My Thanks to Stephen Wilde, who has submitted this article containing a hypothesis on energy flow in Earth’s climate system.
The Ignoring Of Adiabatic Processes – Big Mistake
Stephen Wilde – December 2012
Abstract:
An attempt is made to reconcile the diabatic and adiabatic processes within a planetary atmosphere and in doing so show how changes in the radiative characteristics of constituent molecules in an atmosphere might not have an effect on the equilibrium temperature of the atmosphere and of the surface beneath it.
Applying the proposed scenario would appear to indicate why and how planetary atmospheres adjust themselves to the ideal lapse rate set by gravity despite divergences from that ideal lapse rate within the vertical temperature profile of the atmosphere.
Essentially, the adiabatic and diabatic processes must always match each other on any given planet at equilibrium because they are then of equal size and run at equal speed but are of opposite sign.
The diabatic process results in warming and the adiabatic process rations the supply of PE in the atmosphere flowing back to the surface in the form of KE thereby maintaining the equilibrium temperature set by mass, gravity and insolation.
If any forcing element acts on the speed of either process alone then
the other process changes its own speed to restore equilibrium.
Equilibrium temperature can only change when a forcing element acts
on both processes together so as to change the amount of energy tied up
in both processes by the same amount.
Only gravity, mass and insolation can achieve that.
The key equation is:
KE + PE = constant.
The established science is that only mass, gravity and insolation can change that constant so if radiative characteristics of GHGs in the diabatic process cause a rise or fall in the atmospheric height then that must be at the expense of either KE (if rising) or PE (if falling) because the constant does not change.
So, the thermal effect of a rise in the atmospheric height must be negated by a fall in KE as KE gets replaced by PE and for a fall in the atmospheric height there would be an increase in KE relative to PE.
The net thermal effect being zero.
For the full article please click here (MS docx format)
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The idea of two separate opposite sign loops (diabatic warming and
adiabatic stabilisation) also works for the early faint sun paradox.
As insolation increased, both loops gained in volume equally and
remained in balance as regards speed of throughput so that stability
was maintained albeit with wider equatorial climate zones and a
higher atmosphere. There would have been a rise in surface temperature from the increasing insolation but nothing like as big as one might have expected because gravity and atmospheric mass would have stayed much the same
thus diluting the effect of the increase in solar power.
The atmospheric mass might actually have declined, partially offsetting the increase in solar power.
The issue of DWIR and UWIR is interesting because one can propose
each of them being equal within the diabatic loop whilst within the
adiabatic loop it is the balance of KE and PE in each molecule at
any given height which sets temperature and not DWIR and UWIR.
Two completely different energy transfer and distribution mechanisms
but being of opposite sign as regards their thermal responses to the same forcing element and both being independently capable of variation they keep each other in check.
If the effective radiating height for DWIR/UWIR changes in the diabatic loop then there is an equal change in the height of KE/PE equilibrium in the adiabatic loop but although each changes height the thermal effects are opposite.
A rise in the effective radiating height for DWIR/UWIR would be a
consequence of warming but that would induce a fall in in the height at which KE and PE are in balance which results in cooling because KE falls as a result of more PE forming
at the expense of KE.
All the action occurs at the heights concerned and is rapid so that
if the surface is affected at all it would only be temporary as the
adiabatic response takes a little time to catch up with the
radiative change.
The only way to invalidate this proposition would involve
demonstrating that equilibrium temperature (as defined by KE plus PE) does not solely depend on mass,
gravity and insolation but that would be inconsistent with the Venus comparison and with established science wouldn’t it?
Trick,
Still haven’t learned that your games with semantics won’t work?
[mod: please lose the tone --Tim] The cooling and heating tubes have common flow rates and hot and cold temperatures. They have the same available power to heat and cool. Yet the boxes end up at different average temperatures. This is because of gravity, gas pressure gradients and the physical movement of energy by convection. All the things your AGW flux equations don’t properly model.
An atmosphere without radiative gases cannot easily cool. Your claim that conductive cooling at the surface can match the energy entering the atmosphere by conductive heating and convection are false.
AGW believers forgot that hot air rises. Hilarious isn’t it?
Konrad – My semantics don’t matter but the 1st and 2nd law do matter.
Your 2 boxes are supposed to be identical right? Turn off cold water, heat them both by hot water flow up to say the temperature of your water heater ~180F at the probes, then turn off water letting both boxes cool to room temperature – will take the same amount of time give or take. Agree?
If that test works within reason, then understand their radiative, conductive, and convective net flux out is near enough reasonably the same. Then if as you write: “The cooling and heating tubes have common flow rates and hot and cold temperatures. They have the same available power to heat and cool.”
Then net flux-in is also the same in each, right?
So the total energy added in each box must be the same as you cannot create energy in either box no matter the arrangement: each box will rise to same Tavg. forcing out same energy in at equil. If you spatial and temporal sample the temperature in each box, properly computed Tavg. will be the same, not same at every location. Nothing in either box could disprove the commonly called GHE since it is based on 1st law & 2nd law.
Trick says:
January 16, 2013 at 1:18 am
“Your 2 boxes are supposed to be identical right? Turn off cold water, heat them both by hot water flow up to say the temperature of your water heater ~180F at the probes, then turn off water letting both boxes cool to room temperature – will take the same amount of time give or take. Agree?”
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Trick,
Yes I agree that this would be the case. Conductive losses would be the same for each box, and the vertical distribution distribution of conductive loses would be the same. But this is not in any way relevant to the experiment.
To illustrate the point, for each box replace one panel of EPS foam with thin cling film that is a poor insulator. For box 1 replace the top. For box 2 replace the base. Heat both boxes to an internal temperature of 60C then let them cool. Now which box cools faster?
Is the answer -
A. Both boxes cool at the same rate
B. Box 1 cools faster
C. Box 2 cools faster
If truly identical, they both will cool to room temperature with same Tavg. curve. Some points faster, some slower, some same rate. Answer is all of the above if you mean local T; A. if you mean Tavg. Energy is neither created nor destroyed in either box.
You mean one box has a membrane but no insulation at the top. the other has a membrane but no insulation at the bottom, otherwise both are insulated all around?
Put another way you have enabled maximum conduction top or bottom.
Tim,
You are correct. The height at which energy loss occurs is critical to which box cools faster.
Trick,
The correct answer is B.
Box 1 cools faster. The reason is in box 1 cooling at the top sets up convective circulation, bringing higher temperature air more quickly in contact with the cling wrap causing the greatest conductive losses. The speed of conductive cooling is dependant on the temperature differential between the internal air in contact with the cling wrap and the external air. Due to convective circulation this differential will always be higher in box 1.
In box 2 convective circulation does not develop. And the speed of conductive cooling through the cling wrap base is limited to the speed of gas conduction within the box.
Trick, if you wish to check this empirically I would suggest building the insulated boxes at least 500mm tall. On box 2 it would be advisable to add 150mm legs to allow air circulation under the box. Wooden BBQ skewers may do the trick. The higher the temperature differential between internal to external temperatures at the start of the experiment, the more obvious the result will be.
Yes, the correct answer is B at some T point. So will A and C be correct at some other point. If energy is same in both boxes, and the flux-out is same for both boxes (identiical) then Tavg. curve will be exactly the same. 1st law always works.
Trick says:
January 16, 2013 at 4:33 am
“Yes, the correct answer is B at some T point. So will A and C be correct at some other point. If energy is same in both boxes, and the flux-out is same for both boxes (identiical) then Tavg. curve will be exactly the same. 1st law always works”
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Trick,
No, incorrect again. For the boxes modified with cling wrap in the manner described, while both box 1 & 2 start at the same temperature (60C) and end at the same temperature (room temperature), Box 1 will cool FASTER.
“and the flux-out is same for both boxes”
During the cooling period for box 1 the flux out is NOT the same for each box, and this is entirely the point. Gravity, the minor pressure gradient in each box and the speed of gas conduction being slower at this scale than the speed of convection ensures this. No laws of thermodynamics are being violated, distressed or abused.
This modification of the two box experiment with cling wrap is a good way for you to learn that conductive cooling at the base of the atmosphere cannot offset conductive heating at the base of the atmosphere.
The conductive heating and cooling at base of atm. must be the same or the 2nd law is violated. Tavg. in your boxes will go down the same curve if energy content is same and flux-out is same. 2nd law is no hope to get around. Sometimes real hard to measure, just talk to the guys thought they proved cold fusion, LOL. Need a good control volume & precise measurement to see it.
Trick says:
January 16, 2013 at 5:23 am
“The conductive heating and cooling at base of atm. must be the same or the 2nd law is violated. Tavg. in your boxes will go down the same curve if energy content is same and flux-out is same.”
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Trick,
For the boxes modified by cling wrap as described, box 1 will cool to room temperature faster. This is because the flux out is NOT the same until both boxes have reached room temperature.
Are you seriously suggesting that the gas in the two foam boxes modified by cling wrap in the manner described (box 1 with a cling wrap top, Box 2 with a cling wrap base) will cool at the same RATE to room temperature from a starting temperature of 60C? Could you please give me a yes or no answer to this.
Aaaah. The silence of the Sheep. No, Wait! Lambs, I’m sure it should be, lambs?
If the boxes have identical net flux-out properties (i.e. insulation such that unforced cool to room temp. at same rate from 60C) and start from same net flux-in, then just by definition Tavg. cooling rate will be the same. Each point will cool differently. If your mod.s change the box properties to be different, like Venus & Earth, then of course two different boxes Tavg. cooling rate will be different.
Trick says:
January 16, 2013 at 12:54 pm
“If the boxes have identical net flux-out properties….”
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Trick,
I believe I gave a clear description of the alternate arrangement for the boxes. Tim confirmed the nature of the alterations with the cling wrap. What was being asked should have been very clear. The question was not “net flux-out”, the question was which of the boxes would cool faster. You could not see the correct answer.
I believe there may be two reasons you can not see the correct answer to this problem or the correct answer to the previous two box experiment. The first is not understanding the basic physics of convection. This is the critical failing in all AGW calculations. You will note that convection is only incorrectly represented as a linear flux in AGW calculations, they have never modeled the actual movement of atmospheric gases. Convection is a method of energy transfer involving the physical movement of gas or other fluid with a pressure gradient. In terms of net energy flow it is always one way. To explain why this will cause an imbalance in in conductive energy flux between the surface and the atmosphere is quite simple. The amount of energy transferred by conduction depends on the nature of the materials in conductive contact and the temperature differential between them.
Convection in the atmosphere brings the coldest air in contact with the hot surface during the day, maximising conductive flux.
Convection in the atmosphere brings the coldest air in contact with the cool surface during the night, minimising conductive flux.
The second reason you can not see the correct answer to this problem or the correct answer to the previous two box experiment may be that you can not believe that the promoters of AGW have made a mistake so basic.
So you can understand the most basic error the AGW promoters have made I will attempt to design a far simpler experiment you can build at home. No water pipes or valves or custom foam boxes. You will however need to acquire a dual probe thermometer with exposed thermocouple type sensors. Also a fridge. More soon.
Konrad 11:40pm – “You could not see the correct answer.”
I can see the correct answer: 1st & 2nd law. Konrad avoids both of them best he can.
It is Konrad explanations avoiding 1st & 2nd law that I can’t see: 1) A one-way energy valve, 2) conductive heating not equal conductive cooling at interface of 2 bodies at different T while in thermal contact with each other, 3) reduced input when Konrad faced with too much energy, 4) convection somehow removing energy from earth/atm. system to deep space, 5) as wayne elegantly stated “in=out” not being controlled for by Konrad.
At long last, Konrad does find a correct answer when he points out to the choir: “The amount of energy transferred by conduction depends on the nature of the materials in conductive contact and the temperature differential between them.”
Yes. See Fourier’s thermal conduction differential formula for solids and fluids, not strictly rising to law level as it is not strictly applicable to gas; need IGL in form of PV=density*R*T to more fully explore atm. kinetic theory of gas.
“… you can not believe that the promoters of AGW have made a mistake…”
I repeatedly ask Konrad who are these promoter guys exactly? If they really do exist, what mistake have they made that I cannot believe exactly? How can I contact them to find out why? No answer has been forthcoming from Konrad, just a modified experiment.
“I will attempt to design a far simpler experiment.”
Oooookayyyy….Here we go again. I await that new challenge. Look forward actually. Eagerly; while tapping my toe impatiently.
Trick says:
January 17, 2013 at 12:46 am
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Trick,
I think I should go through these one by one.
“I can see the correct answer: 1st & 2nd law.”
As the record shows (and not just on this thread) you were unable to answer correctly for which box in the original two box experiment got hotter. When asked about the clearly described alterations with the cling wrap you also got the wrong answer as to which box cooled quicker.
“1) A one-way energy valve”
Convection is one of three main forms of energy transfer. It works one way. Energy is transported from the high pressure zone of a fluid to the low pressures zone. Gas conduction can work to equalise the energy imbalance so created, but it is too slow compared to a diurnal convective heating cycle on planet earth.
“2) conductive heating not equal conductive cooling at interface of 2 bodies at different T while in thermal contact with each other”
If one of the bodies is a column of mobile GAS (you know, the thing that is not modeled correctly in the AGW calculations) and that column is in a gravity field then attempting to conductively cool the column at the base will be less effective that trying to conductively heat the column at the base. This is the basic physics of convection
“3) reduced input when Konrad faced with too much energy”
Not entirely sure what you are referring to here but if it is the ORIGINAL two box experiment, then the conductive energy input to box 2 is indeed reduced as the temperature in the box rises toward the temperature of the heating tubes. The amount of conductive energy flow is dependant on temperature differential between the tubes and the gas in the box.
“4) convection somehow removing energy from earth/atm. system to deep space”
I have never claimed or implied this. The main point I have been making all along over several threads is that IR to space from the atmosphere or conduction to the surface is the only way our atmosphere can lose energy. Remove radiative gases and the only way our atmosphere can cool is conductive contact with the surface. My experiments all show that conductive contact with the surface is ineffective at cooling the atmosphere compared conductive heating of the atmosphere from the surface. Without radiative gases our atmosphere would be far hotter than current temperatures. AGW is physically impossible. Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce its radiative cooling ability.
“5) “in=out” not being controlled for by Konrad”
I am not trying to measure the exact fluxes in and out of a gas column. My experiments just cover the physical mechanisms for energy flow into an out of a “non-radiative” atmosphere. Understanding conduction and convection for a gas column in a gravity field shows that if being heated and cooled at separated points at the base of the column, there will be an imbalance in energy flow into and out of the gas until the average temperature of the gas rises near to the temperature of the heat source. Very basic physics. Now what are some of those heat sources on earth? 50C+ desert sands, liquid magma…
“I repeatedly ask Konrad who are these promoter guys exactly?”
Names like “Pierrehumbert” spring to mind. (I think he wrote “The farming of spherical chickens in a vacuum – for beginners.”
You have their textbooks
To Blog controllers – thanks for the patience and your system work. Now I get to learn about “Pierrehumbert”. Ha.
******
To Konrad – Nice try. Some swings hit, some misses, no cigar. Respectfully & constructively I trust, here are the issues Konrad needs to work on, not necess. that I am right just to help Konrad find conforming 1st & 2nd law is right & better more solid basis for debate:
“..unable to answer correctly in the original two box…you also got the wrong answer as to which box cooled quicker.”
I did answer correct to 1st & 2nd law in the orig. 2Box and again correctly in the cling wrap example. Konrad seems to think measuring a local temperature determines the temperature Tavg. of the whole box. One local T does not determine the box temperature Konrad, my answers are correct. If 1 T reading did so then you could measure the T outside your door and track that as global Tavg. You have to find Tavg. spatial and temporal sampled (Trenberthian term) for the whole box, both boxes, to determine which box is hotter or if they are the same Tavg., which they are if identical. I have written this before, hammer away at it & Konrad will get it.
“(Convection) works one way…..This is the basic physics of convection”
You miss what happens in natural atm. physics completely here. Please read up on convection. Even Stephen told you previously hot air rises, cools and descends. You need to see this to get the right answers. Think of a hot air balloon taking off and landing. Staying in system, no space journeys for hot air balloons. Ref. Bohren text has a whole section on it, take Konrad only a few minutes to get up to speed.
“3) reduced input when Konrad faced with too much energy..Not entirely sure what you are referring to here..”
Konrad reduced the Box 2 input from 10units to 1 unit in one attempt after I pointed out the extra energy issue.
“I have never claimed or implied (convection somehow removing energy from earth/atm. system to deep space”)”
Won’t search & quote you but you have written convection (one way!) cools the surface w/o returning energy. This means you think the energy must escape the earth/atm. system; convective energy does not escape the system; hot air balloons don’t rise to the moon, neither does convection. Convective energy stays in the system mix as it does in your 2Box. This is Stephen’s adiabatic cycle. I would settle for just stays in earth/atm. system moving internal heat around.
That Konrad could learn from a thorough study of control volumes, since energy is neither created nor destroyed in them, nothing matters moving heat in them, only thing that sets their Tavg. is flux in and flux out.
“My experiments all show that conductive contact with the surface is ineffective at cooling the atmosphere compared conductive heating of the atmosphere from the surface.”
In no way do Konrad experiments show this b/c Maxwell Demon is dead; the experiments conserve energy & comply with 2nd law as does the atm. It is your interpretation of the experiment ignoring Tavg. that becomes nonconforming with 1st and 2nd law.
“5) “in=out” not being controlled for by Konrad.
“I am not trying to measure the exact fluxes in and out of a gas column.”
That is exactly why Konrad interpretations are inconsistent with 1st and 2nd law while Konrad experiments follow them to the letter. Yes, you do need to control for and measure flux-in and flux-out to draw the correct conclusions.
“Now what are some of those heat sources on earth? 50C+ desert sands, liquid magma…”
Desert sand a heat source! ?? How? The source of desert sand heating is the day time sun, the atm. is in thermal contact with sand like bare feet, heat flows both ways depending on relative local T gradient to equil. The liquid magma is part of the natural flux density emission internal from the earth 0.1 W/m^2. Ok, add it to the forcing 239 + 0.1 = 239.1 no problem, get 239.1 in = 239.1 out and Tavg. incr. of something like 0.04K. Tavg. ~255.04K to radiate as required for equil. to deep space, usually the .04 is just rounded off. As I showed previously.
“Names like “Pierrehumbert” spring to mind. (I think he wrote “The farming of spherical chickens in a vacuum – for beginners.””
Not real familiar with his or her work, I will see what I can find while Konrad’s working on the next experiment design modification. At least I have a name now. But Konrad does not point out the mistake made or where. Would be helpful to know. And helpful if I had an editor…
Trick,
It seems you are going in circles.
“Stephen told you hot air rises, cools and descends.”
That would be your failure to understand right there. Without radiative cooling at altitude that hot air will not cool and decend. Adiabatic cooling does not count as it is matched by adiabatic heating on decent. Radiative gases are vital for continued vertical convective circulation below the tropopause. Without this circulation the atmosphere will heat.
There is no way around this Trick. Those claiming that radiative gases heat the atmosphere have not just got the basic physics of convection wrong, they failed to include them in their calculations at all.
The joy of this is that there will be no easy out for the AGW believers. No “unexpected negative feed backs”, no “new modeling of optical density says. .” Just failing to include the fact that hot air rises. Hilarious. Everyone on the planet will be able to understand just how foolish “climate scientists” were;)
Konrad 6:48am: “That would be your failure to understand right there. Without radiative cooling at altitude that hot air will not cool and decend.”
This statement shows Konrad’s lack of understanding the total energy of a polyatomic molecule. I listed the various ways the polyatomoc molecule’s total energy can change in collisions et. al. above 1/10 4:42am. Konrad isn’t absorbing or emitting either.
Once again, the N2 molecule total E = Etran + Erot + KEvib +PEvib + Eelectronic + mgh for 79% of atm.
For a hypothetical non-radiative atm., only KEvib, PEvib, Eelectronic are hypothetically turned off.
To conserve energy in hypothetical non-radiative atm. as mgh term increases i.e. “hot air rising”, Etran decreases. As Etran. decreases, the mean temperature of the molecules in the parcel decreases and it cools. This is the mechanism that generates the lapse rate as T(P). And the equil. Teq near surface cools from 288K to ~255K, no superheated atm. results.
I have ordered up Pierrehumbert 2010. Will see if “Principles of Planetary Climate” fails to include the fact that hot air rises as Konrad writes.
Trick says:
January 18, 2013 at 1:28 am
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Trick,
Yes, I remember your comment at 10/01/13 at 4.42, and I remember my response to it.
I will respond again, you provided some terms for mathematical variables but did not answer the question asked. You were asked to provide a plausible physical mechanism by which an “non-radiative” atmosphere could lose energy acquired by conductive contact with the surface. Much later in the thread you eventually tried to use conductive contact with the earth’s surface as a implausible physical mechanism by which a “non-radiative” atmosphere could lose energy.
You still have not described a plausible physical mechanism by which an “non-radiative” atmosphere could lose energy acquired by conductive contact with the surface.
What would happen immediately after the removal of radiative gases from our atmosphere. Note that the atmosphere would begin rapidly heating. It would not be in equilibrium.
Lets describe the physical mechanisms by which energy can enter a non radiative atmosphere….
1. The biggest inflow will be conduction and convection from the earth’s surface
2. A very small amount of incoming solar IR and SW intercepted by N2 and O2
3. A very small amount of out going IR from the surface intercepted by N2 and O2
Lets describe the physical mechanisms by which energy can exit a non radiative atmosphere….
1. A small amount of cooling by conduction with the earth’s surface
2. A very small amount of IR radiated to space by N2 and O2
Those supporting the AGW position claim that on removal of radiative gases our atmosphere would begin cooling to 33C below current temperatures. How is this even remotely possible?
Trick, could you please describe the PHYSICAL MECHANISM such an atmosphere could lose as much energy as it was acquiring by conductive contact with the earth’s surface? Empirical experiment shows that conductive cooling at the surface cannot be this mechanism.
And as you believe convective circulation would continue in a “non-radiative” atmosphere could you also describe the PHYSICAL MECHANISM by which such an atmosphere could lose energy at altitude which is vital for continued convective circulation?
Just to be clear, this “the N2 molecule total E = Etran + Erot + KEvib +PEvib + Eelectronic + mgh for 79% of atm” just will not do.
This “X amount of IR radiated to space by N2 and O2” is type of description what I am looking for.
Trick, if you can be bothered with the fiddly interface, ‘principles of planetary climate’ can be accessed through google books for free.
I certainly wouldn’t give Pierrehumbert tuppence for it.
I would like to see this explanation as well.
tallbloke 10:49 am – Library syndicates deliver for free. I take it there is a history you have with the author. I like to hold a book in my hands, old habit, no Kindles for me. Yet.
Konrad 3:51am – “…you…did not answer the question asked.”
Yes, I did. But really you should not depend on any anonymous internet poster to be your teacher.
Konrad should seek the answers to his 1/10 9:19am “response” to my attempt at constructive education from couple authorities in the field.
Dr. Craig Bohren is one I’ve found, he spent over 33 years taking atm. thermo students with firmly ingrained immutably incorrect views and enlightening them applying the 1st principle real science & experiment. He knows the ropes & writes interestingly. His work is available at a library near Konrad. Reportedly he likes to answer atm. thermo questions, might still be doing so, go up his mountain for the answers you seek more efficiently. If not, libraries are better than the internet blogs, that’s why I go library-ing all the time. Learn from history.
I am more like a transponder echoing the atm. thermo science learnings of others and the correct 1st principle science stuff sticks with me so I want be constructive and in the process to learn more atm. science.
Max wants to see an explanation too. Look in the thread above, all the first principle based explanations from Bohren et. al. Konrad and Max seek are already there, no poster has substantively corrected any of mine AFAIK. Still, could be I am science incorrect, study up & if so, let me know where exactly. All interested should follow-up with Craig Bohren’s book(s), and the 1st principle based work of others.
******
“You were asked to provide a plausible physical mechanism by which an “non-radiative” atmosphere could lose energy acquired by conductive contact with the surface.”
Take out radiation ability from atm. molecules get optically thin atm, the Teq.=288K surface originally at ~396 W/m^2 radiates to deep space now TOA initially at 396 W/m^2 transiently, surface loses energy over time cooling to 239.1 W/m^2 with TOA at 239.1 W/m^2 at LTE forcing surface Teq. ~ 255.04K in perfect balance with sun. In=out.
“Much later in the thread you eventually tried to use conductive contact with the earth’s surface as a implausible physical mechanism by which a “non-radiative” atmosphere could lose energy.”
Your bare feet cool the surface patch below if patch below hotter than ~98.6F and your bare feet warm the surface patch below if patch below less T than ~98.6F. Your bare feet molecules are a proxy for atm. molecules by Fourier differential, w/different k.
“Lets describe the physical mechanisms by which energy can enter a non radiative atmosphere….
1. The biggest inflow will be conduction and convection from the earth’s surface”
The biggest 239 external inflow is from the sun, 0.1 inflow from earth. Conduction and convection are an internal system response w/energy flux density outflow to deep space at 239.1 W/m^2 spatial and temporal sampled by CERES Mar. 2000 to May 2004.
“2. A very small amount of incoming solar IR and SW intercepted by N2 and O2.”
“3. A very small amount of out going IR from the surface intercepted by N2 and O2”
No. Non-radiative MEANS non-radiative atm. molecules. The various molecules KEvib, PEvib, Eelectronic are hypothetically set=0 for N2 and O2 also.
“Lets describe the physical mechanisms by which energy can exit a non radiative atmosphere….
1. A small amount of cooling by conduction with the earth’s surface”
Cooling by conduction to exact equilibrium with heating by conduction as wherever hotter atm. T flows energy to cooler atm. T by thermal contact – same w/your bare feet proxy, different k.
“2. A very small amount of IR radiated to space by N2 and O2”
No, non-radiative.
“…on removal of radiative gases our atmosphere would begin cooling to 33C below current temperatures. How is this even remotely possible?”
It is plausible since surface at 239.1 W/m^2 radiates to deep space TOA at 239.1 W.m^2, surface Teq. at ~255.04K in balance long term equilibrium, atm. in thermal contact with surface equilibrates per Fourier conduction differential. On avg., patch of 255.04K surface below = atm. patch above at 255.04K, lapse rate of atm. reduces atm. T(P) from 255.04K to 0K up to where P=0. If local T above and local T below out of balance move heat from hot to cold, get in balance. Thermals, evap./transp. are an internal system response, moving heat around within system in balance.
“…could you please describe the PHYSICAL MECHANISM such an atmosphere could lose as much energy as it was acquiring by conductive contact with the earth’s surface?”
See description Fourier conduction differential, no need to invent anything new. Works for solids, fluids and w/PV=nRT for kinetic gases.
“describe the PHYSICAL MECHANISM by which such an atmosphere could lose energy at altitude which is vital for continued convective circulation?”
Hot air rises, mean velocity of parcel molecules fighting against gravity lose KE to PE, parcel cools, and descends. Vice-versa exactly.
“Just to be clear, this “the N2 molecule total E = Etran + Erot + KEvib +PEvib + Eelectronic + mgh for 79% of atm” just will not do.”
Konrad then argues against 1st law (and 2nd law elsewhere). There is no hope for that.
“This “X amount of IR radiated to space by N2 and O2” is type of description what I am looking for.”
X=0 in hypothetical non-radiative atm. Teq.~255.04K at surface, 239.1 surface radiation out to deep space TOA at 239.1 W/m^2, atm. thru optically thin atm. Teq~255.04K atm. at surface up to atm. T(P)=0 at P=0 TOA.
Simple, not easy. Nothing new. Check for typo.s.
Trick says:
January 18, 2013 at 2:46 pm
Konrad 3:51am – “…you…did not answer the question asked.”
Yes, I did. But really you should not depend on any anonymous internet poster to be your teacher.
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Trick,
No, you have never answered the questions in the manner asked of you. The reason is of course you cannot. The basic physics is that adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce the radiative cooling ability of the atmosphere.
“depend on an anonymous internet poster to be your teacher” Wow! You thought that one would fly? Even the most casual search of Rogers site should have taught you that I never call from “authority” as you do (Dr. Craig Bohren???). I do not rely on “anonymous internet posters”. I do my own work. I design and conduct my own empirical experiments. You do not. Am I anonymous? No. And I stand by my assertion that AGW is physically impossible.
But in terms of answers you have given us this little gem…
“-describe the PHYSICAL MECHANISM by which such an atmosphere could lose energy at altitude which is vital for continued convective circulation?-
Hot air rises, mean velocity of parcel molecules fighting against gravity lose KE to PE, parcel cools, and descends. Vice-versa exactly”
Priceless
Konrad 4:44pm: “The reason is of course you cannot.”
I cannot only if the answer Konrad seeks is faith based; I base all my answers on 1st principle science I have learned from reliable teachers. Please show where I did not do so. Would be interesting to discuss; it is a talkshop.
“I never call from “authority” as you do…”
True, that is why Konrad misses a lot of 1st principle science as I noted above. Won’t repeat.
“I design and conduct my own empirical experiments.”
Konrad did provide pictures. And the experiments follow science to the letter. It is Konrad’s interpretations that do not follow 1st principle science; his interpretations just follow his own faith. This is fine for Konrad but not physical. Being a pilot means can fly an airplane; the airplane is useful being designed on 1st principle science and will repeat each flight even though Konrad et. al. pilots may not understand aero design principles. Others tried flying on faith; some did not repeat the attempt.
“And I stand by my assertion that AGW is physically impossible.”
A Konrad faith based assertion so far. Not backed by science or experiment.
“But in terms of answers you have given us this little gem…”
Something wrong with that gem based on science 1st principles? Not yet pointed out by Konrad. Just it doesn’t line up with Konrad’s faith.
Konrad – this is not the conversation I enjoy very much; I do not learn much from Konrad faith,
better to be constructive and point out issues (issues may not be problems) with science (mine or others) to correctly interpret Konrad experiments since you seem to be searching for the correct answers. Science is still being practiced, it is not perfected yet.
Trick,
I understand that you are not enjoying this conversation too much. I, on the other hand have found it very enlightening. You have been one of the staunchest defenders of the ADW religion here at the talkshop. You have brought out every trick in those book and have shown beyond reasonable doubt those you have faith in simply failed to include the role of gravity in their AGW calculations. They forgot that hot air rises. This is why you cannot give a reasonable answer to how an atmosphere without radiative gases can lose the energy it would acquire from conductive contact with the surface.
When pressed to explain how conductively heated gases could lose energy without radiation to space, you offered this -
“Hot air rises, mean velocity of parcel molecules fighting against gravity lose KE to PE, parcel cools, and descends. Vice-versa exactly”
- this gives me a clear indication of why you so desperately avoid giving this type of explanation and offer mostly half baked maths. It is now perfectly clear to anyone reading your response that you do not actually understand the physics. The explanation you gave clearly does not describe a method by which non radiative gases can lose energy. KE to PE does not indicate a loss of energy to space.
Despite all those text books you clearly do not understand physics. What does that tell you about the difference between those who believe in the religion of AGW and those that call it a hoax?
“A Konrad faith based assertion so far. Not backed by science or experiment-.”
You have shown you do not understand the basic physics of gases in a gravity field. How can you understand what the experiments are showing?
Konrad 1:03 am: “I, on the other hand have found it very enlightening.”
Good you are then winning your battle to venture further into science away from faith based interpretations.
“…you clearly do not understand physics.”
Good. Konrad gets back on physics. Seems to read like this is my problem: “The explanation you gave clearly does not describe a method by which non radiative gases can lose energy. KE to PE does not indicate a loss of energy to space.”
Did I ever write that KE to PE indicates a loss of energy to space? No. I wrote very clearly that thermals do not go to space. They stay in the system and move heat around. Hot air balloons do not rise to space.
“You have shown you do not understand the basic physics of gases in a gravity field.”
Konrad – Do you agree that the temperature of a parcel of air goes as the mean translational KE of its molecules? That the parcel doesn’t achieve escape velocity?
Do you agree the KE goes as the velocity of the molecules 1/2mv^2?
Do you agree each molecule loses velocity if happens to climb in altitude against gravity field? And vice versa exactly?
Do you agree the air parcels at TOA have lost almost all their KE (where your hand would feel T~0K) and possess almost all PE?
Do you agree this stated in reduced eqn. form is Total energy = constant = PE + KE?
Do you agree at surface ref. h=0 Total energy of any molecule = constant = 0 + KE?
Do you agree at TOA ref. P=0 Total energy of any molecule = constant = PE + 0?
“- this gives me a clear indication of why you so desperately avoid giving this type of explanation and offer mostly half baked maths.”
All my maths are good in full. No desperation, I remain calm. Show me exactly which math of mine is half-baked (explain what that means too, exactly) so I can respond.
“When pressed to explain how conductively heated gases could lose energy without radiation to space, you offered (thermals).”
Konrad is so confused, it is hard to even sort out. No, to lose energy to space, I wrote the bare feet proxy, the earth radiates. The non-radiating atm. is in full thermal contact with earth so they equilibrate, like bare feet with different k, cited Fourier conduction differential. Unless Konrad wants to go against 0th law too after trying to break the 1st & 2nd laws unsuccessfully.
Did I miss anything important? Konrad’s post is so rambling as to be hard to comment meaningfully. Calm down Konrad, learning should be fun. It is a big mistake to ignore adiabatic processes.
Trick, you ask “did I miss anything important? ”
Yes you have. You have totally missed the fact that convective circulation below the tropopause depends on radiative gases being present in the troposphere. You have totally miss the fact that conductive cooling at the base of an atmosphere with a vertical pressure gradient cannot offset conductive heating at the base of the atmosphere. You have totally missed the fact that radiative gases cool our atmosphere.
konrad,
I’m not sure how certain that is or to what degree. Wind works pretty well.
Tim,
Strong vertical convective circulation in the troposphere is the most powerful driver of weather systems. I have covered the role of mechanical convection in an earlier post. I know its hard to believe but the AGW team never properly modeled a non-radiative atmosphere. They just modeled radiative flux in and out of an “earth” with a combined atmosphere and surface. They never modeled a separate atmosphere wit depth, moving gases and a pressure gradient.
Konrad 2:30 am: Where are all those in your 1:03am post exactly? Calm down, go slow. Tim is right about winds. Convection is dependent on the temperature/pressure differences not radiative gases per se.
For conductive cooling to be not equal conductive heating at thermal contact of two bodies you fail the 2nd law. And the 0th.
For radiative (infrared active) gases to cool the whole atm. need them to suck in & destroy energy failing the 1st law. No answers to my questions?
Uh, Trick, small question, do you happen to know what the thermal conductivity of air is?
Konrad: “You have totally missed the fact that convective circulation below the tropopause depends on radiative gases being present in the troposphere.”
Your exactly correct there Konrad. Without a doubt. All except the bottom layer would stagnate, isothermal for that upper portion and rather hot. Exactly the same thing happens to a heat pipe (solar hot water panels use them) if the thermal energy at the top is not removed. That is also what gives us an environmental lapse rate instead of zero lapse.
You’ve got it, it is the 17 and especially the 80 wm-2 in the thermal/latent convective process that makes out atmosphere rather unique or it would be warmer, not colder and GHGs are vital to perform those two vital roles, one at the bottom, the other at the top. But it is the latent heat by convection that is the great mover.
And Konrad, through all of this back and forth between you and Trick, I believe you have given me one of the missing hidden answers between Earth and Venus’s atmospheres. Of course they have different parameters but the one difference is the state change in water vapor, the 80 wm-2 that without it the earth would be much warmer, not by the GHG’s. All of the planets have plenty of GHG’s to perform the roles at the bottom and top, if not there lapse rates would not make sense and they do down to the molecular composition of each.
What I need to do is ‘warm’ the Earth up by the 80 wm-2 as if the Earth was still identical elsewhere, but just dry, and then try to compare the two planets now with both on an equal footing. Thanks. That might be why I could never quite get everything to gel.
Calm? But of course Trick! I’m still not frustrated, distracted or snowed even after 500 comments on this thread
As to the laws of thermodynamics I have no problem. You and those who believe in AGW are just not using them correctly when modeling conductive energy transfer between the surface and atmosphere. Anyone who reads this exchange in the future will see the numerous times I explained to you that to model this exchange properly you need to run iterative calculations on many discrete air parcels. The atmosphere is not a single mathematical layer as used in AGW pseudo science calculations. The gases in our atmosphere move.
Conductive energy transfer depends on temperature differential. Gravity keeps cooler gases in contact with the surface. Surface Tmax causes a greater energy exchange with the atmosphere than surface Tmin.
As to your claim that radiative gases are not necessary for convective circulation in the troposphere, the original two box experiment shows how critical energy loss above the level of energy input is to continued convective circulation. Where does all the strong convection occur in our atmosphere? Below the tropopause. Where can almost all of the most powerful radiative H2O be found in our atmosphere. Below the tropopause.
Without radiative gases convective circulation would stall in the atmosphere. When convection stalls the atmosphere above the near surface layer will heat to match land Tmax. Radiative gases are vital for cooling our atmosphere.
Can I ask why you are so allergic to empirical experiment? You have bought many text books. Would you be prepared to buy a dual probe thermometer and conduct an empirical experiment? I can design you a simple experiment that does not require all the tubes and water. I only used the water tubes because I felt the Peltier chip version with Qcell insulation was too hard for others to replicate. Would you agree to try an empirical experiment if I made it easy to build? The electronic thermometer should cost under $100.
Wayne,
Sorry for not responding sooner. Friends who brought round laphraigh, trashy euro techno and litres of radiative gases have distracted me. Normal service will be restored shortly
“All except the bottom layer would stagnate, isothermal for that upper part and rather hot”
I’m impressed, although my expectations have been lowered somewhat by Trick. You have clearly thought this through. You have evidently modeled the 3D gas volume in your head. I did the same, but as the answer was so different for what “consensus science” said, I just had to check by empirical experiment. AGW appears to be physically impossible. Strangely there are a few sceptics who are going to be even more embarssed than the AGW believers.
For a “non-radiative” atmosphere there would indeed be dramatic temperature fluctuations near the surface. While I have indicated that the temperature higher up would initially be driven by land surface Tmax, other factors need to be considered. N2 & O2 do absorb and emit a very small amount of EM radiation. Conductive cooling by contact with the earth surface is useless for cooling an atmosphere without radiative gases. Just how hot could our atmosphere get without H2O and CO2?
Konrad 8:50am – Good, stay calm.
“Can I ask why you are so allergic to empirical experiment?”
I’m not at all. I’m allergic to interpretations of experiments not based on 1st principles. Like those that confuse Tlocal with Tavg. and then interpret one box is hotter when basic physics clearly shows the identical boxes are at equal Tavg. with identical energy in=out for both.
Then, based on faith and that misunderstanding, incorrectly proclaim “Conductive cooling by contact with the earth surface is useless for cooling an atmosphere without radiative gases” when the 0th law, 2nd law and Fourier conduction differential, experiment, human experience and observation show otherwise. A quick reasonable science est. shows atm./surface would on avg. temporal and spatial sampled equilibrate in under 3 years at global near surface Teq. 255.04K (the ~.04 from magma et. al. geotherms).
Konrad reverts to his deep faith to draw the somewhat softened conclusion “AGW appears to be physically impossible” w/o understanding text atm. physics with and without infrared active gas. To move on to the much harder AGW science in frequency domain, it is logical for Konrad to get the basic science physics understood first.
I’m interested enough to discuss and learn from the science not Konrad’s faith. Still no Konrad answers to my questions above btw. And the library syndicate I use has “pulled” the ‘Principles of Planetary Climate’ text for me and it is in transit. Will see if hot air rising is ignored and just not using laws of thermodynamics correctly as Konrad writes.
Trick, do you know what the thermal conductivity of air is?
Non-zero.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_429.html
Air: 0.024
Asphalt: 0.75
Clay (dry to moist): 0.15 to 1.8
Clay (saturated): 0.6 ~ 2.5
Concrete (light to stone): 0.1 to 1.7
Earth (dry): 1.5
Soil (w/ organic matter): 0.15 ~ 2.0
Soil (saturated): 0.6 ~ 4.0
Sand (dry): 0.15 ~ 0.25
Sand (moist): 0.25 ~ 2.0
Sand (saturated): 2.0 ~ 4.0
Water: 0.58
Rock: 2.0 ~ 7.0
Air is what you would call a thermal insulator, the only surface materials with comparably low conductivity is snow which goes as low as 0.025, though ice is around 2.18.
Not sure what the average thermal conductivity of the surface is, but given all the water at 0.58 and the balance of sand/soil/earth/clay/rock on the land, I’d say it’s probably a good deal higher than that of air.
I’ll also note that you’re using assumptions of thermal equilibrium as a reason to claim the air will be cooled by the ground as much as it is warmed by it.
Obviously the surface is still going to be receiving energy from the sun, while the atmosphere in this hypothetical scenario will not, nor will the atmosphere be receiving energy from the surface radiation, and similarly it will not be able to transmit surface radiation to the ground, nor to outer space.
Though the hypothetical breaks down for numerous reasons, one of which being that without the supposed ability of the atmosphere to add energy to the surface, there is not enough “extra” vibrational kinetic energy for the ground to undergo both radiative and conductive transfers at the same time, as I explained in the emissivity thread.
Though, this scenario actually has an unexpectedly useful illustrative ability: it shows that the use of 396 W/m^2 for surface emissions into a radiantly active atmosphere is absurdly wrong.
In the case of an impossible non-radiant atmosphere the ground could indeed radiate 396 W/m^2 directly into space if we ignore conductive losses!
“In the case of an impossible non-radiant atmosphere the ground could indeed radiate 396 W/m^2 directly into space if we ignore conductive losses!”
Ground would at first be ~396 after the theft of atm. radiative ability. So would TOA. 240 in can’t support that 396 unencumbered output. Two bodies in thermal contact will equilibate, the only real question is how long it would take. Windy at first, would become less so later on.
Technically it would be 299 W/m^2 because I’ve confirmed that no, you can not ignore that the same vibrational energy is responsible for radiation and conduction, so yes, you have to subtract those losses from the potential radiation.
Trick says:
January 19, 2013 at 6:34 pm
“I’m allergic to interpretations of experiments not based on 1st principles. Like those that confuse Tlocal with Tavg. and then interpret one box is hotter when basic physics clearly shows the identical boxes are at equal Tavg. with identical energy in=out for both.”
————————————————————————————
Trick,
because you don’t understand conduction and convection in gas you keep giving the wrong answer. Conductive flow will in an out of a gas column in a gravity field via surface conduction at its base will not be equal. The AGW calculations that model the atmosphere as a single mathematical layer are quite simply garbage. The atmosphere has depth and the gases in it transport energy by physical movement.
Here as promised is a little experiment you or anyone reading this later can build to find out just how totally wrong you are.
http://i49.tinypic.com/akcv0g.jpg
What you see in the image are two small EPS foam tubes. Internal volume is 75 x 75mm by 200mm high.
Tube 1 has a top with cling film replacing the foam.
Tube 2 has a base with cling film replacing the foam.
Each tube has a battery pack and a small 5V computer fan blowing across the outside of the cling film.
Tube 1 has small legs on one side to tilt it to around 5 degrees off vertical. This helps convective flow start against the friction of the internal walls.
Tube 2 has 50mm legs to allow its fan to move air freely across the cling wrap
You will note that there are multiple thermometer probe entry points in each tube.
The experiment has been scaled to fit in a refrigerator. Over 200mm the speed of gas conduction is well out of scale to a real atmospheric column, but the imbalance in conductive energy flows between the two tubes is still very clear.
To conduct the experiment first equalise the internal temperature of each tube to room temperature by turning each tube cling film down and running the fans for 15 minutes. Use a thermometer probe position equal distance from the cling film for each tube.
Now orientate the tubes so tube 1 has cling film at the top and tube 2 has cling film at the base. Place them on a shelf in a refrigerator with the fans running and close the door with the thermometer outside. The fans ensure air in the refrigerator does not stagnate need the cling wrap cooling zones on each tube. If your refrigerator has wire shelves, place a plate under each tube.
Use the probe differential button on the thermometer to observe the temperature differential between the tubes develop as they cool from room temperature. Due to the small size of the tubes compared to the speed of gas conduction, maximum differential should be achieved in 2 minutes and decrease thereafter.
Remove the tubes from the refrigerator and allow them to equalise to room temperature again, move the thermometers to new positions and repeat the cooling run. Do this a number of times to build up a picture of the temperature differential at various distances from the cling wrap in each tube at the 2 minute mark.
With a room temperature of 25C and a refrigerator temperature of 7C here are some typical temperature differentials at the 2 minute mark
175mm from the cooling surface – tube 1 2.0C cooler than tube 2
100mm from the cooling surface – tube 1 1.3C cooler than tube 2
25mm from the cooling surface – tube 2 0.3C cooler than tube 1
Tube 1 with the cooling surface at the top cools faster. This is because cooling from the top of a gas column in a gravity field sets up a convective flow bringing the hottest gases in contact with cooling surface. This maximises temperature differential at the cooling interface and maximises conductive energy flow. In box 2 convection does not occur and gravity keeps the coolest gas in contact with the cooling interface. This minimises temperature differential at the cooling interface and minimises conductive energy flow.
The experiment gives clear results even when compromised by being scaled to fit in a domestic refrigerator. If you want truly dramatic results try insulated tubes 2m tall in a commercial cool room.
Now if instead you want the garbage AGW math to work you can do that too. You simply need to remove the factor not modelled in the AGW calculations, which of course is GRAVITY. Simply turn the boxes on their side when placing them in the refrigerator and they will cool at the same rate.
Trick, you commented-
“Konrad reverts to his deep faith to draw the somewhat softened conclusion “AGW appears to be physically impossible” w/o understanding text atm. physics with and without infrared active gas.”
I will leave “faith”, “Consensus” and “The Cause” to the acolytes of AGW because these things, just like belief in AGW, have nothing to do with science.
My conclusions about the AGW hoax have not softened. AGW is physically impossible. Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce its radiative cooling ability. As the experiment above shows conductive cooling the atmosphere at surface level will not offset conductive heating at surface level. Energy loss at altitude is critical for convective circulation and cooling the atmosphere. Without radiative gases our atmosphere would cook..
I would ask if you now have the common decency to acknowledge that my understanding of atmospheric physics is better than yours.
Max 6:34am: “Technically it would be 299 W/m^2..”
Only when global near surface Tavg. would be between 288K and on way to 255.04K by surface cooling to space thru optically thin atm. – intermediate transiently on way to balance in=out at ~240. Cite 1st law.
Though thermo doesn’t say much about transient conditions, double check Gibbs & Maxwell always started off by writing “Only macro considered and let the system settle to equilibrium, then: insert rest of paper or book.”
Still true today.
Konrad 7:43am: I’m still practicing science, not perfected it yet. So is Boeing Co. et. al.
“I would ask if you now have the common decency to acknowledge that my understanding of atmospheric physics is better than yours.”
A good start would be for Konrad to show his bona fides & answer my list of questions 2:05am above. That would start to bring an answer in focus to that which is asked by Konrad. Remember I’m just an anon. internet poster; what counts for Konrad is to line up his experiment interpretations with the thermo grand master work & their interpretations.
Taking off in an experimental aircraft design on faith it will safely return the pilot to earth, is not the most safe tradition in history of aero. science. Boeing Co. currently learning more about 787 battery design. We all can learn, make it fun. Learning should not ever end for we humans. Costly for Boeing & not so much fun for the engineers going 24/7 at the moment.
No Trick, if the surface was at 289 K and undergoing conduction AND radiation, then both methods of heat transfer involve the same vibrational energy modes.
It is literally impossible for the surface to emit at full power and have any energy left for any other sort of additional heat transfer.
Unless you’d like to propose an extra fund of vibrational energy which doesn’t change the temperature and only takes part in conductive/convective/evaporative losses?
Max. 289K implies 390W/m^2 radiation. Plus convection and conduction and evaporation totals (say) 500W/m^2
Downwards we get 170W/m^2 from the Sun and 330W/m^2 from warm water vapour and co2 (mostly not far above the surface), totals 500W/m^2
By the time you get to the TOA, the colder water vapour and co2 emits 240 to space.
And the problem is?
P = εσA(Th⁴) is what you use for a surface radiating into a vacuum, and it is also what you can use for a surface radiating into an ambient environment at least three times cooler than it is.
P = εσA(Th⁴ – Tc⁴) is what you use for a surface radiating into an ambient environment of a similar but cooler temperature, like the ground radiating into the atmosphere.
The 390 or 396 W/m^2 assumes the ambient temperature is 1/3rd the emitting temperature or less.
The atmosphere is not that cold, so that is definitely not the correct value to use.
Similarly, there is no extra fund of vibrational energy available for the 500 W/m^2 if the surface is 289 K.
Temperature of a solid measures the kinetic energy right?
The translational and rotational motion of molecules in a solid is functionally null, so temperature must be measuring the vibrational modes, thermal radiation is one manner in which that vibrational energy fund can contribute to heat transfer, it is not the only way.
“No Trick, if the surface was at 289 K and undergoing conduction AND radiation, then both methods of heat transfer involve the same vibrational energy modes.”
This debate comes back to what is the “surface” defined as, we discussed this before. I still hold we don’t know the avg. surface dirt/water temperature only that the near surface air global Tavg. is ~ 289K and varies w/time.
The dirt/water temperature surface Tavg. is not measured so is averages whatever it needs to be for the air to global avg. ~289K near the dirt surface couple meters up or so.
And gives me a timely soapbox to say even the air Tavg. is a bit bogus though generally accepted like GAAP, as can’t strictly average temperatures. Have to really temporal and spatial sample avg. the W/m^2 flux and convert to Tavg., more precise but not a game changer.
Can add mass, can’t strictly add temperature; combining two equal 106F pots of water will be twice as massive but won’t boil.
Again:
“At the surface, the outgoing radiation was computed for blackbody
emission at 15°C using the Stefan–Boltzmann law
_____ R = εσT⁴
where the emissivity ε was set to 1.
[snip]
There is widespread agreement among the other
estimates that the global mean surface upward LW
radiation is about 6 W m−2 higher than the values
in KT97 owing to the rectification effects described
in the “Spatial and temporal sampling” sidebar. We
adopt a value of 396 W m−2, which is within 2.1 W m−2
of all estimates but is dependent on the skin tem-
perature and surface emissivity (Zhang et al. 2006)
and can not be pinned down more accurately. To
compute the land and ocean contributions, we use
the ISCCP-FD ratios.” ~TFK2009
It should be of course, P = εσA(Th⁴-Tc⁴) due to the whole “there is an atmosphere which has temperature too close to the surface to treat it as though it is emitting into a far colder ambient environment” thing.
Source: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/stefan.html#c1
“For hot objects other than ideal radiators, the law is expressed in the form:
P/A = εσT⁴
where e is the emissivity of the object (e = 1 for ideal radiator). If the hot object is radiating energy to its cooler surroundings at temperature Tc, the net radiation loss rate takes the form:
P = εσA(T⁴-Tc⁴)
The Stefan-Boltzmann relationship is also related to the energy density in the radiation in a given volume of space.” ~R. Nave
For Max – One free trace thru the references.
TFK09:
“At the surface, the outgoing radiation was computed for blackbody
emission at 15°C…”
“If we define a global mean as Tg…
“For 1961–90, Jones et al. (1999) estimate that Tg is 287.0 K…”
Jones et. al 1999:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0442(1999)012%3C0829%3ARTCSTC%3E2.0.CO%3B2
This paper references for Temperature data station siting: “UKMO, 1969: Observers Handbook. U.K. Meteorological Office”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/2/n/OH_Appendix1.pdf
p. 185 Installed station “Thermometer screens: Standard exposure…originally designed by Thomas Stevenson. This is erected….so that…thermometers are 1.25 m above the ground.”
Jones et. al. 1999 Table1 total 12,092 stations measuring mean temperature. As we now know the stations vary in siting “goodness”, but I have yet to see one fallen over measuring dirt temperatures.
Max – The station thermometers are just not in the dirt, they are “at the surface” held in the air measuring air temperature. The nearby dirt is at whatever temperature required for the thermometer air temperature reading.
“Other estimates of radiative and surface fluxes
have been derived using satellite data, including
those made by the ISCCP (Rossow and Duenas 2004;
Zhang et al. 2004) and CERES (Loeb et al. 2000, 2007,
2009; Wielicki et al. 2006) groups. Zhang et al. (2004)
produce the ISCCP-FD version of radiative fluxes
based upon ISCCP cloud data and other data in an
advanced radiative code. This has been produced in
3-h steps globally on a 280-km grid from July 1983
onward. They estimate, based on comparisons with
ERBE, limited CERES, and some surface data, that
the errors are of the order of 5–10 W m−2 at TOA
and 10–15 W m-2 at the surface.” ~TFK2009, 3rd page
“Several atlases exist of surface f lux data, but
they are fraught with global biases of several tens
of watts per meter squared in unconstrained VOS
observation-based products (Grist and Josey 2003)
that show up, especially when net surface flux fields
are globally averaged. These include some based on
bulk flux formulas and in situ measurements, such as
the Southampton Oceanographic Centre (SOC) from
Grist and Josey (2003), WHOI (Yu et al. 2004; Yu and
Weller 2007), and satellite data, such as the HOAPS
data, now available as HOAPS version 3 (Bentamy
et al. 2003; Schlosser and Houser 2007). The latter
find that space-based precipitation P and evapora-
tion E estimates are globally out of balance by about
an unphysical 5%. There are also spurious variations
over time as new satellites and instruments become
part of the observing system.
Zhang et al. (2006) find uncertainties in ISCCP-FD
surface radiative fluxes of 10–15 W m−2 that arise from
uncertainties in both near-surface temperatures and
tropospheric humidity. Zhang et al. (2007) computed
surface ocean energy budgets in more detail by com-
bining radiative results from ISSCP-FD with three
surface turbulent flux estimates, from HOAPS-2,
NCEP reanalyses, and WHOI (Yu et al. 2004). On
average, the oceans surface energy flux was +21 W m−2
(downward), indicating that major biases are present.
They suggest that the net surface radiative heating
may be slightly too large (Zhang et al. 2004), but also
that latent heat flux variations are too large.” ~TFK2009, 4th page
“To compute these effects more exactly, we have taken the surface skin temperature from the NRA at T62 resolution and
6-h sampling and computed the correct global mean surface radiation from (1) as 396.4 W m−2 .” ~TFK2009, 5th page
Note that NRA is the NCEP-NCAR reanalysis, and surface skin temperature is the term typically given to the direct measurement of the ground temperature by IR thermometers.
“We
adopt a value of 396 W m−2, which is within 2.1 W m−2
of all estimates but is dependent on the skin tem-
perature and surface emissivity (Zhang et al. 2006)
and can not be pinned down more accurately. To
compute the land and ocean contributions, we use
the ISCCP-FD ratios.
[...]
However, after the adjustments noted above for
LH and better accounting for the aerosols and water
vapor in the absorbed solar radiation, our revision
estimates are 333 and 63 W m−2 for the downward
and net LW.” ~TFK2009, 9th page
Trick,
will you at least concede now that the vertical position of conductive cooling alters the cooling rate of a gas column in a gravity field? That cooling the column from the top is more effective than cooling the column from the bottom?
Trick: “Max – The station thermometers are just not in the dirt, they are “at the surface” held in the air measuring air temperature. The nearby dirt is at whatever temperature required for the thermometer air temperature reading.”
The ocean covers 70% of the Earth’s surface. It’s around 2C warmer on average than the air above it.
This isn’t going to give the extra 110W/m^2 worth of power required to account for evaporation and thermals on top of 390W/m^2 outgoing longwave. Max is right, something doesn’t add up. In a big way. I think it’s time to acknowledge that there is a problem.Wait a minute, too early in the morning to think straight. It does add up.
Max:390 up as LW temp 288K. 500 down in SW+LW. 110 spare for evap and thermals. What is the problem?
Konrad said:
“That cooling the column from the top is more effective than cooling the column from the bottom?”
Pressure gradient ?
My contention is that the cooling at the bottom is constrained by the pressure at the bottom and the fact that replacement energy is constantly being returned to the bottom by the descending portion of the adiabatic loop.
AGW proponents are aware of the issue and call it DWIR but I think it is compression effects.
Konrad 6:12am asks: “…will you at least concede now that the vertical position of conductive cooling alters the cooling rate of a gas column in a gravity field?”
Inventing the Trick (trademark) ½ m^2, 10kg. finned but mostly flat metallic device (Codename A) held at 100K by external refrigeration (disconnected upon column insertion) capable of being inserted into an equilibrium earthian atm. gas column (usual adiabatic theory set up) at any height to tropopause. Effective defined as the time it takes for the column & A to equilibrate, less time more effective, more time less effective.
Answer depends on two initial condition assumptions as usual.
If assume the equilibrium gas column of interest can do work on the air column above and below, then A will have X(P) effect placed at any height, X varying from high at h=0 to low at h=tropopause.
If assume the equilibrium gas column of interest can do no work on the air column above and below, then A will have Y(T,P) effect placed at any height, Y varying from high at h=0 to low at h=tropopause.
Being properly caffeinated at the moment (unlike tb), I may have that right, any issues?
Max 4:58am: “..surface skin temperature..”
I did one free ref. investigation. You are on your own now. I’m certain surface skin temperature means air thermometers measuring 1.25 metres above the dirt. Look ‘em all up.
Trick: http://tigge.ecmwf.int/tigge/d/show_object/table=parameters/name=skin_temperature/levtype=sfc/
“Temperature of the surface at radiative equilibrium. It forms the interface between soil and atmosphere.”
http://www.goes-r.gov/products/ATBDs/baseline/baseline-LST-v2.0.pdf
That goes over the whole process of obtaining the land surface temperature, not the temperature a meter off the ground, not the temperature of a layer of air at the surface, specifically the temperature OF THE SURFACE ITSELF.
TFK2009 notes the use of various products like the GOES one there, and I specifically quoted several times where the specific land temperature is being talked about.
Flat out, if you continue to claim TFK2009 did not run their calculations using the ACTUAL TEMPERATURE OF THE PHYSICAL SURFACE OF THE GROUND as 289 K, you are now going to be [snip], unless for some reason you’ve managed to lose the ability to see what I write.Full stop.
“Max:390 up as LW temp 288K. 500 down in SW+LW. 110 spare for evap and thermals. What is the problem?” ~tallbloke
It isn’t 500 down, the LW down only reduces the 390 up, it does not add to the surface energy budget.
The 110 from evaporation and thermals has to be added to the total losses for a surface at 288 K.
You don’t start with P=εσ(289⁴) and then add P=εσ(277⁴), the second value there is energy that originally came from the first value, you can not add them together, full stop.
The energy coming down from the atmosphere originated at the surface, unless the atmosphere is warmer than the surface then the only possible result of this energy returning to the surface would be to reduce emissions into the atmosphere accordingly.
Thus you use P=εσ(289⁴ – 277⁴) and you get 62 W/m^2, not 396 W/m^2.
Now the surface wouldn’t be losing enough energy to balance incoming solar though, what a pain.
If you take the evap/therm to be 99 and solar to be 161 though, 161 W/m^2 down – 99+62 W/m^2 up would be a surface balance.
The atmosphere absorbing 78 W/m^2 from the sun directly and emitting 78 W/m^2 to space would then give 161+78 in at TOA and 161+78 out at TOA.
Unfortunately that breaks down because there isn’t a way to explain the surface being over 255 K.
…
Rather than inventing a method to justify a bad model, I suggest identifying the flaws in that calculation (i.e. stupid ideas like the energy the atmosphere receives from the ground being added to the energy the ground receives from the sun and then a temperature could be calculated from that directly) and producing a better model.
Clearly the constant illumination model TFK2009 uses is broken if it requires one to treat the atmosphere as a source of around twice as much energy as the sun provides.
The arguments made seem plausible, and it is easier to doubt yourself rather than professionals.
Nonetheless, the arguments are bunk, they are utterly unjustifiable, and the manner in which they are readily adjusted to seemingly work around whatever objections are offered is further proof that they are invalid.
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A solid argument will not need to be constantly propped back up every time a pole is yanked out.
Trick is a perfect example of this with his “the 289 K is the temperature a meter off the ground, the surface temperature is then clearly whatever is required to explain away the seemingly sensible point you’re making, Max”, so I showed that they state “the 289 K is the surface temperature from which emissions are calculated” to which he digs through the references and plucks a source used by what I think was the KT97 paper to justify his claim.
I will be pleasantly surprised and gain new respect for him if later I find a post where he admits he was incorrect about the definition of “surface skin temperature” as used by Trenberth et all.
The worst part of this though, is how those sorts of argument even got tallbloke to go back and doubt his earlier post.
Ohhh, ok, gotcha, I’ll do that. I had it saved in case I needed to shorten it, kill the extra copies, I didn’t see any confirmation signs that it went in.
[Reply] Done. WordPress is quirky, and when it tosses your post into spam, it just vanishes from your view. Please, research, reference, and annotate a post on your formula for emission into a warm atmosphere. Find empirical results if possible, and write it all up. It is an important contribution if you can make it stick.
Max 4:14pm: “..(Trick) plucks a source used by what I think was the KT97 paper to justify his claim.”
No, I cited & quoted all from TFK09, just search the doc. They go back a long ways even in TFK09.
I’m certain Tg=Tavg. is ~287K that will be traceable to near surface air temp. up 1.25 m from surface, 12000+ Stevenson screen or not stations. There are soil temperatures measured also – why are they listed different than skin on ECMWF? I’m not interested to research those like you are but quickly checking the ECMWF site you listed I did find more info. And even contact info. to e-mail them & ask questions.
Follow your interest deeper, savor the hunt, and let me et. al. know what you find about “…surface skin temperature…”. Is it at ~287K? I doubt it now. If it turns out soil, then probably not 287K used in TFK09, what is that skin temperature exactly, in Kelvin globally?
I can’t do ALL the ref. reading work or respond everything, LOL. Cuts into my bar time.
Trick, again, it is a fact that the TFK2009 paper uses data from things like satellite measurements of surface temperature, that data is a “surface skin temperature” or “land skin temperature”, and it means “the temperature of the frickin’ ground”… not a meter off of the ground.
I didn’t say you pulled the source from the KT97 paper, I said the source you used is referenced as being one they had used in the past, it is not listed as one of the main sources they used for calculating the surface temperature in the actual body of the paper, ctrl-f, check it out for yourself like I did.
No one anywhere ever has called “temperature measured in a stevenson screen” the “surface skin temperature”, that is exclusively a term used in remote sensing fields, it means “the temperature of a surface in the viewing window of an infrared thermometer” for the record.
I will whip it up, tallbloke.
Trick says:
January 21, 2013 at 2:36 pm
————————————————–
BAFFLEGAB!
Rog, Tim & Max,
To understand the game of Bafflegab, just follow this link, this is a must read
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9686940/armstrong/Nursing%201982.pdf
[Reply] Bookmarked.
Max™ says:
January 21, 2013 at 4:14 pm
“The arguments made seem plausible, and it is easier to doubt yourself rather than professionals.
Nonetheless, the arguments are bunk, they are utterly unjustifiable, and the manner in which they are readily adjusted to seemingly work around whatever objections are offered is further proof that they are invalid.”
“The worst part of this though, is how those sorts of argument even got tallbloke to go back and doubt his earlier post.”
——————————————————————
Max,
Welcome to the game of Bafflegab! But don’t get distracted, snowed or frustrated. Trick is actually doing great service by putting on display just how little real physics is involved in the AGW claims.
It’s basic Physics? The science is settled? Bafflegab!
Don’t get sucked in to doubting yourself. Just follow the scientific method and logic. AGW fails every empirical test.
1. DWIR cannot slow the cooling rate of liquid water that is free to evaporatively cool. That rules out 71% of the earth’s surface from being affected by “back radiation” from CO2. The empirical experiment to check this is easy.
2. Ignore gravity like the AGW believers do and treat the atmosphere as a single mathematical layer or “body” as Trick does. The answer is still that CO2 cools our atmosphere. Why? Because CO2s ability to warm the atmosphere by intercepting outgoing IR is a inverse logarithmic function of its concentration in the atmosphere. However CO2s ability to radiate to space energy the atmosphere has acquired from conduction and the release of latent heat is a linear function of its concentration in the atmosphere. Even failing to consider gravity, CO2 will become a coolant after around 50ppm. This too can be shown by empirical experiment.
3. Model gravity and the pressure gradient correctly and you will find that radiative gases are vital for continued convective circulation in the troposphere. Without energy loss to space above the altitude of energy input our atmosphere will heat. When you model the atmosphere with depth and a pressure gradient the net effect of radiative gases is cooling at all concentrations above 0ppm. The critical importance of emitting IR to space above the altitude of energy input into the atmosphere can also be demonstrated by empirical experiment.
Where are the empirical experiments that prove AGW? Nowhere, that’s where.
AGW is physically impossible. If you find Tricks defence of AGW unconvincing, just think how ridiculous other AGW believers are going to get in the near future. These are the last days of the hoax. Soon only the most fervent believers will be left. Those that have any chance of saving career or reputation are already trying to slink away, foolishly hoping for an escape to “Black Carbon”, “Biocrisis” or “Sustainability”. Those that can’t escape the permanent record of the Internet are going nuts. Fools like Gleick, Lewandowsky and Mann are now so far around the bend they can no longer see daylight.
Guaranteed to come in handy Konrad! Bookmarked and permanently stored away.
Rog, the above post at 11.44pm contains an error. Please delete and replace with this:
You know things make a lot more sense for my hypothesis if the effect of CO2 is nominally cooling. It goes like this:
i) CO2 in an atmosphere allows more radiative energy out to space than does a less radiatively active atmosphere.
ii) Atmosphere cools and so contracts.
iii) Contraction results in faster conversion of PE to KE by speeding up my adiabatic loop. It speeds up because it doesn’t have to go so high.
iv) The additional KE is attributed incorrectly to the CO2 and is taken to be a net warming effect.
v) But it isn’t because all the extra KE is doing is offsetting the cooling effect of more upward radiation.
vi) Net effect of more CO2 being zero.
Doesn’t it make more sense that way around ?
Max 8:35pm: “I didn’t say you pulled the source from the KT97 paper…”
Max 4:14pm: “…(Trick) digs through the references and plucks a source used by what I think was the KT97 paper to justify his claim.”
Max – The TFK09 global Tg=287K ref. Jones et. al. 1961-1990 is measured 1.25 m off the ground at 12000+ stations by design as stated in the TFK09 source ref.s. What did Max find the global surface skin temperature measured at exactly? 250K? 350K? What? I’m interested to know, really.
Stephen 11:56pm: “vi) Net effect of more CO2 being zero.”
Yes. The global near surface experiences slower cooling and same on up to a certain altitude; above that altitude atm. experiences the exact opposite, since energy is neither created nor destroyed by infrared active gas.
TFK2009 didn’t list it measured, they listed a variety of methods used to get a range of values for the surface skin temperature, and then computed a “black body surface temperature” that gave emissions which worked for their purposes.
The comment btw, was saying that you went through the references listed in the paper and grabbed that one, which being from ’61 to ’90 is probably a reference included because they used it in the KT97 paper.
“vi) Net effect of more CO2 being zero.”
I’ll go for # six. That is what I am finding. But some of your other thoughts could all be true, but they require measurements, for I can think of just as many factors that may say they do not matter of even work in an opposite direction.
Take “iii) Contraction results in faster conversion of PE to KE by speeding up my adiabatic loop. It speeds up because it doesn’t have to go so high.” Could be true but also because it is lower there is less temperature difference and that would mean less speed in your loop. See, I wish you the best in your proposal, but in science you have to have something showing these all are actually occurring and by how much.
“i) CO2 in an atmosphere allows more radiative energy out to space than does a less radiatively active atmosphere.”
I’ve fought with that one myself. Don’t know for sure, but it seems you mixed specific co2 lines with generic radiation lines instead of just saying ‘less co2’. I’ve seen no proof in an atmosphere that just co2, specifically, matters squat. Venus’s outward level after removing albedo seems little difference than Earth’s profile adjusted for the composition. Both shed the amount of energy that goes in at about the 100 to 225 mb level, in fact all planets and moons with thick atmospheres do the same thing according to the charts on that: http://i45.tinypic.com/34i010j.jpg . Jupiter is one of the less-radiative-active atmospheres with He and H2 but yet it sheds what energy that goes at the same pressure and following close the potential temperature curve for that mixture. See why I have trouble placing a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on that? Wish I could concretely prove it either way myself.
“iv) The additional KE is attributed incorrectly to the CO2 and is taken to be a net warming effect.”
What “additional KE”? We are speaking of long periods, right? That is one aspect after all of the words I still don’t know exactly what you mean there.
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I might not be a good person to place a stamp on your idea. I’ve tried such conjectures, usually long ago, until I found I could always disprove myself or I would have written a paper. None yet. I can’t find one myself to place my own stamp of approval on. See… I’m a great person to tear both yours and mine to pieces cause I’ve done it to myself so very many times for decades !!
You might need to get better at tearing your own apart. In science if you don’t do it, someone else is bound to call you on it, and usually in a more embarrassing way. Best to do as much of that as you can do yourself first, then write.
But seriously Stephen, I’ll follow your thoughts and ideas, they interest me, I think through each one trying not to pick too much without a queue, and if I come across anything to help, really help, like actual confirming papers or equations I’m more than happy to pass them on.
Trick:
I just located that graph as to where in pressure the tropospheres all end for planets and moons with atmospheres. Still can’t find the paper (or other) from whenc it came.
http://i45.tinypic.com/34i010j.jpg
Mars is already in the stratosphere at the surface, look where it belongs on that plot!
I’m not sure how much I can do regarding empirical results, I was looking at one thing that could show the effect of going from radiation -> vacuum to radiation -> convective atmosphere: tungsten filament incandescents.
They require more power applied to reach the same temperature as a bulb in a vacuum, but have fewer issues with the filament evaporation and longer lifespans at higher temperatures.
Here’s what I put together so far, though I can’t really take credit for it as a contribution of my own, it’s just something that I’ve learned elsewhere which stands out in big bold letters saying “Hey, listen!”… yeah, I get it, hush up http://zeldawiki.org/Navi.
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I was asked by tallbloke, paraphrased slightly, “396 W/m^2 LW up, 493 W/m^2 SW+LW down, 97 W/m^2 for convection and evaporation, what’s the problem?”
Good question, what is the problem there?
Well, the biggest thing I’d say is that you can’t start with P=εσ(289⁴) up from the surface and then add P=εσ(277⁴) coming down from the atmosphere.
The energy coming back down from the atmosphere originated at the surface, unless the atmosphere is warmer than the surface then the only possible result of this energy returning to the surface would be to reduce emissions into the atmosphere accordingly.
The equation for radiation leaving the surface should actually be P=εσ(289⁴ – 277⁴), which works out to 63 W/m^2, not 396 W/m^2.
I have no clue where the idea that upward and downward components of radiative transfers should be treated independently, but it can mislead one into thinking there is far more energy arriving at the surface than is actually available. Considering that, I’d say it is probably best to use the correct form of the SB equation in the first place, to avoid such issues.
Though if you correct the errors in the Trenberth budgets like this, the surface doesn’t seem to lose enough energy to balance incoming solar though, what a pain.
I suppose you could take the evaporative and convective transfers of 97 W/m^2 and add it to the corrected 63 W/m^2 surface emissions. You get the same value given for solar in at the surface: 160 W/m^2. If you add the direct solar absorbed by the atmosphere you get the net in/out value of 238 W/m^2, so where does all this extra stuff come from in the TFK2009 budget?
…
Perhaps after adding the 333 W/m^2 DWIR to the 160 W/m^2 solar they decided to treat convective and evaporative losses as though they also added to the total 396 W/m^2 UPWIR value so there would be 493 W/m^2 in and out at the surface?
…
May as well pre-empt Trick and pull out a Thermodynamics text from respected authors.
http://books.google.com/books?id=O389yQ0-fecC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
“The energy transfer is the net radiative exchange and the transfer by free convection. It is equal to the flux q1 that must be added to [the surface] to maintain it at its specified temperature. Since T1 and T2 are given, the hjc must be computed from free-convection correlations and the net energy transfer is, by use of (6-20a),” ~Siegel and Howell
http://i341.photobucket.com/albums/o396/maxarutaru/Selection_127_zpsaf8af2ff.png
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Wayne: I wonder why Venus is not on that plot.
Have no idea. You know, I never even realized it was missing. All my Venus info comes from much higher resolution info and that was just a… look, isn’t that strange, they all are basically at the same pressure and stored it away. Lost that dude for a couple of years but finally found it on an old archive, Trick was curious.
But look at other Venus profiles, the troposphere linear lapse ending right at 62 to 63 km and that would put the pressure in that same range. I have 62 km at 161 mb, 63 km at 134 mb.
Trick said:
“The global near surface experiences slower cooling and same on up to a certain altitude; above that altitude atm. experiences the exact opposite, since energy is neither created nor destroyed by infrared active gas.”
But that requires an expanding (warming) troposphere and a contracting (cooling) stratosphere.
The problem with that is that both result in a higher tropopause and a higher tropopause makes the adiabatic loop higher so the circuit takes longer so that KE is returned to the surface less quickly which offsets the reduction in cooling at the surface. Hence in reality there must be no warming of the troposphere or cooling of the stratosphere from more CO2.
wayne said:
“because it (the adiabatic loop) is lower there is less temperature difference and that would mean less speed in your loop.”
I don’t think so because we are considering a contraction of the entire atmosphere with the same surface temperature and the same temperature of space so the temperature difference is the same but the physical distance smaller so the only way the lapse rate can be maintained at the one set by gravity is for the circuit to run faster so as to equalise at top of atmosphere again.
“iv) The additional KE is attributed incorrectly to the CO2 and is taken to be a net warming effect.”
“What “additional KE”? We are speaking of long periods, right?”
Yes, long periods it is, because there are variations around the mean and the mean is set by incoming energy from the sun.
The faster shallower adiabatic loop must return PE to the surface as KE faster so on the face of it there ‘should’ be more KE swishng about than there othewise would have been but in reality there is not because CO2 is radiating out at exactly the same rate so the temperature doesn’t change.
Perhaps it would help if I give more narrative to that equation:
VT = n Rspecific E (E = PE +KE)
i) The ‘natural’ relationship between V and T is inverse i.e. When volume increases there is decompression and gas cools. When volume decreases there is compression and gas warms.
That is overturned at a surface where new energy is being added under stable pressure. At the surface it looks like a higher temperature causes a higher volume but that is only so if one is adding energy whilst holding pressure stable.
Under an open sky convection then steps in to raise the warmed (less dense and thus lighter) expanded air to a greater height and lower presuure whereupon the distortion caused by proximity to the heated surface is negated.
So if V increases then P falls and reduces T so that the product of VT remains stable unless new energy is added so as to raise both. We end up with the same VT as before the surface heating but a lower P at a higher level.
But you cannot alter P for an atmosphere as a whole hence the inadequacy of the Ideal Gas Law in that situation.
ii) On the other side of the equation one has to realise that the height of the atmosphere is a result of TOTAL energy E and not just KE.
That is because the pressure gradient distributes all the available energy equally between PE and KE at equilibrium.
So one can expand V by increasing PE OR KE and when V increases T drops for a cooling effect UNLESS the proportions of PE and KE change to correct T and I think that is what happens via an adjustment within the adiabatic loop.
The speed of the adiabatic loop adjusts to the change in atmospheric height so as to remove any imbalance between KE and PE that might be caused by any forcing elements other than more mass, more gravity or more insolation.
iii) For the atmosphere as a whole no energy is being added when one increases net radiative capability and P remains the same as does n and R. The only possible variables if P is kept steady are T and V.
So when radiative capability changes there is an apparent potential to change T but if one simply changes T whilst leaving all the other terms the same there will be more KE in the atmosphere than is required to make energy in equal energy out at top of atmosphere.
The total E will still be the same because no more energy is being supplied from outside but the radiative change would have upset the natural 50/50 balance between KE and PE.
If Pressure is held steady there cannot be an adjustment from a pressure change so inevitably V has to change instead which cancels any rise in T because of the inverse relationship.
Summary:
One cannot use variations in P to help retain thermal equilibrium for an atmosphere as a whole, only for discrete parcels of air within an atmosphere
The height of the atmosphere is determined by KE +PE and not KE alone.
If all of the terms E, n, Rspecific and P are fixed as they are when no extra energy is being supplied to the system then the only variables left are V and T which are inversely proportional to each other so any change in either must instantly cancel out any change in the other.
I think my equation works.
Hi Stephen, good to see you’ve been thinking this through further. I think your hypothesis is developing nicely. However, there is still the question of latent heat outstanding, although it is probably reasonable to leave it out of the equation for now. If T is some kind of expression of energy, then the left side of the equation is Energy times volume. This seems reasonable too. We get other such quantities in classical mechanics, such as Newton-metres. Nm=J. How might we turn VT into Joules I wonder.
Thanks tallbloke.
No need to include latent heat because the removal of KE to latent when evaporation occurs unbalances the KE/PE relationship at the surface set by the pressure gradient but uplift then occurs until the latent comes back to KE again from condensation higher up which rebalances the KE/PE relationship so the net effect in the water cycle is zero and has no net effect on the entire surface to space vertical column.
Note that water vapour being lighter than air the creation of latent heat is the same as an injection of PE in place of KE so given the pressure gradient the air is then in the wrong position relative to the gravitational field. Convective uplift corrects for that.
Latent heat is just PE at the wrong height !!!
Joules come in within the term R which is work done per mole per degree as we saw previously.
Basically if anything tries to upset the KE/PE energy balance away from the 50/50 ratio imposed by the pressure gradient it goes straight to a change in V which prevents a change in T.
It works like that because for an entire atmosphere one can no longer adjust P. Only T and V are then variables and inversely at that.
Meanwhile as long as the sun gets no hotter then E stays the same.
As long as the atmosphere contains no more mass then n stays the same.
As long as the gravitational field is stable Rspecific stays the same.
The inverse relationship between V and T then does the rest to ensure stability.
Max 3:51am – Yeah, a range of method’s to calculate skin temp. s from the 1.25 m up air temperatures. That is consistent with my browsing the link you posted ECMWF site. They showed an eqn. deriving skin temp. and noted it has no heat capacity which I didn’t dig into. I couldn’t find any results just the math. Skin temp. remains for me to be the calculated T of the dirt needed for the 1.25 m up air temp.
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wayne 4:22am– Yeah, problem is Mars surface must just be too high for its atm., LOL. In the stratosphere is a funny way to say it. Note the dotted lines showing an unknown surface temperature if there even is a surface. Interesting showing Titan being so much “warmer” than Uranus and Neptune.
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tallbloke 6:26am: Venus would be off my monitor to the right somewhere.
11:41 am: “How might we turn VT into Joules I wonder.”
Bring the R over to the left side w/VT. Still won’t solve the oranges and apples units issue though.
tallbloke asked:
“How might we turn VT into Joules I wonder.”
The value of Rspecific on the right is work done per mole per degree which converts Joules to E (KE+PE) but by virtue of the pressure gradient only half of E can be KE which then gives us T on the left.
Trick, the 30ft tide on Titan generates heat. Given how cold it is out there, a little bit of extra energy makes quite a big difference in Kelvin terms.
Stephen 9:56am: “The problem with that is that both result in a higher tropopause and a higher tropopause makes the adiabatic loop higher so the circuit takes longer so that KE is returned to the surface less quickly which offsets the reduction in cooling at the surface. Hence in reality there must be no warming of the troposphere or cooling of the stratosphere from more CO2.”
The exact math shows the tropopause remains at exact same height in the limit to conserve energy.
“But that requires an expanding (warming) troposphere and a contracting (cooling) stratosphere.”
Atm. in total doesn’t warm or cool net. Stephen’s concept doesn’t conserve energy appropriately.
There is no energy problem when worked according to nature’s laws as I’ve explained in the past, just that it is so technical it is hard to get across and make it stick. In reality the physics shows when the start of the lapse curve at ~1000mb is necessarily slightly higher T causes the end of lapse curve to be at slightly lower T at same exact tropopause height compensating total energy.
Stephen’s adiabatic processes run slightly faster near the surface (based on V most probable for N2 slightly higher) and Stephen’s adiabatic processes run same amount slightly slower near the same exact height for tropopause (V most probable for N2 slightly lower) in the limit.
This is not intuitive; it comes about because the gas enthalpy must be held the same as the standard atm. gas enthalpy up to tropopause so total energy is neither created nor destroyed. Mathematically this is hard to do but has been done for at least 15 years now or more – the science has been worked out convincingly. Need the appropriate higher level training to learn how it all successfully works.
The physics also show this process is self limiting, diminishing in effect as infrared active gas ppm increases and vice versa. The science debate should be over the size of effect on global near surface Tavg. not that there is an effect – which is so small both in physics and hard to measure in practice it is currently impossible to pick the fly droppings from the pepper. Don’t use pepper if want to be safe until the instruments are precise enough for pepper purification.
Trick said:
“The exact math shows the tropopause remains at exact same height in the limit to conserve energy.”
Trick’s story was that tropopause warms whilst stratosphere cools and both those processes would result in a higher tropopause but Trick admits that it doesn’t happen.
More energy in the troposphere pushes the tropopause up and less energy in the stratosphere pulls the tropopause up.
I agree, it doesn’t happen and Trick’s scenario fails.
Stephen 2:37pm: “More energy in the troposphere pushes the tropopause up…”
Yes more energy is what it would take to push up tropopause as well as pushing up TOA.
The more energy would have to and does come from the sun not offset w/changes in albedo since the needed internal energy pushing up tropopause can’t result net from internal infrared active gas (atm. emissivity changes) resulting from internal processes which neither create nor destroy energy in the earth/atm. system control volume.
The internal process stuff (Stephen’s adiabatic) adds and subtracts energy in equal amounts in total atm. and below tropopause – as Stephen writes easy to see PE+KE = constant (along with other not so easy terms). That must be so & the mathematicians force it to happen along with controlling for entropy. Cite 1st law. And 2nd. And IGL PV=nRT.
This scenario has worked undefeated and built on w/better and better science for at least 15 or more years. It is truly not my scenario. My preferred scenario is a beach bar. Not checking for typo.s.
Trick:
You said CO2 warms the troposphere and cools the stratosphere to achieve a zero net effect.
That would be bound to raise the tropopause.
Not possible, doesn’t happen, as you pointed out.
CO2 not guilty.
Stephen 6:15pm: “Trick: You said CO2 warms the troposphere and cools the stratosphere to achieve a zero net effect.”
Thanks for the calm discussion Stephen. Here’s my clip you used, no mention of stratosphere, but I can see your issue.
“The global near surface experiences slower cooling and same on up to a certain altitude; above that altitude atm. experiences the exact opposite, since energy is neither created nor destroyed by infrared active gas.”
Around here, that “certain altitude” causes as tallbloke mentions on emissivity thread “emotional, probably” responses.
The ”certain altitude” crossover I mean is well w/in the troposphere – little less than 600mb pressure altitude in standard atm. still on smooth lapse curve. Would of course vary spatial and temporal sampled.
Above that “certain altitude” ~600mb get the local T compensates down for the upward T near surface to conserve energy in the mathematical workouts and make sure entropy considerations consistent with 2nd law and PV=nRT, tropopause and TOA heights held constant.
“In the stratosphere is a funny way to say it.”
It was a joke Trick!
Well, sortof, I read in some agency article that said the stratosphere on Earth sometimes extends all of the way to surface in the Arctic winter and that funny viewpoint just stuck. Knew I could use it somewhere!
A fine joke too wayne 8:02pm! I laughed. Not all serious around here, no fun that way.
Looks like I did misread Trick’s words because the general AGW theory is as I worded it, namely a warming troposphere and cooling stratosphere.
Trick says:
January 22, 2013 at 1:13 am
“Yes. The global near surface experiences slower cooling and same on up to a certain altitude; above that altitude atm. experiences the exact opposite, since energy is neither created nor destroyed by infrared active gas.”
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And increasing the buoyancy of gas close to the surface and decreasing the buoyancy of gas in the mid to upper troposphere leads to what? Faster convective circulation!
For a brief moment I thought Trick had got it, but then…
Konrad 10:15pm – Not on avg. faster – global avg. temporal and spatial sampled, some slower, some faster, takes more energy from outside to avg. faster, or lose energy to outside to avg. slower. Yes, it is windy inside the earth/atm. control volume.
Trick, does radiation have entropy?
I would say radiation has entropy as long as the total energy of the radiation can do something “useful”. I think I am about to be taken to school anyway, so Max 10:36pm can now proceed.
Trick says:
January 22, 2013 at 10:26 pm
“Not on avg. faster..”
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I take that to be bafflegab which should have been written “the average speed of convective circulation will not be faster in the troposphere due to the addition of radiative gases.”
This would of course be incorrect. Convective circulation depends on radiative gases in the troposphere. Without radiative gases releasing energy to space at altitude, convective circulation would not occur below the tropopause. Without radiative gases the average speed of convective circulation in the troposphere would be zero. Adding radiative gases will not slow convection in the atmosphere or leave it unchanged. Adding radiative gases speeds up convection in the atmosphere.
For an atmosphere such as ours that has maintained a very stable temperature for thousands of years and is exhibiting continued convective circulation there is only one possible answer. Energy is exiting the atmosphere at a higher altitude than it is entering the atmosphere. There is only one way our atmosphere loses energy at altitude, that is through IR radiation to space.
For an atmosphere with a vertical pressure gradient, heated near the surface, radiative gases act as coolants at all concentrations above 0ppm.
Stephen, you should abandon that funny equation and take a new tangent.
I think I see what you are trying to say, I think, that the energy that pours into the surface and atmosphere does cause an increase in temperature and that increase in temperature causes by the IGL an increase in volume raising the column but every night that increase in height (PE) and increased volume is converted back to KE keeping the temperature higher that it would have been without that storage of PE (potential energy) during the daytime expansion. This storage of energy is not being accounted for anywhere best I can tell.
Isn’t that your very, very base point you are trying to address?
So look at energy and not the IGL specific. It takes a given amount of energy to even raise the temperature. How much energy? That is governed by ‘cp’, about 29.07 J/kg/K. At night, that increased volume comes back down to the same value each mean day so it is as if you should have used ‘cv’ instead of ’cp’ and it is cv=cp-R or about 20.76 J/kg/K.
It’s harder, 29 J instead of 21 J, to raise the temperature of air during the day for the atmosphere has no lid, just a frictionless “gravitational cap” on top of each column. The extra ‘R’ (8.3144 J) goes into the lifting of the column.
The 29 J goes in during the day with a constant pressure but ends up by the end of nighttime being 21 J that was all the energy to raise the temperature at a constant volume.
Take the ratio 29.07/20.76 (γ=1.4) and multiply it by N-K’s mean temperature with surface thermal inertia taken into account, not the 154 K of and inertia-less surface, I remember it is right above 200K, I think it was about 206 K. Well, 29.07/20.76 * 206 K is the 288 to 289 K we find that is the mean Earth temperature at the surface.
Isn’t that close to what you are trying to prove without re-creating a new Ideal Gas Law + gravity and creating a new set of new gas constants to boot?
Could that be where the AGW conjecture goes so very wrong not taking into account energy storage during the daytime that can, and does, convert at nigh by PE > KE back to KE of temperature?
Seems looking into ‘cp’ and ‘cv’ might be the better tack you should be on (just a tip from an old sailor).
You could then bring in other factors like composition changes. In water vapor’s state change case but you might find you really don’t even need to address that specifically.
TYPO — I mixed terms. Either should have used Cp and Cv or should have used 1003 and 716.4 for the values of cp and cv but the ratio I was speaking of stays the same either way. Shouldn’t really change the essense of everything I wrote.
See, I always tend to forget the importance in the damn caps! (or not, either way it hurts)
Ever seen something un-emit a photon?
Can you put radiation back into a source, or do you have to reflect/emit a new photon back into it?
Can you collect all of the radiation from a source and put it back “inside”?
wayne.
Thanks for that. I think you are right that the diurnal variation is similar in principle because it shows the storage process and the daily changes in the amount of energy stored as PE on one half of the globe but that example involves a change in input from the sun which affects both V and T together because the total of PE and KE is being increased and decreased on the irradiated side and so that example though a helpful illustration is not applicable to the entire atmosphere.
The matter of radiative effects within the atmosphere involves only V and the relative proportions of KE/PE because the total of PE+KE gets no larger if one is looking at the entire atmosphere on both day and night side.
I think my equation is the best stab at that so far.
I’m not creating a new Ideal Gas Law plus gravity because both the IGL and my equation incorporate gravity in the term Rspecific already.
Nor is there a new set of gas constants. Just the same old Rspecific.
What my equation does is recognise that V and T are inversely proportional and that V is dependent on PE + KE and not just by KE because of the gravity induced pressure gradient.
I still think that it covers the situation.
I agree that the movement of energy in and out of storage (PE) in order to retain equilibrium when V changes is not addressed anywhere else as far as I can see.
One needs to introduce the variable height or speed of the adiabatic loop in order to address that.
Konrad 10:59pm: Your strawman; well stabbed only if you can ‘splain the source of the created energy within the control volume of earth/atm. causing net speed up (more f*d ) diffusion and advection because as you write only constant radiative energy flux gets in/out to deep space (at LTE I might add).
Yes, it is windy near earth surface.
******
Max 11:48pm: All the natural processes I’ve ever seen follow: T*dS greater than delta Q. Bar none.
I’ve learned about these natural processes from natural thought experiments w/pictures of processes following: T*dS equal delta Q but none of these exist in the wild. If they did, my furnace wouldn’t run as much, if at all when 255K outside.
Humorous mood – Philo. Questions to wrestle with:
1) Would un-emit mean absorb?
2) Would objects emitted from an Emitter that come within range of the Unemitter instantly disappear?
3) If we un-emitted attention, what would happen to a blog? To Politicians?
4) Can you stimulate when things un-emit like the opposite of a LASER? A LASUER pointer that takes a dark round spot of light OFF the presentation? Or is un-emitting only ever spontaneous?
Thought that word was humorous, please disregard 2-4. Been a long, cold Jan., shows the lack of GW in the face of increased atm. emissivity around here, my liquor cabinet has been raided, emitting a tumbler or two I am un-emitting, until later emitting.
As regards Trick’s earlier comments about the troposphere I think he is describing the effect of water vapour and its phase changes.
In fact the issue is the effect of the radiative characteristics of CO2 and the theory in relation to that is the warming of the troposphere and simultaneous cooling of the stratosphere but that cannot be right because if it were right the tropopause height would have changed but as Trick says it appears not to have done so.
The likely reason is that the net effect of CO2 is zero for the reason I set out in the Emissions thread and that the changes observed are due to other natural causes such as solar and oceanic variability.
“but that example involves a change in input from the sun ”
No, not at all. From the sun’s viewpoint, the Earth is ALWAYS identically irradiated. There is always, every second, one exact hemisphere illuminated. (assuming the sun’s output does not change itself)
Stephen: 1:35am “…because the total of PE+KE gets no larger if one is looking at the entire atmosphere on both day and night side.”
Good, very, very good.
“What my equation does is recognise that…”
Apples are oranges. This might make some sense in certain ways like if you have to carry a load of apples to market then use the same truck and crates to carry some oranges tomorrow, adjusting the quantity slightly. The grocer might even use the same display case adjusting the price slightly.
However, if I want an apple & you hand me an orange and tell me “Here this is the same thing” and I take a bite, I might want to discuss certain issues on a blog after I try that experiment. Konrad might even swoop in and tell me “Oh no, you’ve just got to refrigerate that orange first.”
Oh man, I’ve gotta’ go search some more strawmen to stab….
Stephen 1:42am: “As regards Trick’s earlier comments about the troposphere I think he is describing the effect of water vapour and its phase changes.”
No, I’m not talking phase changes, they occur within the control volume. The mathematics and 15 yrs. or so of modern science tell us the energy in the troposphere is unchanged as it is not net warmed by infrared active gas additions; add the stratosphere and the total atm. energy is unchanged due to internal processes. The only way to warm the total atm. is to get more net energy in from the sun (net of albedo changes).
Or of course increase the 0.1 W/m^2 from geotherms.
wayne.
You were referring to expansion and contraction of one half at a time not of the entire atmosphere.
In relation to that one half the solar input changes from zero to full on which is what causes the expansion and contraction and the movement of PE and KE in and out of storage on that one side.
Therefore T and V are both affected above that one half on a diurnal basis.
My comment about the effect of radiative changes from composition of the atmopsphere wasn’t quite right. In that case the total of PE and KE does change but because the total energy coming in from outside does not change then all of any thermal effect from radiative characteristics could only go to V and more PE which would then result in a change of heights and the adiabatic loop would adjust for the discrepancy between PE and KE so as to restore the 50/50 ratio.
However I am doubtful that the radiative changes have any net effect anyway because they don’t in themselves seem to cause any volume changes. I just say that if they could have such an effect then the system must correct for it in the same was as it does when other internal forcing elements try to upset top of atmosphere balance.
The volume changes I know of come from the effect of water vapour in the troposphere altering the lapse rate and thus the height of the tropopause and the effect of direct solar heating of ozone affecting the volume of the stratosphere so much that the lapse rate actually reverses.
One thing Trick has got right is that the only way to warm the total atmosphere is to increase the energy supply from outside.
What he doesn’t seem to realise is that I am describing the process that retains system stability when ANY internal forcing element seeks to disturb equilibrium.
If radiative changes have any net effect then the same adjustment method would apply.
That internal adjustment can only involve V and an element on the other side of my equation because T being inversely related to V cannot rise unless V falls so if V rises then T cannot.
With P being fixed for an atmosphere as a whole and no increase in mass, gravity or insolation there are no variables left other than T and V on one side of the equation and the PE/KE relationship on the other side.
Trick says:
January 23, 2013 at 1:36 am
“Konrad 10:59pm: Your strawman; well stabbed only if you can ‘splain the source of the created energy within the control volume of earth/atm. causing net speed up (more f*d ) diffusion and advection because as you write only constant radiative energy flux gets in/out to deep space (at LTE I might add).”
——————————————————————————
That was your response to this -
“For an atmosphere such as ours that has maintained a very stable temperature for thousands of years and is exhibiting continued convective circulation there is only one possible answer. Energy is exiting the atmosphere at a higher altitude than it is entering the atmosphere. There is only one way our atmosphere loses energy at altitude, that is through IR radiation to space.”
You actually claim to be responding to a strawman argument while offering one??? Where exactly do I claim energy is being created in the “control volume of the earth/atm”?
“All the natural processes I’ve ever seen follow: T*dS greater than delta Q. Bar none.
I’ve learned about these natural processes from natural thought experiments w/pictures of processes following: T*dS equal delta Q but none of these exist in the wild. If they did, my furnace wouldn’t run as much, if at all when 255K outside.
Humorous mood – Philo. Questions to wrestle with:
1) Would un-emit mean absorb?
2) Would objects emitted from an Emitter that come within range of the Unemitter instantly disappear?
3) If we un-emitted attention, what would happen to a blog? To Politicians?
4) Can you stimulate when things un-emit like the opposite of a LASER? A LASUER pointer that takes a dark round spot of light OFF the presentation? Or is un-emitting only ever spontaneous?
Thought that word was humorous, please disregard 2-4. Been a long, cold Jan., shows the lack of GW in the face of increased atm. emissivity around here, my liquor cabinet has been raided, emitting a tumbler or two I am un-emitting, until later emitting.” ~Trick
1. Absorbing a different photon is not the same as reversing emission of the original one.
2. Perhaps, it would be a dangerous thing to be around I imagine.
3. I’d love if we could calibrate this to the wavelengths which politicians feed on, but I think we need to determine the force carrier involved in attentive transfers.
4. The world may never know.
More seriously, there are more possible states for a system that has emitted radiation to be in, so the disorder is greater.
I’m used to seeing it as S = dQ/T or dS=dQ/T, but if radiation didn’t carry entropy out of the system you should be able to make an arbitrarily efficient heat engine.
Trick says:
January 23, 2013 at 2:13 am
“The only way to warm the total atm. is to get more net energy in from the sun (net of albedo changes).”
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Or you could reduce its ability to radiate IR to space by just reducing the amount of radiative gases it contains
Radiative gases play a far bigger role in cooling the atmosphere than they can in heating it. How much outgoing IR do they intercept from the surface? A small amount. How much IR do they radiate to space? A far greater amount than they intercept from the surface.
Stephen 1:42am: “…that the changes observed are due to other natural causes such as solar and oceanic variability.”
And albedo. And other T influential cycles (orbits et.al.). I am on Stephen’s side here when folks talk about say 15 years of not much global near surface Tavg. change. Much longer than that since the beginning of (somewhat shabby) thermometer station readings, I am not so sure. Interestingly the modern day science and math has been out about 15 years or so too. Maybe nature took note & read up on the modern science and corrected her ways?
Nahhh….bad Trick, bad, BAD Trick. It is not nice to fool with Mother Nature.
Yes, it is windy near earth surface; few limbs blew off an evergreen few nights ago. Compensating for CO2 near surface T effects as they fell to the ground. I will burn them next summer at the 4th of July all-lake firework & bonfire party, returning the carbon to the atm. from whence it came. To begin the cycle anew.
Stephen 2:38am: “What (Trick) doesn’t seem to realise is that I am describing the process that retains system stability when ANY internal forcing element seeks to disturb equilibrium.”
The key word is internal. No internal process adds energy to the earth/atm system unless energy is created internally and there is no hope for that (well, unless e=mc^2 is used). Internal stuff keeps it all well mixed, fortunately. What big time keeps the stability is the external stuff: stable sun and the ability of the earth system to reject the sun stably. This is really remarkable, a reason we are all here to blog -incessantly.
1370 * 0.7 – 4*sigma*(1-0.8/2) * Tsurface avg. ^4 solve for Teq. atm. near surface =289K
Some day of course this will end. Hopefully humans find a near enough earth like planet, or they find us first.
Konrad 2:43am: “Where exactly do I claim energy is being created in the “control volume of the earth/atm”?”
Konrad 10:59am:“…the average speed of convective circulation will not be faster in the troposphere due to the addition of radiative gases. This would of course be incorrect.”
Thus Konrad claims: “…the average speed of convective circulation will be faster in the troposphere due to the addition of radiative gases.”
Takes energy to increase mass’ speed, an acceleration. F=ma, energy = F*d. QED, Konrad creates energy in control volume.
Konrad 2:13am: “Or you could reduce its ability to radiate IR to space by just reducing the amount of radiative gases it contains.”
This would increase surface ability to radiate to conserve energy; if reduce internal ability to radiate, must show increase internal ability to radiate elsewhere or energy then created internally. Nice but no cigar. In=out. Always.
Well, except for a little bit of variability evidenced each month’s report of global near surface Tavg.
Max 2:47am: “I’m used to seeing it as …dS=dQ/T”
Kinda’. Have to watch the d’s. The left side is a true differential but thermo just can’t live with a true differential on the RHS, so it uses historically a delta sign, a bit different in meaning, the delta Q is a small quantity but not generally so small as to be a true differential. Check it out in your thermo texts. You will see.
Thermo actually expects us to believe not only that one differential can be bigger than another, but even that a differential can be bigger than something which is not a differential. Thermo is a really twisted science. Perfect for blogs. How many blogs do you see dissing beam theory? Any?
Yet jet aircraft engines don’t melt, it is sort of hilarious – just the batteries do. Hey put the jet engine thermo guys on to the battery team, duh Boeing?
“ Absorbing a different photon is not the same as reversing emission of the original one.”
In every way it is indistinguishable I believe. Prove me inaccurate. Wait, that’s what Konrad is for. Calling Konrad…
Max 2:47am: “More seriously, there are more possible states for a system that has emitted radiation to be in, so the disorder is greater.”
I am on a momentary roll. Think of the universe. The ultimate closed system, all internal processes so far as we know, no energy enters, none created. The entropy can’t be forced down, is relentless in increase. The universe radiation energy becomes less and less useful as its entropy (disorder) increases. Heat death eventually, all entropy no useful energy. Black holes evaporated back all the information they ever sucked in, no information lost at all. Entropy is cool. No hope to go against it.
I’ll just list the facts I have been able to gather over this trek before taking a long break from this, no one seems to slow enough to think, and I am not that good at arguing:
• Nikolov and Zeller’s integration of the mean temperatures are correct. I’ve checked their integral derivations and numerically integrated two completely different geometric ways – it is 154.3 K using the moon’s albedo and emissivity per the Diviner mission.
• Diviner mission – it is also correct. The moon is much colder than historically thought and just like the Earth minus an atmosphere it is warmer that the “super conducting” case (Dr. Robert Brown’s terming) of a surface with zero thermal inertia and mass. That brings the dry and barren bodies up to over 200 K by itself, about 212 K if I remember correct. Energy stored below a physical surface or not within a gas can never radiate.
• The Earth is not as AGW science explains that you have an evenly warmed and cooled 240 w/m2 of input to anywhere on the surface. Closer, diurnal, you have a mean 480 w/m2 of input on the day side and zero input on the night side. If the night does not come close to shedding a rate of 240 w/m2 all night long, then there will be a boost in the mean temperature at equilibrium just as seen from the surface thermal inertia. And yes Trick, input equals output over the long haul.
• You still have to account for the approximate 76 K to raise the mean Earth from ~212 K to ~288 K and I have yet to find anyone able to come close to explaining how this huge amount of resident energy stays resident within our atmospheric system, day in and day out. It is not from a concentration of 0.00039 of co2 or even the 1.5% of water vapor for sure. Daytime expansion carried along with the atmosphere onto the night side to shrink back down and compress to maintain warmth in the air could very well be the answer looked for, the basic equations agree. Energy stored as gravitational potential energy can never ‘radiate’ away.
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Ok Stephen, I tried to hand it to you freely. Maybe best I keep it myself and run with it. Closest I’ve ever come to something worth writing a science paper for the last forty years. No kidding. But this will take a while to firm the numbers, equations and find the supporting data. Who knows, I might be able to disprove this thought myself.
It also answers a slew of questions that radiation-only has no answer for at all.
Wayne 3:53am: “That brings the dry and barren bodies up to…about 212 K…”
Mars is dry and barren, at about Teq.=210K, with little GHE ~few K to 212-215K. Is that a coincidence or a clue?
The reason I say you can’t “put the genie back in” with photons is because you can’t collect all of the emissions and restore it to the original surface.
You can’t win, you can’t break even, and you can’t stop playing.
Trick says:
January 23, 2013 at 3:13 am
1- “Takes energy to increase mass’ speed, an acceleration. F=ma, energy = F*d. QED, Konrad creates energy in control volume.”
2- “This would increase surface ability to radiate to conserve energy; if reduce internal ability to radiate, must show increase internal ability to radiate elsewhere or energy then created internally. Nice but no cigar. In=out. Always.”
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1- You still don’t seem to be grasping the mechanics of fluids in a gravity field. Do this little experiment and you may get close to understanding the role of radiative gases in our atmosphere.
- get a large glass container of hot water and mix a ¼ teaspoon of finely ground cinnamon into it.
- wait until Brownian motion slows till the suspended particles are barely moving.
- now suspend a beer can full of ice water in the top 50mm of the hot water to one side of the clear container.*
- watch as convective circulation develops in the container
You just created vertical convective circulation by removing energy from a fluid! Impossible!
2- In=out. Always? No, again you are wrong. Remove radiative gases and our atmosphere will begin to heat. Energy In will not equal energy out of the atmosphere while the atmosphere is heating. Only when the atmosphere has heated to a temperature far hotter than current will a new equilibrium be reached and energy entering the atmosphere will again equal energy exiting the atmosphere. Just like the original two box experiment.
Without radiative gases our atmosphere will run hotter. The AGW hypothesis is the worst mistake in the history of human scientific endeavour.
*Note – a frozen orange could be used in the place of the beer can
Trick said:
“What big time keeps the stability is the external stuff: stable sun and the ability of the earth system to reject the sun stably. This is really remarkable, a reason we are all here to blog -incessantly.”
Yes exactly.
So if anything within the system other than mass gravity or insolation tries to alter T there has to be an internal system mechanism which changes to once again arrange that outgoing radiation matches incoming radiation.
In the process that mechanism must raise T or reduce T as necessary (or prevent T from changing in the first place) to maintain top of atmosphere balance over time subject to variations around the mean.
I have provided a suitable explanation whatever may be the problems translating that into formal equations or getting the minds of others to grasp the concept.
The fact is that there is a stabilising mechanism and the equations must be made to reflect the reality.
wayne at 3.53am
I appreciate your efforts wayne.
That unaccounted for energy store is PE locked into my adiabatic loop in a constant cycle of decompression and compression. Nothing else works. We need variability within that loop to counter radiative imbalances at top opf atmosphere which arise from internal variations including the radiative characteristics of constituent molecules.
Trick has agreed some important points but just cannot seem to make the final conceptual leap because his mind is set on his radiative only calculations.
You can see the concept but are having difficulty accepting the basic simplicity of my suggested equation.
wayne said:
“Daytime expansion carried along with the atmosphere onto the night side to shrink back down and compress to maintain warmth in the air could very well be the answer looked for, the basic equations agree. Energy stored as gravitational potential energy can never ‘radiate’ away.”
Yes, the adiabatic loop.
In reality the Earth’s rotation spreads the cells of compression and decompression all around the globe even though the basic scenario is daytime decompression and night time compression.
Trick said:
“What big time keeps the stability is the external stuff: stable sun and the ability of the earth system to reject the sun stably. This is really remarkable”
Yes, ‘the ability of the Earth system to reject the sun stably’, well put,and the adiabatic loop varies to provide that ability and achieve the outcome by expanding, contracting and keeping the KE/PE ratio stable along the vertical pressure gradient despite internal system variations such as radiative characteristics of constituent molecules ocean cycles, solar effects on the composition of the upper atmosphere and all other internal variations.
The system response to internal variability is always, fast, complete and inevitably negative because the atmosphere MUST ALWAYS match energy in with energy out subject to variations around the mean whilst the equilibrium process is ongoing (which is all the time).
Trick shows that the radiative equations work but they only do so because they implicitly incorporate the net effect of that non radiative regulating process.
Several times Trick came up with numbers that seemed to reflect the stable reality but then he failed to realise that it is a non radiative process operating in the background that enabled his radiative calculations to be squared off.
I think that is pretty near to agreement between the three of us is it not ?
Amazing what an all night brainstorm can achieve
Stephen 8:50am: You would have a case if infrared active gases realized when they absorbed IR coming up from below they were supposed to emit the IR in same up direction IR was previously traveling. The effects balancing as you describe. But this is not the case, they emit in random directions changing the direction of some of the upcoming IR photons into a bath.
The complex modern math shows this effect in earth atm. is stronger than you imagine and results in some constant internal IR energy permanently below ~600mb and same amount less just as permanently above ~600mb, still in external radiative LTE balance for eons. We humans feel the effect by comfortably wearing thinner coats in the winter, running our furnaces less than if this absorb/emit IR complex bath physics was not happening.
Nothing in Konrad’s cinnamon/beer can/ice water bath contraption can change these physics. I suppose at least Konrad got some human wants/needs fulfilled from the experiment by emptying the beer can.
You say radiative, I say adiabatic.
“Yes, the adiabatic loop.
In reality the Earth’s rotation spreads the cells of compression and decompression all around the globe even though the basic scenario is daytime decompression and night time compression.”
Close, well, the cells are carried along with the rotating atmosphere. Spreading implies a lateral movement across the ground.
Those ‘adiabatic’ cells die every night. One factor I am injecting in your thoughts is that during the day you have strong vertical velocity that is KE *within* your loops, air rising *and* descending, and that vertical velocity dies away and slows to zero, vertically, during every night. Sailplanes have no ‘engine’ at night. What happens to that vertical KE? Does it become a change in ‘T’? I don’t see that KE merely becoming PE meaning it is a transfer to ‘T’. How much roughly? By what equations?
Don’t leave it out. When you put the numbers to it, I already have, it is a sizable vertical transfer to ‘T’ right there, not counting any water vapor and state change that is yet another quanta of energy transfer you need to put in equations if you are to prove your idea. You seem to be fighting me and I am trying to help you prove your idea correct. Be brave, if the equations end up disproving your idea, I’ll have to follow the physics, but I think that is not going to happen, you seem to have something there and I can see it too. Lets break these circular arguments and move on to proving it.
If you will accept my help and take ‘area’ into account you will see the strange effects to ‘T’ that manifests in the energy at the top and bottom of these ‘adiabatic’ loops, basically heat pipes. The strangeness comes when you try to respect the conservation of mass vertically along with the velocities of the up and down portions that do have different areas, also, always respecting the conservation of energy and momentum. P x V is energy and the product of the two are in units of Joules that you can equate into the ½∙m∙v² or equivalently p²/2m of the cycling vertical air mass.
Just saying ‘adiabatic’ (no transfer of energy) loop you are describing a movement up and down that respects the potential temperature equation (or a modification to Poisson’s in Cp), cooling as it rises and warming as it descends but by that equation and the adiabatic process you have vertical symmetry in the energy and nothing happens with that energy at all. Is that what you see? No energy change at all? You need to change your insistence on saying ‘adiabatic loop’ a hundred times. You might consider renaming it a bit so it matches what you are trying to get other people to visualize.
ad•i•a•bat•ic adj.
Of, relating to, or being a reversible thermodynamic process that occurs without gain or loss of heat and without a change in entropy.
Does that accurately describe your ‘adiabatic loop’ in the atmosphere to you?
That’s not the way I keep reading you trying to describe it. You keep implying energy transfer and it get confusing.
Trick says:
January 23, 2013 at 4:49 pm
“Nothing in Konrad’s cinnamon/beer can/ice water bath contraption can change these physics. I suppose at least Konrad got some human wants/needs fulfilled from the experiment by emptying the beer can.”
———————————————————————————
Trick,
That will not work either. You made a direct claim that I would need to add energy to speed up convective circulation in the atmosphere. You provided truly spectacular bafflegab to that effect here -
“Your strawman; well stabbed only if you can ‘splain the source of the created energy within the control volume of earth/atm. causing net speed up (more f*d ) diffusion and advection because as you write only constant radiative energy flux gets in/out to deep space (at LTE I might add).”
And doubled the stupidity here -
“Takes energy to increase mass’ speed, an acceleration. F=ma, energy = F*d. QED, Konrad creates energy in control volume.”
I responded with a simple experiment showing how to generate convective circulation by REMOVING energy from a fluid here -
“- get a large glass container of hot water and mix a ¼ teaspoon of finely ground cinnamon into it.
– wait until Brownian motion slows till the suspended particles are barely moving.
– now suspend a beer can full of ice water in the top 50mm of the hot water to one side of the clear container.*
- watch as convective circulation develops in the container.”
Trick, you keep getting the basic physics of convection spectacularly wrong. You claimed I needed to add energy to drive convection. I gave you an empirical experiment showing how to drive convection by removing energy from a fluid. Will you admit that you got the basic physics of convection wrong?
wayne, my comment was addressed to Trick rather than you.
As regards the concept of an adiabatic loop I described it at some length in the head post.
In effect the entire atmosphere is comprised of rising and falling air at every level though most obviously in the troposphere.
At any given moment half the atmosphere is rising and half is falling.
No energy is gained or lost and it is fully reversible.
A constant cycle of compression and decompression and the energy locked into it is what gives rise to the atmosphere appearing to be warmer than it ‘should’ be from applying the S-B equation.
Trick and the AGW proponents all think that the cause of the ‘extra’ warmth is radiative.
I think it is adiabatic.
Radiation is a consequence of temperature and not a cause of temperature.
Oops, didn’t mean to interrupt!
Carry on.
Stephen,
while conducting the simple experiment to show just how wrong Trick was about needing to add energy to drive convection (I guess Trick is off having a long drawn out wince) I saw something interesting. Not only do the suspended particles show the convective circulation, they also show turbulence and mixing in fine detail.
What the flow away from the beer can looks like is “boiling in reverse”. This has led to thinking that we may both be correct. Removing radiative gases from our atmosphere will stall convection and cause the atmosphere to heat. Adding radiative gases may only cause cooling up to a set level*. After which no further cooling will occur. An inverse logarithmic ratio. (No Trick, this does not mean there will be radiative heating after that. There is no way out there.)
Think of a pot of water on the stove. Turn the gas up and the water will increase in temperature. Turn the gas up further and the water will reach 100C and boil. Turn the gas up further and the water will remain at 100C but will boil away faster.
Think about an atmosphere without radiative gases. Add CO2 and convection starts and the atmosphere begins to cool. Add more CO2 and the near surface temperature drops to around 15C av. Add more CO2 and the temperature remains at around 15C av. Yet convection runs faster.
This would indicate that for an atmosphere that has more than sufficient radiative gases to drive convection, the only way left to change temperatures would be changes in solar radiation or surface pressure. It should be noted that all planets and moons in our atmosphere have radiative gases. This may be why the N&Z hypothesis holds true for all.
* set by surface pressure and solar insolation.
Correction for above -all planets and moons with atmospheres in our solar system have radiative gases….
Konrad.
Thanks for your further thoughts.
The pot of boiling water analogy is one that I often use. The boiling point is set by pressure so if more energy is added it simply boils faster. I often refer to the lower boiling point at the top of Everest too and my point about air pressure on the oceans acting as another thermostatic mechanism is one that tallbloke was thinking about as well.
My contention is that the basic lapse rate and atmospheric height is set by gravity and insolation acting on mass, nothing else, but that assumes a radiatively inert atmosphere. That is the basic contention of N & Z and various others. I thought that was once the settled science.
There is no such thing as a radiatively inert atmosphere even with O2 and N because ALL mass has SOME radiative capability.
If one then increases radiative capability then maybe that does have a net warming or net cooling effect but either way that cannot alter equilibrium temperature. It just affects the rate at which energy flows through exactly as per the boiling pot analogy.
It is like adding other materials to the boiling water that absorbs energy from the heat source faster or more effectively than does the water itself. The boiling point stays the same but the rate of boiling can change. The volume of the water tries to change too does it not ?
Actually that extension to the boiling pot analogy is very apt because those additional materials would behave in exactly the same way as adding additional characterisatics to molecules in the air.
I suggest the adiabatic loop as the countering mechanism which varies in speed just as does the rate of boiling when a pot of water tries to go above 100C.
It is the pressure gradient set by gravity that ‘tells’ every molecule the height at which it should sit for its own specific physical characteristics and energy content.
If it finds itself out of place it just moves up or down until it is again at the right height relative to the pressure gradient.
That works just fine for individual molecules or parcels of air within an atmosphere and the IGL applies.
It doesn’t work for an entire atmosphere because then pressure is fixed and one cannot move the entire atmosphere up or down relative to the gravitational field unless one were to lift it bodily away from the surface all around the globe.
When pressure is fixed the only remaining variables are V and PE because E (PE+KE) is fixed by insolation and the half which is in KE form is the same as T on the other side of the equation so KE and T cancel out.
The only variables left if mass (n) gravity (R), pressure (P) and KE stay the same is PE and V so inevitably any change in V can only go to PE and not KE.
As David Socrates realised there is only a fixed fund of KE if mass gravity and insolation stay the same and it comprises only half of the energy required to maintain atmospheric height. The other half being PE.
All necessary adjustments to maintain top of atmosphere radiative balance can therefore only be achieved by juggling V and PE.
So I do think we are both right if you agree that the temperature decline with height is due to the pressure gradient allowing PE to replace KE as one goes up.
The column always contains the same energy at every level from bottom to top but as one goes up the temperature falls as KE declines relative to PE.
Where we still seem to disagree is that even in a radiatively inert atmosphere that pressure gradient and the consequent KE decline with height will still induce convective overturning via an adiabatic loop.
You know, I get a headache when I am asked to prove such an obvious proposition with data and observations.
All one needs to do for verification is consider a pot of boiling water and the addition of thermally active impurities.
The boiling point stays the same but the rate of boiling can change.
The atmosphere being a fluid subjected to pressure is exactly the same but the rate of conversion of water to vapour in the process of boiling is for the atmosphere the rate of conversion of KE to outgoing longwave radiation which then varies V and PE as necessary to match incoming solar energy.
No further proof should be required.
[Mod note] Stephen, please correct your email address, it is borking your login
Ok, done.
Don’t know how that happened.
Konrad (many): “…REMOVING energy…”
That will do it too! See non-constant external energy flow is all you need.
The atm. IR active gases neither create NOR destroy internal energy. They are internal! Can’t speed up or slow down things inside since don’t cross the crontrol volume, that’s why control volumes are so powerful. Now your beer is absorbed internal too. Soon it will be emitted. Stephen’s adiabatic loop is a useful construct to learn this; helps me communicate with Stephen.
Konrad – your experiments exactly follow the laws of nature. So does the atm. There is nothing you can experiment with to find the laws are inaccurate. Just your interpretations. I am interested to help understand the experimental physics but you create so many external energy fluxes w/o measuring a one, this help is impossible. (refrigerator electric cord, fan electronics, fan motor, fan blades working the air, cling wrap UV, house furnace, house insulation, box insulation, et. al.). If you measure the fluxes one & all reasonably well & use control volumes to account for energy flux, understanding will come to Konrad. Just like understanding came to the cold fusion experiments, the laws of nature won.
Konrad – Here’s your experimental target. Slow down a mass or speed up a mass using constant energy in the control volume, no force crosses the control volume, no energy crosses in/out the control volume, yet the experiment shows the internal mass changes velocity. That will get my attention. You can use cinnamon & beer if you want.
Trick said:
“Slow down a mass or speed up a mass using constant energy in the control volume,”
It is alleged that GHGs slow down energy transmission. That means that the supply of energy to the non radiative processes ceases to be constant so the constancy parameter that Trick imposes is not appropriate.
The energy supply to the system from outside remains constant but the GHGs have intoduced a variation in the rate of energy supply within the system.
If they do then the system response is to speed up energy transmission elsewhere in order to equalise top of atmosphere balance again with no necessary change in overall system temperature.
Thus no need for any force to cross the control volume at top of amosphere or any energy to cross in/out of the control volume at top of atmosphere.
You simply have two control volumes within the atmosphere that cancel out.
But it is not demonstrated that GHGs do cause a slowdown in the first place.
If Trick avers that GHGs have no effect on the speed of energy transmission through the system then that is fine by me since there is then no need for an equal and opposite system response either.
Yeah Stephen, the variation in constant energy supply manifests little more energy below ~600mb and same amt. little less above ~600mb due IR active gas up to tropopause whereafter other processes dominate to p=0 (no longer a smooth lapse curve). T slightly higher on avg. below ~600mb, T slightly lower above ~600mb on avg. by same amount energy; atm. computes itself a crossover point in troposphere. Our job is try and understand where/why the crossover. Once accomplish that, can better understand why it changes consistent with natural laws.
IR active gas doesn’t add net energy, just moves constant energy from ~LTE external flows around inside control volume, like a redirection of a hockey puck is useful when on target. This is why the debate about surface “net heating” fails w/o insolation or albedo and near surface “slowing of cooling” is ok with constant energy b/c no net heating, there is “slowing of T increase” somewhere else in the control volume.
Unless of course insolation increases net of albedo changes or albedo changes net of insolation changes which increase or decrease energy in the control volume able to drive change in speed of the adiabatic processes. Given very constant mass and gravity.
This is hard for me to write accurately but I can learn the eqn. form is not so easy to understand and stick for some.
Trick said:
“the variation in constant energy supply manifests little more energy below ~600mb and same amt. little less above ~600mb ”
Bigger temperature differential leads to faster convection in the adiabatic loop.
Trick says:
January 24, 2013 at 2:20 pm
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Trick,
another big (F-). SEE ME AFTER CLASS!
At least you are now admitting you were wrong in your original assertion that added energy was needed to speed convective flow. But you clearly do not understand the basic physics of convection in fluids. Understanding convection is critical to understanding why AGW is physically impossible.
“See non-constant external energy flow is all you need.”
No. Wrong again! Convective flow is a physical energy transfer mechanism that only works in fluids with a pressure gradient. In the atmosphere this pressure gradient is caused by gravity. Convective flow can be caused by both balanced or unbalanced energy flow into and out of the fluid. The most important thing, the thing that the AGW pseudo scientists forgot, is the relative heights of energy input and output. For a fluid column in a gravity field convective flow can be caused by -
1. unbalanced energy input lower than the top of the column. (convection occurs and the column is heating)
2. unbalanced energy output higher than the base of the column (convection occurs and the column is cooling)
2. Balanced energy flow where the energy input is at lower hight than energy output. (convective circulation will be occurring but the average fluid temperature will be stable)
“The atm. IR active gases neither create NOR destroy internal energy. They are internal! Can’t speed up or slow down things inside since don’t cross the control volume, that’s why control volumes are so powerful.I am interested to help understand the experimental physics but you create so many external energy fluxes w/o measuring a one, this help is impossible. (refrigerator electric cord, fan electronics, fan motor, fan blades working the air, cling wrap UV, house furnace, house insulation, box insulation, et. al.). If you measure the fluxes one & all reasonably well & use control volumes to account for energy flux, understanding will come to Konrad. Just like understanding came to the cold fusion experiments, the laws of nature won.”
That is just Bafflegab designed to cause doubt in others reading this as to nature of the simple repeatable empirical experiments I have presented here. It won’t work. Oh, and the “cold fusion” analogy is not going to work out, after all the “maxwells demon” smear failed.
“The atm. IR active gases neither create NOR destroy internal energy. They are internal! Can’t speed up or slow down things inside since don’t cross the control volume”
Wrong again. By removing energy to space at altitude, radiative gases play a critical role in convective circulation in our atmosphere. Just like the beer can in the experiment
1. Adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will not reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability.
2. Radiative gases cause cooling at all concentrations above 0ppm.
3. AGW is physically impossible.
Trick, history can’t be rewritten on AGW in the age of the Internet. The AGW pseudo scientists got it wrong. They did not correctly model the atmosphere with depth, gravity and moving gases. In the near future as the painful back down occurs there will be a lot of fancy excuses, a lot of bafflegab that sounds “sciency” as to why they got it wrong. But the basic truth, “they forgot gravity” will remain on display forever.
Stephen Wilde says:
January 24, 2013 at 9:50 am
“The boiling point stays the same but the rate of boiling can change.”
————————————————————————————
Stephen,
Yes, I believe the atmosphere would have reached the “reverse boiling point” at far lower concentrations of radiative gases. Adding more is unlikely to resulting in any further measurable cooling. Convection may speed up slightly but this too would be unmeasurable as 0.04% CO2 is too low to make a difference to anything. H2O does all the work, and the atmosphere already has more than enough to run an effective vapour/condensate heat pump. The only way now for global temperatures to change would be to alter surface pressures or alter the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface.
Konrad 10:10pm: “…this pressure gradient is caused by gravity.”
Gravity is a force field Konrad! Coming in across the control volume too like your refrig. electric cord. You need to properly account for it and when you do so, you will find gravity can move the constant energy around, even in an atm. fluid & more fully understand your uncontrolled box fluids. Causing we humans not need to wear as thick a coat outside in the winter or even run our furnaces as long. Check it out, very interesting.
Trick writes: “I repeatedly ask Konrad who are these (AGW) promoter guys exactly?”
Konrad 1/17 2:05am, 6:48am next points out who one of his supposed AGW believer promoters is in this clip: “Names like “Pierrehumbert” spring to mind…. no easy out for the AGW believers…. got the basic physics of convection wrong, they failed to include them…Just failing to include the fact that hot air rises. Hilarious.”
Konrad wants me to believe the author of “Principles of Planetary Climate” author leaves out considering the fact that hot air rises.
So I’ve now checked the book. See page 170 Pierrehumbert tells the reader on average: “…ground…considerably warmer than the air with which it is in immediate contact…the air molecules acquire the temperature of the surface by heat conduction, and turbulent air currents will carry the warmed air away from the surface….”
QED “Principles of Planetary Climate” does not fail to include the physical fact that hot air rises in a planetary atm.
Actually, there is much more fun modern atm. science. Interesting weekend reading for Konrad and even myself, especially this gem explaining (as in my attempts Konrad ignores) the reason Konrad gets so confused interpreting his own uncontrolled experiments p. 322: “Most confusion can be resolved by thinking hard about the energy budget of the control volume.”
Konrad should pick up a copy so as at least to find how I didn’t clip these out of book context (rather than print the whole book for Konrad but tb did say it is on-line somewhere IIRC).
Trick says:
So I’ve now checked the book. See page 170 Pierrehumbert tells the reader on average: “…ground…considerably warmer than the air with which it is in immediate contact…the air molecules acquire the temperature of the surface by heat conduction, and turbulent air currents will carry the warmed air away from the surface….”
–
So Pierrehumbert clearly explains, hidden in his words (sneaky devil), that radiation, the net ~63 w/m2, is all that radiation does at the surface and that wind friction, evaporation, conduction and convection are all that is happening there, in a mean sense, at the surface. The ~63 w/m2 of radiation goes to space as radiative window energy or a small portion may smear across the mix of energy (temperature) in the mid-troposphere. Now we are getting somewhere Trick.
Internal to the troposphere it is all ruled by thermodynamics until you approach the tropopause. So far, so good.
Now forget the lower troposphere and we can now concentrate on what occurs up there. I agree with Konrad, it is all water vapor there but a very tiny amount from co2, and even there, you cannot “trap energy” by an isolated 0.04% of co2 molecules where equipartition across all available states guarantees it is going to escape to space one way or the other, the other being mainly by h2o radiation lines and continuum. It is strictly a matter of temperature and density. There you cannot ignore density in the SB relation for it is no longer a solid surface but a diffuse gas and density of the molecules radiating does matter. If co2’s ‘bite’ ever does increase in the wings, equipartition means h2o lines of radiance will increase to compensate (or in O3 or CH4 or … lines). Qantas of energy do not have “membership” or “ownership” labels attached to them saying “I belong to a c02 line”!
That is why the OLR does not follow the concentration of co2 curve, not at all. Surely you have seen that in the data.
Trick,
I certainly hope you did not pay for that book.
When I said “Names like “Pierrehumbert” spring to mind. (I think he wrote “The farming of spherical chickens in a vacuum – for beginners.” I was joking.
“Spherical chickens in a vacuum” is an ancient physics joke and so is Pierrehumbert.
Rog even warned you , “I certainly wouldn’t give Pierrehumbert tuppence for it.”
I was using Pierrehumbert as a classic example of what is wrong with AGW physics. I will admit to never owning his text, but I was alerted to the bafflegab contained therin by a die hard AGW believer Joel Shore. Joel was unable to comprehend the role of radiative gases in cooling the atmosphere. He could not understand that the ability of CO2 to warm by intercepting IR from the surface was an inverse logarithmic function of its concentration in the atmosphere. While the ability of CO2 to radiate energy to space that the atmosphere had acquired from latent heat and surface conduction was a linear function of its concentration in the atmosphere. Pierrehumberts text was his bible.
You say “Konrad wants me to believe the author of “Principles of Planetary Climate” author leaves out considering the fact that hot air rises”
I maintain that they have not properly considered or modelled this fact. What is the corollary of “Hot air rises”? Cool air descends! How does it cool (lose energy and buoyancy) at altitude in our atmosphere? Radiative gases.
Pierrehumbert could best be described as an academic activist. Scientist does not fit. He has been one of those maintaining the consensus position of an atmosphere 33C cooler than present without radiative gases. Pierrehumbert is a linear flux guy. Search his text all you like but you will not find an accurate modelling of the critical role of radiative gases in convective circulation below the troposphere.
Trick says:
January 25, 2013 at 5:14 pm…
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In the vacuum of space, no one can hear your spherical chicken squawk.*
* Chickens may rapidly become spherical when introduced to the hard vacuum of space. They just don’t stay that way for long…