Tim Cullen: Illumination from the Geochemical Society

This is the first of two guest posts from Tim Cullen on the fascinating subject of photon production in planetary atmospheres:

The concept of a “fluorescing atmosphere” is generally dismissed as cranky [or just plain crazy] by most pundits and commentators.

Therefore, I am extremely grateful to Professor Mark A. Smith and Hiroshi Imanaka for publishing a truly remarkable paper on the Geochemical Society website that clearly illustrates that photons are produced in the atmosphere.

The blue emissions are indicative of atomic hydrogen [but there are other atmospheric atomic gases that emit blue photon – such as helium] and are produced in many ways [including]:
a) Electrons colliding with atomic gas particles.
b) Solar photon colliding with atomic gas particles.
c) Atomic gas particles recombining to form molecules.

Though less is directly known regarding the haze layers, lying predominantly below the direct reach of Cassini, much is now known regarding the atmosphere above the haze.

Using the Ion-Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) on Cassini, we now know that even in the ionosphere, there is a rich and complex organic chemistry unparalleled in any known atmosphere (Waite, 2005; Waite, 2009).

Nils-Axel Morner: Solar Wind, Earth’s Rotation and Changes in Terrestrial Climate

My thanks to Nils-Axel Morner for sending me a copy of his new paper ‘Solar Wind, Earth’s Rotation and Changes in Terrestrial Climate’ published yesterday in Physical Review & Research Inernational. This is a great paper, full of interest, drawing together disparate dynamic phenomena into a comprehensible whole. Niklas is fully up to date with the latest research from Nicola Scafetta and the talkshop, incorporating planetary motion into the scheme encompassing the wider ‘frame of reference’ in which terrestrial climate change occurs. This is what will enable the new climate science to move beyond the constricted and constipated thinking of the current climate science mainstream.

 

Ken Gregory: Water Vapor Decline Cools the Earth – NASA Satellite Data

My thanks to Clive Best for offering this analysis from Ken Gregory as a repost here at the talkshop. There’s already an active discussion of it on WUWT, but we’ll run it anyway, as its importance is high.

Water Vapor Decline Cools the Earth – NASA Satellite Data
Original article at http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?id=483

An analysis of NASA satellite data shows that water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas, has declined in the upper atmosphere causing a cooling effect that is 16 times greater than the warming effect from man-made greenhouse gas emissions during the period 1990 to 2001.

The world has spent over $ 1 trillion on climate change mitigation based on climate models that don’t work. They are notoriously poor at simulating the 20^th century warming because they do not include natural causes of climate change – mainly due to the changing sun – and they grossly exaggerate the feedback effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

Most scientists agree that doubling the amount of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, which takes about 150 years, would theoretical warm the earth by one degree Celsius if there were no change in evaporation, the amount or distribution of water vapor and clouds. Climate models amplify the initial CO₂ effect by a factor of three by assuming positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds, for which there is little direct evidence. Most of the amplification by the climate models is due to an increase in upper atmosphere water vapor.

The Satellite Data

The NASA water vapor project (NVAP) uses multiple satellite sensors to create a standard climate dataset to measure long-term variability of global water vapor. NASA recently released the Heritage NVAP data which gives water vapor measurement from 1988 to 2001 on a 1 degree by 1 degree grid, in three vertical layers.¹ The NVAP-M project, which is not yet available, extends the analysis to 2009 and gives five vertical layers. Water vapor content of an atmospheric layer is represented by the height in millimeters (mm) that would result from precipitating all the water vapor in a vertical column to liquid water. The near-surface layer is from the surface to where the atmospheric pressure is 700 millibar (mb), or about 3 km altitude. The middle layer is from 700 mb to 500 mb air pressure, or from 3 km to 6 km attitude. The upper layer is from 500 mb to 300 mb air pressure, or from 6 km to 10 km altitude.

The global annual average precipitable water vapor by atmospheric layer and by hemisphere from 1988 to 2001 is shown in Figure 1.

The graph is presented on a logarithmic scale so the vertical change of the curves approximately represents the forcing effect of the change. For a steady earth temperature, the amount of incoming solar energy absorbed by the climate system must be balanced by an equal amount of outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) at the top of the atmosphere. An increase of water vapor in the upper atmosphere would temporarily reduce the OLR, creating a forcing of more incoming than outgoing energy, which raises the temperature of the atmosphere until the balance is restored.

Figure 1. Precipitable water vapor by layer, global and by hemisphere.

Doug Proctor: Our former man at Mauna Loa writes on Curried aerosols

This is content promoted from Suggestions to a full article.

Image credit NOAA. GMD Lidar: Mauna Loa, Hawaii

This is a followup to an old post whose subject has come up again.

Since recently I was at the Mauna Loa site where the data comes from, I have a particular interest in studies that have come from there. In this case it has to do with green laser beams that are fired vertically to measure stratospheric aerosols/particulates.

Recently, as shown on WUWT this week, there are claims that mid-size volcanic emissions into the stratosphere are responsible for the non-warming since 1998.

Earlier, Judith Curry [see 1, below] carried a good commentary on the subject of warmist scientists responded to the question of non-warming since 1998. Curry was responding to an article by Paul Voosen [2]. Curry pointed out the lack of certainty evidenced by specific comments. Voosen complained in a comment that she misinterpreted the comments.

The difference in view is very interesting, and very significant.

NASA Balloon Mission: Detects 50 Million Cosmic Rays over Antarctica

My thanks to contributor ‘Scute’ for this interesting news, just in:

NASA can’t get enough cosmic rays. (Copied RSS feed below). First it was ATTREX kicking off last month. And now the preliminary verdict is in from ballooning across Antarctica where they found “large numbers of cosmic rays”. All very welcome but why play it all down in AR5 chapter 7 while all this was going on behind the scenes?

Stunning big photo, click for full size image. Source: NASA

Feb. 4, 2013

RELEASE: 13-037

NASA’S SUPER-TIGER BALLOON BREAKS RECORDS WHILE COLLECTING DATA

WASHINGTON — A large NASA science balloon has broken two flight
duration records while flying over Antarctica carrying an instrument
that detected 50 million cosmic rays.

Is the message getting through? MET Office seeks Space Weather Scientist

There aren’t many jobs on offer at the MET Office these days, maybe belt tightening is the order of the day as they ready for privatisation. But it seems that having shot their mouths off about the Sudden Stratospheric Warming that we already knew was linked to the current cold snap, they’ve realised they need someone who knows something about the subject before they get made to look silly. Again. Finding a bright young astrophysics/Earth sciences graduate with Fortran skills might be a bit of a challenge though:

Space Weather Research Scientist
Salary: Starting £25,500 and for exceptional candidates up to £29,100 + competitive benefits, including Civil Service Pension

Generic role: Scientist

Profession: Science and Engineering

12 month fixed-term, Full time at Met Office, Exeter

Closing date for applications: 8 February 2013

Background information

Space Weather is a developing area of work at the Met Office. The all Hazards guidance now provided by Met Office forecasters includes alerts of space weather events. We have also signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center which covers exchange of data, development of space weather services, forecaster training and collaboration on space weather research. One initial focus of Met Office space weather research is the development of a thermosphere / ionosphere data assimilation system.

Guy Leech: Open Letter To David Cameron

The Rt. Hon. David Cameron MP
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London SW1A 2AA
18^th January 2013

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY POLICIES

Dear Prime Minister,

Like you I read PPE at Oxford and I was lucky enough to be taught Economics by Professor Wilfred Beckerman. He has an interest in the economics of environmentalism, having worked in that field with the World Bank in the 1960s, advised the Labour Party on it and he was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution from 1970 to 1973. He wrote an excellent book in 1974 called “In Defence of Economic Growth” which was a rebuttal of the famous Club of Rome 1972 book “The Limits to Growth”.

In 2002, Prof. Beckerman published a book called “A Poverty of Reason: Economic Growth and Sustainable Development”. If you or your advisers on environmental policies haven’t read it before, I thoroughly recommend it as a succinct and massively sensible analysis of many environmentalists’ arguments by a brilliant economist and excellent teacher. He is still going strong at 87; he’s still teaching at UCL, mainly on ethical issues in Economics which he touches on in this book when addressing the mistakes made by many environmentalists about intergenerational ethics, rights and basic economics when considering issues like resource depletion, climate change and the precautionary principle.

NASA ATTREX Project to Perform Real Climate Science in Upper Atmosphere

My thanks to commenter ‘scute’ for this NASA news feed item:

NASA engineers integrate instrumentation into the Global Hawk unmanned aircraft capable of flying at 65,000 feet

NASA CHASES CLIMATE CHANGE CLUES INTO THE STRATOSPHERE

WASHINGTON — Starting this month, NASA will send a remotely piloted
research aircraft as high as 65,000 feet over the tropical Pacific
Ocean to probe unexplored regions of the upper atmosphere for answers
to how a warming climate is changing Earth.

The first flights of the Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment
(ATTREX), a multi-year airborne science campaign with a heavily
instrumented Global Hawk aircraft, will take off from and be operated
by NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in
California. The Global Hawk is able to make 30-hour flights.

Water vapor and ozone in the stratosphere can have a large impact on
Earth’s climate. The processes that drive the rise and fall of these
compounds, especially water vapor, are not well understood. This
limits scientists’ ability to predict how these changes will
influence global climate in the future.

Tropopause Rules

Reblogged from Musings from the Chiefio:

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The title is a bit of a play on words. In common U.S. English, there's a frequent phrase that came, I think, from High School Sports (and eventually made it into movies). In one movie, it involves cats vs. dogs. "Cats Rule, Dogs Drool".

But I could have causality backwards here. Perhaps the movie came first?

At any rate, this posting has two 'themes', if you will.

Read more… 4,905 more words

An excellent article by E.M. Smith, the 'Chiefio' .

Susan Solomon et al: Decreases in Tropical Stratospheric Ozone

This is interesting. Reductions in the temperature of the lower stratosphere have hitherto been assumed to be a result of the ‘thickening’ of the troposphere by the increase in carbon dioxide, leading to increased absorption of surface emitted long-wave radiation and thus ‘global warming’. Now Susan Solomon, IPCC lead author seems to be introducing strong uncertainty into the issue. Extreme Ultra Violet light from the Sun is known to destroy ozone. EUV was at a long term peak while the Sun was highly active in the late C20th. This appears to raise the possibility that as well as being at least partly (possibly mainly) responsible for the ‘ozone hole’ which developed over the poles, more of the incoming solar radiation was reaching the surface due to this effect, thus contributing to late C20th warming.

Uncertainties in the evolution of stratospheric ozone and implications for recent temperature changes in the tropical lower stratosphere

• Susan Solomon
• Paul J. Young
• Birgit Hassler

• Lancaster Environment Centre

Journal publication date	14/09/2012
Journal	Geophysical Research Letters
Volume	39
Number of pages	4
Original language	English

Abstract

Observations from satellites and balloons suggest that ozone abundances have decreased in the tropical lower stratosphere since the late 1970s, but this long-term change is occurring in a region of large interannual variability.