.
Some useful discussion in comments below Anders post. Pekka says:
“The radiative height is determined directly by the GHG concentrations and effects of clouds, tropopause height is not sensitive to GHG concentrations and depends more on thermodynamics of air and convection.”
I should start by saying that this post was partly motivated by an intersting comment from Pekke Pirila on another thread. Also, Eli already has a post that mostly cover this, so this is more from completeness, than anything else.
In a number of my recent posts, I’ve been referring to an effective emission height in the atmosphere that is set by the greenhouse gas concentration. Given that the tropospheric temperature gradient (lapse rate) is largely set by convection, if you know the temperature at some height in the atmosphere, then one can work back down the lapse to the surface in order to determine the surface warming due to greenhouse effect. I haven’t, however, really defined this effective emission height. In equilibrium, the Earth radiates as much energy back into space per unit time as it receives from the Sun. If you determine the average amount of energy…
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Tallbloke's Talkshop 
tallbloke says:
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March 11, 2014 at 8:59 am
Thanks gentlemen for an illuminating discussion. If as Pekka says, the ‘emission height’ explanation of the greenhouse effect is just illustrative, then what is the actual explanation?
I ask because it appears that water vapour has been declining at higher altitudes where as Pekka points out, the radiative balance action occurs. Is this decline reflected in GCM output?
Please could someone point me to up to date and definitive data for observed global OLR. I’ve seen a number of different plots on the net, none of which agree with each other.
Regarding stratospheric temperatures, there is disagreement there too, between the (undocumented) HADcru version and the NOAA version (which shows less cooling). Which dataset is used in parameterisation of GCM’s?
Whether you call it ERL(effective radiating level) or ERH(effective radiating height) makes no difference. It’s still a load of complete tripe.
The truth is that the net effect of radiative gases in our atmosphere is cooling at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.
So what’s all this snivelling stupidity about ERL?
This is the inane attempt of the warmists to claim that adding radiative gases to the atmosphere will reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability. Does anyone think this sounds remotely plausible?
No? That’s right, because it isn’t.
But unbelievably that’s just what high priest of the Church of Radiative Climatology claimed in 1995. Dr. Perriehumbert tried the “initially radiative gases cause cooling, but after a certain point (rainbow to unicorn ratio goes negative) they cause warming…Are you so stupid you believe him?
There is no ERL in our continuously moving atmosphere. No warming for over 17 years. Who are you going to believe? Squealing leftardulent foamer Dr. Perriehumbert or your own lying eyes?
Work it out people…
The notion of strong positive water vapor feedback is not supported by observations. We have slightly more than 13 years of CERES radiative balance measurements right now, which have their own problems, but still, they indicate a pretty attenuated response to increasing carbon dioxide mixing ratio.
tallbloke says: March 11, 2014 at 9:20 am
” Given that the tropospheric temperature gradient (lapse rate) is largely set by convection, ”
On what do you base this “given” fact?
For large parts of the troposphere where the air is descending ( all high pressure areas)
the lapse rate is influenced (not set) by subsidence.
Ben Wouters says: March 11, 2014 at 1:35 pm “tallbloke says: March 11, 2014 at 9:20 am”, it is not Tallbloke, I think you will find he is quoting from the “And Then There’s Physics” forum.
“…then one can work back down the lapse to the surface in order to determine the surface warming due to greenhouse effect.”
P dV = -V dP / \gamma
the first law of thermodynamics can be written as
m c_v dT – V dp/ \gamma = 0
Also since :\alpha = V/m and :\gamma = c_p/c_v we can show that:
c_p dT – \alpha dP = 0
where c_p is the specific heat at constant pressure and \alpha is the specific volume.
Assuming an atmosphere in hydrostatic equilibrium:[8]
dP = – \rho g dz
The above from WIKI on lapse rate. Please note there is no mention of GHGs or green house effect. Gravity yes CO2 no. Specific heat yes AGW no.
A C Osborn says: March 11, 2014 at 2:37 pm
it is not Tallbloke, I think you will find he is quoting from the “And Then There’s Physics” forum.”
Thanks. Missed that. Question remains nevertheless.
Another question. In this post: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/ben-wouters-influence-of-geothermal-heat-on-past-and-present-climate/
I demonstrated that the temperature of the deep oceans has been set by geothermal heat.
Eyeballing the temperature in all basins at ~1000m to be ~275K, how much of the difference with the average surface temperature (~290K) is attributable to the sun, and how much to the GHE.
Imo the sun is more than capable of warming the upper ~200m some 15K and take the thermocline along as well.
So the GHE = 0K. (like in null, nada, nothing).
I am convinced that there is something wrong with GHG theory. Take the water vapour amplification for example, it does not appear to be happening. There is some increase in humidity in the lower troposphere but reductions at the middle and upper levels.
I accept that all matter has a black body temperature and radiates accordingly. How do we know that down welling IR is mainly from the GHG present or simply blackbody radiation from the atmosphere where a portion of its thermal energy came from collisions with excited GHG molecules. The rest obviously comes from the heated surface by way of conduction followed by convection.
One could think of the lapse rate as an atmospheric mass gradient and corresponding kinetic energy gradient. All molecules have velocity and bend, twist and vibrate. The quantized energy bands just do not lie in the IR as in the case of GHG.
So what if we think kinetic energy and Boltzmann radiation rather than IR? Extra GHG would boost the warming but if it quickly translated to kinetic energy, this would result in more convection.
Just some wild speculation…. but there is something wrong with the famous settled science…
I should have added that a molecular dipole determines whether IR activity occurs. Symmetrical molecules tend not to create a dipole whatever the vibration.
Ben W, mkelly –
Try a slightly different approach to lapse rate and EEH:
The tropics contains half our atmosphere and most of its energy. Current understanding is that CO2 has negligible effect on thunderstorms – supported by the fact that the famous tropical “hotspot” has not yet manifest. The ITCZ establishes a moist adiabat that we can assume is constant, and controls the Hadley circulation.
As the moist adiabat is less than the DALR, desert air cannot of itself descend; DALR is irrelevent as not limiting. Descent is mediated by radiative loss from infra-red-active gases (IRAG.s) allowing air to follow the moist adiabat; that loss is from the IRAG’s “effective emission height” (EEH). nb IRAG.s cool.
The original And Then There’s Physics post tends to the (too common) view that boundary conditions dictate the interior. If you examine radiosonde data for desert locations, you’ll see that the air is strongly stratified, with very different specific humidities. This means that while you can estimate a notional EEH for CO2, that for H2O varies considerably over space and time.
The significance for this topic is that both IRAG.s transmit heat in parallel through the air column, so knowledge of only one EEH is insufficient to describe the system.
Schrodinger’s Cat says: March 11, 2014 at 6:42 pm
“I am convinced that there is something wrong with GHG theory.”
Main thing wrong with GHG theory is that the atmosphere does not heat the surface.
The atmosphere only reduces the heat loss to space.
Peter Shaw says: March 11, 2014 at 6:48 pm
“The ITCZ establishes a moist adiabat that we can assume is constant, and controls the Hadley circulation.”
What is a moist adiabat? (I am familiar with the DALR and the WALR)
The ITCZ is just an area with strong convection (rain and thunderstorms) that occur due to excessive solar heating. Think of it as a safety valve, releasing excessive heat.
To compensate for the convecting air, near the surface winds blow towards the ITCZ (trade winds)
To close the circulation air descends around 30 N and S, creating the high pressure areas there,
and thus creating dry and warm areas (deserts)
Thus works much like the classic Fohn effect.
Good thing you brought this up, Tallbloke, because the ERL tripe (to follow Konrad’s example) is seen as a Truth in the AGW camp, it’s a Fact to them. I’ve tried to discuss this with Pekka Pirilä and Science of Doom (on his site) just now recently, but they seem utterly incapable of stepping out of their bubble. They ‘have made calculations’, they ‘have run models’. And both the calculations and the models show warming by lifting the ERL. Therefore, in their minds, the effect is a Physical Necessity. It can’t be otherwise. I’ve tried to point out to them that it is not the calculations themselves that are wrong. It’s the premises, the assumptions on which they are being performed, that are flawed. I fully agree with Konrad above. How would you LOWER the atmosphere’s ability to cool to space by putting GHGs into it?!
A little thought exercise to try and calculate what the Earth’s surface temperature might be if we were to replace the bulk gases (oxygen, nitrogen, argon and that pesky water vapor that complicates everything), with an equivalent mass of Carbon dioxide : ie Assume that the Earth’s atmosphere consists of 100% carbon dioxide.
I’ll number my assumptions to make it easier for anyone who wants to take issue with them :
1) There would be no change in incoming solar radiation.
2) The effective emission height would default to the tropopause, Following from that :
3) The temperature at the tropopause would be 255K
4) The adiabatic lapse rate can easily be calculated as -9.8 (no change to gravity) divided by the specific heat capacity of CO2 at constant pressure (0.844KJ/kg K). This calculates as -11.613K/Km.
5) (This one I’m not sure about – a little help?) An equivalent mass of Carbon Dioxide would occupy a similar volume to an equivalent mass of air. Following from that :
6) The calculated surface to tropopause distance from the International Standard Atmosphere (11.019Km) remains valid.
If all 6 assumptions hold, the surface temperature (in theory) can now be calculated as :
255 + (11.613*11.019) = 383K (110 C) That’s 95C above what it is today. Well, that should be enough to wipe out all life on Earth! (:
But, consider this………
If it takes raising atmospheric concentrations of CO2 by a factor of 2500 (from 400ppm to 1,000,000ppm) to increase the Earth’s surface temperature by 95C, what effect is raising them by a factor of 2.5 (from 400ppm to 1000ppm) going to have?
I agree with Konrad and Kristian on the point that raising the height of the ERL (however defined) would result in a cooling effect simply because the atmosphere would expand with it which reduces average density and allows solar energy to flow through the system faster and out to space by all available means.
Not least, by speeding up equator to pole energy transfers in the deeper atmosphere, Or by subtly changing the timing and quantities of the various phase changes of water which are all sensitive to atmospheric densities and pressures.
The raising of the ERL (which is a by product of the changed global air circulation) is part of the negative system response that supplies an equal and opposite reaction to the radiative capabilities of GHGs.
And if GHGs have a net cooling effect by allowing radiation out to space direct from the atmosphere then the ERL would fall and provide an equal and opposite reaction to that too.
The same process occurs for ALL internal system forcing elements other than mass and gravity at a given level of insolation..
Meanwhile, over at
And Then There’s Physics:
my comments seem to be getting past moderation despite someone trying to label me as a Slayer.
They just can’t get past the idea that a higher ERL must have a higher surface temperature to drive it whereas that isn’t necessary if the slope of the lapse rate changes instead, and it does, because the global air circulation changes to pull the average net global lapse rate between surface and space back towards that set by mass and gravity.
Water vapour changes the DALR to the WALR and the system must compensate for that by changing lapse rates elsewhere (above the tropopause) to negate the effect.
Most likely, the lapse rate in the stratosphere is different from what it otherwise would be if there were no water vapour distorting the lapse rate in the troposphere.
If ever the ideal lapse rate set by mass and gravity were capable of being changed over the long term then the atmosphere would be lost.
Ben W –
Apologies; moist adiabat = WALR.
You present the popular description of the Hadley circulation, but this is sadly inadequate.
Earth’s atmosphere is a strongly coupled system, so nothing “just” happens. Every large-scale feature is what and where it is for good reason. A circulation doesn’t complete itself; something causes that. The “environmental” lapse rate is close to the WALR not by chance. I find climate science very intolerant of thinking errors and assumptions. I hope this helps you.
Kristian says:
March 11, 2014 at 8:58 pm
Stephen Wilde says:
March 11, 2014 at 9:26 pm
—————————————
I apologise for my vitriolic comment above it was OTT. However the whole ERL game gets me very hot under the collar. The ERL game is one of the core tricks to creating models that show gases that must cool our atmosphere doing the reverse and warming it. The pseudo scientists are essentially claiming – “adding radiative gases to our atmosphere will reduce the atmospheres radiative cooling ability”. This is truly ludicrous. Without radiative gases the atmosphere would have no radiative cooling ability.
To understand why the Church of Radiative Climatology is so desperate to promote tricks like this you need to understand how their initial two shell radiative models show warming for increased radiative gas concentrations. Here is what they did –
THEY HELD THE SPEED OF TROPOSPHERIC CONVECTIVE CIRCULATION CONSTANT FOR INCREASING CONCENTRATIONS OF RADIATIVE GASES!
Sorry about the shouting, but that is the critical error in the very foundation of the “basic physics” of the “settled science”. As Dr. Spencer correctly pointed out in 2009, radiative gases play a critical role in driving convective circulation below the tropopause by allowing energy loss, buoyancy loss and subsidence of air masses from altitude. Without these gases, circulation in the Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells would stall and our atmosphere would trend isothermal through gas conduction. Modelling the speed of tropospheric convective circulation as constant for increasing radiative gas concentration is quite simply pseudo science. Radiative gases warm at low altitude and cool at high altitude. This creates a buoyancy imbalance that drives vertical circulation. If your models hold the speed of vertical circulation constant for increasing radiative gas concentration then your models will show increased low altitude warming.
This is what all the post 1990 radiative/convective band-aids applied by the Church of Radiative Climatology to their gospel are all about. Trying to find “sciencey” sounding excuses for holding the speed of vertical circulation constant for increasing radiative gas concentration. Pierrehumbert tried the “choked radiator” approach and ERL is a variant of this. Trenberth went even further and tried to replace the vapour/condensate heat pump of vertical convective circulation with the heat engine of pole-wise energy flow as the primary driver of atmospheric circulation.
Konrad, the game being played here is, as you point out, the ‘All Else Being Equal’ meme. The analogy being used is the ‘glass box experiment’ setup. If you can only reduce the temperature gradient away from the heated surface, you will impede convective heat loss and get warming right away. If the lid of the box is warmed by absorbing IR from the surface, then it will end up having a higher temperature than a lid that does not absorb IR from below. The gradient and thus the convective flow through the box is reduced. But this isn’t how the atmospheric radiative GHE works. It couldn’t work like that. The global temperature gradient up through the tropospheric column can’t just be reduced. It stays the same. Because the troposphere is always free to expand. There is no fixed lid. The mean global tropospheric temperature profile is held to vary around the adiabatic lapse rate by the constant and tightly coupled interaction between diurnal surface heating by the Sun (acting towards steepening the gradient) and convection (working towards levelling it).
I, however, do not agree with you and Spencer that our atmosphere would end up isothermal (that is, without a tropospheric lapse rate) with no so-called GHGs in it. Radiation is no requirement for the establishment of a lapse rate in a tall, unrestricted air column in a gravity field heated from below. Only a heat source and cooling at altitude, away from it. There is no requirement for the air in this situation to radiate away energy for it to get colder higher up. All it takes is surface heating (add to that, differential heating), resulting convection and adiabatic cooling to get circulation going. If the troposphere can’t rid itself of the energy, it will simply expand to contain it, and the surface will have to get ever warmer in order to maintain a positive gradient up and away. In the end, the troposphere will be so high that it will start shedding off to space. This is a planet that cannot reach an equilibrium between incoming and outgoing and will hence warm until it (most likely) loses its atmosphere altogether.
This is why the so-called GHGs are necessary, not to maintain the tropospheric temperature profile, but to maintain planetary energy balance.
Seems they have not been able to improve their knowledge about the fundamental mechanisms of their “theory” in the last few years. They are discussing exactly the same issues with no more hard data.
TB, the water vapor feedback is one of the stakes in the heart of GHG. Did you ever get an answer?? You can also needle them about the lack of the Holy Trinity. Equatorial Hot Spot/Tropopause Height/Stratospheric Coolling all of which need to be happening to show that their hypothesis is close to reality.The models show it so it must be reality!! 8>)
In my quick scan I didn’t see anything about the Time To Collision of a GHG molecule be smaller than Time To Emission in the lower atmosphere or whether absorbed IR can be thermalized through collisions or the reverse.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
I am certain that the net GHE warming from CO2 is negligible, or even negative, for the reasons I outlined here in a WUWT post which got picked up by The Hockey Schtick. It is a necessary conclusion driven by the fact that, empirically speaking, the rate of change of CO2 is positively related to temperatures. If temperatures were also positively related to CO2, then we would have a positive feedback loop, and the system would become unstable.
The actual reason why is something I have not made up my mind about, but I think many posters here are facing the same conundrum as I, to wit: how can a thing which radiates heat away before it can climb higher cause net heating when present in greater quantity? It is sort of like adding cooling fins to an electronic heat sink, and expecting it to run hotter. Those fins will also ‘backradiate’ to the sink in greater quantity than smaller fins, but overall, they will radiate much more heat away.
Berenyi Peter,
Great to hear from you! I greatly enjoyed your contributions on SKS but I guess John Cook booted you as he did me.
If you are interested I could try to dig up SKS internal communications concerning your comments that were “Moderated”. I hope you will enjoy this link:
http://www.gallopingcamel.info/docs/DeletedCamel.doc
The folks here seem to have fully functional BS detectors so there is not much I can add. However, I did comment in some detail on “And Then There’s Physics”.
If my comment makes it through “Moderation” I will let y’all know.
Bart,
That link was pretty good at debunking CO2 as a primary climate driver over the short term (decades/centuries).
Here is one that debunks it over hundreds of millennia:
Thomas Stocker knows that [CO2] in the atmosphere has been driven by global temperature over the last 850,000 years because he was one of the EPICA dome researchers. Yet he supports the lie that CO2 drives climate. That is why I call him the “Prince of Darkness”.
He defies Freedom of Information Acts and the Aarhus convention with the aim of preventing the general public from learning the truth. He “Lawyers Up” if you ask him questions relating to the EPICA data.
OK, so this is shameless self promotion on my part but if you are not ready to believe me please take the trouble to look at the hard scientific data presented in the “Luethi et al” and “Jouzel et al” papers. Form your own conclusions.
Kristian says:
March 12, 2014 at 12:45 am
“I, however, do not agree with you and Spencer that our atmosphere would end up isothermal (that is, without a tropospheric lapse rate) with no so-called GHGs in it. Radiation is no requirement for the establishment of a lapse rate in a tall, unrestricted air column in a gravity field heated from below. Only a heat source and cooling at altitude, away from it. There is no requirement for the air in this situation to radiate away energy for it to get colder higher up. All it takes is surface heating (add to that, differential heating), resulting convection and adiabatic cooling to get circulation going.”
————————————————————
Kristian,
Radiation is no requirement for the establishment of a lapse rate in the atmosphere, but strong vertical circulation across a pressure gradient is. For this circulation to occur in an atmosphere maintaining a reasonably constant temperature profile, heating must be occurring at low altitude and cooling at a higher altitude. The misunderstanding here is believing that adiabatic “cooling” can cause buoyancy loss in a rising airmass. This is a common confusion in climate debate.
First I should define the terms –
Adiabatic – energy neither entering or exiting a control volume (or air mass)
Diabatic – energy may enter or exit a control volume (or air mass)
Meteorologists may use the “adiabatic assumption” in determining day to day meteorology, but it is just a working assumption. All air masses are in part diabatic due to gas conduction, release of latent heat and radiation allowing energy to enter and exit the air mass.
What is referred to as adiabatic cooling is the loss of temperature with de-pressurisation of air masses as they ascend. This cooling does not represent an energy loss from the air mass. If the air mass descends it also undergoes adiabatic heating as it re-compresses. This means adiabatic heating and cooling are “buoyancy neutral” in terms of tropospheric convective circulation.
Tropospheric convective circulation in the atmosphere is driven by diabatic processes not adiabatic processes. Energy enters air masses at low level via surface conduction, intercepted surface IR and the release of latent heat. Energy exits air masses at altitude via IR to space from radiative gases and very slow gas conduction to the surrounding atmosphere. These are diabatic processes.
If you remove radiative energy loss at altitude this leaves air masses with only weak and ineffective gas conduction as a means of diabaticly cooling, losing energy and therefore buoyancy. Circulation in the Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells would stall and our atmosphere would start to heat dramatically.
You can build and run a simple experiment into importance of diabatic energy exchange in convective (Rayleigh-Bernard) circulation for yourself. This experiment is loathed by believers and lukewarmers alike as it shows why our atmosphere would heat not cool if radiative gases were removed. –
This shows two tall gas columns built of EPS foam. These should be built at least 1m tall to overcome scaling issues of entrainment and gas conduction. Penetrate the boxes as shown with thin aluminium heat exchange tubes (tubes at the base of the box should be on the inner surface). It is also recommended to use 9 thermocouples per box to build a picture of the temperature profile in each box. Run hot (80C) and cold (1C) water through the aluminium tubes as shown. After an hour you should be able to get a temperature profile like this –
http://tinypic.com/r/zmghtu/6
The box with diabatic cooling at the top runs cooler. The box with the “atmosphere” being heated and cooled only at the “surface” level runs hotter. Which best represents a radiative atmosphere and which best represents a non radiative atmosphere?
What happens when the “basic physics” of the two box experiment are applied to an atmosphere with a pressure gradient? This diagram illustrates what Dr. Spencer was talking about –
The second panel shows a point just after radiative ability is “switched off”. The atmosphere is beginning to heat and trend isothermal.
Without radiative gases our atmosphere would heat dramatically. The net effect of these gases is cooling at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.
But, but but, what about back radiation to the surface?! Forget it, it is a negligible factor. The oceans are immune to downwelling LWIR as are many vegetated areas. Surface Tmin in deserts would be lower under a non-radiative atmosphere, but as the two box experiment shows, it is surface Tmax that would drive the temperature of an isothermal non-radiative atmosphere.
Climate pseudo scientists are not just a “little bit” wrong. They are totally and utterly wrong.
Konrad,
I support your position but that may not mean very much as my field is quantum electro optics.
Rodrigo Caballero University College Dublin) also supports you:
Click to access PhysMetLectNotes.pdf
Check out pages 49 through 81.
gallopingcamel says:
March 12, 2014 at 3:35 am
———————————
I did run through your link to Rodrigo Caballero’s lecture notes and while useful with regard to mathematics of lapse rate and atmospheric stability, I would say much of his work is in contradiction of my empirical findings. The mathematics gives the clue to where the errors originate. Caballero is treating the mathematics as the reality, not the real moving gases of the atmosphere. It is vertical circulation across a pressure gradient exceeding the speed of gas conduction that generates our observed lapse rate, not ink on paper.
One glaring omission was an accurate description of Rayleigh-Bernard circulation in the tropospheric convection cells. This is likely missing as he was referencing Pierrehumberts work.
Here is how that part of atmospheric physics was covered in the pre-global warming inanity period –
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~dib2/climate/tropics.html
“Air convected to the top of the troposphere in the ITCZ has a very high potential temperature, due to latent heat release during ascent in hot towers. Air spreading out at higher levels also tends to have low relative humidity, because of moisture losses by precipitation. As this dry upper air drifts polewards, its potential temperature gradually falls due to longwave radiative losses to space (this is a diabatic process, involving exchanges of energy between the air mass and its environment). Decreasing potential temperature leads to an increase in density, upsetting the hydrostatic balance and initiating subsidence. The subsiding air warms (as pressure increases towards lower levels), further lowering the relative humidity and maintaining clear-sky conditions. However, although the subsiding air warms, it does not do so at the dry adiabatic lapse rate. Continuing losses of longwave radiation (radiative cooling) means that the air warms at less than the dry adiabatic lapse rate (i.e. some of the adiabatic warming is offset by diabatic cooling).”
Nowhere in Caballero’s notes is this covered. After all this is the “forbidden science” 😉
Sections 5.15 on ERL and 5.17 on the “greenhouse” effect are particularly instructive as they contain the classic errors.
Section 5.15 makes no allowance for the effect of vertical circulation and variable temperature distribution within the atmosphere. It is a static atmosphere calculation that has no relevance to our moving gas atmosphere.
Section 5.17 is perfect for demonstrating the hideous flaws in the foundation of all global warming theory.
Caballero starts with a good question –
“If the Earth had no atmosphere, what would be its surface temperature?”
But then tries to apply SB calculations to the liquid oceans –
“Assume that the Earth is warmed to a uniform temperature Te by the absorbed insolation…” and “Te is known as the effective emission temperature. It is determined solely by the insolation and the planetary albedo.”
– and derives the incorrect figure of 255K (~ -18C) and concludes –
“On Earth, Te is much colder than the observed global-mean surface temperature of 15C or 288K. The difference must be due to the atmosphere.”
Then it just gets worse –
The warming effect of the atmosphere, known as the greenhouse effect, is best understood as follows. The atmosphere is opaque in the infrared, which means that the mean emission level is lifted off the ground. The mean temperature at the emission level (i.e. the mean brightness temperature) must be Te in order for emission to match absorbed insolation. But the atmosphere has a positive lapse rate, and so the temperature at the ground must be greater than Te.
What’s wrong here is first and foremost the figure derived for “Te”. It’s not a little bit wrong, it’s so wrong that the gods themselves weep at the stupidity of humanity. As can be shown via empirical experiment* if the oceans could be retained in the absence of an atmosphere they would driven to near 80C by solar SW alone. Even if the figure of -18C was correct for land, this would still leave planetary surface Tav at over 50C!
Surface Tav is far lower than this at around 15C and therefore the atmosphere must be cooling the surface of the planet. And what is the only effective cooling mechanism for the atmosphere? That’s right, radiative gases!
How do climate pseudo scientists get the calculation for ocean temperature in the absence of an atmosphere so wrong? Quite simply they treat it as being heated at the surface by a constant average ~ 250 w/m2 SW source. However our oceans are being heated at depth by intermittent diurnal SW peaking at over 1000w/m2. Energy is only returned to the surface by slow non-radiative transport. The slower this transport is the more energy accumulates. Also the slower the non-radiative transport in our transparent oceans gets, the closer intermittent heating with 1000 w/m2 pulses gets to continuous heating with 1000 w/m2
Quite simply you do not just need to know the emissivity of a material to calculate its equilibrium temperature but its transparency/translucency as well.
How our climate really works –
The sun heats our oceans.
The atmosphere cools our oceans.
Radiative gases cool our atmosphere.
*I will post the recipe for “Shredded Lukewarm Turkey in Boltzmannic Vinegar” as a separate comment.
Here is the recipe for “Shredded Lukewarm Turkey in Boltzmannic Vinegar”
Take two 100 x 100 x 10mm blocks of clear acrylic. Paint one black on the base (block A), and the second black on the top surface (block B). Spray both blocks with several layers of clear-coat on their top surfaces to ensure equal reflectivity and IR emissivity. Attach thermocouples to upper and lower surfaces. Insulate the blocks on the sides and base. Enclose each in a small LDPE greenhouse to minimise conductive losses. Now expose to strong solar SW.
As little 3 hours should result in a 17C average differential between the blocks. The block with the black base runs hotter. SB equations will not give the correct answer. (caution – experiment temperatures can exceed 115C)
What would the priests of the Church of Radiative Climatology say? Both blocks are absorbing the same amount of solar radiation, both blocks have the same ability to emit LWIR, they should reach the same equilibrium temperature.
However block A reaches a far higher average temperature, why? The SW absorbed by block A heats from the base, and non-radiative transports (conduction) govern how fast energy returns to the surface to be radiated as LWIR. The SW absorbed by block B is absorbed at the surface and some is immediately re-radiated as LWIR before conduction can carry it down into the block below. Our oceans most closely resemble block A, however two shell radiative models that consider the ocean just “surface” model the oceans more like block B.
This is how solar SW alone is quite sufficient to heat our oceans. SW heating at depth is instantaneous, however the slow speed of non-radiative transport back to the surface allows energy to accumulate over the diurnal cycle. If our oceans could be instantly turned to ice, my crude guess is that it may take over a decade for the sun to thaw them, but they would thaw even under a non-radiative atmosphere.
Image of advanced version with intermittent halogen lights and air cooled IR shields –
Imo convection is overrated in the grand scheme of things.
Have a look here: http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=mean_sea_level_pressure/waterman
( a fantastic site btw)
Most of the world is happily moving along with standard or slightly above standard pressure. Only the dark areas have below standard pressure.
Currently most low pressure areas are around Antarctica.
Still the world as a whole is loosing energy at a more or less constant rate, and the sun can just resupply the loss.
Konrad: “if the oceans could be retained in the absence of an atmosphere they would driven to near 80C by solar SW alone.”
Hi Konrad. We’re pretty much on the same page. Stephen Wilde and I have been saying for a long time that air pressure on the ocean surface limits the rate of evaporation and forces the ocean to rise to a temperature whereby it can lose heat at the rate it gains it. The ocean is heated to depth in 3D by the Sun, but can only cool by losing heat from its surface in 2D. Since water is much more opaque to IR than air is, its harder for that energy to get back to the surface.
The bit of your comment I quoted jumped out at me because we need to consider how much energy the ocean surface radiates, convects, evaporates and conducts on the night side of the planet at the higher equilibrium temperature it has due to the retentive nature of its mass and heat capacity.
Konrad: “Without these gases, circulation in the Hadley, Ferrel and Polar cells would stall and our atmosphere would trend isothermal through gas conduction.”
Isn’t the fact that air is denser near the surface always going to mean it absorbs more of the incoming sunlight than thin, high altitude air, and thus gets hotter?
I still disagree with Konrad on the matter of the decline in temperature with height being dependent on radiative loss from GHGs.
It is the decline in density with height that then allows convection from an unevenly heated surface below.
That uneven surface heating places parcels of air with differing densities next to one another in the horizontal plane and so the lighter less dense parcels are forced to rise above the denser parcels by horizontal jostling of the parcels as the planet rotates or as a result of the uneven surface.
The rising parcels are then forced to cool by the conversion of KE to PE as they rise.
The vibrational kinetic energy,(KE or heat), is used up in the process of gaining height but remains present in the form of gravitational PE (not heat).
On descent the process is reversed and KE is regained from PE.
That will go on without GHGs.
In the absence of GHGs the subsiding air would warm at the DALR and ascending air would cool at the DALR.
So far, so good.
Radiative gases must change the slope of the lapse rate because they absorb radiative energy and convert it to vibrational kinetic energy, (KE or heat), within the body of the atmosphere.
We then need to consider the difference between condensing and non condensing GHGs.
A condensing GHG such as water vapour (using latent heat instead of KE) changes the DALR to the WALR which decreases the rate of cooling with height which pushes the effective radiating height higher and condensation at a higher level allows rapid radiation to space from the condensate.
In that case the change in the lapse rate is due to water vapour being lighter than air. It is more buoyant and so reaches a greater height faster than air would.
The descending dry air then warms at close to the DALR (radiative gases and aerosols make a small difference) which is about twice as fast as the vapour laden air cooled on the ascent. That accelerated warming on the descent tends to offset the accelerated radiative energy loss to space from the condensate.
Indeed, one could say that the faster warming on the descent is what provides the energy for continuing evaporation which then feeds the apparently ‘extra’ radiative loss from the condensate.
Conservation of energy applies.
For a non condensing GHG the change to the lapse rate slope on both ascent and descent would be equal so no net thermal effect.
Instead of the surface temperature changing, the slope of the lapse rate changes, along with the effective radiating height.
The thing is that one does not need a higher / lower surface temperature to support the higher / lower ERL if the lapse rate slope changes instead.
Is that the basic error of AGW theory ?
If GHGs change the lapse rate slope and the ERL then a surface temperature change need not occur but instead one sees a change in atmospheric volume and the configuration of the global air circulation pattern.
All the back calculations to ascertain surface temperature from the new ERL would be wrong because they took no account of the change in the lapse rate slope.
tallbloke says:
March 12, 2014 at 8:52 am
———————————
Dr. Spencer’s 2009 post is a good description of the critical role of radiative gases in atmospheric circulation and why the primary vertical circulation would stall in their absence –
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/what-if-there-was-no-greenhouse-effect/
However he gets two critical things wrong –
1. He sets surface Tav for a non-radiative atmosphere to that incredibly wrong -18C
2. He uses surface Tav not surface Tmax to set the resultant isothermal temperature of the non radiative atmosphere.
With regard to solar heating of a stalled non-radiative atmosphere –
N2 and O2 are not truly non-radiative gases, the do absorb and emit EM radiation, they are just very poor at it.
A non-radiative atmosphere heating would be initially be driven by –
First – Surface conduction up to surface general Tmax
Then – Surface conduction and gas emission from volcanic point sources
Finally radiative superheating of O2 and N2 molecules at altitude by solar UV
This final mode of heating is observed in the molecular temperatures of gases in the thermosphere, and it will occur higher than surface level due to early interception of UV.
Essentially there are many modes of heating our atmosphere, but without radiative gases it has little way of cooling. (I have further empirical experiments showing why gas conduction back to the surface is ineffective, but a night inversion layer from standard meteorology is a good example)
Stephen Wilde says:
March 12, 2014 at 9:49 am
————————————
“The rising parcels are then forced to cool by the conversion of KE to PE as they rise. […] On descent the process is reversed and KE is regained from PE.”
The problem here is that this is an adiabatic process and is therefore “bouyancy neutral” Rayleigh-Bernard circulation in our atmosphere requires diabatic energy exchange from air masses.
Years ago our friend “Trick” claimed that you needed energy input to drive convective circulation. I gave a very simple experiment demonstrating how to drive convective circulation by removing energy from a fluid column.
From way back in 2011-
– 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
(still good after all these years 😉
Radiative gases are removing energy at altitude from our atmosphere. 90% of all energy absorbed by the land, ocean and atmosphere is emitted back to space as LWIR from radiative gases in the upper atmosphere. 90%! This cannot be dismissed as not being a critical part of tropospheric convective circulation.
Konrad, you say:
“Adiabatic – energy neither entering or exiting a control volume (or air mass)”
I’m sorry, but this is not the definition of ‘adiabatic’. The definition is: ‘HEAT is neither entering or exiting a control volume (or air mass).’ Energy is free to leave and enter the volume by way of WORK. In fact, that’s HOW adiabatic heating and cooling works. The rising air expands and does so INTO the air surrounding it, pushing it away, hence it does work on it, losing internal energy in the process – cooling. The opposite thing happens going down.
The point I’m making, Konrad, is that atmospheric radiative cooling to space is indeed crucial for the energy balance of the Earth system, but it is not crucial for the tropospheric temperature profile and for convection to work. The cooling by radiation aloft simply lets the tropopause remain at the same altitude. Without this cooling, the tropopause would ‘forever’ rise. Convection would never stall, it would simply have to become stronger and stronger to keep the temperature profile close to the adiabatic lapse rate, and to achieve this, the surface would have to become warmer and warmer for each passing day, meaning incoming energy would pile up at/below the surface.
I feel this point, though, detracts attention from the REAL discussion. So I will lay off it. We agree on the most important point: GHGs in an atmosphere would cause net cooling, not net warming.
Konrad said:
“circulation in our atmosphere requires diabatic energy exchange from air masses.”
No it doesn’t.
It only requires an initial external (solar) diabatic primer to a surface beneath the gases and then constant renewal by continuing exchange between surface and air. That continuing exchange is effected by the convective uplift and descent.
Everyone seems to overlook the heating side of the descent.
Once uplift begins it must create a circulation taking energy from and returning energy to the surface.
The uplift and descent (once the air parcel is detached from the ground) would be fully adiabatic but for the presence of radiative gases and aerosols and the presence of those helps energy loss to space and thereby reduces the amount of energy that needs to be returned to the surface before radiation out from the ground.
Basically, the presence of radiative gases leads to a less violent convective circulation. Cooling, if you will.
Kristian said:
“The cooling by radiation aloft simply lets the tropopause remain at the same altitude. Without this cooling, the tropopause would ‘forever’ rise”
The tropopause would only rise to a point determined by the mass of the atmosphere, the strength of the gravitational field and the level of insolation.
Kinetic energy can only lift matter against gravity to a height consistent with the weight of that matter.
That is implicit in the gas laws because the gas constant is defined as the amount of work (in Joules) required to lift 1 ‘mole’ of mass to a height where it is 1K cooler.
Obviously, the uplift must cease when all the kinetic energy that is freely available has been used up in work done.
The kinetic energy freely available is limited to that which is not radiated straight out to space as soon as it arrives.
That means that on Earth that extra 33K thermal enhancement (or whatever the true value is) represents the energy in the system that is available to maintain the height of the atmosphere by doing work lifting the molecules against the force of gravity.
That 33K constantly being used to maintain atmospheric height must be deducted from the radiative exchange with space.
It should not be included in consideration of the S-B equation.
Konrad said:
“circulation in our atmosphere requires diabatic energy exchange from air masses.”
No it doesn’t.
It only requires an initial external (solar) diabatic primer to a surface beneath the gases and then constant renewal by continuing exchange between surface and air. That continuing exchange is effected by the convective uplift and descent.
Everyone seems to overlook the heating side of the descent.
Once uplift begins it must create a circulation taking energy from and returning energy to the surface.
The uplift and descent (once the air parcel is detached from the ground) would be fully adiabatic but for the presence of radiative gases and aerosols and the presence of those helps energy loss to space and thereby reduces the amount of energy that needs to be returned to the surface before radiation out from the ground.
Basically, the presence of radiative gases leads to a less violent convective circulation. Cooling, if you will.
Kristian said:
“The cooling by radiation aloft simply lets the tropopause remain at the same altitude. Without this cooling, the tropopause would ‘forever’ rise”
The tropopause would only rise to a point determined by the mass of the atmosphere, the strength of the gravitational field and the level of insolation.
Kinetic energy can only lift matter against gravity to a height consistent with the weight of that matter.
That is implicit in the gas laws because the gas constant is defined as the amount of work (in Joules) required to lift 1 ‘mole’ of mass to a height where it is 1K cooler.
Obviously, the uplift must cease when all the kinetic energy that is freely available has been used up in work done.
The kinetic energy freely available is limited to that which is not radiated straight out to space as soon as it arrives.
That means that on Earth that extra 33K thermal enhancement (or whatever the true value is) represents the energy in the system that is available to maintain the height of the atmosphere by doing work lifting the molecules against the force of gravity.
That 33K constantly being used to maintain atmospheric height must be deducted from the radiative exchange with space.
It should not be included in consideration of the S-B equation.
This issue was also joined on the Connollys’ website, where they responded this way to And Then Theres Physics:
Therefore we reasoned that, by studying the experimental temperature profiles (e.g., using weather balloons), we could quantify the magnitude of the greenhouse effect for each profile at all altitudes, by subtracting the parts of the temperature profile that could be explained in terms of the thermodynamic properties of the bulk gases (i.e., nitrogen & oxygen).
We discuss how we did this in some detail in our Paper 1. But, in summary, if you look at Figure 12 in Section 4 above, the blue dashed line is the thermodynamic temperature profile we would expect for that weather balloon in the troposphere (just based on the gas laws for nitrogen & oxygen), and the red dotted line is the profile we’d expect for the stratosphere. The circles represent the experimental data.
We think the fits are surprisingly good. To us that implies that almost all of the temperature profile (up to at least mid-stratosphere) is explained purely in terms of the thermodynamic properties of the bulk gases.
Kristian: The rising air expands and does so INTO the air surrounding it, pushing it away, hence it does work on it, losing internal energy in the process – cooling.
The temperature of a volume of gas expanding into a vacuum would also fall, no work needed.
“The temperature of a volume of gas expanding into a vacuum would also fall, no work needed.”
In that case the work done is expansion against the intra molecular force.
The phrase ‘pushing it away’ refers to work done against the intra molecular force rather than work done against gravity. The latter involves movement in the vertical plane whereas the former can be vertical or horizontal.
I often see the two separate processes conflated when people talk about the expansion and contraction of gases.
Stephen Wilde says, March 12, 2014 at 1:48 pm:
“Kristian said:
“The cooling by radiation aloft simply lets the tropopause remain at the same altitude. Without this cooling, the tropopause would ‘forever’ rise”
The tropopause would only rise to a point determined by the mass of the atmosphere, the strength of the gravitational field and the level of insolation.”
I can’t fully agree with this. It is also determined by the energy balance of the atmosphere (energy in, energy out), and of ‘convective strength’ (level of buoyant acceleration). I’ll try to explain.
I’m basically talking about Konrad’s hypothetical scenario here. In it, the atmosphere is constantly heated by the surface but cannot cool radiatively to space. And so the tropopause will quite naturally rise with its increasing energy content -> a gas being heated from below and free to expand will do so, and on Earth there is only one direction for it to move – up. Mass and gravity would of course work against this thermal expansion, but convection/buoyancy would work for it. If it didn’t expand, then the lapse rate and hence convection would necessarily be reduced with the increasing energy content and the troposphere would tend towards isothermal conditions, like Konrad suggests.
The point I am trying to make is this: If we reached isothermal conditions, then there could be no conduction/convection of solar energy from the surface to the atmosphere. Does that mean that this energy would then rather automatically be radiated directly from the surface to space so that we didn’t get any rising temperatures? Of course not. That’s not how the real world works. Try to impede conductive/convective/evaporative heat loss from a surface (like your own skin) with a completely IR-transparent piece of covering. Do you get warmer? Of course. Why? Because energy piles up. It’s not like radiation just comes to the rescue and takes over the entire heat loss burden whenever you suppress the others. At least not before AFTER substantial warming. Radiation only acts alone in a pure vacuum.
So what happens? Energy from the Sun will accumulate at/below the surface, because it can’t get out as fast as it comes in. So we get surface warming. The surface warms for the system to reestablish the upward temperature gradient, for the surface to be able to cool into the atmosphere. And keep its energy balance. This process works naturally and automatically.
But you make a good point and I think I will have to slightly restate my position on this. It is all very hypothetical in the end.
It seems the surface won’t have to warm too much to maintain the lapse rate after all. The lapse rate might ALMOST be maintained simply from the troposphere thermally expanding. I say ‘almost’ because of the workings of mass and gravity which will always tend towards collapsing the atmosphere. The surface will most likely have to warm a bit in this scenario, to strengthen convection back up to maintain the lapse rate properly and hence surface energy balance.
So the tropopause does (must) get higher and higher. The convection gets more effective at lifting the surface-heated air ever higher into the air at the same solar input level, because 1) of the higher temperatures it induces, and because at the same time 2) the atmosphere gets less and less dense the more it expands.
In the end this is a matter of a thermodynamic system (a gas) that is slowly filling up with energy but which parallelly expands without doing work on its surroundings.
Will this system warm? I guess it’s ultimately a question of kinetic versus potential energy content.
Interesting stuff. But really quite beside the original issue.
Again, since this is all sooo hypothetical and has sooo many variables to consider, I feel (even though I was the one turning this into an issue in the first place, upon Konrad’s introduction of the ‘isothermal atmosphere without GHGs’ concept) that we should all go back to the discussion on the validity of the ERL argument for global surface warming.
Does putting GHGs into an atmosphere make it less or more capable of cooling radiatively to space?
“Does putting GHGs into an atmosphere make it less or more capable of cooling radiatively to space?”
More capable. The radiation directly to space from within the atmosphere reduces the amount of energy that has to be returned to the surface by subsiding adiabatically warmed air before it can be radiated out.
In fact, the increased radiative capability to space merely offsets the thermal effect of the radiation back down and if there were any difference the volume of the atmosphere and the circulation pattern would simply adjust accordingly to restore equilibrium.
“Will this system warm? I guess it’s ultimately a question of kinetic versus potential energy content.”
Exactly. The circulation will change to restore balance if KE and PE go out of balance.
” It (tropopause height) is also determined by the energy balance of the atmosphere (energy in, energy out), and of ‘convective strength’ (level of buoyant acceleration).”
Energy out can’t exceed energy in if the atmosphere is to be retained so the level of insolation deals with that.
The level of buoyant acceleration depends on density which means one is back to mass, gravity and insolation. It is true that for example water vapour is lighter than air but the increased or decreased buoyancy of compositional variations gets adjusted for by circulation changes so again back to mass, gravity and insolation.
Please try to realise the power of adiabatic warming on the descent phase of the convective cycle. That is what raises the surface temperature above S-B and that is a function of mass, gravity and insolation alone.
It has been so for 4 billion years so the solid surface has had plenty of time to include adiabatic warming in the process of reaching equilibrium.
Konrad 11:28am:
“A non-radiative atmosphere heating would be initially be driven by –
First – Surface conduction up to surface general Tmax
Then – Surface conduction and gas emission from volcanic point sources
Finally radiative superheating of O2 and N2 molecules at altitude by solar UV.”
Konrad continues to miss if earth atm. becomes transparent across the spectrum, solar UV goes right thru atm., no superheating. The surface of the earth radiates directly to space and the sun radiates directly to the surface, the energy balance being determined by surface radiative, conductive & convective energy transfer at Tmean ~255K by 1st law conservation of energy in=energy out (albedo ~ 0.3, surface solid & liquid emissivity 1.0, rounded, same orbit solar constant).
Surface Tmax. would offset by surface Tmin. and slow conduction, fast radiative, fast convective energy transfer would eventually even out the transparent atm. to Tmean=255K with weather variations showing equilibrium at surface with approx. lapse rate of -g/Cp to tropopause at TOA. This is well known and disputed by Konrad’s incorrect interpretation of his experimental results. Satellites would measure spatial and temporal 255K, surface thermometers 255K.
Solar UV would not superheat as the given atm. transparency avoids that problem, O2 and N2 et. al. at surface would conduct/convect to equilibrium Tmean 255K unless Konrad can show the 1st and 2nd law are wrong by experiment. Of course that sort of experiment would be meaningful to physics in general but won’t happen as informed, critical physicists would simply replicate & quickly find the issue with Konrad’s interpretation of his experimental results.
******
Kristian 4:13pm: “Does putting GHGs into an atmosphere make it less or more capable of cooling radiatively to space?”
No net warming by putting CO2 well mixed into total atm., the upper atm. is enabled to radiate more to space, the exact same amount the lower atm. radiates more to surface causing slight increase in surface Tmean. Around surface Tmean delta 0.16C for 20th century as observed give or take a small enough CI to be meaningful. Enables less tundra, more crop growing et. al. overall arguably beneficial for Earth dwellers.
Stephen Wilde says:
“Please try to realise the power of adiabatic warming on the descent phase of the convective cycle. That is what raises the surface temperature above S-B and that is a function of mass, gravity and insolation alone.”
Yeah, Stephen, I still don’t get your idea that the global surface temperature of the Earth is raised above the S-B calculated one by descending air. It just seems highly unphysical. Heat is not brought back to the surface by descending air. Globally, heat is only ever brought upwards between the surface and the atmosphere. The heat sink of the atmosphere is space.
The global surface is at an average of 288K with our specific solar input and atmospheric weight because the atmosphere resists the free escape of absorbed energy by way of movement of air and hence energy will pile up. The delay in outgoing is in the conductive>convective transport of energy through the troposphere to the purely radiating surface (ToA), not in radiative transport.
You can’t make an object warmer than you even warmer by directly supplying it with your energy. That would make your energy supply a transfer of ‘heat’ from cold to hot which doesn’t work in nature. What you as a cooler object must do is reduce the temperature gradient away from the warmer object so that less energy goes from IT to YOU.
The weight of the atmosphere on the surface can not change the temperature gradient away from the surface. It does however restrict the SPEED at which energy is able to travel up ALONG this gradient away from the surface, at a specific surface temperature.
Trick, consider what I wrote above. The surface could not radiate the entire solar flux directly to space with an atmosphere (ANY atmosphere) on top of it at 255K. It would have to be much warmer. Why? Because a solar-heated surface would ALWAYS lose energy to this atmosphere conductively/convectively. It’s an automatic and directly coupled relationship. So if say 2 parts of energy are coming in and 1 part goes out to the atmosphere through conduction/convection, then only 1 part is left to be radiated away to space. This Earth system would not be able to reach energy balance.
The paragraph I’m referring to is this: “The point I am trying to make is this: If we reached isothermal conditions, then there could be no conduction/convection of solar energy from the surface to the atmosphere. Does that mean that this energy would then rather automatically be radiated directly from the surface to space so that we didn’t get any rising temperatures? Of course not. That’s not how the real world works. Try to impede conductive/convective/evaporative heat loss from a surface (like your own skin) with a completely IR-transparent piece of covering. Do you get warmer? Of course. Why? Because energy piles up. It’s not like radiation just comes to the rescue and takes over the entire heat loss burden whenever you suppress the others. At least not before AFTER substantial warming. Radiation only acts alone in a pure vacuum.”
Kristian,
Descending air warms at the dry adiabatic lapse rate.
At any one time half the air around the planet is descending.
No new energy is being added. It is simply that PE gets converted to KE as air descends.
The fact is that air which falls towards a centre of gravity vibrates more than it did when it was higher up.
Air which rises away from a centre of gravity vibrates less as it rises.
If it ever got to absolute zero it would not vibrate at all but it never does because space is at 3K above absolute zero.
Too many people think that adiabatic warming of air on descent is ‘unphysical’ but it is established science supported by centuries of observation.
Kristian 6:09pm: “..surface would ALWAYS lose energy to this atmosphere conductively/convectively.”
Concur, since conductive/convective energy transfer dumped into atm. not space, only surface radiation gets to space for transparent atm. These LH and SH processes are already accounted for in the 255K surface balance if atm. transparent – enables think of LH & SH as Stephen’s adiabatic processes same amount energy transfer up & down (even if not transparent atm.) – they are not diabatic (adiabatic!). Overall in system only radiation is diabatic whether or not atm. is transparent. All integrated over spectrum and temporal/spatial mean.
Note transparent atm. has EEH in top post title at surface.
OK so, I think I get what you all are saying, and it seems generally plausible and even congenial from my point of view. Here’s the thing I am having trouble getting past: TOA radiation.
If the measured TOA radiation does actually have these divots taken out where water vapor et al. are removing spectral components which would otherwise be coming up from the ground, does that not say directly that the ground is going to have to warm to produce more radiation in other bands to balance the input?
The late John Daly discussed this here, and the TOA spectrum with the divots taken out is shown in Figure 3.5. Daly said “Actually, if we apply proper physics, i.e. cooling of the upper troposphere for increasing CO2, and we use IPCC’s constant lapse rate, the ground should indeed be cooling (!) instead of warming.” As I say, this seems reasonable to me on one level, but I do not quite completely grasp his argument.
If anyone can address this conundrum, I would appreciate it.
Kristian said:
“So if say 2 parts of energy are coming in and 1 part goes out to the atmosphere through conduction/convection, then only 1 part is left to be radiated away to space. This Earth system would not be able to reach energy balance.”
You’ve forgotten that the 1 part going to the atmosphere on uplift is coming back to the surface on descent.
That corrects the supposed imbalance.
You then have 2 parts in and 2 parts out for radiative energy balance
plus
1 part from surface to air and 1 part air to surface for conductive / convective balance.
The reason being that in net terms none of the 2 coming in from the sun needs to go from surface to atmosphere because there is already the other one part locked in from the original formation of the atmosphere.
In effect, solar energy in gets a free pass straight through which is the concept I set out in my old article about the adiabatic process.
Stephen Wilde says, March 12, 2014 at 6:14 pm:
“Too many people think that adiabatic warming of air on descent is ‘unphysical’ but it is established science supported by centuries of observation.”
Stephen, it is not the adiabatic warming of air on descent that I consider ‘unphysical’. I have no problem with that process per se. It is rather the notion that it somehow makes the surface warmer. There is after all no extra heat added to the system as a whole through this process.
Could you explain exactly through what thermodynamic mechanism you see the adiabatic warming of descending air will raise the global surface temperature above the S-B value?
Do you agree that there is no way that the cooler atmosphere can ever make the warmer surface even warmer through directly supplying it with energy from, that is, through an extra transfer of heat from above (in addition to the solar one)? That all the atmosphere can do is suppress the rate at which energy is escaping the surface?
Just to see if we’re on the same page …
Stephen Wilde says, March 12, 2014 at 7:09 pm:
“You’ve forgotten that the 1 part going to the atmosphere on uplift is coming back to the surface on descent.
That corrects the supposed imbalance.
You then have 2 parts in and 2 parts out for radiative energy balance”
What!?
Bart says, March 12, 2014 at 6:45 pm:
If the measured TOA radiation does actually have these divots taken out where water vapor et al. are removing spectral components which would otherwise be coming up from the ground, does that not say directly that the ground is going to have to warm to produce more radiation in other bands to balance the input?”
Those IR diagrams with those distinct CO2 bites are deceptive. That’s why these people use them all the time. They simply don’t show what one is led to believe they show.
All they show is that less energy goes out to space in the particular CO2 IR frequency band. That doesn’t mean that the energy doesn’t leave the Earth system, that it’s somehow ‘trapped’ within it. The atmosphere radiates to space based on bulk temperature, not on the specific spectral properties of its constituent gases. You know of course that the IR absorbed from the surface by the CO2 molecules is NOT reemitted at the same frequency. That’s not what we’re looking for. It goes into the total energy fund of the atmosphere, maintaining its temperature. Well, the temperature radiation of Earth doesn’t have anything to do with CO2′s or H2O’s spectral properties. It is a bulk property.
What matters is TOTAL OLR at ToA. Not these partial diagrams. And total OLR through the ToA has increased globally rather in step with temperatures over the last 30 years or so. This they won’t discuss.
Kristian,
I assume your 7.21 post was before you read the rest 🙂
The solar input is simply passed straight through.
There is no need for the warmed descending air to do any further active warming since the surface has already attained its enhanced temperature from the time that the atmosphere first lifted off the ground.
All that the warmed descending air has to do is maintain the status quo whilst the incoming solar energy flows straight through.
The stability of the system over 4 billion years shows that that is sufficient.
Increasing GHGs just increases the total energy in the surface to air exchange whilst the solar input continues to flow straight through.
Instead of raising surface temperature the Gas Laws ensure a change in the lapse rate slope and the height of the ERL by changing atmospheric volume and reconfiguring the circulation.
Kristian said:
“What matters is TOTAL OLR at ToA. Not these partial diagrams. And total OLR through the ToA has increased globally rather in step with temperatures over the last 30 years or so. This they won’t discuss.”
Correct, as temperature rose OLR increased but that warming process involved a change in the proportion of solar energy able to enter the oceans as per my New Climate Model.
Since albedo fell that has the same effect as an increase in ToA insolation which will warm the surface temperature along with increases in mass or gravity.
Trying it with GHGs when no additional energy is arriving will not have the same effect.
Kristian says:
March 12, 2014 at 7:31 pm
Hmmm… Not quite sure if that fully answers or not. I will have to ponder further.
The bottom line, I think, is that this is a very steady and repeatable signature. Combined with the steady warming trend since exit from the LIA, it accounts for virtually the entire temperature record. There is no indication of any influence of rising CO2 at all. No secular component which evidences any relationship at all.
So, the starting point is resolved: Surface temperature is insensitive to CO2 concentration. The experiment has been performed, and that is the result. Why is really the only remaining question.
TB: “The temperature of a volume of gas expanding into a vacuum would also fall, no work needed.”
Stephen: “In that case the work done is expansion against the intra molecular force.”
I’m not sure if any work is being done in this case. It’s more a conversion of one expression of kinetic energy (heat (and therefore, by Lussac’s law, pressure in a gas)) to another expression of kinetic energy (motion (of the gas molecules away from each other)).
“It’s more a conversion of one expression of kinetic energy (heat (and therefore, by Lussac’s law, pressure in a gas)) to another expression of kinetic energy (motion (of the gas molecules away from each other)).”
Yes I take that point if the expansion is into an unbounded vacuum such that the distances involved render the intra molecular forces irrelevant.
However you wouldn’t get much additional cooling once the bounds of the intra molecular force had been exceeded would you ?
At that point the molecules would be at the temperature of space with no more cooling however much further expansion occurred.
tallbloke 7:49pm, Stephen 8:21pm: TB: “The temperature of a volume of gas expanding into a vacuum would also fall, no work needed.”
Concur If real gas. Stephen almost gets it right here too, congrat.s Stephen. Sadie Carnot figured this out in his 1824 paper. I observe Stephen writes he likes to live on the distant past science, man that is distant past.
Picture a two cell rigid, adiabatic ideal box; an ideal gas in one chamber, vacuum the other. Puncture the partition and what happens to system T? Nothing, for an ideal gas there is no change in T. However, for a real gas the T decreases a bit due to the expansion in the presence of intermolecular forces which come about from consideration of real gas enthalpy H = U + pV. Joules law shows what happens for an ideal gas.
NB: Stephen – intramolecular forces are strong keeping a molecule together; intermolecular forces of attraction or repulsion are weak – they form enthalpy’s pV term and are observed as work to/from a gas parcel. In this expansion example, some work comes out of these forces reducing the T a bit.
The ideal process can’t be reversed, you can wait forever and the ideal gas won’t flow back thru the puncture randomly ending up all one side – permitted by 1st but not permitted by 2nd law. This sort of thing forced the 2nd law out of the grand masters in the 1800s.
I note the distinction between inter molecular and intra molecular, thanks.
Of course I meant inter molecular and I know that force can be weak for a gas which is why expansion of gas into a vacuum subjected to the same gravitational influence is very small as is the fall in temperature.
Stephen 8:33pm: Good. Now extend your thinking a bit, this real gas intermolecular force is why your arguments on single molecule KE+PE extended to a real gas are not exactly right, the pV term we’ve debated mucho in the past is the reason – now that your thinking is on it, capture it.
Trick,
I’m aware that real gases differ from ideal gases so there will be leakage in and out of the adiabatic cycle but that gets dealt with by air circulation changes too.
So what is your point ?
Stephen 9:26pm: My point is you argue from gas parcel total energy KE+PE being conserved so conclude added CO2 has no effect on surface Tmean. This is true only for a single molecule; for a gas you need to argue from gas parcel total energy = enthalpy H = U + pV due intermolecular forces and where internal energy U = function of (sum KE+PE).
Arguing from the change in gas parcel energy (dH) w/out pV term means you miss dp*V and p*dV terms. And that allows for incorrect conclusions I have pointed out before, e.g. when you just say the atm. height must increase to exactly offset surface warming. Including pV term handles changes like this correctly.
Stephen: gas parcel total energy = KE+PE = constant, so any change in KE means equal -PE change.
Science & differential math: gas parcel total energy = H = (U) + pV = (KE+PE) + pV = constant, so any change in KE (i.e. temperature) means equal -PE change – p*volume change – V*pressure change.
As I repeatedly point out, this is why text books talk about constant volume processes (volume change = 0 means p*volume change term = 0) AND constant pressure processes (V*pressure change term = 0). And also where science gets Cp and Cv constants for each gas.
Capture the moment here.
I don’t follow all those terms so I’ll have to do my best with words.
I didn’t say ‘just’ changing atmospheric height.
I was careful to say that the entire global air circulation must reconfigure including the density distribution.
In the course of that reconfiguration the speed of energy throughput changes and so the height may not change at all once the equilibriation process has been completed.
If there is a ‘moment’ to be ‘captured’ why don’t you capture it ?
Or is that just a cynical flourish ?
Whatever, you cannot have the same energy doing two things at the same time so if there is a thermostatic mechanism at all (and there must be) then the available energy has to be juggled between keeping the mass of the atmosphere off the ground and permitting radiation to space.
The same package of surface energy cannot do both or it would need to be in two places at once.
Stephen 10:31pm: “I don’t follow all those terms…”
I hoped for the best; which is why you don’t always narrate the science correctly to explain observations and sometimes draw incorrect conclusions. I thought Stephen had a chance for some science insight to improve narrative here; the moment has passed.
At least try to learn there is more to the narrative for a gas than single molecule KE+PE whether you follow it or not.
There is no thermostat, no set temperature, no perfect temperature, no closed loop system, the surface Tmean results from an open loop system balance which varies a bit over time since the sun is a variable star & albedo, atm. and surface emissivity, orbits, seasons change, some in limit cycles (on that last term, for those able, see Poincarě stuff b. 1854).
My comment on “And Then There’s Physics” did make it through moderation:
My point is that Newtonian mechanics and thermodynamics predicts a temperature gradient (Lapse Rate) of L= -g/Cp which has been observed on all seven bodies in the solar system with significant atmospheres.
In contrast nobody has been able to establish a mathematical relationship between CO2 concentration and surface temperature. For example, Hansen’s “Runaway Greenhouse Effect” on Venus has no mathematical basis. It is just a scary fairy story.
camel 11:47pm: “..nobody has been able to establish a mathematical relationship between CO2 concentration and surface temperature.”
Seems this 1938 paper did pretty well for 20th century based on theory and experiment compared to eventual observations. Revise it to the updated & future CO2 ppm, update any other stuff needed & make a better 21st century est.:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.49706427503/pdf
Stephen Wilde says, March 12, 2014 at 7:35 pm:
“I assume your 7.21 post was before you read the rest 🙂 “
True, but reading the rest didn’t help. You say: “1 part from surface to air and 1 part air to surface for conductive / convective balance.”
But there is no 1 conductive/convective part from air to surface. The air does not on a global (hemispheric) scale provide heat to the surface.
Konrad,
I note that you are getting snipped at WUWT. Congratulations, I am envious!
I enjoyed your insights on Caballero. While I like the clarity of his lecture notes he is a “Warmist” so he is not perfect (as we are). You said:
“Caballero starts with a good question –
“If the Earth had no atmosphere, what would be its surface temperature?”
I had a crack at that and came up with a different figure:
The comments on the above post highlight David Appell who considers himself a moderate amongst CAGW alarmists. To have a meaningful debate with anyone it is hgelpful to find an island of agreement before venturing into the ocean of controversy. Appell and I could not agree on anything!
Trick says:
March 12, 2014 at 11:24 pm
“There is no … closed loop system, the surface Tmean results from an open loop system balance…”
No. Planck radiation alone exerts a strong restoring force. The question is not whether it is a closed loop system or not – it trivially is. The question is how underappreciated feedback mechanisms help regulate it so that CO2 has virtually no observable effect. See comment above.
Trick says:
March 12, 2014 at 11:59 pm
Texas Sharpshooter’s Fallacy. A superficial, and not very good at that, resemblance between Callendar’s prognostication and subsequent events is not proof of anything. You could as easily claim that climate reacts to the logarithm of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Trick says:
March 12, 2014 at 5:57 pm
“Konrad continues to miss if earth atm. becomes transparent across the spectrum, solar UV goes right thru atm., no superheating.”
——————————————
Sorry Trick, fell at the first post. Again.
I was not suggesting “transparent across the spectrum” but removal of strongly radiative gases such as water vapour. UV super-heating of oxygen and nitrogen is provably occurring in part due to interception of UV in the thermosphere. An again, production of ozone in the stratosphere requires interception of UV by oxygen molecules.
But radiative super heating of a stagnant atmosphere is a side issue, not really worthy of debate. Our planet would be toast without radiative cooling of the atmosphere due to altered atmospheric circulation well before this could ever occur.
And this? –
“Surface Tmax. would offset by surface Tmin. and slow conduction, fast radiative, fast convective energy transfer would eventually even out the transparent atm. to Tmean=255K”
Surface Tmax offset by surface Tmin? Wrong again. I showed you the empirical experiment that disproved that back in 2011. The surface is far more effective at conductively heating the atmosphere than it is at conductively cooling it. Not “Maxwells Demon”, just the AGW “Gravity Gremlin”.
Bart 1:20am: “You could as easily claim that climate reacts to the logarithm of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.”
Ok, I claim that. That was easy. What do you know, if DJIA is up tomorrow we have CAGW and if it is not, then CAGW is disproved. Bingo. Many posters make it just as easy too with simple assertion.
Callendar did not just assert. The paper applies reasoned physics based on solid 1st principles evidenced & developed with test. Callendar unlike me just now, cites the experiments that argue the 1st principle physics he builds on are reasonable so you can go look them up and be a critic if possible. Data is available and results reproducible. He even invited specialists in the field as critics & responds right there in the paper. Serious question: What more could Callendar have done?
How about this paper? Would not your criticism apply equally well?
Click to access e_mc2.pdf
“No. Planck radiation alone exerts a strong restoring force.”
So – your Planck radiation checks Tmean constantly for any deviation from set point 288K and if found acts to restore the system back to “normal” or “desired” or “perfect” T? After all this is what the set point on a thermostat means in a closed loop home heating system. Does the sun check for 288K and decide to cancel or add a few sunspots it wasn’t planning? No.
This is an open loop system, Tmean is the response to a lot of inputs that do not check the output for a set point. The word feedback is used in many undisciplined ways; if the sun increases output, then Tmean goes up until all the forcings come into balance again. That’s all. Control system theory is a fun adventure if you have not ever been there. It has equations!
The usual question I ask to demonstrate open vs. closed loops is this: fill your coffee cup to the tip top and now walk up a flight stairs. Do you do better (meaning spill less) looking at it or looking away? You should feel your stability parameters change in the experiment. Some over control looking at it, looking away dampens that out better.
Here w/coffee there is an objective – so you have an outcome desired to control. The earth system has no such objective.
Konrad 2:16am “I was not suggesting “transparent across the spectrum”…
Konrad 11:28am: “A non-radiative atmosphere …”
The internet never forgets.
“Trick” claimed that you needed energy input to drive convective circulation.”
You do! To drive convection does require a fluid receiving energy transferred from below in a gravity field. Turn off the stove, your boiling soup convection will calm down. This is forced convection. Not sure what I wrote long ago, have a link? I may have been drinking. Add the energy transfer into the water from above, no driven i.e. forced convection results.
Your current example is free convection, i.e if convection is not driven, then convection will stop when the beer can and hot water come to same temperature (this is called equilibrium). “Anything that cannot go on forever, will stop.” – Herb Stein.
”The surface is far more effective at conductively heating the atmosphere than it is at conductively cooling it”
Maybe so, but equilibrium WILL be achieved for a non-radiating atm., the only question is the time constant. Even if a Volcano pops off, just the time constant back to equilibrium is in question. The sun abides, it will wait ‘till 255K surface Tmean evens out by radiative, conductive, convective energy transfer equilibrium at surface and only radiation getting out to space – the earth surface will be your radiator fins, entropy is your friend.
..but removal of strongly radiative gases such as water vapour.
Ok, deal with that one in good time. Next post maybe. This stuff is not rocket science.
Kristian says:
March 12, 2014 at 4:13 pm
“Does putting GHGs into an atmosphere make it less or more capable of cooling radiatively to space?”
Stephen Wilde says:
March 12, 2014 at 4:32 pm
“More capable. The radiation directly to space from within the atmosphere reduces the amount of energy that has to be returned to the surface by subsiding adiabatically warmed air before it can be radiated out.”
—————————————
I think in this we three are on the same page.
So to the original question of ERL. This is a game of calculating solar input, calculating an “effective emission level” for an IR opaque atmosphere and then using an assumed lapse rate and assumed vertical circulation to back calculate a “surface” temperature. Is this even remotely reasonable?
Why I raised the case of the non-radiative atmosphere is because this where the ERL approach most obviously collapses. Such an atmosphere can still heat, and empirical experiment shows that it would be far hotter than the -18C indicated by the ERL game.
Our current atmosphere is being heated from below and cooled from above. Just as Sir George Simpson warned Callendar in 1938, the atmosphere is never in radiative equilibrium, non-radiative transports dominate and calculating for radiative flux alone will not solve for the temperature profile of our moving atmosphere. Since Trick has raised the issue, here are Sir George Simpsons wise words –
“..but he would like to mention a few points which Mr. Callendar might wish to reconsider. In the first place he thought it was not sufficiently realised by non-meteorologists who came for the first time to help the Society in its study, that it was impossible to solve the problem of the temperature distribution in the atmosphere by working out the radiation. The atmosphere was not in a state of radiative equilibrium, and it also received heat by transfer from one part to another. In the second place, one had to remember that the temperature distribution in the atmosphere was determined almost entirely by the movement of the air up and down. This forced the atmosphere into a temperature distribution which was quite out of balance with the radiation. One could not, therefore, calculate the effect of changing any one factor in the atmosphere..”
These words are as true today as when Sir George Simpson wrote them in 1938. You cannot solve for changed radiative transport within our atmosphere without also calculating changes in non-radiative transports. The use of instantaneous radiative flux equations or linear mass balance calcs won’t do it. Either CFD (computational fluid dynamics) or empirical experiment is required. I would note here that in terms of CFD, current GCMs do not have the vertical resolution to even come close to what is required. GCMs are parametrised in the vertical dimension with pre-calculations that show radiative gases causing net warming.
(Trick will no doubt raise Callendar’s response, but it is no better than Judith Curry’s flawed “all other things being equal” case. As empirical experiment shows, “all other things” cannot remain equal for changing radiative gas concentrations.)
Bottom line – if the ERL approach fails for a “non-radiative” atmosphere then it fails for all radiative gas concentrations.
Trick says:
March 13, 2014 at 2:54 am
—————————————-
Nit picking about the definition of “non-radiative”? Obviously we are talking of the primary gases in our atmosphere O2 and N2…why do you bother with this?
And this? –
K- “Trick” claimed that you needed energy input to drive convective circulation.”
T – “You do! To drive convection does require a fluid receiving energy transferred from below in a gravity field.”
Trick why oh why would you do that? I just showed the unbelievably simple empirical experiment that trashed that argument when you tried it in 2011 on this very thread. Here you go –
“From way back in 2011-
– 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.”
Seriously Trick, do you truly not understand what is being shown? That is convective circulation being driven by REMOVAL of energy from a fluid column. What possible point is there is debating against such basic physics?
All you are doing is demonstrating that the whole of the global warming hoax depends on total ignorance of even the most basic fluid dynamics.
“..why do you bother with this?” You wrote it not me. You say why.
2:16am: “I was not suggesting “transparent across the spectrum” but removal of strongly radiative gases such as water vapour. UV super-heating of oxygen and nitrogen is provably occurring in part due to interception of UV in the thermosphere. An again, production of ozone in the stratosphere requires interception of UV by oxygen molecules.”
Ok. Here the top post EEH rises off the surface as the atm. is increasingly opaque not transparent anymore.
So…we have a theoretical case where the atm. itself CAN still radiate to space, just atm. emissivity is reduced not eliminated by THIS Konrad assumption. The atm. will radiate to space and to surface. So we get a new surface Tmean balance somewhere between 255K and 288K for however much Konrad wants to specify the emissivity of the atm. is not zero (i.e not transparent) up to today’s real global atm. emissivity WITH wv ~0.8.
No atm. boil off, system equilibrium comes to steady state energy in=energy out, once again the only question is the time constant.
PS: Suppose Konrad specifies the atm. emissivity such that steady state Tmean becomes oh, say 275K. Now surface thermometers will spatial/temporal read out 275K and the satellites will still measure 255K. There will now be a tropopause below TOA approx. lapse –g/Cp, satellite integrated across the spectrum, albedo 0.3, same solar constant, L&O emissivity 1.0, rounded. Planes have to cruise higher AGL for no forced convection smooth customer rides.
PPS: I wish this WAS rocket science, much more challenging & fun to figure out the steady state temperatures in say a Saturn 5 F-1 engine. Wish I was at Rocketdyne at the time. Before fast computers! Just IBM029 punch cards for data entry. They really must have puckered up on test day. Imagine the bars in Downey are quite interesting engineering debates also. “OMG, will this thing (IOW, the SOB motor) actually work? And all 5 at once? IDK, order another round.”
VS: “OMG that thing really blew sky high. We will be working late tonight. Gentlemen, get your slide rules ready.”
konrad… that is consistent with what trick wrote. ” To drive convection does require a fluid receiving energy transferred from below in a gravity field.”
You have placed a heat sink in there above what becomes the heat source.
Now place the cold object at the bottom.
tchannon says:
March 13, 2014 at 3:42 am
—————————————
Tim,
please re-read the exchange, I do not think I am too far out of line.
K- “Trick” claimed that you needed energy input to drive convective circulation.”
T – “You do! To drive convection does require a fluid receiving energy transferred from below in a gravity field.”
I used the word “input”, trick responded “You do!”. Hence the response.
The simple experiment described shows a fluid starting at a given temperature and developing convective circulation as energy is removed, not added.
This is exactly what radiative gases are doing at altitude in our atmosphere, removing energy, lowering buoyancy and playing a role in driving vertical circulation.
The whole of the global warming game depends on holding non-radiative energy transport constant for changing radiative gas concentration. What I am pointing out is this is provably incorrect. Change the concentration of radiative gases and you must necessarily change the pattern and speed of vertical circulation in the atmosphere.
Thanks Tim. Konrad 3:21am appears to lose his concentration once again: “That is convective circulation being driven by REMOVAL of energy from a fluid column.”
Queen’s English: Driven: “..to force to work or act: He drove the Saturn 5 F-1 workers until they collapsed and the engine passed gov. acceptance cert. testing”.
You do not have a forcing function, no supv. driving the worker bees; there is a cold beer can in a glass of hot water. No electric cords, no gas lines, no gasoline, therefore no forcing from an energy reservoir being used up. Konrad: Return to calm state of mind. Concentrate on fundamentals.
This experiment of yours is free convection, cold beer can & hot water not plugged in, it is acoustic. This is a VERY good example of your experiments causing you to come to strange conclusions.
Forced circulation in the atm. is driven by the sun using up an energy reservoir (the hydrogen, same as Saturn 5 F-1 using up the kerosene). Forced atm. convection then comes about from the atm. being driven by the SW sun causing higher temperature surface below thru LW, convection, conduction up the cooler atm. lapse rate (approx., ideal, environmental lapse whichever one you want).
Now – how do you think they ever got the F-1 working? They experimented, they analyzed with first principle thermodynamics, they sweated it out, they improved, they failed sometimes, they won sometimes. Finally the development efforts paid off and Bezos got to pay to bring the things up off the ocean floor having worked just fine. So too does the earth system. ~Balanced steady state billions of years, F-1 only for ~150 sec.s.
Konrad 4:08am: “Change the concentration of radiative gases and you must necessarily change the pattern and speed of vertical circulation in the atmosphere.”
Concur. The atm. forced convection i.e. circulation is affected by composition. 1st law & 2nd law enables the understanding that surface Tmean also changes. The circulation change is inside the control volume as I have pointed out for your experiments before, thus energy is moved around inside, but the energy balance is unaffected. The only way circulation changes the steady state balance is for the circulation to push some atm. out to space past the control volume at TOA, like a coronal ejection. This doesn’t happen for earth atm. molecules speed – most all are way .LT. escape velocity.
Konrad 2:56am: “Bottom line – if the ERL approach fails for a “non-radiative” atmosphere then it fails for all radiative gas concentrations.”
The ERL (top post title EEH) doesn’t fail for a non-radiative transparent atm., it is simply 0 AGL. Thermometers measure 255K, satellites measure 255K – there are no dropouts in the transparent atm. curve.
No doubt Callendar’s response to Simpson: “..if any substance is added to the atmosphere which delays the transfer of low temperature radiation, without interfering with the arrival or distribution of the heat supply, some rise of temperature appears to be inevitable in those parts which are furthest from outer space.”
This is hardly “all other things being equal” at all. Or link the response context you clip, maybe something is lost.
Trick says:
March 13, 2014 at 4:47 am
“ No doubt Callendar’s response to Simpson: “..if any substance is added to the atmosphere which delays the transfer of low temperature radiation, without interfering with the arrival or distribution of the heat supply, some rise of temperature appears to be inevitable in those parts which are furthest from outer space.”
This is hardly “all other things being equal” at all. Or link the response context you clip, maybe something is lost”
—————————————————–
Nothing being lost. I knew you would post it for me 😉
Right there – “without interfering with the arrival or distribution of the heat supply”
– that is the equivalent of “all other things being equal”. But it is the very non-radiative “distribution” that is being altered by altering the concentration of radiative gases.
Sir George Simpson was right, you cannot solve for just radiation only as the EWL approach tries to do. Conductive exchange, lapse rate and speed of vertical circulation cannot be treated as constants.
The ERL approach clearly does fail for a non-radiative atmosphere as it tries to set the atmospheric temperature to an incorrectly calculated figure of -18C for surface Tav. Empirical experiment shows that such an atmosphere would have its temperature driven instead by surface Tmax.
And that figure of surface Tav being -18C for the surface in absence of an atmosphere? That’s out by around 98C. The oceans would practically boil without an atmosphere to cool them.
PS. If you want to play with Rocket Surgery you are free to do so. Here is an ancient project of mine, “The Crow” –
A ducted rocket/ramjet. At 100g, not the fastest thing to fly on a “B” engine, but you can get off the rail without a non air-breathing booster and it can after-burn the CO exhaust from the black powder engine. The duct liner is 0.75mm of polymer modified gypsum and fibreglass.
Trick says:
March 13, 2014 at 4:29 am
“Konrad 4:08am: “Change the concentration of radiative gases and you must necessarily change the pattern and speed of vertical circulation in the atmosphere.”
Concur. The atm. forced convection i.e. circulation is affected by composition. 1st law & 2nd law enables the understanding that surface Tmean also changes. The circulation change is inside the control volume as I have pointed out for your experiments before, thus energy is moved around inside, but the energy balance is unaffected.”
————————————————————-
Trick,
here seems to be a failure of logic here. Claiming that a planet in radiative equilibrium can have its atmospheric temperature altered by altering the radiative transports within the control volume but denying that changing non-radiative transports within the control volume will have a comparable effect. This is illogical.
Trick says:
March 13, 2014 at 2:16 am
“Callendar did not just assert. The paper applies reasoned physics based on solid 1st principles evidenced & developed with test.”
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong”. – Richard Feynman
The data have come in from the experiment over the past century. On a planet-wide scale, at least on this planet, it doesn’t work.
Capture the moment. Eschew epicycles. Open yourself to reasoning out why.
“Would not your criticism apply equally well?”
No. That theory agreed with the experiments. Indeed, that theory arose because of the experiments, which diverged from then current theories. You might take a lesson from that.
Newton, and many others after him, applied reasoned physics based on solid 1st principles evidenced & developed with test. But, it did not work generally on all dynamical scales, and required adjustments.
“This is an open loop system…”
That phrase does not mean what you think it means. In an open loop system, a transient disturbance leaves the system permanently displaced from its starting point. That is not the case here, whether you believe it is regulated to a particular equilibrium point or not.
Trick says:
March 13, 2014 at 2:54 am
There is no such thing as an atmosphere “transparent across the spectrum”. You might as well be arguing about atmospheres which have faeries in them. Seriously. If you are conjecturing about how a non-realizable system might behave, then there is a real possibility that your conclusions will have no bearing on the real world.
Radiative physics is not wrong, just incomplete.
It fails to deal with the thermal effect at the surface of the mechanical energy tied up in the adiabatic convective cycle within an atmosphere.
That mechanical energy which maintains atmospheric height against gravitational collapse requires a surface temperature enhancement but radiative atmospheric physics does not recognise that.
It needs a surface temperature enhancement because energy tied up in the mechanical process is no longer able to be radiated to space, you can’t have the same parcel of energy contributing to two separate processes simultaneously.
Not complicated or new.
Just basic thermodynamics and common sense. No specialist terminology required.
Observations prove that it must be so.
The adiabatically warmed air doesn’t even need to heat the surface. All it needs to do is maintain the status quo.
The status quo comprises a fixed amount of mechanical energy locked into the adiabatic convective cycle.
If energy leaks in or out, and that must happen since the gases are not ideal, the resulting imbalance is simply dealt with by a change in the scale or speed of the convective cycle which swaps energy to and fro between KE and PE as necessary to maintain overall system equilibrium.
Simply adjusting atmospheric volume and / or atmospheric density distribution is sufficient.
gallopingcamel says:
March 13, 2014 at 12:11 am
“I had a crack at that and came up with a different figure:”
————————————————————————-
CamelusVelocitas,
sorry for the slow response. I did follow your link and am encouraged to see someone is still following up on N&Z. I did not get to far into the follow up comments, due to the behaviour of David Appell. You may consider him a moderate, however I would consider him a shameless squealing propagandist.
I have noted this individual on non-climate blogs referring to CO2 as a “heat trapping gas”. Funny thing that. On a climate blog he can be forced to admit that it both absorbs and emits (when confronted by an expert in stimulated CO2 IR emission), but when he thinks he can get away with it on a political blog…
Conclusion – not a person of good character. As I wrote at WUWT – he has achieved one amazing thing with his endless propaganda. He has rewritten future history. The marketing dept. of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation are no longer first in line 😉
On a historical note, investigating the physical basis for the N&Z hypothesis was one of the first experiments I conducted which, thanks to Tallbloke, had a thread here at the Talkshop.
I enclosed two black target plates in separate transparent containers and regulated the pressure in one to ambient and the other to 1.25 bar. Exposed to equal SW the air in the high pressure container heated faster and higher.
In terms of planets with an atmosphere, there is an issue which I don’t see that N&Z addressed. This is that there are no planets or moons within our solar system that have managed to retain an atmosphere without radiative gases.
The N&Z hypothesis works better than the GHE hypothesis, even for planets where little solar reaches the surface. But it requires two things, an atmospheric cooling mechanism and vertical atmospheric circulation.
Konrad said:
“The whole of the global warming game depends on holding non-radiative energy transport constant for changing radiative gas concentration. What I am pointing out is this is provably incorrect. Change the concentration of radiative gases and you must necessarily change the pattern and speed of vertical circulation in the atmosphere.”
Correct.
And the circulation change provides an equal and opposite negative response by speeding up energy throughput to cancel the alleged slowing down from the GHGs.
It works the other way round if the net thermal effect of GHGs is cooling.
“The N&Z hypothesis works better than the GHE hypothesis, even for planets where little solar reaches the surface. But it requires two things, an atmospheric cooling mechanism and vertical atmospheric circulation”
If you have a vertical circulation then radiative cooling from the surface works just fine. No longer a need for radiation out from GHGs.
You still need radiation out from GHG’s at the top of the atmosphere though. Unless there’s enough dust in the air.
“You still need radiation out from GHG’s at the top of the atmosphere though”
Why ?
The convective circulation returns KE to the surface on descent to supply the renewed ascent leaving the surface to both receive and radiate the entirety of incoming solar energy.
The cooling with height is created by the decline in density and loss of KE to PE with height.
Bart 7:09am: “The data have come in from the experiment over the past century. On a planet-wide scale, at least on this planet, it doesn’t work.”
Sure it does. Feynman was right (his writings should be mandatory), but you need to do some more work. Get out your HadCrut4+decadal data ~1900-2013. Re-calibrate it to a time baseline 1921-1940 Callendar ~used. Center it, calculate and plot anomaly. By inspection, find mean anomaly observed 1900 to 2000 on the order of ~ 0.20C and look up 1938 table VI prediction of 0.16C anomaly for 20th century.
This is not too shabby, Feynman would want to know CIs, arguably the test came out statistically ~meaningfully close to 1938 prediction.
Stephen 9:14am: “The cooling with height is created by the decline in density and loss of KE to PE with height.”
You have just been shown there is more to the narrative than KE+PE and you agreed. Arguing from this POV is incomplete atm. physics, you draw incorrect conclusions and should drop this line of incomplete reasoning from your narrative until you can fully understand it. I suggest consulting modern atm. thermo. text books as a source for complete understanding.
Bart 7:09am: “In an open loop system, a transient disturbance leaves the system permanently displaced from its starting point.”
Not necessarily. Open loop systems can be stable too as in my coffee cup example (other than my permanently displaced coffee spilled on your white shag carpeting). Depends on the transient disturbance system response eqn.s being stable, neutral stable or unstable. Get out your Bode or Nyquist plots for earth system. Find an open loop system stable for “billions and billions” (~Sagan term) of years. The poles and zeros will tell the story. I hadn’t thought before but possibly a more proper term for wv feedback is really the wv gain in the open loop earth system. What do you think?
Bart 7:09am: Trick says: March 13, 2014 at 2:54 am There is no such thing as an atmosphere “transparent across the spectrum”.
It was Konrad brought up non-radiative atm., go challenge him. For me, I observe Mars is an atm. system pretty darn close to “transparent across the spectrum” with the EEH just barely AGL. As far as science can est., Mars surface Tmean ~212K and Teff = 210.0K.
You want a really high EEH est.? Check out Venus.
Konrad 5:17am: “The ERL approach clearly does fail for a non-radiative atmosphere as it tries to set the atmospheric temperature to an incorrectly calculated figure of -18C for surface Tav. Empirical experiment shows that such an atmosphere would have its temperature driven instead by surface Tmax.”
Oh I see, your “all things equal” stems from the assumptions of albedo=0.3, L&O emissivity 1.0, rounded, solar constant orbit unchanged, as atm. emissivity is alone simply varied from Tmean=288K down to Tmean=255K.
This does not make the EEH physics fail, the 1st and 2nd applied law be falsified by your experiment, oceans boil with transparent atm. in place or transparent atm. boil off in any reasonable way.
You will find your answers in the study of small perturbations in stable open loop control system theory. As I’ve been discussing with Bart. And I’ve discussed with you in the past regards airplane autopilots. The commercial plane autopilot response systems are very, very stable to perturbations of one parameter, say a wind gust. Now a fighter pilot likes his system unstable so as to dodge a Mach 3+ missile all the better. Commercial jets don’t.
If the system of interest is known very, very stable then it is considered ok to perturb a single parameter and observe & learn about system response, as long as the system response is fairly linear. I concur, one has to accept the earth system is very, very stable and ~linear to simply vary one parameter leaving “all else equal” & calculating response but geez, observations show this stability & ~linearity is the basic case. There is no big deal problem in theory varying basic atm. emissivity alone to observe basic system response in order to learn more about the system of interest.
This is why Gore’s “tipping point” got so much attention, which eventually went the way of his millions of degrees internal T.
“…in absence of an atmosphere?”
Concur. Don’t go there, no need for that, this is being non-linear at its worst, oceans would boil off at vacuum of space. Hansen went a little too far with that picture, past linearity like Gore, just laugh it off when you see that. Better to keep atm. in place for hydrostatic semi-opaque or transparent atm. condition which all the atm. thermo. text books place in the assumed category.
Trick says:
March 13, 2014 at 2:46 pm
“Re-calibrate it to a time baseline 1921-1940 Callendar ~used. Center it, calculate and plot anomaly.”
Sure, you can torture the data until it confesses. But, the fact remains that there is no secular trend in the data which wasn’t around long before CO2 began increasing significantly. There isn’t anything in the data which hasn’t been around since at least 1880. The arrival of the peak of the current ~60 year cycle, right on time in about 2005, basically killed AGW as a viable hypothesis. You are seeing what you want to see. You need to step back and look at the larger picture.
Trick says:
March 13, 2014 at 3:14 pm
The coffee cup is closed loop. Gravity holds the coffee in the cup, and reacts to sloshing according to the liquid excursion. You can modify stability by fiddling with your visual-physical loop, but that is just an additional control signal.
But, this is degenerating into a battle over semantics. What you are talking about is more accurately referred to as regulation, but this is not really important. The important thing is that you are asserting lack of regulation without any proof.
Bart 5:00pm: ”…torture the data…” This is undefined. Data feels nothing. If you mean data mining, no, there are hundreds of defn.s there also. I will point out Callendar’s 1938 prediction works for long enough out of sample. If you want to choose since 1880 when records began, it will work for that too because Callendar is based on 1st principles. Just adjust the Table VI number for the delta ppm CO2 for any climate length period you want, the rest of the physics is still ~good, you will get a reasonable anomaly answer. Note this model runs a bit cold unlike the $Billionaire models that just may have a view to support & are black box unknowns with tuning possibly & not 1st principles.
”The coffee cup is closed loop.” There are aspects of closed and open. You can feel with your hand all the time, this is closed loop of course. Spilling some on your hand is closed loop, you correct. Now, my main point was look & not look. Can you get the open loop aspect with no eye contact? If not the semantics won’t matter.
I have actually conducted that experiment in real life many times – note the obvious potential of doing so in the morning at the coffee pot or coffee machine w/your co-workers. (Some will look askance, you may have to do this surreptitiously – observe do they look or have they learned better off not to look?). I have discovered many interesting poles and zeros exist in various human control systems.
For open loop all you know is the current state and model, there is no news about error corrections needed. What do you do when a microphone squeals due to closed loop feedback? You open the loop by turning down the volume. This can be made stable open loop by putting into the volume model just where the pole happens and limit the volume knob to turning less.
“..referred to as regulation..” This is defined just look it up. You are the control system, the coffee spill is thing desired being regulated to 0; the airplane control system is the black box, the thing being regulated is level flight; the thermostat is the control system with a set point, the regulation is to room temp.; I have more but that should help with semantics.
Trick says:
March 13, 2014 at 7:13 pm
I see nothing here which merits further response.
Sorry to be so late to the party but I saw this thread yesterday and have just finished reading the very interesting comments. While reading I realized that I covered many of these same topics in a couple of Tallbloke blogs about two years ago. I have copied the links below.
Trick, this first link covers your emphasis that PV work plays an essential role in understanding the thermodynamics of convection. But I have used the first law of thermodynamics instead of enthalpy to explain it.
This second link expands on the first link and covers other topics such as the role of gravity, the thermodynamics of the lapse rate and the effect if GHG’s on the atmospheric temperature profile and convection dynamics (hint: none).
If anyone wants to get into more detail, I have included a link to my 2010 E&E paper at the end of the first link. There I cover the role of water vapor in atmospheric thermodynamics and why water vapor concentrations in the upper troposphere decrease with higher surface temperature.
In the paper, I also include some calculations on the distribution of latent heat into thermal energy versus PV work energy upon water vapor condensation. At high water vapor concentrations, 80% of latent heat release can take the form of PV work rather than thermal energy. That’s why there is no upper troposphere hot spot as predicted by the models. But that’s for another time and thread topic.
Bill
Konrad,
The attached link shows a slide from a presentation by Scott Denning explaining the generally accepted derivation of the average temperature of an airless Earth:
“Climate Scientists” around the world use -18 degrees Centigrade (255 Kevin) as the starting point for their theory that the GHE amounts to 33 Kelvin, a figure that is plausible if you claim that CO2 is the “Driver”.
N&K realized that the Denning analysis was wrong given that it assumes that Earth is a thermal superconductor. They calculated the temperature of an airless Moon (and Earth) to be 154.3 Kelvin. The formula that N&K used can be found here:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/image_thumb16.png?w=459&h=189
The N&K poster has been discussed at length on “Tallbloke” but here is a link to save you delving into the archives from two years ago:
Click to access C7_Nikolov_M15A.pdf
The Diviner LRE experiment shows that the Moon’s equatorial temperature average is 206 Kelvin while the global average is ~194 Kelvin.
So what’s wrong with the N&K analysis? Their calculation would be exactly correct if the moon was a perfect insulator, the opposite of Scott Denning’s assumption. Reality is somewhere in between these two figures so I tried to “Reverse Engineer” the Moon’s thermal properties starting with the Diviner LRE observations. I failed rather dismally. Hopefully you are smart enough to succeed where I failed or perhaps you know of someone who has already made the correct analysis.
One more problem is the rate of rotation. If a body is a thermal superconductor or a perfect insulator, the rate of rotation has no effect on the average surface temperature.
For real materials it matters what the rate of rotation is. For this reason it is wrong to assume that the temperature of an airless Earth rotating 30 times faster than the Moon would have the same average surface temperature (as N&K did in their poster).
Before I get snipped for being “Off Topic”, I am attempting to show that the Greenhouse effect is much larger than the 33 Kelvin assumed by “Climate Scientists”. The correct figure is greater than 288-206 = 82 Kelvin, far beyond what can be explained in terms of a theory based on an “Effective Radiation Height” modulated by [CO2].
tallbloke says:
March 13, 2014 at 8:54 am
“You still need radiation out from GHG’s at the top of the atmosphere though. Unless there’s enough dust in the air.”
———————————————
This is correct, without radiative gases (or air borne dust), our atmosphere has no effective cooling mechanism. Conduction back to the surface doesn’t work for an atmosphere in a gravity field. (yes, I have the empirical experiment for that, just drawing up the diagram to go with the photo.)
In the meantime a simple example from radiative physics –
-Take two equal sized aluminium plates, paint one matt black and polish the other to mirror.
-Attach a thermocouple to the back of each.
-Restrict conductive cooling and expose each to equal solar radiation.
You will note that while the matt black plate heats faster, the mirror plate reaches a far higher equilibrium temperature. (Ah, the old black car with chrome trim trick agent 99!)
Now ignore that the energy input to each plate is via radiation, and consider that energy accumulates in the mirror plate because it is poor radiator.
The plates don’t model our atmosphere, but in terms of “best fit” which best models a radiative atmosphere and which best models a “non-radiative atmosphere”? This is why the Church of Radiative Climatology is so desperate to ignore centuries of fluid dynamics and claim that the surface can conductively heat and cool the atmosphere equally.
I’m a bit puzzled.
First comment from one gallopingcamel on April 2, 2012
The thermal properties are the surface conductance and a thermal delay line into a thermal capacity (ultimately the whole body)
The earth was not discussed.
It has a high surface conductance and high spin rate but there is a large problem: – the earth has a thick and variable zone where the concept of a distinct entity called surface doesn’t exist.
Given the way people are this is not discussion stuff.
In broad terms the earth will be much hotter, perhaps what we see.
tchannon,
Thanks for that link that I had forgotten! I am a “Hardware” person with limited “Software” skills. I never managed to get those network analysis programs to work. My tools (e.g. PSPICE) are 2002 vintage given that is when I retired from the Duke University Free Electron Laser Laboratory.
The equatorial temperature of the Moon as measured in the Diviner LRE is 206 Kelvin, so that is the maximum temperature one could expect on a body 93 million miles from the sun that lacks an atmosphere. No matter how fast an airless body might spin its average temperature will be less than 206 Kelvin.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 13, 2014 at 9:14 am
———————————–
Stephen,
one of the many mistakes in the AGW hypothesis is the claim that the surface has equal ability to conductively heat and conductively cool our atmosphere. This is how climate pseudo scientists set their calculated temperature for a non-radiative atmosphere to (an incorrectly calculated) surface Tav of -18C. They effectively treat the atmosphere as a static body for the purposes of calculating surface to gas conductive exchange. For a gas atmosphere in a gravity field this is a grave error.
In showing the empirical experiment that highlights this error I have been accused by both Trick and Dr. Robert Brown of invoking “Maxwell’s Demon”. (I’m still laughing at Dr. Brown, Trick can’t be helped). However all I am showing is what maybe best termed the AGW Gravity Gremlin. My claim is based on solid empirical evidence and is only a demonstration of the fluid dynamics that produces what methodologists refer to as a “night inversion layer”
In terms of surface to gas conduction in a gravity field, the surface has a far greater ability to conductively heat the atmosphere than it does to conductively cool it. Three factors come into play here –
1. Conductive exchange between surface to gas is faster than gas to gas.
2. Conductive exchange is greatest when there is greater temperature differential between surface and gas.
3. The speed of convective energy transport in a gas must necessarily be higher than gas conduction for convection to occur.
The following empirical experiment can be build small enough to fit in a domestic refrigerator –
Good results can still be obtained at small scale, however due to the speed of gas conduction not scaling and issues of internal friction, I recommend building the experiment larger and using a commercial cold room.
Instructions for “The AGW Gravity Gremlin” empirical experiment –
– Build two insulated gas columns 500mm square by 1500mm high each open at one end.
– Position thermocouples at sufficient locations in the interior of the columns to record full temperature profiles.
– Cover the open end of each column with thin film plastic.
– Mount a Circulation fan outside the plastic to blow against it.
– arrange the columns so column 1 has the film surface at the base and column 2 at the top.
– in a room at 25C run the fans until both columns have and equal internal gas temperature.
– With the fans still running, move both gas columns into a -5C cool room, and observe their temperature profiles as they cool.
– After both columns have equalised at -5C, move both back to the 25C room and again observe the internal temperature profile as the warm back to 25C.
Your results should look like this –
When cooling, column 1 cools far slower. Cooling is limited to the speed of gas conduction in the column and as a layer near the lower plastic film cools, the internal gas to plastic surface differential is lowered. Column 2 cools faster as gas cooled at the film subsides in the column, initiating convective circulation. This brings the hottest gas to the plastic film maximising temperature differential at the film and maximising conductive exchange.
When heating a similar pattern emerges. Column 1 with the film at the base heats fastest as convective circulation is able to develop, bringing the coldest gas to the film and again maximising temperature differential and conductive exchange. In column 2 the speed of re-heating is now limited to the speed of just gas conduction as convective circulation does not occur.
This is why the surface is far better at conductively heating our atmosphere than it is at conductively cooling it. This is why a non-radiative atmosphere will have its temperature driven by surface Tmax not surface Tav as claimed by climate pseudo scientists. Couple the AGW Gravity Gremlin with a non-radiative atmosphere and you find an atmosphere far, far hotter than present.
@ gallopingcamel; AH! real data and not an assumption based on WAG. Somehow actual data trumps all the computer aided calculations of projected formula. I guess they should reverse engineer from the facts a new set of concepts. No problem! I only had to spend 20 years creating my own physics model because the accepted standard model is badly distorted from reality and can not even explain Gravity.
Bottem line, 194Kelvin global surface average at 93 million miles from the sun for a naked rock that rotates. pg
Trick says:
March 13, 2014 at 4:10 pm
————————————–
“Oh I see, your “all things equal” stems from the assumptions of albedo=0.3, L&O emissivity 1.0, rounded, solar constant orbit unchanged, as atm. emissivity is alone simply varied from Tmean=288K down to Tmean=255K.”
No, I have been very clear, my criticism of the “all things being equal” approach of Callendar and all the pseudo scientists following refers to treating both lapse rate and speed of vertical circulation (the primary energy transport in our atmosphere) as constants for varying radiative gas concentrations. As Sir George Simpson warned, you simply can’t do that for a moving gas atmosphere.
Oh, and endlessly repeating that 255K figure for the surface in the absence of an atmosphere will never make it right, it should be well over 300K.
“Don’t go there, no need for that, this is being non-linear at its worst, oceans would boil off at vacuum of space. Hansen went a little too far with that picture, past linearity like Gore, just laugh it off when you see that.”
No, I will not be laughing it off and nor can you. As shown in section 5.17 of Gallopingcamel’s link to the foundation gospel of the Church of Radiative Climatology –
Click to access PhysMetLectNotes.pdf
That is the junk science that lays at the very foundation of the failed radiative greenhouse effect hypothesis –
“If the Earth had no atmosphere, what would be its surface temperature? This classic calculation
goes as follows…”
– and the surface temperature claimed? -18C! It’s junk science.
It’s no good claiming the oceans would boil off without an atmosphere. I am well aware of that. Climate scientists however have claimed to calculate the surface temperature of our planet without an atmosphere. So it is reasonable to check their calculations against an ocean planet where all atmospheric effects except pressure are removed from the oceans. The surface of our planet is not some imaginary opaque material with infinite conductivity heated by a puny ¼ power sun, it is 71% covered by transparent oceans heated at depth by SW diurnal pulses of over 1000 w/m2.
Empirical experiment can show us just how hot our oceans would get without atmospheric cooling. They certainly won’t freeze without DWLWIR. They would heat to 80C if not beyond. This means that the net effect of the atmosphere over our oceans is ocean cooling. And the atmosphere has only one effective cooling mechanism. Radiative gases. These gases provably do not warm our planet, they cool it and they cool at all concentrations above 0.0ppm.
gallopingcamel says:
March 14, 2014 at 1:19 am
“I am attempting to show that the Greenhouse effect is much larger than the 33 Kelvin assumed”
————————————-
Come to the dark side, we have cookies…
It’s cooling, not warming from radiative gases.
We can check how hot our oceans would get if they could be retained without an atmosphere –
I haven’t built that one yet, but my conservative guess for how hot the water will get is something like this –
This means that the net effect of the atmosphere over the oceans is cooling, and our atmosphere has only one effective cooling method – radiative gases.
Calculations based on opaque substances regardless of emissivity or conductivity can’t work for our world, Planet Ocean.
If you are in any doubt as to the importance of transparency of materials in calculating surface temperature, build and run the experiment shown here –
Type, as they say is cheap. But what you will learn from this experiment is invaluable. An ancient saying – “Tell me I’ll forget. Show me I’ll understand. Let me do it and I will know.” The mathematical solution to the advanced experiment run with liquid lays in the realm of CFD. For the Church of Radiative Climatology, this is the “forbidden science” (at least in the vertical dimension, horizontal CFD is apparently allowed for senior clergy using GCMs if approved by a high priest).
Konrad: Oh, and endlessly repeating that 255K figure for the surface in the absence of an atmosphere will never make it right, it should be well over 300K
Whoah. The Moon has no atmosphere and it’s cold. I think you mean ‘no GHG’s’, not ‘no atmosphere.’
Konrad says:
March 14, 2014 at 2:13 am
This is correct, without radiative gases (or air borne dust), our atmosphere has no effective cooling mechanism. Conduction back to the surface doesn’t work for an atmosphere in a gravity field. (yes, I have the empirical experiment for that, just drawing up the diagram to go with the photo.)
———————————————
True that. But w/o Greenhouse gas, the only way for the atmosphere to heat would be via conduction.
All radiative cooling/heating would then happen at the surface (minus dust/aerosol). There would still be a lapse rate, but the extremes at surface would be more pronounced wouldn’t they?
gallopingcamel says: March 14, 2014 at 1:19 am
” I am attempting to show that the Greenhouse effect is much larger than the 33 Kelvin assumed by “Climate Scientists”
I’m on the same page as you.
Imo part of the explanation for the moons temperature being above it’s radiative balance temperature for a body with one side continuously facing the sun is geothermal flux. The temperature in craters near the poles that receive no solar radiation should be 2,77K due to the background radiation.
Actually it is ~25K. This could be due to a small geothermal flux (50 -100 mW/m^2)
Rotation is the other factor, but the rates for the moon and earth are pretty low.
As soon as rotation comes into play you have to consider the specific heat capacity (shc) of the surface being warmed. Moon has dust and rocks, shc below 1 probably. earth has water, shc above 4.
I’ve some text here: http://www.principia-scientific.org/moons-hidden-message.html
tallbloke says:
March 14, 2014 at 8:12 am
“Whoah. The Moon has no atmosphere and it’s cold. I think you mean ‘no GHG’s’, not ‘no atmosphere.”
—————————
Nope 😉 If our oceans could be retained in the absence of an atmosphere that’s ~80C for 71% of the surface.
Global Tav in the absence of an atmosphere (with crude adjustment for land and veg) ~60C.
These gases cool. Always.
Look at the standard NASA energy budget diagram. Net radiative flux into the atmosphere is less than half the net radiative flux out to space from radiative gases. The only way to model warming is to hold the speed of vertical circulation (and thereby non-radiative transport from the surface) static for increasing radiative gas concentration. That’s what, in effect, they did.
What they really did was calculate the wrong figure for “surface Tav” -18C (out by ~ 80C) then add an atmosphere with optical opacity, calculate that “surface Tav” was radiating from an “effective radiating level” then back calculate surface temp by treating lapse rate and vertical circulation as constants.
Seriously they used a “surface with no atmosphere” Tav of -18C for a planet with 71% ocean. That figure is not right, its not even wrong. The only “saving grace” is that it wasn’t out by more than an order of magnitude. But I wouldn’t really call that saving or grace.
Eric Barnes says:
March 14, 2014 at 8:19 am
————————————-
“True that. But w/o Greenhouse gas, the only way for the atmosphere to heat would be via conduction.”
Largely correct, but N2 and O2 do absorb some radiation, and this, in a stagnant atmosphere can lead to radiative super heating as in the thermosphere. (This is a minor technical point. If radiative gases were removed all surface life would end well before this became a concern)
“All radiative cooling/heating would then happen at the surface (minus dust/aerosol). There would still be a lapse rate, but the extremes at surface would be more pronounced wouldn’t they?”
Yes and no. In the absence of radiative gases, the lapse rate would fade and the bulk of the atmosphere would trend isothermal. The observed lapse rate is produced by vertical circulation across the atmospheric pressure gradient. (note that the lapse rate ends and reverses just after the tropopause where all strong vertical circulation in our atmosphere ends. Also the point where all significant radiative gases in our atmosphere end 😉 )
As to extremes at the surface, yes. This is exactly what Dr. Spencer predicted for a “non-radiative” atmosphere. Strong (near surface only) advection winds at dawn and dusk over land, limited by surface friction. However I would say not so much over the oceans. Our oceans need the atmosphere to cool (no, they provably won’t freeze without DWLWIR). Without radiative cooling of the atmosphere, it can’t cool the oceans. Boiled whale time I’m afraid.
“the lapse rate ends and reverses just after the tropopause where all strong vertical circulation in our atmosphere ends. Also the point where all significant radiative gases in our atmosphere end.
Is ozone in the stratosphere not a significant radiative gas ?
The lapse rate goes right to space but changes rate and trend from layer to layer.
“In the absence of radiative gases, the lapse rate would fade and the bulk of the atmosphere would trend isothermal.”
No it wouldn’t because there would still be uneven surface heating causing density differentials in the horizontal plane. Adiabatic uplift would do the rest.
Konrad 5:59pm: Basic Earth measured albedo~0.3, L&O emissivity 1.0, rounded, gross solar constant, as atm. emissivity is alone simply varied from Tmean=288K down to Tmean=255K is based only on the 1st law balanced control volume around Earth 1.5m AGL of the thermometers.
To disprove this, Konrad experiment proper control volume accounting must disprove the 1st law. If it does, please notify local authorities as a law is broken. All of thermodynamics since Carnot/Clausius will change should the subsequent investigation agree with Konrad.
“..section 5.17…- and the surface temperature claimed? -18C! It’s junk science.”
First, search your linked document for “hydrostatic” so that you will see the atm. thermo. science is based on that evidence. Then search a few modern atm. thermo. text books for the same word, they will all develop the theory from that evidence.
An atm. must be in place for all of the subsequent thermo. development. To suddenly write “If the Earth had no atmosphere…” by any author, simply write it off – invoking this scenario is not their best moment. It is just as easy to understand the basic physics of why satellites measure 255K and surface thermometers measure 288K with an atmosphere in place.
As is Konrad’s habit when quoting Sir George Simpson 1938, to support his view unfairly he clips a sec. 5.17 passage but leaves out important 5.17 content. Continue reading the clip for the full story Konrad & note this is exactly Callendar’s easier to understand response comment above in this thread in reply to Simpson; here “mean emission level” means EEH in the top post title:
“The warming effect of the atmosphere, known as the greenhouse effect, is best understood as follows. The atmosphere is opaque in the infrared, which means that the mean emission level is lifted off the ground. The mean temperature at the emission level (i.e. the mean brightness temperature) must be Te in order for emission to match absorbed insolation. But the atmosphere has a positive lapse rate, and so the temperature at the ground must be greater than Te.”
Konrad continues: “This means that the net effect of the atmosphere over our oceans is ocean cooling. And the atmosphere has only one effective cooling mechanism.”
Concur! With Konrad writing you have to watch the pea under the thimble very carefully and sometimes you can’t easily do so with his clips & experimental obtuse descriptions; at 3 card Monte, Konrad would be masterful – descriptions/interpretations of his experiments show the misdirection (in reality, the pea is they all follow the 1st law).
Magician steps are: 1) the pledge, 2) the turn, 3) the prestige – observe Konrad makes a pledge, does the turn with obtuse experiments and delivers the prestige to amaze readers. You need to find the money card w/Konrad to understand this stuff.
As pointed out by tallbloke and Tim, yes, concur with Konrad the atm. cools the oceans by radiating to space – oceans won’t boil off as Konrad agrees when atm. is in place w/hydrostatic equilibrium in evidence so the atm. cools in that sense. However, as a theoretical transparent Earth atm. grows more opaque to IR, the L&O surface Tmean increases from 255K as EEH lifts off surface to observed 288K as evidenced by 1st law, thermometers and the satellites.
Trick says:
March 14, 2014 at 2:12 pm
——————————————-
K- “This means that the net effect of the atmosphere over our oceans is ocean cooling. And the atmosphere has only one effective cooling mechanism. [radiative gases]”
T – “Concur!”
Whoops! Have we forgotten something? Atmosphere cooling the oceans was it? Sorry, the high priests of the Church of Radiative Climatology have already decreed that the oceans would freeze solid in the absence of downwelling LWIR from the atmosphere. They have decreed that the atmosphere warms our oceans.
You can’t re-write history in the age of the Internet. The gospel is locked in and recorded for all to see (and laugh at). Surface of -18C in the absence of an atmosphere was it? Try ~ +60C.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 14, 2014 at 2:10 pm
————————————-
“Is ozone in the stratosphere not a significant radiative gas ?”
Not significant in terms of vertical circulation
“The lapse rate goes right to space but changes rate and trend from layer to layer.”
The lapse rate stagnates and reverses after the tropopause. Vertical circulation above the tropopause is slow and insignificant.
“No it wouldn’t because there would still be uneven surface heating causing density differentials in the horizontal plane. Adiabatic uplift would do the rest.”
Until you have actually built and run some of the gas column experiments I can’t really help here.
You will not get the strong vertical circulation necessary to pneumatically generate the observed lapse rate by disparate heating and cooling just at the surface. Further to this I have shown you the empirical experiment demonstrating why conductive cooling by the surface is ineffective. Do you dispute the results?
Remember, to generate the observed lapse rate, vertical circulation must necessarily exceed the speed of vertical gas conduction. It needs to be powerful. Only shedding 90% of all energy absorbed by the atmosphere, land and ocean from radiative gases at altitude to space has the power to generate the circulation observed.
I know that our atmosphere appears as an onion skin on the planet. But shallow experiments in which entrainment occur when heating and cooling at disparate surface points do not apply. The tall gas columns I am showing you are valid. Due to the pressure gradient, our atmosphere as a far greater height in terms of Rayleigh-Bernard circulation than can be inferred from its physical height.
Over at ATTP things have pretty much ground to a halt because it all boiled down to a belief by the AGW proponents that the mass of an atmosphere does not in itself have a significant bearing on surface temperatures.
They rely only on the radiative properties of GHGs alone to raise surface temperatures above the blackbody figure of 255K.
I have trawled the internet and see that that is the generally promulgated view.
The trouble is that I am certain that when I was being educated the more atmospheric mass within a given strength of gravitational field and at a given level of irradiation then the higher the surface temperature would rise.
The amount of atmospheric mass was then regarded as a critical factor in the setting of the surface temperature.
What happened to all that ?
There is lots of work by many that seeks to return to that view and the findings of N & K plus many others seem to support it.
I also come across many who still favour that view and of course it fits in with the Gas Laws.
Some old text books would be useful but I don’t have access to any and of course such publications are readily destroyed and replaced over time.
Can atmospheric mass really be a negligible factor in setting surface temperatures ?
That is the nub of the issue.
“Until you have actually built and run some of the gas column experiments I can’t really help here”
Those experiments are not conducted using a rotating spherical body open to the sky with a rough surface and irradiated by a point source of light.
Apply those parameters and you will get plenty of vigour in the air circulation and the observed lapse rate will develop.
I am not sure of the atmosphere of the planet that Konrad describes but it isn’t the Earth. You can not have an Earth atmosphere without H2O gas over a water ocean. Maybe he is describing the Stratosphere where there is very little H2O to disturb his radiation experiments. To boil a whale would require the surface pressure on the oceans to be tripled to about 45psia to raise the surface evaporation temperature to the level,140F, to injure a whale. pg
Konrad 2:25pm:
The pledge: “CO2 et. al. GHGs cool at all ppm .GT. 0.0.”
The turn: “..the absence of downwelling LWIR…”
The prestige: “Try ~ +60C.”
Watch the pea: Konrad writes about TOA control volume, hides surface control volume up sleeve; eliminate hydrostatic condition, oceans boil not freeze. I’m amazed and entertained by Konrad magic. I prefer my science watching the pea and getting the money card right.
There’s an app. for that, just point your phone camera at the 3 cards in Monte, the app. will follow the money for you. Pity in Las Vegas, no card counting. My camera app. is focused by 1st law,
Stephen 2:58pm: “What happened to all that ?”
Nothing. Mass radiates above 0K. Increase mass, increase radiation. Your old text books taught that too, you forgot the effects in the meantime because the exact science is hard to recall (and you admit the formulas are beyond you so resort to narrative), consulting modern text books – even just their narrative – will refresh your learning and even update in some areas.
Increase mass, increase conduction, convection and the amount of energy stored in the atmosphere.
Increase delay time in transmission of solar energy through the system, resulting in higher surface temperature.
No provision for that in radiative theory.
p.g.sharrow says:
March 14, 2014 at 3:08 pm
————————————-
I fear you miss the point. The Church of radiative climatology has decreed that the surface Tav of our planet would be -18C in the absence of an atmosphere. All I have done is run empirical experiments to check how hot our oceans would get in the absence of all atmospheric factors except pressure.
The answer most assuredly is not -18C. It’s +80C or beyond.
The conclusions from this are simple –
-The net effect of the atmosphere over our oceans is ocean cooling.
– Our atmosphere has only one effective cooling mechanism – radiative gases.
– The net effect of radiative gases in our atmosphere is therefore planetary cooling.
The claims gospel of the Church of Radiative Climatology are false. Our oceans will not freeze in the absence of DWLWIR. The experiments are up-thread. Please try them.
Trick says:
March 14, 2014 at 3:11 pm
————————————
No pea, and now no “Trick”.
The Church of Radiative Climatology claimed a surface Tav of -18C in the absence of an atmosphere. I have disproved that by empirical experiment. And to the glaring ~80C error between the figures you have no answer. No answer at all.
Are you actually going to try claiming that the high priests are right, and that our oceans would freeze without DWLWIR?
Stephen 3:25pm: “No provision for that in radiative theory.”
Watch all 3 peas. Radiative theory is one of three; Stephen holds conduction, convection up his sleeve here. The “provision for that” is in conductive, convective energy transfer all operating superposed with radiative energy transfer in the surface control volume while only radiative transfer operates at TOA.
Find all 3 peas discussed plainly & not up sleeves in narrative in modern text books and specialist papers. Blogs, not so much. Magicians inhabit blogs at times.
Oops, the magic of tags got me.
Stephen 3:25pm: “No provision for that in radiative theory.”
Watch all 3 peas. Radiative theory is one of three; Stephen holds conduction, convection up his sleeve here. The “provision for that” is in conductive, convective energy transfer all operating superposed with radiative energy transfer in the surface control volume while only radiative transfer operates at TOA. Find all 3 peas discussed plainly not up sleeves in narrative in modern text books and specialist papers. Blogs, not so much. Magicians inhabit blogs at times.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 14, 2014 at 3:25 pm
“Increase mass, increase conduction, convection and the amount of energy stored in the atmosphere. Increase delay time in transmission of solar energy through the system, resulting in higher surface temperature. No provision for that in radiative theory”
——————————————————————-
None what so ever. And that is why the gospel of the Church of Radiative climatology is a load of…
They couldn’t even get the surface temp. of the lunar regolith right. What hope would they have with our transparent oceans?
Konrad 3:41pm: My screen name takes on yet another meaning when hockey’s hat trick success was the original intent.
The pledge: high priests are wrong (i.e. 1st law of the grand masters is wrong)
The turn: empirical experiment results displayed with Konrad’s view superposed hiding 1st law pea up sleeve.
The prestige: ~80C error
Konrad – consider what a theoretical earth transparent atm. 1st law Tmean of 255K implies for the ocean surface that you hold up your sleeve. Also the oceans don’t “freeze solid” even over a glacial max. epoch. The deep ocean Tmean oscillates over eons of glacials and interglacials. The time constant is all that is in question. Not the 1st law.
3:47pm: They couldn’t even get the surface temp. of the lunar regolith right.
Can you?
“Find all 3 peas discussed plainly not up sleeves in narrative in modern text books and specialist papers.”
Not in terms of warming the surface without DWIR you don’t.
Conduction and convection are slower than radiation and so warm the system. Expressing it all in terms of fast radiative transfer misses out the reason why the surface can heat above 255K from more mass alone.
It also misses out that convection acts as a regulator between conduction and radiation.
Expressing it all in terms of almost immediate radiative transfers misses out the fact that the rate of convection can vary in order to achieve its regulatory function.
Konrad thinks I should do his experiments! Konrad I am an old man that is short of time and resources undertaking my own physics experiment on mass/inertia and gravity. Why should I undertake an experiment on dry atmospheric gases when those things were well studied 200 years ago. Green house gas is an invented term that has nothing to do with the actual conditions in a green house. pg
Stephen Wilde (March 14, 2014 at 2:58 pm ),
You summed it up really well. The 1896 Arrhenius conjecture about trace gases is false. Clearly, the bulk of the atmosphere does matter. Here is a link to my little rant on that topic:
Trick says:
March 14, 2014 at 4:06 pm
“consider what a theoretical earth transparent atm. 1st law Tmean of 255K implies for blah, blah, blah.”
Why? That 255k figure is proven to be garbage by empirical experiment. Why would you keep trotting it out?
“3:47pm: They couldn’t even get the surface temp. of the lunar regolith right.
Can you?”
Of course. How basic is that? Just get a bucket of sand from a volcanic beach in west NZ, dry it out place it in a vacuum chamber, insert thermocouples and expose to solar SW on a lunar diurnal cycle. Then verify your math against reality. It’s not hard. And there’s certainly no “magic”
Only a fool or a climate scientist would skip a simple baseline experiment like that.
I will be fascinated what thimble you will attempt to hide your brain under next. (Hint – avoid the ocean one, it’s transparent 😉 )
Stephen 4:09pm: “…the surface can heat above 255K from more mass alone.”
To heat something, anything, one has to use up a portion of an energy reservoir, mass alone cannot heat anything.
The sun heats earth surface to Tmean 255K with transparent atm. by using up hydrogen reservoir. I have lowered myself to use the word “heat”, may the high priests forgive me, entropy should be used but Stephen won’t follow that as easy.
Above transparent starting point, you add atm. gas mass, you add DWIR and some more atm. opaqueness which enables the sun to heat the surface a little more by 1st law. So with added atm. mass the sun’s ability to heat earth surface by using up hydrogen between transparent & today’s actual atm. might range then (with added atm. mass) maybe 256K to 289K. 1st law is all you need.
This is all in narrative in modern texts, they are available free for loan at the library.
Don’t be silly, Trick.
You know I am referring to mass subjected to irradiation and held within a gravity field.
You also know that you don’t need DWIR if conduction and convection have a net warming effect from slowing down the speed of throughput of solar energy.
All the fuss is about a trace gas radiating a trivial bit of DWIR whilst the elephant in the room is the whopping great bulk of atmospheric mass obstructing the free flow of radiation by conducting and convecting instead of radiating.
Do grow up.
p.g.sharrow says:
March 14, 2014 at 4:25 pm
———————————
My apologies, it was not my intent to waste your time, and I wish you luck with your experiment.
I fully agree that “geenhouse gas” is a manufactured term intended to control “narrative”. The correct term is radiative gases.
Konrad 4:27pm: Why? That 255k figure is proven to be garbage by empirical experiment. Why would you keep trotting it out?
There’s a garbage eating app. for that 255K!
Tmean 255K is obtained by application of basic 1st law of the high priests Carnot/Clausius maybe a little Kinetic Theory of Maxwell. For 255K to be trotted out incorrectly, you just need to prove their 1st law wrong. Your experiments all trot out the 1st law, so I do too.
Earth’s EEH with transparent atm. Tmean 255K is 0 AGL. At space normal molecule speeds, Tmean 288K, EEH is raised AGL about 5km.
“So with added atm. mass the sun’s ability to heat earth surface by using up hydrogen between transparent & today’s actual atm. might range then (with added atm. mass) maybe 256K to 289K. 1st law is all you need.”
AGW proponents will not accept that added mass can achieve that. They say it must be more GHGs.
You implied that yourself in a previous comment when you involved DWIR which is primarily (apart from a trivial fraction) derived from GHGs
Please stop blathering.
The slowdown in energy transmission (and surface warming from 256 to 289 is achieved by mass obstructing the free flow of radiation by diverting energy to conduction and convection.
DWIR and GHGs almost completely irrelevant.
Stephen 4:37pm: “You know I am referring to mass subjected to irradiation and held within a gravity field.”
Yes. Don’t be silly Stephen, do get to the library, read a modern text (you can ignore the formulas at first and still learn).
The mass of atm. in the control volume at the surface thermometer level is subjected irradiation both from the sun and the DWIR in same direction, UWIR in other direction, convection, conduction for Tmean 288K. If atm. is theoretically made transparent, DWIR goes to 0 and equilibrium is once again achieved at Tmean 255K by 1st law with conductive, convective and radiative transfer still in action superposed to new steady state equilibrium.
At TOA only radiative energy transfer is in action to deep space, meaning all the convective, conductive energy transfer was dumped into & remains in the atm; satellites would still measure 255K. They would not get hit by convection or conduction energy transfer.
Stephen 4:45pm: “AGW proponents will not accept that added mass can achieve that. They say it must be more GHGs.”
You just (re)learned all mass radiates; all mass is GHG. Add any mass, get more GHG. Some mass more IR active (opaque) than other mass. AGW proponents focus on IR active mass.
Do get to a library, stop the silliness, this is all explained in modern texts. They sort out the science from the magic.
Stephen 4:45pm: This clip is blather or show me that energy diverters inhabit the atm.:
“The slowdown in energy transmission (and surface warming from 256 to 289 is achieved by mass obstructing the free flow of radiation by diverting energy to conduction and convection.
Since you won’t go to library, here is what you will find in science explained there:
”The slowdown in energy transmission (and surface warming from 256 to 289) is achieved by added mass obstructing the free flow of radiation to space, conduction and convection.”
Trick: 3:47pm: “They couldn’t even get the surface temp. of the lunar regolith right”.
Can you?
Konrad 4:06pm: “Just get a bucket of sand from a volcanic beach in west NZ, dry it out place it in a vacuum chamber, insert thermocouples and expose to solar SW on a lunar diurnal cycle. Then verify your math against reality. It’s not hard. And there’s certainly no “magic”.
Concur. So what Tmean “can you” get?
Thanks tb 5:32pm. Tim’s et. al. nice stuff & great work also linked above in this thread from doing the real experiment on the moon (results from Diviner project) indicate moon around Tmean = 214K.
What does Konrad think? Oh I already know from being amazed at Konrad’s the prestige: Should be +80C or beyond (in true Buzz Lightyear fashion). Which is 353K or beyond.
Calling Tim….
I’m trying to find out from Tim if that 214.4K Tmean is at the equator, or for the whole Moon. Pretty sure he means at the equator, but stand by.
However, Vavasada’s paper shows an average equatorial Tmean of about 240K from just below the surface.
I just love the way Trick keeps referring to “Modern Text” as if there is any guarantee that the text is any use whatsoever.
I bet he believes that CO2 in the Thermosphere actually causes warming as it is the only place where the CO2 wavebands are not swamped by H2O.
tb – https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/a-model-of-lunar-temperature/
Quoted cite where it looks like Tim has est. integrating the total surface latitudes not just Vavasada et. al. Fig. 7 equator ~240K mean. Will be interesting what he explains. There is an issue with surface area of sphere and T grids, not sure how/if he handles.
“Lunar surface:
392.8K peak
93.99K minimum
214.7K mean
ACO 6:22pm – I happen to concur with Feynman having read his stuff extensively, when theory and experiment within CIs agree, you just might have something useful but concur we are still just practicing science, haven’t perfected it yet.
AFAIK nothing lives in the thermosphere, if it does, let those dudes worry. The surface Tmean and its drivers do seem to be of interest to earth surface dwellers who practice science not magic. Oh – you can find magic explained in modern books too.
Trick: OK, maybe it’s coincidence that Tim’s average for the whole surface is the same as Vavasada’s average for the equator. Can’t see it somehow…
tb 6:32pm – Not sure what you imply avg. being same. Vavasada Fig. 7 had ~240K equator (by Mark 1 eyeball). Tim has 214.7 total surface if I read it right.
Trick: Tim just confirmed by email that the 214.4K is the surface average temp for the equatorial band, same as Vavasada. Hence the well matched plot of his model and Vavasada’s result.
The 240K in Vavasada’s fig7 is for subsurface equator. You can see the surface is 25K colder from the plot.
tb: Thx. How large is Tim’s equatorial band then? Latitude to Latitude. In his piece mentions “5′ intervals to 5′ the pole” – may be out of context.
Hi folks. This has turned up at a bad time for me personally where if anyone noticed I have been quiet of recent (yeah okay, an improvement). A series of things have gone wrong here leaving me too exhausted for much else.
I spoke to Tallbloke earlier about the lunar matter. I’m not sure of the situation looking at how I left the files and after a couple of years.
The basis of what I was doing is good. The answers might not be so I’d be cautious over reading too much into the old work. At the time there was no independent check. I couldn’t figure out a way to make the idea easily accessible to others back then. Today, probably at least as awkward.
Oh, ok Tim, tb. 240-25=215K. Call equator what you will. Including more surface integrated to poles the Diviner Tmean must then be lower.
Trick said:
“”Since you won’t go to library, here is what you will find in science explained there:
”The slowdown in energy transmission (and surface warming from 256 to 289) is achieved by added mass obstructing the free flow of radiation to space, conduction and convection.””
Please provide a link to that library content since it is just what I need.
Mind you, it differs from your contention that the warming effect of extra mass is from the minimal radiative capability of the additional bulk gases.
It appears to confirm my point that instead it is a mater of conduction and convection.
Stephen 7:46pm – “Please provide a link to that library content since it is just what I need.”
Good for you. Here’s a teaser. See Bohren 2006 Sec. 1.2: “All matter – gaseous, liquid, or solid – at all temperatures emits radiation of all frequencies at all times, although in varying amounts.”
A similar statement was in your textbooks long ago, this has been well known since Planck – you know the one w/no less than 3 fundamental constants of nature in it.
See page 33 for free here also. Mind you a bit of necessary formula but the math is unambiguous.
Click to access 9783527405039_Excerpt_001.pdf
The modern full texts still under copyright have to be purchased or library loan obtained. As I have oft quoted, library copies of Bohren 1998 and Bohren 2006 will have plenty of narrative for you. The top post EEH has a solid foundation even by Feynman standards.
Trick, please address the other point.
You have been suggesting that the rise from 256 to 289 is due to the radiative characteristics of GHGs including the minimal radiative capabilities of the bulk atmosphere.
That is no different from the AGW viewpoint and ignores the role of conduction and convection in slowing down the transmission of solar radiation through the Earth’s atmosphere.
That textbook clearly refers to conduction and convection and that must be the primary method of obstructing radiative flow since it is far slower than radiation.
That means that mass per se is the issue and not radiative characteristics.
Please clarify your position.
Stephen: Trick is ignoring the fact that the radiation level at a given altitude is mostly the outcome, not the cause of the temperature of the matter there. He only does this to keep banter going. 😉
Thanks TB.
Sometimes I try too hard to unravel deliberate obfuscation.
I’ve given up on ATTP since Pecka, who must know better, tried to treat gases like solids by suggesting that in order for a warmed, less dense parcel of air to rise it had to be pushed up by some other force and moreover that the additional energy that it acquired whilst rising higher was added from that other source.
He likened the rise of warmed gases to lifting a stone against gravity.
Priceless.
He had no idea of the adiabatic process either.
Nor do any of them accept that any part of the temperature rise from 255 to 288 has anything to do with atmospheric mass.
I call that denialism.
Well the temp rise is from colder than 255. How much is due to what is the big Q!
Stephen Wilde says, March 14, 2014 at 10:15 pm:
“I’ve given up on ATTP since Pecka, who must know better, tried to treat gases like solids by suggesting that in order for a warmed, less dense parcel of air to rise it had to be pushed up by some other force and moreover that the additional energy that it acquired whilst rising higher was added from that other source.
He likened the rise of warmed gases to lifting a stone against gravity.
Priceless.”
From what you write here, Stephen, it seems to me that Pekka was simply referring to ‘the buoyant force’ and that the energy the rising air parcel acquired was simply the conductive heat from the surface.
The upward buoyant force must indeed push against the opposite downward force that is the weight of the atmosphere (which includes gravity) on top of the expanding surface air parcel. The weight of the atmosphere is expressed by the atmospheric pressure and when an air parcel expands it has to do so against this external pressure. This means that it has to do work on the surrounding air in order to expand into it and will thereby slowly lose internal energy as it rises. When the energy originally supplied to it from the surface as conductive heat has all been spent doing work on the surrounding atmosphere, the air parcel will stop rising. Thus, the more heat transferred from the surface to the surface air in the first place, the higher the heated air will be able to rise, because its original buoyant acceleration will be higher.
But ‘acceleration’ results from one force overcoming another force. The more the one force overcomes the other, the higher the acceleration rate. So either the first force becomes bigger (more heat), or the second force becomes smaller. The second (the opposing) force is the atmospheric weight. If it were smaller, the acceleration would be higher at the same heating rate. If it were larger, the acceleration would be lower at the same heating rate.
Well, turns out the complete picture is somewhat more complicated than this. But this is the basic principle explaining why the the surface is 288K rather than 255K (or rather much colder). Atmospheric pressure (weight) on the surface also controls evaporation rates. The heavier the atmosphere, the lower the evaporation rate at equal heating rate. This also obviously affects surface temperature. The surface seeks energy balance, after all.
Stephen, tb – At hockey game. Find your answers in the link I provided. No fun if banter one sided unless Konrad has some entertaining and amazing magic to share. I volunteer check your work later.
tchannon says:
March 14, 2014 at 7:07 pm
————————————
Sorry to hear that. I hope things improve.
Trick says:
March 14, 2014 at 4:43 pm
“Earth’s EEH with transparent atm. Tmean 255K is 0 AGL. At space normal molecule speeds, Tmean 288K, EEH is raised AGL about 5km.”
———————————————————-
Around in a circle and back to 255K. It’s like a dog returning to….
I wonder in the future if canines will be equipped with GPS collars?
“….in five blog comments you will arrive back at your gastric effluvia…you have arrived….”
Trick, that 255K doesn’t smell any better than the last time you checked. It’s time for some new tricks.
That 255K is not just “on the nose”, it’s completely off. The Earth is not made of green cheese. It is not made of some mystery substance of infinite conductivity, no thermal storage capacity, a fixed albedo of 0.3, illuminated by a ¼ sun that only absorbs and emits radiation from its surface.
This thread was about the validity of the ERL argument. It can be seen if the surface Tav for an earth without atmosphere is incorrectly calculated then every calculation built on that figure is utterly wrong. Any hope of the ERL approach having any validity is lost right there. There is little need to even raise the second critical failing, incorrectly holding non-radiative transports and lapse rate to be constants. The whole of the radiative GHE hypothesis is pseudo science.
Trick, can you show me just where in the calculation for your 255K figure for an earth without an atmosphere SW penetration into transparent materials with slow non-radiative internal energy transport was taken into account?
Konrad philosophizes 1:23am: About green cheese, canines, mystery substances et. al.
It can be seen if the surface Tav for an earth without atmosphere is incorrectly calculated…
I believe earth without atm. is incorrectly calculated too based on the discussion of the moon; the Diviner moon data is a good source to start looking for clues as to why. It is offline at the moment. Plus you gotta’ deal with that ocean boil off thingie. No fun. Fish will be sore at you. And some are pretty big.
Otherwise, like I recommended don’t go there, just philosophize about a non-radiative atm., oceans in place, windy, hydrostatic in all its glory that you started above 6:41am. Lotsa’ decent clues come from that. This allows for forming a fundamental based view into nature of the foundations of EEH.
“Trick, can you show me just where in the calculation for your 255K figure for an earth without an atmosphere SW penetration into transparent materials with slow non-radiative internal energy transport was taken into account?”
Ocean water has an emissivity measured 0.95-0.98 with maybe .004 variation for winds 0,10,20m/sec. Much like an opaque cabbage, which contains a lot of water. Land surface varies more, but you can’t go too wrong integrated over the surface around 0.95 to 0.97. So, land, ocean water, cabbages emissivity integrate out a little under 1.0. Just throw up your hands and round that up to 1.0 thereby eliminating a range of other very, very messy minor simultaneous equations. Getting down to a single balance eqn. can handle w/o computer. This 1.0 is the 1 in eqn. 1.72, page 33 in my link at 8:15pm.
I am here to tell you ocean water and land are opaque, not one IR photon makes it thru the earth like those pesky as hell neutrinos but you can live a productive life on topic w/o those things.
Once you got that cold, dead nuts, go back add some simultaneous eqn.s for water depth of few feet if you like, compute out a few meters difference in EEH out of 5km. Knock yourself out.
Read page 33+ in my link at 8:15pm for all the semi-gory (no pun) results of much science development details. And how earth atm. radiative science got THAT far in the preceding 32 pages. Come over from the dark side bring your cookies; this side has fundamental constants of nature, light, tests, and laws. Lotta’ fun banter and parties too.
Ben Wouters said way above at 1:19am:
“Imo part of the explanation for the moons temperature being above it’s radiative balance temperature for a body with one side continuously facing the sun is geothermal flux.”
May be some word slips there, continuously facing earth? Moon’s Tmean below radiative balance?
The Tim et. al Diviner stuff shows Tmean should be less than Tmean 214K surface at equator and the entire surface Tmean from 1st law balance on NASA moon fact sheet page is 270.7K. I think that’s interesting and have not yet discovered a satisfying reason.
It should be evident the moon’s EEH is 0 AGL given only 25,000 kg. mass atm. But whoa, the Diviner data implies a negative EEH. Can that make sense at all? Don’t think so. But dunno. Should be more clues to learn about this -EEH implication, always good to learn like Stephen now, actually inquiring enough to want to look stuff up – finding there is more to Tmean nature than mass, insolation and gravity.
Kristian.
Pekka was not referring to the buoyant force because that causes the air to rise of its own volition.
He specifically likened it to the lifting of a rock which has no buoyant force.
Kristian
“When the energy originally supplied to it (the warmed air parcel) from the surface as conductive heat has all been spent doing work on the surrounding atmosphere, the air parcel will stop rising”
You don’t understand the adiabatic process either.
Once the parcel leaves the surface none of the initial conductive energy that caused it to start rising gets used up.
The initial conductive energy stays within the parcel and ensures that all the way up (unless stopped by an inversion) the parcel constantly finds itself to be less dense than the surrounding air and so it keeps going with no further loss of energy.
The energy needed to work against he surrounding air comes from using up its KE which is why it cools. Pekka specifically denied that the energy needed to do the work came from the KE.
He really has no idea, which I found astonishing in view of his experience and status.
I think that when the radiative theory came to be taught they just dropped basic thermostatic principles such as that of adiabatic uplift and descent from the curriculum because on the face of it the radiative equations appeared to account for the surface warming via DWIR.
They didn’t realise that proposing a thermal effect on the surface from DWIR was duplicating what the descent side of the adiabatic process was already achieving.
I gave them evidence that descending air warms adiabatically from 10C at 700mb pressure to 25C at the surface with no new energy added. They ignored it.
I pointed out that descending air after dumping water vapour as condensate warms on the descent at the DALR which is twice the rate of cooling on the ascent which is governed by the moist rate, They ignored it.
There is no willingness there for proper scientific discourse and gross ignorance of basic thermodynamics in atmospheres.
Kristian.
The key thing is that on the basis of your description of the initial conductive warming being used up on the ascent by doing work against gravity then you do need a higher surface temperature to create more convection.
That is the whole problem and why AGW needed to introduce a surface warming effect from DWIR.
If one refers to the adiabatic process properly one can see that the initial conductive energy is not lost during uplift. It simply gets converted to PE and then ,crucially, it comes back to KE on the descent and so when the parcel gets back to the surface that initially conducted energy is still there.
That is what the AGW crowd (and you and Pekka) do not realise.
That is why the surface is warmer than S-B predicts, that is why the surface then radiates to space the same as it receives.
The adiabatic energy exchange is net zero because cooling on the ascent is exactly the same as warming on the descent.
It is said by Eschenbach, ATTP and others that because the energy exchange between surface and air is net zero you can ignore it but you can’t because the energy in that exchange is still adding to energy at the surface arriving from the sun so the surface MUST be warmer than S-B.
The result is a surface temperature enhancement AND radiation out equalling radiation in.
And because of the peculiar, counterintuitive nature of the adiabatic process you don’t need DWIR to balance the energy budget.
As per one of Pekka’s comments they have convection in as a net cooling effect for the surface but that is wrong. Adiabatic convection is thermally neutral at the surface.
That is the error in AGW theory and it is rife even in the minds of sceptics because knowledge of the true nature of the adiabatic cycle seems to have been lost by nearly everyone since the education authorities substituted DWIR in place of the thermal effect of the descent phase.
Trick says:
March 15, 2014 at 3:52 am
“Konrad philosophises ….”
————————————-
philosophises?
Trick, who do you you think you are combating?
Anthony watts has a solar powered house and an electric car.
I don’t own a petrol burning ego box. No SUV. The only “vehicles” my partner and I own are are kayaks and push-bikes. (“ if it floats flies or f__ks – rent it” – Alan ( my flight instructor))
I had to settle for two out of three, even if the current government won’t acknowledge it 😉
Trick, in failing to attempt, or even acknowledge this –
“Trick, can you show me just where in the calculation for your 255K figure for an earth without an atmosphere SW penetration into transparent materials with slow non-radiative internal energy transport was taken into account?”
– you telegraph a great deal. You can’t answer it can you? Here’s the thing about libraries, they contain a lot of knowledge but little intelligence. Rote leaning what others have worked out is no substitute for being one of those whose results are rote learned by others.
I understand your distress that you wasted all that time learning how to back calculate a fictional surface Tav from a fictional ERL. But I’m sorry but there is nothing I can say or do that will turn you into one of those that would have instantly seen that this was a dead end. We have discussed the SR-71 before, and how Kelly Johnston could “see the air”. I’m not Kelly Johnston, but I’m good enough to see that you are not in the ballpark. No amount of rote learning fixes this. Either you can see it or you can’t. And you,Trick, can not.
But then, I do not consider you a “true believer”. I suspect you know that the whole AGW thing is tripe. You are just hoping to delay the inevitable by doing your best to instil doubt in sceptics. Have you not worked out who most sceptic are? Engineers. You have been stupidly trying to instil doubt in those who must doubt themselves for a living. Your mistake has not just invoked resistance, it has invoked RAGE. Good work Trick, now there will be no escape for any of the fellow travellers.
Having established that adiabatic convection is thermally neutral as regards the surface we can see that the heat acquired by the atmosphere via conduction from the surface never leaves the surface whilst new solar energy continues to arrive and depart.
That is how the mass of an atmosphere raises the surface temperature above S-B.
The next question is as to why even more energy arriving at the surface, such as by way of DWIR from radiative gases affects the convective circulation but not surface temperature.
The fact is that the amount of conductive energy that the air at the surface can hold on to is determined by the weight of the atmosphere above the surface.
Convection from a solid surface is just the same in principle as vaporisation from the surface of boiling water.
The maximum temperature achievable in both cases is pressure related (the weight of the atmosphere). 100C at surface pressure for boiling water and 33C above S-B at surface pressure for a solid surface.
So in both cases more energy coming from any source other than more mass, gravity or insolation results in faster processing of energy throughput and not a rise in surface temperature.
QED.
I note my last comment is in moderation.
Rog, Tim,
anything between “you have no idea” and “I may like improvements” may be safely deleted. Probably for the best. I have just have had a little flashback to that time (No! Not at band camp…) where JC had to contend with deuterium fusion not involving fissile initiators. JC was right, and “OTT” wasn’t the half of it.
That’s the problem with 20/20 hindsight goggles, misplace them and the chance of finding them again is infinitesimal…
Konrad: Anything with ‘Anthony Watts’ in it drops into moderation, because while I think he is due some fair criticism, I don’t like unseemly attacks on anyone. So I read comments containing his name before editing/approving them.
Stephen: “Pekka was not referring to the buoyant force because that causes the air to rise of its own volition.
He specifically likened it to the lifting of a rock which has no buoyant force.”
Good point.
Trick: “The Tim et. al Diviner stuff shows Tmean should be less than Tmean 214K surface at equator and the entire surface Tmean from 1st law balance on NASA moon fact sheet page is 270.7K.”
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/moonfact.html
Black-body temperature (K) 270.7
This figure is in error. The error arises out of the incorrect application of the Stefan-Boltzmann law
The Moon is a spherical rotating body illuminated from one side by the Sun at a zenith rate of 1360.8W/m^2 (or whatever the solar ‘constant’ is this week). But the calculation treats the Moon as a stationary body under a constant illumination from all sides.
The erroneous formula used is
Pi*R^2 S0 (1 – AMoon) = 4Pi*R^2 TMoon^4
where PiR^2 is the projected geometrical area of the Earth, S0 is
the solar constant (or, solar irradiance at the mean Sun-Earth
distance, 1360.8 W/m2, as given by Kopp and Lean, 2011),
and AMoon is the planetary albedo of the Moon (nominal value,
AMoon = 0.12).
Hansen Lacis et al 2013
The role of long-lived greenhouse gases as principal
LW control knob that governs the global surface
temperature for past and future climate change
Tellus
*Corresponding author,
e-mail: Andrew.A.Lacis@nasa.gov
Accepted for Publication
(Preprint Version)
This paper is part of a Thematic Cluster in honor of the late Professor Bert Bolin for his
outstanding contributions (sic) to climate science.
Tellus B 2013. © A. A. Lacis et al.
Citation: Tellus B 2013, 65, 19734, http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/tellusb.v65i0.19734
SERIES B
CHEMICAL
AND PHYSICAL
METEOROLOGY
This is a load of bollox, as Nikolov and Zeller ably demonstrated in their paper:
Despite being vilified, attacked, denigrated and censored by Anthony watts and his pig-ignorant and potty mouthed crony Willis Eschenbach.
The albedo difference between Moon and Earth is then used to arrive at the spurious 255K figure for Earth.
tallbloke says:
March 15, 2014 at 10:11 am
—————————————
Rog,
thanks for the timely [snip]
as your fellow country man Terry Pratchett wrote (paraphrased) –
“there are no good and bad people. There are only ever and always the bad people, It’s just that some of them are on different sides. An unending sea of evil, shallow in most places, but deeper, oh so much deeper in others.”
I may have been a very naughty puppy, but I am dog paddling toward the shallows just as fast as I can 😉
Stephen Wilde says, March 15, 2014 at 7:47 am:
“You don’t understand the adiabatic process either.”
Stephen, it is you that don’t understand the adiabatic process. I’m sorry. You’ve invented your own version of how the adiabatic process is supposed to work. As soon as anyone tries to present to you the common and well-known physical explanation of how it really works, you immediately get all defensive, exclaiming that they don’t get the process. We do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiabatic_process
You build your whole hypothesis on energy being somehow brought back to the surface from the atmosphere. I’ve asked you to explain how this is supposed to work thermodynamically, seeing that the way heat flows through the system is always Sun -> surface -> troposphere -> space. There is no conduction/convection globally of heat from atmosphere to surface.
The atmosphere prevents the free escape of energy from the surface through the movement of air. That’s what happens. The original delay forcing the surface to warm extra (that is, accumulate energy) is all in the conductive/convective transport of energy from the surface through the troposphere to the tropopause from where it’s radiated to space. In this way the troposphere works as a ‘conductive’ insulating layer on the surface.
Stephen Wilde says, March 15, 2014 at 7:34 am:
“Pekka was not referring to the buoyant force because that causes the air to rise of its own volition.
He specifically likened it to the lifting of a rock which has no buoyant force.”
OK. Then I misunderstood. Pekka is a sophist.
Stephen Wilde says, March 15, 2014 at 7:34 am:
“Pekka was not referring to the buoyant force because that causes the air to rise of its own volition.
He specifically likened it to the lifting of a rock which has no buoyant force.”
Actually, the same magnitude of buoyant force acts on the rock as the air parcel. It’s just that the considerably higher mass of the rock means it’s not going to float upwards. Buoyancy depends on the pressure and relative density of the surrounding fluid. It’s not a ‘force’ inherent to the object itself.
TB said:
“It’s just that the considerably higher mass of the rock means it’s not going to float upwards.”
Actually it is because a solid cannot change its density as much as a gas on being warmed .That is a result of the strength of the molecular bonds in solids.
Anyway, the rules are completely different for solids and masses.
As I pointed out to Pekka, in meteorology, warmed air starts to rise of its own volition leaving lower pressure beneath into which denser air then flows so there is no question that any force other than the initial slug of uneven surface heating is required. The point was lost on him.
Kristian:
I fear that I must continue to disagree with the description of adiabatic uplift from you..
There is no doubt that once initiated such uplift doesn’t just use up the extra slug of energy (over and above the energy held in adjoining parcels) that caused the uplift to begin. Instead it continues until the parcel of air has dropped to the temperature of space unless stopped by an inversion such as the tropopause.
If Kristian were right then it would only rise until it lost the extra slug but it clearly doesn’t. stop at that.
There are sources for the description I gave but I don’t have one handy at present.
More generally:
Radiative physics does not account for adiabatic warming on descent. Air at 700mb at 10C warms to 25C at the surface. They assume that convection including the adiabatic component has a net cooling effect. It doesn’t. Adiabatic convection is thermally neutral at the surface because the descent phase matches the uplift phase.
There is a permanent pool of conductive energy held at the surface by the weight of the mass of the atmosphere and that raises surface temperature from 255 to 288 or whatever with no effect required from DWIR.
Once at the surface all the available energy merges into a haze of kinetic energy which at that point is in transition between radiation and conduction.
That haze of kinetic energy then splits into radiative energy release and conductive energy release in precise proportions to match energy in from space with energy out to space AND provide the pool of conductive energy which remains at the surface to maintain the adiabatic portion of convective uplift and descent.
Having failed to recognise the energy in the descent phase radiative theory thinks it has to introduce DWIR to balance the books. It doesn’t. They are wrong and everything else flows from that.
Stephen 7:34am, tb 10:23am: I’m not familiar what Pekka cite was referring to, not sure where a link was given to find out but both of you need to study a little more on the buoyant force of a rock.
Stephen: “…lifting of a rock which has no buoyant force.”
tb: “Good point.”
There are student designed rock canoe races at certain engineering schools! Demonstrating rocks can float, all you need is to displace equivalent weight of fluid. A rock on earth surface has a buoyant force of the weight of air it displaces aiding in your efforts to pick it up. Aerosols are just small rocks. Now for rocks on the moon some things are different as in the moon EEH.
tb 10:44am: Thx for that synopsis. Will take some time to parse thru for EEH application consternation, as is true for rocks some things are different on the moon. S-B & 1st law will work if applied correctly; I suspect the NASA emissivity inputs to the 1st law are the issue. Have thoughts, will reply. Need a little more research & do some basic calc.s, pity the Diviner site is off line. Too many basketball and hockey games today. Then softball travel starts next week.
Unfortunately too, Konrad augers in and craters at 9:08am. He may yet dig himself out using science, the 1st law of getting out of craters is stop digging.
tb 10:44am: I googled “regolith emissivity”. 3rd hit paper looks promising, there is some work already done. The basic text on emissivity I cited 8:15pm states:
“The definition of a blackbody as one that absorbs all radiation incident on it contains a trap
for the unwary. Notions about radiation being incident on bodies are valid only when they are
much larger than the wavelength.”
Now this work:
http://dspace.uta.edu/bitstream/handle/10106/126/umi-uta-1407.pdf?sequence=1
states:
“Because of a variety of erosion processes, it appears unlikely that solid rock lies
exposed over much of the surfaces of the Moon. For the Moon, these processes serve to
grind the material into particles that are small compared with the wavelength.”
My guess this will lead in part to resolving the consternation of the moon’s EEH but there is much work ahead for the wary.
PS: You write: “where PiR^2 is the projected geometrical area of the Earth”
Assume you mean moon?
Yes, moon.
Oh dear.
In my previous post I said solids and masses instead of solids and gases.
Ok tb & Tim et. al., the paper I cited 3:59pm is all one needs to see the NASA moon fact sheet you link 10:44am is incorrect to state moon’s: “Black-body temperature (K) 270.7” because of the surface material wavelength to body size issue. So simple EEH becomes not applicable on moon. Moon surface material is a case where BB assumptions of surface emissivity 1.0 trap the unwary.
The paper develops a decent foundation that the regolith emissivity acts like a fine powder in which S-B has a trap for those unwary as I clipped 3:59pm unlike earth L&O surface. This makes the case for me why Konrad is better off to just ignore folks talking earth with no atm. & consider atm. remains in place, just use small perturbation theory consistent w/variation in the atm. transparency to learn about the earth system.
Seems to be correct then in your 10:44am: “The error arises out of the incorrect application of the Stefan-Boltzmann law”.
Because the paper makes a good case for the emissivity of regolith at the surface in the range ~0.50 to ~0.75 far below earth’s 1.0, rounded. As I’ve long observed, once surface emissivity drops below 1.0 there are several other simultaneous eqn.s pop up and the basic formula 1.72 on p. 33 Bohren 2006 text is no longer a good enough basic 1 layer model solution. His Fig. 1.16 shows in part the new complexity.
I would think, but haven’t read this anywhere, that the amount of regolith above bed rock (substantial 5 meters and more per this paper), might serve to model like earth’s atm. but still one can’t play with the basic formula to find something works. The real moon solution from Diviner data quickly becomes too complicated for a basic model.
Key thing is don’t compare moon measured Tmean to simple Earth balance Tmean (and resultant EEH), there is much different surface particle physics to deal with.
Bottom line: don’t think Earth’s basic balance is wrong b/c it doesn’t work for moon; terrestrial simplifications that ~work are just inapplicable on moon.
I’ve had some time to collect my thoughts and write them down. I think this is more or less what several of you have been saying, but let me know what you think.
The usual elementary explanation of the GHE involving back-radiation is a vast oversimplification. In this explanation, sunlight is said to go effectively unimpeded through the atmosphere to the ground, heating it, and causing it in turn to emit radiation which peaks in the infrared. Water vapor and CO2 in the atmosphere intercept radiation near that peak, and reflect roughly half of it back down again, which serves to heat the surface still further. In the steady state, TOA radiation balances incoming solar radiation, but surface radiation balances both incoming solar and back-radiated IR, and so the surface heats beyond what it otherwise would be.
The flaw in this argument is that not all heat transfer is through radiation. In fact, a lot of heat reaches the troposphere via convection. So, balance at the surface is not achieved merely by balancing outgoing heat from radiation and incoming heat from back-radiation. You must also include outgoing heat from convection in that equation.
The situation is similar to having a heat source encased within a metal enclosure. If the enclosure is elevated above the heat source by non-conducting struts, then it will act as an insulator, impeding the outward flow of heat, and causing the heat source to run hotter. But, if we now connect the heat source to the enclosure through heat pipes, the heat pipes will conduct the heat to the enclosure, and the enclosure will function as a radiator, lowering the temperature of the heat source due to the greater outward facing surface area.
Or, for a more mundane example, it is like having a motorcar with a radiator. If you ignored the fluid flow through the engine which brings heated coolant to the radiator for heat dissipation, you would conclude that the radiator would actually heat the engine, by impeding heat dissipation from the engine directly. That, obviously, ignores a crucial part of the system.
The atmospheric circulation is like a network of heat pipes, bringing the surface heat up to the troposphere for dissipation to space. So, there are two ways in which a so-called GHG can influence the surface temperature: From radiation alone, it acts to impede outward flow, resulting in a heating of the atmosphere. From convection, it acts as a radiator, cooling the surface. Which effect dominates depends on the state of the system.
If the two effects are balanced, increasing the quantity of a GHG will have very little effect on surface temperatures. If convection dominates, increasing the GHG will actually cool the surface. Based on the fact that there is no evidence of increasing CO2 in this past century having any influence on surface temperature, I suspect that we are near the point where the two effects balance. Indeed, the dynamics are such that the system should tend to balance the two opposing feedbacks.
Now, I had a bit of an epiphany relating to my last remaining doubt expressed above. The reason that a chunk of the TOA spectrum is missing can have two causes: 1) it is being removed from the surface spectrum as the radiation travels to TOA, or 2) it can fail to exist in the surface spectrum to begin with.
And, then, I realized what a spectrum missing a chunk of red color means: It means the effing ocean is blue! And, it’s blue whether you are looking down at the blue marble from space, or from the edge of a dock. It has little to do with atmospheric transmission, and everything to do with the fact that the ocean absorbs red and reflects blue.
Trick: The problem isn’t just in different characteristics of lunar and terrestrial surface emmissivities. The problem is that climatologists can’t even correctly calculate the incidence of insolation on a hemisphere.
It’s a failure of basic mathematics.
FAIL.
I’ll discuss this further on the new thread set up for the purpose, so as not to derail your conversation with Stephen and Konrad.
Stephen 1:52pm: “Anyway, the rules are completely different for solids and (strike masses) gases.”
Which rules? This is like saying the rules are different for (strike solids) masses and masses. Enthalpy formula (total energy of any mass packet) is exactly the same for solid, liquid, gas, plasma.
”Radiative physics does not account for adiabatic warming on descent.”
Sure it does. Its mostly adiabatic warming though, what went up, came down meaning mostly no added radiation. In reality, the parcel does encounter warming – is slightly diabatic from sun’s radiation.
”Adiabatic convection is thermally neutral at the surface because the descent phase matches the uplift phase.”
Adiabatic convection and adiabatic latent heat, is why it takes SW diabatic radiation from sun SW to increase surface to Tmean 255K w/transparent atm. and 288K with semi-opaque atm. DWIR. Did Stephen finish reading the piece I cited yet? It’s in there, quote me where and I will believe Stephen might have read it.
”There is a permanent pool of conductive energy held at the surface by the weight of the mass of the atmosphere…”
Would be nice cheap permanent pool of energy source in my backyard from nature if this actually were true in atm. thermo. science. But the sun sets from time to time, wind becomes still at times, winter comes around & my house needs energy. This conductive energy actually comes from sun’s radiation except for the 0.1 W/m^2 internal earth energy flux, waste heat from cars, power plants, forest fires etc.
Having recognized the energy in the descent phase is mostly adiabatic not enough diabatic, radiative theory DWIR balances the books. Stephen’s original is wrong, stuck miscalling the 1960’s text book he claims to have studied – easy enough we all forget some learning, have to look things up again and again, and everything else flows from that.
Homer Simpson, cartoon character: “How is education supposed to make me feel smarter? Besides, every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home winemaking course, and I forgot how to drive?”
Hi Bart:
Yes, the ocean absorbs solar near infrared and emits cooler far infrared longwave radiation. Your insight could be really important, let’s work on that idea.
You said: “I suspect that we are near the point where the two effects balance. Indeed, the dynamics are such that the system should tend to balance the two opposing feedbacks.”
Could you expand on that too please.
Thanks tb 6:44pm. Would appreciate your top post discussion of the paper I cited w/regolith powder vs. BB 1.0 emissivity issue. In the links you provided, N&Z use for the moon surface emissivity: ϵ = 0.955. This means somehow they need more flux balance simultaneous equations below 1.0 but I don’t see them (i.e where does the 1-.955 or the actual 1-.5 to 1-.75 remainder get accounted – discursively?). They also add a cosine term over basic formula square wave input, be careful explain the input solar constants are integrated out the same total energy applied for comparison purposes.
Hi Trick. N&Z have refined their formulas for the heat capacity and emmissivity of the regolith since that paper was written. Ned was in close contact with ashwin Vavasada for some time. There will be more on this from them, but they are staying under the parapet for now.
Oh ok tb, concur unpublished stuff for the moon is very proprietary not in play yet with newer Diviner data. Blogs are good for running certain ideas up the flagpole though, hint…hint.
tallbloke says:
March 15, 2014 at 7:25 pm
“Could you expand on that too please.”
It’s a little inchoate right now. Please disregard that part until I can ponder it some more and get back to you another time.
tallbloke says:
March 15, 2014 at 7:25 pm
Bart says:
March 15, 2014 at 8:44 pm
It is important to note that the apparent balance is empirical. The temperature data do not show any significant correlation with CO2. But, accidents like that typically don’t just happen. I have some ideas why, but they are not ready to present.
Bart: No problem. I like the direction of travel though. It reminds me of Miskolczi’s finding that despite the increase in co2 the overall opacity of the atmosphere hasn’t changed during the period of radiosonde observations. More airborne co2, less airborne water… Opposite trends perhaps caused by opposed (and balanced?) feedbacks.
Trick: Watch this space… 😉
For the record, latest exchange at ATTP:
Pekka said:
“Atmosphere cannot restrain radiative cooling in any other way than by radiating back, i.e. by back-radiation from GHGs. That’s the only way. Convection or conduction cannot contribute to that. They make the surface only still colder.”
My reply:
The atmosphere prevents radiative cooling to space.
The hallmark of an atmosphere is conduction and convection. No atmosphere, no conduction and convection.
All atmospheres cause surface warming the scale of which is related to their mass.
Therefore conduction and convection always cause surface warming.
Write that out 100 times.
The reason is that any kinetic energy taken into the adiabatic convective exchange from the surface is returned to the surface on descent and has to be added to ongoing solar energy coming in.
The radiative fluxes that you then bleat on about arise as a result of and are not a cause of the extra surface warming and a result (not a cause) of the thermal gradient set up by conduction and convection under the influence of mass, gravity, insolation and the Gas Laws.
Radiative theory is just plain wrong due to incompleteness.
DWIR is sticking plaster to make it look plausible.
On your theory no GHGs, no DWIR and no atmosphere because nothing could then create the energy needed at the surface for conduction and convection to occur. There would be no initial atmospheric lift off without GHGs which is plain nonsense.
An atmosphere of zero radiative capability must rise off the surface anyway due to input of solar energy with consequent conduction and convection.
Radiative theory fails on basic logic.
This is pertinent too:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/why-earths-climate-is-self-regulating.html?showComment=1393612872842#c6849087148825741864
Stephen Wilde says, March 15, 2014 at 1:52 pm:
“I fear that I must continue to disagree with the description of adiabatic uplift from you.”
It’s not coming from me, Stephen. It’s coming from everyone but you. Did you bother to read the wikipedia article I linked to?
Stephen, we agree on many things and you have a lot going on your description of how the Earth system operates in general. But I simply cannot agree with you on your version of the adiabatic process and frankly I’m not sure where you got it from. From this I also can’t fathom your use of common adiabatic cooling and warming to explain Earth’s surface temperature.
“If the adiabatic lapse rate is lower than the ambient lapse rate, an air mass displaced upward cools less rapidly than the air in which it is moving. Hence, such an air mass becomes warmer relative to the atmosphere. As warmer air is less dense, such an air mass would tend to continue to rise”
from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convective_instability
Since it continues to rise it can only come to a halt when it meets an inversion.
Admittedly it depends on the relationship between the adiabatic lapse rate and the ambient lapse rate but that is just another way of saying that it keeps going up until the surrounding conditions become less favourable. Nothing to do with just using up the initial slug of energy that started the rise and no mention of any gravitational restraint as you suggested.
Taking global convection overall the tropopause is the highest point that it can reach due to the inversion there.
A simpler mental picture is if you assume that the adiabatic and ambient lapse rates are the same from surface to tropopause.
In that case, once the parcel has lifted off the surface it retains its density differential with the surrounding air all the way to the tropopause and won’t stop or slow down.
Stephen – Your link at 9:05 missed the money card, the gradient is computed but not the T at surface zero intercept, only radiative balance can supply that information. Close logic tag. Given the radiative balance at any point on the g/Cp gradient the T profile then becomes known.
Here is some information about conversion of PE to KE
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter2/potential2.html
and the scale of the temperature rise as air warms on the descent:
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter6/adiab_warm.html
so you can see that the heat being redelivered to the surface is substantial.
Note that at any given moment half the Earth’s atmosphere is rising to some degree or another and half is falling.
Essentially the kinetic energy taken up by adiabatic convection is returned to the surface so such convection never cools the surface. It just holds KE as PE for a while.
Radiative theory says that convection cools the surface but as you can see it doesn’t. It is thermally neutral as regards the surface.
But it does mean that the surface carries that energy which radiative theory thinks has gone PLUS the newly arriving solar energy so of course the surface temperature rises but not from DWIR.
To compensate for the imagined convective cooling they needed DWIR to balance the radiative books which is fine on the radiative side of things but it then unbalances the conductive exchange between surface and atmosphere so they just swapped a radiative accounting problem for a conductive one.
But they can’t see it because they think only radiatively.
Hope that isn’t too confusing.
Bart says, March 15, 2014 at 6:38 pm:
“The flaw in this argument is that not all heat transfer is through radiation.”
The flaw is first and foremost the underlying assumption of back radiation as a physical entity available to ‘heat’ the surface directly.
“(…) there are two ways in which a so-called GHG can influence the surface temperature: From radiation alone, it acts to impede outward flow, resulting in a heating of the atmosphere. From convection, it acts as a radiator, cooling the surface. Which effect dominates depends on the state of the system.”
In the end it’s all about one thing and one thing alone: Can radiation reduce the temperature gradient out/up from the surface? The so-called GHGs absorb some of the IR from the surface and thereby help maintain the dynamic temperature (energy fund) of the atmosphere. The point, this energy pool is distributed along a pretty much fixed temperature profile by the tightly coupled interaction between surface heating by the Sun and convective processes, that acts on a global scale to keep the profile thoroughly tied to the adiabatic lapse rate.
The CO2 crowd realised this long ago. Arrhenius couldn’t be right. ‘Back radiation’, even if it did exist as physical entity, couldn’t warm the surface of the Earth. That’s exactly why they invented the ‘effective radiating level’ (ERL) explanation.
The so-called GHGs do not enable the atmosphere to warm. It would warm with or without them. Through OTHER heat transfer mechanisms. The so-called GHGs enable the atmosphere to COOL (effectively/adequately). To space. Through radiation. Here there is no other available mechanism.
Their presence in the atmosphere also blocks 45% of the potential evened out solar input (the HEAT IN) to the global surface on a permanent basis. This is compared to the Moon’s surface which absorbs on average ~297 W/m^2 of radiative heat from the Sun where the Earth’s surface only absorbs ~165 W/m^2.
So how much radiative heat does the Earth’s global surface emit on average? About 53 W/m^2. Of this a fair share go straight through to space via the atmospheric window. So around 30 W/m^2 (maybe even less) of heat is transferred by radiation from the surface to the atmosphere. This is what the so-called GHGs have to work with. What the atmosphere will absorb. The only radiation that can potentially ‘heat’ it. That’s not a lot. Remember, the surface is already deprived of 132 W/m^2 from the Sun by our atmosphere (some reflected, some absorbed).
“The reason that a chunk of the TOA spectrum is missing can have two causes: 1) it is being removed from the surface spectrum as the radiation travels to TOA, or 2) it can fail to exist in the surface spectrum to begin with.”
Total OLR at ToA is seen to increase in line with (lagging) rising tropospheric temperatures and to decrease in line with (lagging) declining tropospheric temperatures over the last 30 years. It is NOT seen decreasing with rising atmospheric ‘GHG’ content over the same period.
Trick says, March 15, 2014 at 10:38 pm:
“Stephen – Your link at 9:05 missed the money card, the gradient is computed but not the T at surface zero intercept, only radiative balance can supply that information. Close logic tag. Given the radiative balance at any point on the g/Cp gradient the T profile then becomes known.”
Whatever gave you the idea that ‘radiative balance’ alone can supply T information when air in a gravity field above a heated surface is involved?
Stephen – At equilibrium Tmean 288K, conduction convection lw radiation go up, conduction convection sw and LW radiation come down for surface balance. At Tmean 255K conduction convection LW radiation go up, convection conduction sw radiation come down. Fill in the numbers I’m counting goals for and against.
Stephen Wilde says, March 15, 2014 at 10:41 pm:
“so you can see that the heat being redelivered to the surface is substantial.”
No, no, no, Stephen! Please! There is no heat redelivered to the surface! Second Law of Thermodynamics! You have to get out of this blind alley!
Stephen Wilde says, March 15, 2014 at 10:28 pm:
“Taking global convection overall the tropopause is the highest point that it can reach due to the inversion there.”
The tropopause isn’t just a thing, Stephen, hanging in mid-air somewhere for convection to reach. The tropopause is where it is because of convection. Less powerful convection, lower tropopause, more powerful convection, higher tropopause. Why do you think the tropopause is so high in the tropics and so low at high altitudes?
Sorry, ‘altitudes’ should of course be ‘latitudes’ :p
Kristian 11:28 – I’d count that in the LW radiation conduction convection coming down if I were you.
Trick says:
March 15, 2014 at 5:47 pm
————————————–
Trick, you follow this –
“The real moon solution from Diviner data quickly becomes too complicated for a basic model.”
With this –
“Bottom line: don’t think Earth’s basic balance is wrong b/c it doesn’t work for moon; terrestrial simplifications that ~work are just inapplicable on moon”
I’m sorry, but that is just beyond belief. If your radiation only maths can’t work on a ball of dusty rock in a vacuum, what possible hope is there that it can work for a planet’s surface that has half the land covered with vegetation and 71% of the planet covered with transparent oceans kilometres deep?
You are arguing for the impossible. Your 255K figure for earth surface Tav in the absence of an atmosphere is not science, it’s religious dogma.
That 255K figure was derived solely from guessing an albedo and emissivity for a super conducting mythical planet made of green cheese and illuminated by a constant ¼ power sun.
You can add an IR opaque atmosphere, make up an “effective radiating level” set the temperature at that level to 255K and claim to derive the “surface” temperature by assuming lapse rate and vertical circulation are constants. But it’s pseudo science. The results of recalculating this critically flawed maths for differing radiative gas concentrations are worthless.
The temperature profile of our soil, oceans and atmosphere cannot be derived from radiative calculations alone. The very foundation of the entire AGW hoax and the radiative GHE hypothesis is pseudo science.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 15, 2014 at 10:41 pm:
“so you can see that the heat being redelivered to the surface is substantial.”
Kristian says:
March 15, 2014 at 11:32 pm
“No, no, no, Stephen! Please! There is no heat redelivered to the surface! Second Law of Thermodynamics! You have to get out of this blind alley!”
————————————————————————–
Stephen,
I’m afraid Kristian is right. You have this very wrong. Moist convective circulation is acting as a giant vapour/condensate heat pump removing energy from the surface and radiating it to space from altitude.
Air masses in convective loops are losing energy via radiation as they rise, translate and descend. They radiate most strongly on accent and decent. Yes, air masses do reheat by adiabatic compression on decent but due to radiative cooling throughout their rise and fall they do not return to the surface hotter than they left.
On Earth the atmosphere is not returning energy to the surface as maximum solar heating is at the land surface (or below in the oceans). Our atmosphere heats from below. On Venus things are different as maximum solar heating occurs mid atmosphere. On Venus convective circulation does transport energy down to the surface and coupled with the huge adiabatic compression generates 490C surface temperatures.
Bart said: what a spectrum missing a chunk of red color means: It means the effing ocean is blue!
In addition, we have Spas in Lower Saxony, with zero%, small% and heavy (3% and more) salt-water. Standing in the water and looking at the patch of the surface where the Sun is reflected: it is always reflected white.
Trick says, March 16, 2014 at 12:03 am:
“I’d count that in the LW radiation conduction convection coming down if I were you.”
Sorry, Trick. I can’t even begin to understand what this sentence is supposed to mean …
Kristian says: March 15, 2014 at 11:32 pm
I think Stephen has confused you on the issues of ‘back radiation’ and ‘convection’ Kristian.
If we take a ‘mass of dry air’ (no H2O) and surround it with an ‘impenetrable boundary to all modes of heat/energy transfer’, we find that; expanding the volume of the ‘mass’ lowers the internal temperature, pressure and density. However, if we return the ‘mass’ to its ‘original volume’, the ‘original’ temperature, pressure and density are restored.
This ‘isn’t’ convection, its the behaviour of an ‘adiabat’! Convection is only evident when the ‘KE’ is increased WRT the ‘KE’:’PE’ ratio at low altitude!
In the real world, an increase of ‘KE’ (only to ‘the mass’) forces expansion of ‘the mass’ against its surrounding environment. This results in an expansion to the volume of ‘the mass’ which results in an ‘~unaltered temperature’ (radiation reduces thermal energy from ‘the mass’) and an associated change in density. This is the ‘pertinent point’ of/for ‘convection’ per se.
Overly ‘energetic’ mass ‘rises’ until its ‘overly energetic state’ is made normal for the altitude within which it remains ‘static’. Radiation is the primary culprit for ‘energy loss’ at ‘high altitude’, but ‘the mass’ returns to ‘the surface’ at ‘~the temperature, volume and density’ of its ‘origin’, minus the energy that caused the ‘anomaly’ that generated the ‘original convective state’.
==============================================================
Kristian says: March 15, 2014 at 11:46 pm
Reading into this “The tropopause is where it is because of convection.”.
No it isn’t! “The tropopause is where it is because of” THE TRIPLE POINT OF WATER!!!
Please see this link;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phase_diagram_of_water.svg
from the wikipedia page;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_point
where you’ll realise that both ice and water vapour are ‘lighter’ than liquid water, thus, the ‘tropospheric barrier’ to H2O in it’s ‘water phase’ exists at altitudes that exclude the ‘fluid’ form of H2O at these altitudes/temperatures. Namely, ‘The Tropopause’!
===============================================================
I’d like to say more, but it’s ~3:30 where I am.
Best regards, Ray.
Konrad 12:56am stops digging in his crater and pokes his head out: “Your 255K figure for earth surface Tav in the absence of an atmosphere is not science, it’s religious dogma.”
Tmean not Tav, Concur, the 255K number is only for earth with hydrostatic transparent atm. OTOH if the earth lost its atm. even Konrad agrees the oceans would boil off, similar lunar processes shown in the paper I linked 3:59pm would take over:
“…meteors..Small meteorites and micro-meteoroids dominate the evolution of the lunar surface by breaking down surface rocks into powder. Such repetitive and frequent impacts agitate the lunar surface by shattering, burying, exhuming, tumbling, transporting individual grains in a random fashion. The process gradually develops fine-grained powdery layer on the lunar surface above the actual bedrock [59]. This layer is called regolith.”
Thus the S-B unwary fall into the lunar surface powder too small for the wavelength trap noted 3:59pm.
A no atm., no liquid water surfaced earth would receive the same treatment, the earth surface would eventually be fine powder too – with surface emissivity reported roughly 0.5 to 0.75 which is much less than the current 1.0, rounded up slightly to BB to simplify & dismiss the other eqn.s.
This surface emissivity 0.5 to 0.75 introduces additional simultaneous linear eqn.s for the flux into the regolith, thru the regolith, and to the bedrock and vice versa. All that has to be modeled over the surface, no one has done so to my knowledge. So no one even has an estimate what the 255K would become if the earth atm. was not in place without the hydrostatic condition evident. AND remember have to overcome the wavelength issue warily.
On the moon this hasn’t been done either AFAIK, none of the posted Diviner papers showed even an interest in doing so. Once it has I would guess the lunar EEH would then line up with the Tmean at 0 AGL once again but I wouldn’t consider that a given.
Kristian 12:03: “Sorry, Trick. I can’t even begin to understand what this sentence is supposed to mean …
Kristian said: “Whatever gave you the idea that ‘radiative balance’ alone can supply T information when air in a gravity field above a heated surface is involved?”
Short answer: Stephens et. al. 2012 (among many others) counted the SH, LH, LW, SW up and down to/from earth surface control volume for radiative balance to within a view serving trivial small amount. This counted the LW from “air in a gravity field above a heated surface” going to/from that surface. Eqn. 1.72 p. 33 in the cite I gave shows how to use that to find both the natural Tmean 288K and the Tmean 255K for a transparent atm. in place given albedo 0.3, L&O surface emissivity 1.0.
This is boiled down, read the cites to begin to understand.
Stephen 8:47pm: ”That means that mass per se is the issue and not radiative characteristics. Please clarify your position.”
Added mass always adds radiation, no exceptions, so both are the issue, add the right amount of mass to get the right amount of added radiation to move up 1K for 256K transparent atm. to 289K semi-opaque natural atm., cite the text linked 8:15pm, p. 4 sec. 1.2 right up front where Max Planck showed with no less than 3 fundamental constants of nature:
“All matter – gaseous, liquid, or solid – at all temperatures emits radiation of all frequencies at all times…there is no hedging here: all means all. No exceptions. Never. Even at absolute zero?…absolute zero is unattainable…”
Clarified? Or what part of the no exceptions is it for which you take exception? There are no exceptions to the EEH. There are unknown EEH, but no exceptions.
Trick says:
March 16, 2014 at 4:11 am
“if the earth lost its atm. even Konrad agrees the oceans would boil off”
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No Trick, that won’t work either.
Of course the atmosphere would boil off in the absence of an atmosphere. This is irrelevant. You can’t change the history in the age of the internet. Nowhere in the foundation claims of a figure of Te 255k for earth without an atmosphere was the claim qualified as “an earth without oceans”.
The history is very clear, climate pseudo scientists claimed repeatedly that our oceans would freeze without downwelling LWIR from the atmosphere. Their claim cannot be changed now and it remains totally and utterly wrong.
Climate pseudo scientists claim that the net effect of the atmosphere on our planet is surface warming. They claim that radiative gases are responsible for this. The most basic sanity check on these inane claims is to determine the temperature of the surface in the absence of an atmosphere. This can be done by the simplest of empirical experiments.
The answer is that the land would have a far lower Tmin without an atmosphere, but our oceans would be ~65C hotter (if not more) if all atmospheric effects excepting pressure are removed. The oceans cover 71% of this planet. The net effect of the atmosphere on our planet is therefore surface cooling. And there is only one effective cooling mechanism for the atmosphere, that being radiative gases. The net effect of radiative gases on our planet is therefore cooling not warming.
The pseudo scientists you are supporting claimed the oceans would freeze without DWLWIR from the atmosphere. Empirical experiment proves this false. That’s game over for AGW. Global warming from radiative gases is quite simply a physical impossibility.
Konrad 4:59am: “Nowhere in the foundation claims of a figure of Te 255k for earth without an atmosphere was the claim qualified as “an earth without oceans”.
Nowhere is just not the case, there are exceptions, cite Bohren 2006 clip as somewhere. There are others. Cite many text books, just cull out the ones said w/o atm. You can learn and advance too. Discount the folks that said w/o atm. they weren’t thinking clearly as you – as the ocean must depart w/o atm. The ones that kept the oceans & surface and invoked transparent atm. like Bohren 2006 – hang out with them at parties eating your cookies.
“The pseudo scientists you are supporting claimed the oceans would freeze without DWLWIR from the atmosphere. Empirical experiment proves this false.”
Scientists need apply only the 1st law and your experiments all, every one, without exception, prove the 1st law works just fine.
Trick says:
March 16, 2014 at 5:27 am
“The ones that kept the oceans & surface and invoked transparent atm. like Bohren 2006”
—————————————-
No, Trick an IR transparent atmosphere won’t save you. If an atmosphere cannot radiativly cool to space then ultimately it has no way of providing cooling for the oceans. (no, conduction back to the 29% land surface won’t effectively cool an IR transparent atmosphere, as shown by empirical experiment)
Our radiative atmosphere is the cooling system for our oceans. If they can only cool by surface IR to space then empirical experiment shows that solar SW and UV will super heat them.
There is no way around it, the pseudo science of the radiative greenhouse effect claims our oceans would freeze without downwelling LWIR. This is provably incorrect.
Are you claiming that the oceans would freeze without downwelling LWIR from the atmosphere?
Konrad said: Our radiative atmosphere is the cooling system for our oceans.
Sure; look at the Triple Point Experiment (~4 to 10 minutes).
Kristian says:
March 15, 2014 at 11:25 pm
” ‘Back radiation’, even if it did exist as physical entity, couldn’t warm the surface of the Earth.”
I cannot agree with that. Radiative physics predicts that it can. And, these principles are well established. It is how this stuff works. And, it does work. Every single minute of every single day on hundreds of satellites whizzing above your head.
No, there must be a counteractive mechanism which is causing the back-radiative heating to lose its punch. I think it is the convection, and I think I’ve made a decent case for that.
Konrad 6:15am: “Are you claiming that the oceans would freeze without downwelling LWIR from the atmosphere?”
All proper basic science claims is Tmean equilibrium with transparent atm. would be 255K. This is the equivalent blackbody temperature an observer on the moon would infer for Earth looked upon as an infrared sun. Doesn’t say much about Tmin or Tmax at the equator. What do you think? Open water or not? Reason it out. Fill me in.
Konrad 6:15am: Are you claiming that the oceans would freeze without downwelling LWIR from the atmosphere? Oops. Try this.
All proper basic science claims is Tmean equilibrium with transparent atm. would be 255K. This is the equivalent blackbody temperature an observer on the moon would infer for Earth looked upon as an infrared sun. Doesn’t say much about Tmin or Tmax at the equator. What do you think? Open water or not? Reason it out. Fill me in.
Kristian.
I meant heat redelivered to the air immediately above the surface which then inhibits surface cooling. I’ll be more careful with that wording in future.
and you asked:
“Why do you think the tropopause is so high in the tropics and so low at high altitudes?”
The tropopause is caused by ozone absorbing solar energy to create a temperature inversion. Convection does push up against it and can lift it higher above warm areas with it being lower above cold areas. Plus an effect from centrifugal forces.
Konrad:
“due to radiative cooling throughout their rise and fall they do not return to the surface hotter than they left.”
There is radiative cooling from GHGs, aerosols and water condensate but the major part of the energy content remains as PE and returns to KE on the descent.
The DALR is faster than the moist ALR so, actually, parcels do return to the surface warmer than they left to an extent determined by their water vapour content during ascent.
This adiabatic stuff just isn’t taught any more which makes it very hard for me to get it across.
Chaeremon says:
March 16, 2014 at 6:58 am
———————————
While continued evaporative cooling of our oceans depends on an atmosphere with radiative cooling ability, this vacuum experiment is worth noting as it shows part of what would happen to our oceans in the absence of atmospheric pressure.
I have run this in the past and would note two things for others trying it. The first is that the experiment is not a good way to treat oil filled vacuum pumps. The water that initially boils off collects in the oil of the pump. Run the experiment a few times and the pump may no longer be able to pump down to 6 mbar. New oil time. The second is that slight agitation can cause faster freezing of the water.
This is in effect the cooling mechanism used in most space suits. A water cooling loop is run through a sintered porous aluminium block exposed on one face to vacuum. The water in the block vacuum freezes. Excess heat from the astronaut tries to unfreeze the water, but the resultant boil off to vacuum again counters this.
A variant for NBC suit cooling uses a heat trap container well insulated from the suit. This is filled with dry silica crystals and pumped down to high vacuum before use. By connecting a vacuum line from this heat trap to a water reservoir, water can be boiled off and trapped in the silica. Due to the absorption of the silica, the vacuum remains strong and continuous pumping is not required.
The interesting point here is how long it would take for oceans frozen in this manner to be lost to space. If you use the climate pseudo science approach you would get the wrong answer. You would incorrectly calculate the surface temp of the ice as -18C which is close to the lower limit for sublimation to vacuum (-20C). But the ice would instead be heated at depth by solar SW, with non-radiative return of energy to the surface allowing heat to accumulate in the ice.
This is why the “snowline” in the solar system lays at 3AU, well outside where radiation only flux equations suggest surface temps to be below -20C. The snowline in the solar system being at 3AU should have been a big red flag to climate pseudo scientists claiming our oceans would freeze without DWLWIR from the atmosphere.
When the Phoenix lander exposed water ice under the Martian surface, it took only 4 days to sublimate on exposure to sunlight. Max recorded atmospheric temp at the landing site was -19.6C and pressures were around 8 mbar.
@Konrad said: [t]he snowline in the solar system being at 3AU … 😎
Good to know; and thanks for sharing your insights.
Trick says:
March 16, 2014 at 7:29 am
———————————-
“All proper basic science claims is Tmean equilibrium with transparent atm. would be 255K.”
No proper science does not claim that, only climate pseudo science. Proper scientists know that just as emissivity of materials is important for determining equilibrium temperature of materials, so to is transparency/translucency and internal non-radiative transport.
“This is the equivalent blackbody temperature an observer on the moon would infer for Earth looked upon as an infrared sun.”
And that is why Sir George Simpson warned that just calculating radiation and ignoring non radiative transports is a dead end. You cannot determine the temperature profile of transparent fluids in a gravity field by instantaneous radiative flux equations alone. That approach is pseudo science. It was called as pseudo science in 1938. Nothing has changed.
“Doesn’t say much about Tmin or Tmax at the equator. What do you think? Open water or not?”
Oh for goodness sake! Re-invoking the diurnal cycle that the pseudo scientists eliminated so you can create a shallow equatorial warm pool? Just how is that going to save the global warming hoax?
Without a radiativly cooled atmosphere to in turn cool the oceans, the oceans will rise to 80C if not beyond. This can be shown by simple empirical experiment. There is no way out.
Climate pseudo scientists claimed that the net effect of a radiative atmosphere over the oceans was warming of the oceans. But the net effect of our radiative atmosphere over the oceans is provably cooling of the oceans.
“Reason it out. Fill me in.”
Gladly. The “mistake” the climate pseudo scientists made was so incredibly stupid that there is no way to prevent the citizens of this planet finding out and boiling with rage.
“The sun heats our oceans, the atmosphere cools our oceans and radiative gases cool our atmosphere”.
A simple message that everyone can understand. And they are getting the message. No amount of hand waving about “heat hiding”, “aerosols masking” or trade winds blowing” can obscure snivelling idiocy of this magnitude. There can be no “sciencey “ sounding excuse that will save any of the fellow travellers. The SS Global Warming has hit the iceberg of truth. It is sinking with all rodents. Sceptics have smashed every lifeboat and the Internet has welded the hatches shut.
“and radiative gases cool our atmosphere”. ”
I agree, but radiative gases are not the sole cooling agent.
Most cooling is from radiative energy loss to space directly from the surface.
In the absence of radiative gases you would still have the necessary cooling from the surface to achieve equilibrium and convective overturning would still be present to ensure that energy were delivered back to the surface (or the air above the surface) to prevent system destabilisation from internal system variations.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 16, 2014 at 7:43 am
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Stephen,
with regard to vertical circulation in the atmosphere I gave this link up thread. This is a very good primer on tropospheric convective circulation from the pre-global warming pseudo science days. It covers both adiabatic and diabatic processes in the circulation of air masses below the tropopause.
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~dib2/climate/tropics.html
“Air convected to the top of the troposphere in the ITCZ has a very high potential temperature, due to latent heat release during ascent in hot towers. Air spreading out at higher levels also tends to have low relative humidity, because of moisture losses by precipitation. As this dry upper air drifts polewards, its potential temperature gradually falls due to longwave radiative losses to space (this is a diabatic process, involving exchanges of energy between the air mass and its environment). Decreasing potential temperature leads to an increase in density, upsetting the hydrostatic balance and initiating subsidence. The subsiding air warms (as pressure increases towards lower levels), further lowering the relative humidity and maintaining clear-sky conditions. However, although the subsiding air warms, it does not do so at the dry adiabatic lapse rate. Continuing losses of longwave radiation (radiative cooling) means that the air warms at less than the dry adiabatic lapse rate (i.e. some of the adiabatic warming is offset by diabatic cooling).”
You need to be cautious with any atmospheric circulation texts written post 1990. Most try to eliminate the role of radiative gases in subsidence and cooling described above.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 16, 2014 at 10:09 am
“Most cooling is from radiative energy loss to space directly from the surface.”
————————————————————————————————
I believe radiative loss from the surface direct to space may be greater than previously claimed, however I would not claim “most” OLR is emitted to space directly from the surface. NASA diagrams previously showed 90% of all energy absorbed by the land , ocean and atmosphere being radiated to space from the atmosphere. The is a distinct difference between SWIR satellite imaging (reflected) with surface features visible and LWIR imaging (emitted) in which surface features are obscured. However the issue of LWIR wavelengths imaged would need to be adressed.
It is notable however in these last days of sobbing panic for the fellow travellers that “Travesty” Trenberth has tried some frantic adjustments to his figures, widening the atmospheric IR window.
The small IR thermometer I own is capable of detecting the difference between low cloud ~+10C, mid level cloud ~-20C and clear sky -40C. It seems to have no trouble getting a reading through several thousand metres of the region supposedly of the highest IR opacity.
As an empirical experiment it would be interesting to overfly a ground targets of differing IR temperatures with a similar instrument at various altitudes to see at what point (if any) the ground became a “grey blur” to the detector.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 16, 2014 at 10:09 am
“In the absence of radiative gases you would still have the necessary cooling from the surface to achieve equilibrium and convective overturning would still be present to ensure that energy were delivered back to the surface (or the air above the surface) to prevent system destabilisation from internal system variations.”
—————————————-
Stephen I have given you the build instructions for the “AGW Gravity Gremlin”, including internal flow diagrams, showing why the surface is ineffective at cooling our atmosphere. You seem to be the last hold out on this.
Nick Stokes, Joel Shore and Tim Folkerts were all trying the same claims as they were desperate to find some physical way to get a non-radiative atmosphere to be at -18C. They needed some why to get hot gases to come back to the surface at night to be cooled. But hot gasses rise and without buoyancy loss they don’t come down. Entrainment doesn’t work at atmospheric scales. Adiabatic cooling does not cause buoyancy loss and cooling via gas conduction is too slow on the scale of air masses.
I know your convective model requires vertical circulation in the absence of radiative gases, but you are invoking un-physical processes to get the math to work. The surface is far better at conductively heating our atmosphere than it is at conductively cooling it. The empirical results of the experiment are solid. Night inversion layers are a dramatic real world example of the physics. And vertical circulation at tropospheric scale requires buoyancy loss at altitude. Waving aside physical reality to make the maths work is taking you into Trick territory, which is not the best place to be.
Trick says: March 16, 2014 at 4:11 am
Surface emissivity for the moon between 0,5 and 0,75 leaves you with the problem how to explain the equator noon temperature reaching 390K.
TSI 1364 w/m^2 albedo 0,11 => 1214 W/m^2 SB => 383K.
With halve the 1214 W/m^2 disappearing in an infinite sinkhole as emissivity 0,50 implies will give a noon temperature at the equator around 322K.
Missing ~ 68K. Lunar greenhouse effect even without atmosphere?
A cold rock orbiting the sun, rotating once every orbit (so one side continuously faces the sun) will regardless the surface structure eventually reach radiative balance for every spot on that rock.
Simple calculation for the dayside using albedo 0,11:
1364 W/m^2 spread over half a sphere gives 607 W/m^2 average radiation => SB 322K
Nightside only (almost) nothing => SB 0K
Average temperature (322 + 0) / 2 = ~161K
Refining the calculation to account for the difference between the point directly facing the sun and the day/night boundary will lower this figure further (N&Z 154K ?)
Effective temperature for the moon has been calculated by spreading incoming solar around the whole surface:
Average radiation 303 W/m^2 => SB 270K
You can’t use average radiation and then use SB to calculate an average temperature.
SB formula has a fourth power in it !!!!!!
Increasing the rotation rate to once every second will distribute incoming solar evenly around every latitude, but the difference between the equator and the poles remains, so even in this extreme case the 270K will not be reached.
see eg http://www.principia-scientific.org/moons-hidden-message.html
Stephen Wilde says, March 16, 2014 at 7:43 am:
“I meant heat redelivered to the air immediately above the surface which then inhibits surface cooling.”
No better.
“The tropopause is caused by ozone absorbing solar energy to create a temperature inversion. Convection does push up against it and can lift it higher above warm areas with it being lower above cold areas. Plus an effect from centrifugal forces.”
No, Stephen, you’ve got this completely backwards. There’s a tropopause (a troposphere) in every planetary atmosphere, even where there is no oxygen/ozone. All it takes is surface heating of a gas in a gravity field. The troposphere is ‘made’ from below, not from above.
Konrad says, March 16, 2014 at 11:40 am:
I know your [Stepen WIlde’s] convective model requires vertical circulation in the absence of radiative gases, but you are invoking un-physical processes to get the math to work.”
I ‘swore’ to leave this specific (and very hypothetical!) topic be. But I have to point out that you also, Konrad, seem to require some unphysical processes to occur to get your description to work.
Specifically, in the end, your atmosphere becomes isothermal, same temperature as surface Tmax, and then your claim is that it just stops there. But you’ve blocked convective losses while still keeping up the ‘constant’ energy input from the Sun. Are you saying that at this point, radiation from the surface somehow ‘takes care of’ its ENTIRE energy loss, without further warming? How does that work? That sounds unreasonable to me. It could only do this if the surface got REALLY HOT so that the T^4 relationship rendered convective losses insignificant, the surface simply didn’t ‘need’ them and radiated rather like a pure emitter. Problem is, the flux it’s emitting at max is only 239 W/m^2 (equal to the incoming). A pure emitter giving off a flux of 239 W/m^2 is only at 255K, and then we’re back to the AGW argument.
Seems to me you’re disregarding atmospheric expansion upon warming in your setup.
There are so many variables and processes to consider in this hypothetical situation that the answer is not easily given. I might very well be wrong in the end, but as of now I am not convinced in the least by the ‘isothermal argument’.
Konrad 9:44am: At least offers some sort of explanation of “climate pseudo science” term he uses.
“You cannot determine the temperature profile of transparent fluids in a gravity field by instantaneous radiative flux equations alone. That approach is pseudo science.”
Ok then whenever Konrad uses “pseudo science” term substitute his current definition: “the temperature profile of transparent fluids in a gravity field by instantaneous radiative flux equations”. So let me try parse Konrad’s 1st paragraph in Queen’s English becomes:
“No proper science does not claim (Tmean equilibrium with transparent atm. would be 255K), only (strike climate pseudo science) the temperature profile of transparent fluids in a gravity field by instantaneous radiative flux equations”.
Understanding this Konrad prose needs understanding instantaneous. Which needs understanding instant. Which in Queen’s English: “an infinitesimal or very short space of time”. Konrad is wrong since text book science of climate is demonstrably not applied to a very short space of time. Hence the rest of his 9:44am post must be gibberish.
******
“Without a radiativly cooled atmosphere to in turn cool the oceans, the oceans will rise to 80C if not beyond.”
Gibberish. The moon has no “radiatively cooled atmosphere” yet its entire surface Tmean has come to long term (not instantaneous) equilibrium less than measured equatorial 214K (-59C). The moon surface radiates directly to space as would the earth’s surface at 255K with a transparent atm. when the system comes to equilibrium conductively/convectively. Not enough energy input to surface to raise surface Tmean any higher in long term equilibrium.
“Climate pseudo scientists claimed that the net effect of a radiative atmosphere over the oceans was warming of the oceans.”
Konrad gibberish is demonstrably wrong as above since text book science of climate is demonstrably not applied to a very short space of time. Over a very long time constant, earth land and ocean surface Tmean would come to equilibrium at 255K with a transparent atm. and albedo 0.3 by basic 1st law energy balance.
Ben Wouters 11:57am: falls into the S-B trap for the unwary writing: ”Surface emissivity for the moon between 0,5 and 0,75 leaves you with the problem how to explain the equator noon temperature reaching 390K. TSI 1364 w/m^2 albedo 0,11 => 1214 W/m^2 SB => 383K.”
Bohren 2006 cited above: “Notions about radiation being incident on bodies are valid only when they are much larger than the wavelength.”
Since the particles of powder of the moon regolith are suspect not meet the much larger than the wavelength assumption, S-B as we know applies reasonably well on earth is demonstrably not necess. good application on the moon. So it is left to future science work & developments to explain the 390K. And entire moon surface Tmean & EEH of top post.
Probably going to see some debate on what “much larger” means in precise dimensions. This debate thread serves to focus at least my interest in what to look for in parsing future papers & blog top posts/comments.
Konrad,
I agree with that early text completely.
It’s true that there is radiative cooling from above the ground which is due primarily to GHGs, aerosols and water vapour condensate. There is some radiative capability of the bulk gases as Trick tiresomely reminds us but not enough to matter.
That radiative cooling though is only a small fraction of the total potential energy stored in the bulk atmospheric molecules. Once off the ground temperature falls so remember that the radiative components of the atmosphere are at a lower temperature than the surface so as one goes higher they radiate less and less strongly.
Most of the heat still returns during the descent phase by conversion of PE back to KE.
I also agree that if there are GHGs, aerosols and water vapour condensate radiating during the descent phase then the warming will not be at the DALR rate but slightly less.
It won’t be a lot less than DALR as witness Foehn winds and such like. They heat the descending air to a temperature higher than the original starting point in a relatively small vertical distance either side of a hill or mountain.
Despite those deviations from the general principle I’m sure that one day it will come to be recognised that the higher than S-B surface temperature is due to adiabatic warming of air on descent reducing the radiative cooling of the surface and not to DWIR.
As regards DWIR I think that there are no net radiative flows at any point in the vertical column of the atmosphere.
Gravity and mass density seek to sort the atmospheric molecules into a temperature gradient along or close to the DALR and all that then happens is that there is IR present at every level, the intensity of which corresponds with the temperature fixed by gravity and mass density at that level
If the IR intensity manages to deviate from that set by gravity and mass density at any given level then convection kicks in immediately to re sort the molecules again and put them at their correct heights along the DALR.
So GHGs interfere with the DALR but convection then corrects it.
As regards IR sensors they do not measure DWIR coming from the sky. They focus on a height determined by their sensitivity to optical depth and register the temperature at that point along the ambient lapse rate.
In a perfectly transparent atmosphere they register the temperature of space.
If a cloud passes over they measure the temperature at the height of the cloud.
If the atmosphere were completely opaque they would measure the temperature at the sensor.
The significance of their measurements has been grossly misinterpreted.
There is no DWIR or UWIR.
There is only the lapse rate slope as set by mass and gravity as modified by varying atmospheric composition and the consequent convective adjustments.
f there is no net DWIR then radiation cannot warm the surface above S-B and all we are left with is the warming from adiabatic descent.
QUD.
Stephen 10:09am: Concur. Very good. Could probably debate “most” to “some” but not worth it. Bookmark this.
Trick: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_soil#Properties
“The term lunar soil is often used interchangeably with “lunar regolith” but typically refers to only the finer fraction of regolith, that which is composed of grains one cm in diameter or less.[1] Lunar dust generally connotes even finer materials than lunar soil. There is no official definition of what size fraction constitutes “dust”, some place the cutoff at less than 50 micrometres in diameter, others at less than 10.
Due to myriad meteorite impacts (with velocities in the range of 20 km/s), the lunar surface is covered with a thin layer of dust. The dust is electrically charged and sticks to any surface it comes in contact with. The soil becomes very dense beneath the top layer of regolith.”
If the dust particles were so small as to be less than light wavelengths, they would pack very densely at the surface. but the presence of the glassy bit and other stuff makes this unlikely I think. Anyway, none of this changes the FACT that the method used by Lacis and Hansen to calculate the energy falling on the body is mathematical nonsense. N&Z’s method is the correct one.
Konrad said:
“Night inversion layers are a dramatic real world example of the physics. And vertical circulation at tropospheric scale requires buoyancy loss at altitude”
Density increases on cooling and air cools with height so there is a steady buoyancy loss with altitude without the need for radiation to space.
I mentioned previously that without radiative gases the circulation would have to be more vigorous to return energy to the surface fast enough for radiation to space.
The more vigorous the circulation the less inversions would develop and the more successfully a radiatively cooling surface could pull heat from warmer air above.
I don’t think your suggestions are valid.
General meteorology experience has value 🙂
Kristian said:
“There’s a tropopause (a troposphere) in every planetary atmosphere, even where there is no oxygen/ozone.”
All that is required to form a ‘pause’ is molecules that absorb sunlight to a greater extent than the molecules below. It doesn’t have to be ozone and it is different for every planet.
Planetary atmospheres are complex structures with many chemical constituents each with varying responses to sunlight.
I doubt you could ever get a planet without a ‘pause’.
In fact, Earth has several ‘pauses’ in the form of tropopause, stratopause and mesopause.
They are all caused by differing molecular responses to direct solar irradiation.
How many ‘pauses’ does Jupiter or Venus have with their dense and complex atmosphere?
The ‘pauses’ are always set from above but can be modified from below.
Stephen 4:00pm: “…we are left with is the warming from adiabatic descent.”
You also had a lot going right in this post until this clip that you still can’t get 2nd law down cold, dead nuts, as Kristian tried point out (repeatedly) cooler air temp.s above earth surface can’t be “warming from adiabatic descent” they are adiabatic! – only the diabatic higher temperature sun warms the surface (well, except for the 0.1 W/m^ from higher than surface temp. earth internals, car engines, power plants, forest fires etc.)
”There is no DWIR or UWIR”
A big exception to the no exceptions Planck rule I’d say & thus disagree. Then you recover say IR thermometers measure these. Confused a little are ya’? Planck wasn’t. Also IR thermometers don’t “focus”, they gather in photons from whatever they view from lens to infinity and beyond (Konrad term) – but you get that stuff mostly right too. On a roll today Stephen, now just “get” that 1) your adiabatic processes don’t/can’t warm the surface, only the sun does in a diabatic process; 2) there is no exception so DWIR and UWIR exist at all frequencies and all the time. No exceptions.
Trick said:
” cooler air temp.s above earth surface can’t be “warming from adiabatic descent” they are adiabatic! ”
Please stop being silly, Trick.
Air at 700mb with a temperature of 10C warms to 25C on reaching the surface with no new energy added. Just conversion of PE to KE. That KE is originally from the sun and hence diabatic.
“Also IR thermometers don’t “focus”, they gather in photons from whatever they view from lens to infinity and beyond”
They measure the temperature at a height determined by optical depth.
Originally they were designed to take the temperature of solid objects in the same horizontal plane as the observer. Examples are the interiors of refrigerators or ovens.
The point at which they measure the temperature is a fixed point where the optical depth is such that they think they have identified a solid object.
Their data output has been grossly misrepresented by such as you.
tb 4:13pm quotes wiki top post instead of original sources at bottom concludes: “If the dust particles were so small as to be less than light wavelengths, they would pack very densely at the surface. but the presence of the glassy bit and other stuff makes this unlikely I think.”
Does look like the dust particles do pack densely:
Depends on def. of closely/densely. I’ve only read that one regolith paper recently, need to get some more under my belt to form a view. That one had lotsa’ cites so my work is cut out.
“N&Z’s method is the correct one.
Maybe so but their input to their method for regolith emissivity of 0.955 is at least suspect. I will parse thru it see where they obtained that number. Do you know? Going to have to spend some time reading on regolith emissivity – ever covered that in a top post here? – and body size effects on S-B. Very likely this body size is covered in the literature, been around a long time. Getting out my copy Bohren 2006…et. al.
Kristian says:
March 16, 2014 at 12:28 pm
I am not convinced in the least by the ‘isothermal argument’.
I agree. An isothermal atmosphere is not stable. Molecules at the top have extra gravitational P.E.
The system will move to equalise energy at all heights, and create the lapse rate.
It will also expand and heat up until emission = absoption
Stephen 4:36pm in his confusion over 2nd law application forgets this conveniently (it is written card up his sleeve for ref.): Air at 1000mbar warmed by the sun to a temperature of 25C cools to 10C on reaching 700mb.
Then this works in a classic 1824 Sadie Carnot reversible process same: “Air at 700mb with a temperature of 10C warms to 25C on reaching the surface with no new energy added.”
No change in surface temperature from this reversible process, the sun warms the surface, up air parcel goes again. Rinse repeat. Actually the process is not reversible, the parcel does gain a little energy from the sun on the way down, gains in entropy slightly and the universe proceeds toward max. entropy.
Stephen 4:36pm: “Their data output has been grossly misrepresented by such as you.”
2nd hand and subsequent assertion is easy to be incorrect, original author cite please.
Trick said:
“No change in surface temperature from this reversible process,”
Well that’s my point.
Adiabatic convection is thermally neutral at the surface so the surface temperature increase caused by conduction is still there whilst the continuing flow of solar energy goes on so that is what causes the surface thermal enhancement. You have to add the conductive energy content to the solar input.
Radiative theory assumes that convection has a cooling effect which needs to be negated by DWIR to keep things in balance but that just isn’t true.
Stephen 4:00pm: ” radiation cannot warm the surface above S-B and all we are left with is the warming from adiabatic descent.”
Stephen 5:23pm: ”Well that’s my point: “No change in surface temperature from this reversible process,”
Stephen – The internet never forgets (Konrad term), please try to at least stay on you own point. So which is it?
1) Radiation cannot warm surface , so adiabatic descent does OR
2) adiabatic descent cannot warm surface, so sun’s radiation does.
Pick one. Stay on point. Defend it. Geez you waste so much time with this antic. Don’t weasel out:
Homer Simpson, cartoon character: ”Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It’s what separates us from the animals… except the weasel.”
No inconsistency.
Sun warms surface unevenly to create more KE in some locations than others.
Warmed air parcels rise converting KE to PE and cooling.
Cooled, denser air then descends and converts PE to KE which maintains conductive energy at or just above the surface.
Sun’s new energy still coming in so add that to the store of conductive energy and surface temperature rises from 255K to 288K.
Average surface temperature stabilises at 288K whatever happens to the internal energy exchanges because 33K thermal enhancement is the limit permitted by pressure at the surface.
Of course you knew all along that I said DWIR does not warm the surface but you dishonestly switched that to sun’s radiation.
Not a nice trick from Trick the weasel.
Stephen 6:18pm picks 2) “No inconsistency. Sun warms surface.”
Stick with that and you will go far.
” I said DWIR does not warm the surface.”
Bzzzt. The sun causes downwelling IR Stephen, it is UP in the sky. The SWDWIR from the sun warms the surface and atm. during day; none of the LWDWIR from adiabatic processes warms the surface day or night because emitted from cooler atm. source.
Then drop this 1) completely please: “..all we are left with is the warming from adiabatic descent.” In day & night, the adiabatic LWDWIR coming from atm. adds energy to surface control volume but that only slows cooling cannot warm since LWDWIR comes from cooler source; the sun’s SWDWIR adds energy and warms surface control volume, comes from hotter source. You are so completely confused on this, listen to Kristian too, try and write precisely no weasel wording.
Now get it right stay on you pick 2); for the moment I am interested in regolith particle size & resultant critical S-B wavelength study so as not to fall into the trap for the unwary.
OK, Roger, here is my hypothesis:
The temperature at the surface should obey something like
dT/dt = -e*T^4 + S + g(T) – c(T)
T = temperature of the surface
e = emissivity times SB divided by heat capacity
S = normalized solar input flux
g(T) = effect of back-radiation from GHGs (a positive function of T)
c(T) = convective transfer (a positive function of T)
The effect of g(T) is immediate. c(T), however, takes time to build. We can capture this sort of dynamic in the form of a 1st order differential equation
dc/dt = -c/tau + k*T
tau = time constant
k = coupling constant
Define the equilibrium temperature as Teq, such that
-e*Teq^4 + S + g(Teq) – c(Teq) = 0
Then, the perturbation equations for deltaT = T – Teq, delta_c = c(T) – c(Teq) become
d(deltaT)/dt = -(4*e*Teq^3)*deltaT + gp*deltaT – delta_c + deltag
d(delta_c)/dt = -delta_c/tau + k*deltaT
where gp is the partial derivative of g(T) with respect to T evaluated at Teq, and deltag is the change in g(T) with respect to an increase or decrease of GHG.
Solving for the steady state by setting the two time derivatives to zero, we get
deltaT = deltag/(k*tau + 4*e*Teq^3 – gp)
delta_c = deltag*k*tau/(k*tau + 4*e*Teq^3 – gp)
It is readily seen that as k*tau approaches infinity (high sensitivity and/or very long response time), in steady state
deltaT approaches zero
delta_c approaches deltag
Hence, delta_c (increased convection) entirely cancels out the change due to deltag (increased backradiation) as k*tau (the sensitivity of convection to temperature) becomes large. Since convection, generally, is a more efficient heat dissipation mechanism than radiation, this condition should be readily attained.
This is actually just a longwinded example of lag compensation in a control loop. Nothing particularly exotic. Basically, the instantaneous response to a sudden pulse of injected GHG should be warming, followed by a steady retreat to the original equilibrium. For steadily increasing GHG, there is only a small steady state tracking offset, which would revert to zero once the increase stopped.
0.126
Correlations based on 180,000 active datapoints, sample every 2.34 minutes about 23 hours a day from 20th Feb 2013 until 11 Mar 2014 less outages. Some quantities 230,000 active points.
Data from Chilbolton Observatory web site plots, meteorological and radiation instruments, all processing by author.
Hmm, format of above will have to do.
tb 4:13pm: “If the (lunar) dust particles were so small as to be less than light wavelengths, they would pack very densely at the surface. but the presence of the glassy bit and other stuff makes this unlikely I think”
Ok. I finished all I am interested to inquire into. My answer is YES if a paper is going to publish on lunar surface radiative transfer using regolith emissivity, then it is going to have to deal with and avoid the trap for the unwary in application of S-B.
Do not find how the current N&Z paper you linked does so with lunar surface emissivity at 0.955. The ref. they use Huang 2008 states: “..assume that the surface of the Moon is a black-body to the radiation it actually receives.” These Huang et. al. guys fall into the trap for sure based on their familiarity for earth surface probably because….
The regolith particle sizes (defined by diameter) are by total amount 100%: ~50% of total finer than thermal IR band wavelength starting at 100 microns & lower; then ~10% of total amount finer than IR wavelength at 10microns (the main band of interest). Light wavelengths from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electromagnetic-Spectrum.svg
Particle sizes (grain = any small, hard particle, as of sand) from cite [50] of regolith emissivity paper: Lunar Sourcebook Fig. 7.9 p. 306 “The average grain size of lunar soils is only about 60 (microns).”
Click to access LunarSourceBook.pdf
Regolith emissivity paper I posted upthread also cites [19] Bohren 1983 “Absorption and Scattering of Light by Small Particles” some of which is on line. From Bohren 2006 applying the radiative transfer theory NOT to paint particles ~fine as smaller lunar regolith grains but ok to snow particles which are much larger:
As particle size decreases, scattering decreases…
For ice grains in snow…many times the wavelengths of visible light, whereas for paint particles…comparable with or even appreciably less than visible light wavelengths (less than 1 micron).
Now that we understand why radiative transfer theory should work for snow…
Figure 5.16 supports an assertion about snow that at first glance seems the product of a disturbed mind: snow is both the whitest natural substance on earth and the blackest. At visible wavelengths the reflectivity of clean, fine-grained snow is as high as that of anything you’ll find in nature, whereas well into the infrared its reflectivity plunges to near zero. We are easily led astray by extrapolating outside the narrow range of visible wavelengths to which we are sensitive.”
Bart 8:44pm: I get T is in Kelvin. What are the units?…on your:
e = emissivity times SB divided by heat capacity
S = normalized solar input flux
g(T) = effect of back-radiation from GHGs (a positive function of T)
c(T) = convective transfer (a positive function of T)
Trick: Interesting, thanks. Some say the moon is brighter than it’s emission temperature. Puzzling stuff. Hansen and Lacis still can’t do sums properly though. N&Z provide the correct integration equations for a sunlit black-body hemisphere,and Lacis and Hansen don’t, whatever the issues around emmissivity.
Tim C: You should be announcing these findings on a new thread! Huge amount of work, well done.
Bart: I’ll take some time to digest, but the basic principle sounds about right to me. Climatology reasoning which contains the immortal phrase “all else being equal” never rings true.
Kristian says:
March 16, 2014 at 12:28 pm
“Specifically, in the end, your atmosphere becomes isothermal, same temperature as surface Tmax, and then your claim is that it just stops there.”
———————————————————
Kristian,
no this is not a correct interpretation of my claim about an atmosphere without strongly radiative gases. As I stated at the beginning of this thread –
“A non-radiative atmosphere heating would be initially be driven by –
First – Surface conduction up to surface general Tmax
Then – Surface conduction and gas emission from volcanic point sources
Finally radiative superheating of O2 and N2 molecules at altitude by solar UV”
Modelling the full consequences of removing strongly radiative gases from our atmosphere is indeed an open ended problem. But we do no the final outcome – there are no planets or moons in our solar system that have managed to retain an atmosphere without radiative gases.
In pointing out that initially an “non-radiative” O2 & N2 atmosphere would have it’s temperature driven by surface Tmax, I am simply showing the basic proof that such an atmosphere (before it eventually boiled into space) must run far hotter than our current atmosphere, therefore the radiative greenhouse effect hypothesis is false.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 16, 2014 at 4:13 pm
————————————-
Stephen,
This is an extraordinary claim –
“I mentioned previously that without radiative gases the circulation would have to be more vigorous to return energy to the surface fast enough for radiation to space.”
That claim is in direct contradiction of –
– the pre-hoax meteorology I linked to
– Dr. Spencers 2009 description of radiative/convective circulation
– empirical experiment into Rayleigh-Bernard circulation in gases
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Maths on paper will not do it. You would need at least a CFD (computational fluid dynamics) demonstration or better still empirical experiment.
If your convective model shows vertical circulation increasing for lower radiative gas concentration, something is very wrong with the calculations.
My empirical experiments show decreased energy loss at altitude stalling vertical circulation consistent with Dr. Spencers interpretation. Maths on paper, no matter how well the sums add up, cannot counter empirical experiment.
Trick says:
March 16, 2014 at 3:16 pm
“Konrad gibberish is demonstrably wrong as above since text book science of climate is demonstrably not applied to a very short space of time. Over a very long time constant, earth land and ocean surface Tmean would come to equilibrium at 255K with a transparent atm. and albedo 0.3 by basic 1st law energy balance.”
————————————————-
Well there you go. Trick has run around in circles, tried every trick, every distraction, multiple calls to the authority of the “modern texts”. But there is now way out. And so the false claim that the ocean surface would be 255K without downwelling LWIR is reiterated.
And what does that claim mean? It means that Trick (even though the actual words of shame are avoided) has crawled back to claiming the oceans would freeze without downwelling LWIR from the atmosphere.
Empirical experiment proves this claim false. Without a radiativly cooled atmosphere our oceans would rise to temperatures ~80C or beyond. So why keep claiming the oceans would freeze without radiative gases in the atmosphere?
Because the whole of the AGW hoax depends on claiming that radiative gases warm the surface of the planet. But there is no escape. Empirical experiment shows that the net effect of the atmosphere over 71% of the earths surface is cooling not warming. And given that radiative gases are the atmospheres only effective means of shedding energy, this means that the net effect of radiative gases on this planet must be cooling. The AGW hypothesis is therefore disproved.
Trick, empirical experiment shows the oceans won’t freeze in the absence of downwelling LWIR. It doesn’t matter what your “text book science” says, if it doesn’t conform to empirical experiment, then it is wrong.
Konrad 11:20pm: If the empirical experiment results aren’t fully accounted, then a view can be formed. For Einstein, the test was elegant in simplicity, either the star moved position or it didn’t. Find something easy Konrad, simple, elegant. Like that stunner.
Good sport to have someone take the other side though, no entertainment fun in movies or TV shows without conflict. At hockey games, when the opposing goalie lifts his mask for a water bottle squirt, the home crowd invariably chants: “Ugly goalie, ugly goalie.” They cheer “Yay” when he lowers the mask. Then when opposing player parents stand cheer an opposing team goal: “Ugly parents, ugly parents.”
”Empirical experiment proves this claim false. Without a radiativly cooled atmosphere our oceans would rise to temperatures ~80C or beyond. So why keep claiming the oceans would freeze without radiative gases in the atmosphere?“
Not enough energy in some of the higher latitude net sun.
Well, I tried challenge Konrad to calculate noon time equatorial SWDWIR effect hitting the oceans full strength w/zero energy from LWDWIR but he runs back to tiny, complex, obtuse lab experiments the energy balance of which no one can understand with basic eqn.s not even Konrad so as to hide his 3 card Monte money card effectively. Trick is set up to think I can win. That’s why they call it a confidence game.
All Konrad experiments prove the first law and with the proper input parameters would prove what the big experiment would show for equator ocean water state at atm. 0 emissivity. That’s the real money card Konrad AND it is not up MY sleeve, it is right there in text books – you CAN win with skill this way, come over to the light. Fundamentals are tasty.
“Empirical experiment shows that the net effect of the atmosphere over 71% of the earths surface is cooling not warming.”
To date, I have not seen a 1st law accounting of ANY experiment ever done by Konrad. He may be shocked to find he CAN handle the truth.
The test that may really help out is the one Konrad proposed to do on the lunar regolith hint, hint…Maybe NASA gives you loan of some? Ya’ think? Or find the particle size of talcum, that might work too. Or grind up the right material to suit, silica?
Currently I think few & maybe no one has interest to do this at wavelengths of interest. Think they did it for microwaves what with the success of the real time radar ranging. Surface emissivity is an electrical property essentially dependent on surface roughness, particle size and dielectric properties of that surface. Should be innovative fun. You have my confidence.
Trick says:
March 17, 2014 at 1:50 am
————————————
“Find something easy Konrad, simple, elegant. Like that stunner.”
I already did Trick, but you can’t cope with the answer because it destroys the whole AGW hoax.
“Not enough energy in some of the higher latitude net sun”
And the simple, elegant “stunner”? As easily demonstrated by empirical experiment your statement is completely false. Solar SW has the power to drive our oceans to ~80C or beyond without cooling from a radiativly cooled atmosphere. (Oh, and the “higher latitude” fudge won’t save you any more that the reintroducing the diurnal cycle game you tried).
“Well, I tried challenge Konrad to calculate…”
What? Using your provably failed S-B calculations? I have already told you the problem requires CFD or empirical experiment. I gave you the repeatable empirical experiment. In fact I have given three empirical experiment designs all showing the same thing – S-B calculations that treat transparent materials as opaque, fail and fail badly. The errors are not minor, they are huge. If the S-B calcs don’t work for lunar regolith how could they possibly work for transparent oceans kilometres deep? When it comes to the mean surface temp of our oceans the -18C figure is in error by almost ~98C! No amount of hand waving can make that go away.
“but he runs back to tiny, complex, obtuse lab experiments the energy balance of which no one can understand with basic eqn.s not even Konrad so as to hide his 3 card Monte money card effectively.”
No Trick, the experiment with two acrylic blocks demonstrating the failure of S-B calcs for transparent materials is simplicity itself. No tricks on my part, just utter stupidity on the part of climate pseudo scientists. They claim the net effect of the atmosphere over the oceans is warming?! It’s complete tripe.
Trick you keep running around in circles avoiding giving a direct answer, so I challenge you to give a clear and direct one word (no hand waving) answer to this –
“Is the net effect of our radiative atmosphere on the oceans cooling or warming?”
Konrad 2:56am: “Solar SW has the power to drive our oceans to ~80C or beyond without cooling from a radiativly cooled atmosphere.”
The moon isn’t moved Konrad. Same solar gross SW power orbit as earth but the moon is less than 255K Tmean with transparent atm.. The reason solar doesn’t have power for 80C there either is the different albedo & surface emissivity; moon 1st law transparent atm. Tmean balance is measured even lower than earth’s theoretical 255K and you have the test cohones to figure out regolith emissivity. You have my confidence to do that experiment.
“If the S-B calcs don’t work for lunar regolith how could they possibly work for transparent oceans kilometres deep?”
They work on earth but not yet on moon b/c its regolith particle size is on the order of the wavelength of interest. Earth ocean emissivity is accurately measured along with land & atm. emissivity. Basic 1st law gives Tmean 288K same as thermometers, no cards up sleeve – all laid out on table face up.
“No Trick, the experiment with two acrylic blocks demonstrating the failure of S-B calcs for transparent materials is simplicity itself.”
So…uh, at what value has Konrad measured the emissivity of the acrylic blocks? Are they much different emitters than cabbage? Have you performed a 1st law balance and demonstrated the right answer like scientists have done give or take?
“Is the net effect of our radiative atmosphere on the oceans cooling or warming?”…one word (no hand waving) answer…”
Complicated. (…or 2nd choice Bohren. Couldn’t decide, take your pick. Me? I’d choose to read Bohren stuff, no, I mean NO, hand waving in there.)
Trick says:
March 17, 2014 at 4:38 am
————————————-
Trick, you are still running around in circles and avoiding giving a direct answer. I suspect you are well aware that the net effect of our radiative atmosphere on the oceans, but are refusing to admit it because that means that the whole of the AGW hypothesis is false.
Once again I challenge you to give a clear and direct one word (no hand waving) answer to this –
“Is the net effect of our radiative atmosphere on the oceans cooling or warming?”
The net effect, Trick. Your one word answer. Cooling or warming? Which is it?
Konrad.
Temperature declines with height with or without radiative gases.
Relative density increases with declining temperature with or without radiative gases.
Thus, higher colder gases will always be relatively dense and thus heavier than the more recently warmed gases coming up behind them in the column of convection.
They will be pushed to one side and begin to descend elsewhere with or without radiative gases.
The convective circulation will not ‘stall’.
Trick and Konrad
Convection sorts out the vertical position of molecules so that they always move towards the point along the lapse rate slope appropriate to their KE (heat) content.
If anything makes them too warm or too cold for their position along that slope they will rise or fall until they are where they ‘should’ be.
The height of non radiative gases is determined by their conductive exchange with their surroundings.
The height of radiative gases is determined by both their conductive and radiative exchanges with their surroundings.
Thus radiative gases always rise to a height where radiation from the ground to the molecule and from the molecule to the ground is balanced.
That is why there can be no net radiative flow either up or down at any point along the slope of the adiabatic lapse rate.
If a net radiative flow does develop at any point along the adiabatic lapse rate then temperature and density differences arise, convection up or down is enhanced or suppressed and both conductive and radiative balance is regained.
There is neither net DWIR nor net UWIR to or from radiative molecules once they arrive at their correct height along the lapse rate slope.
Convection balances both convective and radiative energy flows so as to prevent surface warming from variations in the conductive AND radiative properties of molecules.
If it works for varying conductive capability why did anyone think it wouldn’t work for varying radiative capability.
“Is the net effect of our radiative atmosphere on the oceans cooling or warming?”
Neither.
The ocean temperature is determined by the weight of the atmosphere on the surface at any given level of insolation.
Radiative changes within the atmosphere just change air circulation and ocean surface evaporation rates
Stephen Wilde says:
March 17, 2014 at 7:55 am
————————————
Stephen,
as adiabatic cooling on ascent is matched by adiabatic heating on decent, the standard (pre-AGW hoax) physics says this must be buoyancy neutral. A rising 25C airmass cannot overturn a previous 25C airmass that has risen, because it will adiabatic cool to the same temperature as the previous airmass as it arrives near the same altitude.
You are claiming that just conductive heating and cooling at the surface can drive strong vertical convective circulation powerful enough to pneumatically generate the observed lapse rate over 15 km of the atmosphere. This is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
Firstly I have shown you empirical experiments demonstrating the poor ability of the surface to conductively cool the atmosphere. It is provably far better at conductively heating it. Secondly I have shown you empirical experiment demonstrating the difference between conductively heating and cooling a gas column at disparate “surface” locations compared to heating at the surface and cooling at “altitude”.
Your claims are extraordinary. I’m sorry but without empirical evidence there is no way on this good earth that I can accept your claims. I do a lot of work in design and engineering and your claims about adiabatic cooling driving convection are in contradiction of all the physics I work with. No amount of maths on paper can convince me without empirical experiment to back it.
You will need to build a centrifuge arm with a gas column along it. It would not be necessary to generate the 800 mb pressure gradient of the tropopause, but at least 100 mb would be workable. The gas column will need to be big enough to minimise issues of gas conduction (refer gravity gremlin ex.) Then try heating and cooling at disparate locations at the “base” of the gas column and compare circulation results to heating at the “base” and cooling at the “top”.
Stephen, the bottom line is that you don’t have empirical evidence to back your claim of adiabatic cooling driving strong vertical tropospheric circulation or your even more extraordinary claim that this circulation would be more vigorous in the absence of radiative gases. No amount of maths will fix this. No amount of typing. You need extraordinary empirical evidence.
Stephen Wilde says:
March 17, 2014 at 9:21 am
“Neither”
———————-
Stephen, I would leave that one to Trick.
His job is to “engage”, confuse and disrupt, instil doubt and report back. Responses likely get patchy when SKS backup fails.
If you have been reading this far you should have noticed that Trick is terrified of typing a clear and direct answer to such a simple physics question. There is a very good reason for that.
I was following Stephen Wilde’s comments on “AndThenTheresPhysics”.
He was making too much sense so the moderator stepped in. That was my cue to assert that the main bulk of the atmosphere accounts for the GHE while trace gases do not. It was not long before I got this:
“gallopingcamel says:
March 16, 2014 at 11:15 pm
[Mod: This comment has been removed by the moderator. If you want to continue with this argument, GallopingCamel, you will need to provide evidence in the form of links to other work. See the comments policy]
If there was any merit in the Arrhenius conjecture CAGW echo chambers would not need to censor dissenting comments.
Konrad 5:38am: “….net effect…”
Net of what? No word limits. Help me bend the edge of one of your Monte cards, tilt my odds a little more favorable.
“Is the net effect of our radiative atmosphere on the oceans cooling or warming? Your one word answer.”
Radiation.
Getting the science figured out one word at a time….next 1 word answers in no particular order will be convection, conduction, EEH, emissivity, absorptivity, 1st law, sun.
*******
Stephen 7:55am: Concur
Stephen 8:06am: “…neither net DWIR nor net UWIR…”
Same question: net of what?
“The ocean temperature is determined by the weight of the atmosphere…”
Because there are no exceptions to the sun & atm. mass radiating SW and LW DWIR and terrestrial LW UWIR at all frequencies all the time everywhere.
Konrad said:
“your claims about adiabatic cooling driving convection are in contradiction of all the physics I work with. No amount of maths on paper can convince me without empirical experiment to back it.”
I didn’t say that.
The real world is staring you in the face.
The sun starts the adiabatic cycle and maintains it.
Only the very first cycle when the atmosphere lifted off, as a result of solar heating, has a cooling effect on the surface.
Once the first cycle has been completed you then have constant incoming solar energy plus extra warmth at the surface because any further energy taken upwards after completion of the first cycle is being replaced on the descent elsewhere at the same time.
So, after completion of the very first cycle the surface or near surface is receiving solar plus returning adiabatic with no longer any net cooling from the fresh uplift because that is matched by the returning adiabatic.
It is simply a matter of timing once the first cycle is completed.
Only the first cycle had a surface cooling effect. After that the effect is one of surface warming.
Whilst cycle 2 and subsequent cycles take conducted energy upward the descent phase of cycle 2 and subsequent cycles restrains surface radiation by exactly the same amount.
The result is radiative balance between surface and space with conductive balance between surface and air at the cost of a raised surface temperature.
Convection modulates radiation relative to conduction so as to keep surface temperature stable.
It works for variations in conductivity and radiative capability for all molecules in the atmosphere.
Why should radiative variability between molecules have any different thermal effect to conductive variability between molecules ?
Either way the convective responses are identical.
Actually the above isn’t quite right.
If it was all a matter of radiation with no atmosphere then the surface temperature would be 255K as per the S-B prediction with energy straight in and straight out with no delay.
Conduction and convection is slower than radiation so at some point it must induce surface warming as energy backs up in the system.
By slowing transmission of radiation through that mass on the surface which is capable of forming an atmosphere, surface heating rises over and above 255K to 288K.
The rise to 288K PRECEDES the very first convective uplift of gases because the material that will form the atmosphere must first absorb a portion of the solar energy passing through BEFORE it can start to rise.
That is what has been missed.
The extra 33K then goes, over a period of time, by conduction and convection to provide gravitational potential energy thereby raising the atmospheric mass off the surface.
During the process of lifting the atmospheric mass, the surface temperature drops back to 255K by which time the first convective cycle is complete.
As soon as the first cycle is completed the surface temperature goes back up to 288K because the warming effect from the descent phase is then cancelling out the cooling effect (from 288K) of the uplift phase.
Radiative theory relies on conduction and convection as a cooling effect.
What they forgot was that the surface temperature rose BEFORE the cooling effect kicked in simply because conduction and convection is slower than radiation.
And then, at the end of the first convective descent, the cooling effect was negated, leaving the raised surface temperature in place.
Conduction and convection always has a warming effect on the surface once the first convective cycle has run its course.
Stephen 4:43pm: “If it was all a matter of radiation with no atmosphere then the surface temperature would be 255K as per the S-B prediction….”
That is an S-B trap the unwary fall into like for the moon, w/o atm. the L&O surface would no longer emit at 1.0, rounded. Surface devoid of liquid water due to vacuum of space, would be pounded into fine particles with emissivity more like ~0.5 to ~0.75 and no one AFAIK has computed the Tmean for that circumstance. It would be lower than 255K, probably same as moon around 200K give or take a lot as no one to my knowledge knows there either.
You also miss in your cycle narrative, that the very 1st cycle returned the same energy to the surface from the 1st atm. The 2nd cycle rinsed & repeated ad infinitum. It is entertaining you think the atm. energy today is still primordial from that 1st cycle. Actually the sustained energy at birth came from using up KE of infalling material, then faint sun then the normal sun using up hydrogen.
”Radiative theory relies on conduction and convection as a cooling effect.”
Konrad’s radiative atm. and L&O surface UWIR window cools the whole system to deep space after being warmed nearly all by the sun using up hydrogen. This is all pretty easy basic stuff except some details are hard science.
Trick:
It doesn’t matter whether it is 255 or another figure. The principle is the same.
The 1st cycle returned energy to the surface during the second cycle. That delay made all the difference.
Rinsing and replacement is accepted but makes no difference to the net figures.
The basic fact is that a material capable of being gaseous at a surface upsets the S-B prediction because it causes a delay in the throughput of energy and thereby raises surface temperature above S-B.
Simply put, a gas at a surface is not a blackbody and alters the surface temperature accordingly in proportion to its mass BEFORE uplift away from the surface.
Timing is all and radiative theory got the timing wrong.
Stephen 5:57pm: “..causes a delay in the throughput of energy and thereby raises surface temperature..”
Impossible. A delay in and of itself cannot raise temperature, nature requires using up a resource to raise temperature. The sun SW DWIR raises the temperature. Wish I could engineer delay from your narrative into my furnace so as not to use up nat. gas.
“…a gas at a surface is not a blackbody…”
Concur; the earth’s atm. looking up measures emissivity around 0.7 in the arctic and around 0.95 in the tropics, not quite BB 1.0; global atm. mean looking up emissivity is about 0.8, only semi-opaque.
…radiative theory got the timing wrong.”
Makes no science sense at all, writing this only suits a view.
“Impossible. A delay in and of itself cannot raise temperature”
A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before must increase total system energy content and raise temperature.
That’s the principle behind the alleged warming effect of DWIR isn’t it ?
However,
Conduction and convection can be seen to do it just fine without DWIR as soon as one realises that the surface gases must warm up above S-B BEFORE they can begin to rise.
Gases held in a gravity field above surfaces are not blackbodies. Their response to surface conduction is different to that of a simple blackbody surface responding to radiation.
The energy carried to and fro via conduction between gases and the surface has to be added to the new radiative energy arriving at the surface beneath them in order to arrive at the correct surface temperature.
Only during the very first convective cycle can one ignore the conductive energy exchange because at that stage the loop has not yet closed.
It is no answer to suggest that warm air cannot directly heat a surface. Warm air can most certainly slow down net heat loss from a surface and that is all that is required.
“”radiative theory got the timing wrong.”
Makes no science sense at all, writing this only suits a view.”
The timing error lies in the assumption that one can diagnose the net thermal effect of conduction and adiabatic convection at a surface before the first convective cycle has closed the loop.
Only for that period of time does the adiabatic cycle exert a net cooling effect as required by radiative theory.
Furthermore, that net cooling effect is from 288 and not 255 because they failed to realise that the surface gases must get hotter than S-B before they can start to rise.
If the surface gases could only get to S-B predicted temperature then they would stay at the surface.
At that temperature, all radiation which comes in goes straight out with nothing available to provide the gravitational potential energy needed to start uplift.
How could conduction reduce the surface temperature below 255K ?
To do that, the gaseous material in contact with the surface would somehow have to be colder than the surface but that isn’t possible because the surface warmed them up in the first place. Indeed, before becoming gaseous they were part of the solid surface.
The truth is that gases absorb energy from the surface until they reach the temperature of the surface (255K).
Then, because they are not pure blackbodies they slow down the release of their conducted energy back to the surface whilst energy continues to come in from space so they become warmer than the surface.
At that point they have ‘surplus’ energy available to provide the necessary gravitational potential energy to rise.
That is the only way it can work.
Stephen 6:45pm: “A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before (from the sun) must increase total system energy content and raise temperature.”
^Ding^ No weasel words. In my house, they call the slowing down from added insulation. In the atm., they call it increased LW DWIR to surface and equal increased LW UWIR to space from added infrared active gas. In my house, the effects of the added insulation slowing down are noticeable on wallet and comfort, in the atm. near surface – not so much.
Callendar’s 1938 paper* said the same as Stephen’s ideas: “.. if any substance is added to the atmosphere which delays the transfer of low temperature radiation, without interfering with the arrival or distribution of the heat supply, some rise of temperature appears to be inevitable in those parts which are furthest from outer space.”
Full stop; there is no science past your however.
The rest of your post is weasel wording about adiabatic process that use up no fuel source nor are capable in any way of slowing down or even speeding up the rate of transmission of energy.
Now your weaseling might succeed if you can show a change in the emissivity of the L&O surface or of the atm. or even the tougher albedo. Many, many, struggle to do so, you can keep trying, someone just might get the NCAA Men’s BBall brackets right too. THAT’s good for $1Billion pre-tax, turn your energies there. You have a better skill chance there not having read the modern atm. thermo. text books here.
*Sir George Simpson, an invited reviewer in 1938, tried these weasel words too but it is GS Callendar’s ideas that have stood the test of time:
“It was excellent work. It was difficult to criticise it, but would like to mention the atmosphere was not in a state of radiative equilibrium, and it also received heat by transfer from one part
to another.”
This is weaseling, as Callendar points out, the earth system is in steady state equilibrium in which added infrared active gas can have an effect on the emissivity of the atm. affecting surface balance by delay but not the overall steady state as the added IR gas uses up no fuel source and reduces the delay equally in upper atm.
One could have a scenario where the surface material becomes gaseous before the S-B temperature is reached so my above use of the numbers 255 and 288 is for illustrative purposes only.
If the blackbody surface temperature were 255 and gases began to form at 235 they would presumably stay at the surface until 255 were reached.because the surface would absorb incoming energy in priority.
Stephen Wilde says, March 17, 2014 at 4:43 pm:
“Conduction and convection is slower than radiation so at some point it must induce surface warming as energy backs up in the system.
By slowing transmission of radiation through that mass on the surface which is capable of forming an atmosphere, surface heating rises over and above 255K to 288K.
The rise to 288K PRECEDES the very first convective uplift of gases because the material that will form the atmosphere must first absorb a portion of the solar energy passing through BEFORE it can start to rise.”
You’re so close, Stephen! But no. It happens the opposite way. The surface absorbs the solar flux, but the transmission of energy back out again is slowed down by the restricted upward acceleration of moving (surface heated) air. It is not infinite, after all. There are limits to it. If there were no resistance to the upward flow of air from a certain original heating, there wouldn’t be any such limits. This resistance is the atmospheric weight (mass x gravity). The surface heated air needs to expand against the surrounding (‘overlying’) pressure.
This initial less-than-ideal uplift makes solar energy accumulate at/below the surface (more coming in than going out per unit of time), and the surface consequently warms. It warms until the uplift can manage to maintain a global environmental lapse rate on a constant basis close to the adiabatic lapse rate and an upward movement of air containing absorbed surface energy that is fast enough to balance the incoming.
The heavier the atmosphere, the higher this ‘equilibrium’ temperature needs to be (the more energy has been accumulated at/below the surface) before the adequate lift can take place, WITH EQUAL SOLAR INPUT.
As soon as this stage has been reached, the only way you can disturb the balance is by changing the weight of the atmosphere and/or the solar input to the surface.
It’s all about 1) how much energy is coming in to the surface vs. 2) how much is going out from it per unit of time. 1) is about solar input, 2) is about atmospheric weight.
As I said earlier, there is more to it than this, more ‘complicated’ (relating to atmospheric density profiles, bulk heat capacity, conductive transfer rates and gravitational collapse), but this is the general principle.
Sorry, Trick.
You cannot completely ignore conduction, convection and adiabatic circulation and just go back to your radiative only premise.
Callendar would have accepted that mass, via conduction and convection would have achieved the effect he described. That is the real insulating effect.
Emissivity and albedo variations are second order effects which form part of the negative system response when the circulation needs to change in order to cancel out the variations caused by differing conductivity or radiative characteristics.
Added radiative gases do have an effect but imperceptible compared to the atmosphere’s mass and only as regards circulation changes.
Stephen 6:45pm: “If the surface gases could only get to S-B predicted temperature then they would stay at the surface.”
The surface does only get to S-B from the sun, the rest of the processes being adiabatic removing and adding equal energy since they use up no fuel, cause no delay (meaning no change in L&O emissivity or atm. emissivity), there would still be asphalt lot hot spots and green grass spots, convection would be by approx. g/Cp lapse.
The rest of your post – discard; just go back to your own gem of an idea; Konrad should have this as his money card in his Monte game:
“A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before must increase total system energy content and raise temperature.”
This is good. Build on it. A permanent clip for me to remind you of your own genius time to time. You just unwittingly invented on your own (I think not copied from elsewhere?) and wrote down the 1st law. Had you done this before 1824, your name would be in history in place of Sadie Carnot et. al.
Find just why this is by reading the modern texts, resist the temptation make up more narrative past this gem. Use just this, it is all you need. Calling Konrad…
Trick says, March 17, 2014 at 6:17 pm:
“Impossible. A delay in and of itself cannot raise temperature”
Trick obviously doesn’t know how a real-world object is warmed. You do know about thermodynamic systems, don’t you, Trick? The change in internal energy over a certain time period is determined half by the incoming and half by the outgoing energy. If they balance each other, there will be no change in internal energy. If incoming for some reason is greater than outgoing, then internal energy will increase – and we get system warming. Warming until balance is restored.
Kristian.
I am describing the process from the beginning. Starting with no atmosphere.
Therefore, you need not introduce the weight of the atmosphere at that early stage.
All the other things you mention come into play after the atmosphere is established.
For the purpose of seeing the basic principles all one needs is the narrative I gave you.
The main point you do make, and I agree, is that the more mass the atmosphere acquires then the higher the surface temperature will become.
I believe that is implied in my scenario.
This means that there is no inherent S-B (‘instantaneous flux’) relationship between solar heating of the surface and the equilibrium surface temperature. This is one of the GHE/AGW tricks.
In reality, it’s all a matter of balance and energy accumulation.
“As soon as this stage has been reached, the only way you can disturb the balance is by changing the weight of the atmosphere and/or the solar input to the surface.”
Exactly, been saying that for years.
Anything else just affects circulation.
But you do need adiabatic warming on descent to close the loop.
Stephen 7:37pm: ”You cannot completely ignore conduction, convection and adiabatic circulation and just go back to your radiative only premise.”
True, correct, not ignoring, just be sure include conduction, convection AND radiation in the energy control volume of interest:
“A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before must increase total system energy content and raise temperature.”
”Emissivity and albedo variations are second order effects…”
No. Check their exponents and partial derivatives in the modern texts, all are 1. Their effects are first order processes.
”Added radiative gases do have an effect but imperceptible…”
How “Imperceptible” is being debated all over to hell and back; Callendar’s 1st principles did the best prediction of which I am aware – some 75 to 100 years later out of sample. As you wrote, the added IR active gas have an effect by raising atm. emissivity and need be included in the energy accounting you wrote of, man this is good, bears repeating over and over:
“A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before must increase total system energy content and raise temperature.”
“This means that there is no inherent S-B (‘instantaneous flux’) relationship between solar heating of the surface and the equilibrium surface temperature.”
Not once you have mass floating off the surface which is free to increase and decrease density in response to variable internal system energy flows.
The conduction and convection involved invalidates the S-B equation.
GHGs not necessary.
Trick,
Albedo and emissivity are second order effects.
On a water world anything that tries to upset the thermal balance will change global cloudiness and albedo.
On a dry world it will change the strength of winds and the amount of airborne dust to change albedo.
In the end, as Kristian says, it is al about balance and energy accumulation.
On that basis even the internal system radiative flows are a second order effect.
They are a consequence of internal system variations and not a cause of anything in themselves.
Kristian 7:44pm: ”Trick obviously doesn’t know how a real-world object is warmed.The change in internal energy over a certain time period is determined half by the incoming and half by the outgoing energy.”
Concur no change in T if energy balanced in & out. Just listen closely to Stephen reiterate the 1st law:
“A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before must increase total system energy content and raise temperature.”
Sure Kristian if there is no “slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system” and “energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before” then “must NOT increase total system energy content and NOT raise temperature.”
To warm a real world object takes using up fuel. That object will also warm if fuel flow is unaffected and the object experiences “a slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through….”
Stephen 7:58pm: “Albedo and emissivity are second order effects.”
No Stephen. You are writing about cause and effect. Not the order of the math involved. For instance, energy flux is 1st order, temperature is 4th order. This order stuff is useful in understanding the math, you can add energy flux (32 W/m^2 + 32 W/m^2 = 64 W/m^2), you cannot add temperatures (32F + 32F doesn’t equal 64F). Whilst all have cause and effect.
Trick says:
March 17, 2014 at 1:07 pm
————————————
Trick, you have heaped criticism on my simple repeatable empirical experiments at every opportunity. I gave you a simple challenge, just to give a simple and direct answer to one very, very simple physics question –
“Is the net effect of our radiative atmosphere on the oceans cooling or warming?”
How hard can the answer be? The gospel of the Church of Radiative Climatology is quite clear in their answer. They say the oceans would freeze without downwelling LWIR from the atmosphere, that with a non-radiative atmosphere the oceans would be at 255K and sky radiation raises this temperature.
You have given three responses, all of which are a clear attempt to avoid giving a clear answer. In your latest evasion you claim not to understand the words “Net effect”. It’s very simple Trick. Does the sum of all atmospheric effects on the ocean, conduction, evaporation and DWLWIR mean the oceans on average would be warmer or cooler than if under a non-radiative atmosphere?
Your failure to give a direct answer even on the third attempt is painting quite a picture.
Once again I challenge you to give a clear and direct one word (no hand waving) answer to this –
“Is the net effect of our radiative atmosphere on the oceans cooling or warming?”
Trick, your one word answer. Cooling or warming? Which is it?
Stephen,
Trick has unfairly accused you of “weaseling”. (truly remarkable in light of his attempts to avoid the simple question of net effect of the atmosphere over the ocean!).
Sir George Simpson’s analysis is solid. Callendar did not understand he would need to change the speed of non-radiative transport for varying radiative gas concentration.
I may be in total disagreement with your convective model, but I am in complete agreement with this –
“A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before must increase total system energy content and raise temperature.”
This is 100% correct. Much as I don’t like to use “sports commentator language” I could say “110% correct. This is exactly why the empirical experiment here –
– shows such a dramatic difference between the equilibrium temperature of the two target blocks for equal power of incoming SW. It’s all about where energy enters and exits a material and the speed of non-radiative energy transport within the material.
The gospel of the Church of Radiative Climatology is completely wrong. Radiative gases actually speed up energy exit from our atmosphere. Why? Because most of the energy that these gases emit to space was acquired from energy entering the atmosphere via non-radiative exchange with the land and oceans.
Konrad 11:09pm: ”Cooling or warming? Which is it? your one word answer.”
Equilibrium.
Both.
1st-Law.
Steady-State.
Bohren.
Chaos.
Cooling.
Warming.
Pick one. Turn the card over, is it the Monte money card Konrad? Am I putting more paint on the canvas? The problem is of course your question is not well posed/specified so that there is one equation and one unknown to solve so I am just playing your entertaining Monte confidence game. I learned long ago, playing poker against 5-6, after 20-40 minutes if I do not know who the patsy is by then I figure I’m the patsy & lower my bet sizes.
Konrad proposition: “They say the oceans would freeze without downwelling LWIR from the atmosphere, that with a non-radiative atmosphere the oceans would be at 255K and sky radiation raises this temperature.”
Let’s try check your proposition against Stephen’s epiphany with my added comment in () for Tmean 288K where surface control volume is the system: “A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before (from the sun) must increase total system energy content and raise temperature.”
Means Tmean increases above steady state 288K in the chaos at equilibrium by first law per Bohren. Apply Konrad proposition absent LW DWIR & operate on Stephen’s statement becomes:
“A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing into a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before (from the sun) must decrease total system energy content and lower temperature.”
Means surface Tmean decreases below 288K.
With an albedo of 0.3, L&O emissivity of 1.0, rounded, find Tmean = 255K having moved toward the moon Tmean but with more surface emissivity earth remains a bit higher.
Very powerful that Stephen epiphany. If you want more of an answer than 1 word, absent LW DWIR, more surface area of Earth oceans would freeze seasonally, ocean surface would not freeze near the equator. I’ll look around to see if there is an estimate if you like.
Konrad: Extremely lucid. A productive conversation, and Trick is a welcome sparring partner in it. I didn’t spot the ‘weaseling’ but as everyone knows:
A weasel is weasely reconised, whereas a stoat is stoatally different. So stay calm everyone, the science discussion is good, and small furry mammals may skitter past it, hopefully without distracting attention from or scaring the elephant in the room.
Guys, talking about the ‘first’ convective cycle is a ‘bad analogy’ for any scenario other than ‘Proto-Earth’ as Sol bursts into flame, when there were many ‘gasses’ in Sol’s System for Proto-Planets to ‘grab an atmosphere’ before Sol’s ‘Stellar Wind’ blew them away. Following that, at ~3.5 Bn. YBP., our Proto-Earth collided with the hypothetical Theia, reconfiguring the ‘locale’ to what we presently observe today. IMHO, a more up-to-date and dynamic analogy would be better understood.
Could we start with the interaction factor between mass and EM energies, then go on with the ‘latency’ factor for mass?
IMHO it’s impossible to realise an “Effective emission height” below the mid Strat. 😦
Best regards, Ray.
Konrad 11:50: “Callendar did not understand he would need to change the speed of non-radiative transport for varying radiative gas concentration.”
Callendar did well to understand moving energy around inside the control volume has no effect on the amount of total energy in the system as Stephen implies & would have no effect on Tmean as speed of non-radiative transport inside the system has no effect on the control volume total energy of interest at the surface in his answer to Simpson. Stephen is right too:
“A slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing through a system whilst energy continues to arrive at the same rate as before (from the sun) must increase total system energy content and raise temperature.”
Try and demonstrate this. I am standing at a place where T=288K.
To my left, a parcel rises at speed X. To my right, a parcel descends at speed X. Sun & LW DWIR flow in at rate Z and earth radiates out at rate Z. All balanced. Total energy same. T remains 288K.
If there is speed of non-radiative transport increases to Y due to varying radiative gas concentration (there isn’t but play along):
To my left, a parcel rises at speed Y. To my right, a parcel descends at speed Y. No change in total energy. No affect on T = 288K.
Sun & LW DWIR flow in at rate Z+ now so to balance earth radiates out at rate Z+. All re-balanced. Total energy in the surface system increases. Surface T increases 290K. The increase in LW DWIR is a slowing down in the rate of transmission of energy flowing out the system as Stephen writes.
So what happens at great height if the rate flowing out of surface slows down? It decreases.total energy up there.
The increase in surface energy total came at the expense of a equal decrease in energy total up high. Total energy up high decreases to offset the increase energy below, upper atm. cools. This is why they are trying to get a good handle on stratosphere Tmean but it is tough going last paper I read. No thermometer field up there have to use sounding rockets and satellites.
Callendar & Stephen are right, Simpson wrong.
I don’t know what ‘Callendar & Stephen’, or ‘Simpson’, said Trick, but ‘you’ need to consider ‘what happened’ to energies ‘between’ absorption and emission to and from Earth’s atmosphere!
The ‘mass’ made a difference! 😉
How can we describe this?
Best regards, Ray.
Trick says:
March 17, 2014 at 11:56 pm
———————————–
Squirm.
Wriggle.
Thrash!
Flex!!
Twist!!!
Weasel!!!
Word games are fun, but how about some actual physics? 😉
Empirical experiment shows that if our oceans could be retained in the absence of an atmosphere they would reach ~80C via solar SW alone, not -18C. The atmosphere has only one effective cooling mechanism – radiative gases.
So Trick, that question again –
“Is the net effect of our radiative atmosphere on the oceans cooling or warming?”
Trick, your one word answer. Cooling or warming? Fifth time lucky?
tallbloke says:
March 17, 2014 at 11:59 pm
———————————–
Calm and having lots of fun Rog 😉
The best bit of this is the science is not hard, every high school kid will be able to get it once they run the experiment. This means that none of the “sciencey” sounding excuses the Church of Radiative Climatology are busy cooking up will save them. Heat hiding, aerosols masking or trade winds blowing will all fail. Their figure for ocean surface temperature in the absence of a radiative atmosphere is out by ~98C. They won’t walk this one off 😉
I may be having my fun but the elephant not yet in the room is 7 billion angry citizens. I think “Mr. Stampy” is about have a full on trumpeting&stomping frenzy.
Konrad says: March 18, 2014 at 1:22 am
Your question is a bit unfair Konrad. I’m sure you realise, as I do, that SW insolation ‘warms’, but IR ‘OLR’ is mostly a product of ‘oceanic evaporation’ and ‘cools’! This question requires a response that is ‘greater’ than a “one word answer”. 😉
Best regards, Ray.