My Thanks to Ned Nikolov, who has just sent the first part of the ‘Response to comments on the Unified Theory of Climate’ to us.
Part 1: Magnitude of the Natural ‘Greenhouse’ Effect
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. and Karl Zeller, Ph.D.
January 17, 2012
We’ve decided to split our expanded explanation into two parts, so that we do not overwhelm people. From what we’ve seen on the blogs so far, there appear to be 2 main areas of confusion: 1) the size of the GH effect. Most people have a hard time wrapping their minds around the fact the atmosphere boosts the surface temperature by well over 100K; and 2) the physical nature of the pressure-controlled thermal enhancement. Although, this follows seamlessly from the gas law, most people (including PhD scientists) appear to be totally confused as to how precisely the effect of pressure works or is even possible. So, this will be topic of our reply Part 2.
(a) The term Greenhouse Effect (GE) is inherently misleading due to the fact that the free atmosphere, imposing no restriction on convective cooling, does not really work as a closed greenhouse.
(b) ATE accurately conveys the physical essence of the phenomenon, which is the temperature boost at the surface due to the presence of atmosphere;
(c) Reasoning in terms of ATE (Atmospheric Thermal Effect) vs. GE (Greenhouse effect) helps broaden the discussion beyond radiative transfer; and
(d) Unlike GE, the term Atmospheric Thermal Effect implies no underlying physical mechanism(s).
We start with the undisputable fact that the atmosphere provides extra warmth to the surface of Earth compared to an airless environment such as on the Moon. This prompts two basic questions:
(1) What is the magnitude of this extra warmth, i.e. the size of ATE ? and (2) How does the atmosphere produce it, i.e. what is the physical mechanism of ATE ? In this reply we address the first question.
The pdf is available here. UTC_Blog_Reply_Part-1
Please try to focus on the content of the pdf in comments to this thread. We can carry on posting our general thoughts about the overall theory and how best to formulate our understanding of the proposed gravity effect on the existing threads – thanks.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Thanks Ned, fast work!
Thanks for providing my morning reading. I see that it is not yet up on WUWT, you have done it again!
“Data obtained during the LRO commissioning phase reveal that the Moon has one of the most thermal environments in the solar system”
Is there a word missing from this sentence? Section 2.2 Para 3
Alarmist headline (you know it’s coming) :
“New Paper shows Greenhouse Effect to be 5 times greater than previously thought!”
Not quite sure how many floors the building needed for this “elevator speech” but my first-year physics of some zillion years ago managed to follow the argument. Looking forward to the next instalment. Thanks.
THANK YOU!
Science using real observations… wonderful.
I think I am correct in saying the Holder’s inequality is similar to the unequal area gridding problem where if you compute the earth temperature from gridded data it is necessary to cos() the latitude first for computing the what is the weighted mean. cos() is the weight.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/WeightedMean.html
This is pretty exciting stuff. I was able to follow this argument the first time, but I wasn’t able to keep up on the math. I still can’t keep up on the math, but they’ve certainly made it easy for anyone competent to verify or disprove their thesis.
Empirically, it seems that it would be straightforward to access lunar temperature data as they suggest and see how close their 155K is to real life measurements. Theoretically, somebody that’s retained a better grasp than I have on thermodynamics and integral calculus should be able to comment on their methodology, favorably or otherwise.
As I said earlier, this step is pretty crucial. There’s no point at all in advancing pet theories unless and until N&Z’s Tgb calculations are proven. If they aren’t, then the currently accepted radiative effects explain everything already.
For myself, I am greatly anticipating part 2 of their thesis. I believe there is going to be something substantial there. I’ll be happy to find out either way, but the current explanation is very unsatisfying. I really wish them well.
Congratulations Ned and Karl.
This builds on your first paper.
The strongest point here surely is the fact that the conventional average temperature of the moon is stated to be 255K, which is about 50K above the mean annual equatorial temperature as measured by the Diviner team from the latest NASA data.
There is something radically wrong with the greenhouse theory.
Dan,
There are certain basic things one needs to know from college or even HS level to be able to follow and understand our theory. Without those things present, one should not blame the authors for the lack of clarity, but the critique towards oneself … There is no way around it!
“Faster rotation and/or higher thermal inertia of the ground would only facilitate a more efficient spatial distribution of the absorbed solar energy, thus increasing the uniformity of the resulting temperature field across the planet surface, but could not affect the average surface temperature.”
Does this make sense to everyone? I would have thought a more-uniform temperature for the same average would result in less radiation–and so “faster rotation and/or higher thermal inertia” would result in a higher average temperature for the same insolation. What am I missing?
Joe Born says:
January 18, 2012 at 1:55 am
I picked up on that too. I can see why speed of rotation may not affect average surface temperatures, although I need more convincing on that point, but thermal inertia of the surface absolutely has to. The fact that the absolute minimum temperatures on the Moon are 25-30K whilst the theory proposes they should fall to 3K is all the confirmation you really need.
This doesn’t, by itself, mean the whole theory is wrong, but any non-atmospheric thermal enhancement needs to be accounted for before the ATE can be determined with rigorous accuracy.
Ned Nikolov says:
January 18, 2012 at 1:37 am
Ned, I couldn’t understand what your point was until I re-read what I posted. The lack of clarity was on my part. When I said “the current explanation is very unsatisfying”, I meant the current, commonly accepted GHG theory. It’s always fallen kind of flat for me and any theory that predicts tipping points and runaway temperatures from a modest increase in levels of a trace gas, well…
When I read your first paper, something seemed to click with me. That of course doesn’t mean anything, but my gut says you’re onto something. BTW, I made it through differential and integral calculus, thermodynamics 101, and a few other engineering courses. No degree, though. I can follow what you are saying well enough, so you’re doing a good job including us laymen in your explanation. That is very generous and it’s much appreciated that you are explaining well without talking down to us lesser gifted folks.
Really am looking forward to part 2.
Dan
Joe Born says:
January 18, 2012 at 1:55 am
Joe, this makes sense to me at an intuitive level. A faster rotation would imply less warming when exposed to sunlight and less cooling at night. Overall insolation would be the same, hence average temperature would be the same, but the extremes would be much less. Just my take.
Dan in Nevada:
Thanks for the input. But recall what Nikolov said about Hoelder’s inequality. The same average temperatures can result in different levels of radiation out if one’s variance exceeds the other’s.
Joe:
I think I get what you are saying and I appreciate your explaining it. If you’re right, maybe the difference isn’t all that significant. In that case, I think the important thing would be to validate their main argument and save further refinements (for length of rotation and other variables) for another day. But, N&Z are putting their work out there for people to try to shoot holes in it and you’ve brought up a good point.
Well worth th the wait Ned and Karl, congratulations for a fine detailed summmary!
The exactitude of the prediction of the Moon’s equatorial temperature is telling. The AGW climastrologers have nothing to equal it.
Climate research certainly needs a paradigm shift. It is locked into a faulty modality that is going nowhere fast! It is a Mann-u-factured and Hansenized CAGW dead end. May this hypothesis launch new ways of cracking the nut. A good beginning… Kudos. GK
N & Z acknowledge that this is still a work in progress, and one senses that there is still a mountain of detail to work through to fully validate the results. However, I find the way the basic argument hangs together even at this stage is very convincing. The chain of logic seems so simple that it is hard to see at what point it could be falsified.
I am now looking forward to Part 2. I do have a problem with the way in which N & Z previously described and emphasized the role of pressure and the manner in which it did or did not affect temperatures in the system. That led to a lot of confusion. The last four lines of Part 1 suggest that the confusion may be continued into Part 2.
The paper is very convincing, however I too am somewhat puzzled by:
“Faster rotation and/or higher thermal inertia of the ground would only facilitate a more efficient spatial distribution of the absorbed solar energy, thus increasing the uniformity of the resulting temperature field across the planet surface, but could not affect the average surface temperature.”
This needs a bit of clarification. It is apparent from the figures that thermal inertia of the ground is low. Is it known how much energy is absorbed by the ground, what the specific heat and thermal conductivity of the ground are? I don’t think the effect of thermal inertia can be high, but it could explain some of the discrepancy between calculations and Diviner measurements. Is the uncertainty in the Diviner data known? I see no mention of measurement uncertainty in the paper.
Phillip Bratby says:
January 18, 2012 at 8:21 am
The paper is very convincing, however I too am somewhat puzzled by:
“Faster rotation and/or higher thermal inertia of the ground would only facilitate a more efficient spatial distribution of the absorbed solar energy, thus increasing the uniformity of the resulting temperature field across the planet surface, but could not affect the average surface temperature.”
This needs a bit of clarification. It is apparent from the figures that thermal inertia of the ground is low.
They are responding to Smith’s hypothesis, not themselves claiming anything about the Earth’s ground’s thermal inertia. Read the whole paragraph:
In a recent analytical study, Smith (2008) argued that Eq. (5) only describes the mean temperature of a non-rotating planet and that, if axial rotation and thermal capacity of the surface are explicitly accounted for, the average temperature of an airless planet would approach the effective emission temperature
“Faster rotation and/or higher thermal inertia of the ground would only facilitate a more efficient spatial distribution of the absorbed solar energy, thus increasing the uniformity of the resulting temperature field across the planet surface, but could not affect the average surface temperature.”
I take that as meaning that faster rotation or higher thermal inertia would provoke enough negative system responses via conduction, and convection (and the water cycle ?) to keep the system at the average temperature set by pressure and energy input.
The concept of thermal inertia at the surface is helpful in dealing with a watery world because on Earth the greatest thermal inertia at the surface is in the oceans. I think they should say surface rather than ground to clarify that point.
Common sense really and possibly old knowledge but getting a proper proof and analysis at this stage of the AGW panic would be a major step forward,
With this work to consider and more to come I am very excited, especially if it fits well with my previous suppositions. So far so good.
I have a question on figure 3:
the horizontal line at 40K is probably the influence of earth’s radiation towards the moon?
I didn’t find it mentioned in the text.
Imo the comparison with the moon is wrong, since the earth isn’t a rocky planet, but a very wet one.
70% of the surface is ocean, at least 3km deep.The bulk of the oceans have a temp. of ~275K, greatly buffering the incoming solar radiation. So the assumption of 0K temp at the nightsite of the earth is wrong.
See https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/hans-jelbring-the-greenhouse-effect-as-a-function-of-atmospheric-mass/#comment-13485
Just to be sure, I’m not talking about the core heating the oceans, just assuming thermal balance between the 2.
Since system earth (hot core, crust, oceans, atmosphere) is in radiative balance with incoming solar there is no system wide temperature change.
The talkshop is going into read-only mode for 12 hours in protest at the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation before the US Congress. Check the new post, and come back tonight after 10pm GMT when normal service will be resumed for comments. You can of course browse interesting old threads in the meantime if you wish. 🙂
In fact, that’s a good idea, because if SOPA/PIPA gets enacted, much of the content of this site will disappear. 😦
To cover that eventuality, I have produced a DVD with the entire two years of Talkshop posts, comments, images, papers, all external links and content. It’s a bundle of interesting goodness! It will be available to Talkshop members and interested parties in due course. 🙂
“Imo the comparison with the moon is wrong, since the earth isn’t a rocky planet, but a very wet one.”
I think the thermal inertia point about the surface might cover that.
I like the paper, particularly the explanation of the geometry of insolation and the albedo correction (which I had not picked up on before). A minor quibble – I think that an emmissivity of 0.95 may be too high – in re-entry dynamics a carbon/carbon high termperature thermal protection system with a silicon carbide coating has a measured emmissivity of 0.89 (and this is designed for high emmissivity).
The last paragraph is of course the key – part 2 will be facinating! As I have stated before I think that the key may be that the laws of thermodynamics act to maximise the entropy of the planet as a whole (including the atmoshere) in a non-equilibrium thermodynamic system (consequent upon rotation). Surely this must be true whatever the mechanism, and all things being equal only the atmosphere has the necessary degrees of freedom to achieve this? I think that the likelyhood is that only insolation, gravity, rotation and the mass of the atmosphere can account for the system that we observe.
I realise that the statement above is wooly, and I hope that part 2 will provide a sensible construction that will remove “wooliness” and give examples of several planets in order to validate the analysis.
Excellent explanation of the proxy earth PGB, Ned. Just shows what can be achieved through carefull observation of what is ‘out there’ (as per the X-Files: “The truth …”, perhaps?).
But I agree with Roy Martin, who says (January 18, 2012 at 7:50 am):
“I do have a problem with the way in which N & Z previously described and emphasized the role of pressure and the manner in which it did or did not affect temperatures in the system. That led to a lot of confusion. The last four lines of Part 1 suggest that the confusion may be continued into Part 2.”
I would look for drastic rewording of your third last line, where you say, “… it is the physical force of atmospheric pressure that can only fully explain the observed near-surface thermal enhancement (NTE).” This will, indeed, require a second part – probably longer than this first part. You definitely need much more precise and carefully selected words to avoid the confusion Roy Martin speaks of. I think this is what probably set Willis E off on his tangent at WUWT (which he now says was a prank).
Most engineers who read your last sentence will immediately jibe, thinking, “Whoa there! Does he mean, ‘The effect of atmospheric pressure?” They will then think, “He must be meaning ‘Density’, perhaps?”
My take on your point (FWIW) is that the high density (which exists due to the action of gravity on the gas molecules) directly controls what the EFFECT OF INSOLATION will be (through the IGL equation ρTs = const. = Ps M / R).
As I put it to Willis, try using “Thermal Expansion Coefficient” as an ANALOG for your “Near-surface Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement (ATE) defined as a non-dimensional ratio (NTE)”. Each is a dimensionless ‘factor’ which enables us to calculate the EFFECT of heat input, albeit to two very different systems.
This is another attempt by the ruling elite to try and control this monster they spawned, the world wide web. As with other tactics, it will surely fail!
TB,
This is a prime example of sacrificing accuracy for the single calculation of averaging.
It changes the planet into a cylinder and assumes what happens at the equatorial region will automatically be transfered to the polar regions.
This takes away all the different parameters such as size difference, velocity differences, solar energy angle differences, land height differences, anomaly of region differences, etc.
This same assumption is the current model of climate science on our planet.
Sacrificing accuracy is inherent in mathematics. Take the circle calculation of 3.14159. Not many people realize that it is open ended and NEVER will come together in the full circle. But it is needed for different sizes of circles as the accuracy is in how many numbers of the 3.14159 is included.
Thanks for this reply/Part I.
This is so much clearer to me than the first outing. It just goes to show how hard it is to transfer what is on a poster for top physicists into a paper which can be followed by bottom physicists – or, in my case, abyssal, as in HS physics decades ago, and no, I won’t tell you the grades I achieved 😦
A joy to read, especially given the actual observations by ‘Diviner’.
It astonishes me that there haven’t been queries by planetary scientists as to why there are these discrepancies between observed data and those calculated according to theoretical assumptions.
N & Z are right to point this out.
Looking forward to the arguments from the physics community, in the hope of learning more.
In my view, elegant and utterly convincing but I will leave it to the maths experts to check the numbers.
I look forward to the explanation of the origin of such a large atmospheric affect.
But, I am going to chance my arm at an explanation:
The denser it is, the greater is the energy that the atmosphere accumulates and the more effective it is in transferring energy from low to high latitudes and from the day to the night side thus raising the temperature in what would otherwise be very cold locations. If there is no atmosphere, there is no warmth at two meters and no redistribution.
There is a necessary minimum level of greenhouse gas to facilitate the atmospheric absorption of the small portion of energy that leaves the surface of the earth as radiation. But in fact most of the energy is transferred to the atmosphere by conduction and evaporation. Any increase in the proportion of the atmosphere that absorbs the Earths long wave radiation is unlikely to promote an increase in surface temperature because, in the grand scheme of things, this is a minor process.
It is the bulk density of the atmosphere that in the first instance that determines the ‘average’ surface temperature. In the case of the Earth, there is an even more efficient absorber and transporter of energy….the oceans. Together the atmosphere and the oceans raise the temperature of mid and high latitudes well beyond that of the moon, a good proxy for what the Earth would be if there were no atmosphere and no ocean.
Since the density of the atmosphere is relatively invariable we must look for a different explanation for the change in surface temperature. Change in cloud cover is the obvious alternative. There is very strong evidence that the temperature of the cloud bearing layers of the middle and upper troposphere is affected by change in ozone content that has its origin in polar processes.
On second thoughts, I would like to modify my conjecture @ 10.02 am (just caught by the bloody strike!) to : “…only insolation, albedo, gravity, rotation and the specific heat of the atmosphere can account for the system that we observe”.
Ned, a small nit to pick – please change “undisputable” to indisputable.
“We start with the undisputable fact that the atmosphere provides extra warmth to the surface of Earth compared to an airless environment such as on the Moon.”
Thanks
[Reply] I told Ned to get a proof reader last time. Brian H – step forward! 🙂
Welcome back everybody. 🙂
As I understand it, Part 1 shows that the temperature of earth without an
atmosphere would be 100 degrees colder than climate scientists assume. The
difference is due to climate scientists failing to account for the lack of
clouds in an earth with no atmosphere (change in albedo due to no clouds)
and the fact that the calculation of spatially averaged radiation absorbed
is wrong due to Holder’s inequality; the value is lower when averaged
assuming a linear relationship than if calculated by integration at every
location.
This results in two questions:
(1) Are the authors correct?
(2) If they are correct, then why is the whole of climate science wrong on
such basic issues?
With regard to the science and maths, I am not an expert, but I do have some
concerns about some assumptions. I think that emisivity/albedo could be
different for the different wavelengths of incoming and outgoing radiation.I
am also concerned about the earth having one third land and two third’s
water in relation to assumptions about heating and subsequent heat loss. I
am unsure about the effect of rotational speed but I’m willing to accept a
constant mean with range of variance affected by speed.
To conclude, Part 1 is a very significant challenge to established beliefs
regardless of Part 2. I would like to see the “established” scientists
comment on this before we proceed.
As for me, I would love to see conventional wisdom overturned, but let us
take it one step at a time otherwise it will be easier for the establishment
to ‘rubbish’ the conclusion.
S’ Cat, Would Earth with no atmosphere have an ocean?
Good point.
Blame the Marquess De Carano. (I feel guilty about the lot disappearing while I wrestled with this excellent subject.
This reply is fantastic. Thank you very much.
Your paper completely knocks the ghg hypothesis flying… I was bowled over by the original paper when, ah, when I finally got round to reading it.
What I’m now looking for is a similar standard of communication that might get through to (at least some) diehards, or just folk like me who get so overwhelmed with the quantity of stuff coming through that I don’t take time out to read the paper unless there is a very tempting bait. Your moon graph up top is fantastic in that respect. Perhaps think about:
* Setting up an FAQ – a user-friendly approach IMHO, which helps those who are unwilling to jump into or wade through the whole paper, but still have issues, reasonable or not.
* Discussing the full Earth temperature / altitude profile, and why it is a “W” shape, reversing direction in the stratosphere and thermosphere. Is the stratosphere an area where GHG (ozone) is visibly at work?
* Producing the Fig 5 and Fig 6 graphs from the original paper on logarithmic scales, so that they appear as straight-line graphs – this would be a killer. Oh, and superimposing the one on the other, suitably scaled, to show that the individual planets fit in exactly the same way as the continuum on earth. Straight-line graphs are always impressive.
S’ Cat: Nothing beats a good red,, I mean,, read. 😉
I thought some of the N & Z points sounded familiar, see here:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1562&linkbox=true&position=7
” Greenhouse Confusion Resolved”
“* Discussing the full Earth temperature / altitude profile, and why it is a “W” shape, reversing direction in the stratosphere and thermosphere. Is the stratosphere an area where GHG (ozone) is visibly at work?”
Already done, here:
Click to access How%20The%20Sun%20Could%20Control%20Earths%20Temperature.pdf
” How The Sun Could Control Earth’s Temperature”
Stephen, you were definitely thinking along the right lines in that article.
“The atmosphere of Venus is very dense so the surface is much hotter than it otherwise would be. That of Mars is very thin so the surface is only a little hotter than it otherwise would be. The Earth is a special case because I would argue that the oceans should be regarded as a form of atmosphere in much the same way as the air because both air and oceans have heat storing properties. In effect Earth’s ‘atmosphere’ is in two parts for heat storing purposes and water is the primary player in both components.”
Logic leads us to realisation.
Mathematics takes us from there to precision.
I am thinking about the ability of molecules in a fluid (both gas and liquid) to transfer energy by conduction. At present I lean to no as energy charge is conducted the same as electrical charge and must have electron shell to shell contact for transfer. If the energy charge is great enough to leap a gap then radiation, EMF, is the form of transfer. In a fluid there is not shell to shell contact and therefor no conduction. Just a minor detail. Radiation works well enough, just means the molecule must reach a higher energy level to dump the energy via. radiation. pg
PG have you ever come across the wave theory of matter?
http://cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-wave-structure/wave-structure-tomes.shtml
PGS,
One way or another the non GHGs get warmed to ambient temperature at all levels so in a mixed atmosphere with water vapour one isn’t reliant on conduction from the surface. The GHGs clearly do a good job of warming the non GHG molecules around them by whatever means is available.
TB,
Thanks for that. The rest of the article is spot on too as regards the importance of density and mass rather than composition.
Even the description of the process seems to match the N & Z proposals:
“A warming effect in the atmosphere arises because between coming in and going out the radiant energy is ‘processed’ by the molecules in the atmosphere into heat energy and then back again, often many times for a single parcel of radiant energy, the number of times being directly proportionate to the density of the atmosphere. It is the density, not the composition which gives more or less opportunities for such collisions between radiant energy and molecules whilst the incoming and outgoing radiant energy is negotiating the atmosphere. When an atmospheric molecule absorbs radiant energy it vibrates faster thereby becoming warmer. It is momentarily warmer than the surrounding molecules so it releases the radiant energy again almost immediately. The speed of release is again dictated by overall atmospheric density because greater density renders it less likely that the neighbouring molecules are cool enough for a release of radiant energy to occur. However the time scales remain miniscule on the level of an individual molecule BUT on a planetary scale they become highly significant and build up to a measurable delay between arrival of solar radiant energy and it’s release to space.
It is that interruption in the flow of radiant energy in and out which gives rise to a warming effect. The warming effect is a single persistent phenomenon linked to the density of the atmosphere and not the composition. Once the appropriate planetary temperature increase has been set by the delay in transmission through the atmosphere then equilibrium is restored between radiant energy in and radiant energy out.”
Schrodinger’s Cat says January 18, 2012 at 10:05 pm:
“I think that emissivity/albedo could be different for the different wavelengths of incoming and outgoing radiation.”
Of course this seems logically true. As new numbers get refined, parameters such as per-line-emissivity will eventually need to be taken into account. However, I personally have looked into this issue and have found that when the emissivity changes in one frequency band you also have approximately likewise changes in all other bands and that differential seems rather small and can or should be temporarily overlooked at the moment as the much larger issues are re-addressed.
Paradigm shifts as this will need reanalysis across the board and personally, I believe it would be better attacking them from largest to smallest in order. I think most would agree.
For part 2, I’d love to hear your thoughts on why Jericho (below sea level) and deep mines are hot, but deep in the sea it’s cold. It surely has to be linked to (air) density increase rather than (air and water) pressure increase.
And I’d love to hear your thoughts on the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, which though so far from the Sun are so hot deep down.
Wayne: 100% agree. Start with the big picture and iron out details in due course.
I think that the energy transfer ( in answer to P. G Sparrow) is usually by collision. The conservation of momentum is probably a good approximation (m1v1=m2v2).
Strictly speaking, potential energy increases as the molecules approach each other so that atomic distances are reached and repulsive forces apply, but then when collision occurs the energy is kinetic.
This means that GH gases can transfer their absorbed energy to lots of nitrogen and other molecules and the whole lot can radiate as black bodies at a higher level than previously because the extra kinetic energy equates to a higher temperature. They also exert a greater pressure on their surroundings because the higher energy molecules have higher velocities. This might increase the volume occupied by pushing other parcels of air away (doing work on them), in which case some of the energy is used that way.
Lucy: Gas is compressible. Water ain’t.
Ned: email me from another account.
Schrodingers Cat: energy transfer by collision. Yes.
Now what makes heated air rise? This is what I see at the molecular level: molecules buzzing around in all directions with the extra buzz called warming that they’ve been given from the hot earth surface. They find more space to bounce longer distances when they happen by chance to go upwards, therefore are less likely to bounce downwards next bounce. Now this gets magnified as increased directional momentum is also catching, and legions of molecules start moving together upwards and outwards. And if there is water vapour at dew point present, it will start to condense round micro-particles to give the concerted molecular movements visible form at a visible scale. Kettle steam puffs or clouds.
Worth a good animation.
Building on my last comment, higher kinetic energy leads to higher gas pressure which can lead to it increasing in volume thereby becoming less dense and more buoyant so it rises upwards. The expansion in volume results in cooling, so the temperature drops. If it is still warmer than surrounding air, this process continues.
In other words, we get convection.
Stephen Wilde says: January 18, 2012 at 10:31 pm
thanks, about to read.
TB, I know water is incompressible, just emphasising, this point needs spelling out IMHO, otherwise kneejerk logic says that water should warm under pressure too – it doesn’t make easy sense to me that ocean depths are cold where mines are hot – but then the evidence is inescapable too!
“This means that GH gases can transfer their absorbed energy to lots of nitrogen and other molecules and the whole lot can radiate as black bodies at a higher level than previously because the extra kinetic energy equates to a higher temperature.”
Thanks Schrodinger’s Cat for the mention, have you considered:
.. or higher volume?
Don’t rule out ALL effects, that has been a lot of the misunderstandings I see in the past. In an unbound gravitationally held system I would tend to say increased volume, not higher temperature. It raises the entire atmosphere limited by the speed of sound. If this transfer of energy to n2 and o2 and back again by re-excitation is so very fast compared to the speed of sound then that entire effect can probably be totally ignored and is merely the equipartition and already in the heat capacity (Cp).
If you disagree, I’m always open the learning something that maybe *I* am misunderstanding. I think everyone would like to hear all aspects and get a good gut understanding of it all. That is why I particularly wish when one side of a multiple sided process is mentioned that the other sides were briefly also mentioned the others as ruled out and why.
“Lucy Skywalker says:
January 18, 2012 at 11:22 pm
TB, I know water is incompressible, just emphasising, this point needs spelling out IMHO, otherwise kneejerk logic says that water should warm under pressure too – it doesn’t make easy sense to me that ocean depths are cold where mines are hot – but then the evidence is inescapable too!”
IF the ocean was transparent enough so that solar radiation warmed the ocean floor it would be an analogous situation, but its not.
I am starting to take the baby steps in trying to come to grips with the subject in hand. For that reason I have to start with the gas laws. I did this by going to a site that explains them, and voila, I note that what the “ideal” gas law means is related to all molecules etc being perfectly elastic. This statement got me thinking…. and since I studied economics I relate it back to the conditions of “perfect competition”…. which of course does not exist.
Since these are baby steps, I look forward to working through what it all means and how I can best understand the subject so that I am not bamboozled by science-eze. I look forward to one day being able to read and assess these papers with a little bit more in the way of understanding.
“Lucy Skywalker says:
January 18, 2012 at 11:16 pm
Now what makes heated air rise? This is what I see at the molecular level: molecules buzzing around in all directions with the extra buzz called warming that they’ve been given from the hot earth surface. They find more space to bounce longer distances when they happen by chance to go upwards, therefore are less likely to bounce downwards next bounce. Now this gets magnified as increased directional momentum is also catching, and legions of molecules start moving together upwards and outwards”.
I found that statement interesting when matched to the thinking towards atmospheric pressure as a heat conservation mechanism. If the density of molecules above is determined by pressure doesn’t that phenomenon set the lapse rate of collisions and conduction regardless the molecular structure of higher molecules?
Fellows,
I see that the discussion is drifting again towards radiative transfer and how molecules exchange energy. I think this is the wrong route … The reason the Gas Law explains so precisely the the thermodynamics of gases is because all countless molecular interactions collapse statistically into a simple linear relationship: PV = nRT.
Think about these facts:
1) The product PV = pure kinetic energy measured in Joules
2) The physical definition of pressure is a force per unit area (N m-2).
3) On a planetary scale, the atmosphere obeys the the rules of an isobaric process (operating under constant pressure). This means that surface pressure is, on average, independent of T. In an isobaric process, we have T/V = constant. And P depends ONLY on the atmospheric mas over a unit area and gravity.
4) Changing the atmospheric mass on a planet, alters the surface pressure meaning that it alters the force applied to a unit surface, which in turn will alter the kinetic energy and temperature of the lower atmosphere for the same incoming radiation. More force – higher temperature; less force – lower temperature for otherwise equivalent solar input. That is why we finished our reply with the sentence:
In the case of an isobaric process, where pressure is constant and independent of temperature such as the one operating at the Earth surface, it is the physical force of atmospheric pressure that can only fully explain the observed near-surface thermal enhancement.
Lucy, If we invert the atmosphere and changed its gravitational polarity wouldn’t the amount of Heat that bounces of the surface of the Earth/Ocean eventually find its way to outer space equally relative to the molecular density of the molecule above, as you described?
Fellow Lucy,
Not so much is known about deep ocean, a huge amount of exploration remains to be done.
If say flowing bottom water became warm enough to uninvert it might surface in the Indian Ocean, perhaps further then warm more as it flows back around South Africa and takes an Atlantic cruise up to Iceland, whereabouts inversion is taking place and examining the sea bed again south seems a nice change.
Image from bc.ca
Aside, fun considering the gravity and sea level maps in this context.
In the reply document I am concerned about the definitions and assumed values of emissivity and absorptivity of solid objects and the moon in particular.
I have the following defintions (Perry’s Chemical Engineering Handbook) a) “The ratio of the total radiating power of a real surface to that of a black surface at the same temperature is called the emittance of the surface (for a plane surface the emissivity)” b) “If radiation is incident on a surface, the fraction absorbed is called the absorptance (absorptivity), a term to which two subscripts may be applied, the first to identify the temperature of the surface and the second to identify the special energy distribution of the surface.”
The absorptivity of the moon of radiation energy from the sun can not be close to 1, otherwise we would could not see it. The moon reflects a very high proportion of visible light. I have seen an article where a scientist was able to photograph on the moon incident light reflected from earth’s oceans onto the moon (this was reflected by the moon or again it could not have been seen). It is assumed that the sun has a equivalent surface which gives a calculated surface temperature around 5800K, further assuming that it is a black body (which the actual spectrum of emission shows is not correct). The spectrum of a black body at the supposed temperature of the sun peaks in the UV range. When one looks at the absorbtivity of some solids such as refractories at source temperatures around 5000-6000 C a value around 0.3 can be found.
This could throw in doubt the calculations but of course also knocks on the head AGW calculations.
Perry’s Chemical engineering Handbook gives the emissivities of a range of materials at different temperatures. Oxidised metal surafce around 70F have emissivities around 0.65., rough red brick at 79F about 0.93, serpentine at 74F 0.90 and water in the range 0-100C 0.95-0.965. I could not find any emissivities at temperatures below 0C while for some materials (such as graphite) the emissivity actually declines with temperature it appears most materials converge to a constant emissivity of about 0.9 at temperatures of 0C and below.
N&Z’s post is interesting but it should again be mentioned the S-B equation only applies to surfaces in a vacuum (OK for the moon). Any calculations with pseudo or equivalent surfaces where there is a gas or there are clouds is guess work. Any instrument that assumes the S-B equation in measurements in the presence of an atmosphere will give the wrong answer.
Finally, there is no backradiating from clouds or gases in the atmosphere which have a lower temperature than the Earths surface. Those you have thought bubbles about that have clearly never made measurements, calculations and designed heat exchangers ie they are not engineers.
“In the case of an isobaric process, where pressure is constant and independent of temperature such as the one operating at the Earth surface, it is the physical force of atmospheric pressure that can only fully explain the observed near-surface thermal enhancement.”
Love your work Ned.
So, if our atmosphere was upended, the thermal enhancement would radiate in all directions at its near surface with space, the same as it would as if it was the normal way around.
And, the kinetic energy of gas, not its chemical composition is what explains its thermal enhancement capacity.
I can only surmise, there is no thermal enhancement back into the system without a increase in kinetic energy. The isobaric atmosphere resists by expansion any increase in pressure, thereby, maintaining the thermal enhancement capacity within it, near the Earths surface. Changes to atmosphere can change nRT = PV.
I’m salivating for more info Ned.
Anybody got a tester for the PV of C02 in a stratified atmosphere, or for that matter, know it already?
Lucy Skywalker @ January 18, 11:22 pm
Lucy, whilst the “ocean conveyor” concept from tchannon @ January 19, 3:27 am is part of the story of advective ocean depths cooling, a more interesting aspect to me is the relative thinness of the oceanic crust compared to the continental crust, where your “hot mines” are found. So why isn’t the typical ocean bottom hot like in the mines, even at greater depths?
I’m only an engineer, but I do know that water has a thermal conductivity far in excess of rock, and it is greatly enhanced by convection and advection, to rapidly transport heat away. What is more, because the water bottom is cold, it is a huge heat sink to any geothermal activity, although climatologists, amongst others, claim it is negligible. (You know; this heat transfer is proportional to: T1 – T2). What puzzles me though is that those assertions are made on over 70% of the earth’s surface area and depth, that they know little about. Oh, and another thing, there are strong arguments suggesting that oceanic crust is a better thermal conductor than the continental more layered rocks, including those naughty sandstones and limestones, and conductive interfaces.
BTW, I think the depicted “ocean conveyor” is more of an artistic concept than in the probable real-world dynamics, and ENSO etc is not included.
cementafriend:
You are confusing emissivity with the albedo! Emissivity/absorptivity only applies to long-wave radiation. Albedo or reflectance applies to shortwave radiation. So, the albedo of the Moon is 0.11, but its emissivity 0.95. Earth’s albedo is 0.3, but the emissivity of our atmosphere is about 0.91
markus:
The Gas Law is indifferent to gaseous composition!
I applaud the attention given by the authors to the lunar surface temperatures. And I think there may well be something important to be said about the aspect of observed planetary behavior that the authors will attempt to explain in Part 2. But I’m afraid I can’t participate in the group hug.
As a rewrite that followed considerable previous comment, this paper is more than a little disappointing. One of the central contentions not only of this paper but also of the poster to which the previous reader commentary was directed is that atmosphere causes essentially all the difference between the gray-body temperature the authors calculate and the actual temperature we observe. Readers had responded to that contention in the last go-round by objecting that thermal conductivity and the combination of speed of rotation and heat capacity must also contribute to that difference. Indeed, perusal of this paper’s graph of temperatures on the (airless, only slowly rotating) moon nearly compel the conclusion that this is so. (Its night-time temperature is not even within hailing distance of the 2.72K temperature the authors’ calculations implicitly–but very roughly–assume.)
Yet the authors’ response to those objections is a combination of a red herring (“Adding axial rotation to a stationary planet residing in a vacuum, where there is no friction with the external environment does not provide any additional heat energy to the planet surface”–as though the objection was that it did) and the following statement, which is completely inconsistent with their own (quite valid, but not as original as a casual reader might have inferred) observations regarding Hoelder’s inequality: “Faster rotation and/or higher thermal inertia of the ground would only facilitate a more efficient spatial distribution of the absorbed solar energy, thus increasing the uniformity of the resulting temperature field across the planet surface but could not affect the average surface temperature.”
For the benefit of anyone new enough to the topic that the statement just quoted is not troubling, let’s consider two equal-size planets an equal distance from a star that provides their exclusive energy input. One of the two planets has a uniform temperature T1 over its entire surface. The other has a uniform temperature 2 * T2 in one hemisphere and a uniform temperature of zero on the other: its mean temperature is T2. If each planet’s surface area is 2, then at equilibrium their outgoing radiation must be equal, because the they both receive exactly the same incoming energy. I.e, 2εσT1^4 = εσ(2T)^4, so T1 = T2 * 8^(1/4): the first planet’s average temperature is more than half again what the second’s is. Obviously, making temperature distribution more uniform makes the average temperature greater if the radiation out is to remain the same.
Another issue is minor numerically but, since it was raised before, the authors’ failure to address it completely shows either a lack of care or a questionable choice. In going from Equation 5 to Equation 6, the authors added a fudge factor c_s to make the average temperature come out right after the sun ceases to shine. It’s hard to understand why this was done. Its effect on the calculation is negligible before while the sun shines, and we’ll all be past caring when its shining stope, so the fudge factor addresses a non-issue. Yet it adds a quantity that requires explanation they have not provided; rather than being the actual value of the (isotropic) background radiation, it’s the (much greater) value that (essentially planar) solar radiation would have to drop to to in order to provide the earth as much total power as background radiation does. Why include such a target for criticism? If they feel they have to go there at all, why not just say that the result of taking background radiation into account is negligible when the sun is present?
Again, it’s quite possible that there’s something important in the relationships the authors have observed among the planets’ surface temperatures, atmosphere size and insolation. At least I’m inclined to think so. But the authors’ performance so far gives little basis for optimism that they will explain that relationship creditably.
ALL:
I was very impressed by the N&Z elaboration Part 1, but the following statement has given me pause, as it did first to Joe Born, @ January 18, 2012 at 1:55 am, and several others following.
• A big problem that I see with this is that there is a strong hotspot directly under the sun, and it will radiate energy away very much faster than anywhere else on the proxy moon by virtue of the T^4 related S-B law.
• The longer the ratio of the presence of such an equilibrated hotspot versus its absence is; the dramatically greater is the rate of heat loss to space, versus the very much lesser leakage elsewhere.
• If the thermal qualities of the regolith had zero effect, then the rotation speed of the planet would seemingly not alter these ratios.
• However, there is clearly a thermal inertia effect on the moon, as demonstrated in data that the coldest parts are still well above the background of space. (and a much faster rotating Earth would be warmer than the moon under such thermal inertia effects)
• The assumed thermal characteristics and surface albedo of the surface on an airless Earth with no vegetation and complex other stuff, are in my view highly speculative. (you know; volcanos and stuff)
Nevertheless, I don’t think that my analysis on Part 1 is too harmful, but that perhaps the values calculated by N&Z may not be spot-on. (but that does not mean that their overall hypothesis should be dismissed)
Presumably, N&Z will eventually launch a proper paper, and I hope they will accept this here broad discussion as an excellent peer review. I’m looking forward to Part 2!!!!!!!
Joe Born says:
January 19, 2012 at 5:20
“Obviously, making temperature distribution more uniform makes the average temperature greater if the radiation out is to remain the same”.
Thanks for taking the time in writing that script Joe.
At first look, I though this; I.e, 2εσT1^4 = εσ(2T)^4, so T1 = T2 * 8^(1/4): was a Phil Jones Excell formula.
I don’t agree with your assertion above. Although gas laws are different to laws for denser mass, applying N&Ks theory universally does actually give a explanation for the of differences in the GBs average temperature. In fact, it seems to explain why it the rotating GB is warmer.
The central point of thermal enhancement is centered from a different mass density (for a better phrase). The central point of enhancement moves on a rotating atmosphere free GB,. The central point of Enhancement does not move on a still GB. Heating a greater mass shallower each time.
The difference in temperature between rotating and stationary GBs is explained by the amount of mass being heated is, on daily basis, shifting of its central point of thermal enhancement. Up and Down with the tides of its daily thermal enhancement.
The residual temperature will be the averaged kinetic value of its isothermal mass on a theoretical glassless black body.
Joe, this looks like a developing breakthrough. N&K, if wise, will tone it down, and get off to the patents office. Let’s stop them, it demands much of our combined thought.
PS: thanks for the pointer Ned.
@ Ned Nikolov, January 19, 2012 at 3:05 am:
Thanks for this timely explanation.
Your point #4 bears repeating:
“4) Changing the atmospheric mass on a planet, alters the surface pressure meaning that it alters the force applied to a unit surface, which in turn will alter the kinetic energy and temperature of the lower atmosphere for the same incoming radiation. More force – higher temperature; less force – lower temperature for otherwise equivalent solar input. That is why we finished our reply with the sentence:
In the case of an isobaric process, where pressure is constant and independent of temperature such as the one operating at the Earth surface, it is the physical force of atmospheric pressure that can only fully explain the observed near-surface thermal enhancement.”
It underlines for me how hard it is to change the perspective when looking at a phenomenon one has been used to look at differently, orthodoxly, for years.
While this makes eminent sense to me, I look forward to arguments from physicists to the contrary because this debate, having only started, means we all can learn.
N & Z find a very much larger ATE than previously envisaged, some 133C rather than 33C.
I think they may find that to account for that they need to treat the oceans as part of the atmosphere.
[N&Z]: “Faster rotation and/or higher thermal inertia of the ground would only facilitate a more efficient spatial distribution of the absorbed solar energy, thus increasing the uniformity of the resulting temperature field across the planet surface, but could not affect the average surface temperature.”
I think the above needs some clarification. Does ‘ground’ mean ‘surface’ i.e. land or ocean or does it just mean land.
I ask because the difference could be important. Oceans absorb incoming shortwave to a depth of 200 metres or so and the thermal inertia of the oceans is large. Thus the behaviour of the oceans in altering thermal inertia for the whole system overall would have an effect on average surface temperature.
In fact the oceans would have a regulating effect on Earth’s atmosheric temperature and again as per the N & Z proposals I think the oceanic regulatory power is set by solar input and pressure at the surface.
The importance of surface pressure at the ocean surface is that it sets the energy ‘cost’ of the evaporative process and thus controls the rate at which the oceans can release stored solar energy to the air.
I went into a lot of detail about that here:
Click to access TheSettingAndMaintainingOfEarth.pdf
“The Setting And Maintaining Of Earth’s Equilibrium Temperature”
N & Z have the right idea (IMHO) as regards the air but they need to extend the basic principles into the oceans to get the full picture.
I think some people think ( i.e Willie Essenbach ) are confused in thinking that only infra red absorbing gases give off heat in the atmoshere.
ALL matter gives off thermal radiation and the Stepan Boltzman equation applies to thermal radiation, not just infra red radiation.
I am sorry Ned, you either have not noted the engineering definition of emissivity which is the ratio of the integral over the whole wavelength spectrum of radiant flux compared to that of Black Body surface at the same temperature. When energy falls on a surface the energy is either absorbed, reflected or passes through (transmitted). For a black body all the energy is absorbed ie reflectivity and transmissivity are zero. It is physicists and climate scientist who talk about albedo which is not used in engineering. When one talks about a highly polished metal surface or a white surface -these have a low absorptivity, while a black surface such as lampblack or platinium black has near unity absorptivity (0.98). Absorptivity depends on the nature of the receiver surface and the wavelengths emitted by the source. One can concentrate solar energy with mirrors so that a high absortivity receiver can reach high temperatures. (waves not massless particles called photons)
I go back to the point that the moon reflects visible light which is a major component of radiation from the sun.
One of the differences between the moon and the earth is that the moon has a low absorptivity of sunlight while the Earth surface is some 70% water which has a high (but not unity) absorptivity.
It is known that shallow waters where one can see the bottom that considerable sunlight is reflected. Sunlight is also reflected at water surfaces.
From my experience with flames etc the emissivity of a clear atmosphere is no more that 0.45 (which is around the emissivity of a nozzle mixed gas flame) which is nearly all due to water vapour. Clouds of water droplets & ice particles have a high absorptivity and emissivity at all temperatures in the atmosphere. I have no idea about the extent of clouds. I have noticed if there are black clouds rolling overhead before rain, the temperature can drop 20C in minutes ie little radiation from the sun reaches the surface. I think you need to justify the cloud cover in your emissivity assumption.
Please do not get me wrong. I think gravity does have an influence and hope that you can get your calculations to standup to scrutiny by clarifying definitions and using empirical data (such as the considerable measurements of emissivities of different materials)
OT:-)
The Earths Budget is wrong.
It dismisses the energy that God makes available to it, and excess he retrieves if not needed.
E.G.
Wm/2 INWARDS 1,000,000,000,000
Less Energy used by convection surface = x., 1klm = y, 10klm = z
Wm/2 OUTWARDS 1,000,000,000,00 – xyz.
The point is like a P&L; Income – expenses = profit. (GODS LAW)
Joe,
I disagree…
The expected relation at radiative equilibrium is:
T2 = x*T1 (where ‘x’ is the relation)
Since case 1 radiates from two hemispheres at T1 and case 2 from one hemisphere at T2 (=x*T1):
2εσ(T1)^4 = εσ(T2)^4
2 * (T1)^4 = (T2)^4
2 = (T2 / T1)^4
2^(1/4) = (T2 / T1)
so T2 = 2^(1/4) * T1
T2 =/= 2*T1 as you proposed, but rather T2=2^0.25*T1, thus the solution you reached was inevitably invalid.
Yes?
Cheers,
Bill
My dyslexia causes confusion for me with convection & conduction, sorry.
“I think you need to justify the cloud cover in your emissivity assumption.”
N&K theory trumps albedo feedback.
The highest thermal enhancement is nearest the earth, thermal enhanced matter to the point conduction, will not absorb more radiation, unless its kinetic energy and therefor its speed, slows.
The is no radiation from clouds, GHGs, etc that would be able to excite the electrons of mass to convection more then was first re-radiated from the near earth surface at a higher isobar below.
Markus: If you want to play in our sandpit, energy is neither created nor destroyed (nor ‘used up’ by x,y or z)
Ok?
Ned Nikolov says: January 19, 2012 at 3:05 am
Changing the atmospheric mass on a planet, alters the surface pressure meaning that it alters the force applied to a unit surface, which in turn will alter the kinetic energy and temperature of the lower atmosphere for the same incoming radiation.
So if we compare the planets in the solar system we should find that for any given atmospheric pressure the atmospheric temperature is determined solely by the level of incoming solar radiation.
This is exactly what Harry Dale Huffman found when he looked at Venus.
Harry Dale Huffman’s logic determined:
The atmospheric temperature of Venus should be 1.176 times that of the Earth at any given atmospheric pressure.
Harry Dale Huffman’s data indicates that he and Nikolov & Zeller are correct:
In the end: All roads lead to Rome 🙂
Worth citing again
The message I read is, that this important maths disproof has been done. Perhaps it could be appended in a footnote?
“Markus: If you want to play in our sandpit, energy is neither created nor destroyed (nor ‘used up’ by x,y or z)
Ok?”
Ok. Is it employed in our atmosphere by x,y,or z?
[Reply] Yes, only for a while though, until it ends up as low grade heat and gets shipped back off into space.
Ned
255 K is the Earths BB temperature as calculated by the S-B equation.
255 K is the effective emission temperature of the atmosphere as measured by satellite.
255k is the effective emission height at the central mass point of the atmosphere at 5 km, average cloud height.
255 K is the mean surface temperature of the moon, also as per the S-B eq.
Effective emission height, 255 K when discussing a gas is the same thing as saying radiative surface -18º C.
Effective emission height 255 K = radiative surface -18º C.
By locating 255 K / -18º C in the Earths atmosphere and applying the normal atmospheric temperature lapse rate of 6.5º C per km, providing conditions are stable for the air column below the -18º C altitude, it is possible to accurately predict the near surface temperature to within a couple of points of a degree.
I am satisfied that this predictive ability is confirmation that the figure of 255 K is correct.
As we all know, a theory becomes a proof when it is confirmed by its ability to make accurate and relevant predictions.
My question to you Ned is, does your theory have the ability to make such accurate predictions about the Earths near surface temperatures and are you going to demonstrate that for us?
TB,
Sent an e-mail off to Dr. Zeller and his reply was…
Thank you for your input Joe,
we will look at and consider it.
KZ
Unified Theory of Climate
A proposed key new driver of climate is the variation of total atmospheric mass and surface pressure over geological time scales.
Therefore:
The average surface temperature of a planet can only vary if:
1) The Suns output changes
and/or
2) The planets orbital distance from the Sun changes
and/or
3) The planets atmospheric density / composition changes
and/or
4) The planets gravity changes
So now we know the average surface temperature drivers here on Earth.
Therefore:
We need historic values for all four variables before we can establish the Earth’s history of average surface temperature… without the data we can only guess, assume, presume and be clairvoyant.
This underlines the fact that science is based upon observations.
Many thanks to Harry Dale Huffman and Nikolov & Zeller for bringing some science to the climate clairvoyants party.
markus:
I apologize for not responding; I didn’t quite follow you (although I infer from your “Phil Jones Excell [sic] formula” comment that you weren’t dazzled by my insight). But maybe the following response to Bill Norton will prove relevant.
Bill Norton:
Thanks for checking my algebra. Always a good idea, given my tendency to drop signs, etc. Now, I’m not a physicist, so I found it hard to follow your “x * T” notation. Instead, maybe I could impose upon you to look over my shoulder while I check my work myself.
And, by golly, there is an error True to form, I wrote “T” where I meant “T2”. That is, I meant to write 2εσT1^4 = εσ(2 T2)^4. So let’s see where else I may have gone wrong.
The total radiation is the radiative power density εσT^4 integrated over the area where that power density prevails. Am I correct so far?
Each planet’s surface area is, according to the hypothetical, 2. On the first planet, where the temperature is uniform, the temperature everywhere is that planet’s average temperature T1. The total radiated power is therefore the area 2 times the power density εσT1^4. That makes the equation’s left side 2εσT1^4. How am I doing now?
On the second planet, half the surface has a temperature of zero, while the other half has a uniform temperature of such a magnitude as to yield an average temperature T2. By my reckoning, that makes the temperature that prevails throughout the other half 2 * T2. The total radiated power is therefore the area 1 times the power density εσ(2 T2)^4. So the equation’s right side εσ(2 T2)^4. Am I still okay?
If so, then, to say both planets radiate the same total power, I should have written 2εσT1^4 = εσ(2 T2)^4 Dividing both sides by 2εσ yields T1^4 = 8 T2^4. How am I now?
In the unlikely event that I’ve made no further mistakes, all that’s left is to take the 4th root of both sides, which seems to yield T1 = T2 * 8^(1/4). Despite correcting my initial error, I arrived at the same result. (The blind-squirrel rule strikes again.)
In words, the first planet’s average temperature T1 is about 1.68 times the second planet’s average temperature T2: different distributions can make the same average temperature result in different total radiated powers.
Malagaview,
1,2,3,4 all deal with motion which scientists deems as insignificant to temperature data.
Joe Borne,
Click to access world-calculations.pdf
Click to access world-calculations-2.pdf
If averaging to the single calculation, you change the whole planet into a cylinder. This misses a vast amount of parameters that do not fit into the averaging of one parameter.
Lucy Skywalker says:
January 18, 2012 at 10:52 pm
“For part 2, I’d love to hear your thoughts on why Jericho (below sea level) and deep mines are hot, but deep in the sea it’s cold. It surely has to be linked to (air) density increase rather than (air and water) pressure increase.”
Afaik there is a temp. gradient from the continents surface to the hot mantle of ~20K/km.
Deepest drillhole was ~12km, where it became too hot to continue drilling.
Ocean floors are thinner so have a steeper gradient, ~50K/km.
If there is any warming from the ocean floor to the oceans the, the warmed water would still show up at the surface (meeting Hansen’s missing heat on the way up 😉
Imo the average temp. of the oceans of ~275K should be the base temperature in calculating the ATE in the N&Z paper (and be used in the calculation of the GHE, 275K > 290K is an easier explanation than 0K > 255K with incoming solar radiation.
malagaview says:
January 19, 2012 at 12:12 pm
perhaps one more factor?
5) when the temperature and/or thickness of the earths crust changes.
On geological timescales this surely will have an effect?
Joe’s World: “If averaging to the single calculation, you change the whole planet into a cylinder. This misses a vast amount of parameters that do not fit into the averaging of one parameter.”
I’m afraid I was not able to extract any actionable meaning from that, even after I inspected you PDF files. If you could set forth your meaning in words a superannuated non-physicist has a fighting chance of comprehending, I would be happy to respond.
[Reply] ‘Joe’s World’ get’s one more shot at it and then I’m calling a halt. I asked in the headline post for people to focus on the content of Ned and Karl’s paper. Joe is ignoring that and my patience is wearing thin.
Will says: January 19, 2012 at 11:14 am
By locating 255 K / -18º C in the Earths atmosphere and applying the normal atmospheric temperature lapse rate of 6.5º C per km, providing conditions are stable for the air column below the -18º C altitude, it is possible to accurately predict the near surface temperature to within a couple of points of a degree.
So now we can understand how the Stefan-Boltzmann law works for a planet with an atmosphere… the effective radiating surface is located in the atmosphere… the height of that effective radiating surface is determined by the lapse rate… and the lapse rate is determined by the density of the atmosphere.
It all hangs together very well from my perspective… as far as I can tell the Stefan-Boltzmann route and the Nikolov & Zeller route both lead to Rome because they are different formulations of the same basic equation… so both routes are equally predictive, equally convincing and equally valid.
Harry Dale Huffman took the Stefan-Boltzmann route to correctly predict that atmospheric temperatures above Venus would be 1.176 times that of the Earth at any given atmospheric pressure… his observations prove this route to be valid.
The Nikolov & Zeller route predicts that for any given atmospheric pressure the temperature is determined solely by the level of incoming solar radiation… so at 1000 mb of atmospheric pressure Venus should be 1.176 warmer that Earth… and observations prove this route to be valid.
Bob Fernley-Jones says:
January 19, 2012 at 6:34 am
• A big problem that I see with this is that there is a strong hotspot directly under the sun, and it will radiate energy away very much faster than anywhere else on the proxy moon by virtue of the T^4 related S-B law
This is nicely evened out on earth by the oceans. The highest ocean surface temps are ~305K,
way below the theoratical SB temp.
The suns direct influence is restricted to the layer above (and including) the thermocline.
A couple of hundred meters in the tropics, surfacing near the polar circles.
This band of warmer water shifts north and south with the seasons, enabling the melting and refreezing of polar sea ice.
May be even the simple mechanism for the start of ice ages. Less incoming solar causes the warm band to shrink in depth and move away from the poles. The effect of the moving away from the poles may be greater than presently considered.
“May be even the simple mechanism for the start of ice ages. Less incoming solar causes the warm band to shrink in depth and move away from the poles. The effect of the moving away from the poles may be greater than presently considered”
Almost certainly and it would be associated too with poleward and equatorward shifting of all the climate zones because the level of solar input to the oceans will widen or contract the equatorial air masses.
Additionally, I think solar effects also alter the size of the polar air masses via chemical processes involving ozone.
The great thing about N & Z from my perspective is their vigorous assertion that the negative system responses of conduction, convection and presumably the water cycle do indeed entirely negate the thermal effects of GHGs which I have been contending for the past four years.
There is a climate ‘price’ to pay in the form of an adjustment to the surface air pressure distribution but miniscule from human emissions as compared to that from solar and oceanic causes.
Note too that N & Z’s emphasis on the surface temperature being sensitive to solar input leads us to the amplification process that I have suggested elsewhere and which arises from changes in cloudiness and global albedo.
Equatorward jets produce more clouds for less energy into the oceans with a cooling system overall and poleward jets produce less clouds for more energy into the oceans with a warming system overall. I prefer that to the Svensmark cosmic ray approach.
That directly affects the amount of solar energy getting to the surface and into the oceans and that then produces variations in insolation far greater than anything seen from TSI changes.
Seems we’re building a new Unified Climate Theory, but imo it will be quite different from the N&Z one. If Tallbloke allows I could give my short version of it in this thread?
BenAW,
See if it fits in with this one:
Click to access TheUnifyingTheoryofEarthsClimate.pdf
The N & Z confirmation of the basic conceptual platform is essential but I’ve taken the implications to the logical conclusion.
“Please try to focus on the content of the pdf in comments to this thread. We can carry on posting our general thoughts about the overall theory and how best to formulate our understanding of the proposed gravity effect on the existing threads – thanks.”
I am amazed at how few people are commenting on the actual content of the pdf, which claims to show that actual GB temperatures are much lower (~100K) than “team science” would predict. To the limited extent I can follow their math, it looks right to me and I would agree with them that the “team science” methodology is woefully simplistic.
This by itself is a game changer, if correct, and it should at least be argued. It was amusing, then annoying, to read the comments on earlier posts here and at WUWT by some of the more educated skeptics. Their arguments always boiled down to some version of “team science fully explains the 32 degree elevation of average temperature above a black body”, not even mentioning that N&Z are claiming it’s more like a 133 degree elevation.
I couldn’t get into the Diviner website that was linked in the pdf. Apparently you need a password to access it. So I’ll take what N&Z said on faith for now. That said, it is truly amazing that the average temperature at the moon’s equator is far below what the Team’s calculations should be the average temperature of the entire moon. This alone would be worth a paper.
BenAW says: January 19, 2012 at 12:55 pm
perhaps one more factor?
5) when the temperature and/or thickness of the earths crust changes.
On geological timescales this surely will have an effect?
Thats an interesting one…
From my perspective the key word here is: crust
Continental crust is a pretty good layer of insulation…
A layer of insulation that is typically 30 km to 40 km deep.
The surface of the continental crust is responsive to climate…
We get warming during the day and summer…
We get cooling during the night and winter…
But these thermal effects don’t go too deep…
Permafrost doesn’t seem to go below 1,500 meters…
The continental crust also insulates the surface from internal heat…
From the 500 – 900 C temperatures found at at the upper mantle boundary.
So basically the continental crust is a insulating layer…
The oceanic crust is generally less than 10 km thick…
So perhaps oceanic crust is not such a good insulator…
But by the time we get to sea level we find the oceans are responsive to climate…
We get warming during the day and summer…
We get cooling during the night and winter…
But these thermal effects don’t go too deep…
Sound familar?
So my guess is the the crust and oceans act as an insulator.
However, the crust is not a perfect physical barrier…
The Earth has ruptures, volcanoes and hot spots…
The Earth is degassing into the atmosphere…
The Earth is extruding fluids – including oil and water…
The Earth is erupting dust into the atmosphere…
And over geologic time it expands and its gravity increases…
So my bottomline is:
I discounted the crust as a variable because it is an insulator.
The internal dynamics of the Earth effect: atmosphere, gravity and orbit.
But everything was probably different before the Earth’s crust formed 🙂
I agree with Dan in Nevada – please comment only on the pdf. There are many other outlets (including on this site) for alternative theories.
Has anybody independently checked the integrations in N&Z part 1? This, at least to me, was the “missing link”. The method looked OK to me, but I do not currently have the skill to do this without many hours of detailed revision.. I agree with some of the above comments about emissivity/absorbtivity, but I would respectfully suggest that they are treated seperately from the albedo issue. N&Z seem to set out the argument clearly, and they said from the outset that this is an argument in two parts – if considerations and/or objections to the first part are dealt with here, and in other places, then we are all prepared to properly consider part 2.
Joe’s World says: January 19, 2012 at 12:40 pm
1,2,3,4 all deal with motion which scientists deems as insignificant to temperature data.
That is why I call them: climate clairvoyants
The key is the more accurate measurements of surface temperatures on planetary bodies combined with the alleged error in previous applications of the S – B equations.
No objections could withstand those two points if they are verified.
I am confident because I read somewhere that NASA has already made corrections to its data about moon surface temperatures to come in line with N & Z.
Once those changes are made the ATE is obviously way larger than anything that could be explained by the previous GHG based explanations for the surface temperature of the Earth.
Indeed, I’m of the view that it is too big a diffrence from S – B to be accounted for by the atmosphere alone. I think they are going to have to bring the oceans into the equation as part of the atmosphere to get the figures to become plausible.
There isn’t really a lot to say about the pdf in view of it’s clarity. Either it is right or it isn’t and I’m very hopeful because a lot falls into place if it is right.
I’m new here…
But I don’t find gravity imposed heating surprising at all. I’m surprised it’s a surpise. I’m no climate scientists, but I think it follows from classical thermocynamics. I explain why over on “a matter of some gravity”…
You guys seem really knowledgable. I’d really like for someone to tell me where I went wrong. I won’t be offended.
Thanks!
malagaview says:
January 19, 2012 at 2:44 pm
“I discounted the crust as a variable because it is an insulator.”
But appearently far from perfect, with a temp. gradient of 20K/km for the continents and much higher for the oceanbed.
see:
Ned Nikolov says:
January 19, 2012 at 3:05 am
Dear Sir, thanks to you and Tallbloke for the opportunity to talk with you in this amazing forum. It is true that without the math an amature finds it difficult to follow the details, but understanding the principles of the laws of nature enable a cogent grasp of the concepts. Your post here encourages me to think my thoughts are on the right path. One communication advantage an articulate amature has, once understanding is gained, is that he or she can become a more efficient communicator of the concepts presented due to his basic understanding, sans the sometimes confusing details.
If light of the above would be so kind as to review this short comment here, David says:
, it would be immensely appreciated so I can assess if I am on the right path. (If I am, I think it will help many others increase their understanding.)
Stephen Wilde says:
January 19, 2012 at 3:15 pm
————————————————————————-
Agreed, especially about the oceans, which I call a GHLiquid, but perhaps in light of the new contribution should be labeled a OTE. Ocean Thermal Effect. (-;
Stephen Wilde says:
January 19, 2012 at 2:20 pm
BenAW,
See if it fits in with this one
Had a quick scan. It’s seems too detailed for my very simple model that tries to explain were the GHE theory and the N&Z paper go off the rails
I was thinking of non solid system, just atmosphere with little GHGs, mostly non GHG, but a much stronger gravity (Thought experiment, so here gravity is stronger) suspended in space. It could only conduct the recieved insolation back and forth, until such time as that non radiating gas collided with and conducted to another GHG like water vapor. If this is true then the GHG would be a negative affect, shortening the residence time of energy in the earths system, and be strictly cooling relative to non GHGs.
Roger Longstaff: “Has anybody independently checked the integrations in N&Z part 1?”
If you’re talking about Equation 5, the answer is yes, I have verified it, although, because I got mixed up about exactly what theta was, I had difficulty with it. I assume you’re actually asking about something else, so I won’t elaborate.
Roger Longstaff says:
January 19, 2012 at 2:45 pm
Back of the enveloppe calculation could be:
0,955*0,89*1362/2 = 579 W/m^2 SB > 318K for the sunny side.
2K for the night side, so the average is 160K. Slightly highter than N&Z’s 154,7K
Stephen, just read your The Hot Water Bottle Effect (THWBE), http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=1487 so that will do for my Nikolov inspired OTE,
Thanks.
Joe Born: Many thanks – yes, I was talking about equation 5.
BenAW: Thanks. Again, I have not checked the exact maths, but did you enter the 0.89 emissivity into the integration? Again, intuition suggests to me that the actual emissivity of the Earth that is not covered by cloud would be even lower than the TPS figure that I quoted (the only one that I am reasonably confident about, as that is what I am working with). Any thoughts?
BenAW says: January 19, 2012 at 3:43 pm
The Geothermal Gradient in the Earth [away from tectonic plate boundaries] is 22.1 K per km of depth.
But the average geothermal conducting gradient is only 0.02 K/m.
So the surface only recieves 0.06 W/m2 [on average] from below.
While Total Solar Irradiance upon Earth (TSI) varies between 1,321 W/m2 and 1,413 W/m2.
I think it is safe to discount the crust as a variable.
Perihelion Aphelion TSI Max TSI Min Planet (AU) (AU) W/m2 W/m2 ====== ========== ======== ======= ======= Mercury 0.3075 0.4667 14,446 6,272 Venus 0.7184 0.7282 2,647 2,576 Earth 0.9833 1.017 1,413 1,321 Mars 1.382 1.666 715 492 Jupiter 4.950 5.458 55.8 45.9 Saturn 9.048 10.12 16.7 13.4 Uranus 18.38 20.08 4.04 3.39 Neptune 29.77 30.44 1.54 1.47http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_radiation
Sorry, my previous comments about emissivity may be wrong. A quick search indicates that the emissivity of the oceans is about 0.96 – in line with N&Z assumptions. I am very surprised that it is so high – so much of this stuff is counter-intuitive!
Something I’m trying to wrap my head around is what the implications are for outgoing energy if we assume N&Z’s calculations really do describe reality. It’s absolutely true that, at equilibrium, outgoing radiation must equal incoming radiation. A colder average temperature reasonably implies that much less energy is entering and leaving the system than is currently assumed. That part I don’t have a problem grasping.
In part 2, they will (hopefully) show that a significant gaseous atmosphere can raise the average surface temperature while presumably not violating that energy balance. By the way, I’m trying to stay on-topic here by not commenting on the specifics of part 2. I’m trying to understand what their equation (6) means in terms of energy LEAVING the system.
The only thing that comes to mind is that the hottest part of the system (the point directly facing the sun) will radiate at a very high intensity (W/m^2), the coldest point at a very low intensity, and all points in between will obviously radiate at an intensity somewhere between the two extremes based on the S-B constraints (T^4). I realize I’m not putting this very well, but I don’t have the time right now to get it right.
Can somebody less math-challenged than me verify or disprove whether running equation (6) in reverse allows for a body with a higher average temperature (with a fairly uniform temperature distribution) to radiate the same amount of energy as a body with a lower average temperature (but with much larger extremes)? I’m not claiming that this is what N&Z are saying. As far as I can tell, they haven’t addressed this, which is surprising since this is what most of the hostility from certain quarters is based on.
Thanks,
Dan
malagaview says:
January 19, 2012 at 5:30 pm
? Do we even know the geo thermal flow through the ocean floor? BTW, what is the residence time of this geothermal flow as it eneters the world oceans;days, years decades, centuries) This would give you the total energy in the oceans due to geo thermal heat flow. Im a thinkin (wag) it equals the energy in the atmosphere??
Fellows,
I see a lot of ideas expressed here, but many of them off topic, unfortunately. There appears to be also a broad confusion on a number of issues, which we will try to address in more detail in Part 2. In the mean I would suggest a re-read of our original paper, and especially of Sections 3.1 and 3.3. There are some key statements there, which if understood, can clarify a lot of the discussion on this thread. In addition keep in mind that, according to our theory:
(1) The atmospheric composition is COMPLETELY irrelevant; water vapor has no impact on ATE and the proof is in the fact that all planets follow the same pressure curve (Fig. 5) despite the vast differences in atmos. composition and that, of all planets, water vapor only occurs on Earth;
(2) the atmosphere does not slow down Earth’s cooling as claimed by the current GH theory; it ENHANCES the energy provided by the Sun thanks to pressure;
(3) The thermal enhancement effect of pressure has nothing to do with convection, water cycle or any other transport mechanisms. It is a manifestation of the physical force that pressure represents (since, by definition, pressure is a force per unit area!).
About the Diviner website, I just want to inform you that it will be soon up and running again. The site is in the public domain with no access restrictions, but they had a computer crash (some HDs went bad) and that’s the reason the site is currently down. I got this info from Dr. Matt Siegler, who is in charge of the Diviner temperature data and the website.
The standard S-B equation gives the average temperature of the moon as 255K.
All this means is that if every point on the surface of the moon was at 255K, then the amount of radiation emitted would match the incident solar radiation, assuming a perfect black body.
Since by definition the outgoing lunar radiation matches in the incoming radiation, then also by definition, the average temperature of the moon can be no lower than 255K.
Clearly, the moon is not at 255K at all points, so all that this paper appears to be doing is arguing over the definition of “average temperature”.
[Reply] Watch the Talkshop for an upcoming post on the S-B equation.
“The thermal enhancement effect of pressure has nothing to do with convection, water cycle or any other transport mechanisms”
I agree that the thermal enhancement (ATE) is not caused or contributed to by convection, water cycle and other transport mechanisms but I do think that those things provide the mechanisms whereby the ATE is maintained when other variabilities within the system seek to disturb the ATE.
“the atmosphere does not slow down Earth’s cooling as claimed by the current GH theory; it ENHANCES the energy provided by the Sun thanks to pressure; ”
But that enhancement results from a slowing down of cooling doesn’t it ?
All that collisional activity in the denser lower layers is delaying the exit of energy to space. How else could it work ?
Roger Longstaff:
The way to analyze that equation is to turn the earth on its end so that the sun is shining directly onto the North Pole, placing the whole Southern Hemisphere in niight. If phi is latitude, theta is longitude, and we define mu = sin phi, the radiation intensity at any location in the Northern Hemisphere is S_0 (1 – alpha_0) sin phi = (1 – alpha_0) S_0 mu, and the equivalent temperature is the fourth root of that value divided by epsilon sigma. To get the area-average temperature, integrate the product of that temperature and differential area over the Northern Hemisphere
The differential area is a latitudewise arc R d phi swept through a longitudewise arc R cos phi d theta, where R is the earth’s radius. No loss of generality for present purposes results if we assign R a value of unity, so lose the Rs.
Now convert the integration variable from phi to mu = sin phi: d phi = d mu / sqrt(1-mu^2) and cos phi = sqrt(1 – mu^2). With those substitutions, you simply end up with a constant times mu^(1/4) as the integrand, making it straightforward, with the appropriate integration-limit changes, to reach the result at the end of Equation 5.
“These data along with information posted at the Diviner Science webpage indicate that mean temperature at the lunar-surface ranges from 98K (-175C) at the poles to 206K (-67C) at the equator. This encompasses pretty well our theoretical estimate of 154.7K for the Moon mean global temperature produced by Eq. (6). In the coming months, we will attempt to calculate more precisely Moon’s actual mean temperature from Diviner measurements.”
You can’t include the poles in some average temperature.
It is unclear to me, whether 98 K average pole temperature include the permanent shadowed regions. Even if they don’t include permanent shadow, the polar region at the moon is largely shadowed by terrain features. The earth has no permanent shadowed regions. Nor does earth’s polar regions as dominated by terrain features as they are on Moon.
But you wish to ignore this, you also have more aspect situation that the polar areas not being an significant fraction of the entire lunar surface.
One has similar situation with earth- you can basically ignore earth’s polar temperatures in determining Earth’s average temperature- because it small percentage of total area. And moon with less axis tilt than earth has smaller polar region [arctic circle: 1 1/2 percent as compared to earth 23 percent]]
So the lunar equator average temperature should fairly close to the global lunar temperature. If lunar equator mean temperature is 206 K, as guess I would say the average global should around 180 K.
Between 60 North and south latitude is about 90% of surface area of the moon, it’s high is looks like around 340 K as compared equator high of 390 a difference of 50 K with nighttime being the same. So around 1/2 of 50 K. And above 60 Latitude: at 75 degrees it’s 280. Averaged against
around 370- around 90, half from nite 45 and only 10% area, pushing average down around 5 K.
So I would roughly average somewhere between 175 K and 185 K.
So seems at least 30 K higher average than 154.7K given
Ned Nikolov,
This may be a dumb question, but is what you are saying that the Earth, with its water cycle giving an overall albedo and emissivity that is the same as the dry and airless Moon, explains your conjecture “The atmospheric composition is COMPLETELY irrelevant; water vapor has no impact……..”?
Thank you Joe, for explaining the geometry and the integration. My respect, sir!
Ned,
Thanks for the info. The apache errors I got seemed to say there was an authentication problem.
Since you brought it up, I thought you were very clear in your first paper that, pressure being fixed, volume and temperature would both have to be higher. This makes sense to me and seems pretty straightforward.
The one thing you haven’t addressed so far is the question I asked above (5:45pm). You and Zeller have really been getting beaten up over the contention that your hypothesis demands more energy leaving the system than is entering. I believe that you are expecting your equation (6) to describe energy flows both ways, but you haven’t actually said that. Can you clarify this?
Ned Nikolov says: January 19, 2012 at 6:21 pm
The atmospheric composition is COMPLETELY irrelevant;
water vapor has no impact on ATE and the proof is in the fact
that all planets follow the same pressure curve
I have that pinned up on my wall…
A huge smile on my face…
And this song running through my mind 🙂
THANK YOU.
Roger Longstaff,
The LW emissivity of Earth and Moon may be similar but their shortwave albedos are VERY different. Earth reflects 30% of the incoming sunlight while the Moon reflects only 11%.
The atmospheric composition is irrelevant because atmos. temperature is only a function of pressure and volume (the latter being controlled by solar heating). Mean surface pressure is largely independent of heating or temperature meaning that we have an isobaric (constant pressure) thermodynamic process at the surface on average.
“The atmospheric composition is COMPLETELY irrelevant;
water vapor has no impact on ATE and the proof is in the fact
that all planets follow the same pressure curve”
Which would imply that the pressure curve is what it is and that all the elements of a given atmosphere structure themselves around the need to maintain the ATE dictated by that pressure curve ?
Hence, for the Earth, the Hadley cells, jetstreams and the permanent climate zones.
Thanks for your input, Ned, and thanks for being patient.
Re-arranging the engrained thought images into new patterns of how this all works does take a bit of time, and requires a gentle kick now and then.
Back to re-reading the pdf again …
Dan in Nevada; “Can somebody less math-challenged than me verify or disprove whether running equation (6) in reverse allows for a body with a higher average temperature (with a fairly uniform temperature distribution) to radiate the same amount of energy as a body with a lower average temperature (but with much larger extremes)?”
You wouldn’t get that result from Equation 6, at least not directly,since the assumption of high extremes is assumed for that equation. But the result you’re asking about really is not really controversial. What’s controversial is whether the evening out of temperature that raises the average is due entirely to atmosphere, or whether part of it is the result of other factors, such as heat capacity.
Dan,
To your question (January 19, 2012 at 6:53 pm):
We have never said that more energy is leaving the system than entering. The ‘more energy’ is ONLY present near the surface, where pressure is substantial and creates the enhancement. As pressure drops with altitude, so does the kinetic energy and temperature of the atmosphere (at least in the troposphere). Pressure also affects the LW absorptivity/emissivity of the atmosphere (lower pressure, less emissivity), so that the higher energy at the surface gets progressively attenuated as one moves up in altitude and the net effect is that the IR energy flux exiting at the top of the atmosphere equals the shortwave flux absorbed from the Sun.
Our Equation 6 ONLY describes the average planetary temperature as a function of solar radiation available at the TOP of the atmosphere or ABOVE the surface of an airless planet (called solar irradiance, So). In other words, So is NOT the amount of radiation absorbed by the system, but the amount reaching the system before any absorption takes place. Because of that, inverting Equation 6, i.e. solving it for So is physically meaningless, although one can do it mathematically!
Is this clear enough?
Joe Born says:
January 19, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Joe, thanks for the reply. I don’t think I’d characterize the question as “non-controversial”. Maybe I didn’t put it too well. There were a few very long threads at WUWT where (ahem) certain knowledgable folks kept asserting over and over ad nauseum that raising the average surface temperature REQUIRES more outgoing radiation, hence N&Z are wrong.
My thought is that in order to overcome this argument, you would have to show that you CAN have radiative balance, even with higher AVERAGE surface temperatures. N&Z do a good job IMHO of showing that the “team” calculation for incoming radiation is simplistic and wrong. That being the case, it’s likely that the “team” calculation for outgoing radiation is also simplistic and wrong. Since this subject is the source of 99% (at least) of the hostility towards what N&Z have to say, I think it’s important to address it.
Ned Nikolov says:
January 19, 2012 at 7:18 pm
Ned, see my reply to Joe Born above. I know you are not saying that more energy is leaving the system than entering. However, you’ve got several critics (I’m not one) claiming that if the average surface temperature is higher, then the amount of radiation being emitted to space must also be higher. Some of these guys have physics degrees and are familiar with the subject. If you are ever going to convince them that you are right, you will have to show that you CAN have a higher average surface temperature AND maintain radiative balance.
You say “… the net effect is that the IR energy flux exiting at the top of the atmosphere equals the shortwave flux absorbed from the Sun”. That’s a good start, but to answer your more knowledgable critics (again, not me), you are going to have to have to expand on that, maybe to the extent of another multi-page pdf. This is by far the major argument being used against what you are saying and your ideas aren’t going to get any traction until you effectively address it.
Ned Nikolov,
I’m not sure if you noticed my question above so here is a link to it,
Thanks,
Will
“if the average surface temperature is higher, then the amount of radiation being emitted to space must also be higher.”
All one needs to do is allocate the difference to a dynamic energy exchange between surface and atmosphere or between bottom and top of atmosphere.
240W/m2 in from sun and 150W/m2 from atmosphere to surface = 390W/m2
240W/m2 out to space and 150W/m2 from surface to atmosphere = 390W/m2.
Doesn’t that do it ?
O.K Ned. I get most of it, my lack of scientific nomenclature resits my comprehension, but I’ll keep on it.
However, I always discover and explain the weakness of my logical interpretation of data in a financial projection.
What are the weaknesses in your ATE and its resulting UTC?
Let us all know as soon as you can, please.
Obfuscation is a mistake others have made.
Dan, those pro AGW critics seem to miss the point that if the higher than S-B surface temperature can’t work for the UTC, it can’t work for their pet theory either.
Theirs is the unphysical theory, not the UTC.
The double accounting in Trenberth’s energy budget leads to this:
Will,
To your question:
“My question to you Ned is, does your theory have the ability to make such accurate predictions about the Earths near surface temperatures and are you going to demonstrate that for us?”
Our theory does make such accurate predictions about near-surface temperatures not only for Earth for a number of other planets! Have you read our original paper and our Reply that’s the topic of this thread? It looks like you have not!
Read first, and then try asking “intelligent” question!
Thank you.
“We have never said that more energy is leaving the system than entering. The ‘more energy’ is ONLY present near the surface, where pressure is substantial and creates the enhancement. ”
The ‘more energy’ state at the surface was created with the atmospere itself some billions of years ago. Don’t keep thinking it has to be re-created. It is, and always has been there. It’s more a maintenance thing ☺.
tallbloke says:
January 19, 2012 at 8:39 pm
Tallbloke,
Such an oven would work fine if it was filled with CO2 to provide back-radiation. At least according to “team science”. Unfortunately, as you know more than most, it’s not just pro-AGW critics but anti-AGW critics who believe enough team science to use the same argument.
To be clear, I’m not in any position to judge who’s right and who’s wrong and I know it. What N&Z are saying “feels” right, but that means nothing so I’m trying to stay neutral. But one thing is apparent and that’s that N&Z are bucking “settled” science and they need to be able to answer their critics. Since this point is the main thing the critics are jumping on, they really need to address it.
Dan
Ned,
Thank you for your reply: “The LW emissivity of Earth and Moon may be similar but their shortwave albedos are VERY different. Earth reflects 30% of the incoming sunlight while the Moon reflects only 11%.”
How does this line up with the statement on page 3 of the pdf that gives the albedo of the Earth @ 0.12, and the albedo of the Moon @ 0.11? I thought that this “serendipity” was a main part of your part 1 analysis. Whay am I missing?
Ned,
You make an assumption then you insult me. What is your problem?
I have read your pdf and I found it completely unconvincing.
Which is why I asked you the important question above.
My question lays out simple proof which shows that you are wrong. Here is the data.
Note that this data is from a position which is close the solar zenith in both time of year and location.
08221 LEMD Madrid Observations at 12Z 19 Aug 2011
—————————————————————————–
PRES HGHT TEMP DWPT RELH MIXR DRCT SKNT THTA THTE THTV
hPa m C C % g/kg deg knot K K K
—————————————————————————–
1000.0 143
947.0 633 31.8 10.8 28 8.66 30 4 309.7 336.6 311.4
944.0 661 29.8 10.8 31 8.68 39 4 308.0 334.7 309.6
925.0 838 27.2 11.2 37 9.11 100 7 307.1 335.0 308.8
880.0 1275 23.0 10.0 44 8.83 135 7 307.2 334.2 308.8
850.0 1577 22.2 7.2 38 7.55 160 7 309.4 332.9 310.8
812.0 1969 19.8 4.8 37 6.67 190 10 310.9 331.8 312.1
767.0 2458 16.7 1.7 36 5.68 245 21 312.7 330.8 313.8
751.0 2639 15.6 0.6 36 5.35 236 21 313.4 330.5 314.4
700.0 3230 10.6 -1.4 43 4.96 205 22 314.2 330.2 315.1
654.0 3792 6.4 -6.5 39 3.62 190 30 315.6 327.5 316.3
646.0 3893 5.6 -7.4 39 3.41 195 28 315.8 327.1 316.5
625.0 4159 3.1 -7.9 44 3.40 210 22 315.9 327.2 316.6
614.0 4302 1.7 -8.1 48 3.39 195 22 316.0 327.2 316.6
567.0 4942 -4.3 -9.3 68 3.35 195 23 316.2 327.2 316.8
560.0 5040 -4.9 -15.9 42 1.99 195 23 316.6 323.4 317.0
526.0 5529 -9.3 -13.7 70 2.54 195 24 317.0 325.6 317.5
525.0 5543 -9.5 -13.9 70 2.50 195 24 316.9 325.4 317.4
518.0 5647 -9.3 -31.3 15 0.54 195 24 318.4 320.4 318.5
515.0 5692 -9.5 -23.5 31 1.12 195 24 318.7 322.7 318.9
513.0 5722 -9.5 -16.5 57 2.06 198 24 319.0 326.1 319.4
503.0 5874 -10.9 -14.7 74 2.44 211 26 319.1 327.5 319.6
500.0 5920 -10.5 -17.5 56 1.95 215 27 320.2 326.9 320.6
498.0 5951 -10.5 -20.5 44 1.51 219 26 320.5 325.9 320.8
491.0 6059 -10.9 -25.1 30 1.02 235 23 321.3 325.0 321.5
478.0 6265 -11.7 -33.7 14 0.47 225 22 322.8 324.6 322.9
471.0 6377 -12.6 -35.0 13 0.42 220 21 323.1 324.7 323.2
447.0 6773 -15.7 -39.7 11 0.27 230 17 324.0 325.1 324.1
446.0 6790 -15.8 -39.9 11 0.27 230 17 324.1 325.1 324.1
435.0 6977 -17.3 -42.2 9 0.21 215 18 324.5 325.4 324.6
422.0 7204 -19.1 -45.1 8 0.16 220 21 325.1 325.7 325.1
410.0 7418 -19.7 -42.7 11 0.22 226 23 327.0 327.9 327.0
400.0 7600 -21.5 -42.5 13 0.23 230 25 327.0 327.9 327.0
381.0 7958 -23.9 -40.9 19 0.28 234 30 328.4 329.5 328.4
Following the formula I explained in my original question, at an altitude of 7100 m gives a near surface estimate of 32.05º C, with an actual measured temperature 31.8º C.
I did not see where your theory predicts ACTUAL near surface temperatures, only that you claim the near surface temperatures predicted by the standard use of S-B eq are wrong.
I think I have now provided simple indisputable evidence that you are clearly mistaken.
Please demonstrate how your theory can accurately predict the Earths near surface temperature within a few points of 1º and verify that with empirical measurements from radiosonde data, just as I have done here.
In future when replying to me, I respectfully ask that you refrain from insults, such as implying my questions are not “intelligent”.
Thanks
Wil
TB:
I’m still around, but won’t have anything productive to contribute to this discussion until part 2 comes along.
In the meantime, could you tell me who in NASA hands out the free energy ovens? My wife can’t wait to get one, the price of electricity here in Mexico being what it is. 🙂
Will says:
By locating 255 K / -18º C in the Earths atmosphere and applying the normal atmospheric temperature lapse rate of 6.5º C per km, providing conditions are stable for the air column below the -18º C altitude, it is possible to accurately predict the near surface temperature to within a couple of points of a degree.
And how often do you climb in a plane and go and do that Will? Or did you get a magic radiometer for christmas?
UPDATE Will has clarified the data he provided as radiosonde data.
You’ve made it onto permanent moderation by the way. Congrats.
Markus: same goes for you. Nonsense will be binned.
“By locating 255 K / -18º C in the Earths atmosphere and applying the normal atmospheric temperature lapse rate of 6.5º C per km, providing conditions are stable for the air column below the -18º C altitude, it is possible to accurately predict the near surface temperature to within a couple of points of a degree”.
Hate to bud in, but, a point of contention Wil. Using a 6.5DEG rate is illogical to the ATE theory.
With ATE, the lapse rate is stratified by the Energy Enhancement of kinetic energy. Lapse rates will be borne from atmospheric pressure not thermodynamics. So the lapse under ATE will not be same as the current paradigm.
Roger Longstaff:
To your comment: “How does this line up with the statement on page 3 of the pdf that gives the albedo of the Earth @ 0.12, and the albedo of the Moon @ 0.11? I thought that this “serendipity” was a main part of your part 1 analysis. Whay am I missing?”
Yes, sorry, I misunderstood your original question. I thought you were talking about the Earth-atmosphere total albedo, which is 0.3. But the albedo of the actual Earth surface (oceans, land, glaciers weighted by area) is about 0.12. This is compared to the Moon albedo of 0.11 only to show that it is appropriate to use the Moon as a proxy for Earth’s gray body to evaluate the ATE.
The claim that atmospheric composition does not affect air temperature comes from the Gas Law.
Roger Longstaff says:
January 19, 2012 at 5:21 pm
My calculation is a rough estimate of the integrals N&Z use. I spread incoming over half the sphere, calculate the average temp, and then average with the dark side, temp 3K.
The result is pretty close to the correct calculation using integrals
(which I have long forgotten how to do 😉
Will, please point us to the source of your data. I’d like to check some other sondes so we can get an idea of how often the data matches your presented result.
Thanks.
malagaview says:
January 19, 2012 at 5:30 pm
I only responded since you mentioned geological timescales. For now I assume the ocean is in thermal balance with the hot core, insulated by the crust, so no heat flow.
Stephen Wilde says:
January 19, 2012 at 8:06 pm
“All one needs to do is allocate the difference to a dynamic energy exchange between surface and atmosphere or between bottom and top of atmosphere.
240W/m2 in from sun and 150W/m2 from atmosphere to surface = 390W/m2
240W/m2 out to space and 150W/m2 from surface to atmosphere = 390W/m2.
Doesn’t that do it ?”
Stephen, you’re probably right as far as it goes. However, the argument from the Team is that only GHGs can account for absorption by and emission from the atmosphere. Ned clearly is saying that isn’t necessarily true. So far, the two sides are just talking past each other. Since this is a major sticking point, somebody needs to clearly explain why Ned and you are right, otherwise they win by default. Remember, Ned is challenging the status quo and overturning the conventional wisdom puts the onus on the challenger.
@Ned Nikolov
could you please expand on my earlier question about the line at 40K in fig. 3 in the PDF?
Still assuming it’s “earth shine” warming the moon. If so is it correct that it is steady over the full day?
At least with a lunar eclipse it is zero.
Did you account for it in the comparison with earth temps? It should increase the difference with the earth temps if I’m correct.
tallbloke says:
January 19, 2012 at 11:23 pm
Will, please point us to the source of your data. I’d like to check some other sondes so we can get an idea of how often the data matches your presented result.
Not being Will, this is what I use:
http://weather.uwyo.edu/upperair/sounding.html
For a nice one showing non-adiabatic behaviour try:
Antarctica, Gif to 10 mb, 2011, jun, 21/00Z and then click on the station in central Antarctica.
Very impressive inversion.
BenAW,
The line at about 40K represents ‘winter’ (nighttime) temperature at the poles. To get the average polar temperature, one has to take into account the summer (daytime) temperature as well, which happen to be around 155K. So, the mean polar temperature is then (155 + 40)/2 = 98, which appears in Table 1.
BenAW: Have you calculated how much energy is involved compared to direct solar radiation? Not much is my guess. If Earth albedo is 30% and the Moon’s disc occupies a small fraction of the sky and is only receiving Earthshine half the time, and the Earth’s curvature compared to the sun means most energy is directed out of the lunar plane…
Dan in Nevada: “I don’t think I’d characterize the question as ‘non-controversial’. Maybe I didn’t put it too well. There were a few very long threads at WUWT where (ahem) certain knowledgable folks kept asserting over and over ad nauseum that raising the average surface temperature REQUIRES more outgoing radiation, hence N&Z are wrong.”
There seems to be a Rashomon effect going on here. You’re perception of what went on may indeed be correct. Just in case it’s helpful, though, I’ll tell you what I thought I witnessed.
What I thought was going on was that people were arguing past each other. One side was saying, look, the average temperatures we see are way higher than the gray-body-radiation equivalent, and the degree to which that is the case for various planets seems to depend largely on the insolation and weight of the atmosphere, just as N&Z say. Why, they say, won’t you guys pay attention to the data? It couldn’t be clearer.
As I saw it, the other side wasn’t responding to that at all. Instead, they were responding to what they understood N&Z to say, namely, that the elevated temperatures we observe with the atmospheres as currently constituted would result even if those atmospheres were replaced with atmospheres that are of the same sizes but contain nothing at all that radiates, i.e., even if those atmospheres were totally, absolutely transparent at all wavelengths. Since, according to conventional theory, it is those planets’ surface temperatures that dictate how much their surfaces radiate, those surfaces would radiate just as much as they do now if it were true, as N&Z contends, that insolation and atmosphere weight alone determine surface temperature. But currently the earth’s surface radiates more total power than the earth receives from the sun, so more radiation would be going out than is coming in if there were nothing in the atmosphere to send radiation back to the surface.
Note that this question is separate from whether greater variance in temperature results in more radiation for the same temperature average, or equivalently, whether greater temperature uniformity results in greater average temperature for the same total radiation. The reasons why I said above that I didn’t consider the latter result controversial are (1) I understood the discussion, as I just said, as being centered instead on N&Z’s absolutely-transparent-atmosphere position, and (2) the more-radiation-from-more-variance result clearly follows from the widely accepted Stefan-Boltzmann relationship.
Joe Born says:
January 20, 2012 at 12:56 am
Joe,
Well, you made me Google Rashomon effect – hope you’re happy. One thing I’ll agree with up front is that the two sides were certainly talking past each other. For one, the “smart” anti folks completely refused to even acknowledge or address N&Z’s claims regarding the methodology for calculating airless grey body temperature. On the other side, nobody attempted to make a decent case to try to refute the contention that N&Z’s hypothesis requires more energy leaving the system than is entering (the point we are discussing). For the most part, I think we agree.
What is novel to me is “more-radiation-from-more-variance result clearly follows from the widely accepted Stefan-Boltzmann relationship”. I’m starting from essentially nothing here, so I’ll have to take your word for that. The smart anti folks said nothing of the sort and very clearly said what I claimed they said, that a higher average surface temperature requires more outgoing radiation. Ned Nikolov says that even a GHG-free atmosphere will radiate from the TOA and there will be a radiative balance.
So, I’ve got a new term I can spring on people (thanks), but I’m not any more enlightened. I suppose at some point it will all make sense, but I’m starting to feel it’s not going to be soon.
If it were possible to place a bolus of pure Argon gas just ahead of the moon in its orbit, enough to give an atmosphere of 1 bar surface pressure when it enveloped the moon, the solid surface area of the moon would increase tremendously as particles of dust repelled by static charge on the bulk surface flew into the atmosphere.
The particles of regolith suspended in the newly acquired atmosphere, if spherical, each would have four times the surface area available for insolation than the size of their circular shadow, and would be in constant motion, including having angular spin, due to the cause of Brownian motion – collisions with the atoms of gas (with associated energy transfer). Due to gravity, most of the particles would reside in the lower atmospheric reaches, except for novel dust particles from the interplanetary dust field and the vaporized remnants of meteors and meteorites falling from above.
How much more influential on low altitude atmospheric temperature and thus the bulk surface temperature, would this situation be than the airless scenario?
The gravitational field of the moon would not capture the atmosphere long enough for a troposphere to form, but if the moon were earth-sized, how much of the regolith aerosol would end up at the top of the troposphere of a dusty-solar-heated GHG-free atmosphere? Would the majority in terms of mass of aerosol stay in the lower 50 metres or so?
And would the sky look blue and sunsets red?
I am reluctant to write the following.
To date no-one over many years has provided me with a credible ghg effect explantion, always there is assertion, mental jump over omission. At that point my brain blocks. In consequence I cannot argue neither can I say much on the current subject.
I am well aware of withholding, omitted information, misrepresentation. It only takes one suspected conflict, the whole thing is rejected.
An instance is sleight of hand over solar emission. The only valid way to represent this graphically is on a log-log plot yet these are notable for their absence. In addition there is a very widespread ignoring of IR, truncation very early where I specifically note the omission of ghg wavelengths.
Take SORCE as an example, it states “SORCE will also provide the measurements of the solar spectral irradiance from 1nm to 2000nm, accounting for 95% of the spectral contribution to TSI.”
Conveniently avoiding ghg wavelengths. (I’ve raised this elsewhere, denial, claims radiometers walk on water) reference
If I plot reality what looks like an awkward problem appears. There is no issue with plotting eg. earth surface emission on common graph, no scale breaks, no trickery. The sun does behave as an SB emitter with not great big omissions at ghg areas.
This is illustrative plot upper is from wikip. as a map, y-axis is linear. Red trace is a standard solar reference but papers seem to be rare. (uptick at uv is imo instrumentation dynamic range limitation)
An upshot is the sun is hotter, radiates more at all wavelengths where the earth emits.
As I see it this means that for a column of atmosphere dayside there is incoming at all wavelengths but there is a bandreject filtering for ghg.
This leads to two limit situations
No ghg there is heat input to the surface and heat loss from the surface to space.
Blocked ghg channel there is no input to the surface and no output to space. Implication.
Obviously there are side details but conceptually that’s as I see it. I also point out that back radiation cannot be distinguished from forward radiation, cannot tell whether incoming came from the sun, or earlier forward radiation from the surface. ghg is a nebulous body.
If this is correct there is little effect from ghg dayside but the same channels remain blocked nightside reducing surface radiation to space, suggesting a more minor role for ghg.
In addition, what exactly goes on in this context higher in the atmosphere?
Anyone clarify for me, by email if you want? I apologise if this is too far out of thread context.
“the argument from the Team is that only GHGs can account for absorption by and emission from the atmosphere. Ned clearly is saying that isn’t necessarily true. So far, the two sides are just talking past each other. Since this is a major sticking point, somebody needs to clearly explain why Ned and you are right, otherwise they win by default. Remember, Ned is challenging the status quo and overturning the conventional wisdom puts the onus on the challenger”
Until about 20 years ago the warmth of gas under pressure was adequately dealt with by the Ideal Gas Law plus non radiative energy transfer processes such as conduction and convection.
Since then, AGW theory has come from nowhere to assert that it is all about radiative processes alone and so entirely a matter of atmospheric composition.
There has been no evidence put forward to rebut the Ideal Gas Law or to suggest that conduction and convection cannot do the job.
The onus is indeed on the challenger and that is the AGW lobby.
Can anyone prove that a non radiative atmosphere does not obey the Ideal Gas Law and/or does not acquire energy via conduction and convection ?
“But currently the earth’s surface radiates more total power than the earth receives from the sun, so more radiation would be going out than is coming in if there were nothing in the atmosphere to send radiation back to the surface. ”
I need evidence of this. I know it’s in models, but is the measurement which prove this.
How would provide evidence of this.
Just because take the temperature of my wall in my house and it’s 20 C, it doesn’t my is radiating
271 + 20= 291 K. Which SB would indicate 291 K cube times .0000000567 which 406.5 watts per square meter.
Instead my wall is kept warm by the room temperature- a gas molecules will warm wall to the degree it is cooled by outside air temperature [cooler air molecules outside].
Now what going to cool outside of wall more. -80 C air temperature or black vacuum of space at 2 K?
The answer is -80 C air temperature.
You can be wrapped in Saran wrap and be warm in space- not so in -80 C weather.
You could walk on the Moon with surface temperature at 20 K, in a space suit. And only modification needed is warmer boots, and need slightly less *Cooling* of the spacesuit than you normally would if operating in sunlight.
You don’t need a heater for spacesuit- other than the gloves. It always the issue of getting rid of the excess body heat. Unless picking cold items or rolling around in cold dirt.
So just because something is a certain temperature, it doesn’t mean it radiating that much heat- watts per second.
If this object was the magical non=existence blackbody, it would radiate at the temperature cubed and times .0000000567
Let me have a go at clarifying the basic Jelbring and N & Z hypotheses:
In the absence of an external energy source the atmospheric column would become isothermal.
Temperature at both top and bottom would be the same despite the higher energy content per unit volume at the bottom.
Mass is simply a form of energy so a denser mass per unit volume contains more energy but it does not follow that it has a higher temperature than a less dense unit of volumre.
Temperature is simply a measure of kinetic or vibrational energy and molecules can have the same averaged kinetic energy in both a dense and a less dense unit of volume.
Gravity just primes the system by placing greater density of molecules at the bottom of the column. It does not provide any heat or kinetic energy in itself.
If an external energy source is then switched on then the kinetic response to that energy input is density dependent and so the temperature gradient with density then appears.
More molecules per unit volume will convert a larger proportion of the incoming radiative energy into kinetic form and it is kinetic energy that is refected in a higher temperature.
Furthermore higher density involves more collisional activity due to closer packing of the molecules so that kinetic energy stays in kinetic form for longer whilst it is bounced to and fro between molecules before eventually being released in the form of outgoing longwave.
The more incoming radiation that is converted to kinetic energy per unit volume AND the longer it stays in kinetic form the higher the temperature will become.
The adiabatic temperature gradient is therefore a consequence of gravity induced pressure PLUS uneven energy distribution (more molecules per unit volume) PLUS incoming radiation.
ALL the components must be in place at the same time to produce the temperature gradient.
THEN the entire structure of the planetary atmosphere is effectively forced to structure itself so as to provide the most efficient mix of energy transfer mechanisms both radiative and non radiative so as to maintain that adiabatic temperature gradient.
Radiative processes only perform a mopping up function. In so far as non radiative processes fail to return the system to that adiabatic lapse rate then radiative processes step in to make up the difference.
The final oucome in terms of atmospheric structure can become highly complex and that is where composition becomes relevant.
BenAW @ January 19, 1:22 pm:
This was in response to the following part of my January 19, at 6:34 am:
I meant this in the context of our airless moon or a planet with transparent atmosphere, and N&Z’s assertion that that any reduction in extremes of temperature due to rotation speed and surface thermal characteristics, does not result in a change in average surface T. Others here also expressed doubt at that claim, and that it needed clarification. I went on to suggest that I don’t think it would cause major damage to their hypothesis. Of course Earth does not possess such a pronounced solar hotspot as the moon.
Ned & Karl,
Further to my January 20, at 6:28 am just above, although it may not be very important to your fundamental hypothesis, (apart from maybe in the numbers), several of us on this thread have difficulty with your assertion:
Will you be elaborating this? Still others elsewhere, for instance Richard Courtney, have indicated that a smoothing of surface temperature will result in a higher average T. Thus, I recommend that your final paper should pre-empt a potential misunderstanding/criticism in this area.
With best intentions and support, Bob_FJ
The authors (N&Z) are correct that a new paradigm is needed to explain the so called greenhouse effect. They correctly argue that convection is an important component of the energy transfer processes that establish the Earth’s surface temperature. However, they then lose themselves in the mathematical abstraction of climate averages. There is a second, even more basic paradigm shift that is required before the ‘greenhouse effect’ can be properly explained. There is no such thing as climate equilibrium or a climate equilibrium state on any time scale. The local temperatures and fluxes are always changing on a daily and seasonal basis. Climate change is determined as a long term trend in the short term averages. There is no equilibrium short cut to a climate average. The short term effects have to be calculated first and then averaged over a longer time period.
The simplest explanation of the ‘greenhouse effect’ requires four thermal storage reservoirs and six energy transfer processes. The short term time resolution has to be one hour or less. The four storage reservoirs are the oceans, the ground, and the lower and upper troposphere. The six energy transfer processes are:
1) Energy transfer at the air-land interface
2) Energy transfer at the air-ocean interface
3) Direct LWIR emission to space from the surface
4) Energy transfer between the lower troposphere and the surface
5) Upward convective transport to the middle and upper troposphere
6) LWIR emission to space.
The first important point is that the troposphere functions as two essentially independent thermal reservoirs. This follows from a detailed high resolution analysis of the radiative transfer properties of the atmosphere. Almost all of the downward long wave IR (LWIR) flux reaching the surface originates in the first 2 km of the troposphere. This region acts as a ‘thermal blanket’ that is heated during the day, mainly by convection and cools more slowly at night by LWIR emission. The linewidths of the molecular lines in the lower troposphere are sufficiently pressure broadened that they overlap and behave as a ‘black body gas’ within the regions of the main absorption bands of H2O and CO2. Within these bands, all of the LWIR flux is absorbed over a relatively short path length and then re-emitted at the local air temperature.
In the middle troposphere, as the pressure and temperature decrease and the H2O vapor pressure decreases, there is region where the water band linewidths narrow and LWIR radiation is no longer absorbed in the wings of the lines. (This is similar to looking through a comb). This results in a transition to a free photon LWIR flux that is no longer re-absorbed and simply escapes to space. Most of this transition to a free photon flux occurs within a fairly narrow temperature range from about 260 to 240 K and water vapor concentrations from 10^17 to 10 10^16 molecules per cm^3 (apologies for the units). This is nominally around 5 km in altitude near the so called ‘thermal equilibrium temperature’. (At a lapse rate of -6.5K/km ascent to 5 km gives a cooling of 32.5 K, which is where the so called greenhouse gas temperature comes from – to get to the water band cooling.)
Once these details of the radiative transfer are understood, then we end up with a straightforward dynamic (time dependent) engineering heat transfer problem. The ground has a thermal capacity of about 1.5 MJ.K.m^-3. A 1 m^2 air column extending up to 2 km has a heat capacity of about 2 MJ.K.m^-3 and the 6 km column above this to a 10 km tropopause level has a heat capacity of about 6 MJ.K.m^-3. The total daily solar flux for full summer sun is about 25 MJ.m^-2. (Numbers here are approximate, to illustrate the argument for a paradigm shift, the devil of course resides in the details). The troposphere is unstable to convection and as the sun heats the ground during the day, convection must occur. Based on measured results, the bulk convection coefficient for relatively dry ground is about 20 W.m^-2.K^-1. Here, for convenience, we take the temperature for convection as the difference between the surface temperature and the air temperature at 2 m above the ground (the weather station temperature).
During the middle of the day for full summer sun, the dry ground temperature can easily reach 50 C (hot enough to make bare feet very uncomfortable). The air temperature reaches about 25 C. Assuming 0.8 for the solar absorption coefficient, we have 800 W.m^-2 for the solar flux, about 200 W.m^-2 for the net upward LWIR flux (surface –atmosphere) and about 100 W.m^-2 for thermal conduction into the ground. In round numbers, about half of the LWIR flux is absorbed within the first 2 km by the atmosphere and drives more convection, and half, about 100 W.m^-2 is lost to space through the LWIR atmospheric transmission window. Most of the heat that is stored in ground is released later in the day and may drive convection well into the evening after sunset. There is also a seasonal variation in the ground temperature as the daily solar flux total changes. It is also important to note that the peak temperatures occur after the peak solar flux. During the day this can be about 2 hours, and seasonally it is about 2 months. This is characteristic of a thermal storage reservoir and indicates that there is no thermal equilibrium – ever.
Now let us get a little deeper into the convection (and yes, I am still ignoring wind speed effects). The heat capacity of the air near the ground is about 1.2 kJ.m^3. Convection involves the direct transfer or conduction of heat (kinetic energy) from the ground to the air. A convective flux of 500 W.m^-2 therefore requires an air flow of about 0.42 m^3 per second of air per square meter, or 1500 cubic meters per hour per square meter. This warm air rises and is replaced by cooler air from above. Convection produces a turbulent eddy structure that grows in size with altitude. Large scale, 1 km size convective cells can only form at a similar altitude above the surface.
If the ground is moist, some of the convective energy is converted into latent heat by evaporation. The surface temperature does not increase as much as for dry ground. The air flow from the surface is reduced. However, as the evaporated water condenses at higher altitudes to form clouds, the latent heat is released and produces more convection.
In summary, the solar flux absorbed by the surface is either dissipated by convection or is lost to space through the LWIR transmission window. The atmosphere is heated by convective mixing. This resets the lapse rate each day which in turn resets the temperature and concentration profiles for the upper and lower thermal reservoirs.
During the day, convection heats the troposphere. At night, once the surface cools back to the air temperature, convection dies down and the lower troposphere thermal reservoir cools by LWIR emission. Approximately 50 W.m^-2 is lost from the surface by direct LWIR emission to space through the atmospheric transmission window. This cools the surface and the air near the surface. Another 50 W.m^-2 is lost through radiative transfer at the 2 km level. The surface LWIR cooling flux varies from almost zero when there is low cloud cover to about 100 W.m^-2 for low humidity conditions. Using a 50 W.m^-2 average for the surface cooling, the total ‘average’ night time cooling rate is 100 W^m-2. Over a 12 hour period this is just over 4 MJ.m^-2. Coupled into a thermal reservoir with a heat capacity of 2 MJ.m_-2.C^-1 this gives an overnight radiative cooling of about 2 C, after convection almost stops. This is the concept needed to explain the ‘greenhouse effect’ in the lower troposphere. Usually the air temperatures change as the weather systems move through and this night time ‘greenhouse’ cooling is obscured.
The upper troposphere reservoir is always radiating LWIR flux to space, 24/7. A 1 C rise in temperature in the upper reservoir requires a thermal input of 6 MJ.m^-2. The convective heating from the surface occurs mainly in the afternoon, when the upper reservoir is both heated by convection and cooled by radiation. Some of the convective thermal energy is also lost to thermal expansion as the air rises. This is the lapse rate cooling. During the rest of the day, the reservoir just cools by LWIR emission to space. The upper reservoir acts as a thermal storage heat pump. It warms up and expands during the day when the convective heat ‘pulse’ from the surface arrives. The tropopause rises slightly in altitude. It then continues to cool until the next convective pulse arrives. As the seasons change, the height of the tropopause moves up and down and the amount of heat stored adjusts itself to the net energy balance. No single energy transfer process controls this balance. The daily and seasonal variations in the heat storage are so large that the change in LWIR from an increase of 100 ppm in atmospheric CO2 is too small to be noticed. It is a ‘flea on an elephant’.
The story for the oceans is more complicated because the solar heat gets stored initially in the first 100 m ocean layer and long range transport and circulation are important. There is also a much higher latent heat flux which is strongly dependent on the wind speed.
In summary, the main point that has to be made is that the so called greenhouse effect can only be explained when the time dependent aspects of the thermal storage are considered in detail. There is no such thing as a climate equilibrium state and playing around with equilibrium flux equations is a useless exercise in mathematical manipulation. When the empirical radiative forcing constants are added, it all degenerates into climate astrology. This is the basis for the IPCC ‘predictions’.
This rather simple discussion is based on the analysis of some extensive temperature and flux data sets and high resolution atmospheric radiative transfer calculations. I have published more detailed results as ‘The Dynamic Greenhouse Effect and the Climate Averaging Paradox’. It is available on Amazon and Kindle. I have also place a more extensive discussion on my website at http://www.venturaphotonics.com.
This is a first attempt to describe the full paradigm shift that is needed before climate science can recover from the global warming fiasco and return to its foundations in physics.
Roy Clark says:
January 20, 2012 at 7:43 am
Thanks Roy, that is a good effort to explain how the solar energy gets transferred to a non GHG atmosphere by non radiative means.
Exactly what some need to hear about.
The abiabatic temperature gradient is then set up match the density of the atmospheric molecues as they ‘process’ the former solar shortwave (now kinetic energy) up through the atmosphere until release to space as outgoing longwave.
In theory GHGs not needed but GHGs if present would facilitate the absorption of that former solar energy by the air.
However, and this is critical, the atmosphere always organises itself to maximise the loss of energy to space (maximising entropy ?) so the structure of the atmosphere with its particular composition for any given planet then reorganises itself as best it can to lose that solar incoming energy and composition dictates how best it can do it with a mix of radiative and non radiative energy transfer mechanisms.
At equilibrium solar in matches longwave out and the rest is in the surface/atmosphere interchange.
At all times the atmosphere tries to return as best it can to that abiabatic lapse rate and according to the N & Z data always succeeds one way or another and the consequence of that success is an increase in surface temperature over and above that predicted by S – B.
tallbloke says:
January 19, 2012 at 11:55 pm
BenAW: Have you calculated how much energy is involved compared to direct solar radiation? Not much is my guess.
No I didn’t, but I found this PDF, showing a temp. of around 35K due to earthshine:
Click to access Greenhouse_Effect_on_the_Moon.pdf
This effect seems greater than the constant used in the N&H integral of 0,0001325 W/m^2.
So it’s at least worth a mention imo.
(this constant is used to account for deep space backgroundradiation)
Stephen Wilde says:
January 20, 2012 at 8:21 am
“At all times the atmosphere tries to return as best it can to that abiabatic lapse rate”
Stephen, would you explain what you mean with “adiabatic lapse rate” ?
You may want to read this discussion first:
BenAW
“Stephen, would you explain what you mean with “adiabatic lapse rate” ?”
Dry adiabatic lapse rate. Not the environmental one which is highly variable. The dry rate is the one under discussion and is related to atmospheric pressure.
Joe Born says:
January 19, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Joe
I am a little worried about your thought experiment. Both planets receive their energy from the same source, have the same size and are at the same distance from the source. Clearly planet 2 is non-rotating becauseit receives no radiation on its dark side. The energy it receives ExA, where E is the radiant flux in units watts/unit area. But the flux at the surface of planet 1 is also ExA. How does it regulate its average temperature to a uniform value around its total surface? I have tried to visualise a mechanism involving a rotating planet 1, but need also to invoke some thermal inertia and/or an atmosphere to spread the incoming energy uniformly around planet 1 to provide a uniform surface temperature to enable the system work as you argue.
I can simulate your experiment by assuming that both planets are heated internally, ie. not by external radiation but this rather negates the point!
I would be grateful for an explanation.
Best wishes
Stephen Wilde says:
January 20, 2012 at 9:18 am
Still don’t get it. Afaik is the DALR independant of pressure, only gravity and density.
The ISA average atmospheric lapse rate is ~6,5K/km.
DALR is 9,8K/km. How is the atmosphere trying to return to the DALR?
The idea with a jigsaw is to put the pieces together in a way that reveals the underlying picture.
A lot of people are just cutting up the pieces into smaller units.
There is one main issue behind all this, namely, how does the atmosphere acquire kinetic energy so as to raise the surface temperature beyond S -B.
AGW proponents would have us believe that it is only or mostly via solar shortwave interacting with Greenhouse Gases that then radiate down to the surface which becomes warmer than S – B.
Meanwhile solar energy comes in, hits the surface and leaves again at the same rate coming in and going out as per S -B.
Willis over at WUWT has constructed a theoretical model involving a flat surface, and uniform energy in from multiple suns and insists on a zero energy exchange from surface to atmosphere.
He doesn’t seem to realise that without GHGs or a surface/atmosphere energy exchange it will just get hotter at the surface until the atmosphere boils off to space because there is no other way for the solar incoming to leave. The contributor Bart and a few others have noticed and commented but Willis remains oblivious as do a number of PHds.
Well that isn’t real in any sense. Every planet around every star is spherical and uneven and rotating. with an uneven energy source from a single or, (rarely), double star.
With those features a significant air circulation is a given so on every real planet the solar radiation striking the surface gets conducted and convected to warm the entire atmosphere whether GHGs or not.
GHGs would assist the energy distribution process but in doing so they also facilitate the loss of energy to space so that is likely to be a zero sum game or nearly so.
Now Jelbring and N & Z (and me) sidestep the issue as obvious because it has been observed that every planetary body with an atmosphere whatever the proportion of GHGs has much the same temperature profile with pressure.
Harry Dale Hoffman and others made the same observation but made the error of disputing the greenhouse effect at all with a resulting loss of credibility. Ned has avoided that problem by providing the ATE (Atmospheric Thermal Effect) which refers to the same phenomenon as the mistaken GHG induced greenhouse effect but which arises from different causation.
I have been using the terms ‘gravitational GHE’ or conductive ‘GHE’ but I agree that Ned’s term is better.
Yet there are many who do not accept that the temperature of gases gets higher with pressure (not on a one off transient basis as argued by some who should know better) and who seek to demand intellectual gymnastics to explain and prove that which is empirically clear and which and was accepted for over 100 years via the Ideal Gas Law.
Well I think my above post explains the density related mechanism perfectly clearly at:
Stephen Wilde says:
January 20, 2012 at 4:35 am
and the long response from Roy Clark gives a lot more detail as to why and how non GHGs warm up from solar irradiation warming the surface without the need for any downward radiation from GHGs higher up in the air.
So despite all the cutting up of the jigsaw pieces that has been going on that is pretty much the jigsaw completed but where is the role for GHGs ?
Well, GHGs contribute to the total energy in the air as does the composition of the atmosphere generally.
However, they contribute only to the negative system response that always seeks to drive the energy flux through the system back towards the lapse rate dictated by the pressure/density induced temperature gradient of the ATE.
That negative system response is maximised in every planetary atmosphere by the surface pressure distribution, the sizes positions and intensities of the permanent climate zones and especially their net latitudinal positions and especially the atmospheric heights.In particular the height of the tropopause changes in response to changes in the energy flux through the system.
I have mentioned before how the surface pressure pattern can shift latitudinally as the atmospheric heights rise and fall in response to any interior (mostly oceanic) or exterior( solar) system forcings that try to alter the basic underlying pressure induced lapse rate.
Ned seems to be concentrating on the scale (Part 1) and mechanism (Part2) of the ATE. At this point I do not know whether he will be seeking to go a step further and show how he believes the ATE then results in climate changes.
As shown in my other work I have advanced some detailed proposals so I look forward to Part 2 with much curiosity.
I’ve got a two step escalator.
Kinetic Energy is (forced) employed by Potential Energy until mass re-radiates the employed kinetic energy to space.
So Enhanced Energy is the kinetic energy plus the potential energy of mass. The mechanism of conjoining energies causes heating, the mechanism of decoupling causes cooling.
[Reply] Markus: Get thee to a library, you need a book on thermodynamics to read. I can’t coach you coherently here.
Roy, thank you for the information. Some questions if you will.
“The ground has a thermal capacity of about 1.5 MJ.K.m^-3. A 1 m^2 air column extending up to 2 km has a heat capacity of about 2 MJ.K.m^-3, and the 6 km column above this to a 10 km tropopause level has a heat capacity of about 6 MJ.K.m^-3”
=========================================================================
Roy, are we missing 2 km somewhere, we have a 6 km colum, and a 2 km colum, but a 10 km level?
Also it does not appear to be intuitive to me that the higher 6km colum would have 3x the thermal capacity. If the atmosphere is ever thinner with elevation, then a linear relationship to thermal capacity does not appear likely?
============================================================================
“During the middle of the day for full summer sun, the dry ground temperature can easily reach 50 C (hot enough to make bare feet very uncomfortable). The air temperature reaches about 25 C. Assuming 0.8 for the solar absorption coefficient, we have 800 W.m^-2 for the solar flux, about 200 W.m^-2 for the net upward LWIR flux (surface –atmosphere) and about 100 W.m^-2 for thermal conduction into the ground. In round numbers, about half of the LWIR flux is absorbed within the first 2 km by the atmosphere and drives more convection, and half, about 100 W.m^-2 is lost to space through the LWIR atmospheric transmission window. Most of the heat that is stored in ground is released later in the day and may drive convection well into the evening after sunset.”
=========================================================================
If the ground T during the day can be 25 C above the air T, how much of the flux, ground to air is conduction Vs radiation? I remember (I think) that the oceans are, on average about 2c above the air, which would also indicate an average conduction flux to the air. I think this process matters as I understand Non GHGs in the air are transparent to LWIR, but not of course to conduction. So this conduction flow to non GHGs would have to conduct to a GHG (or back to the ground) before it would radiate.
“The ISA average atmospheric lapse rate is ~6,5K/km.
DALR is 9,8K/km. How is the atmosphere trying to return to the DALR?
Think of a planet with no atmosphere letting all solar radiation instantly in and instantly out. No lapse rate and S – B will apply.
Then an atmosphere so thick that it lets very little out. That will have a lapse rate related to density and pressure and S – B will not apply.The variation from S -B will produce the DALR and the surface temperature will be set accordingly.
Then alter the composition of the atmosphere. That will produce a different lapse rate (the ISA average) but will NOT change the surface temperature. Instead, the atmospheric heights will change, the surface pressure distribution will change and the rate of energy flow through the atmosphere will change but the equilibrium temperature at the surface will NOT change.
The Earth is a somewhat special case because of the oceans.
On Earth the DALR rate is disrupted by the different composition of the components. On Earth primarily water, then the troposphere then the stratosphere( affected by ozone) all of which have their own vertical temperature profiles. Then the same again for Mesosphere and Thermosphere.
But working together all those layers do the best that can be done to return the system back to the DALR.
For any given atmosphere it can only get so close to the DALR. There will always be a discrepancy but it is adjusted for by changes in the atmospheric heights and the surface pressure distribution so that the equilibrium temperature for the system as a whole stays the same.
And note that the troposphere is NOT representative of the Earth’s equilibrium temperature because of the energy content of the oceans. Variations in tropospheric temperatures only reflect the rate of energy flow through the lower atmosphere as the system constantly shifts either side of equilibrium due to oceanic and solar variability.
Now that seems logical to me but I’m not a professional scientist so my fingers are firmly crossed 🙂
Roger,
if you want radiosonde data the best place to look is google.
The important point to remember is that for obvious reasons you need to find soundings which are close to the solar zenith both in time and location in order to get near to equilibrium.
As you move further away from the solar zenith in time and location the difference in the estimated and observed temperature increases, where estimated temperature is higher than the observed. The further away from the solar zenith in time and location, the larger the difference. Indicating that the ground is cooler that the air and becomes more so, the further away in time and location you go. As one would expect.
Conversely, as you move closer to the solar zenith and beyond the equilibrium locations the observed near surface temperatures will tend to be higher that the estimated temperature. Indicating that the ground is contributing heat to the air.
There are very few places over the Earths solid surfaces and even fewer over the oceans, both in time and location, where the later is the case.
Which, as far as I am concerned, is incontrovertible evidence that the “GHE” does not exist. It is complete falsification of the hypothesis in my view.
I cannot elaborate further at the present time as I am in the process of writing up my findings. I think you have enough to go on for now.
Lets see what you do with this information Roger. I fully suspect you will do your utmost to discredit it, and if that is the case then more fool you.
P.S.
Please can you fix the formatting for the radiosonde data I posted.
[Reply] Will, I’m not out to ‘discredit’ anything. However you are new here and I want to ‘trust but verify’. So please point us to your data source. WordPress does crap formatting that we have to live with. If you want to link an image of the data better laid out, I’ll post it in the thread so it can be seen here. I don’t think it does falsify the hypothesis anyway, but lets get it properly done so we can discuss it further.
Stephen Wilde says:
January 20, 2012 at 10:34 am
Sorry, but imo you’re mixing things up. DALR and WALR ONLY apply to parcels of air that move up or down in the static atmosphere. Think thermals, high or low pressure cells where the air resp. descends or rises, air being blown up a mountain range, or rolling down at the other site.
Pse read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate
TB,
As far as I have read so far…
Rotation and planetary tilting are NOT required nor is the differences in velocities.
Nor is atmospheric lensing of having a bent atmosphere or even the angles of sun energy.
Joe Born says:
January 19, 2012 at 12:17 pm
…”If so, then, to say both planets radiate the same total power, I should have written 2εσT1^4 = εσ(2 T2)^4 Dividing both sides by 2εσ yields T1^4 = 8 T2^4. How am I now?
In the unlikely event that I’ve made no further mistakes, all that’s left is to take the 4th root of both sides, which seems to yield T1 = T2 * 8^(1/4). Despite correcting my initial error, I arrived at the same result. (The blind-squirrel rule strikes again.)
In words, the first planet’s average temperature T1 is about 1.68 times the second planet’s average temperature T2…”
————————————-
Dan in Nevada says:
January 19, 2012 at 7:30 pm
“…My thought is that in order to overcome this argument, you would have to show that you CAN have radiative balance, even with higher AVERAGE surface temperatures….”
————————————-
This is like a final exan question in thermo (thermo 202?)… Okay, your question posits:
– two planets with identical ε at identical incoming radiative energy
– two thermally isolated hemispheres for planet 2; one at 2*T2, the other at 0.0K
– two identical thermally isolated hemispheres for planet 1, each at temp T1
– total emitted radiation of each planet must be equivalent
– radiated energy from planet 2 is εσ(2 T2)^4 + 0
– radiated energy from planet 1 is εσ(T1)^4 + εσ(T1)^4 = 2*εσ(T1)^4
– therefore, 2*εσ(T1)^4 = εσ(2 T2)^4
So, yes, I agree with your algebra.
HOWEVER, this is just numerology, in that, you could add any number of non-radiating surfaces to further lower the average temperature of planet 2. The radiating side of planet 2 is still higher than T1 (i.e., 2T2>T1, though T1>T2).
So, lets look at real numbers (T1=255K), considering, as stated above, two hemispheres for planet 1 and planet 2:
T1 T2cold T2hot T2avg T1/T2avg T2hot/T1
255.0000 0.0000 303.2478 151.6239 1.6818 1.1892
255.0000 50.0000 303.1918 176.5959 1.4440 1.1890
255.0000 100.0000 302.3473 201.1737 1.2676 1.1857
255.0000 127.5000 300.8504 214.1752 1.1906 1.1798
255.0000 150.0000 298.6037 224.3019 1.1369 1.1710
255.0000 200.0000 287.7568 243.8784 1.0456 1.1285
255.0000 250.0000 259.7221 254.8610 1.0005 1.0185
255.0000 255.0000 255.0000 255.0000 1.0000 1.0000
Note that:
1) For T2cold=0.0K, T2hot for planet 2 is 2*Tavg (your 2*T2)
2) Line 1 is where we agree; your ratio for T1/T2avg and my previous 2^0.25 for T2hot/T1
3) Though planet 2’s Tcold ranges from 0.0K to 255K, T2hot only changes by 48.2K
4) Average T2 will always be less than / equal to T1
Thus, you have shown that a fast rotating body at a uniform 255K radiates the same as a tidal-locked planet at 303.25K AND its average temperature if rotating and non-uniform will ALWAYS be less than 255K.
—————————–
FWIW, I have NOT yet gone through the maths of N&K part I of rev 2… waiting on part 2.
Not relevant, but for posterity (or my own petard?), my speculative interests are:
1. Does Joe Born set out the boundary conditions for upper/lower T2hot?
2. Should the average T be the average T at the point of (?? adjective) lapse rate or Tsurface or at TOA?
3. Is using average T for comparisons meaningless?
4. WRT N&K, is there an elevator speech analogy of the gravity field influence to electrical theory SCR, LVDT, transistor collector, etc, that can be made; i.e., the effect is because of the presence of the field, but the field does no (or negligible) work/current/etc.?
Cheers,
Bill
My previous table is six columns to four decimal places each:
T1; T2cold; T2hot; T2avg; T1/T2avg; T2hot/T1
Cheers,
Bill
[Reply] How I wish wordpress comments systems honoured the html table tags…
Since I hear some talk above of inter-atmospheric radiation, I must bring into play one more *very key* aspect having to do with energy transfer. Some have spoken of the maximization of entropy and that is true but that maximization does have some purely physical and geometric limits placed on its rate of transfer either upward or downward.
Each radiation event within the atmosphere is isotropic, it can happen in any direction. Since that is 4π steradians you should divide that into six portions for ease of visualizing this effect. Make 1/6th of the 4π steradians point upward and 1/6th or the 4π steradians point downward and 4/6th of the 4π steradians pointing horizontally, like north, south, east and west. That means in general only 1/3rd of any radiative transfer of energy is generally in a vertical or horizontal direction. This definitely play into any calculations of these RATES of energy transfer. Four sixth or better two thirds of all radiation is more or less horizontal which stays horizontally resident and keeps that local radiation maintaining warmth at every single altitude level. One sixth generally moves its way upward and one sixth generally moves its way downward per second. As you can see the RATES we have been lead to believe in this area is generally 1/6th of what has been claimed. I tend to call this effect horizontal radiative energy resonance having not found a better term (but surely there’s a better one out there).
Bob Fernley-Jones had a great thread related to this effect on rates earlier at WUWT. If you have a hard time visualizing this, check out some graphics there at: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/26/does-the-trenberth-et-al-%E2%80%9Cearth%E2%80%99s-energy-budget-diagram%E2%80%9D-contain-a-paradox/ . On that thread we experience having heads explode of some holding a stake in their dog race once again insisting to keep their eyes shut tight on such aspects as three dimensions and gravity. I can see that, it simply reduces radiative vertical transfer rates per second by one sixth.
Just keep in mind this effect totally occurs near the surface on Venus and this effect is near zero on Mars. Each atmosphere at each altitude level must be analyzed how thick to a frequency HORIZONTALLY. Earth is generally in between those two extremes.
I think this is why N&T are saying radiation has zero effect, when you work through the x-y horizontal flows compared to the z component flows, all tends to cancel, definitely horizontally, and the vertical but that which would occur no matter which gases are in the atmosphere.
Last note, I’m am *not* trying to drag this conversion back onto radiation, but I *am* saying if you insist on trying to explain how and why surface energy creates other lapse rates deviating from the DALR you had better play into your calculations this 1/6th aspect in the rates or you are going to be quite a bit, 5/6th, off. or that is what I have come to realize.
“Sorry, but imo you’re mixing things up. DALR and WALR ONLY apply to parcels of air that move up or down in the static atmosphere”
That is possible and I’m not the only one. Many are using the terms interchangeably.
The wiki link has mention of a ‘process’ lapse rate. Which term do you think is best ? Should we just use ATE as coined by Ned ?
We need a term for whatever the lapse rate would be if dictated by pressure and density alone. Would that be possible to ascertain given the wide variety of gases found in atmospheres ?
The Dry and Wet rates depend on humidity and the tendency for water vapour to rise due to it being lighter than air.
The environmental lapse rate then being the one actually observed and being variable depending on the portion of the vertical column one is observing with the rate often determined by factors other than density and pressure.
Still my basic point remains:
i) An underlying lapse rate determined by mass and gravity/pressure/density which does influence surface temperature and causes the surface temperature to diverge from S – B.
ii) The lapse rate determined by composition which does not influence surface temperature but which instead reflects a change in the rate of energy transfer from surface to space.
It seems to me that all the terms ‘atmospheric’ , ‘environmental’, ‘wet’, ‘dry’ all relate to ii) above which is why I used the term ‘adiabatic’ for i)
If you recall I just used ‘adiabatic lapse rate’ until you questioned me.
Perhaps I should just go back to that given that the term ‘adiabatic’ means pressure driven ?
Bill Norton, the way around the lack of HTML tables is to format your data in a mono-spaced font as courier or lucida console in some app as notepad and using only spaces to align your column data. Then place a <pre> and a </pre> around that block of data when commenting. That should fix your dilemma.
Roger,
may I suggest using the data linked to by
BenAW says:
January 19, 2012 at 11:49 pm
It is an excellent source. Please remember the points I have already made.
The inversion over Antarctica referenced by BenAW is yet more confirmation of this falsification.
Thanks.
A long way back in this post, several people were worrying about N&Z’s claim that the average temperature of the moon is only 154 degrees absolute.
Somebody attempted to check the calculation from Diviner’s data and suggested that it may be 30 to 50 degrees hotter (I think these were the figures.).
Sombody else proclaimed that as “all” the relevant data was 255A, then that was that.
I would remind you that the Diviner figures for the average equitorial temperature is about 200A degrees.
If that is in the ballpark acurate, it is unlikely that the global average could be anywhere as high as 255A.
(Disclaimer – it is very late and I am very tired. All the figures I have quoted are from my rather faulty memory. I may have got the detail wrong and if so, please forgive me for being just a frail error prone human. I am not trying to deceive. But the bottom line is that if the Diviner figures are right, then there is no way that the AGW black body figure of between – 18 and -33A below actual could be in the ballpark. With a much lower greybody temperature, it is impossible to comprehend how CO2 and it fellows can be responsible for the temperature).
Thanks and goodnight.
By the way – N&Z talk about temperature, not energy.
They do not say or infer that more energy is being exported than imported, to use terms I find more familiar than the ones that you may prefer.
The pressure of the atmosphere at the surface rises its temperature.
There is an offsetting drop in temperature higher up in the atmosphere.
No total additional temperature or energy is required for this to occur – just a transfer.
That’s called an Adiabatic process.
AusieDan is so true. Some persons do continually get mean temperature and energy incorrectly mixed. The average temperature can change markedly for a constant total energy simply by redistributing where each varying potion of that total energy is placed spatially. That is NOT creating energy. The energy is constant, but, the mean temperatures vary, with a maximum if each and every portion of energy is identical.
Mean temperature is not always fourth power proportional to energy on a 1-D line, 2-D plane or 3-D sphere.
Maybe Will will think this through in relation to his insistance on his 255 K occurances.
[Cross-post of my contribution to Willis’s “Perpetuum Mobile” discussion on WUWT]
Willis,
N & Z have indeed produced a game-changer here and no thought experiment is needed to understand their ‘Unified Theory of Climate’. Simply stated, their hypothesis consists of their two key equations, (7) and (8).
The existence of a dimensionless ATE ‘factor’ does not imply that “gravity causes heating of the lower atmosphere”, in defiance of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. I believe the relevant science is nicely encapsulated in their (non-linear) equation (8),
Ts = 25.3966 (So + 0.0001325)^0.25 NTE(Ps).
That equation enables them to calculate the surface temperature (Ts) of ‘any planet with an atmosphere’, knowing only the TOA TSI (So), the surface pressure (Ps) on the planet and the dimensionless Atmospheric Temperature Enhancement factor (NTE).
The NTE factor for any planet is derived from observations already made (see N & Z, Table 1) and a thorough reassessment of the physics of what they term ‘grey body’ temperature (Tgb) of a real, airless planetary object (our own moon) – a conceptual physical model which is used in equation (7) to derive their NTE values.
The experiments have been done, the data have been analyzed; their ‘grey body’ temperature model and their simple regression are now out there to be pondered for veracity and significance.
The fact that nobody can explain “how it works” (to your satisfaction) is not a valid reason to try to demolish their hypothesis by thought experiments (which include unproven assumptions).
Try to understand it Willis, please. All your thought experiments are irrelevant unless you can demonstrate where their math, or their data, or their ‘grey body’ model, or their regression is wrong. To do that you need to understand what they have done and, by your own admission, you do not yet understand what they have done.
To: OzWizard (January 20, 2012 at 2:57 pm)
OzWizard,
Thank you for the nice & concise summary above! I totally agree – arguing against real data and correct math calculations (involving regression analysis and calculus) with ‘thought experiments’ is silly. It’s like trying to explain away gravity with ‘theoretical arguments’! That is the reason, I recommended to Will to first read carefully our papers and then try to asking intelligent questions. He took this wrongly as an offense on his intelligence, for which I apologize …
By the way, the attempt to compare temperature predictions from our Equation 8 (in the original paper) with observed lapse rates in the free atmosphere (as attempted by Will and others) is physically misconstrued. That is because Eq. 8 only predicts temperatures near a solid/liquid surface, and not in the free atmosphere! Due to its much higher absorption of solar radiation (lower albedo) compared to air, a surface heats the air adjacent to it much stronger that the heating experienced by an atmospheric layer far away from the surface. The net effect of this is that the laps rate in the free atmosphere is typically quite higher than the rate of temperature change above a surface that is being moved up through the atmosphere to progressively lower levels of pressure. This difference between lapse rates was noticed in climatology decades ago when comparing changes of temperature with terrain elevation to those observed with increasing altitude in the free atmosphere. In other words, the rate of drop in temperature when climbing a mountain is typically much smaller (3C – 4C per km) than the rate of temperature decline one experiences when ascending into the atmosphere (5C – 6.5C per km) … We discuss this in our reply Part 2.
[ correct typos s/claiming/climbing/ s/accend/ascending/ –Tim]
My take on the debat.
Current Greenhouse Effect Theory (GET): the earth is 33C warmer than the incoming solar
radiation can explain.
This can only be explained by the effect of greenhouse gasses, mostly watervapour and CO2.
(see eg http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2010/2010_Lacis_etal.pdf )
Temperature is arrived at by using a “blackbody” to calculate the effect of the incoming solar radiation.(blackbodies are not found in the real world)
Shining a 100 W lamp at blackbody material immediately results in the illuminated area
warming up from -273C to -68C, a 1000W lamp results in -273C to +91C. Switching the lamp
off immediately results in -273C again.
Our sun delivers 1364W, and that on every square meter that is directly exposed to its
radiation. GET distributes the incoming 1364W/m^2 over the whole earth, then calculates
the temperature: -18C. Since our average temperature is +15C, we seem to be missing 33C.
More realistic approach is distributing the solar radiation over the dayside only, which
results in +30C. Since “the light is out” on the nightside, temperature there is -273C.
Average temperature now -151C.
What both approaches are neglecting is that the earths surface consist mostly of oceans,
70% area, minimum 3 km deep and a temperature on average of +2C, already 20C higher
than the blackbody temperature the GET uses when the sun has heated the blackbody.
Ocean surface temperature is on average 17C, just 15C higher than the temperature of the
deep oceans. This warmer layer is ~200m deep in the tropics, reducing to 0m near the
polar circles.
So instead of heating a blackbody from -273C to -18C (255C difference) all the sun has to
do is heat a smal part of the oceans from +2C to +17C, just 15C difference.
This warm ocean then heats the atmosphere, and results in our pleasant 15C average
temperature near the surface.
As background information may serve that the earth radius is ~6370 km, ocean depth
~3km, oceanbed 5 -10 km. The other 6350+ km are hot to very hot, (400C – >5000C),
although it is assumed that allmost no heat is flowing from the hot interior to the oceans.
Apart from being oversimplified, anything seriously wrong with this?
I may have a very large black(body) spot 😉
If not this kills all of the GET and most of the ATE.
Ben Wouters
Ronaldo:
I agree that, to make the math simple, I used unrealistic assumptions in the thought experiment I used to demonstrate that different temperature distributions can result in different average temperatures for the same outgoing radiation. I don’t think that affects the conclusion. If you think it does, though, and can tell me why, perhaps I can come up with a more-satisfactory response.
Bill Norton:
If my reading of your comment about my demonstation is corrent, you require no response from me, unless it’s to “Does Joe Born set out the boundary conditions for upper/lower T2hot?” which I don’t quite understand.
Apologies if these facts haven’t been pointed out before, but they do provide evidence that the greenhouse effect does not control the lapse rate.
We have the following lapse rates:
0.0066 C/m in the free atmosphere of the Earth
0.0096 C/m for the Loschmidt effect using Cv
0.0082 C/m for typical ventilated mines
0.0110 C/m for the deepest depths of South African diamond mines.
The lapse rates in mines is not influenced by the greenhouse effect since they are known to be dark. Convection is limited. It seems most likely that atmospheric pressure is the main controlling mechanism for determining lapse rates in compressible gases.
The lapse rate for the free atmosphere is probably the smallest because it can radiate freely to space.
BenAW,
I agree that the oceans control air temperatures as per my Hot Water Bottle Effect.
I’ve also said that the oceans should be considered as part of the atmosphere and I have explained in detail why the ocean heat content and the rate of energy flow from ocean to air is also pressure dependent just as is the ATE.Therefore both being pressure dependent the oceans cannot alter the ATE. In fact they are an important part of setting it on our particular planet.
The ATE effect is dominant in the atmosphere and governs the temperature gradient from surface to space. We could adopt the term Ocean Temperature Effect (OTE) for the region below the ocean surface but I prefer the term ATE to cover both, with the oceans just being considered as a part of the atmosphere. Obviously there is a discontinuity at the water/air interface but the evaporative process deals with that to leave ATE in the air undisturbed.
ATE is far more powerful than the misleadingly named and probably non existent GHE from GHGs because the former involves the entire atmospheric mass whilst the latter involves only GHGs which are a not a sizeable proportion of total mass.
What I think happens is that ATE is in complete control and all the other features of the system from the bottom of the oceans to the top of the atmosphere organise themselves around ATE to maximise system entropy (the tendency of any system to become less organised over time). In the case of an irradiated planet the concept of it becoming less organised over time involves the removal of energy to space as fast as possible given the constraints of basic physics.
The system always responds negatively to any factor that tries to alter the surface temperature fixed by the ATE because any deviation from the ATE represents a reduction in efficiency as regards the rate of energy loss to space. As far as we can tell it always succeeds leaving ATE unaltered.
The way that the system organises itself depends on the composition of the component elements but due to the dominance of the ATE the only effect from composition differences is to change the rate of energy throughput within each component of the system so that the surface temperature does not change.
However a faster throughput of energy within a particular component of the atmosphere will result in higher temperatures wherever more warm air passes more often across sensors siuated within that component but that is a result of energy redistribution and not a sign that the equilibrium temperature of the system has changed.
The ability to redistribute energy in that way (differentially in different components of the system) is in fact what makes the system flexible enough to maintain the ATE.
Thus pressure and energy input give us the ATE but everything else including GHGs only affects the rate of energy throughput and not the ATE itself.
If GHGs increase then the energy throughput increases to leave the ATE stable and if GHGs decrease then the energy throughput decreases to leave the ATE stable.
N & Z are carefully collating data to verify that proposition. If they do indeed get accurate enough planetary surface temperaures to prove the dominance of the ATE from planet to planet then all that other factors can achieve is to work around the ATE just as I suggest.
So far they have firmed things up by getting a more accurate lunar surface temperature and corrected an apparent error in the application of the S -B equations.
The resulting figures are in supprt of the proposition that ATE governs the surface temperaure regardless of all other potentially confounding factors.
Douglas: Thank you and welcome to the Talkshop. I would be very grateful if you would impart to us some of your thoughts on the work you did with pyrheliometry and the results which indicate relative stability in the opacity of the atmosphere. I think this is highly relevant to Nikolov and Zeller’s extraterrestrial investigations.
Thanks again for joining us here.
Joe Born says:
January 20, 2012 at 5:59 pm
Joe.
Thank you for your response. Your conclusion is an inevitable consequence of the 4th power S-B law. It also emphasises the need to avoid average surface temperatures in real-world calculations of the Earth’s radiation budget. Thanks for your insight.
Joe Born said:
“different temperature distributions can result in different average temperatures for the same outgoing radiation.”
I agree, but I would have referred to different energy distributions rather than different temperature distributions.
I said this above:
“A faster throughput of energy within a particular component of the atmosphere will result in higher temperatures wherever more warm air passes more often across sensors siuated within that component but that is a result of energy redistribution and not a sign that the equilibrium temperature of the system has changed. ”
Which is pretty much the same point.
By the way, Joe, I’m a lawyer too.
Douglas Hoyt
Thanks for the lapse rates. Very helpful, to consolidate the picture emerging of three effects:
* gravity-induced air heating,
* solar-radiation-of-ground heating nearby air by conduction,
* free-to-radiate-outward air cooling.
Can you add the lapse rate of going up a mountain ie next to terra firma all the way?
I have finally found time to re-run my empirical experiment into the N&Z hypothesis. This time I followed “Joules Verne’s” (WUWT) suggestion and regulated the pressure in the test chambers. I used an air bladder (hot water bottle) and weights (bricks) to maintain constant pressure in the high pressure chamber.
Due to thunderstorms and rain I was unable to use sunlight as a long wave source and had to use a flood lamp (too much IR). However the results were just as before. The chamber with the higher pressure always rises to a higher temperature when illuminated. I should point out that illumination is only started when the chambers have been pressurised and allowed to equalise temperatures.
With just 6 house bricks on the air bladder, chamber temperature differentials of over 4 degrees were observable. Again I reiterate that low and high pressure chambers were allowed to equalise in temperature before illumination.
When the weather clears I will re run the tests with sunlight instead of a floodlamp. In the meantime I am confident in claiming that Nicolov and Zeller are correct and that Willis and Joel are entirely wrong. Again.
To authors: Pt1, brilliant paper, maths looks OK and implications profound but I’m not sure about Pt2 coming up. Can’t see pressure as being anything other than an indicator, don’t think it’s a cause. When I pump up my tyres they get hot once and cool down; I have to keep doing the pumping (work) to maintain the heat. My advice is just to publish part1 and include the predictive part in pt2 and leave the explaining till later.
At 154.7K, all water present on Earth will be frozen very, very solid, even at the equator. A snowball Earth! The trouble here is that the albedo would then be about 0.8, all over the surface, resulting in Tgb of ~107K, thus completely upsetting the present proposition. It appears that we have to assume that the Earth not only has no atmosphere, but has no surface water either. Under conditions of both no air and no water an albedo of 0.11 or 0.12 would then be totally relevant, and directly comparable with conditions on the Moon. In this context it appears that reference to data in Trenberth et.al. 2009 is quite irrelevant.
These changed assumptions do not invalidate the conclusions reached in the first paper, which we expect will be reiterated in Part 2. They simply mean that the former Eq. 8 also encompasses the influences of water vapour as just another component of Earth’s atmosphere, and so will remain valid. The effect on surface temperature of all the chaotic events occurring in an atmosphere of any gaseous composition are therefore completely subordinate to the mass of the atmosphere, the albedo and emissivity of the surface, and the solar energy input..
Konrad: would you like to have another guest post here for a write-up of your experiment?
Paul: yes, that’s Ira Glickstein’s argument. It’s wrong so far as Konrad’s empirical result shows, and also wrong from a consideration of the energy flow in a gradient of pressure. What Ira says about the initial heat of compression is correct, but fails to follow up on the consequences.
Lucy: I saw a figure of around 0.0045C/m yesterday. Can’t remember where.
Douglas Hoyt says:
January 20, 2012 at 6:37 pm
“0.0110 C/m for the deepest depths of South African diamond mines.
The lapse rates in mines is not influenced by the greenhouse effect since they are known to be dark. Convection is limited. It seems most likely that atmospheric pressure is the main controlling mechanism for determining lapse rates in compressible gases.”
Are you implying that the geothermal gradient of 20K/km has nothing to do with this?
The deepest mines are over 3km deep, so the crust temp. there is already 60K higher than the surface temperature.
BenAW: People can’t work in temperatures much above blood heat. Do they wear watercooled suits down there or something?
You are saying the naked rock will be at 75C. I’m having trouble with that. Can we have some more facts about deep mines please. Thanks.
tallbloke says:
January 21, 2012 at 10:15 am
You are saying the naked rock will be at 75C. I’m having trouble with that. Can we have some more facts about deep mines please. Thanks.
Quick google:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient
http://www.universetoday.com/65631/what-is-the-temperature-of-the-earths-crust/
The second one has some text about mines.
Thanks Ben. From your second link:
“The deepest mine in the world is the TauTona gold mine in South Africa, measuring 3.9 km deep. This is only about 10% of the depth of the crust in Africa, and yet the temperatures down at the bottom of the mine reach a sweltering 55 °C. The mine needs air conditioning to bring the temperature down to the point that it’s comfortable for miners to work all day.”
Perhaps Doug Hoyt might clarify whether he is discussing the non-air-conditioned lapse rate of the ‘forced’ lapse rate, and how the geothermal gradient will affect his figures.
Tim Channon put up an interesting post about below sea level temperatures at Jericho a few weeks ago.
BenAW says:
January 21, 2012 at 9:44 am
to Douglas Hoyt: “Are you implying that the geothermal gradient of 20K/km has nothing to do with this? The deepest mines are over 3km deep, so the crust temp. there is already 60K higher than the surface temperature.”
I have the feeling you are just grabbing such figures off of the www. Goto actual data as boreholes here: http://www.wellog.com/charts/gradient.jpg . Like in Texas the lapse is about 130degF / 7500ft * 548.64 = 9.5K/km. Oklahoma-Arkansas is a bit steeper than all of the rest but no where close to 20K/km.
wayne says:
January 21, 2012 at 11:24 am
I have the feeling you are just grabbing such figures off of the www.
That’s why I started with: Quick google
We start with the undisputable fact that the atmosphere provides extra warmth to the surface of Earth compared to an airless environment such as on the Moon
Just noticed again the basic premise in the N&Z paper.
Imo the comparison with the moon is false. The moon is a reasonable imitaion of a greybody,
Earth isn’t, since it has a solid “base”temp. in the bulk of the oceans of 275K.
Table 1 in the PDF gives the equator mean temp. as 299K and the ATE as 93K.
In my world the calculation is 299 – 275 = 24K, and is caused by both solar radiation and the ATE.
I go for ~100% solar and ~0% ATE, but perhaps 90/10 can be proven.
Well, I have ploughed through this blog trail from end to end looking for inspiration. Yes, I have found it. But it is heavily diluted. There are just a few coherent blog posts, including (of course) the ubiquitous Ned himself. In my opinion he has done a really excellent job of responding calmly and cogently to the substance of each issue raised rather than to the minutiae of some often very muddled ideas.
Stephen Wilde (January 20, 2012 at 9:58 am) defines the blog response problem perfectly: The idea with a jigsaw is to put the pieces together in a way that reveals the underlying picture. A lot of people are just cutting up the pieces into smaller units.
I hope I cause no offense by being controversial. Some bloggers here I have found deeply impenetrable. For me (perhaps I am too dim) the worst example is cementafriend. He (she?) seems very knowlegeable about extremely subtle details which he delivers breathlessly one after another. But he never seems to come to any conclusion. On the one hand, he seems to like the N&Z paper. Yet, on the other, he can find endless (apparently very clever) caveats and concerns. There is nothing wrong with that in principle of course. I am sure it’s exactly what N&Z want. Unfortunately cementafriend’s caveats are mostly of a qualitative nature so (unless one is on the inside track) it is impossible to form a judgement about whether they are minor points of no significance for the N&Z thesis or whether they are N&Z thesis killers. All in all, cementafriend, you have not succeeded in making a friend of me (nor, I sincerely hope, an enemy either). It’s nothing personal: it’s just because I really couldn’t understand anything you said.
In contrast to that extreme example of unhelpfulness (for me), there are several brilliant gems. One rare but shining example is Malagaview’s love of empiricism. He has seen clearly the essence of real science which is that theory has to be backed by experimental data. Some examples (my bold type):
“THANK YOU! Science using real observations… wonderful.”
“… without the data we can only guess, assume, presume and be clairvoyant. This underlines the fact that science is based upon observations. Many thanks to Harry Dale Huffman and Nikolov & Zeller for bringing some science to the climate clairvoyants party.”
“It all hangs together very well from my perspective… as far as I can tell the Stefan-Boltzmann route and the Nikolov & Zeller route both lead to Rome because they are different formulations of the same basic equation… so both routes are equally predictive, equally convincing and equally valid. Harry Dale Huffman took the Stefan-Boltzmann route to correctly predict that atmospheric temperatures above Venus would be 1.176 times that of the Earth at any given atmospheric pressure… his observations prove this route to be valid. The Nikolov & Zeller route predicts that for any given atmospheric pressure the temperature is determined solely by the level of incoming solar radiation… so at 1000 mb of atmospheric pressure Venus should be 1.176 warmer that Earth… and observations prove this route to be valid.”
“Ned Nikolov says: January 19, 2012 at 6:21 pm: The atmospheric composition is COMPLETELY irrelevant; water vapor has no impact on ATE and the proof is in the fact that all planets follow the same pressure curve. I have that pinned up on my wall…A huge smile on my face…And this song running through my mind: Blinded by the Light by Manfred Mann”
(No relation, to the other M. Mann, one assumes?)
So here, for whatever it is worth, is my take on the N&Z paper:
STEP 1 – GREY BODY TEMPERATURES
THEORY: The ‘grey body’ temperature of the Earth without an atmosphere would be around 133K below ambient, not the 33K below ambient of received climate science wisdom.
EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION: The Moon’s average surface temperature is of that order and in any case is certainly is not anywhere near as high as just 33K below Earth ambient!
BOTTOM LINE: N&K got their math right – everyone else simply got theirs wrong. Get over it.
STEP 2 – Kinetic Energy Storage Effect
THEORY: The quantity of kinetic energy stored in any slice of a planetary atmosphere (and therefore the temperature of that slice) is dependent only on two variables:
(a)The density of the air in the slice (fixed by its pressure; which in turn is fixed by gravity; which is…fixed.)
(b) the rate at which energy flows through the slice (fixed by its distance from the Sun; which is also …fixed.)
However the quantity of kinetic energy stored is not dependant on atmospheric composition, and in particular, not on so-called greenhouse gases such as water vapor and CO2.
EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION: When scaled against their grey body temperature equivalents, to account for their distance from the Sun, it turns out that all the planetary atmospheres for which reliable instumental data is available have more-or-less identical temperature-versus-height characteristics, irrespective of their atmospheric compositions.
BOTTOM LINE: The composition of a planetary atmosphere does not affect its temperature profile. In particular, so-called greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide have no significant influence. Venus and Earth conform to the same basic physics as the rest of the universe, although the Venus atmosphere contains 97% CO2 while Earth’s contains only 0.04%.
REMINDER OF THE BLEEDING OBVIOUS: Despite some of the wild muddled blog posting frenzy over the last couple of weeks, gravity is not a source of energy. It is of course a force as we all learned in our schooldays. The only significant source of energy in the current context is the Sun.
CONCLUSIONS: On average at any particular height in the atmosphere of a planet, the mean temperature is a constant that is only proportional to the mass of gas above that point. The mean temperature is not significantly influenced by any other compositional factors such as the presence or absence of so-called greenhouse gases, including water vapor and carbon dioxide.
Above all, N&K have done what all good scientists in other disciplines do (but not in climate science it would seem). They have developed a theory and then demonstrated that the theory is correct against real world data. Or rather I should say, real planet data.
My only sadness in all this is that Harry Huffman should be taking a much greater part of the credit for all of this. He is the only other scientist I know who took the same empirical approach and found the absolutely stunning correlation between Venus and Earth atmospheric temperatures over comparable pressure ranges, thus banishing for ever the crazy idea that CO2 is a dangerous warming gas and that there was ever anything called a ‘runaway geenhouse effect’ on Venus.
Yes, I too am looking forward to Part 2 of the N&Z response. But already I can see clearly that this is game set and match against warmism in ALL its sinister manifestations. I suspect that 2012 is going to be a great year for (real) climate science.
A nice summary by David Socrates.
A really dumb question – the statement about CO2 and water having no measurable effect at all on the quantity of kinetic energy stored. The bit about CO2 I understand and accept, but the absence of water means no clouds, and therefore a reducion in albedo of over a half (and also a change in emissivity) – this feeds directly into the radiation integration, therefore I do not understanf the global conclusion that water does not effect temperatures.
I have read the paper twice and I have still this problem. Could someone please explain the logical step that I have missed?
@ Konrad, January 21, 2012 at 6:52 am:
On first reading, I thought – wow, niiiice one!!
But then a question occurred to me. This may be because I cannot properly visualise your experimental set-up, and it is probably a silly question anyway, but:
Could it be that the bricks you used transferred some of the heat they would have picked up to the air chambers?
Or did you arrange the experiment in such a way that these bricks would not be able to pick up any heat at all?
Sorry about being fussy.
“A nice summary by David Socrates.”
Agreed.
“I do not understanf the global conclusion that water does not effect temperatures.”
As I said before. The entire structure of the atmosphere vertically and horizontally is an inevitable response to the ATE. The atmosphere always organises itself regardless of composition around the ATE. Different composition, different organisational structure but same outcome, the ATE holds in all circumnstances.A water planet just has an enhanced ability to maintain stability because of the efficiency of the water cycle in moving energy around. Water does affect temperatures by helping the system maintain ATE whatever is thrown at it including meteorite strikes and vast volcanic outbreaks.
In the case of the Earth and probably all planets with atmosphere anything including GHGs that tries to force a deviation from ATE has mutually cancelling consequences:
i) The height of the tropopause changes which one would think should result in a change of surface temperature globally but it doesn’t.
ii) A change in the height of the tropopause is never even across the globe. Instead the gradient of the tropopause height from equator to pole changes because bottom up oceanic effects alter the heights most over the equator and top down solar effects alter the heights most over the poles.
iii) The result is a poleward or equatorward shift in the entire surface air pressure distribution including shifts in all the permanent climate zones depending on the balance of top down and bottom up forcings at any given moment.
iv) The consequence of that is a change in the rate of energy flow from surface to space which cancels out the warming or cooling at the surface which would otherwise have resulted from the change in troposphere height. It is a sort of fulcrum or see-saw centred around 45 degrees north or south where the polar and equatorial air masses clash..Raise or lower the tropopause in one place (equator or poles) and it changes the gradient relative to the other and the consequence is no surface temperature change globally and the ATE is kept stable.
v) There will be variations around the ATE as the system responds negatively to either a warming or cooling influence and there will be regional redistribution of warmth or cold across the surface but the vertical temperature profile responds as necessary to maintain the ATE. That is the ultimate definition of weather and climate. Energy redistribution to maintain the ATE..
Mind you I do think the ATE concept is little different from the Adiabatic Lapse Rate which is old science.
The really new and novel point is mine (I hope) namely the sliding about latitudinally of the surface pressure systems beneath the tropopause to maintain system stability against compositional changes (or differences from planet to planet) in the atmosphere. The system responds similarly to ANY forcing including changes in solar input to the system and changes in mass of the planet and atmosphere. If more or less solar energy gets into the oceans the climate zones shift latitudinally to maintain ATE set by mass and pressure and if the mass of the planet and atmosphere were to change then ATE would be reset and the climate zones would shift to reflect the new ATE.
I think the jigsaw is pretty much complete with that concept.
Thanks Stephen,
But you misunderstand me – probably because I did not make the question clearer.
You talk of mechanisms within the ATE, however, I think that N&Z (and Hoffman) founded their conjectures on conservation of energy for a steady state system within a boudary above the TOA. Radiation is the only energy transport mechanism at this boundary, therefore only insolation, rotation, emissivity, absortivity and albedo come into play?
Can all agree that:
1. The Earth is in a steady state thermodynamic condition.
2. The Earth’s “climate” is in a non-equilibrium condition, primarily as a consequence of rotation
3. Gravity is a conservative force that can add no net energy to the system
4. The entropy of the planet (including the atmosphere) can only increase, and, enthalpy must be minimised?
My point is that water – with its major effect on albedo, emissivity and absortivity is a major player in the radiate balance calculation at a boudary above TOA – simply because of clouds. While the effect of CO2 is negligable, I can not see how the same can be said for water.
I agree that the empirical data seem to support the “pressure only” effect, for both cloudy and cloud free planets – so what am I missing?
Just after I posted this I thought of a question that would clear up my confusion – what would happen to Venus if the atmosphere was pure CO2? The mass, specific heat, etc would hardly be altered, but the clouds (sulphuric acid, or whatever thety are) would disappear.
Roger Lanstaff asks: I agree that the empirical data seem to support the “pressure only” effect, for both cloudy and cloud free planets – so what am I missing?
I say: I’m darned if I know, but does it matter?
Roger Langstaff ask: …what would happen to Venus if the atmosphere was pure CO2? The mass, specific heat, etc would hardly be altered, but the clouds (sulphuric acid, or whatever they are) would disappear.
I say: Well its already 97% there. But the answer is, if it were 100% CO2 the tempearture would not alter. Why? I’m darned if I know, but does it matter?
David – it matters to me because the albedo, emissivity, etc. of Venus would radically change. As we all agree that there must be conservation of energy for a steady state system at a boundary above TOA – where only radiation counts – how do we get a temperature effect that is solely controlled by pressure?
Well, I’ve been posting on the WUWT perpetuum mobile thread trying to get Willis or Robert Brown to respond to the proofs we’ve offered, to no avail. I’ll write up our unanswered proofs and post them.
First they ignore you.
Then they ridicule you
Then they fight you
Then they quit the field.
Lol. 🙂
Hi Roger.
You made a good point about water.
However the behaviour of water is very different from that of CO2 or any other gas that does not go through phase changes within the range of ambient surface temperatures.
The thing is that whatever the ATE the atmosphere (whatever the composition) reorganises itself to maintain it.
That is the basic essential truth that I propose as a novel idea.
On Earth we happen to have lots of water. That may well be a result of the Earth being in a ‘sweet spot’ as regards distance from the sun.
At our distance the ambient temperature range allows water to remain as a liquid with only limited excursions into vapour form and solid form.
Nearer the sun and it all boils away. Further away and it all freezes solid.
So at our particular distance from the sun the power of the phase changes of water makes it relatively easy to maintain the ATE. Hence the stability of Earth temperatures over 4 billion years to enable life to develop to a high level of sophistication.
Outside that ‘sweet spot’ where water can arrange stability we see Venus where it all boiled away and Mars where water was either frozen into the surface or evaporated off to space.
Neither of those planets have shown enough long term stability to develop life.
So your point about water affecting temperature is entirely correct.
However it isn’t the properties of water as a GHG that matters. What matters most is the phase changes of water as a mode of energy transport through the entire system.
Water as a GHG may absorb longwave radiation from the surface and radiate 50% back down to the surface but that is not all that it does.
Additionally the phase changes absorb the downward radiation from ALL GHGs into the evaporative process and send it back up to a higher level for earlier radiation put to space than would otherwise be the case.
So the phase changes of water provide a mechanism par excellance to negate the effects of GHGs in their attempts to disturb the ATE.
Does that help ?
Stephen, I agree with you about water, and the consequent phase changes with respect to Earth. My problem is how that impinges on the N&Z and Hoffman conjectures which do not rely on phase changes within a planetary atmosphere.
To me, it is almost a philosophical issue of cause and effect – steady state radiative balance the cause and temperature the effect. Are we saying that phase changes (clouds) act via modification to the lapse rate below them to satisfy the steady state radiative balance that must be true at TOA according to the laws of thermodynamics?
An anaolgoy could be that I can not accept the reality of superluminal neutrinos, as reported by CERN, as this would defy the principle of causality (and therodynamics?). We must, in my opinion, start from what we are certain to be true and work backwards, while costantly developing theories to try to explain empirical evidence.
Rog,
Over on the WUWT threads they are doing all they can to ignore the implications of the Ideal Gas Law and Ned’s ATE ( formerly widely accepted as the Adiabatic Lapse Rate or ALR).
Just look at Wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate
“the concept can be extended to any gravitationally supported ball of gas.”
and:
“the atmosphere is warmed by conduction from Earth’s surface, this lapse or reduction in temperature normal with increasing distance from the conductive source.”
which together show that we are dealing here with long established science although recent shenanigans have made it necessary for N & Z to try to redefine the adiabatic lapse rate (ALR) as ATE for the current uneducated generation.
So the issue isn’t whether the phenomenon is the ATE (Atmospheric Thermal Effect) or the ALR (Adiabatic Lapse Rate)
We can see that they are one and the same.
The issue is whether increasing GHGs can make a difference to the ATE/ALR by virtue of their radiative characteristics.
Well what Ned is doing is simply refining the data and the S-B calculations to show that the effect of more GHGs is zero as against the AGW theory that more GHGs can ADD to the ATE/ALR.
Where I propose a novel idea is in showing WHY the extra GHGs have zero or near zero effect on the ATE/ALR. Ned demonstrates the fact that there is a zero effect and I say WHY there is a zero effect.
The fact is that the entire atmosphere responds to ANY forcing that attempts to disrupt ATE/ALR by altering the tropopause height and that change in height then allows the surface pressure distribution to slide poleward or equatorward beneath the tropopause to negate the thermal effect of any change in tropopause height either at equator or poles.
The same process occurs on EVERY planet that has an atmosphere which tries to disrupt ATE/ALR. The atmosphere ALWAYS reconfigures so that ATE/ALR is maintained.
There is no other possible solution. IMHO.
“My problem is how that impinges on the N&Z and Hoffman conjectures which do not rely on phase changes within a planetary atmosphere.”
N & Z and Hoffman and Jelbring simply point out the facts. Namely that changes in the quantities of GHGs appear to have a zero effect on the Atmospheric Thermal Effect formerly known as the Adiabatic Lapse Rate.
They do not go into the WHY or HOW which I do.
As regards the WHY see my post
Stephen Wilde says:
January 21, 2012 at 6:58 pm
which was addressed to our host tallbloke but which equally could be useful to you.
To my mind the jigsaw is complete.
“The atmosphere ALWAYS reconfigures its energy distribution so that the Atmospheric Thermal Effect/Adiabatic Lapse Rate is maintained.”
Wilde’s Law.
Stephen Wilde says, January 20, 2012 at 9:58 am: Harry Dale Hoffman and others made…the error of disputing the greenhouse effect at all with a resulting loss of credibility. Ned has avoided that problem by providing the ATE (Atmospheric Thermal Effect) which refers to the same phenomenon as the mistaken GHG induced greenhouse effect but which arises from different causation.
I think that is a bit unfair on Harry Huffman. If you read carefully through his blog articles he emphasises exactly your point – that the apparent mechanism of GHGs is actually subsumed by what we are now calling the ATE.
Also, you appear to have changed your mind between 9:58 am and 6:55pm when you said: …ATE is far more powerful than the misleadingly named and probably non existent GHE from GHGs !!
Harry can speak for himself but I suspect that the fundamental agreement between you, me, Huffman, N&Z and now many others, that the ATE dominates everything else is too significant and far reaching for us to dwell on this small distraction any longer. There’s work to do!
Konrad says, January 21, 2012 at 6:52 am: I have finally found time to re-run my empirical experiment into the N&Z hypothesis…I used an air bladder (hot water bottle) and weights (bricks) to maintain constant pressure in the high pressure chamber…With just 6 house bricks on the air bladder, chamber temperature differentials of over 4 degrees were observable.
Brilliant!
First of all you are the only one who thought to do a real experiment. All the rest of us just talked and talked and talked. Secondly, you have now achieved a second dramatic result. And each time you have done this experiment without using sophisticated equipment. A 4degree (C or F?) difference is most unlikely to be instrument error.
I am going into my garage right now to try to replicate what you have done. I will report back.
Paul-in-UK says, January 21, 2012 at 7:17 am: Pt1, brilliant paper, maths looks OK and implications profound but I’m not sure about Pt2 coming up. Can’t see pressure as being anything other than an indicator, don’t think it’s a cause. When I pump up my tyres they get hot once and cool down; I have to keep doing the pumping (work) to maintain the heat. My advice is just to publish part1 and include the predictive part in pt2 and leave the explaining till later.
You are being more than a bit presumptive. I hope and expect that N&Z will do nothing of the sort.
As you pump up your type you are doing work, thereby supplying additional energy to the air in the tyre – which therefore heats up above ambient temperature. As soon as you stop pumping, despite the tyre now remaining at a higher pressure than before, of course it soon cools down again to ambient temperature as the excess heat leaks away through the walls of the tyre. What else would you expect?
That’s exactly the opposite situation from the heating process in the atmosphere which is continuous. Energy is supplied (directly or indirectly) continuously from the Sun. This has been going on for billions of years. Unlike your tyre pumping, it never stops. Likewise heat is continuously being lost (directly or indirectly) to space. The Earth’s atmosphere is thereby in tehrmodynamic balance.
As the heat flows through the atmosphere, it keeps the air hot. At places in the atmosphere near the ground where the air pressure is highest, there are consequently a greater number of molecules per unit volume, and the retained heat is therefore greater (and so the temperature is greater). Higher up in the atmosphere where the air pressure is lower, and there are consequently fewer molecules per unit volume, and the retained heat is therefore lower (and so the temperature is lower).
It really is as simple as that. There is no magic about this. It is just basic thermodynamics.
Not sure if anyone has performed this also but since I have the U.S. Standard Atmosphere 1976 now rewritten into c# it can now be easily used for some multi-level analysis. The first thing was to answer a question that queued me on the pressure-density graphs. I noticed them diverging as the altitude moved higher. Sure enough, when pressure/density*constant(M/R) is plotted that gives the temperatures per every 100 meters very closely. The largest deviation was 0.06 K from the standards temperature. So, the lapse rate is embedded in the ratio of P/ρ, which of course makes sense now, it is a rearrangement of the ideal gas law. Just had to see it myself and am placing this here if there is someone else didn’t quite understand that relationship. The next is mean molecular velocities.
There is a very definite pressure related gas law which is spectral broadening
.
What if any part does this play in the whole picture?
Roger Longstaff says, January 21, 2012 at 4:49 pm: David – it matters to me because the albedo, emissivity, etc. of Venus would radically change. As we all agree that there must be conservation of energy for a steady state system at a boundary above TOA – where only radiation counts – how do we get a temperature effect that is solely controlled by pressure?
You are anxious to know how we get a temperature effect that is solely controlled by pressure. I answer, I don’t know for sure how. All I know is that N&Z and Hoffman both have provided empirical evidence that it is so.
Please don’t think that I am not curious to know how the ATE achieves this amazing balancing act. Stephen Wilde has a good theory about why it happens which looks very promising and I note that he has been responding to your enquiries accordingly. But it is a theory to balance against any other possible theories that may come along to explain the underlying mechanisms. Then one day some empirical evidence will perhaps be found to decide between those competing theories. And thus the great scientific wagon train moves on…
But the point right now is that the ATE appears to be well supported by empirical planetary data, so the main focus for me has to be on that rather than on spending too much time agonising about how it all works behind the scenes. There seems to be a reluctance by many people on this and other blog trails to accept empirical reality and to assume that one can argue N&Z away by invoking this theory or that which appears to contradict it. That was what Eschenbach was trying to do when he self-destructed. So please don’t make the same mistake!
Great scientific leaps forward have always occurred when a strongly held theory had to give way to empirical evidence to the contrary. Plate tectonics, quantum theory, …and so on all changed the face of science. That is the position in history that I believe we have now reached in the climate change debate. We are lucky we have got here at last, just before it is too late.
I think all of this makes perfect sense. I could never believe the alleged power of the GHG effect.
Clearly, a number of excellent contributions have come together on this site to fill in the jigsaw (to borrow the metaphor from Stephen). Maybe some sort of write up is needed with part 2, and additional “papers” from the other contributors so that the whole thing is explained as clearly as possible. This will need some level of coordination. It could then be exposed (here) to constructive criticism so that any problems can be identified and addressed.
I’m extremely anxious that this work does not get buried just like earlier attempts to apply real science.
David Socrates says:
January 21, 2012 at 7:44 pm
“Higher up in the atmosphere where the air pressure is lower, and there are consequently fewer molecules per unit volume, and the retained heat is therefore lower (and so the temperature is lower).”
David, Willis just had an interesting post (“Perpetuum Mobile”) on WUWT explaining that this is a source of confusion and that your contention here is wrong for a steady state system. Importantly, it doesn’t detract from the rest of your post or from N&Z’s hypothesis. All they are saying is that incoming heat energy continuously (as you clarified in your post) causes the volume of the atmosphere to be greater than if that heat energy was not being absorbed by the atmosphere. Because of the IGL, temperature will also be greater. There’s absolutely no reason to complicate things with lapse rates, temperature differentials, etc.
David Socrates
I like your summaries and words of wisdom.
I’ve been doing exactly what I said in effect I needed to do, to Willis: I’ve taken time out to recap. Nine threads at WUWT and five here. It’s a lot. Plus, of course, the wellspring: Nikolov & Zeller’s original work, plus now their first response, plus all Nikolov’s responses I’ve been delighted to discover on the WUWT UTC thread. Such a contrast between Nikolov and Joel / Markus, who like Willis both got worse and worse.
I keep on reaching moments where I simply cannot take in more, and I start to skim… yes, David, the light easily gets diluted. This is why I’ve long held the vision of a wiki, actually I have it started already but put aside these last months until these last days, I’d love to use it soon to try and develop the core thesis, plus FAQ-type series for those having difficulty shifting paradigms (I’m scarcely through that one myself 🙂 ).
With all this in mind, David, I’ve copied your “core statement” above, and (to my mind of course) improved it. I’d planned earlier to develop a page on my website for all this, but events are moving fast, nonononono way I can begin to keep up with either exploding Willis or exploding Joel let alone this whole exploding reception to paradigm shift with fourteen threads here and at WUWT in recent days. Tomorrow I shall try to get it onto my website and/or wiki. If I can get the wiki useable enough, I’ll let you know here, and anyone interested can email me to get the URL. At this point I don’t want distractors to even know the URL. It would just be nice to thrash out, between supporters, a core statement or even series of statements. I think we all know that the “elevator speech” simply will not work when it’s a matter of paradigm-shifting. Though OTOH, perhaps considering Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech might be interesting…
David Socrates says:
January 21, 2012 at 7:38 pm
//////////////////////////////////////////
David,
I is great to hear that someone will be trying the same type of physical experiment. Tallbloke has offered to host a write up of my rig with photos here at the Talkshop. The weather is clearing here an I should be able to do a run with full sun instead of the flood lamp.
In the mean time I have made some improvements to the rig. Firstly the PETG bottles that were previously painted black on one side have been replaced with clear bottles with a matt black target cardboard sheet inside. Previously the lower bottle surface could buckle if temperatures got too high.
The second change is the inclusion of a valve from a bike tire as the inflation point for the air bladder. Filling from a bike pump can now achieve higher pressures than the fish tank pump.
This also opens the opportunity for flushing the entire system with CO2 from a co2 bike tire inflater to check if CO2 actually acts as a coolant at higher pressures.
Hello Everyone,
I was not planning to post comments until our Part 2 is published, but I saw a number of very good posts today (by David Socrates, Stephen Wilde, Konrad and several others) indicating that the group’s understanding is evolving quickly in the right direction. This is really encouraging …
A couple quick comments on topics we address in more detail in the upcoming article:
A) Most folks seem to use interchangeably pressure, density and atmospheric mass when discussing ATE and its effect on surface temperature. In our understanding, there is a strict distinction between these. The flow of causality goes like this: (1) Pressure P depends on total atmospheric mass (Ma) and gravity (g), i.e. P = Ma*g/A, where A is the planet surface area; (2) Surface temperature T is a function of pressure and solar insolation (irradiance) defined by Eq. 8 in our original paper; (3) Air density (ρ) is a product of pressure, temperature, and molecular weight of air (M), i.e. ρ = P*M/(R*T). In other words, air density is a product of temperature, NOT its cause! It is the only parameter in the Gas Law that is affected (albeit weakly) by the atmospheric composition though M (the molecular mass of air). Also, the atmospheric mass by itself is not sufficient to generate ATE. It needs gravity to do so, because gravitational acceleration times mass equals FORCE, and it’s the physical force of pressure that brings about the non-dimensional thermal enhancement Nte in our Eq. 7.
B) On the ATE-albedo relationship – this is a very interesting topic. Karl and I have noticed some 7 months ago that Eq. 8 explained remarkably accurately the surface temperatures of planets using only pressure and solar radiation despite the fact that the albedos of those planets ranged from 0.11 to 0.76. What this implies is that the albedo is NOT an independent driver of surface temperature. The bulk of the albedo is apparently a product of the internal kinetic energy of the system set by solar heating and pressure. Only a small portion of Earth’s albedo (i.e. 0.014 out of 0.3) is independent of the internal energy, and can be influenced by the solar magnetic activity (we do not know exactly how at the moment!). We pointed this out in our original paper (see Section 3C). Current climate science views albedo as an independent variable and a driver of climate, and conducts ‘thought’ and model experiments to quantify the impact of albedo on surface temperature. However, these experiments may well be devoid of physical realism if the albedo is in fact mostly an effect of ATE (and surface temp) rather than a cause for it. Our analysis suggests that indeed it is an EFFECT (for the most part at least).
Therefore, asking questions such as how will the surface temperature change if water vapor (and clouds) were removed from the atmosphere are physically meaningless! We have liquid water on the surface and water vapor in the atmosphere BECAUSE of a certain temperature set by pressure and solar insolation. If pressure/insolation were different, we’d have a totally different environment. Observations show that water is present in substantial quantities on most hard-surface planets including Moon and Mars. But due to lack of sufficient air pressure, temperatures on those planets are cold enough to prevent any water existing in a liquid form. Venus is on the other extreme, where too much pressure created temperatures too hot for water to exit. Our analysis shows that ATE largely controls the atmospheric albedo of a planet. Having high enough ATE (due to pressure) will always result in some form of clouds – whether it’s water vapor as on Earth, sulfuric acid as on Venus, or methane as on Titan, nature always finds a way to create them! Trying to figure out what would happen if those clouds disappeared without a change in surface pressure is simply unphysical and void as a thought exercise!
So, what’s the role of the oceans and water vapor on our planet – water helps spatially redistribute the available energy and, through its high thermal capacity, it makes the system a bit more stable (less responsive to change in drivers such as solar radiation). However, globally water vapor does not affect mean surface temperature or the size of ATE. If we were living on Titan (assuming our physiology could function at 94K), we would be saying similar things about the lakes of methane and methane rain present on that satellite as we are now saying about water on Earth… 🙂
– Ned
Konrad says:
January 21, 2012 at 6:52 am
Konrad,
I think you are unnecessarily complicating things by regulating pressure. In fact, IMO, to properly test N&Z’s idea you SHOULD allow pressure to rise. Here’s how I am looking at it:
Their hypothesis rests on the ideal gas law, PV=nRT. R is a constant and for considering their logic we will assume n (number of gas molecules) to be constant as well so all we need for our purposes is PV=T. If it’s the case that n remains constant, on a planet with an atmosphere, average P will always be the same. If some amount of heat energy is added to the atmosphere and P is constant, then
Tx
P= —– where x is the amount both T and V are affected by the additional energy.
Vx
Given the ideal gas law, this relationship has to hold, i.e. you can’t expect V to rise unless T does also (at least this is how I understand it).
In your experiments, you don’t have a planet to work with so you are experimenting with the equally valid
Tx
V= —– where x is the amount both T and P are affected by the extra energy (IGL).
Px
By regulating P, you are muddying this relationship. In addition, you are allowing n to change (not knowing your setup, I can only imagine you are allowing gas to escape your container into the bladder as pressure rises).
I’m trying to be constructive as I’m with those that have pointed out that you appear to be the only one actually doing anything as opposed to just talking about it. We all appreciate your efforts.
Sorry about the formatting in my prior post. I hope it’s still clear enough.
Dan
Guess I could have written P=Tx/Vx and V=Tx/Px. I feel like the Charlie Brown of WordPress. Aaarggh!
One more comment – our awaited Part 2 specifically attempts to explain (among other things) the physical mechanism of ATE and how exactly it comes about …
Frankly, I feel a bit embarrassed that we have to explain mechanisms that have been a part of the standard thermodynamics’ education some 40-50 years ago. Conducting experiments in the beginning of 21st century to prove the 160-year old Gas Law is really not that flattering, BUT if that’s what it will take to get climate science on the right track, I’m all for it.
Some more (maybe misguided) math…
I had earlier thought to apply a constant Gibbs energy constraint on the atmosphere of my imaginary planet – I misguidedly thought this was a proper equilibrium condition, it wasn’t. Now I’m exploring applying a constant entropy constraint (isentropic atmosphere). But I have to change my imaginary planet’s atmosphere to be a convecting atmosphere. In this case the atmosphere attempts to approach a constant temperature equilibrium, but is prevented from doing so because convection follows this isentropic path.
I can derive the DALR under these assumption. The temperature pressure relationship is dT/dP (constant S). We know that dT/dP(S)*dP/dS(T)*dS/dT(P) = -1 so dT/dP(S) = dT/dS(P)*dS/dP(T). Substituting and employing a maxwell relationship we find dT/dP(S) = V/cP. The DALR follows by recognizing that dP/dz (pressure gradient in the atmosphere) is rho*gc. So dT/dZ = dT/dP * dP/dz = g/Cp. Which is the same answer in Wiki – they get it a different way.
But if the atmosphere is isentropic we also know that dS = (dS/dT)dT + (dS/dP)dP. The second term requires the same maxwell relatiohshp used before and substituting we get dS = (Cp/T)dT- R/P dP = 0. So rearranging and separating variables we get the differential equation Cp/T dT = R/P dP. This equation describes how temperature must change with pressure to maintain constant entropy. So Cp*ln(T/To) = R*ln(P/Po). If Po is the pressure in outer space (about 10^-11 Pa), and To is the temperature of outer space (about 3K) and Cp = 5/2R and if P = 1 bar = 10^5 Pa, then we can calculate T to be… several million K. Yikes!
Am I making an algebra error? Perhaps. But I think this says is that an isentropic expansion of gas from outer space (almost no density) to the planet surface requires an awful lot of work, hence a really big temperature change. Please someone show me if they see a mistake.
Now, I’m wondering how close to adiabatic is earths near-surface atmosphere. It is moist, but I think the moist ALR is found using the same isentropic assumption but accounting for the water vapor latnet heat release. I’m lead to believe the environmental lapse rate lies close to these ideal calculations, depending on conditions. So I think it is near isentropic.
I have some other thoughts on where this might lead, but I really want someone to check my math and logic. So, anybody with a bit of a handle on engineering thermodynamics: I’d love to hear from you.
Ned,
Thank you very much for your explanation:
“Therefore, asking questions such as how will the surface temperature change if water vapor (and clouds) were removed from the atmosphere are physically meaningless! We have liquid water on the surface and water vapor in the atmosphere BECAUSE of a certain temperature set by pressure and solar insolation. If pressure/insolation were different, we’d have a totally different environment. Observations show that water is present in substantial quantities on most hard-surface planets including Moon and Mars. But due to lack of sufficient air pressure, temperatures on those planets are cold enough to prevent any water existing in a liquid form. Venus is on the other extreme, where too much pressure created temperatures too hot for water to exit. Our analysis shows that ATE largely controls the atmospheric albedo of a planet. Having high enough ATE (due to pressure) will always result in some form of clouds – whether it’s water vapor as on Earth, sulfuric acid as on Venus, or methane as on Titan, nature always finds a way to create them! Trying to figure out what would happen if those clouds disappeared without a change in surface pressure is simply unphysical and void as a thought exercise! ”
Surely, therefore, your explanation for Earth’s climate is reliant on the fact that surface water exists in all 3 phases (giving the requisite albedo, etc.), and this needs to be a fundamental part of your conjecture – instead of your statement that only atmospheric mass is responsible for temperature, irrespective of chemical composition?
Roger,
If Earth’s climate is measured by the mean surface temperature (which is an expression of the system’s internal kinetic energy), then climate is independent of surface water. Instead, the latter is a function of climate! Recall the snowball events on Earth (we had at least 3 of them, the most recent some 713M years ago). There was very little liquid water on the surface during those episodes (which lasted for tens of millions of years) and the oceans were frozen nearly to the bottom, because the global temperature was much below freezing. Globally, it is the temperature that controls the water cycle, not the other way around.
Ned, thanks for the updates, and for finding the time to keep us informed. Real science in real time!
Ned Nikolov says:
January 22, 2012 at 12:10 am
“Conducting experiments in the beginning of 21st century to prove the 160-year old Gas Law…
Ned, I specifically asked this question on one of the relevant threads at WUWT. I received a very polite answer from a physicist who felt that the steady state temperature (in something akin to Konrad’s experiments) would not change regardless of the gas pressure in the vessel. You are also a PhD and seem to be saying yes, it will. Imagine us laymen feel trying to follow the arguments when the people whose judgment we rely on can’t agree on “mechanisms that have been a part of the standard thermodynamics’ education some 40-50 years ago”.
If it helps, I believe a lot of us that are following this are learning a lot from all sides and that’s never a bad thing.
Dan
Ned, “Frankly, I feel a bit embarrassed that we have to explain mechanisms that have been a part of the standard thermodynamics’ education some 40-50 years ago.”
http://lasp.colorado.edu/~bagenal/3720/
1972 book used as a course reference in 2005?
Apparently without a greenhouse effect Venus is colder than Earth. Without knowing the course I cannot know whether that is a deliberate mistake but if not isn’t it a loud warning something is wrong with the math?
I was inspired by the N&Z work to look at the question using flow diagrams.
What the flow model (see link above) shows is that if a NON GHG atmosphere does not increase surface temperatures by way of back-conduction, above what is predicted for a black-body temperature, then a GHG atmosphere cannot raise the temperatures by back-radiation.
Since one of the criticisms of N&Z is that a NON GHG atmosphere cannot increase surface temperatures above what is predicted for a black-body temperature, the model broadly supports the N&Z position that something other than the greenhouse effects warms the planet above what is predicted for a black-body temperature.
The flow model also shows that CO2 increases cooling by increasing the effective albedo.
For the past week I’ve had 4 inches of snow outside my door as the GHG back-radiation beat down on it relentlessly.
Last night it rained and the snow is gone.
Dan,
To your note : I specifically asked this question on one of the relevant threads at WUWT. I received a very polite answer from a physicist who felt that the steady state temperature (in something akin to Konrad’s experiments) would not change regardless of the gas pressure in the vessel.
Yes, I’m not surprised that you got this answer. Dr. Roy Spencer at UAH made the exact same statement on his website while responding to our firs paper. I have a deep respect for Roy and his excellent work for the past 30 years in managing and developing one of the most important global temperature data sets derived from satellite observations. But he is a ‘victim’ of the same education system as many other PhD scientists. There have been at least 2 generations of researchers ‘programmed’ to think mostly in term of radiative transfer when explaining climate/atmospheric phenomena. This strong ‘radiative bias‘ is not an accident, but a result of an unidirectional funding of climate science at least for the past 20 years. Experts in radiative transfer such as Jim Hansen at NASA GISS have been raised to the status of Climate Gurus and awash with all kinds of prizes and awards….
We are now experiencing the consequences of this decades long approach. We came to the point where pressure is considered by many scientist as some variable with no physical consequences; hence, the ‘thought experiments’ proposed by some that changing pressure would only have a transient effect on temperature. Well, Konrad and other laymen have gone through the effort to verify this and got the ‘surprising’ result that pressure does indeed raise equilibrium temperature.
A mistake that scientists (and laymen) often make is comparing systems at different pressures that absorb different amounts of external energy (through radiation or conduction). These people fail to realize that pressure by itself is NOT a source of energy, but only enhances whatever energy is provided from the outside. This fractional (non-dimensional) enhancement is a manifestation of the FORCE that pressure represents (in the physical sense of the word). So, if one wants to measure the absolute temperature enhancement of pressure, one needs to make sure that the two test systems absorb the same amount of energy (as Konrad did)! A highly compressed pressure container in the freezer will have lower temperature than the air in an open bottle outside the freezer…. We see this effect on the NTE – Pressure curve on Fig. 5 in our first paper: Earth and Titan have similar enhancement factors (1.863 for Earth’s atmosphere vs. 1.918 for Titan’s atmosphere). Yet, the absolute temperatures of the two planets are VERY different (287.6K on Earth vs. 94K on Titan). That’s because the solar energy reaching the two bodies is vastly different! … So, the fractional thermal enhancement (Eq. 7) depends ONLY on pressure, but the actual (temperature-measured) enhancement depends on solar radiation AND pressure (Eq. 8).
Ned Nikolov says:
January 22, 2012 at 3:07 am
Ned,
Thank you for your considered response. It’s generous of you to take the time to explain all this. Everything you say makes sense to me and Konrad’s experiments are empirically proving you correct.
I have yet to see any one of your critics address, much less disprove, your analysis that is the topic of this thread, namely what the airless gray-body temperature of the earth would be. Again, you’ve explained it very well and the Diviner data corroborates what your are saying; at this point it would be hard for me to believe you are not right.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m trying very hard to be skeptical (neutral) until this all shakes out. I think I see others here besides me that essentially buy into what you are saying, but nevertheless are holding your feet to the fire to prove your points. This is as it should be. But when your critics won’t even address your central claims, it’s hard to take the criticisms seriously.
One thing I hope you expand on at some point is just how the earth maintains its energy balance without considering the role of GHGs. I don’t personally have any dog in the fight, but that seems to be the knee-jerk reason for dismissing what you are saying, due, as you say, to the “radiative bias” in the current view. If you have to re-explain decades-old science to make your point, then that’s what you need to do.
Earlier (January 19, 2012 at 7:18 pm), you kind of spanked me when I asked about running your insolation equation “in reverse”. What I meant, but wasn’t very precise, was that the criticisms over on WUWT, with respect to a body having an atmosphere with absolutely no GHGs, relied on converting an average planetary temperature to total radiative emission to “prove” you are wrong.
What your equation (6) for this post insists on is integrating the point-by-point insolation over the entire surface to use the S-B equations to calculate an average GB temperature. If this is true (and I pretty much accept that it is), wouldn’t you have to integrate the point-by-point temperature over the entire surface to use the S-B equations to calculate outgoing radiation, rather than using the planetary average temperature? i.e., how would you calculate total outgoing radiation from the moon given your analysis so far?
On the other hand, you said in your reply that outgoing IR at the TOA takes care of it. I’m still not clear as to what the answer is. I know you have a pretty full plate as it is, but if you have some time I’m hoping you can clear this up.
Thanks,
Dan
Ned,
Does the pressure affect work the same for incompressible and compressible fluids? If not, what is the difference?
Do you have any comments on my algebra above? Is it fair to assume the near-surface atmosphere is isentropic? How high into the atmosphere does that assumption hold? Where and why does it break down?
Lots of question, I know. But I’m curious.
kdk33 says:
January 22, 2012 at 4:09 am
kdk33, I can answer your first two questions. 1.) It only works for compressible fluids (gases). 2.)The reason is that that one of variables in the ideal gas law, and a crucial one for the “pressure effect”, is volume. By definition, an incompressible fluid never experiences a significant change in volume.
For the remainder, you’re frankly over my head.
Dan
Strange how the wiki site on adiabatic lapse rates clearly refers to conduction as the main route for warming of the atmosphere when we appear to have large numbers of highly qualified and experienced PhDs thinking it is all about radiative transfer.
In the meantime I’ve been trying to make it clear over at WUWT that the thermal gradient in a column only arises when an external energy source is added.
Unfortunately it just isn’t sinking in.
There are two huge gaps in modern science education and both relate to difficult to comprehend concepts because they are counterintuitive.
One is the process of the phase changes in water and the latent heat exchanges involved.
The other is the Ideal Gas Law and adiabatic processes.
Yet both are critical to an understanding of Earth’s climate.
I’m up for any collaborative effort to try and get the truth acrtoss to the general public and would be happy (if asked) to assist with a more accessible narrative once the proper scientists here have put together the science and data.
Mind you, I think the rest of you are getting it together anyway without help from me.
Ned’s comments are already very clear to my mind.
In all the blog threads I do see increasing numbers of contributors starting to get it and can only hope that at some point it will start to cascade out into the public domain in any event.
Some journalist somewhere must eventually see a good story in the fact that climate science has overlooked or wilfully ignored the issues of latent heat transport, conduction from surface to atmosphere and the Ideal Gas Law.
Ned & Karl.
Thank you very much for your work on this, it is a very interesting and compelling study worthy of serious consideration. It is a shame, but unsurprising, that much of the discussion, especially at WUWT has de-generated into bloggers hyper-ventilating about the details of the internal dynamics of the Earth’s atmosphere, instead of stepping back and looking at the bigger picture. Very much a “big-picture” person, myself.
For me, the strongest, and least controversial, part of your paper, is the new mathematical approach to applying the Stefan-Boltzman law : I don’t presume to follow all the Maths, but I do know how to judge something by these results :
Effective grey-body temperature of the Moon calculated by traditional method : 255K
Effective grey-body temperature of the Moon calculated by your proposed new method : 155K
Actual average temperature of the Moon as empirically measured by the Lunar Diviner programme : 175-180K
You don’t have to be a rocket, or even a climate, scientist to see which method appears to be more accurate, especially if you were to embrace the concept of thermal inertia at the surface being a plausible explanation for the 20K difference between observed and theoretical Lunar temperatures.
Have you considered separating this part of the paper, and submitting it for publication in advance of your full Unified Climate Theory? The paper would be short, sharp, and difficult to refute given the new empirical evidence available from Lunar diviner. If accepted, it would knock a big hole in the wall of the Greenhouse Theory, through which you could drive the “Unified Climate” bus in a follow-up paper. Given the huge controversy that your theory will inevitably attract should it achieve widespread attention, that may be the best tactical approach.
Whatever you decide, the very best of luck with your continuing endeavours. Even if you are completely wrong (FWIW, I don’t think you are) – this is still the best way to do science, and if there is any field of study which needs to be shaken out of its complacency, it is Climatology.
Dan in Nevada says:
January 22, 2012 at 1:16 am …
Dan,
Could you link the physicist’s response regarding pressure/temperature at WUWT? I’m wondering if he has the correct system in mind. I think if he is using the same system for both the high pressure and low pressure cases, he will get the wrong answer. That is, if he would raise the pressure by reducing the volume (compressing the vessel) while maintaining the same energy input, there will be no difference in temperature (once the initial heating that comes with compression was allowed to dissipate). We still have the same number of molecules available for convection. Heat capacity being an extensive property, it remains the same for the two systems.
The correct model systems would have the same volume, and the high-pressure case would be obtained by pumping more gas into it. More gas, higher heat capacity, higher temperature. Am I missing something here? It seems pretty self-evident and embarrassingly simple.
Anything is possible,
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement. The experience we’ve had so far on the two blogs definitely suggests that the best approach is to separate the big paper into small component topics and try publishing them before the grand summary discussing the big picture. The article of this thread can nicely fit into a separate publication …
FYI, yesterday I analyzed data I received from a NASA researcher, that allow for a more accurate calculation of Moon’s mean temperature. These data show a very similar range of average temperatures between lunar equator and the poles as reported in our article here, but contain information for other latitudes as well. So, after integrating the numbers, the Moon’s global mean temperature came to 165.6K. This is only about 10K higher than our theoretical estimate. We are also working on improving our analytical expression for the gray-body temperature in Eq. 6.
For anyone paying attention to data and real evidence, there should be doubt at this juncture that the current estimate of 250K for the Moon’s mean surface temperature is simply a fiction! The implications of this single fact are far reaching, since the present GH theory is completely unprepared to deal with the ensuing 122K-130K atmospheric thermal enhancement (GE). And that is an eye-opener by itself …
Thank you , Ned, for your ongoing explanations here on this thread.
And thank you all who keep debating and looking at the implications – every little bit helps me, a non-physicist, to understand a bit more.
As a footnote, or aside, if you wish, do remember the story of Helicobacter pylori and stomach ulcers:
“Helicobacter pylori was first discovered in the stomachs of patients with gastritis and stomach ulcers in 1982 by Dr. Barry Marshall and Dr. Robin Warren of Perth, Western Australia. At the time, the conventional thinking was that no bacterium can live in the human stomach, as the stomach produced extensive amounts of acid of a strength similar to the acid found in a car battery. Marshall and Warren rewrote the textbooks with reference to what causes gastritis and gastric ulcers. In recognition of their discovery, they were awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.”
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori
(Scroll down to ‘History’).
I hope that encourages all of you to keep on asking, researching and debating this excellent new paradigm.
Ned Nikolov @ January 22, 3:07 am
I had an Email exchange with Roy maybe a year or more ago, where I pointed out that according to the Trenberth/IPCC cartoon of the Earth’s energy balance, by far the greatest cooling effect from the surface was from evapotranspiration, to which could be added as an enhancement thermals. Radiation attributing to the GHE, (other than that escaping directly to space), was a minor player according to Trenberth. I wanted to know why the literature seemed dearth of anything on the non-radiative stuff.
My brief interpretation of the several courteous exchanges with Roy is a bit head scratching; he advised yes, convection (his collective word), is very important, and it is incorporated in the computer models, however everyone is too busy working on the radiative aspects to have time to work on convection
Ned Nikolov says:
January 22, 2012 at 5:36 am
For anyone paying attention to data and real evidence, there should be doubt at this juncture that the current estimate of 250K for the Moon’s mean surface temperature is simply a fiction! The implications of this single fact are far reaching, since the percent GH theory is completely unprepared to deal with the ensuing 122K-130K atmospheric thermal enhancement (GE). And that is an eye-opener by itself …
Imo you’re correct in calculating the effect of solar radiation on half a sphere iso the GHE spreading it.around the whole sphere. (same approach as Joseph Postma took btw)
Applying this blackbody approach to planets similar to the moon looks ok, although even rocks have some heatstorage capacity compared to the on/off nature of a blackbody.
Imo it is absolutely WRONG to use the blackbody approach for waterplanet earth.
It’s base temperature is 275K, not 0K.
Reason of course being the oceans, and no, I’m not assuming any heat exchange between the hot core and the oceans, just radiative balance for planet earth with incoming solar, so no temperature change for the whole system, just internal distribution of heat.
(oceancurrents, windpatterns etc.etc)
So both the GHE and the ATE have to compete with solar radiation in warming earths surface from 275K to 290K. I think the sun is by far the major player.
Conclusion should be imo that the atmosphere is heated mostly from below, and conduction and convection are the major processes to accomplish this, setting an ENVIRONMENTAL lapse rate from surface to outer space.
The paradigm change we’re looking for is getting rid of the blackbody calculation for water planet earth, it’s totally wrong imo, and yes, this does also kill the GHE theory.
wayne @ January 20, 11:40 am
Wayne, thanks for your enthusiasm. An interesting aspect of that thread was that some of the usual suspects, (apart from Tim Folkerts), did not try to demolish my first principles arguments as an engineer. (= applied scientist). BTW: Wot’s all this stuff about elevators?
• Willis, (the one who knows everything), despite a request to draw his attention to the thread because he had a vested interest, what with his own “improved” Earth’s energy budget cartoon, did not appear.
• R. Gates made a brief appearance, pointed out a minor oversight, said there was a lot to chew on, and then disappeared.
• Joel Shore? Well perhaps he was on holiday, (vacation).
The link you give to the original WUWT thread has 639 comments attached, some very long, and was painfully slow on my computer. For a quicker view of the article, here follows a better link, and it includes a correction prompted by the comment from R. Gates.
I was thinking of expanding the article to cover some other comments in the 639, and will be looking for a guest post on a different website to WUWT. I’ve gone off WUWT a tad just lately.
IMO, no one was able to dismantle the evidence I gave that the S-B application by Trenberth, was at least, put in polite terms; paradoxical.
Ned, and others,
Thank you for your patience in explaining my albedo questions. I think that part 2 will help to clear this up for me. When will part 2 be published? You have got us hooked and impatient – but please do not rush this.
I agree with the comment above about publishing the radiative calculation for the Moon, along with the empirical evidence. I would love to see this published in Nature! How could they refuse?
Best of luck!
kdk33 says: January 22, 2012 at 12:25 am:
I think that the problem is that you can not ascribe a temperature and pressure to “outer space”. The mean free path of atoms is such that you can not have a meaningful concept of pressure, as there will be no conduction, and all atoms must be treated on an individual basis, following geodesic trajectories. Also, the 2.7K “temperature” is not related to a gas, however difuse, but is simply the black body temperature of the universe.
All off topic, but I thought it was an interesting question, from someone who was willing to discuss entrpy (and my answer may be completely wrong!).
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 21, 2012 at 9:26 pm
As an example of the arbitrary nature of the N&Z choice of values for surface pressure in their paper, they say the pressure of the earth is 98,888.20 pascals. I particularly liked the fact that it is allegedly accurate to the nearest hundredth of a pascal.
….
Finally, whenever you see parameters given to seven significant figures, and the earth’s surface pressure given to two decimals, you know you are dealing with amateurs. That kind of fake precision is a big red flag at any time.
At least they are using their arms to operate calculators instead of waving them around furiously.
Thanks for some replies.
After some thought….
I think the isentropic assumption breaks down at the point in the atmosphere that convections ceases to be the dominant heat transfer mechanism. I suppose that radiation takes over; and, at that point, the temperature gradient becomes much closer to zero. Thus, the earth’s surfae temperature is not a million degreees.
BTW, isentropic just means adiabatic AND reversible. Nothing to be afraid of.
So, does gravity impose both an atmospheric temperature profile as well as a pressure profile? I think the answer is kinda sorta, but in a round about way. Radiation heats the polanet surface so it attempts to cool. In the near surface atmosphere, the dominant heat transfer mechanism is convection. Because there is a pressure gradient, convection cannot return the atmosphere to a zero temperature gradient, instead it can only return the atmosphere the DALR (for my dry imaginary ideal gas planet). Put another way: Gravity imposes a pressure gradient and that pressure gradient limits the ability of convection to return the atmospheric temperture gradent to zero. That limit is the DALR.
Now, the DALR comes about because convection (heat transfer by movement of the heat containing mass) requires gas to move up and down the pressure gradient. As it does, it experiences isentrop;ic (adiabatic and reversible) expansion and compression. Hot air rises attempting to heat the air above (convection), but as it does it is cooled because of expansion. So when it arrives at the cold air above, it isn’t as hot as it was when it left… you get the point.
Once convection ceases to be the dominant heat transfer mechanism, then this DALR constraint no longer applies.
Aside: TB, if I’m off-topic, just tell me where this discussion should go (please don’t send me to TBTS purgatory).
Bob Fernley-Jones says:
January 22, 2012 at 8:47 am
Went to your linked article. Very interesting read. Some observations:
– The 2nd NASA energy budget balances, while the Trenberth cartoon has the 0,9W/m^2
fudgefactor to explain global warming. Is NASA abandoning the warming trend?
– The NASA budget has no energy flowing from atmosphere to earth. Is backradiation gone?
– Of the energy leaving earth (51% of incoming) ~60% is by conduction and convection
Seems radiation is getting less importance?
Perhaps back to good old meteorology, where the sun heats the earth, and the earth heats the atmosphere (mainly)?
Perhaps NASA is backtracking it’s position regarding the GHE. Let’s hope 😉
Some interesticg calcs…
We know, assuming an isentropic ideal gas: cP ln(T2/T1) = R ln(P2/P1). We can let Cp = 5/2R. If I let T2 be earths gray body temperature and set it to either 255 K(traditional) or 155 K(N-Z), then I let T1 be 280K, and I let P1 be 1 bar (pressure at the surface). Then I can calculate P2, which is the atmospheric pressure where the earth is at it’s gray body temperature.
If I divide my idealized atmosphere into two parts – near surface where convection dominates, and an upper part where radiation dominates – then P2 is the pressure at which convection ceases to dominated.
For T2=255 K, that pressure is about 0.79 bar. For T2 = 155 K, that pressure is about 0.22 Bar
At least my numbers are starting to be more reasonable.
Tallbloke
I did not see this funny comment by Willis from January 21, 2012 at 9:26 pm
(1) None of the pressure values used in our paper are ‘arbitrary’! For example, the Earth’s mean surface pressure of 98,888.2 Pa was calculated as P = Ma*g/A, where Ma is the total mass of the atmosphere (kg), g is average gravity, and A is the Earth’s total surface area (m^2). The values for Ma, g, and A were taken from NASA pages and are listed in Table 1 in our original paper. Anyone can verify this calculation. The 98,888.2 value is smaller than the standard 101,325 Pa, because the latter is the pressure at sea level and as such does not represent higher land masses which we need account for in this analysis. Incidentally, our 98,888.2 figure is very similar to the 98,550 Pa average atmospheric pressure obtained by Trenberth & Smith (2005), see:
Trenberth , K.E. and Smith, L. 2005. The Mass of the Atmosphere: A Constraint on Global Analyses. J. Climate 18: 864-875. (http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/massERA40JC.pdf)
(2) The parameters in our regression Eq. 7 (in the first paper) are given to seven significant figures for a reason! It is because they appear in the exponential part of a highly non-linear function. If these were rounded to the 2nd or 3d digit, then the function will not produce the exact values for the enhancement factor anymore, and anyone who tries to use Eq. 7 or 8 to reproduce our results will notice a discrepancy with what we report in the paper. In trying to avoid such confusion, we decided to list regression parameters with their full precision.
However, Willis apparently could not figure out the above, which should not come as a surprise given his inability to grasp basics implications of the Gas Law. Out of all bloggers on both websites (where our paper was published), he was the only one I noticed, who asked repeatedly what the point of our paper was?! I’ll leave to the community to decide who is the amateur here … 🙂
BenAW,
About your comment from January 22, 2012 at 8:44 am:
1) We are NOT calculating the solar radiation on half sphere! Read our paper one more time
2) Your speculation that Earth’s base surface temperature is 275K is incorrect, because there would be no liquid oceans without atmosphere and its ATE effect. It is the extra warmth provided by atmospheric pressure that makes the very existence of oceans possible. So, the Earth’s base temperature is that of a gray body exemplified by the Moon.
clazy8 says:
January 22, 2012 at 5:20 am
clazy,
Here are the relevant links:
My html fu is weak at best, sorry about not providing proper links. This subject is the only one that turned me from a full-time lurker to a semi-participant. I was surprised just now to see how often I thought I had something worth saying. Also saw good reasons why lurking should be my standard m.o.
On a rotating uneven sphere under a single sun with a non GHG atmosphere there would be huge dayside and nightside temperature differentials producing very strong winds.All the energy exchanges between surface and atmosphere would be via conduction and convection involving ALL the molecules of the atmosphere whatever their radiative characteristics.
There would be enough mixing to bring warmed upper air down to the cold ground on the night side which would smooth out both heating and cooling around the planet.
The pressure at the surface would still combine with solar input to give the bog standard adiabatic lapse rate (or Atmospheric Thermal Effect) for a planet of that mass and atmospheric pressure. The air circulation of the planet would simply restructure itself around the ATE.
Just as every planet with an atmosphere of any composition always has done and always will do.
You see, an atmosphere structured around ATE is the only possible stable structure. Unless it achieves ATE then the situation is unstable and the atmosphere either boils off or congeals on the ground eventually.
The Ideal Gas Laws have never been falsified.
GHGs wholly unnecessary.
I just had this excjhange with Joel Shore at WUWT:
“For a planet without a greenhouse effect, said height is necessarily the surface of the planet”
Irrelevant because energy still gets into the air via conduction and convection and back to the surface via convection and conduction for then radiating out. So there will still be a lapse rate and it must match ATE otherwise the system is unstable. If it doesn’t match ATE then the atmosphere will accumulate energy via conduction and convection indefinitely until it boiled away or lose energy to the ground via conduction and convection indefinitely until it congealed on the surface.
The true Perpetuum Mobile is the concept of a planet with an atmosphere that is not precisely in equilibrium with its ATE.
Any disequilibrium will either boil off the atmosphere or congeal it on the ground.Once congealed on the ground it would be lost via sublimation.
The radiative GHG theory is itself a Perpetuum Mobile because it proposes that changing the composition changes ATE. Thus a bit more human GHGs are amplified by more water vapour and that gives more GHGs which amplifies again ad infinitum.
The atmosphere and oceans would get hotter and hotter until they boiled away.
We would see lots more planet sized bodies with no atmospheres at all because a little change in atmospheric composition would have been enough to destabilise it.
IIf we were to reduce GHGs so that they changed the ATE lapse rate the other way then the Earth would get steadily colder until the oceans and air congealed on the ground.
The system won’t allow it. Any change in composition that might introduce a disequilibrium with ATE is neutralised by a reconfiguring of the circulation pattern.
If you could find one planet where the Gas Laws do not apply then you would have me. Where is it ?
WUWT has published the reply to comments.
@Stephen Wilde says:
January 22, 2012 at 7:27 pm
I agree Stephen, Many people blow smoke and a few try to create light. It is a waste of time to convince smokers to quite. They enjoy their vice too much. May be time to ignore them and move on. 😎 Just create illumination for those that seek it. pg
Ned Nikolov says:
January 22, 2012 at 5:12 pm
1) We are NOT calculating the solar radiation on half sphere! Read our paper one more time
If you mean the adding of the 2,7K deep space temp factor over the whole sphere, ok.
2) Your speculation that Earth’s base surface temperature is 275K is incorrect,
“We start with the undisputable fact that the atmosphere provides extra warmth to the surface of Earth compared to an airless environment such as on the Moon.”
My proposal is at the least an alternative to your theory, so the undisputable is not warrented imo.
And we have this guy Occam with his razor 😉
I still have some problems with figure 3 in the paper.
The slope in the lines for 0,60 and 75 latitude suggest some heat storage capapcity for the moons surface, making it a non-perfect grey body.
The line for “latitude 89 winter” shows imo the effect of “earthshine” on this specific day.
If correct it’s magnitude is far greater than the 2,7K deep space temp you do compensate for.
Needs some elaboration imo.
Can somebody help me out with this text from the main paper on the UCT?
As example for the ATE the following is stated:
“At a planetary level, the effect is manifest in Chinook winds, where adiabatically heated downslope airflow raises the local temperature by 20C-30C in a matter of hours.”
I don’t see the relevance of this effect for the total atmosphere.
I just posted this on the WUWT blog – a lot of you bloggers are suffering from problems WUWT bloggers are:
The equations we have given you bloggers are simple and they work. Why aren’t you all trying to disprove our MIRACLE equation rather than banging your heads against walls trying to prove or disprove who knows what and exclaiming you have problems with this or that? The question is how can we possibly have done it – there is no question that our equations work – if you haven’t verified that it works, why haven’t you? What are you all afraid of: the realization that the Earth could be 100% nitrogen or 100% CO2 or 100% naughty vapours of some sort, and using the same surface pressure, would provide for the same average global surface temperature? Why are you all trying to include so-called GH gases; ocean modulations; re-radiations; crusts, your grandma’s bad breath and so on ad nauseam? These are not part of our theory. These parameters & ideas have absolutely nothing to do with the long term average global surface temperatures we are addressing and we’ve proved it with actual data . This is the miracle of our theory and why we called it the UTC? Why aren’t you thinking: “hmmmm, N&Z have given us an equation that lo-and-behold when we plug in the measured pressures and calculate Tgb as they suggest, gives us a calculated Ts that also matches measured values! You can’t disprove the equation? So maybe we are cooking the data books somehow, but how?
[Reply] Hi Karl, welcome to the Talkshop, and thanks for joining the discussion. I’m sure you’ll get some long replies to this comment, so I’ll give a short one:
We’re sceptics! Here at the Talkshop, we have suspended judgment and have trusted you and your future reviewers to make sure the maths is correct. But science is about more than maths. We will look at anything new from all angles and try to see if it has a serious conceptual flaw. I haven’t found any big problems so far and I wish you and Ned well and hope your theory succeeds! – Rog Tallbloke
BenAW @ January 22, 2:21 pm
Thanks for your interest Ben. I should mention that the NASA version predates the 2009 Trenberth cartoon by several years, and is all over various divisions of NASA and elsewhere. I should perhaps try and track-down the origins and add that relative timing to my updated article IF any mainstream blog shows an interest to post it. (such as Tallbloke’s, solely currently on offer for an expression of interest).
As for Trenberth’s missing 0.9 W/m^2, well it seems to be a funny circular argument that is not supported by the last decade or more of data.
colliemum @ January 22, 6:24 am
Re your good example of paradigm change:
Yes indeed, that is a good example of paradigm change. Another one I rather like, partly because it is topical in nearby threads, is that not long ago, Alfred Wegener was chastised by his peers for proposing a theory of continental drift/tectonics. Of course he did not have any firm proofs, or demonstrable geological mechanisms to cause it, but was nevertheless fairly recently proven to be correct.
Copied from WUWT for the record:
Joel Shore says:
January 22, 2012 at 7:28 pm
Willis says:
But they are not integrating over the dark half, as near as I can tell. What am I missing? You can’t just ignore half of the planet like that.
They did integrate over the dark half…and the value they get is zero because that is what the insolation is over that half. (They then add something back in to account for the fact that the temperature on the dark side would not really be 0 K but the 3 K background. I haven’t really paid attention to whether they did that correctly because the power due to the 3 K background is so ridiculously small as to be inconsequential.)
Oh, and Joel, what was your opinion of them substituting
mu = cos(theta)
into equation 7, and then integrating over mu? That seems like an incorrect procedure to me.
It is fine. The integral of the polar coordinate for a function f over a spherical surface is integral of f*sin(theta)*d(theta) but sin(theta)*d(theta) = -d(cos(theta)) = -d(mu) where mu = cos(theta). [The negative sign is accounted for by switching the limits of integration, i.e., 0 deg to 90 deg becomes mu = 0 to mu = 1.]
Like I said in my first post, as near as I can see, their mathematical calculations are fine. Their errors here are conceptual ones.
———————————————————
Joel couldn’t resist blowing a little smoke at the end there, but the preceding commentary is good to see. Of course, it will take people time to get their heads round the turning upside down of their co2 driven thinking, but science moves forward.
Here’s my own comment to Joel:
tallbloke says:
January 23, 2012 at 12:45 am
Joel Shore says:
“Trenberth’s diagram is for the actual Earth’s atmosphere where some of the terrestrial radiation is absorbed by the atmosphere (and said atmosphere also radiates). If this were not the case and the Earth’s surface still emitted 390 W/m^2 of radiation from the surface, then all of that radiation would escape to space and the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere would be 240 W/m^2 of solar radiation coming in (and being absorbed, as opposed to the part that is reflected) with 390 W/m^2 of terrestrial radiation going out.
The problem is not getting those numbers to balance with the radiative greenhouse effect…The problem is getting them to balance without the radiative greenhouse effect.”
Joel, I understand it’s hard for you to get your head around this, but consider Ned’s statement that:
“the long-wave (LW) radiation in the atmosphere is a RESULT (a BYPRODUCT if you will) of the atmospheric temperature, NOT a cause for the latter! The atmospheric temperature, in turn, is a function of solar heating and pressure!
The so-called GH effect is a pressure phenomenon, not a radiative phenomenon! That’s because no back radiation can rise the Earth’s surface temperature some 133K above the corresponding no-atmosphere (gray body) temperature. AND yes, the thermal effect of our atmosphere is well over 100K as proven by NASA’s recent observations of Moon surface temperatures.”
Now, The practical demonstration by Konrad Hartmann in the recent post on my site (linked above in an earlier comment) shows that higher pressure does indeed enhance the sensible atmospheric heat generated by the passage solar radiation. This is an empirical result. No conservation law is harmed during the process. Empirical reality cannot break laws of nature!
The radiation measured by AERI and other such devices is the radiation buzzing around between the molecules in the air. The air is denser near the surface, which is why we see 390 squiggles per square metre whizzing about just above the surface there. Up at 7km or thereabouts on average, where the air is less dense and there are fewer molecules per cubic cm, we see around 240 squiggles per square metre whizzing around. This fails to surprise me.
As we all know, there is plenty of convection and evaporation and condensation leading to latent heat release going on in the troposphere, such that radiation is not required as a shifter of heat there. It just buzzes around doing its buzzy thing. Above the troposphere, those radiatively hyper-active water vapour and co2 molecules do a sterling job shifting heat back into space for us so we stay cool here on the surface. Has there really been a change in the effective radiating height in the last 40 years? Got any data on that?
Empirical data from pyrheliometers gathered and studied by Doug Hoyt and others show no overall change in the opacity of the atmosphere for 70 years or so during the C20th. It’s a real result which has been ignored for too long IMO.
Stay cool Joel.
“The radiation measured by AERI and other such devices is the radiation buzzing around between the molecules in the air. The air is denser near the surface, which is why we see 390 squiggles per square metre whizzing about just above the surface there. Up at 7km or thereabouts on average, where the air is less dense and there are fewer molecules per cubic cm, we see around 240 squiggles per square metre whizzing around. This fails to surprise me.
As we all know, there is plenty of convection and evaporation and condensation leading to latent heat release going on in the troposphere, such that radiation is not required as a shifter of heat there. It just buzzes around doing its buzzy thing.”
Nice image of lots of buzzy thing buzzing about 🙂
Should be required reading.
Well put.
I just looked at WUWT – it is facinating to watch the “great minds” fall into line! They now seem to agree that the maths is correct, at least.
It took at least 3 readings of part 1, and then reading the original N&Z paper before I “got it”. I wish I had done this before making any comments, and I suspect that others may now feel the same way. If the empirical evidence holds up (and I am sure that many people are now frantically checking it) I do not see how this is not a “game changer”.
The trouble is, assuming that there is no “killer blow”, how can this be used to stop the trillion dollar “carbon scam” if only qualified physicists can understand it, and then only after many hours of study? But that is probably a debate for another place.
The pyrheliometer measurements mentioned a couple of times previously are not really relevant to the discussion here. The pyrheliometers measure visible radition, not thermal IR.
Doug: thanks for the clarification. My faulty crash-damaged memory is making a fool of me again. 😦
So is that near IR part of the solar spectrum which is intercepted in the atmosphere (~70W/m^2 IIRC) too small to detect changes in opacity with or just outside the wavelength range of the instruments?
It seems to me that radiation budgets, gas laws, conduction, planetary motions, and convection have been so conflated as to become incomprehensibly complex. I’m only an engineer with a smattering of physical oceanography in my background and in my experience nature simply doesn’t support such twisted scenarios as are being put out there in the climate debate. So I would like to take a wack at simplifying.
My first simplifying assumption is that all of the various horizontal and vertical motions induced in our fluid ‘atmosphere’ (I’m including the oceans) are nothing more than energy exchange mechanisms. They convert potential to kinetic and back again with no net (planetary) energy change. This means convection, water cycle, ocean storage, winds, etc. contribute nothing to the argument.
Secondly, I say it’s a given that the net radiative balance has to be maintained to conserve (planetary) energy.
Next, I conjecture that the atmosphere, irrespective of what it is composed of, steals energy on the daylight side (by conduction) from the grey body that would otherwise have been radiated to space then gives it back at night (by conduction). As long as the net daily energy of the black body remains unchanged from that of an atmosphere free planet then the net radiation to space remains unchanged. Energy is conserved. It’s like you have a giant (perfect) spring that is compressed in the daytime and released at night, always giving back what it takes to compress it. It makes no difference whether you put an enormous amount into the compression (Venus) or a little tiny amount (Mars).
This next bit is tricky and also key. Many people conflate the temperature of the earth and the temperature of the atmosphere. i.e. we speak of them as if they are the same thing. They aren’t at all the same of course and I maintain that it is possible to have a constant mean temperature planet, our grey body that is maintaining radiative balance, (the solid and liquid part) with a non radiating elevated temperature atmosphere near the surface. Go stand on a beach in the sun in your bare feet. if you think air temp and surface temp are the same.
Lastly lets go back to the perfect spring. How can a gas (let’s make it an ideal non GHG one) get hotter than the grey body says it should be. That brings me to Konrad’s experiment. The ideal gas law is an energy balance equation. On the left we have pressure and volume. On the right we have a constant, the amount of gas (however you choose to quantify it), and temperature. The experiment is essentially one that adds radiant energy to two equal volumes at different constant pressures. Each bottle has an equation where the left side is held constant (PV). The implication is that each of their energies is constant but unequal. When we add radiant energy each bottle’s gas heats up due to conduction with the black body. PV can’t change. Therefore, on the right side something’s got to give. Molecules go down. Temperature goes up. The energy in the bottles has not changed. Both bottles experience an increase in temperature but the higher pressure bottle has more temp increase.
Could it be that the higher pressure bottle has to let more molecules out than the one at atmospheric bottle to maintain constant pressure? I think so. If I’m right then the temperature in that one has to go up more than the temp of the bottle that only had to let out a little bit of gas. I’m not bright enough to do the math but it does seem logical enough for someone to go about it who is.
If you can safely ignore everything going on convectively, etc. then you’re left with a tall column of gas that is being heated by conduction at the bottom. For a given volume at its base then, it has to let out some molecules (just like Konrad’s experiment) and increase its T in order to maintain the constant P necessary to hold up the column. The experiment is behaving exactly as I would expect a little volume of near surface atmosphere to behave. It can have an elevated T without modifying the planet’s radiative balance at all.
The higher the pressure is, the higher the energy is that will be found near the surface. Higher pressure means more molecules being let out of the ‘bottle’ during daylight which means higher T. As long as the planet rotates the ‘spring’ is doing its thing maintaining the radiative balance while getting as hot as it wants.
Hi Paul and welcome. I think you have a good grasp of some of the key issues, but have maybe gone a step too far with the simplification. I’ll make a couple of additions to your paragraph if I may; see what you think.
“My first simplifying assumption is that all of the various horizontal and vertical motions induced in our fluid ‘atmosphere’ (I’m including the oceans) are nothing more than energy exchange mechanisms. They convert solar irradiance to kinetic to potential and back again, and finally to outgoing long wave radiation with no net (planetary) energy change. This means convection, water cycle, ocean storage, winds, etc. contribute nothing to the argument.”
I’m just emphasising that it’s a dynamic equilibrium with extra-terrestrial input and output. The complexity in the feedbacks and interactions of the climate system which are of chief interest come into play when extra-terrestrial and long term internal fluctuations cause change in factors and magnitudes which are noticeable to us. One of the tricky things is that there’s a possibility that things we hardly notice like small changes in length of day, multi-decadal pressure balance between arctic and equator etc might have a more profound effect on multidecadal climate fluctuations than we yet realise.
Please do cut and paste your relevant thoughts on Konrad’s experiment to his thread for discussion, as well as continuing to discuss N&Z’s work on grey-body temperaure here.
@tallbloke
I agree with the change in wording. It’s always the danger with simplifying assumptions that they are simplifying assumptions, isn’t it?
I will cross post on Konrad’s entry.
Are you in essential agreement with the initial assumption? When I first started thinking about this I had thought of things like ocean currents, storms, wind, etc as important things being left out of the conversation but then it dawned on me that they are just terrestrial energy conversion and transport with no extra-terrestrial importance.
Paul, I agree that in terms of working out overall planetary energy budget they don’t need to be all figured out. However, if you want to work out what cause precedes what effect in order to know whether or not small changes in say atmospheric composition matter of not, then….
Plus of course, those natural internal modes of energy conversion can be pretty important to those who are hit by typhoons, earthquakes, ice-storms, floods, and so on. We are tying to understand and predict those natural disasters to better anticipate and prepare for naturally destructive events.
If changes in composition (from human emissions) result in more energy in the air yet do not increase system temperature overall then one has to look at a changed rate of energy flow through the system.
That does involve changes in climate but, so far, the evidence is that it is miniscule compared to natural variability caused by sun and oceans.
Mind you it may be that the rise in GHGs is primarily due to changes in ocean and ground moisture absorption capability with human emissions normally being quickly absorbed by nearby vegetation and in rainfall.
But those are issues for another thread.
kzeller says:
January 23, 2012 at 4:37 am
Hi, Karl. Was starting to wonder if you were the “Teller” of the pair. If you don’t know who Penn and Teller are, never mind. Anyway, glad to hear from you as well as Ned.
I can tell you and Ned are getting a little frustrated, but you’re making headway. The blog format is particularly helpful for laymen like myself but it must feel like herding cats to you. It’s very helpful when you engage, even if it means talking at a less than scholarly level. Please keep up the comments.
Dan in Nevada says:
January 22, 2012 at 5:56 pm
Thanks, Dan
John Day tells us:
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/books/planetary_science/ (Ch 4, pg 116)
“The temperature on the lunar surface increases by about 47°K in the top 83 cm. The top surface (2-3 cm) is a loosely packed porous layer. Surface temperatures vary considerably. At the Apollo 17 site, the surface reaches a maximum of 384K (111C) and cools to 102K (-171C) at the end of the lunar night [2]. The near-surface temperature is 216K (-57C). At the Apollo 15 site, these temperatures are about 10°K lower. The agreement with previous estimates based on terrestrial observations was very close [8, 9]”
Those references at the end of the quote:
8. Saari, J. M. (1964) Icarus. 3: 161.
9. Mendell, W. W., and Low, F. J. (1970) JGR. 75: 3319.
Ned and Karl used this reference:
Click to access Huang07ASR.pdf
WUWT commenter dlb offers this reference:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010LPICo1530.3008N
Ned,
Before we get too carried away, I suggest that we should pause for a moment to read and carefully absorb today’s reponse from Harry Huffman to your N&Z paper. He has posted this on his own website at:
http://theendofthemystery.blogspot.com/2012/01/observation-on-unified-climate-theory.html
First of all he shows, very eloquently in my opinion, that the grey body calculation that is at the heart of your ‘Nte’ ratio calculations for each planet (which generate the last line of data in your Table 4) is actually mathematically equivalent to his method of comparing the planetary temperatures directly without recourse to the concept of a ‘grey body’. He shows mathematically that both methods end up doing the same two things:
(1) They adjust for the relative amounts of the Sun’s energy that the planets receive (using the relative distances of the planets from the Sun and applying the inverse square law of electromagnetic radiation).
(2) They convert the adjusted energy values to their corresponding temperatures (using the standard Stefan-Boltzmann black body relationship).
So people will ask: what’s the difference? Well what Harry shows is that the additional parameters that you use, emissivity and albedo for your presumed grey body version of each planet are unnecessary. I suspected this when I first read your paper and now I have seen his exposition I am sure he is right.
I would be interested to know whether you agree. If you do, I think this is good news, not bad. It simplifies your proposition considerably and avoids diversion into endless theoretical discussions about the significance of grey body (“atmosphere-less”) versions of each planet – evidently a fruitful source of confusion and disagreement.
At the same time, I do not think that, if you were to adopt Harry’s simpler method of calculation for your planetary comparisons, this would negate your separate and, in my opinion, incredibly important finding that, hitherto, climate scientists have been using the wrong math when calculating the temperature difference between an atmosphere-less Earth (which is arguably a grey body) and its actual measured temperature, leading to a discrepancy between the two methods of calculation of no less than 100K! I think this is a very important result in its own right because it knocks the GHG warming theory on the head anyway, it being very difficult to see how the warmists can put such a huge additional difference down to the effect of GHGs.
So my positive thought is that there are now two separate arrows to our bow: Firstly an impossible temperature gap for the GHG theorists to bridge. Secondly, even if they try (and they will), some cast iron empirical planetary data and an empirical formula that provides no room for a GHG effect anyway.
Just nailed another support paper for all this, thanks to Yankov’s reference at WUWT. Great times! 2005, paper in Russian but Google Translate is your friend!
The adiabatic theory of greenhouse effect by Academician (RANS) OG Sorokhtin,
Institute of Oceanology. Shirshov Sciences.
Tallbloke, you need to run this paper here IMHO.
The bottom line, as David points out, is that N & Z and Harry Dale Hoffman are essentially coming to the same conclusion using highly different methodologies. This can only strengthen the perception that they are both on the right track. The next question is: is it possible to bring the two trains of thought together. I think it may be :
Just posted this on the “High Pressure Venus” thread, but in the light of David Socrates post, it is probably better posted here (apologies if you’ve already read it).
_____________________________________________________________________________
If I am understanding Harry Dale Hoffman correctly, he is not necessarily saying that N & Z are wrong, but that they need to take their theory one step further and, rather than simply accept surface pressure as being a primary explanation, along with solar radiation, for surface temperatures, they need to ask what factors cause surface pressure – break it down into constituent elements if you will. I think he is onto something……..
……Surface pressure is primarily a function of atmospheric mass and our old friend, gravity. Atmospheric depth also – they are intrinsically interlinked. The greater the depth of the atmosphere, the greater the distance over which adiabatic lapse rate (a function of gravity (again!) and heat capacity) applies. The greater the distance over which the adiabatic lapse rate applies, the greater the temperature difference between the top of the atmosphere and the surface.
Does this make sense? I know it is simplistic, but this is deliberate as I am trying to break things down into basic principles. I can’t see any fault in the logic. Can anyone else?
Following on, my working hypothesis is this :
The TRUE effective surface temperature (TEST – I like that!) of a planetary body is defined by incoming solar radiation and the thermal inertia (heat capacity) of its surface. Speed of rotation and axial tilt MAY be other factors which need to be taken into consideration. The presence of liquid (water) on the Earth’s surface raises the TEST of the Earth as compared to planets with dry, rocky surfaces because the heat is essentially stored in a third dimension, so its surface has a higher heat capacity.
Clearly, accurately determining TEST is going to be very difficult, but assuming it is possible, I have a hypothesis arising :
TEST defines height in the atmosphere at which it is correct to start applying the appropriate adiabatic lapse rate. Apply that all the way down the surface and voila!, you have your observed surface temperatures.
This is just a line of thought I am persuing right now, I have an uncomfortable feeling that I am probably missing something blindingly obvious or indulging in circular reasoning, but as far as I can tell it works in principle on all the planetary bodies examined by N & Z : On Venus, because it has a very thick atmosphere, on Earth because of the reason I have outlined and on Europa, Titan and Triton because they all have low lapse rates on account of weak gravity. Mercury, Mars and the Moon all have negligible atmospheres, so it doesn’t apply
If somebody would be so kind as to point out where I am going wrong, and shoot it down in flames I will not take offense.
TIA.
When I say “Hoffman”, I do of course mean “Huffman”. Doh!
Apologies all round.
The enlightened say first one must have faith before one can understand, can apply and finally manifest using spiritual laws: no faith, no manifestation(s). That said you’ve all got to stop looking for complications, and only ‘test’ our equation 7 or 8 in the original post. So, heaven forbid and risking the consternation response of my partner, here is a ‘thought experiment’ that may provide some light toward the goal of enlightenment. Remember that NTE is a ratio of measured planetary global average equilibrium surface temperature to calculated global average equilibrium grey body temperature on the same planet sans atmosphere. From Table 1. in our original post we determined and reported NTE for Earth to be 1.863 = 287.6/154.3. NTE is a ratio, a dimensionless number, like the Reynolds number used to predict laminar vs. turbulent flow, or the Rossby number relating inertia to planetary rotation, etc. These numbers are powerful predictors in the physical universe we live in. NTE is a new one, just hatched so to speak. You can even call it the Nikolov-Zeller Number if you like :). We use NTE to quantify the ATE, atmospheric thermal effect. ATE is another new term we coined to replace and delineate NTE from the confusing ‘g’ word, hoping but failing miserably, to make it easier for you all to grasp.
Remember that sans atmosphere Tgb =Ts = 154.3K for Earth and with atmosphere Tgb still = 154.3K but Ts = 287.6K. Hence Ts is now 133.3 K higher, blasphemously greater than the ‘g’ word 33K . To realize these two temperatures, the total Solar irradiance must be 1362 W m-2. Lower So, lower temps; higher So, higher temps. So (word so not So) using our thoughts let’s move the Earth and its’ atmosphere to outer space and consider what might happen. Burrrr its cold, So = 0 W m-2 and the temperature of deep space is 2.72K. (We are on the very fringe of a thought experiment space cadets so detractors making our atmosphere solid are not welcome here at this juncture. We could use H2 at the same pressure but we won’t go there.) At deep space equilibrium Tgb = 2.72K, we’re domed; but alas, an opportunity for warmth since we still have our atmosphere and its’ NTE of 1.86. Salvation Ts = 1.86 * 2.72 = 5.06K! Earth becomes a virtual way station to heat UFOs. Nikolov & Zeller out-Goreing Gore, sell their ill-gained carbon credits, purchase all the NTE credits, start an intergalactic warming franchise and demonstrate how faith can manifested wealth! On our return to the Milky Way toward our Solar system we pause Earth for at rest in Saturn’s orbit thinking there may be some more easy money to be made. But here Tgb = 48.9K, so our warming business averages Ts = 48.9 * 1.86 = 91K while the nearby Titians with NTE = 1.918 use unearthly sales techniques and run a much better profit margin with 93.7K assets (space cadets confused by the accounting numbers refer to our Table 1). Nikolov & Zeller loose big time barely able to get Earth back to Earth orbit penniless but at least having the ‘extra energy’ that PV with NTE & So provides.
Remember we are only discussing the bases, foundation of, or reason for global average equilibrium surface temperatures, not regionally changing climates, etc. so forget about lapse rates, radiative transfers, atmosphere constituents, you name it, etc. Try to capture the meaning of our equations 7 & 8 and how the planets & moons with atmospheres obey those equations – it’s truly a miracle.
Dr. Zeller:
I’ve been trying to use your equations 7 and 8 to try to figure out how much of a pressure change we would expect from the +/- 1C increase in global surface temperature over the last +/- 100 years, but without much success. Could you give me a number? Thanks.
Roger A, you & I must learn to use Excel. According to my 14 year old grand daughter to raise or lower Ts by 1K in equation 7 for Earth values you need between + or – 4200 to 4300 Pa – I will not ask her to do any more math.
Over at the parallel thread at WUWT, I added to a comment by Tallbloke concerning a basic premise in the N&Z hypothesis, and had the great fortune of a response fromJoel Shore. I thought it might be of interest here, so I mirror it:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bob Fernley-Jones says: January 23, 8:09 pm
Joel Shore @ January 23, 5:11 pm
Thank you for your typical style of response. I compare your response to part of mine:
You seem to have misunderstood what I wrote; particularly see the part where I’ve herewith added bold emphasis. Oh and BTW, it is not me doing the theorising, but what I believe that N&Z are proposing, which many here do not seem to understand, including as a lecturer, yourself.
As Wayne points out [above], you will not find it in Raymond Pierrehumbert’s book or the like, so you may find it hard to even consider it.
Concerning N&Z’s qualifications, sorry, I thought they were introduced somewhere in one of the threads as belonging to your discipline.
Of course physics is quite a wide field and according to your bio, you have been mostly active in non CAGW stuff. Recently, he has also developed an interest in global climate change… Also, according to your bio it seems that you are no more qualified than they in this area, and they have certainly been more active in diverse constructive publications.
http://www.rit.edu/~w-physic/Faculty_Shore.html
Once again your elitism and dogma comes to the fore in these exchanges
So Joel Shore questions N&Z’s efficiency in climate physics does he? Can some one please give me the links to one of Joel Shore’s papers… if he has one. I would like to compare.
Mike Monce says:
January 23, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Peter, George, Willis, et al:
The integral is correct. The average is taken over the surface of a sphere. i.e. they are averaging over the solid angle 4pi, hence the reason they divide by 4pi outside the integral. What everyone is missing is that the integral is NOT being done in cartesian coordinates but in SPHERICAL coordinates. The integral is done as follows:
Set the z-axis of the system pointing towards the sun at the equator, thus their theta angle corresponds to the usual theta in the spherical corrdinate system. At a constant radius, the element of solid angle d(omega) is given by sin(theta)d(theta)d(phi), the integral we are thus calcuating is
INT cos(theta)^.25 sin(theta)d(thetad(phi) from zero to pi
mu = cos(theta) then d(mu) = -sin(theta) d(theta) subbing in gives:
INT mu^.25 (-d(mu)) d(phi) = – 2pi INT mu^.25 d(mu) = -2pi (4/5) mu^5/4 =
-2pi (4/5) cos(theta)^5/4 evaluated from zero to pi
The limit evaluation just gives a factor of -1 so the net result is 2pi (4/5)
Now divide by 4pi and you get exaclty their value of 2/5.
I’m surprised no other physicists has caught this before (rgb??) It’s standard physics from the junior year in college.
wayne says:
January 23, 2012 at 4:05 pm
A few here seem to have a problem with how to perform this spherical integration… this may help.
To be brief, look up at the top-posted article for any parameters you may not understand.
A spherical integration of the per-point average temperature field:
T.gb = ¼π ∫[0,2π] ∫[0,1] T.i dμ dφ
or even clearer:
T.gb = ½ * ½π ∫[0,2π] ∫[0,1] T.i dμ dφ
As for μ = cos(θ.i), this will only need to be evaluated at two locations, 0 & π/2; first is when the sun is directly above and the second at the 360° terminator that is 90° from the first. So the ultimate results of these two evaluations are cos(0)=1 & cos(π/2)=0.
T.gb = ½ * ½π * ∫[0,2π] ∫[0,1] root4( S.0 (1-α.0) μ / (εσ) ) dμ dφ
T.gb = ½ * ½π * root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ)) ∫[0,2π] ∫[0,1] μ^(1/4) dμ dφ
First integrate ∫ [0,1] μ^(1/4) dμ:
= 4/5 * ( cos(0)^(5/4) – cos(π/2)^(5/4) )
= 4/5 * ( 1^(5/4) – 0^(5/4) )
= 4/5 * 1^(5/4)
= 4/5
Giving:
T.gb = 4/5 * ½ * ½π * root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ)) ∫[0,2π] 1 dφ
T.gb = 4/5 * ½ * ½π * root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ)) ∫[0,2π] dφ
Next integrate ∫[0,2π] 1 dφ
2π*1 – 0*1
2π
T.gb = 2π * 4/5 * ½ * ½π root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ)) * 1
Simplifying:
T.gb = 8π/20π root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ))
T.gb = 2/5 root4(S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ))
or
T.gb = 2/5 (S.0(1-α.0)/(εσ))^0.25
If any one out there disagrees with this derivation, lay out yours step-by-step and most here would like to see your expertise.
I have also personally numerically integrated this using two separate geometries, one as stated above and the other by a front facing latitude band view… both verify the above math … in Earth’s case 154.7 K. I also further extended this numeric integration to address other configurations that Dr. Brown raised in a prior article here at WUWT. Those too have also been double-checked and all appear correct.
Joules Verne says:
January 23, 2012 at 4:25 pm
@Stephen Wilde
“It does not in itself maintain a temperature gradient as far as I know but some have been arguing that it might do that as well to a small degree.”
You still don’t get it. Gravity maintains TWO energy gradients. One kinetic and one potential. The kinetic gradient decreases with altitude and the potential gradient increases with altitude. The two opposing gradients cancel out and the column is isogenergetic. This is how you can have a perpetual temperature gradient yet not be able to extract any work from it for a perpetual motion machine – a temperature gradient can be nullified by an equal but opposite gradient of energy in a different form. You can’t connect the cold and hot sides of the atmosphere without climbing up in a gravity well and the useful energy represented by the change in temperature is exactly used up by the energy required to climb uphill against gravity. The books thus balance and conservation of energy is once again safe from the abuses of junk science.
scf says:
January 23, 2012 at 6:29 pm
I believe the correct way to integrate equation 4 over the sphere is:
T.gb = ∫[-½π,½π] ∫[-½π,½π] root4( S.0 (1-α.0) / (εσ) ) root4 (cos(x)) root4 (cos(φ)) dx dφ
with x and φ being the angle of incidence in both directions,
or more simply:
T.gb = C ∫[-½π,½π] ∫[-½π,½π] root4 (cos(x)) root4 (cos(φ)) dx dφ
where C is the constant root4( S.0 (1-α.0) / (εσ) ).
Anyway, that’s the way I see it according to the argument in the article, as the incident solar flux striking the sphere.
tallbloke says, January 24, 2012 at 7:42 am: Gravity maintains TWO energy gradients. One kinetic and one potential. The kinetic gradient decreases with altitude and the potential gradient increases with altitude. The two opposing gradients cancel out and the column is isogenergetic. This is how you can have a perpetual temperature gradient yet not be able to extract any work from it for a perpetual motion machine – a temperature gradient can be nullified by an equal but opposite gradient of energy in a different form.
TB congratulations. I wish I had thought of expressing it that way.
Let us hope that it will help people here at last distinguish (a) the once-and-for-all INACCESSIBLE kinetic energy stored up billions of years ago when the Earth slowly accreted matter, from (b) the constant flow of ACCESSIBLE energy through the atmosphere due to the Sun.
It is the latter, not the former energy that gives rise to an air temperature that is in proportion to air density (and therefore in proportion to height above the surface) in strict accordance with the Ideal Gas Laws.
The only (but vital) role that gravity plays in this latter process it to make the atmosphere HEAVY so that the pressure at any particular height is FIXED by the weight of the air above it.
Phew! Progress towards sanity…
Posted on Willis’ new thread at WUWT
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 23, 2012 at 9:00 pm
John Day says:
January 23, 2012 at 7:46 pm
@Willis
Why haven’t you addressed my comments on the Ideal Gas Law, the crux of this N&Z theory?
Because this thread is about equation 8. The clue is in the title.
Along those lines, I ask everyone kindly to not debate the whole theory, gravity, the ideal gas law, or any other extraneous stuff on this thread. Please confine yourselves to the topic of the thread, the alleged “evidence” that their theory works. There is a “comments” thread open for your general discussions.
w.
Willis, the supporting material you so daintily call “other extraneous stuff” is in fact the evidence that their theory works. “So by ruling out of court” things like the similarity of their non linear regression, to the clausius curve, you cut N&Z off from the facts supporting their theory.
As Jimmi points out above:
“I do not see that rearranging it to give Ts=Ts actually shows anything – you have inserted the tautology, not them.” In other words, you’re being arsey for the sake of it.
Regarding the number of data points, it is trivially true that research work into solar system dynamics is made more difficult by the fact that there aren’t enough planets with good measurements in place to satisfy arsey stats fiddlers with a predisposition to dispose of a promising theory. That’s just how it is.
Now, regarding the alleged number of free parameters:
Eq. 7: Ts/Tgb = NTE(P)
Eq. 8 simply solves for Ts, i.e. Ts = Tgb*NTE(P)
Also, the constant 29.3966 in Eq. 8 is not a ‘tuned parameter’, but a result of combining 4 constants from the gray-body temperature in Eq. 2, i.e.
(2/5)*[(1 – 0.12)/(ϵ*σ)]^0.25 = 29.3966
In addition, you already knew that the purpose of the small constant Cs in Eq. 2 is, to make Eq. 2 predict a temperature of 2.725K (instead 0K) when So = 0 (no radiation present).
In short Willis, you are a serial shark jumper leading a charmed life.
David, I expressed the same thing in words when I pointed out the fallacy of Robert Browns perpetual motion machine consisting of a silver rod. The losses in the transmission of heat in the rod due to gravity going up the hill cancelled the alleged energy gain form going down it.
However, I can’t claim credit for the neat statement you spotted. It was posted by Joules Verne at WUWT. I reposted it here because of its clarity.
Your own summary is very clear too. Well done!
Comment 300! What a great thread this has been. My thanks again to Ned and Karl for their participation.
A further comment to Willis:
tallbloke says:
January 24, 2012 at 3:39 am
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 24, 2012 at 3:21 am
tallbloke says:
January 24, 2012 at 1:33 am
Also, the constant 29.3966 in Eq. 8 is not a ‘tuned parameter’, but a result of combining 4 constants from the gray-body temperature in Eq. 2, i.e.
(2/5)*[(1 – 0.12)/(ϵ*σ)]^0.25 = 29.3966
Upon further contemplation, I realized that this statement couldn’t be true, since the albedos are different for each planet. As a result, if it is a constant for all planets it is a tuned parameter.
It’s the albedo for rocky planets without an atmosphere. Assumed to be the same for all the bodies tested. So, Moon: measured albedo 0.12 Earth with no atmosphere, about the same, etc. So, not tuned; measured from the Moon, and applied elsewhere.
Read Nikolov and Zellers work and their contributions to the threads on my website for details would be my advice to anyone who wants to address what they actually say. You’re not banned from reading my website Willis, just from trying to gishgallop their (or anyone elses) theory into the dust.