My Thanks to Ned Nikolov, who has just sent the first part of the ‘Response to comments on the Unified Theory of Climate’ to us.
Part 1: Magnitude of the Natural ‘Greenhouse’ Effect
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. and Karl Zeller, Ph.D.
January 17, 2012
We’ve decided to split our expanded explanation into two parts, so that we do not overwhelm people. From what we’ve seen on the blogs so far, there appear to be 2 main areas of confusion: 1) the size of the GH effect. Most people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact the atmosphere boosts the surface temperature by well over 100K; and 2) the physical nature of the pressure-controlled thermal enhancement. Although, this follows seamlessly from the gas law, most people (including PhD scientists) appear to be totally confused as to how precisely the effect of pressure works or is even possible. So, this will be topic of our reply Part 2.
(a) The term Greenhouse Effect (GE) is inherently misleading due to the fact that the free atmosphere, imposing no restriction on convective cooling, does not really work as a closed greenhouse.
(b) ATE accurately conveys the physical essence of the phenomenon, which is the temperature boost at the surface due to the presence of atmosphere;
(c) Reasoning in terms of ATE (Atmospheric Thermal Effect) vs. GE (Greenhouse effect) helps broaden the discussion beyond radiative transfer; and
(d) Unlike GE, the term Atmospheric Thermal Effect implies no underlying physical mechanism(s).
We start with the undisputable fact that the atmosphere provides extra warmth to the surface of Earth compared to an airless environment such as on the Moon. This prompts two basic questions:
(1) What is the magnitude of this extra warmth, i.e. the size of ATE ? and (2) How does the atmosphere produce it, i.e. what is the physical mechanism of ATE ? In this reply we address the first question.
The pdf is available here. UTC_Blog_Reply_Part-1
Please try to focus on the content of the pdf in comments to this thread. We can carry on posting our general thoughts about the overall theory and how best to formulate our understanding of the proposed gravity effect on the existing threads – thanks.
Ned Nikolov says:
January 22, 2012 at 5:36 am
For anyone paying attention to data and real evidence, there should be doubt at this juncture that the current estimate of 250K for the Moon’s mean surface temperature is simply a fiction! The implications of this single fact are far reaching, since the percent GH theory is completely unprepared to deal with the ensuing 122K-130K atmospheric thermal enhancement (GE). And that is an eye-opener by itself …
Imo you’re correct in calculating the effect of solar radiation on half a sphere iso the GHE spreading it.around the whole sphere. (same approach as Joseph Postma took btw)
Applying this blackbody approach to planets similar to the moon looks ok, although even rocks have some heatstorage capacity compared to the on/off nature of a blackbody.
Imo it is absolutely WRONG to use the blackbody approach for waterplanet earth.
It’s base temperature is 275K, not 0K.
Reason of course being the oceans, and no, I’m not assuming any heat exchange between the hot core and the oceans, just radiative balance for planet earth with incoming solar, so no temperature change for the whole system, just internal distribution of heat.
(oceancurrents, windpatterns etc.etc)
So both the GHE and the ATE have to compete with solar radiation in warming earths surface from 275K to 290K. I think the sun is by far the major player.
Conclusion should be imo that the atmosphere is heated mostly from below, and conduction and convection are the major processes to accomplish this, setting an ENVIRONMENTAL lapse rate from surface to outer space.
The paradigm change we’re looking for is getting rid of the blackbody calculation for water planet earth, it’s totally wrong imo, and yes, this does also kill the GHE theory.
wayne @ January 20, 11:40 am
Wayne, thanks for your enthusiasm. An interesting aspect of that thread was that some of the usual suspects, (apart from Tim Folkerts), did not try to demolish my first principles arguments as an engineer. (= applied scientist). BTW: Wot’s all this stuff about elevators?
• Willis, (the one who knows everything), despite a request to draw his attention to the thread because he had a vested interest, what with his own “improved” Earth’s energy budget cartoon, did not appear.
• R. Gates made a brief appearance, pointed out a minor oversight, said there was a lot to chew on, and then disappeared.
• Joel Shore? Well perhaps he was on holiday, (vacation).
The link you give to the original WUWT thread has 639 comments attached, some very long, and was painfully slow on my computer. For a quicker view of the article, here follows a better link, and it includes a correction prompted by the comment from R. Gates.
http://bobfjones.wordpress.com/2011/10/16/studying-the-trenberth-et-al-earths-energy-budget-diagram/
I was thinking of expanding the article to cover some other comments in the 639, and will be looking for a guest post on a different website to WUWT. I’ve gone off WUWT a tad just lately.
IMO, no one was able to dismantle the evidence I gave that the S-B application by Trenberth, was at least, put in polite terms; paradoxical.
Ned, and others,
Thank you for your patience in explaining my albedo questions. I think that part 2 will help to clear this up for me. When will part 2 be published? You have got us hooked and impatient – but please do not rush this.
I agree with the comment above about publishing the radiative calculation for the Moon, along with the empirical evidence. I would love to see this published in Nature! How could they refuse?
Best of luck!
kdk33 says: January 22, 2012 at 12:25 am:
I think that the problem is that you can not ascribe a temperature and pressure to “outer space”. The mean free path of atoms is such that you can not have a meaningful concept of pressure, as there will be no conduction, and all atoms must be treated on an individual basis, following geodesic trajectories. Also, the 2.7K “temperature” is not related to a gas, however difuse, but is simply the black body temperature of the universe.
All off topic, but I thought it was an interesting question, from someone who was willing to discuss entrpy (and my answer may be completely wrong!).
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 21, 2012 at 9:26 pm
As an example of the arbitrary nature of the N&Z choice of values for surface pressure in their paper, they say the pressure of the earth is 98,888.20 pascals. I particularly liked the fact that it is allegedly accurate to the nearest hundredth of a pascal.
….
Finally, whenever you see parameters given to seven significant figures, and the earth’s surface pressure given to two decimals, you know you are dealing with amateurs. That kind of fake precision is a big red flag at any time.
At least they are using their arms to operate calculators instead of waving them around furiously.
Thanks for some replies.
After some thought….
I think the isentropic assumption breaks down at the point in the atmosphere that convections ceases to be the dominant heat transfer mechanism. I suppose that radiation takes over; and, at that point, the temperature gradient becomes much closer to zero. Thus, the earth’s surfae temperature is not a million degreees.
BTW, isentropic just means adiabatic AND reversible. Nothing to be afraid of.
So, does gravity impose both an atmospheric temperature profile as well as a pressure profile? I think the answer is kinda sorta, but in a round about way. Radiation heats the polanet surface so it attempts to cool. In the near surface atmosphere, the dominant heat transfer mechanism is convection. Because there is a pressure gradient, convection cannot return the atmosphere to a zero temperature gradient, instead it can only return the atmosphere the DALR (for my dry imaginary ideal gas planet). Put another way: Gravity imposes a pressure gradient and that pressure gradient limits the ability of convection to return the atmospheric temperture gradent to zero. That limit is the DALR.
Now, the DALR comes about because convection (heat transfer by movement of the heat containing mass) requires gas to move up and down the pressure gradient. As it does, it experiences isentrop;ic (adiabatic and reversible) expansion and compression. Hot air rises attempting to heat the air above (convection), but as it does it is cooled because of expansion. So when it arrives at the cold air above, it isn’t as hot as it was when it left… you get the point.
Once convection ceases to be the dominant heat transfer mechanism, then this DALR constraint no longer applies.
Aside: TB, if I’m off-topic, just tell me where this discussion should go (please don’t send me to TBTS purgatory).
Bob Fernley-Jones says:
January 22, 2012 at 8:47 am
Went to your linked article. Very interesting read. Some observations:
- The 2nd NASA energy budget balances, while the Trenberth cartoon has the 0,9W/m^2
fudgefactor to explain global warming. Is NASA abandoning the warming trend?
- The NASA budget has no energy flowing from atmosphere to earth. Is backradiation gone?
- Of the energy leaving earth (51% of incoming) ~60% is by conduction and convection
Seems radiation is getting less importance?
Perhaps back to good old meteorology, where the sun heats the earth, and the earth heats the atmosphere (mainly)?
Perhaps NASA is backtracking it’s position regarding the GHE. Let’s hope
Some interesticg calcs…
We know, assuming an isentropic ideal gas: cP ln(T2/T1) = R ln(P2/P1). We can let Cp = 5/2R. If I let T2 be earths gray body temperature and set it to either 255 K(traditional) or 155 K(N-Z), then I let T1 be 280K, and I let P1 be 1 bar (pressure at the surface). Then I can calculate P2, which is the atmospheric pressure where the earth is at it’s gray body temperature.
If I divide my idealized atmosphere into two parts – near surface where convection dominates, and an upper part where radiation dominates – then P2 is the pressure at which convection ceases to dominated.
For T2=255 K, that pressure is about 0.79 bar. For T2 = 155 K, that pressure is about 0.22 Bar
At least my numbers are starting to be more reasonable.
Tallbloke
I did not see this funny comment by Willis from January 21, 2012 at 9:26 pm
(1) None of the pressure values used in our paper are ‘arbitrary’! For example, the Earth’s mean surface pressure of 98,888.2 Pa was calculated as P = Ma*g/A, where Ma is the total mass of the atmosphere (kg), g is average gravity, and A is the Earth’s total surface area (m^2). The values for Ma, g, and A were taken from NASA pages and are listed in Table 1 in our original paper. Anyone can verify this calculation. The 98,888.2 value is smaller than the standard 101,325 Pa, because the latter is the pressure at sea level and as such does not represent higher land masses which we need account for in this analysis. Incidentally, our 98,888.2 figure is very similar to the 98,550 Pa average atmospheric pressure obtained by Trenberth & Smith (2005), see:
Trenberth , K.E. and Smith, L. 2005. The Mass of the Atmosphere: A Constraint on Global Analyses. J. Climate 18: 864-875. (http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/massERA40JC.pdf)
(2) The parameters in our regression Eq. 7 (in the first paper) are given to seven significant figures for a reason! It is because they appear in the exponential part of a highly non-linear function. If these were rounded to the 2nd or 3d digit, then the function will not produce the exact values for the enhancement factor anymore, and anyone who tries to use Eq. 7 or 8 to reproduce our results will notice a discrepancy with what we report in the paper. In trying to avoid such confusion, we decided to list regression parameters with their full precision.
However, Willis apparently could not figure out the above, which should not come as a surprise given his inability to grasp basics implications of the Gas Law. Out of all bloggers on both websites (where our paper was published), he was the only one I noticed, who asked repeatedly what the point of our paper was?! I’ll leave to the community to decide who is the amateur here …
BenAW,
About your comment from January 22, 2012 at 8:44 am:
1) We are NOT calculating the solar radiation on half sphere! Read our paper one more time
2) Your speculation that Earth’s base surface temperature is 275K is incorrect, because there would be no liquid oceans without atmosphere and its ATE effect. It is the extra warmth provided by atmospheric pressure that makes the very existence of oceans possible. So, the Earth’s base temperature is that of a gray body exemplified by the Moon.
clazy8 says:
January 22, 2012 at 5:20 am
clazy,
Here are the relevant links:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-climate-theory-may-confuse-cause-and-effect/#comment-847861
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-climate-theory-may-confuse-cause-and-effect/#comment-848965
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/29/unified-climate-theory-may-confuse-cause-and-effect/#comment-849305
My html fu is weak at best, sorry about not providing proper links. This subject is the only one that turned me from a full-time lurker to a semi-participant. I was surprised just now to see how often I thought I had something worth saying. Also saw good reasons why lurking should be my standard m.o.
On a rotating uneven sphere under a single sun with a non GHG atmosphere there would be huge dayside and nightside temperature differentials producing very strong winds.All the energy exchanges between surface and atmosphere would be via conduction and convection involving ALL the molecules of the atmosphere whatever their radiative characteristics.
There would be enough mixing to bring warmed upper air down to the cold ground on the night side which would smooth out both heating and cooling around the planet.
The pressure at the surface would still combine with solar input to give the bog standard adiabatic lapse rate (or Atmospheric Thermal Effect) for a planet of that mass and atmospheric pressure. The air circulation of the planet would simply restructure itself around the ATE.
Just as every planet with an atmosphere of any composition always has done and always will do.
You see, an atmosphere structured around ATE is the only possible stable structure. Unless it achieves ATE then the situation is unstable and the atmosphere either boils off or congeals on the ground eventually.
The Ideal Gas Laws have never been falsified.
GHGs wholly unnecessary.
I just had this excjhange with Joel Shore at WUWT:
“For a planet without a greenhouse effect, said height is necessarily the surface of the planet”
Irrelevant because energy still gets into the air via conduction and convection and back to the surface via convection and conduction for then radiating out. So there will still be a lapse rate and it must match ATE otherwise the system is unstable. If it doesn’t match ATE then the atmosphere will accumulate energy via conduction and convection indefinitely until it boiled away or lose energy to the ground via conduction and convection indefinitely until it congealed on the surface.
The true Perpetuum Mobile is the concept of a planet with an atmosphere that is not precisely in equilibrium with its ATE.
Any disequilibrium will either boil off the atmosphere or congeal it on the ground.Once congealed on the ground it would be lost via sublimation.
The radiative GHG theory is itself a Perpetuum Mobile because it proposes that changing the composition changes ATE. Thus a bit more human GHGs are amplified by more water vapour and that gives more GHGs which amplifies again ad infinitum.
The atmosphere and oceans would get hotter and hotter until they boiled away.
We would see lots more planet sized bodies with no atmospheres at all because a little change in atmospheric composition would have been enough to destabilise it.
IIf we were to reduce GHGs so that they changed the ATE lapse rate the other way then the Earth would get steadily colder until the oceans and air congealed on the ground.
The system won’t allow it. Any change in composition that might introduce a disequilibrium with ATE is neutralised by a reconfiguring of the circulation pattern.
If you could find one planet where the Gas Laws do not apply then you would have me. Where is it ?
WUWT has published the reply to comments.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/22/unified-theory-of-climate-reply-to-comments/
@Stephen Wilde says:
Just create illumination for those that seek it. pg
January 22, 2012 at 7:27 pm
I agree Stephen, Many people blow smoke and a few try to create light. It is a waste of time to convince smokers to quite. They enjoy their vice too much. May be time to ignore them and move on.
Ned Nikolov says:
January 22, 2012 at 5:12 pm
1) We are NOT calculating the solar radiation on half sphere! Read our paper one more time
If you mean the adding of the 2,7K deep space temp factor over the whole sphere, ok.
2) Your speculation that Earth’s base surface temperature is 275K is incorrect,
“We start with the undisputable fact that the atmosphere provides extra warmth to the surface of Earth compared to an airless environment such as on the Moon.”
My proposal is at the least an alternative to your theory, so the undisputable is not warrented imo.
And we have this guy Occam with his razor
I still have some problems with figure 3 in the paper.
The slope in the lines for 0,60 and 75 latitude suggest some heat storage capapcity for the moons surface, making it a non-perfect grey body.
The line for “latitude 89 winter” shows imo the effect of “earthshine” on this specific day.
If correct it’s magnitude is far greater than the 2,7K deep space temp you do compensate for.
Needs some elaboration imo.
Can somebody help me out with this text from the main paper on the UCT?
As example for the ATE the following is stated:
“At a planetary level, the effect is manifest in Chinook winds, where adiabatically heated downslope airflow raises the local temperature by 20C-30C in a matter of hours.”
I don’t see the relevance of this effect for the total atmosphere.
I just posted this on the WUWT blog – a lot of you bloggers are suffering from problems WUWT bloggers are:
The equations we have given you bloggers are simple and they work. Why aren’t you all trying to disprove our MIRACLE equation rather than banging your heads against walls trying to prove or disprove who knows what and exclaiming you have problems with this or that? The question is how can we possibly have done it – there is no question that our equations work – if you haven’t verified that it works, why haven’t you? What are you all afraid of: the realization that the Earth could be 100% nitrogen or 100% CO2 or 100% naughty vapours of some sort, and using the same surface pressure, would provide for the same average global surface temperature? Why are you all trying to include so-called GH gases; ocean modulations; re-radiations; crusts, your grandma’s bad breath and so on ad nauseam? These are not part of our theory. These parameters & ideas have absolutely nothing to do with the long term average global surface temperatures we are addressing and we’ve proved it with actual data . This is the miracle of our theory and why we called it the UTC? Why aren’t you thinking: “hmmmm, N&Z have given us an equation that lo-and-behold when we plug in the measured pressures and calculate Tgb as they suggest, gives us a calculated Ts that also matches measured values! You can’t disprove the equation? So maybe we are cooking the data books somehow, but how?
[Reply] Hi Karl, welcome to the Talkshop, and thanks for joining the discussion. I’m sure you’ll get some long replies to this comment, so I’ll give a short one:
We’re sceptics! Here at the Talkshop, we have suspended judgment and have trusted you and your future reviewers to make sure the maths is correct. But science is about more than maths. We will look at anything new from all angles and try to see if it has a serious conceptual flaw. I haven’t found any big problems so far and I wish you and Ned well and hope your theory succeeds! – Rog Tallbloke
BenAW @ January 22, 2:21 pm
Thanks for your interest Ben. I should mention that the NASA version predates the 2009 Trenberth cartoon by several years, and is all over various divisions of NASA and elsewhere. I should perhaps try and track-down the origins and add that relative timing to my updated article IF any mainstream blog shows an interest to post it. (such as Tallbloke’s, solely currently on offer for an expression of interest).
As for Trenberth’s missing 0.9 W/m^2, well it seems to be a funny circular argument that is not supported by the last decade or more of data.
colliemum @ January 22, 6:24 am
Re your good example of paradigm change:
Yes indeed, that is a good example of paradigm change. Another one I rather like, partly because it is topical in nearby threads, is that not long ago, Alfred Wegener was chastised by his peers for proposing a theory of continental drift/tectonics. Of course he did not have any firm proofs, or demonstrable geological mechanisms to cause it, but was nevertheless fairly recently proven to be correct.
Copied from WUWT for the record:
Joel Shore says:
January 22, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Willis says:
But they are not integrating over the dark half, as near as I can tell. What am I missing? You can’t just ignore half of the planet like that.
They did integrate over the dark half…and the value they get is zero because that is what the insolation is over that half. (They then add something back in to account for the fact that the temperature on the dark side would not really be 0 K but the 3 K background. I haven’t really paid attention to whether they did that correctly because the power due to the 3 K background is so ridiculously small as to be inconsequential.)
Oh, and Joel, what was your opinion of them substituting
mu = cos(theta)
into equation 7, and then integrating over mu? That seems like an incorrect procedure to me.
It is fine. The integral of the polar coordinate for a function f over a spherical surface is integral of f*sin(theta)*d(theta) but sin(theta)*d(theta) = -d(cos(theta)) = -d(mu) where mu = cos(theta). [The negative sign is accounted for by switching the limits of integration, i.e., 0 deg to 90 deg becomes mu = 0 to mu = 1.]
Like I said in my first post, as near as I can see, their mathematical calculations are fine. Their errors here are conceptual ones.
———————————————————
Joel couldn’t resist blowing a little smoke at the end there, but the preceding commentary is good to see. Of course, it will take people time to get their heads round the turning upside down of their co2 driven thinking, but science moves forward.
Here’s my own comment to Joel:
tallbloke says:
January 23, 2012 at 12:45 am
Joel Shore says:
“Trenberth’s diagram is for the actual Earth’s atmosphere where some of the terrestrial radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere (and said atmosphere also radiates). If this were not the case and the Earth’s surface still emitted 390 W/m^2 of radiation from the surface, then all of that radiation would escape to space and the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere would be 240 W/m^2 of solar radiation coming in (and being absorbed, as opposed to the part that is reflected) with 390 W/m^2 of terrestrial radiation going out.
The problem is not getting those numbers to balance with the radiative greenhouse effect…The problem is getting them to balance without the radiative greenhouse effect.”
Joel, I understand it’s hard for you to get your head around this, but consider Ned’s statement that:
“the long-wave (LW) radiation in the atmosphere is a RESULT (a BYPRODUCT if you will) of the atmospheric temperature, NOT a cause for the latter! The atmospheric temperature, in turn, is a function of solar heating and pressure!
The so-called GH effect is a pressure phenomenon, not a radiative phenomenon! That’s because no back radiation can rise the Earth’s surface temperature some 133K above the corresponding no-atmosphere (gray body) temperature. AND yes, the thermal effect of our atmosphere is well over 100K as proven by NASA’s recent observations of Moon surface temperatures.”
Now, The practical demonstration by Konrad Hartmann in the recent post on my site (linked above in an earlier comment) shows that higher pressure does indeed enhance the sensible atmospheric heat generated by the passage solar radiation. This is an empirical result. No conservation law is harmed during the process. Empirical reality cannot break laws of nature!
The radiation measured by AERI and other such devices is the radiation buzzing around between the molecules in the air. The air is denser near the surface, which is why we see 390 squiggles per square metre whizzing about just above the surface there. Up at 7km or thereabouts on average, where the air is less dense and there are fewer molecules per cubic cm, we see around 240 squiggles per square metre whizzing around. This fails to surprise me.
As we all know, there is plenty of convection and evaporation and condensation leading to latent heat release going on in the troposphere, such that radiation is not required as a shifter of heat there. It just buzzes around doing its buzzy thing. Above the troposphere, those radiatively hyper-active water vapour and co2 molecules do a sterling job shifting heat back into space for us so we stay cool here on the surface. Has there really been a change in the effective radiating height in the last 40 years? Got any data on that?
Empirical data from pyrheliometers gathered and studied by Doug Hoyt and others show no overall change in the opacity of the atmosphere for 70 years or so during the C20th. It’s a real result which has been ignored for too long IMO.
Stay cool Joel.
“The radiation measured by AERI and other such devices is the radiation buzzing around between the molecules in the air. The air is denser near the surface, which is why we see 390 squiggles per square metre whizzing about just above the surface there. Up at 7km or thereabouts on average, where the air is less dense and there are fewer molecules per cubic cm, we see around 240 squiggles per square metre whizzing around. This fails to surprise me.
As we all know, there is plenty of convection and evaporation and condensation leading to latent heat release going on in the troposphere, such that radiation is not required as a shifter of heat there. It just buzzes around doing its buzzy thing.”
Nice image of lots of buzzy thing buzzing about
Should be required reading.
Well put.
I just looked at WUWT – it is facinating to watch the “great minds” fall into line! They now seem to agree that the maths is correct, at least.
It took at least 3 readings of part 1, and then reading the original N&Z paper before I “got it”. I wish I had done this before making any comments, and I suspect that others may now feel the same way. If the empirical evidence holds up (and I am sure that many people are now frantically checking it) I do not see how this is not a “game changer”.
The trouble is, assuming that there is no “killer blow”, how can this be used to stop the trillion dollar “carbon scam” if only qualified physicists can understand it, and then only after many hours of study? But that is probably a debate for another place.
The pyrheliometer measurements mentioned a couple of times previously are not really relevant to the discussion here. The pyrheliometers measure visible radition, not thermal IR.
Doug: thanks for the clarification. My faulty crash-damaged memory is making a fool of me again.
So is that near IR part of the solar spectrum which is intercepted in the atmosphere (~70W/m^2 IIRC) too small to detect changes in opacity with or just outside the wavelength range of the instruments?
It seems to me that radiation budgets, gas laws, conduction, planetary motions, and convection have been so conflated as to become incomprehensibly complex. I’m only an engineer with a smattering of physical oceanography in my background and in my experience nature simply doesn’t support such twisted scenarios as are being put out there in the climate debate. So I would like to take a wack at simplifying.
My first simplifying assumption is that all of the various horizontal and vertical motions induced in our fluid ‘atmosphere’ (I’m including the oceans) are nothing more than energy exchange mechanisms. They convert potential to kinetic and back again with no net (planetary) energy change. This means convection, water cycle, ocean storage, winds, etc. contribute nothing to the argument.
Secondly, I say it’s a given that the net radiative balance has to be maintained to conserve (planetary) energy.
Next, I conjecture that the atmosphere, irrespective of what it is composed of, steals energy on the daylight side (by conduction) from the grey body that would otherwise have been radiated to space then gives it back at night (by conduction). As long as the net daily energy of the black body remains unchanged from that of an atmosphere free planet then the net radiation to space remains unchanged. Energy is conserved. It’s like you have a giant (perfect) spring that is compressed in the daytime and released at night, always giving back what it takes to compress it. It makes no difference whether you put an enormous amount into the compression (Venus) or a little tiny amount (Mars).
This next bit is tricky and also key. Many people conflate the temperature of the earth and the temperature of the atmosphere. i.e. we speak of them as if they are the same thing. They aren’t at all the same of course and I maintain that it is possible to have a constant mean temperature planet, our grey body that is maintaining radiative balance, (the solid and liquid part) with a non radiating elevated temperature atmosphere near the surface. Go stand on a beach in the sun in your bare feet. if you think air temp and surface temp are the same.
Lastly lets go back to the perfect spring. How can a gas (let’s make it an ideal non GHG one) get hotter than the grey body says it should be. That brings me to Konrad’s experiment. The ideal gas law is an energy balance equation. On the left we have pressure and volume. On the right we have a constant, the amount of gas (however you choose to quantify it), and temperature. The experiment is essentially one that adds radiant energy to two equal volumes at different constant pressures. Each bottle has an equation where the left side is held constant (PV). The implication is that each of their energies is constant but unequal. When we add radiant energy each bottle’s gas heats up due to conduction with the black body. PV can’t change. Therefore, on the right side something’s got to give. Molecules go down. Temperature goes up. The energy in the bottles has not changed. Both bottles experience an increase in temperature but the higher pressure bottle has more temp increase.
Could it be that the higher pressure bottle has to let more molecules out than the one at atmospheric bottle to maintain constant pressure? I think so. If I’m right then the temperature in that one has to go up more than the temp of the bottle that only had to let out a little bit of gas. I’m not bright enough to do the math but it does seem logical enough for someone to go about it who is.
If you can safely ignore everything going on convectively, etc. then you’re left with a tall column of gas that is being heated by conduction at the bottom. For a given volume at its base then, it has to let out some molecules (just like Konrad’s experiment) and increase its T in order to maintain the constant P necessary to hold up the column. The experiment is behaving exactly as I would expect a little volume of near surface atmosphere to behave. It can have an elevated T without modifying the planet’s radiative balance at all.
The higher the pressure is, the higher the energy is that will be found near the surface. Higher pressure means more molecules being let out of the ‘bottle’ during daylight which means higher T. As long as the planet rotates the ‘spring’ is doing its thing maintaining the radiative balance while getting as hot as it wants.
Hi Paul and welcome. I think you have a good grasp of some of the key issues, but have maybe gone a step too far with the simplification. I’ll make a couple of additions to your paragraph if I may; see what you think.
“My first simplifying assumption is that all of the various horizontal and vertical motions induced in our fluid ‘atmosphere’ (I’m including the oceans) are nothing more than energy exchange mechanisms. They convert solar irradiance to kinetic to potential and back again, and finally to outgoing long wave radiation with no net (planetary) energy change. This means convection, water cycle, ocean storage, winds, etc. contribute nothing to the argument.”
I’m just emphasising that it’s a dynamic equilibrium with extra-terrestrial input and output. The complexity in the feedbacks and interactions of the climate system which are of chief interest come into play when extra-terrestrial and long term internal fluctuations cause change in factors and magnitudes which are noticeable to us. One of the tricky things is that there’s a possibility that things we hardly notice like small changes in length of day, multi-decadal pressure balance between arctic and equator etc might have a more profound effect on multidecadal climate fluctuations than we yet realise.
Please do cut and paste your relevant thoughts on Konrad’s experiment to his thread for discussion, as well as continuing to discuss N&Z’s work on grey-body temperaure here.
@tallbloke
I agree with the change in wording. It’s always the danger with simplifying assumptions that they are simplifying assumptions, isn’t it?
I will cross post on Konrad’s entry.
Are you in essential agreement with the initial assumption? When I first started thinking about this I had thought of things like ocean currents, storms, wind, etc as important things being left out of the conversation but then it dawned on me that they are just terrestrial energy conversion and transport with no extra-terrestrial importance.
Paul, I agree that in terms of working out overall planetary energy budget they don’t need to be all figured out. However, if you want to work out what cause precedes what effect in order to know whether or not small changes in say atmospheric composition matter of not, then….
Plus of course, those natural internal modes of energy conversion can be pretty important to those who are hit by typhoons, earthquakes, ice-storms, floods, and so on. We are tying to understand and predict those natural disasters to better anticipate and prepare for naturally destructive events.
If changes in composition (from human emissions) result in more energy in the air yet do not increase system temperature overall then one has to look at a changed rate of energy flow through the system.
That does involve changes in climate but, so far, the evidence is that it is miniscule compared to natural variability caused by sun and oceans.
Mind you it may be that the rise in GHGs is primarily due to changes in ocean and ground moisture absorption capability with human emissions normally being quickly absorbed by nearby vegetation and in rainfall.
But those are issues for another thread.
kzeller says:
January 23, 2012 at 4:37 am
Hi, Karl. Was starting to wonder if you were the “Teller” of the pair. If you don’t know who Penn and Teller are, never mind. Anyway, glad to hear from you as well as Ned.
I can tell you and Ned are getting a little frustrated, but you’re making headway. The blog format is particularly helpful for laymen like myself but it must feel like herding cats to you. It’s very helpful when you engage, even if it means talking at a less than scholarly level. Please keep up the comments.
Dan in Nevada says:
January 22, 2012 at 5:56 pm
Thanks, Dan
John Day tells us:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/books/planetary_science/ (Ch 4, pg 116)
“The temperature on the lunar surface increases by about 47°K in the top 83 cm. The top surface (2-3 cm) is a loosely packed porous layer. Surface temperatures vary considerably. At the Apollo 17 site, the surface reaches a maximum of 384K (111C) and cools to 102K (-171C) at the end of the lunar night [2]. The near-surface temperature is 216K (-57C). At the Apollo 15 site, these temperatures are about 10°K lower. The agreement with previous estimates based on terrestrial observations was very close [8, 9]”
Those references at the end of the quote:
8. Saari, J. M. (1964) Icarus. 3: 161.
9. Mendell, W. W., and Low, F. J. (1970) JGR. 75: 3319.
Ned and Karl used this reference:
http://www.geo.lsa.umich.edu/~shaopeng/Huang07ASR.pdf
WUWT commenter dlb offers this reference:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010LPICo1530.3008N
Ned,
Before we get too carried away, I suggest that we should pause for a moment to read and carefully absorb today’s reponse from Harry Huffman to your N&Z paper. He has posted this on his own website at:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2012/01/observation-on-unified-climate-theory.html
First of all he shows, very eloquently in my opinion, that the grey body calculation that is at the heart of your ‘Nte’ ratio calculations for each planet (which generate the last line of data in your Table 4) is actually mathematically equivalent to his method of comparing the planetary temperatures directly without recourse to the concept of a ‘grey body’. He shows mathematically that both methods end up doing the same two things:
(1) They adjust for the relative amounts of the Sun’s energy that the planets receive (using the relative distances of the planets from the Sun and applying the inverse square law of electromagnetic radiation).
(2) They convert the adjusted energy values to their corresponding temperatures (using the standard Stefan-Boltzmann black body relationship).
So people will ask: what’s the difference? Well what Harry shows is that the additional parameters that you use, emissivity and albedo for your presumed grey body version of each planet are unnecessary. I suspected this when I first read your paper and now I have seen his exposition I am sure he is right.
I would be interested to know whether you agree. If you do, I think this is good news, not bad. It simplifies your proposition considerably and avoids diversion into endless theoretical discussions about the significance of grey body (“atmosphere-less”) versions of each planet – evidently a fruitful source of confusion and disagreement.
At the same time, I do not think that, if you were to adopt Harry’s simpler method of calculation for your planetary comparisons, this would negate your separate and, in my opinion, incredibly important finding that, hitherto, climate scientists have been using the wrong math when calculating the temperature difference between an atmosphere-less Earth (which is arguably a grey body) and its actual measured temperature, leading to a discrepancy between the two methods of calculation of no less than 100K! I think this is a very important result in its own right because it knocks the GHG warming theory on the head anyway, it being very difficult to see how the warmists can put such a huge additional difference down to the effect of GHGs.
So my positive thought is that there are now two separate arrows to our bow: Firstly an impossible temperature gap for the GHG theorists to bridge. Secondly, even if they try (and they will), some cast iron empirical planetary data and an empirical formula that provides no room for a GHG effect anyway.
Just nailed another support paper for all this, thanks to Yankov’s reference at WUWT. Great times! 2005, paper in Russian but Google Translate is your friend!
The adiabatic theory of greenhouse effect by Academician (RANS) OG Sorokhtin,
Institute of Oceanology. Shirshov Sciences.
Tallbloke, you need to run this paper here IMHO.
The bottom line, as David points out, is that N & Z and Harry Dale Hoffman are essentially coming to the same conclusion using highly different methodologies. This can only strengthen the perception that they are both on the right track. The next question is: is it possible to bring the two trains of thought together. I think it may be :
Just posted this on the “High Pressure Venus” thread, but in the light of David Socrates post, it is probably better posted here (apologies if you’ve already read it).
_____________________________________________________________________________
If I am understanding Harry Dale Hoffman correctly, he is not necessarily saying that N & Z are wrong, but that they need to take their theory one step further and, rather than simply accept surface pressure as being a primary explanation, along with solar radiation, for surface temperatures, they need to ask what factors cause surface pressure – break it down into constituent elements if you will. I think he is onto something……..
……Surface pressure is primarily a function of atmospheric mass and our old friend, gravity. Atmospheric depth also – they are intrinsically interlinked. The greater the depth of the atmosphere, the greater the distance over which adiabatic lapse rate (a function of gravity (again!) and heat capacity) applies. The greater the distance over which the adiabatic lapse rate applies, the greater the temperature difference between the top of the atmosphere and the surface.
Does this make sense? I know it is simplistic, but this is deliberate as I am trying to break things down into basic principles. I can’t see any fault in the logic. Can anyone else?
Following on, my working hypothesis is this :
The TRUE effective surface temperature (TEST – I like that!) of a planetary body is defined by incoming solar radiation and the thermal inertia (heat capacity) of its surface. Speed of rotation and axial tilt MAY be other factors which need to be taken into consideration. The presence of liquid (water) on the Earth’s surface raises the TEST of the Earth as compared to planets with dry, rocky surfaces because the heat is essentially stored in a third dimension, so its surface has a higher heat capacity.
Clearly, accurately determining TEST is going to be very difficult, but assuming it is possible, I have a hypothesis arising :
TEST defines height in the atmosphere at which it is correct to start applying the appropriate adiabatic lapse rate. Apply that all the way down the surface and voila!, you have your observed surface temperatures.
This is just a line of thought I am persuing right now, I have an uncomfortable feeling that I am probably missing something blindingly obvious or indulging in circular reasoning, but as far as I can tell it works in principle on all the planetary bodies examined by N & Z : On Venus, because it has a very thick atmosphere, on Earth because of the reason I have outlined and on Europa, Titan and Triton because they all have low lapse rates on account of weak gravity. Mercury, Mars and the Moon all have negligible atmospheres, so it doesn’t apply
If somebody would be so kind as to point out where I am going wrong, and shoot it down in flames I will not take offense.
TIA.
When I say “Hoffman”, I do of course mean “Huffman”. Doh!
Apologies all round.
The enlightened say first one must have faith before one can understand, can apply and finally manifest using spiritual laws: no faith, no manifestation(s). That said you’ve all got to stop looking for complications, and only ‘test’ our equation 7 or 8 in the original post. So, heaven forbid and risking the consternation response of my partner, here is a ‘thought experiment’ that may provide some light toward the goal of enlightenment. Remember that NTE is a ratio of measured planetary global average equilibrium surface temperature to calculated global average equilibrium grey body temperature on the same planet sans atmosphere. From Table 1. in our original post we determined and reported NTE for Earth to be 1.863 = 287.6/154.3. NTE is a ratio, a dimensionless number, like the Reynolds number used to predict laminar vs. turbulent flow, or the Rossby number relating inertia to planetary rotation, etc. These numbers are powerful predictors in the physical universe we live in. NTE is a new one, just hatched so to speak. You can even call it the Nikolov-Zeller Number if you like
. We use NTE to quantify the ATE, atmospheric thermal effect. ATE is another new term we coined to replace and delineate NTE from the confusing ‘g’ word, hoping but failing miserably, to make it easier for you all to grasp.
Remember that sans atmosphere Tgb =Ts = 154.3K for Earth and with atmosphere Tgb still = 154.3K but Ts = 287.6K. Hence Ts is now 133.3 K higher, blasphemously greater than the ‘g’ word 33K . To realize these two temperatures, the total Solar irradiance must be 1362 W m-2. Lower So, lower temps; higher So, higher temps. So (word so not So) using our thoughts let’s move the Earth and its’ atmosphere to outer space and consider what might happen. Burrrr its cold, So = 0 W m-2 and the temperature of deep space is 2.72K. (We are on the very fringe of a thought experiment space cadets so detractors making our atmosphere solid are not welcome here at this juncture. We could use H2 at the same pressure but we won’t go there.) At deep space equilibrium Tgb = 2.72K, we’re domed; but alas, an opportunity for warmth since we still have our atmosphere and its’ NTE of 1.86. Salvation Ts = 1.86 * 2.72 = 5.06K! Earth becomes a virtual way station to heat UFOs. Nikolov & Zeller out-Goreing Gore, sell their ill-gained carbon credits, purchase all the NTE credits, start an intergalactic warming franchise and demonstrate how faith can manifested wealth! On our return to the Milky Way toward our Solar system we pause Earth for at rest in Saturn’s orbit thinking there may be some more easy money to be made. But here Tgb = 48.9K, so our warming business averages Ts = 48.9 * 1.86 = 91K while the nearby Titians with NTE = 1.918 use unearthly sales techniques and run a much better profit margin with 93.7K assets (space cadets confused by the accounting numbers refer to our Table 1). Nikolov & Zeller loose big time barely able to get Earth back to Earth orbit penniless but at least having the ‘extra energy’ that PV with NTE & So provides.
Remember we are only discussing the bases, foundation of, or reason for global average equilibrium surface temperatures, not regionally changing climates, etc. so forget about lapse rates, radiative transfers, atmosphere constituents, you name it, etc. Try to capture the meaning of our equations 7 & 8 and how the planets & moons with atmospheres obey those equations – it’s truly a miracle.
Dr. Zeller:
I’ve been trying to use your equations 7 and 8 to try to figure out how much of a pressure change we would expect from the +/- 1C increase in global surface temperature over the last +/- 100 years, but without much success. Could you give me a number? Thanks.
Roger A, you & I must learn to use Excel. According to my 14 year old grand daughter to raise or lower Ts by 1K in equation 7 for Earth values you need between + or – 4200 to 4300 Pa – I will not ask her to do any more math.
Over at the parallel thread at WUWT, I added to a comment by Tallbloke concerning a basic premise in the N&Z hypothesis, and had the great fortune of a response fromJoel Shore. I thought it might be of interest here, so I mirror it:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bob Fernley-Jones says: January 23, 8:09 pm
Joel Shore @ January 23, 5:11 pm
Thank you for your typical style of response. I compare your response to part of mine:
You seem to have misunderstood what I wrote; particularly see the part where I’ve herewith added bold emphasis. Oh and BTW, it is not me doing the theorising, but what I believe that N&Z are proposing, which many here do not seem to understand, including as a lecturer, yourself.
As Wayne points out [above], you will not find it in Raymond Pierrehumbert’s book or the like, so you may find it hard to even consider it.
Concerning N&Z’s qualifications, sorry, I thought they were introduced somewhere in one of the threads as belonging to your discipline.
Of course physics is quite a wide field and according to your bio, you have been mostly active in non CAGW stuff. Recently, he has also developed an interest in global climate change… Also, according to your bio it seems that you are no more qualified than they in this area, and they have certainly been more active in diverse constructive publications.
http://www.rit.edu/~w-physic/Faculty_Shore.html
Once again your elitism and dogma comes to the fore in these exchanges
So Joel Shore questions N&Z’s efficiency in climate physics does he? Can some one please give me the links to one of Joel Shore’s papers… if he has one. I would like to compare.
Mike Monce says:
January 23, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Peter, George, Willis, et al:
The integral is correct. The average is taken over the surface of a sphere. i.e. they are averaging over the solid angle 4pi, hence the reason they divide by 4pi outside the integral. What everyone is missing is that the integral is NOT being done in cartesian coordinates but in SPHERICAL coordinates. The integral is done as follows:
Set the z-axis of the system pointing towards the sun at the equator, thus their theta angle corresponds to the usual theta in the spherical corrdinate system. At a constant radius, the element of solid angle d(omega) is given by sin(theta)d(theta)d(phi), the integral we are thus calcuating is
INT cos(theta)^.25 sin(theta)d(thetad(phi) from zero to pi
mu = cos(theta) then d(mu) = -sin(theta) d(theta) subbing in gives:
INT mu^.25 (-d(mu)) d(phi) = – 2pi INT mu^.25 d(mu) = -2pi (4/5) mu^5/4 =
-2pi (4/5) cos(theta)^5/4 evaluated from zero to pi
The limit evaluation just gives a factor of -1 so the net result is 2pi (4/5)
Now divide by 4pi and you get exaclty their value of 2/5.
I’m surprised no other physicists has caught this before (rgb??) It’s standard physics from the junior year in college.
wayne says:
January 23, 2012 at 4:05 pm
A few here seem to have a problem with how to perform this spherical integration… this may help.
To be brief, look up at the top-posted article for any parameters you may not understand.
A spherical integration of the per-point average temperature field:
T.gb = ¼π ∫[0,2π] ∫[0,1] T.i dμ dφ
or even clearer:
T.gb = ½ * ½π ∫[0,2π] ∫[0,1] T.i dμ dφ
As for μ = cos(θ.i), this will only need to be evaluated at two locations, 0 & π/2; first is when the sun is directly above and the second at the 360° terminator that is 90° from the first. So the ultimate results of these two evaluations are cos(0)=1 & cos(π/2)=0.
T.gb = ½ * ½π * ∫[0,2π] ∫[0,1] root4( S.0 (1-α.0) μ / (εσ) ) dμ dφ
T.gb = ½ * ½π * root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ)) ∫[0,2π] ∫[0,1] μ^(1/4) dμ dφ
First integrate ∫ [0,1] μ^(1/4) dμ:
= 4/5 * ( cos(0)^(5/4) – cos(π/2)^(5/4) )
= 4/5 * ( 1^(5/4) – 0^(5/4) )
= 4/5 * 1^(5/4)
= 4/5
Giving:
T.gb = 4/5 * ½ * ½π * root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ)) ∫[0,2π] 1 dφ
T.gb = 4/5 * ½ * ½π * root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ)) ∫[0,2π] dφ
Next integrate ∫[0,2π] 1 dφ
2π*1 – 0*1
2π
T.gb = 2π * 4/5 * ½ * ½π root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ)) * 1
Simplifying:
T.gb = 8π/20π root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ))
T.gb = 2/5 root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ))
or
T.gb = 2/5 (S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ))^0.25
If any one out there disagrees with this derivation, lay out yours step-by-step and most here would like to see your expertise.
I have also personally numerically integrated this using two separate geometries, one as stated above and the other by a front facing latitude band view… both verify the above math … in Earth’s case 154.7 K. I also further extended this numeric integration to address other configurations that Dr. Brown raised in a prior article here at WUWT. Those too have also been double-checked and all appear correct.
Joules Verne says:
January 23, 2012 at 4:25 pm
@Stephen Wilde
“It does not in itself maintain a temperature gradient as far as I know but some have been arguing that it might do that as well to a small degree.”
You still don’t get it. Gravity maintains TWO energy gradients. One kinetic and one potential. The kinetic gradient decreases with altitude and the potential gradient increases with altitude. The two opposing gradients cancel out and the column is isogenergetic. This is how you can have a perpetual temperature gradient yet not be able to extract any work from it for a perpetual motion machine – a temperature gradient can be nullified by an equal but opposite gradient of energy in a different form. You can’t connect the cold and hot sides of the atmosphere without climbing up in a gravity well and the useful energy represented by the change in temperature is exactly used up by the energy required to climb uphill against gravity. The books thus balance and conservation of energy is once again safe from the abuses of junk science.
scf says:
January 23, 2012 at 6:29 pm
I believe the correct way to integrate equation 4 over the sphere is:
T.gb = ∫[-½π,½π] ∫[-½π,½π] root4( S.0 (1-α.0) / (εσ) ) root4 (cos(x)) root4 (cos(φ)) dx dφ
with x and φ being the angle of incidence in both directions,
or more simply:
T.gb = C ∫[-½π,½π] ∫[-½π,½π] root4 (cos(x)) root4 (cos(φ)) dx dφ
where C is the constant root4( S.0 (1-α.0) / (εσ) ).
Anyway, that’s the way I see it according to the argument in the article, as the incident solar flux striking the sphere.
tallbloke says, January 24, 2012 at 7:42 am: Gravity maintains TWO energy gradients. One kinetic and one potential. The kinetic gradient decreases with altitude and the potential gradient increases with altitude. The two opposing gradients cancel out and the column is isogenergetic. This is how you can have a perpetual temperature gradient yet not be able to extract any work from it for a perpetual motion machine – a temperature gradient can be nullified by an equal but opposite gradient of energy in a different form.
TB congratulations. I wish I had thought of expressing it that way.
Let us hope that it will help people here at last distinguish (a) the once-and-for-all INACCESSIBLE kinetic energy stored up billions of years ago when the Earth slowly accreted matter, from (b) the constant flow of ACCESSIBLE energy through the atmosphere due to the Sun.
It is the latter, not the former energy that gives rise to an air temperature that is in proportion to air density (and therefore in proportion to height above the surface) in strict accordance with the Ideal Gas Laws.
The only (but vital) role that gravity plays in this latter process it to make the atmosphere HEAVY so that the pressure at any particular height is FIXED by the weight of the air above it.
Phew! Progress towards sanity…
Posted on Willis’ new thread at WUWT
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 23, 2012 at 9:00 pm
John Day says:
January 23, 2012 at 7:46 pm
@Willis
Why haven’t you addressed my comments on the Ideal Gas Law, the crux of this N&Z theory?
Because this thread is about equation 8. The clue is in the title.
Along those lines, I ask everyone kindly to not debate the whole theory, gravity, the ideal gas law, or any other extraneous stuff on this thread. Please confine yourselves to the topic of the thread, the alleged “evidence” that their theory works. There is a “comments” thread open for your general discussions.
w.
Willis, the supporting material you so daintily call “other extraneous stuff” is in fact the evidence that their theory works. “So by ruling out of court” things like the similarity of their non linear regression, to the clausius curve, you cut N&Z off from the facts supporting their theory.
As Jimmi points out above:
“I do not see that rearranging it to give Ts=Ts actually shows anything – you have inserted the tautology, not them.” In other words, you’re being arsey for the sake of it.
Regarding the number of data points, it is trivially true that research work into solar system dynamics is made more difficult by the fact that there aren’t enough planets with good measurements in place to satisfy arsey stats fiddlers with a predisposition to dispose of a promising theory. That’s just how it is.
Now, regarding the alleged number of free parameters:
Eq. 7: Ts/Tgb = NTE(P)
Eq. 8 simply solves for Ts, i.e. Ts = Tgb*NTE(P)
Also, the constant 29.3966 in Eq. 8 is not a ‘tuned parameter’, but a result of combining 4 constants from the gray-body temperature in Eq. 2, i.e.
(2/5)*[(1 - 0.12)/(ϵ*σ)]^0.25 = 29.3966
In addition, you already knew that the purpose of the small constant Cs in Eq. 2 is, to make Eq. 2 predict a temperature of 2.725K (instead 0K) when So = 0 (no radiation present).
In short Willis, you are a serial shark jumper leading a charmed life.
David, I expressed the same thing in words when I pointed out the fallacy of Robert Browns perpetual motion machine consisting of a silver rod. The losses in the transmission of heat in the rod due to gravity going up the hill cancelled the alleged energy gain form going down it.
However, I can’t claim credit for the neat statement you spotted. It was posted by Joules Verne at WUWT. I reposted it here because of its clarity.
Your own summary is very clear too. Well done!
Comment 300! What a great thread this has been. My thanks again to Ned and Karl for their participation.
A further comment to Willis:
tallbloke says:
January 24, 2012 at 3:39 am
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 24, 2012 at 3:21 am
tallbloke says:
January 24, 2012 at 1:33 am
Also, the constant 29.3966 in Eq. 8 is not a ‘tuned parameter’, but a result of combining 4 constants from the gray-body temperature in Eq. 2, i.e.
(2/5)*[(1 - 0.12)/(ϵ*σ)]^0.25 = 29.3966
Upon further contemplation, I realized that this statement couldn’t be true, since the albedos are different for each planet. As a result, if it is a constant for all planets it is a tuned parameter.
It’s the albedo for rocky planets without an atmosphere. Assumed to be the same for all the bodies tested. So, Moon: measured albedo 0.12 Earth with no atmosphere, about the same, etc. So, not tuned; measured from the Moon, and applied elsewhere.
Read Nikolov and Zellers work and their contributions to the threads on my website for details would be my advice to anyone who wants to address what they actually say. You’re not banned from reading my website Willis, just from trying to gishgallop their (or anyone elses) theory into the dust.
“Gravity maintains TWO energy gradients. One kinetic and one potential. The kinetic gradient decreases with altitude and the potential gradient increases with altitude. The two opposing gradients cancel out and the column is isogenergetic. This is how you can have a perpetual temperature gradient yet not be able to extract any work from it for a perpetual motion machine – a temperature gradient can be nullified by an equal but opposite gradient of energy in a different form. You can’t connect the cold and hot sides of the atmosphere without climbing up in a gravity well and the useful energy represented by the change in temperature is exactly used up by the energy required to climb uphill against gravity. The books thus balance and conservation of energy is once again safe from the abuses of junk science.”
and
“Let us hope that it will help people here at last distinguish (a) the once-and-for-all INACCESSIBLE kinetic energy stored up billions of years ago when the Earth slowly accreted matter, from (b) the constant flow of ACCESSIBLE energy through the atmosphere due to the Sun.
It is the latter, not the former energy that gives rise to an air temperature that is in proportion to air density (and therefore in proportion to height above the surface) in strict accordance with the Ideal Gas Laws. ”
Brilliant, chaps.
Although I didn’t see a purely gravitationally induced temperature gradient as essential to the N & Z description it did seem possible that there might be one. The above comments square the circle perfectly.
Ned,
in your reply to BenAW [at January 22, 2012 at 5:12 pm] you say:
“1) We are NOT calculating the solar radiation on half sphere! Read our paper one more time”.
I think BenAW is referring to the inner limits of integration shown in the first of the four steps leading to equation (5) in your “Response to Comments” paper – which are different from the inner limits in your original Tgb equation (2) and in the subsequent steps towards equation (5) in the “Response” paper.
Until I saw your Figure 1 in the “Response to Comments” paper, I could not follow your integral calculus steps for equation (2). But when I saw the inner limits for mu [= cos(theta)] as being from -1 to 1 [and from 0 to 2 x pi for "psi"] in reference to your Figure 1, I also realized that you were probably integrating over a hemisphere.
That is the correct thing to do in this instance, since the average over the full sphere is the same, both hemispheres having the same irradiance pattern and hence the same average temperature.
The inner limits in that fist step towards equation (5) – from “-1 to 1″ – appear correct (for me). The other inner limits (from 0 to 1) do not, as the inner integration is then being done from theta = 90 (at the pole) to theta = 180 degrees (on the dark side equator), i.e over the “unlit” quadrant of the meridian, rather than over the full, semi-cirle (or half) meridian, half of which is in shadow and half in sunlight. I believe the true “average” should include both lit and unlit halves of the hemisphere.
I hope my memory of integral calculus from the 1970′s is still valid and that the above analysis is correct. I will welcome correction if it is not.
Did it strike anyone funny that Dr. Brown did not use an equivalent(?) form of:
N_TE(P) = ln(Ts/Tgb) = t1*P^t2 + t3*P^t4
instead of wrapping exponents on the terms then claiming them forced to be unitless since exponents are Taylor series (which they are)? Am I looking at this wrong or would not the form above free the units question?
see: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/23/the-mystery-of-equation-8/#comment-874164
I’m still scratching my head on that claim.
Fellows,
Why are you, fellows, engaging in a fruitless science discussion with a guy (Willis), who publicly admits that he has no science credentials at all and no science education??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrSjS0IYZ2M
He also has demonstrated a high illiteracy in math. He is just a construction manager! Arguing with people with no expertise in a subject matter is a waste of time and counterproductive. Please, leave Willis alone, as he is a learner, and do not pay attention to his opinions!
Thank you
- Ned
Ned,
I am waiting patiently for a reply to my post yesterday (David Socrates says:
January 23, 2012 at 7:34 pm).
I am crossing my fingers hoping you understand and agree with it. In my opinion, we urgently need to align Hoffman’s work properly with yours. Hoffman hasn’t found a flaw in your math but, I believe, he has found a significant over-complication around your use of the planetary ‘grey body’ concept which he doesn’t need. If removed it would simplify things significantly.
No worries Ned, I think the smart ones are already well aware of the sick games currently being played, it’s a real shame. Why certain persons refuse to help and instead hurt I’ll never know. Science has drifted far away from my long ago experiences with it.
WUWT: Willis Eschenbach: The Mystery of Equation 8
neither my emulation nor N&Z’s emulation of the planetary temperatures are worth a bucket of warm spit…
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/23/the-mystery-of-equation-8/
tallbloke says: January 24, 2012 at 9:38 am
In short Willis, you are a serial shark jumper leading a charmed life.
May be a charmed life… but not a charming one.
Ned Nikolov says: January 24, 2012 at 5:54 pm
Please, leave Willis alone, as he is a learner,
and do not pay attention to his opinions!
Wise words.
I came to that conclusion a longgggggg time ago.
WUWT: John Brookes says: January 24, 2012 at 1:59 am
Willis, with your recent output I’m worried that you might be a warmist troll?
That thought has crossed my mind many times before…
The “attack dog” and his “pack” seem well organised…
But I suppose it is good for the WUWT ratings…
Personally, I do not enjoy watching paint dry…
And I definately do not enjoy watching Bear-Baiting…
So “thumbs down” for WUWT… Such is life.
Sorry Ned, I was dumping comments I wanted to keep a copy of here. I’ll keep them in the round cabinet instead.
Posted on WUWT:
malagaview says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
January 24, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Willis Eschenbach writes:
neither my emulation nor N&Z’s emulation of the planetary temperatures are worth a bucket of warm spit…
I agree with you regarding the quality and value of your input.
David Socrates:
There is nothing to align between Hoffman’s ‘work’ and ours. He simply tried to express (cast) our gray-body temperature equation in terms of the conventional black-body model. This does not alter in any way the theoretical implications of our work regarding the effect of pressure on the surface thermal enhancement (ATE). Hoffman appears to have not even understood these theoretical implications, because he says he is surprised that pressure can alter the black-body temperature of a planet. Also, his mathematical simplification of our Eq. 6 only confuses the main point we tried to make in our reply paper, which is that one SHOULD NOT use the average absorbed radiation by a sphere to calculate the actual mean temperature of that sphere. The confusion arises from the fact that Hoffman’s modified black-body equation contains the therm (So/4), which is the AVERAGE radiation absorbed by a sphere … In summary, his ‘simplification’ only worsens the accuracy of our Eq. 8 in predicting planetary temperatures without providing any additional insight …
Tallbloke,
Re. you various postings about the validity of the N&Z math, it seems that the warmist camp has not found fault with it, which is of course excellent news.
For what it is worth by way of an additional endorsement, not being myself entirely confident about spherical geometry (am I alone?) but being an mere IT professional, I wrote a program to do the spherical temerature averaging by random finite iteration across the surface. After 10,000 random samples, the average temperature came to 154.7 K.
I see Willis Eschenbach’s position on all this as very sad.
I strongly support his Thermostat Hypothesis as far as it goes but he refuses to put it into a wider perspective. He seems to be emotionally invested in it being all there is to say.
There are two ways that the Thermostat Hypothesis needs to be extended for it to be helpful but he has refused to entertain such a possibility in exchanges with me in the past.
Firstly it needs to be extended globally. Just focusing on the convective processes in the tropics is insufficient especially since top down solar effects appear to sometimes oppose and sometimes supplement equatorial effects on the climate system. Unless his hypothesis forms part of the global interplay between sun and oceans it is worthless.
Secondly, (and here I link the issue to this thread) he needs to connect the atmospheric response that he has observed in the tropics with the very facts that Nikolov and Zeller are patiently but firmly highlighting.
I consider that atmospheric pressure is indeed paramount in the climate system. Not only in setting the adiabatic lapse rate in the air but also in limiting the rate at which energy can flow from oceans to air as I have explained elsewhere.
Taking those two factors together I aver that as a consequence the climate system as a whole including the tropical convective cells is simply the Earth system in the process of responding negatively to any influence that seeks to drive the atmospheric lapse rate away from that which is determined by atmospheric pressure and solar input.
So there is indeed a thermostat but it is set by atmospheric pressure and the atmosphere will always reorganise itself on a constantly changing basis so as to stabilise and keep stabilised the global energy budget such that the adiabatic lapse rate is always maintained on an averaged global basis.
That must be so because the adiabatic lapse rate determines the only stable arrangement for the continuance of an atmosphere in gaseous form.
If for any reason the atmosphere failed to match the adiabatic lapse rate then there would be an ongoing and cumulative surplus or deficit as regards the global energy budget.
A little too much energy going out would over time lower global temperatures so much that it would congeal the consituents of the atmosphere on the surface of the planet.
A little too much energy being retained would over time raise global temperatures until the atmospheric molecules gained enough kinetic energy to be lost to space.
It is the GHG theory that is the true Perpetuum Mobile because it proposes an imbalance that would add to the ATE of Nikolov and Zeller on a permanent basis.
If GHGs could do that then their own supposed greenhouse characteristics would create an ever building energy content in the atmosphere as more GHGs caused more GHGs in the form of water vapour in the amplification process that AGW theory sets out but what would ever stop it other than the loss of atmosphere to space
The AGW theory is actually the opposite of the truth. In reality GHGs help to prevent a build up of energy in the atmosphere by radiating out to space so as to make it easier for the atmosphere to be maintained at the lapse rate set by sun and pressure.
Stephen Wilde,
I’m not familiar with Willis’ ‘Thermostatic Theory’, but based on the way he thinks and his inability to comprehends simple concepts, I would be surprised if his theory amounts to anything serious.
There is a principle in physical science that if you cannot put an idea into a mathematical form (i.e. describe it with equations) and verify the math model against actual observations, you cannot claim of having a viable theory. Willis is mathematically illiterate! This became obvious in the discussion he had at WUWT about the integral of our Eq. 5. He was told by several people that our integration is correct and that he was mistaken, and he was explained why. Yet, Willis kept asking the same question over and over again about the integration of nighttime temperatures. Then he goes on to publish an ‘analysis’ of our Eq. 7 (called The mysteries of Eq. 7) that makes an educated person shake his head because of the blatant errors in the analysis and a clear lack of knowledge about how to re-arrange a simple equation … Add to this Willis’ own admission that he had no science education and no science credentials whatsoever, yet he lavishly gives his opinion and promotes his climate theories at various events, and you get a picture of a mentally confused individual, who cannot even comprehend his limitations!
It’s a pretty sad situation, but that’s what you get when you allow a construction manager to run the skeptic’s climate show! … The skeptics camp will never be taken seriously if lead by people such as Willis with no science credentials and laughable reputation … That is the reality!
Willi’s analysis is actually called “The Mysteries of Equation 8″, not 7 as a stated above, but it’s the same gibberish …
Ned Nikolov @ January 24, 5:54 pm
Oh yes indeed Ned: Amongst some hilarious claims that he has made to me, one of my favorites is:
http://climateaudit.org/2008/01/10/energy-balance-at-the-tropopause/#comment-131236
(when I had a nom de blog of Black Wallaby; a common kangaroo where I live)
Then there is his two-layer version of the Trenberth Earth’s Energy Budget cartoon, that he recently proudly re-presented a few months ago, that was also mentioned in the thread linked-to above.
Oh and, and, there has been….where to stop!
Ned Nikolov @ January 25, 2:32 am
Another mystery is; why Anthony Watts seems to regard Willis as a guru or One who knows everything? I’m beginning to suspect that it is more a matter that Willis is a great generator of controversy, which results in high comment traffic. I’ve also seen some comments that suggest that Willis is a troll, and in effect that he fishes for angry reactions. I only hope that Anthony considers the possibility that his highest traffic may well be lurkers (non-commenting readers), and that they might be put-off by all this rubbish. My following comment is mirrored from one I made at WUWT, and is relevant to my attitude in this:
Bob, You made a good point about the web traffic and Willis’ possible contribution to it.
I just sent this email to Anthony. He replied that he would publish my response if I submit it to him officially, which I will.
I truly believe that we need weed out the amateurs and non-professional from the climate science debate at this point, or the Truth will never see the light of day.
————————–
Anthony,
I have not seen so far a SINGLE meaningful criticism of our theory! What Willi’s put out is just a reflection of his math confusion on a high-school level! His arguments are so ridiculous that no self-respecting scientist would even consider responding to such gibberish. Let me briefly address all the main points Willis raises:
1) He claims that our Eq. 8 (in the original paper) reduces to Ts = Ts, which makes him exclaims TA-DA at the end. What he failed to comprehend (which is a simple math BTW) is that Eq. 8 was derived from Eq. 7 by simply solving the latter for Ts. Specifically:
Eq. 7 reads: NTE (Ps) = Ts/Tgb = exp (0.233001*Ps^0.0651203 + 0.0015393*Ps^0.385232 ) . This is the definition of the enhancement factor NTE(Ps)
Solving this for the surface temperature Ts yields Ts = Tgb*exp (0.233001*Ps^0.0651203 + 0.0015393*Ps^0.385232 ) or briefly stated Ts = Tgb* NTE(Ts).
This is basically our Eq. 8! In the text, however, Tgb is given with its actual expression for the gray-body temperature (Tgb) from our Eq. 2.
Now, Willis gets somehow confused thinking that our Eq. 8 meant Ts = t5 * Solar^0.25 * Ts / Tgb; hence Ts = Ts. This is purely a result of his inability to follow the text and understand how math equations get re-arranged.
2) He also claims that the constant 25.3966 in front of our Eq. 8, i.e.
Ts = 25.3966 (So + 0.0001325)^0.25 NTE(Ps)
is a ‘tune parameter’, which he labels t5. This confusion is directly related to the one above. He simply failed to understand that the whole term 25.3966 (So + 0.0001325)^0.25 comes from our Eq. 2 for calculating the gray-body temperature, where 25.3966 = (2/5)*[(1 - α)/(ϵσ)]^0.25. In other words, 25.3966 is simply a combination of several constants assumed in the gray-body formula (Eq. 2). It is NOT any kind of a ‘tune’ or regression parameter, because the gray-body formula (Eq. 2) was derived BEFORE the regression curve in Eq. 7.
Do you follow the absurdity of Willis arguments, so far?
3) He argues that the small constant Cs in Eq. 2 is pointless failing to realize that its purpose is to make Eq. 2 produce a gray-body temperature of 2.725K (which is the irreducible temp of Deep Space), when there is no radiation (So = 0). This constant adds a greater realism to predictions from Eq. 2, and has no adverse implications in our concept whatsoever.
4) Willis further claims that we have used 5 ‘tunable parameters’ (counting t5 above) to fit the data. In reality we only have 4 regression coefficients relating NTE to pressure in Eq. 7. These 4 coefficients define a curve that passes accurately through 8 data points. What is highly significant, and Willis totally failed to grasp is the fact that the Ts/Tgb ratio (the enhancement factor) is so precisely related to pressure across 8 very diverse planetary bodies from Mercury to Triton with vastly different atmospheres and solar illumination (see Fig. 5). The shape of this function is VERY similar to the adiabatic curve described by the Gas Law (via the Poisson formula ) as explained in the text of our paper and shown in Fig. 6. This similarity is NOT a coincidence! It indicates that the thermal enhancement factor (NTE) and the adiabatic heating have a common underlying mechanism related to the pressure force. All this apparently flew straight over Willi’s head, which is not surprising, since he has no science education!
The reason we used an exponential regression curve with 4 free parameters is because the NTE-Pressure relationship is extremely non-linear and could not be accurately described with lesser number of parameters. Note that we did not fit a 4th order polynomial to the planetary data point, but an exponential curve! A 4th order polynomial can fit a variety of shapes, but an exponential curve can only fit a very limited number of responses. Finally, fitting a physically meaningful curve to data points is a perfectly accepted scientific method when studying an unknown phenomenon. One cannot use ‘first principles’ on something that’s poorly known and/or embodies new mechanisms. The whole criticism of our regression fit by Willis is totally baseless and unscientific!
If you have been able to follow my explanation above, please, tell me how Willi’s paper could constitute a legitimate scientific criticism in the light of this evidence. The guy is simply confused, plain and simple! Like I said before he is mathematically illiterate! Having people like him represent the climate skeptics community and arguing science issues is an EMBARRASSMENT. Who do you think in the science community on the other side will take someone like Willis seriously? …. We have the strongest and physically most robust theory EVER proposed as an alternative to the current GH concept. If you have any physical science background at all, I urge you to read carefully our papers and think deeper. I’m willing to help you by answering any questions you may have … Don’t take science advice from amateurs like Willis! It is a recipe for disaster in the long run.
Now, do you want me to put this in an official reply that you could publish, or would you rather remove Willis is paper from your website with an appropriate clarification?
Cheers,
- Ned
Ned, good respnse to Willis who has been confusing me and no doubt many others.
I note this in your reply:
“It indicates that the thermal enhancement factor (NTE) and the adiabatic heating have a common underlying mechanism related to the pressure force.”
which leads me to think that I have been wrong to conflate your ATE with the Adiabatic Lapse Rate.
Are they different and if so how ?
Thanks in advance.
Dr Nikolov
“These 4 coefficients define a curve that passes accurately through 8 data points. What is highly significant, and Willis totally failed to grasp is the fact that the Ts/Tgb ratio (the enhancement factor) is so precisely related to pressure across 8 very diverse planetary bodies from Mercury to Triton with vastly different atmospheres and solar illumination (see Fig. 5).”
This is not true. Table 1 of your paper did not attempt to provide a mean Surface Temperature from Gas Law for Mercury or the Moon. You have claimed a fit using four parameters for six data points.
In my opinion, for what it is worth, N&Z are now well ahead on points. With the correct application of SB calculations, used to explain empirical planetary data in a simple exponential curve fit, any amount of arm waving is just noise – until someone falsifies the analysis. This has not yet happened, and nobody seems close to doing so.
I do, however, regret the war between this site and WUWT. WUWT has done an immense amount of good in recent years and while this may not be their finest hour I think that both sides should try to resolve their differences amicably, shake hands and walk away. It does not matter who started it -this is the way that gentlemen behave.
And please, remember who the real enemy is – the trillion dollar carbon fraud!
Nick Stokes
What kind of a temperature estimate would you get from the Gas Law if there is no gas, i.e. when pressure is virtually zero (in case of Mercury and the Moon, P = 0.000000009 Pa)?? You get 0K.
On a planet with no atmosphere, the temperature must equal that of the gray body. Our Eq. 8 produces exactly that – the gray-body temperature when P -> 0, hence the curve passes straight to Mercury and the Moon…
I have a hard time understanding one thing – why most people on these blogs lack basic logic skills and commonsense, not to mention any decent math knowledge? Also, why some people are so unable to see the big picture her. What’s most significant in our analysis is the discovery that relative atmospheric thermal enhancement (ATEn) is so closely related to pressure across planetary bodies spanning a wide range of atmospheric compositions and illumination conditions. This relationship is fully supported by the Gas Law as evident from the similarity between response curves of ATEn (Eq. 7) and and the adiabatic temperature change in Fig. (6).
Roger Longstaff,
I agree! What seems to be happening with the discussion at WUWT is that some folks has confused the debate with an EGO contest. My understanding is that we are having these discussions first and foremost to resolve the AGW confusion with science tools, and it matters not who provides those tools as long as they a solid and can be used effectively in arguing with the other side …
The climate issue is its root a science issue, not a political one! Trying to resolve a physics science issue with fuzzy soft political tools is like trying to carve a block of granite with a copper chisel – it will never work, because the chisel will bend and deform …
Thanks Ned,
You say: “The climate issue is its root a science issue, not a political one! Trying to resolve a physics science issue with fuzzy soft political tools is like trying to carve a block of granite with a copper chisel – it will never work, because the chisel will bend and deform …”
Thererby, in my opinion, lies a problem. Only people with a good grounding in physics can even understand these issues, while the fraudsters get rich on the back of the greatest scientific fraud in history.
In my opinion this can only be stopped with ideas – ideas that lead to perspectives, which lead to understanding. This understanding must then be communicated to people who elect politicians. And thereby lies another problem – when even physicists disagree with each other, how can we convince anybody else?
But that is not your problem – your problem is the physics. I have tried my best to falsify your theory and I have so far failed to do so. This is the scientific method.
The very best of luck!
Ned,
Further to the philosophical stuff above, a question (probably dumb) about physics:
Did you ever consider a triple integral in your equation 5, including variable “z” (distance from the centre of the Earth), in order to include surface/atmosphere boundary conduction?
Roger,
Eq. 5 only applies to gray bodies, i.e. planets with no atmosphere. In the presence of atmosphere, surface temperature at each point is no longer a simple function of the incident solar angle (cosθ), and becomes dependent on air circulation and the overall amount of energy in the atmosphere. At high enough pressures such as on Venus, where the surface becomes nearly isothermal, the temperature is completely independent of the solar angle. Higher pressure not only raises the average planetary surface temperature, but it also creates a more isothermal (equable) environment (with smaller temperature differences between poles and the equator, and between day and night). This is because of the increased efficiency of lateral heat transport by the atmosphere.
So, there is no physical meaning in having a triple integral in Eq.5…
Folks we also have detractors on WUWT – here’s a post I just made that might enlighten:
Willis says …. “they claim to be able to calculate the surface temperature Ts of eight different planets and moons from knowing nothing more than the solar irradiation So and the surface pressure Ps for each heavenly body. Dr. Zeller refers to this as their MIRACLE equation…” …..”My simplified version of their equation looks like this: Ts = 25.394 * Solar^0.25 * e^(0.092 * Pressure ^ 0.17)” = A SIMPLER MIRACLE
You folks just don’t get it do you, you’re not seeing the forest for the trees: Willis’ rendition of our MIRACLE is also a MIRACLE!!!!!!! What is the Miracle you don’t see? We calculate the average global equilibrium surface temperature on any planet/moon using only Solar input and surface pressure! Why is this a miracle? Because it implys that the AGW theory is bogus. Why does it do that? Since the average global surface temperature of any planet/moon IS the basic bottomline determinator of that planet/moon’s climate and our Eq 8 accurately calculates this temperature without using greenhouse gas information.
Dr. Nikolov & I have been working on this for over 2 years, our first attempts looked like Willis’ simpler miracle, and we’ve played with density also, but we are trying to get it exact, currently Eq 8. You CAN NOT fit an elephant with an exponential equation, you can with a polynominal. The argument about the number of constants in our equation 8 would be valid it it were a polynominal – it’s not.
We are handing WUWT ‘THE NAIL’ to the AGW coffin and you guys have forgotten about the coffin and are fixated on the details of the nail! Is it galvinized? Why isn’t it a wooden spike? They need 2 more nails. Wonder what kind of hammer they plan to use?
“Since the average global surface temperature of any planet/moon IS the basic bottomline determinator of that planet/moon’s climate and our Eq 8 accurately calculates this temperature without using greenhouse gas information.”
Well I’m not a mathematician but from basic knowledge of the Gas Laws plus real world observations I have no problem in ‘getting’ that.
Too many scientists these days are so specialised that they get lost as soon as they depart from their familiar lecture notes.
I agree with Karl!
The major point that Willis missed (but follows from his own regression analysis) is that the planetary surface temperature CAN be explained in a straightforward fashion over a broad range of atmospheric conditions using ONLY pressure and solar irradiance . No other model can currently do that! This is the main point of our theory! The grand implications of the strong relationship shown in Fig. 5 (the NTE – Pressure curve) is that the so-called GH effect (we call it ATE) is a pressure phenomenon that is unrelated to radiative transfer! Hence, the GH effect in its physical nature is NOT a reduction of the surface IR cooling to space (i.e. the atmosphere does not act as ‘blanket’), but is a Pressure-induced Thermal Enhancement (PTE) … It is that simple!
Ned Nikolov says, January 24, 2012 at 8:36 pm: David Socrates: There is nothing to align between Huffman’s ‘work’ and ours. He simply tried to express (cast) our gray-body temperature equation in terms of the conventional black-body model. This does not alter in any way the theoretical implications of our work regarding the effect of pressure on the surface thermal enhancement (ATE). Huffman appears to have not even understood these theoretical implications, because he says he is surprised that pressure can alter the black-body temperature of a planet. Also, his mathematical simplification of our Eq. 6 only confuses the main point we tried to make in our reply paper, which is that one SHOULD NOT use the average absorbed radiation by a sphere to calculate the actual mean temperature of that sphere. The confusion arises from the fact that Huffman’s modified black-body equation contains the term (So/4), which is the AVERAGE radiation absorbed by a sphere … In summary, his ‘simplification’ only worsens the accuracy of our Eq. 8 in predicting planetary temperatures without providing any additional insight …
I was disappointed by this reply because I think it means you have misunderstood Huffman’s math procedure in his original work. The key thing to understand is that, contrary to your assertion, Huffman does not use a “modified black-body equation” containing “the term (So/4)”. Of all the people on the planet Harry is probably the least likely to endorse such a concept! The only sense in which his original work uses the black body concept at all is when he uses the S-B equation to convert the adjusted energy values for Earth and Venus to their correponding temperatures. And even then because he, like you is dealing with ratios, he doesn’t even need to introduce the S-B constant: he merely takes the fourth root of the relative (dimensionless) energy value ratio. So I say again as I said before, Huffman’s approach is simpler than yours because it does not require values for each planet’s ‘grey body’ emissivity or albedo. Neither do you really, because you have set them to the same values for all the planets, thus factoring them out!
I completely agree with you when you say that this issue “does not alter in any way the theoretical implications of our work regarding the effect of pressure on the surface thermal enhancement (ATE)”. I said as much to you in my original comment. My purpose is simply to show that there is a simpler way of expressing the same solution without modifying your thesis in any fundamental way. If nothing else this might help others to understand what is going on and steer them away from obsessing about ‘grey bodies’ which are completely irrelevant to the ATE part of your thesis.
Huffman has also placed his own more detailed comments on his website at:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2012/01/second-response-to-unified-climate.html
Do not underestimate him, Ned. We are all trying very hard to help you.
“Hence, the GH effect in its physical nature is NOT a reduction of the surface IR cooling to space”
From a layman’s common sense of view I have a problem with that assertion of Ned’s.
The ATE involves more retention of energy in kinetic form for longer in denser air before it is released to space as outgoing longwave.
That does involve a slowing down of energy flow through the system does it not ?
No atmosphere and radiation is straight in and straight out.
The more mass in the atmosphere the longer the kinetic energy is retained within the system, surely ?
David Socrates says: January 25, 2012 at 6:51 pm
Huffman’s approach is simpler than yours because it does not require values for each planet’s ‘grey body’ emissivity or albedo. Neither do you really, because you have set them to the same values for all the planets, thus factoring them out!
I am all for elegant simplicity!
David Socrates,
I apologize for the hasty replay I fired last night … it was late and I was already tiered.
In my reply I was only referring to his ideas about simplifying our gray-body formula, which I read on his website. I’m actually not familiar in details with his method. I will definitely take a look. From what you are saying, it sounds like a viable approach.
I need to waste a bit more time replying to our favorite character Willis at WUWT before I could look at the interesting stuff …
@ Ned Nikolov, January 25, 2012 at 5:43 pm – and @ kzeller, January 25, 2012 at 5:55 pm:
Thanks.
As a non-physicist (with a rather wonky relationship with integrals), I ‘get it’, especially when looking at the two comments you made above.
Perhaps scientists from the ‘softer’ end, like us biologists and zoologists, ‘get it’, because we can see the woods rather than get hung up on the tiny twiglets of single trees all over the place.
Perhaps we ‘get it’ because we’re used to working with incomplete data, and know that the more ‘perfect’ one tries to make one’s model, the less it will apply to a general situation.
And it may also be because most of us have spent quite some time outdoors rather than in labs, and, having learned to notice everything possible (“because you can’t go back to the same place and expect it to be exactly the same as last time you went … so never skimp on your field notes, or else!”), temperature differences between sea level and highlands (often within walking distance in these British Isles) are noted.
Thus, even without grasping all the maths at first glance, your theory has made eminent sense to me, and probably to a lot of other non-physicists.
Stephen Wilde:
Please, note that with respect to the GH effect, we are not talking about “more retention of energy in kinetic form for longer in denser air before it is released to space as outgoing longwave” as you stated.
We are talking about an amplification of the absorbed solar energy through the FORCE of pressure. Is is the pressure FORCE that’s responsible for the NTE factor, the relative thermal enhancement. The atmosphere has a negligibly small heat storage capacity, and does not slow down any cooling, long-wave or convective. This is the new aspect of our theory that’s 180 degrees opposite from the current understanding of the GH effect.
Heat loss by LW radiation can only be slowed down through the use of IR-reflecting surfaces such as aluminum, which have very low thermal emissivity, hence high reflectivity. That is the basis for the so-called ‘radiant barrier’ technologies pioneered by NASA 40 years ago. Aluminum sheets or folio used inside walls or special metal-oxide coatings applied to windows create IR reflecting surfaces that reduce thermal radiative losses up to 90%. High emissivity substances like water vapor and CO2 cannot reduce (slow down) thermal radiative losses…
From the original paper:
“At a planetary level, the effect is manifest in Chinook winds, where adiabatically heated downslope airflow raises the local temperature by 20C-30C in a matter of hours.”
Would you explain on how the ATE is manifest here?
How would on our planet the oceans integrate in your theory?
The watertemp. above the thermocline seems mostly solar driven.
How does atmospheric pressure heat the oceans to their average 275K?
Why is the ocean temp. slightly decreasing with depth if pressure driven?
Looking forward to some answers on my questions
BenAW:
Consult a textbook on atmospheric physics to get the answers to your questions ….
Ned Nikolov said:
“Heat loss by LW radiation can only be slowed down through the use of IR-reflecting surfaces such as aluminum, which have very low thermal emissivity, hence high reflectivity”
I think there might be a semantic issue between us rather than a substantive one. I didn’t mean to suggest that the LW radiation itself were slowed down but rather that the energy flow through the whole system is slowed down. In other words the energy flowing through remains as kinetic energy for longer, tied up in the vibration of the molecules in the denser air and on the surface of the ground before it even becomes outgoing LW.
I’ll leave the point until after your Part 2 which might be clearer.
David Socrates,
I understand you started some initiative to enter some of our ideas into Wiki. I think it’s great if you could pass through their filter. I tried once to edit an article about some Egyptian measurement units, and may suggestion was not accepted. I’ve heard from others that Wiki is very conservative and they only favor mainstream knowledge, BUT thing change, so you may have a better shot than me.
I agree with you about the importance of Huffman’s work. As I said earlier, I’ll study his approach more up close next week.
Thank you!
- Ned
Ned & Karl,
I agree that “explicit integration of the SB law over the planet surface” is necessary, and I can see that integration over the top (northern) hemisphere is sufficient for that purpose, since both hemispheres have the same distribution of radiation, hence the same average temperature.
But I’m still concerned about the unexplained change in the limits of the inner integration (for variable ‘mu’) between the first and the subsequent three steps leading to equation (5) in your “Reply to Comments” paper.
The first step has ‘mu’ limits from -1 to 1; the second, third and fourth steps use ‘mu’ limits from 0 to 1, with no explanation of why that change was made. Let me call these limits Set A (-1 > 1) and Set B (0 >1) for brevity.
I understand Set A means theta ranges from 0 to pi. That describes a semicircular meridional path, from ‘sunlit equator’ to ‘dark equator’ via the ‘north (?) pole’ in your Figure 1. But Set B means theta ranges from pi/2 to 0. That describes the quarter meridian, from ‘north (?) pole’ to ‘sunlit equator’ in your Figure 1.
The accompanying text is clear about the dark hemisphere having Ti = 0 from North Pole (theta = pi/2) to the dark equator (theta = pi), and the first step in your derivation of (5) does follow, logically from that. But the unexplained change in the limits of the inner integration has caused me (and others) to question what is going on. Are you integrating over the complete top hemisphere (as Set A indicates) or only over the ‘sunlit half’ of that ‘top hemisphere’ (as per Set B)?
If you are changing from Set A to Set B because of the “Ti = 0″ portion of equation (4), to avoid confusing us wizards, I think you need to make that quite explicit and state reasons why the change occurs in integration limits between step 1 and step 2 in the derivation of (5).
Ned Nikolov says:
January 25, 2012 at 10:04 pm
BenAW:
Consult a textbook on atmospheric physics to get the answers to your questions ….
“At a planetary level, the effect is manifest in Chinook winds, where adiabatically heated downslope airflow raises the local temperature by 20C-30C in a matter of hours.”
Would you explain on how the ATE is manifest here?
Well, I don’t need a textbook to know what the Wet and Dry Adiabatic Lapse rates are, I do know what rain is , so I’m perfectly capable of explaining the Chinook winds without any Atmopheric Temperature Effect.
Hence my question why you consider it a manifestion of the ATE.
Ned and Karl,
Your work is now being discussed on the “Bishop Hill” blogsite in the UK, in the discussion thread, entitled “United Theory of Climate”. Several expert scientists often comment there.
You probably need this like a hole in the head, with all of the activity here and at WUWT, however, if anyone there produces anything useful to add to the debate I am sure that I or someone else will alert you, so please do not feel that you have to monitor this continuously.
Roger Longstaff.
Thank you! This concept is spreading in the cyber World so fast that we must to rely on other people to stay informed. We appreciate your help …
Ned Nikolov says, January 25, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Ned Nikolov says, January 26, 2012 at 3:45 am
No problem at all Ned! I think you will find the Huffman method stimulating and not counter to your work. You might, though, also want to answer Harry’s other observation about the apparent ‘super accuracy’ of some of your Table 1 data.
Re. the Wiki idea, I will contact you separately on this but please note that this did not refer to Wikipedia but to a proposed Wiki specifically for Climate Science.
N&Z,
might I suggest that when you come to publish a paper in a journal one day, that you structure it in at least three main parts:
1) A general discussion
2) Some empirical evidence from lab tests somewhat as done by Konrad
3) Mathematical evidence that you can show a fit with a limited number of available planets/moons.
One point is that item 3) seems to be the area where there is the most resistance from the dogmatists, whom cannot emerge from behind the covers of their textbooks and lecture notes. (how you can evade such experts in journal peer review is a difficulty without lab data, maybe?)
Another point, 2), is that if you can call on a horde of students and an engineering workshop, you should be able to construct some convincing experiment series with varying pressure. (not constrained by a pressure vessel as in that silly analogy from Ira Glickstein). And, if you have the resources, varying gas species, and varying energy inputs. Such data on nicely constructed graphs would be hard for reviewers to deny, maybe?
It is typically smile producing that Joel Shore has made the following arrogant statement concerning Konrad’s low budget experiment:
Amongst other things, I intend to ask this elitist dogmatist, if he could cast his great wisdom as to what the errors were in the experiment. (and how it might be improved if we had the sort of funding that he might be receiving from the public purse). Oh and BTW, an empirical result supporting N&Z may not have an explanation available in the current church dogma.
Bob, Well said. I agree 100%.
Ned & Karl,
I see that this is all shaping up rather like a typical US presidential election.
First the allies on one side tear each other to pieces for months.
Then they combine to tear up the other side.
Once a majority of realists (scpetics) are convinced, it will be time for the true believers to start attacking each other.
Then the media and finally the political world will sit up and take notice.
then the long slog of correcting the economic damage already done, can commence.
I am most encouraged.
Ned Nikolov says:
January 25, 2012 at 5:43 pm
Roger,
…
on Venus, where the surface becomes nearly isothermal,
…
This is because of the increased efficiency of lateral heat transport by the atmosphere.
One mechanism (much more likely than circulation, which is very slow and sluggish there) is CO2 ↔CO2 radiative exchange, very efficient at those temps and densities. Kind of a radiative short-circuit around the whole planet.
Having a go at formatting data tables:
For a constant Teff radiated energy, two hemispheres of a planet can have significantly different temperatures that, when area averaged (as I believe is currently done), will produce significantly variable Tavg for the entire planet. Again, this means the Tavg(MST) can vary as in the example below for constant Teff=255K:
For the above, using earth parameters in MS Excel, at constant total S-B radiated energy for Teff=255K, Tc is the independent variable from 150K to 255K, resulting in Th of 298.6K down to 255K.
It is not, no surprise, linear.
Tavg(MST) ranges from 224.3K up to 255K. All for same Teff=255K.
What this implies to me is that areal Tavg(MST) of the earth can rise (or fall) but that says nothing about the total energy change of the system. More information needed.
I do not know where to find if a gridded Temp–> Energy global map is maintained, would love to see it if anyone can point me to it. If my fu were stronger, a gridded global anomaly dataset plus gridded area dataset could easily be used to calculate the current actual energy change over baseline.
Cheers,
Bill
[good use of the <pre> tag, closed by </pre>, which stands for preformatted, as ever only works if the user gets it exactly right, otherwise WordPress strips it out --Tim]
More to my previous….
I am late to this CAGW skeptic party, but aware of the “smearing” of temps from one location to another 250?km up to 1200km away…. seems to me this should be looked at from an areal perspective…. from what grid size to what new grid size… that can be a significant false radiative energy transfer, in either positive or negative terms.
I have done my own (simplistic) zonal temp –> energy analysis based on:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ghcn_giss_hr2sst_1200km_anom12_2011_2011_1951_1980_zonal1.gif?w=640
that shows 50% of the energy is attributed to above latitude 60N and only 15% for the entire southern hemisphere…
Again, pointers to existing work on this is appreciated.
Cheers,
Bill
The nearest to a global dataset is UAH. The upper plot here gives some idea of temperature distribution, but if I recall correctly I’ve de-emphasised the poles otherwise it looks more of a mess.
GISS on the other hand senses the temperature in the President’s wallet from 1000 klicks, ‘giss more money.
I’d not looked at this for months, didn’t realise the last heat spike had a flow towards the south pole.
Note: if I am too off topic someone please tell me. I think at this point the subject is heat spreading from the equator.
I made my post on the other one but I will put it here too.
The effect of rotation where many bloggers were suspicious.
It’s very simple, there are 2 cases; a. non-rotating b. infinity rotating.
Case b is the most interesting, at infinite rotation the temperature approaches to become isothermal and the increase in temperature per single rotation becomes infinitisemal small. This means that the exponential temp almost equals the arithmetic average temperature.
So rotation do converge as stated by A.Smith(2008), it’s not a fallacy as mentioned by NZ.
[...] This figure agrees well with the theoretical calculations made in Nikolov and Zeller’s paper ‘Reply to comments on the UTC part 1‘, which arrives at a figure of 155K. This possible error of around 6K is a lot less than the [...]
[...] in January, hot on the heels of revalations regarding the Moon’s temperature made by Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller here at the talkshop, Willis Eschenbach published an article at WUWT entitled “The Moon is a [...]
[...] previous threads. This is the main one, where you’ll find pingbacks from others with links. http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/nikolov-and-zeller-reply-to-comments-on-the-utc-part-1/ Share this:ShareFacebookDiggTwitterStumbleUponPrintRedditEmailLike this:LikeBe the first to like [...]
[...] This line of research is highly relevant to the theoretical work of Hans Jelbring, and also Nikolov and Zeller, who have proposed hypotheses to explain the thermal gradient found in the atmosphere causing the [...]