I’m delighted Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller have chosen the Talkshop as the venue for the publication of this new open peer review paper on climate sensitivity. Scientific advance at the cutting edge has always been the most important aim of this blog, and I think this paper truly is an advance in our understanding of the climate system and the factors which support and modulate surface temperature on Earth and other rocky planets.
The paper is mathematically rigorous, but is also accessible to everyone, thanks to Ned and Karl’s exemplary effort to fully explain their concepts and definitions in terms which can be understood by any interested reader who has some familiarity with the climate debate. Building on the bedrock of their 2014 and 2017 papers, this new work extends the applicability and validates the postulates of those previous papers by examining the causes of variability in planetary surface temperature and incorporating the previous findings in quantifying and deriving equations to model them. They find that Earth is sensitive to changes in cloud cover, which affects the amount of solar shortwave radiation reaching the surface, but not very sensitive to changes in Total Solar Irradiance arriving at the top of the atmosphere. They also find that the sensitivity to changes in CO2 levels has been heavily overestimated by current climate models. They show that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration from 280 ppm to 560 ppm will cause an undetectable global warming of 0.004K.
A PDF of the paper can be downloaded here: ECS_Universal_Equations.
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Exact Formulas for Estimating the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity of Rocky Planets & Moons to Total Solar Irradiance, Absorbed Shortwave Radiation, Planetary Albedo and Surface Atmospheric Pressure.
Ned Nikolov, Ph.D. and Karl Zeller, Ph.D.
April, 2022
1. Introduction
The term “Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity” (ECS) has become a synonym for the steady-state response of global surface temperature to a modeled long-wave radiative forcing caused by a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration with respect to an assumed pre-industrial level of 280 ppm. According to climate models based on the Greenhouse theory, an increase of atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 560 ppm would produce a net radiative forcing (i.e. an atmospheric radiant-heat trapping) of 3.74 W m-2 (Gregory et al. 2004) resulting in a global surface warming between 2.5 K and 4.0 K with a central estimate of 3.0 K according to IPCC AR6 (see p. 11 in Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Summary for Policymakers). This implies an average unit ECS of 3.0/3.74 = 0.8 K / (W m-2) with a range of 0.67 ≤ ECS ≤ 1.07 K / (W m-2). Contemporary climate science and IPCC Assessment Reports do not discuss global temperature sensitivities to changes in cloud albedo, absorbed solar radiation or total surface atmospheric pressure. Consequently, no equations have been derived/proposed thus far to calculate these sensitivities. Part of the reason is that variations of cloud albedo are typically viewed in modern climate science as internal feedback to a climatic change induced by external forcing such as increasing anthropogenic carbon emissions. This notion is based on the 19th-Century Greenhouse theory (Arrhenius 1896) adopted by IPCC, which attributes most of the observed warming during the 20th Century and especially over the past 40 years to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations believed to trap outgoing long-wave radiation in the Earth’s troposphere and reduce the rate of surface infrared cooling to Space.
However, a plethora of studies published during the past 15 years have shown through both satellite and surface observations that the absorption of solar radiation by the Earth-atmosphere system has increased significantly since 1982 due to a decreased cloud cover/albedo, a phenomenon often referred to as “global brightening” (e.g. Goode & Pallé 2007; Wild 2009; Herman et al. 2013; Stanhill et al. 2014; Hofer et al. 2017; Pfeifroth et al. 2018; Pokrovsky 2019; Delgado-Bonal et al. 2020; Dübal & Vahrenholt 2021; Yuan et al. 2021).
Since the increased absorption of solar energy by the Earth’s climate system is a direct observation, while the claimed warming due to an increased “radiative forcing” from atmospheric greenhouse gases is a model calculation (not directly measured in reality), it is important to quantify the climate sensitivity to albedo variations independently of the assumed greenhouse forcing. This will help address the question to what extend the recent warming is explainable by the observed increase of planetary shortwave-radiation absorption, which in turn will provide insight into whether or not albedo variations are caused by internal feedbacks or external forces such as the solar wind and galactic cosmic rays (Voiculescu et al. 2013; Svensmark et al. 2021). We address this topic here using CERES observations of globally reflected solar radiation from 2001 to 2019.
Modern climate science a-priori assumes that the sensitivity of Earth’s global temperature to various radiative forcing is similar to the modeled ECS to CO2. In this article, we show that the Earth’s ECS to shortwave solar radiation is quantitatively quite different from the hypothesized ECS to CO2. To this end, first we derive universal analytical models for computing ECS of rocky planets and moons to changes in TOA solar irradiance, planetary albedo, and total atmospheric pressure. Secondly, we verify the albedo-temperature model against CERES satellite measurements of Earth’s reflected shortwave radiation obtained over the past 20 years. Finally, we apply the new analytical models to compare climate sensitivities of Earth to those of other planetary bodies in the Solar System and discuss reasons for the estimated differences.
2. Derivation of Analytical Models of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivities
Analytical models are mathematical expressions with a closed form solution, which means that the solution to a differential equation describing the change of a system’s parameter is exact and can be expressed as a mathematical analytic function.
While analyzing NASA planetary data, Nikolov & Zeller (2017) made a discovery that the long-term (baseline) global surface temperature of rocky planets and moons (Tsb ,K) is mainly a function of two variables: Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) reaching the top of the atmosphere and the mean atmospheric pressure at the surface. In mathematical terms:
where Tna(S) is the global average surface temperature in the absence of atmosphere (i.e. the no-atmosphere temperature), which chiefly depends on TSI (S , W m-2); and Ea(P) is the Relative Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement (RATE), a dimensionless quantity describing a form of adiabatic heating caused by the gravity-induced force of air pressure (P , Pa). In other words, Eq. 1 describes the long-term global surface temperature of a rocky planet as a product of two terms: diabatic and adiabatic heating. A key implication of this semi-empirical model is that atmospheric composition pays no role in determining the baseline global surface temperature of a planetary body. Figure 1 displays the planetary bodies and their observed key parameters utilized in the Dimensional Analysis of Nikolov & Zeller (2017).
Figure 1. Planetary bodies in the Solar System with available high-quality observations of environmental variables used in the Dimensional Analysis of Nikolov & Zeller (2017). Note that A and Ts in this Figure correspond to 𝛼b and Tsb in the text.
Volokin & ReLlez (2014) showed that the airless global surface temperature of a spherical body is given by the formula:
where 𝛼e is the albedo of the surface regolith under airless conditions (fraction); ηe is the fraction of absorbed daytime solar radiation stored in the regolith and released as heat at night; Rc = 3.13𝑒 − 6 is the cosmic background radiation (W m-2); Rg is the average geothermal heat flux at the surface (W m-2); ε is the regolith long-wave emissivity (≈0.98); and
σ = 5.67e − 8 W m-2 K-4 is the Stephen-Boltzmann constant relating the radiative flux from a body to the 4th power of the body’s absolute temperature. Equation 2 was derived via spherical integration of the Stephen-Boltzmann radiation law. Note that the above expression does not contain a term quantifying the angular velocity of a rotating airless body. Volokin & ReLlez (2014) found that the speed of rotation did not affect the global surface temperature of spherical objects, because the spin rate has no impact on ηe, which controls the average surface temperature of the nocturnal hemisphere of airless bodies.
RATE is calculated using an empirical function derived via non-linear regression analysis of data from 6 planets and moons spanning a vast range of physical conditions in the Solar System (Fig. 1), i.e.
where Pr = 0.61173 kPa is a reference pressure assumed to equal the triple point of water. The purpose of using a reference pressure in Eq. 3 is to make the regression coefficients independent of pressure-measurement units. Note that the empirical coefficients in Eq. 3 differ somewhat from those published by Nikolov & Zeller (2017), because the regression analysis has been updated since the original paper using newer and better data for the baseline planetary temperatures of Venus, Earth, and Titan. Figure 2 depicts the curve described by Eq. 3.
Figure 2. Graphical depiction of the Relative Atmospheric Thermal Effect (RATE), a form of pressure-induced adiabatic heating empirically described by Eq. 3.
A key new insight from the NZ model (Eq. 1) is that the climate system is not solely driven by radiation, which is a form of diabatic (external) heating, but it is also controlled by an adiabatic enhancement of the absorbed solar energy (internal heating) due to air pressure. Adiabatic heating is a standard thermodynamic phenomenon in compressible fluids such as gases. The Greenhouse theory of climate change exclusively focuses on radiative forcing and positive radiative feedbacks, and does not consider the adiabatic warming effect of total atmospheric pressure on a planet’s surface.
Nikolov & Zeller (2017) demonstrated that, for bodies with tangible atmospheres, Eq. 2 can be simplified (without sacrificing numerical accuracy) by using constant generic values for 𝛼e and ηe based on NASA’s Moon data and ignoring the small energy-flux terms Rc and Rg i.e.
This reduces Eq. 1 for planetary bodies with an atmosphere to the following simple expression:
Equation 5 does not contain explicit terms for the absorbed solar radiation or the cloud albedo. Yet, it provides a robust mathematical basis for the derivation of exact analytical formulas to quantify planetary climate sensitivities to incoming shortwave radiation, albedo, and total surface pressure. That’s because this integral model accurately and completely describes the baseline global surface temperature of planetary bodies over a broad range of physical environments in the Solar System (see Figures 1 and 2). As such, Eq. 5 can be combined with the rules of calculus to produce closed-form solutions for various equilibrium climate sensitivities defined in terms of perturbations to the baseline global temperature.
2.1 Modeling the Sensitivity of Global Temperature to Total Solar Irradiance
The sensitivity of Tsb to TSI can be inferred from the total derivative of Tsb with respect to S, dTsb/dS. Using Eq. 5 in combination with the chain rule of calculus, we obtain:
Since the mean surface atmospheric pressure (P) is a function of gravity and the mass of an atmospheric column above a unit surface area, P can be viewed as being independent of S for small variations of a planet’s orbit around the Sun such as those caused by Milankovitch cycles. This implies ∂P⁄∂S = 0, which reduces Eq. 6a to:
Thus, the total derivative dTsb/dS becomes equal to the partial derivative of dTsb with respect to S , which can be obtained by differentiating Eq. 5:
Upon separation of variables and integrating both sides of Eq. 7, one arrives at the expression:
which has the closed-form solution:
In Eq. 8, ΔTsb is a change of the baseline temperature Tsb caused by a TSI perturbation Δs. Hence, the sensitivity of global temperature to TSI is proportional to the current baseline temperature of a planet and increases nonlinearly with the magnitude of the TSI perturbation.
2.2 Modeling the Global Temperature Sensitivity to Absorbed Solar Radiation
The sensitivity of Tsb to absorbed solar radiation (Sa , W m-2) can be evaluated using a similar approach to the one employed in Section 2.1. Applying the chain rule of calculus to Eq. 5 yields the following expression for the total derivative dTsb/dSa :
Again, since the mean atmospheric pressure P at the surface is independent of Sa for small variations of the absorbed shortwave flux caused by albedo fluctuations, we can safely assume ∂P/∂Sa = 0 , which simplifies Eq. 9a to:
The partial derivative ∂Tsb/∂S was already evaluated in Eq. 7. The second partial derivative ∂Sa/∂S can be obtained from the standard formula for calculating the average absorption of shortwave radiation by a sphere:
where αb is the planet’s long-term (baseline) Bond albedo defined as the phase-integrated fraction of incident solar radiation at the top of the atmosphere that is reflected back to Space, and thus lost to the climate system. Differentiating Eq. 10 with respect to S yields:
Combining Equations 7, 9b and 11 produces a differential formula describing ECS to Sa :
Quantifying the equilibrium temperature response ΔT (K) to a finite change of the absorbed shortwave flux ΔSa (W m-2) requires a separation of variables in Eq. 12 followed by integration of both sides, i.e.:
Equation 13 has the closed-form solution:
Replacing Sa in Eq. 14 with its equivalent from Eq. 10 yields the final analytical formula for calculating ΔT as a function of ΔSa:
In Eq. 15, ΔT is the deviation of global surface temperature from a baseline value Tsb. Similar to the TSI sensitivity, here ΔT is also proportional to Tsb and varies with the 4th root of the radiation-absorption perturbation ΔSa.
2.3 Modeling the Sensitivity of Global Temperature to Planetary Albedo
Since the albedo is a key parameter determining the amount of solar radiation absorbed by a planetary body, we can use Eq. 15 as a starting point to derive a formula for the global temperature response ΔT to a finite albedo perturbation Δα . To this end, first we differentiate Eq. 10 with respect to αp:
The solution to this is simply
Next, we replace ΔSa in Eq. 15 with its equivalent from Eq. 17 to arrive at an analytical albedo-temperature formula:
Using Eq. 18 we can now write a mathematically robust expression describing the global surface temperature of a rocky planet or moon (Ts ) as a function of 3 terms: (a) the no-atmosphere global surface temperature Tna(S) being chiefly a function of TSI; (b) the pressure-induced adiabatic atmospheric thermal enhancement Ea(P); and (c) the temperature anomaly ΔT caused by a departure of the planet’s albedo (Δα) from a baseline value αb (Eq. 18) i.e.
Upon replacing the three terms in Eq. 19 with their equivalent expressions from Equations 2, 3 and 18 we arrive at a generic model describing the average global surface temperature of rocky planets and moons with atmospheres of arbitrary amount and composition:
Equations 18 through 20 have important new implications for the role of albedo in planetary climates that can be summarized as follows:
a) TSI and the mean atmospheric pressure at the surface determine the baseline (long-term) global surface temperature (Tsb ) of rocky planets while also giving rise to a baseline albedo . Hence, αb is a byproduct of the climate system. Being an intrinsic property of that system, αb does not affect Tsb. This conclusion follows from the 2017 Nikolov-Zeller model (Eq. 1), which accurately describes the long-term global surface temperatures of planetary bodies over a vast range of environments in the Solar System without explicitly accounting for differences in Bond albedos. Vetted NASA observations suggest that, across a broad range of physical environments, αb cannot be predicted from measured temperatures and atmospheric pressures. This fact further reinforces the notion that αb is an emergent parameter of the climate system rather than a controller of climate. Such an understanding about the physical nature of αb explains the observed stability of planetary albedos, since atmospheric pressure and TSI that give rise internally to αb tend to be stable over long periods of time.
b) If TSI and surface air pressure are constant, then the global surface temperature Ts can deviate from Tsb only if the planet’s cloud albedo is forced to depart from its baseline value. Hence, the albedo only affects a planet’s global temperature if Δα ≠ 0.0. Since Δα is much smaller than αb due to negative feedbacks operating within the climate system that constrain albedo fluctuations, the bulk of the albedo on any planet or moon with a tangible atmosphere has no impact on Ts. This implies that large positive ice-albedo feedbacks simulated by theoretical models are likely unreal, which is counterintuitive and constitutes a new finding in climate science.
For a more comprehensive discussion about the role of albedo in climate, please watch this video presented at the 101st AMS Meeting in January of 2021.
2.4 Modeling the Global Temperature Sensitivity to Total Atmospheric Pressure
Current climate science does not recognize direct thermodynamic effects of atmospheric pressure on the global surface temperature. The “Greenhouse” theory only acknowledges the influence of pressure on temperature through the pressure broadening of gaseous infrared absorption lines. The semi-empirical model by Nikolov & Zeller (2017) is the only one that properly quantifies the Atmospheric Thermal Effect as a form of a pressure-induced adiabatic heating operating on rocky planets and moons with atmospheres. This makes the NZ model uniquely suited for evaluating the climate sensitivity to a change of total air pressure (Δp ). Since the atmospheric thermal enhancement Ea(P ) described by Eq. 3 is an explicit integral function of pressure, one does not need derivatives and the chain rule of calculus to come up with a correct climate-sensitivity model. Instead, one must simply perform a differencing of Eq. 1 with respect to pressure to calculate the climate sensitivity ΔTsb (K) to this thermodynamic forcing i.e.
Note that Eq. 21 quantifies the response of the baseline temperature itself to a change of total surface pressure Δp. In contrast, formulas describing climate sensitivities to variations of albedo and the absorbed solar radiation (Equations 15 and 18) evaluate the deviation of global temperature ΔT from a baseline value Tsb. This principal difference is due to the fact that TSI and total atmospheric pressure are the variables defining a planet’s baseline temperature Tsb (Eq. 1).
3. Verification of the Albedo-Temperature Model against CERES EBAF Data
We decided to test the hypothesis that global temperature variations in recent decades were caused by changes in cloud albedo rather than atmospheric CO2 concentration. To this end, we inverted Eq. 20, which incorporates the new analytic albedo-temperature model (Eq. 18) to estimate monthly and annual changes in Earth’s albedo (Δα ) and the Reflected Solar Flux (RSF) at the top of the atmosphere from observed global near-surface temperature records provided by two official data sets: the satellite-based UAH and the surface-based HadCRUT4. Reported temperature anomalies by UAH and HadCRTU4 were converted to absolute global surface temperatures by assuming that, during the 1981 – 2010 period, the Earth’s average surface air temperature was 287.2 K (Jones & Harpham 2013). A value of 0.3 was used for the baseline albedo in Eq. 20 corresponding to a pre-industrial global baseline temperature of 286.4 K. TSI was quantified in our model using the AcrimSat observational record. RSF was calculated from modeled Δα using Equations 10 and 17. Next, we compared the modeled dynamics of RSF to reflected shortwave radiation independently measured from orbit by the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) from 2001 to 2019. We utilized Edition 4.1 of the CERES Energy Balanced and Filled (EBAF) data product. If albedo anomalies (Δα ) predicted by the inverted Eq. 20 (which contain no “greenhouse-gas forcing”) using observed global surface temperatures from two independent sources agree with satellite-measured changes of reflected shortwave radiation by CERES, then our hypothesis would be considered validated.
Figure 3 shows the results from the model-data comparison using smoothed monthly data. Figure 4 illustrates comparison results based on annual data. Note that the modeled reflected solar fluxes fall within one third of the CERES calibration uncertainty range, which indicates a tight functional relationship between the planetary albedo and global surface temperature.
Figure 3. Monthly dynamics of modeled reflected shortwave radiation by Earth based on Eq. 20 and near-surface global temperature records compared to observed reflected shortwave fluxes shifted 7 months forward independently measured by CERES.
Figure 4. Annual dynamics of modeled reflected shortwave radiation by Earth based on Eq. 20 and near-surface global temperature records compared to observed reflected shortwave fluxes independently measured by CERES.
Changes of modeled albedo inferred from near-surface temperature records employing different measurement methods match remarkably well the interannual variation and the multi-year trend of measured reflected solar radiation by CERES. This suggests an albedo control over the global surface temperature variations since 2001. Our analysis also showed that the best model-data match is achieved when reflected CERES shortwave fluxes are shifted 7 months forward. This implies that the global surface temperature responds to changes of cloud albedo with a lag of 7 months. The presence of such a lag further strengthens the argument that observed interannual variations and the overall multidecadal trend of global temperature are indeed driven by changes in Earth’s cloud albedo rather than human CO2 emissions. Prior published research has shown that Sun’s activity likely forces changes in Earth’s cloud albedo either directly via modulation of the interplanetary electric field by solar wind (Voiculescu et al. 2013) or indirectly through the Sun’s magnetic field constraining the flux of galactic cosmic rays into the Earth’s troposphere. Cosmic rays are known to ionize air molecules and boost the production rate of cloud-condensation nuclei, thus increasing the low-level clouds (Svensmark et al. 2021). Although the exact mechanisms of cloud control by the Sun are not sufficiently understood yet to be mathematically incorporated into climate models, it is becoming increasingly clear that, on a decadal time scale, Earth’s climate is governed by the parameter Δα in Eq. 20, not anthropogenic CO2. Nevertheless, more research is needed in the area of magnetic/electric interactions between Earth and the Sun, and the effect of such interactions on cloud dynamics. In this regard, it’s important to point out that, according to recent satellite observations, the interplanetary Space is not electrically neutral as previously thought but instead is filled with plasma-enabled electric currents (a.k.a. Birkeland currents) measuring millions and billions of Amperes (see this 2018 EOS article entitled “Electric Currents in Outer Space Run the Show”). Climate models do not simulate the ionizing and electric effects of cosmic rays and the solar wind on cloud dynamics.
The high accuracy of the modeled reflected solar fluxes inferred from two independent global temperature datasets (Figures 3 and 4) validates our hypothesis that Earth’s climate of the 21st Century is most likely driven by fluctuations of cloud albedo rather than an elusive CO2 “radiative forcing” inferred from theory.
The above results also indicate that the hereto derived analytical models quantifying equilibrium climate sensitivities to variations of albedo and absorbed solar radiation are mathematically correct and physically robust. In a follow-up article soon to appear on this blog, we will apply Equations 15 and 18 to reassess the evolution of Earth’s global surface temperature over the past 60 years using a new gridded data set of measured Surface Solar Radiation (SSR) produced by Yuan et al. (2021). The article will also analyze the observed increase of SSR (global brightening) since 1982 as a driver of recent global warming.
4. Comparing Equilibrium Climate Sensitivities of Planetary Bodies Across the Solar System
The above results raise confidence in the ability of the new analytical models to correctly quantify the ECS to key forcing agents. This justifies the application of these models to compare equilibrium sensitivities of planetary climates across the Solar System. Table 1 provides such a quantitative comparison for the most studied planetary bodies: Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Titan and Triton.
Table 1. Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of planetary bodies in the Solar System to Total Solar Irradiance (TSI), absorbed solar radiation, total albedo, and surface atmospheric pressure. ECS refers to a steady-state change of the global surface temperature in response to a unit forcing.
| Physical Parameter | Venus | Earth | Moon | Mars | Titan | Triton |
| Average Distance to the Sun (AU) | 0.7233 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.5237 | 9.582 | 30.07 |
| Total Solar Irradiance (S, W m-2) | 2,602.1 | 1,361.3 | 1,361.3 | 586.4 | 14.8 | 1.5 |
| Baseline Global Temperature (Tsb, K) | 699.0 | 287.2 | 197.4 | 190.6 | 93.0 | 39.0 |
| Baseline Bond Albedo (αb, faction) | 0.90 | 0.293 | 0.136 | 0.235 | 0.265 | 0.65 |
| Surface Atmospheric Pressure (P, kPa) | 9,300 | 98.55 | 3e-13 | 0.6854 | 146.7 | 0.004 |
| ECS to TSI: K / (W m-2), Eq. 8b | 0.067 | 0.053 | 0.036 | 0.081 | 1.533 | 5.313 |
| ECS to Absorbed Solar Radiation: K / (W m-2), Eq. 15 |
2.671 | 0.298 | 0.168 | 0.423 | 7.573 | 27.824 |
| ECS to Total Albedo: K / (0.01 albedo increase), Eq. 18 |
-18.171 | -1.021 | -0.574 | -0.626 | -0.318 | -0.282 |
| ECS to Surface Atmos. Pressure: K / kPa, Eq. 21 |
0.075 | 0.161 | 40.053 | 4.913 | 0.038 | 4.33 |
.
Climate sensitivities show a complex pattern of variation among the studied bodies due to differences in baseline surface temperatures, Bond albedos, and total atmospheric pressures. In general, the ECS to shortwave radiation increases with Tsb and αb , and decreases with TSI (S). The ECS to pressure variations is high for nearly airless bodies in relatively close proximity to the Sun such as the Moon and progressively declines in a non-linear fashion with P, approaching zero for bodies with massive atmospheres such as Venus or with sizable atmospheres but located far away from the Sun such as Titan. This is explained in part by the strongly nonlinear response of RATE to surface air pressure (see Fig. 2).
The equilibrium sensitivities of Earth’s global temperature to shortwave radiation (i.e. TSI and the absorbed solar flux) are much lower than assumed by the Greenhouse theory based on a modeled ECS to CO2. This is because climate models simulate numerous positive feedbacks, which are fictitious in nature, that amplify the initial system response to a CO2 “radiative forcing” between 2 and 4.5 times. However, as demonstrated by Nikolov & Zeller (2017), the real climate system has no measurable sensitivity to ambient CO2 due to a minute contribution of this trace gas to the total pressure of Earth’s atmosphere. Distinguishing between a theoretical (model-generated) internal forcing and a measured external climate forcing is crucial for advancing our understanding and predictive capabilities. The incoming solar radiation and its dynamic modulation by the water-cloud albedo appear to be the real forcing of Earth’s climate on decadal to centennial time scales. The relatively low ECS of Earth to TSI and absorbed solar radiation ensures a potentially greater stability of our climate compared to that of other planetary bodies such as Mars, Titan and Triton. For example, Earth’s 0.053 K / W m-2 sensitivity to TSI implies that expected variations of Sun’s luminosity and Earth’s orbit causing annual TSI fluctuations in the order of 1 – 5 W m-2 did not and will not ever have a significant impact on Earth’s climate. However, the modulation of Earth’s cloud cover affecting the planet’s absorption of solar energy forced either directly by the solar wind or indirectly by the Sun’s magnetic field through its effect on the galactic cosmic ray flux, is expected to have a sizable impact on global temperature that is 4.4 to 10 times greater than the impact of TSI fluctuations alone. This is because Earth’s ECS to absorbed solar radiation is nearly 6 times higher than the sensitivity to TSI, and the decadal variability of shortwave absorption is typically larger than TSI variability. Note in Table 1 that a 1% shift in Earth’s albedo would cause a -1 K change in the global surface temperature. To put this sensitivity into a perspective, consider that, according to the HadCRUT5 surface temperature record, 1 K is just about the entire warming experienced by Earth since 1850, i.e. over a period of 170 years.
The ECS to albedo variations might be an indicator of how strong the internal feedbacks are that maintain (support) the bulk of planetary albedos as an intrinsic property of the system. Among the bodies listed in Table 1, Venus has by far the highest climate sensitivity to albedo perturbations due to its hot surface and a strongly reflective cloud cover (see Eq. 18). This implies that the Venusian albedo is also likely to show the smallest temporal variations among the studied bodies. Earth has the second highest ECS to albedo perturbations suggesting that the albedos of Mars, Titan and Triton might be more dynamic (less stable) on decadal-to-centennial time scales compared to the Earth’s albedo.
The above estimate of Earth’s ECS to total pressure (0.161 K/kPa) can be used to calculate the response of global surface temperature to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 compared to a preindustrial level of 280 ppm. According to the Nikolov-Zeller discovery about the adiabatic nature of the atmospheric thermal effect, a change in the amount of any gas in the atmosphere (including CO2) impacts global temperature only through the contribution of such a change to total surface air pressure. In other words, what matters for the global thermal environment at the surface is the partial pressure of gases, not their infrared radiative properties. Thus, a 280 ppm increase of atmospheric CO2 implies a 0.0276 kPa increase of surface air pressure (i.e. 98.55*280/106 = 0.0276 kPa). Multiplying this perturbation by the ECS to pressure yields the true response of our planet’s global surface temperature to a CO2 doubling: 0.0276*0.161 = 0.0044 K. This amount of global warming is practically undetectable. Hence, current climate models overestimate the Earth’s global temperature sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 about 682 times or by 68,100% on average (i.e. 3.0/0.0044 = 681.8).
5. Conclusion
Derivation of exact analytical formulas for estimating the equilibrium climate sensitivities of planetary bodies to shortwave radiative forcing and surface atmospheric pressure was possible thanks to a new robust model of global surface temperature inferred from NASA planetary data by Nikolov & Zeller (2017). The model provides novel insights about the role of albedo in climate and into the physical nature of the Atmospheric Thermal Effect (currently called “greenhouse effect”) as a form of adiabatic heating caused by total pressure that is independent of atmospheric composition. The ECS Equations 8b, 15 and 18 were derived from the NZ model employing standard rules of differentiation and integration in calculus. Previous attempts to estimate ECS have been focused on the Outgoing Long-wave Radiation (OLR) as a temperature controller based on an a-priori assumption in the “greenhouse” theory that the atmosphere warms Earth by impeding the rate of surface radiative cooling to Space, a process also known as radiant-heat trapping or cooling retardation. However, the rate of cooling is never a limiting factor in the energy budget of open systems such as the atmosphere, because reducing cooling requires a form of thermal insulation that either impedes conduction/convection or reflects back thermal radiation. None of these mechanisms are operating in a free atmosphere. Since OLR is an effect (consequence) of atmospheric and surface temperatures, this infrared flux cannot affect such temperatures especially in a thermodynamic environment characterized by uninhibited energy dissipation through turbulent convection and advection. The approach of using OLR to evaluate climate sensitivity yields erroneous results also in part because it relies on fictional (non-physical) parameters such as the “effective radiating temperature” and the “effective emission altitude” (for details, see Volokin & ReLlez 2014). A study by Harde (2017) provides a recent example of employing this flawed approach and obtaining completely incorrect ECS estimates as a result. Focusing on OLR as a climate controller instead of analyzing incoming shortwave fluxes that heat the system diabatically is backward in regard to the chain of physical causality. Earth’s climate is controlled by the amount of absorbed solar energy and the adiabatic enhancement of such energy by atmospheric pressure, not by OLR. Hence, a planet’s global surface temperature is independent of the atmospheric long-wave radiative transfer and the rate of infrared cooling to Space, because these are byproducts of the climate system.
Combining the original NZ model with an analytical formula that quantifies the response of global temperature to albedo perturbations (Eq. 18) produced Eq. 20, which fully describes the global surface temperature of rocky planets and moons without recourse to a greenhouse-gas radiative forcing. The latter is a model-generated quantity based on a conjectural 19th-Century hypothesis, which is not supported by modern satellite observations. For example, the classical definition of the “greenhouse effect” as a difference of outgoing long-wave fluxes between the surface and the top of the atmosphere (Ramanathan 1989; Schmidt et al. 2010) yields physically nonsensical results over central Antarctica, where the “greenhouse effect” becomes negative (Schmithüsen et al. 2015; Sejas et al. 2018). However, the actual atmospheric thermal effect over the Earth’s South Pole measured with respect to the thermal environment of the Moon’s airless South Pole is about 144 K (Fig. 5). Hence, the radiative “greenhouse effect” as currently defined has no meaningful relationship to the actual surface warming caused by the presence of an atmosphere. This is not surprising since the “greenhouse effect” was arbitrarily defined by Prof. Veerabhadran (Ram) Ramanathan (at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego) as a radiative flux difference in the 1980s based on nothing else but his a-priori belief that the atmosphere acts as a blanket trapping heat, which is thermodynamically incorrect. An open, convective atmosphere without a lid on top cannot trap heat and does not impede cooling! Prof. Ramanathan admitted contriving his definition of the “greenhouse-effect” in a 2014 paper entitled “Climate Change and Protection of the Habitat: Empirical Evidence for the Greenhouse Effect and Global Warming“ that was published in a periodical of the Vatican City called “Complexity and Analogy in Science: Theoretical, Methodological and Epistemological Aspects“. He erroneously assumed that the difference of thermal radiative fluxes between the surface and the top of the atmosphere measures “the thickness of the greenhouse blanket”.
Figure 5. The atmospheric thermal effect over Central Antarctica evaluated with respect to the airless thermal environment at the South Pole of the Moon.
The ability of Eq. 20 to accurately reproduce a 20-year trend and interannual variability of reflected solar radiation measured by CERES using observed records of near-surface global temperature as input (Figures 3 and 4) constitutes a physical proof that the recent warming was caused by a reduction of cloud albedo, not a rise of greenhouse-gas concentrations as claimed by the IPCC.
The robust derivation of Equations 8b, 15, 18 and 21 makes it meaningful to apply these models to other planetary bodies in the Solar System in order to compare changes in ECSs along a cosmic environmental gradient. Estimates shown in Table 1 indicate that Earth has a relatively low ECS to shortwave radiation compared to other bodies, which makes Earth’s climate perhaps more stable. Earth’s sensitivity to absorbed solar radiation (~0.3 K/W m-2) is 2.7 times lower than the typical modeled sensitivity to a CO2 “radiative forcing” (0.8 K/W m-2). The reality is that the Earth’s ECS to CO2 is essentially zero due to a minuscule contribution of this gas to the total atmospheric pressure on our planet. It’s also worth mentioning that Earth’s ECS to TSI is about 6 times lower than the planet’s sensitivity to absorbed solar flux. Earth has a relatively high climate sensitivity to variations of cloud albedo (-1.02 K/1% albedo change), which indicates the presence of relatively strong negative feedbacks within the system that tend to stabilize albedo fluctuations. This is good news for our global climate.
A PDF of the paper can be downloaded here: ECS_Universal_Equations
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
This is likely a highly technical paper for most non-scientists. So, please take your time to study it carefully in order to fully understand it, since it provides a full scientific proof that CO2 is not a driver of modern climate change.
our current society has fallen in love with kleptocracy, rent seeking, and other criminal behaviors for personal enrichment. What is truly egregious is that the Fourth Estate and ‘science’ have both fallen to this.
If this was the late 50’s or so, AGW would have been argued and found totally wanting and all the charlatans of the Klimate Kaliphate would have been drummed out of scientific circles.
[…] Ned Nikolov & Karl Zeller: Exact Calculations of Climate Sensitivities Reveal the True Cause of … https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/ecs_universal_equations-1.pdf https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/ecs_universal_equations-1.pdf […]
Just from the introduction I was reminded of this…
Clouds Dominate CO2 as a Climate Driver Since 2000
January 9th, 2010 by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
The main point I am making here is that, no matter whether you assume the climate system is sensitive or insensitive, our best satellite measurements suggest that the climate system is perfectly capable of causing internally-generated radiative forcing larger than the “external” forcing due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Low cloud variations are the most likely source of this internal radiative forcing.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/01/clouds-dominate-co2-as-a-climate-driver-since-2000/
It’s fine to demonstrate that the Earth is slightly warmer because its a bit less cloudy, but why is it a bit less cloudy?
current climate models overestimate the Earth’s global temperature sensitivity to
atmospheric CO2 about 682 times or by 68,100% on average (i.e. 3.0/0.0044 = 681.8)!
So much for ‘carbon footprints’.
Used with Joseph Postma’s spherical earth model real time parameterisations, this should prove conclusively to the politicians who are sceptical, but too afraid to speak out against the UN for fear of loosing their job, that CO2 outgassing and or intrinsic CO2 does not drive the climate on Earth. And I don’t wish to be an alarmist either, but the issue in the Ukraine could end up as a World War as UN NATO Fascist Nazi Elitist forces are intent on putting many more lives in jeopardy because of their CO2 narrative. But it has manifested in the exponential increase in the cost of living for the public to subsidies their untenable energy policies. And yes people are quite right to be angry and to fight against those who are effectively oppressing them by said CO2 narrative
In answer to Phoenix44, less air pollution may be part of the answer. As well as being able to absorb, scatter or reflect incoming SW radiation, some dispersed species may contribute to conventional cloud seeding.
What Roy Spencer wrote in 2010 about the role of clouds is conceptually correct. However, he seems to have abandoned this line of thought recently. Roy has increasingly been pushing the false “greenhouse” theory and insisting that adding CO2 to the atmosphere via industrial emissions would measurably warm the planet.
We should be asking, why is he dismissing the evidence accumulated since 2010 that observed changes in absorbed solar radiation by Earth is sufficient to explain the entire recent climate change and that there is no evidence for the so-called CO2 “radiative forcing”?
I hear what you say Ned. In an earlier (2008) blog post RS wrote:
Here I present new evidence that most of the warming could be the result of a natural cycle in cloud cover forced by a well-known mode of natural climate variability: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).
. . .
As Joe D’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, and others have pointed out for years, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has experienced phase shifts that have coincidently been associated with the major periods of warming and cooling in the 20th Century.
https://www.drroyspencer.com/research-articles/global-warming-as-a-natural-response/
Indeed, Oldbrew!
I’d only add to this 2008 statement by Roy Spencer that oceanic oscillations such as PDO, AMO, ENSO etc. are all caused by changes of regional cloud cover/albedo forced by Sun’s activity in conjunction with the Earth’s electromagnetic field rather than these oscillations causing cloud cover variations… So, these are not really phenomena of internal natural climate variability. They are externally forced!
Yes, it’s the original cause that really counts. Not found in most climate models it seems.
Do they have a definition of ‘natural’ as in climate variation?
ENSO ~ 3 El Nino peaks per solar cycle – the big ones occur soon after solar minimum.
AMO ~ 6 solar cycles in 2 groups of three. 1st group has two +ve and one -ve; 2nd group the opposite.
[…] and Tallbloke are continuing (I am grateful for them, too). They have arrived at the subtle question of Earth’s […]
People on Twitter seem to like our paper. Thanks for tweeting it, Roger:
Now that Elon Musk is in charge of Twitter, I filed an appeal yesterday to unlock my account, which was suspended last summer after posting some info about Bill Gates and his murky involvement in the COVID pandemic mismanagement… I hope Twitter is now becoming a free-speech platform again.
It would be great to have you back on twitter Ned. You have new fans.
Oldbrew, “original cause” is I think an error. Complex non-linear systems have no starting point and everything affects everything. Every change is a change to a change, not to a stasis or fixed position. Its why modelling the starting point of the model is impossible, because its all “change”. Many modelers and activists believe in a “stable” climate which CO2 perturbs but that seems very unlikely as climate is never the same (in total) twice.
This might be of interest, re. planetary bodies.
MAY 3, 2022
Experiments measure freezing point of extraterrestrial oceans to aid search for life
“Our results show that the cold, salty, high-pressure liquids found in the deep ocean of other planets’ moons can remain liquid to much cooler temperature than they would at lower pressures. This extends the range of possible habitats on icy moons, and will allow us to pinpoint where we should look for biosignatures, or signs of life.”
https://phys.org/news/2022-05-extraterrestrial-oceans-aid-life.html
Phoenix44: Complex non-linear systems have no starting point and everything affects everything.
True if cloud cover is an internal variable. Not true if it’s driven by an external variable such as solar wind or cosmic ray flux.
Tallbloke, it’s still true if it’s external. The external forcing exists but changes. There are no stable external forcings, they constantly change for all sorts of reasons and the system is constantly changed by those changes. And the change on the “climate” caused by a change in the external forcing is not linear. Something like solar wind is not on-off, it is variable. Yes, it has no feedback from our climate so in that sense you are right, but its effects depend on the climate’s state.
It was the “everything affects everything” I was taking issue with. External variables such as solar wind and cosmic ray flux may well be constantly changing, but they’re not being changed by Earth’s cloud fraction.
“The incoming solar radiation and its dynamic modulation by the water-cloud albedo appear to be the real forcing of Earth’s climate on decadal to centennial time scales.”
I think this is true; however your theory/formulae also need to be field-tested with ongoing data.
The reliance for cloud generation on cosmic rays in this work is a non-starter, so this paper should be revised or retracted. The Svensmark cloud-climate theory is empirically wrong.
During the time of highest cosmic rays, the world experienced record sunshine from fewer clouds:
Hello N&Z, your integral 8b is mistaken, as are similar ones that follow. You cannot treat Tsb as a constant on one side of the equation, while it is a variable of integration on the other side.
Equation 8b is obtained by taking the derivative of equation 5, then integrating the result. Because those operations are inverses, this should just give equation 5 back.
SamH,
Equation 8b and the ones that follow are all correct, because these are the result of integration of partial derivatives to Eq. 5. Each partial derivative is different, hence the resulting integral solutions are different as well… Please consult a calculus textbook!
Bobweber,
The sensitivity equations presented in our paper do not contain any information about the cause of cloud-albedo variations. They only quantify the impact of such variations on the global surface temperature. There is experimental and satellite-measured evidence that cosmic rays affect the rate of production of cloud condensation nuclei. There is also evidence that solar wind directly affects cloud formation. But the mechanisms are in general poorly understood at present. This is why we stated that more research is needed to pinpoint the exact forcing of cloud albedo variations…
What our analysis has unequivocally demonstrated is that observed global temperature changes in recent decades are caused by cloud-albedo fluctuations, not atmospheric CO2!
Hi Dr. Nikolov,
Please check again, the integral is incorrect. You are beginning the partial derivative of Tsb with respect to S, then integrating with respect to S. These are inverse operations.
SamH,
The purpose of integrating the partial derivative with respect to S is to find an analytical expression quantifying the change of temperature deltaT in response to a change of TSI deltaS. This integration is different from Eq. 5, which describes the total absolute temperaures Tsb as a function of total TSI. I hope you understand the distinction now… If not, please explain how the integral in Eq. 8b is incorrect?
Note that Eq. 8b yields ZERO, if deltaS = 0
Ned, CO2-control knob theorists often claim reduced cloud cover is a positive feedback to warming caused by CO2. How do you repond to papers such as this one?
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2026290118
Dr. Nikolov, the problem with the integration is that Tsb was treated as a constant inside an integral over S, but this is not correct because Tsb and S vary together.
The expression for Delta Tsb can be read off from equation 5:
DeltaTsb = Tsb(S0+DeltaS) – Tsb(S0)
= 32.44 Ea(P) [(S0+ DeltaS)^.25 – S0^.25]
You could also write this as
DeltaTsb = Tsb0 {[(S0+DeltaS)/S0]^.25 – 1}
N&Z get a mention here…
Why are we destroying fossil fuels and our modern societies? Part 2
By Terigi Ciccone, Dr. Jay Lehr | May 2nd, 2022
https://www.cfact.org/2022/05/02/if-co2-does-not-contribute-to-global-warming-why-are-we-destroying-fossil-fuels-and-our-modern-societies-part-2/
They also propose a link between El Niño/La Niña and volcanism…
For many years it was accepted orthodoxy that these El Niño/La Niña events were due to climatic circulation patterns in the ocean and atmosphere. However, this has been dispelled by evidence that the El Niño and La Niña are one continuous geologic event in recent years. Meaning, they are caused by increased or decreased tectonic/volcanic activities in the deep ocean floors where the crust is the thinnest, [H][h] and humans have little knowledge of when, where, and how powerful [I][i]. We know this is new to most readers, but you can take it to the bank and cash it.
[H] link — https://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/3231
‘Seafloor Volcano Pulses May Alter Climate’
Well, maybe, but I doubt it. The regular occurence of the biggest El Ninos soon after solar minimum is too obvious to be ignored. I suppose it’s possible that low solar activity has a geomagnetic effect that increases tectonic activity in the ocean deeps, but I think Ned is right that ENSO is primarily cloud driven. That’s because the 1983 eruption of El Chichon chucked enough sulphur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to significantly reduce solar surface radiation, inducing El Nino. It reduced the size of the 1988 solar minimum el Nino, because it had already reduced the amount of energy stored in the pacific warm pool below surface.
That indicates low activity at solar minimum allows more cloud seeding by the cosmic ray flux, also inducing the emission of energy from the ocean. Bob Weber’s comment above is noted, but there may be other things affecting multidecadal trends. The decadal situation with the link between solar cycles, CRF, cloud cover and ENSO seems clear to me.
Ned, cloud nucleation experiments aren’t real clouds in the sky. Nature has provided as I showed a clear refutation of cosmic ray theory in practice. You also don’t need to go looking for cloud generation in the solar wind data either. You’re wasting your time with Svensmark’s theory.
We can see from the low-level vs high-level tropical clouds that they are inversely and seasonally related, with a slight decline since the 1980-90s:
Altogether tropical clouds were higher during the larger solar cycles #21 & #22, declining into #23:
While climate4you has a plug for Svensmark’s theory too, I still don’t believe it. Global cloud cover peaked during after the 1983 El Nino, and thereafter declined after the SC22 peak into the solar minimum, and rose again with rising SC #23 solar activity.
My recent work with TEMIS Ozone/UVI of nearly 250 stations indicates cloud cover is directly tied to ENSO extremes, and a solar cycle influence above 95 SN that drives above-average cloud cover.
Which nixes your premise that fewer clouds are the sole reason for post-2000 warming, not TSI.
The reduction in clouds during the ‘pause’ came about from lower solar activity, afterward SST was warmed by above 95 SN (higher TSI) in SC #24. SC #24 TSI drove SSTs upwards until 2016 when TSI fell below my decadal sun-ocean warming threshold. This had nothing to do with albedo.
I offer as evidence for TSI warming the ocean during SC #24 the following published Nature image with my SORCE (v17) TSI overlay. The southern ocean was particularly sensitive to sunspot cycle #24 TSI changes because those TSI spikes during those solar maximum years happened near perihelion, when the sub-solar point is over the southern ocean, driving ocean absorption.
Furthermore, UAH, HadSST3, and ERSSTv5 all indicate SST cooling from 2016 into the present, and with cloud cover diminishing from the 2015-16 El Nino (see earlier TEMIS plots), all of which contradicts your theory that fewer clouds would cause an increase in SST, albeit land temperatures were indeed high from fewer clouds.
btw I predicted ahead of time both the high TSI SST warming into 2016 and cooling thereafter from lower TSI, and clouds were not part of my prediction system, because the state of cloud fraction changes are caused by TSI changes
This is part of what I mean by field testing. I like your derivations Ned but your cloud connections need an upgrade.
Thanks N & Z!
Needs an abstract.
Since OLR is an effect (consequence) of atmospheric and surface temperatures, this infrared flux cannot affect such temperatures especially in a thermodynamic environment characterized by uninhibited energy dissipation through turbulent convection and advection.
At the heart of many corrupt and fraudulent arguments is an inversion of cause and effect. I think you’re correct that this is the inversion at the core of the CO2 warming story. IR fluxes are, indeed, EFFECTS, NOT CAUSES, of atmospheric temperature.
Atmospheres are not warm because of emitted IR.
They emit IR because they’re warm!
I agree Phil. As we were taught at school back in my youth:
“Everything radiates according to its temperature.”
Not the other way round.
Dear SamH (@SamH May 4, 2022 at 4:19 pm) ,
I now see, where your confusion comes from! Your difference equation
DeltaTsb = Tsb(S+DeltaS) – Tsb(S) = 32.44 Ea(P) [(S+ DeltaS)^.25 – S^.25]
is correct. However, you did not realize that it produces exactly the same numerical result us our Eq. 8b for an equivalent input. That’s because these are identical equations written in different forms! For example, let’s take Earth as an illustration. Using
S = 1361.3 W m-2 and P = 98.55 kPa
we obtain from Eq. 5:
Tsb = 32.44*Ea(P)*S^.025 = 285.747 K
Using your difference equation, we get for the temperature sensitivity (assuming DeltaS = 1 W m-2):
DeltaTsb = 32.44 Ea(P) [(S+ DeltaS)^.25 – S^.25] = 0.052 K (W m-2)
Using our Eq. 8b, we get:
DeltaTsb = 0.25*Tsb*ln(1 + DeltaS/S) = 0.25*285.747*ln(1 + 1/1361.3) = 0.052 K (W m-2)
So, Eq. 8b is the integral form of your difference equation. The advantage of using Eq. 8b over your equation is that Eq. 8b describes DeltaTsb as an explicit function of Tsb. Because of this, Eq. 8b is also applicable to planetary bodies without an atmosphere, while your difference equation is strictly only applicable to bodies with tangible atmospheres. So, Eq. 8b is more general in that sense in addition to being more elegant and cleaner as a math expression.
I hope this helps…
Hi Phil Salmon,
I intentionally omitted the Abstract, so that people have the intellectual incentive to read the whole paper… I agree with rest of your comment.
tallbloke @ May 4, 2022 at 4:09 pm
Yes, I’m aware of the doubletalk used by mainstream climate science with respect to the undeniable fact that cloud-cover has decreased over recent decades. Casting cloud-cover changes as a “feedback” to global temperature rather than acknowledging it as a primary driver of recent warming is a way to keep the physically false “greenhouse” theory afloat while avoiding the embarrassment that climate science has been spending public funds studying the wrong topic of CO2 “radiative forcing” for 40 years!
Dear Dr. Nikolov,
Our two equations are indeed numerically close, but they are not quite the same. Mine is correct, and yours is the result of an improperly performed integral. Although for practical purposes the difference is small, I thought you might want to ensure the math in your paper is correct.
My expression is:
DeltaTsb = Tsb0 {[(S0+DeltaS)/S0]^.25 – 1}
While yours is:
DeltaTsb = 0.25 Tsb0 ln(1 + DeltaS/S0)
Let us call DeltaS/S0 = x. Then aside from the shared factor of Tsb0, our formulas are (1+x)^.25 – 1, versus .25 ln(1+x). You can see the two expressions plotted at the following link, where there is clearly a difference, if a small one: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=plot+.25*ln%281%2Bx%29%2C+%281%2Bx%29%5E.25-1
I would say my expression is just as convenient and elegant as yours, but it is more correct.
SamH,
Let’s not argue about the obvious: Eq. 8b is the correct integral expression describing the response of global planetary temperature (deltaT) to a TSI perturbation (deltaS). The calculus leading to Eq. 8b is straightforward and undoubtful. That’s it!
Ned, I’m afraid you’re wrong. I would urge you to look carefully one more time. It is no problem to make a basic math mistake like this, but it is not a good look to allow it into your final paper.
My formula was derived without any calculus at all, it is really quite simple.
What is the point of this paper? No one will read it. Global Warming Mania has gone beyond proof – you could show clear cooling and we would still have to sacrifice our energy, our infrastructure, our society and our lives to the great Climate Change God.. ..
geezer; the point is to correct the science. How long it takes after that to get the science establishment to gloss over the gross errors of the last 40 years and switch to the correction is another fight for another day. Chin up and keep telling ’em.
SamH,
Your equation:
DeltaTsb = Tsb {[(S + DeltaS)/S]^.25 – 1}
is simply wrong, because it does not follow from proper calculus, and cannot be derived from the simple difference expression corresponding to Eq. 5:
DeltaTsb = Tsb(S+DeltaS) – Tsb(S) = 32.44 Ea(P) [(S+ DeltaS)^.25 – S^.25]
You just made up an equation that produces DeltaTsb = 0, if DeltaS = 0. But that’s not how this works!
SamH, thanks for your input here. This is what open peer review is all about: in-depth discussion of the finer points. Resolution can be reached without rancour when both parties are striving to understand the other’s point of view.
I’m sorry, but SamH apparently does not understand calculus and has trouble deriving one equation from another…
@tallbloke, thanks, I’m glad to have the opportunity for open discussion of scientific works on this website.
@ Dr. Nikolov, I stand by my equation being the correct one, but there is not much more to say that has not already been said, so I will leave it be. I have some questions about more important aspects of the paper that I will try to write up in the next couple of days, I hope you get a chance to answer them. Thanks.
Thank you, SamH.
I’ll try to answer your more substantial questions when you post them here…
This would appear to confirm the work of Jiki Kauppenin & Malen of Turku University in Finland and a team at Kobe university in Japan.
How long can they go being ignored.
However, the actual atmospheric thermal effect over the Earth’s South Pole measured
with respect to the thermal environment of the Moon’s airless South Pole is about 144 K (Fig. 5).
Quite a big number! I suspect Arrhenius didn’t know about that.
Yes, Arrhenius did not have a clue about the atmospheric thermal effect at the Poles, since he had no idea how cold the Moon Poles were…
Too late for Arrhenius of course, but I’m reminded of this…
I think today’s mainstream climate science follows the rule:
“When the facts change, we adjust the data, so we don’t have to change our mind.”
🙂
“an increase of 0.5%–0.7% in solar radiation was noted over the southern half of the country. In central Pakistan, the cloud cover decreased by 3%–5% with a consequent increase of 0.9°C in temperature. ”
https://jaimejessop.substack.com/p/omg-15-billion-people-experiencing
Guardian: ‘North-west and central India experienced the hottest April in 122 years’ – Tallbloke’s link.
So it was just as hot there 122 years ago. Was that a human-induced climate crisis too?
@ tallbloke, solar minimum-induced La Nina caused SST cooling and higher land temperatures.
From Jaime Jessop’s article,
“Pakistan experienced a heatwave in late April. It’s cooled off a bit now, but due to return in May. Northern India is also experiencing heatwave conditions.”
The heatwave is due to strong persistent and early summer-like sunshine with high UVI anomalies, extreme sunshine from cloudlessness that started in Kashmir in 2020 from the La Nina. Northern India had large, enduring UVI anomalies for most of March and April, with May starting out strong.
Although there isn’t any ESA TEMIS ozone/uvi data for Pakistan, I’m sure they are like India and the MidEast, which showed some similar overall patterns in the TEMIS data since 2020. The USA also had early 2022 spring high UVI anomalies, driving some record high temps and wildfires.
Another issue is that the carbon hockey stick is not driven by fossil fuel. It is in fact driven by soil damage tied to tilling and harvesting. This reduces soil water retention to boot, which results in more water vapor. The result is desertification, which is observable and actually driving climate change.
You can read about this in my book, which is publicly available on my Substack:
http://ddebernardy.substack.com/p/a-natural-language?s=w
(I’m in the process of rearranging it as multiple posts to make it easier to share. The above url will be the summary and the table of content when I am done.)
Kindly help get the word out by sharing the link with people who you know. In particular climate scientists, climate activists, and environmental journalists.
Another example of the lack of connection between cosmic rays and clouds: two polar TEMIS ozone anomalies (cloud proxy) near 70N and S, respectively, show for the NH (Barrow, AK, USA) high ozone anomalies throughout the period starting with the 2010 El Nino and lasting until the 2016 El Nino warming subsided, going into negative integrated anomalies through the solar minimum when cosmic rays are highest. This is just the opposite of what Svensmark’s theory predicts.
Secondly, the southern polar station at Maitri, Antarctica shows an increase in integrated ozone starting with the 2010 El Nino, increasing after SN>95 in 2011/12, persisting through the solar max-driven 2016 El Nino, and lasting through to the solar minimum reinforced by the high Nino-like 2018 tropical warmth until 2020, just after the solar minimum when ozone anomalies became more negative as the La Nina began. Nothing about this cloud history was initiated by cosmic rays. Clouds aren’t an independent variable, but they sure aren’t dependent on cosmic rays for nucleation.
BobWeber,
No one is arguing that cosmic rays are the only factor affecting cloud cover. I’ve come to believe for a number of years now that cloud cover is controlled by many processes most of them electric and magnetic in nature. Solar wind and Sun’s open magnetic fields, as well as Moon’s gravitational influence on the jet streams appear to be factors impacting cloud formation as well.
My article above makes the following points:
1. Changes of cloud albedo precede variations of surface temperature and are the driver of Earth’s climatic fluctuations on decadal to centennial time scales;
2. Changes of cloud albedo are likely externally forced by cosmic factors interacting with Earth’s magnetic field.
That’s it!
Excellent contributions, thanks everyone.
What the above indicates to me is that the investigation of the causes of natural variation have been neglected by mainstream climate science, in its dogged (and dogmatic) pursuit of CO2 as the primary (sole) climate control knob.
As Ned said in the paper:
“more research is needed in the area of magnetic/electric interactions between Earth and the Sun, and the effect of such interactions on cloud dynamics. In this regard, it’s important to point out that, according to recent satellite observations, the interplanetary Space is not electrically neutral as previously thought but instead is filled with plasma-enabled electric currents”
Has anyone here got around to reading Brian Tinsley’s papers on the ‘global electrical circuit’?
[…] Study: Exact Calculations of Climate Sensitivities Reveal the True Cause of Recent Warming […]
‘plasma-enabled electric currents’
Like the solar wind…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind
Universe Today is pushing the Venus runaway greenhouse theory again…
Volcanoes May Have Killed Venus with a Runaway Greenhouse, and Almost the Earth Too
MAY 8, 2022
What turned Venus into hell? It could have simply been a steadily-warming Sun, but new research suggests that Volcanoes may have played a role in creating a runaway greenhouse effect. And the same history of active Volcanism almost killed the Earth, too.
https://www.universetoday.com/155746/volcanoes-may-have-killed-venus-with-a-runaway-greenhouse-and-almost-the-earth-too/
What turned Venus into a hot hell, was the built-up of huge atmospheric pressure (93 bar), which adiabatically warmed the surface to 699 K. The massive Venusian atmosphere might well be a result of large-scale volcanism (there are thousands of active volcanoes on Venus today!), but it does not matter what kind of gases are being emitted by volcanoes as long as the overall pressure rises…
[…] (LinkkiPDF) kiviplaneettojen tasapainotilaisesta ilmastoherkkyydestä ECS. Jutun löysin alunperin Tallbloke-blogista (Linkki). Tutkielman tulos on ilmastotieteen valtavirran tulkinnan räjäyttävä: [The reality is […]
@Dr. Nikolov, @SamH, (and @tallbloke)
I was intrigued by the mathematical solution quandary, so here’s my ha’pence worth. I use online and other solvers to explore and to do the heavy lifting. I am not a mathematician btw but a former chartered engineer, and now post-doc academic researcher.
Anyhow, here’s what I get. I hope the links work (if not the raw latex-like equation can be pasted into the grey box):
https://www.symbolab.com/solver/calculus-calculator/%20%5Cint_%7BT_%7Bsb%7D%7D%5E%7BT_%7Bsb%7D%2B%5CDelta%20T_%7Bsb%7D%7DdT%20%3D0.25T_%7Bsb%7D%5Cint_%7BS%7D%5E%7BS%2B%5CDelta%20%20S%7D%5Cfrac%7BdS%7D%7BS%7D?or=input
or (paste & click go):
\:\int _{T_{sb}}^{T_{sb}+\Delta \:T_{sb}}dT\:=0.25T_{sb}\int _S^{S+\Delta \:\:S}\frac{dS}{S}
Simplifying…(trivial standard log identity)
https://www.symbolab.com/solver/algebra-calculator/simplify%20%5Cleft%5B0.25T_%7Bsb%7D%5Cleft(%5Cln%5Cleft%7Cs%2B%CE%94s%5Cright%7C-%5Cln%5Cleft%7Cs%5Cright%7C%5Cright)%5Cright%5D?or=input
or:
simplify\:\left[0.25T_{sb}\left(\ln \left|s+Δs\right|-\ln \left|s\right|\right)\right]
The upshot is a result identical to eqn 8a. If there’s another solution approach, it might be useful to explore and present this in these terms.
Maybe worth a side chat somehow, rather than the main thread.
Dave,
The calculus used in our paper is VERY basic and straightforward! There cannot any doubt about the solutions I presented, because these follows from the Table of Standard Integrals. See Eq. 2 on this page:
http://integral-table.com/
One does not need a numerical solver for integrals that have a closed-form solution like the equations in the paper. Our math only looks complicated to people, who have no understanding of calculus, which is unfortunately the vast majority of the public. It’s sad to see the bitter fruits of a substandard modern education system that fails to teach students the basics of higher math. Luckily, I belong to an older generation that was taught these things…
Ned, you don’t look all that old. Neither am I. Fighting the CO2 fanatics has given me grey hair though.
@Ned
Would it be correct to argue that atmospheric content is negligible as to the mass of the atmosphere?
[…] Study: Exact Calculations of Climate Sensitivities Reveal the True Cause of Recent Warming […]
Joe, that is an ill-posed question, because composition and mass are totally different types of parameters. Any atmosphere has a content of gases and these gases may have any kind of mass… So, your question does not make much sense!
@Ned
“Joe, that is an ill-posed question, because composition and mass are totally different types of parameters. Any atmosphere has a content of gases and these gases may have any kind of mass… So, your question does not make much sense!”
As you see I’m not a scientist and I clearly asked the wrong question. I’m trying to understand if the content in the atmosphere has any influence on surface temps? Your unified theory of climate seems to argue no. But I forever hear increased content will increase mass causes a rise in surface equilibrium.
@Joe & Ned
I think Joe is confused as to the point of this work. Which is fine, these are not easy things for those not versed in science. Ned’s findings show the added CO2 content (or its mass) didn’t increase the surface temp.
Thr added content (say CO2 for example) is negligible, because solar radiation absorption by the atmosphere increased significantly at the same time as the purported surface temp increase. Especially since 1982, which has been driven by a change in albedo not content. Two things determine the surface equilibrium as stated in this paper, TSI and the mean atmospheric pressure at earth’s surface.
@Ned & Old Brew
“What turned Venus into a hot hell, was the built-up of huge atmospheric pressure (93 bar), which adiabatically warmed the surface to 699 K.”
Venus to me is the opposite of what is argued as to the GHE. Especially a runaway GHE which is utter nonsense. The Venusian atmospheric pressure of 9000 kPa if placed on earth would get the same surface temp irrelevant of which gases existed within.
On earth, temperatures increase by about 80C going from 20 to 100 kPa. Which means at 9000 kPa we would see 20C + ln(9000/(100-20)) *80C = 400C as earth’s surface temp.
The effect of the clouds is due to several cycles working together.
The suns radiance cycle
The Milanovitch cycles, earth’s orbit, the rotation of the earth ellipse, the tilt of the earth axis and a intensity cycle of sunspots.
That upsets the earths magnetic field which diverts away cosmic rays.
The means less clouds are formed and so the earth gets warmer.
There are many know warming cycles, most recent the Roman Warming peaked around 100 BC and then got cold around 400 AD, then got warm for the Medieval Warm period around 900 ad, then got cold around 18th century
and then got warm again around 2000 !
These cycles known to Egyptians and Minoans.
Nothing new to see here.
Bazz,
Milankovitch cycles operate on time scales of 10s to 100s of thousands of years. Cloud cover/albedo changes operate on decadal to centennial time scale… So, Milankovitch cycles have NOTHING to do with cloud-albedo changes!
Also, an objective analysis of available data shows that Milankovitch cycles have NO relationship even to long-term variations of Earth’s global temperature such as those observed during the Ice Ages of the past 800,000 years. See this blog post:
“Dispelling the Milankovitch Myth“: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2022/01/03/ned-nikolov-dispelling-the-milankovitch-myth/
Linnea,
Our model described by Eq. 1 in the above blog article can accurately predict the warming that Earth would experience, if the surface air pressure were to increase to 93 bar (9,300 kPa) matching the current pressure on Venus… Earth’s global surface temperature will increase to 311.3 C, not 400 C as you’ve calculated. That’s because you’ve used an incorrect equation! 🙂
@Ned
“Earth’s global surface temperature will increase to 311.3 C, not 400 C as you’ve calculated.”
Ah looking again at equation 1 got it!! I see my error thank you Ned! I bet I got closer to the answer than most could these days 🤣
As to the high CO2 content in the the Venusian atmosphere, my theory has been it’s the result of atmospheric pressure. Agree, volcanic activity certainly aided the high percentage of CO2. But is it not possible a great deal of the CO2 was encapsulated in the surface and released as energy increased. Much like the eastern Antarctic ice core studies which showed increased energy freed encapsulated CO2 from the surface. Thus temp leads CO2 on Venus as much as it did on earth. Which would argue CO2 is predominantly irrelevant to the surface equilibrium on Venus.
Not sure who I am replying to here; Yes I can see your point, I have read J Kauppenin’s paper and with the other cyclic influences he included Milanovitch. All the maths is well beyond me. Of interest just watched video about the collapse of the Maya civilisation in the cold period after the Roman warming. The video blamed drought (climate change ?) Tks for comment
@Ned regarding clouds: “most of them electric and magnetic in nature.”
You are fooling yourself BIGTIME Ned. I am fully aware of the Forbush decrease cloud study, but you should already know they hardly happen enough to count for weather, lest climate change.
My wordpress avatar is my app image of 5-minute solar wind data, ie, the electric, magnetic, and electromagnetic data you claim is a factor. In fact I own three domain with those names, with ‘weather’ attached, the only person in the world who does, so just maybe Ned, after 8 plus years of practical experience and continuous observations I just might know something you don’t.
What I do know Ned is you don’t know what you’re talking about when you invoke Svensmark’s theory and the solar wind wrt clouds. It’s bad science, bad theory. Give it up, you’re being stupid about it. If you can’t integrate what I’ve told you already about why his theory fails, then you sir are headed for failure. …tough love…
@bobweber:
Let me risk an oversimplified pronouncement: Ultraviolet rays from the sun’s corona cause climate change, which follows solar activity, with a time lag of about 10 years, acting via ozone production, which causes changes in the adiabatic temperature profile and both atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. Any arguments?
BobWeber,
I get your point, and I certainly know about “bad science”, since there is no shortage of it in modern climate science.
Please explain what controls trends of cloud albedo that last for decades? Do you think that such long-term trends are externally forced, or do you believe that they are somehow a result of “internal climate variability” as claimed by IPCC?
If you think it’s “internal variability”, then why do cloud-albedo changes precede global temperature changes anywhere from 7 months to 4 years?
One additional comment regarding the electric/magnetic forcing of clouds. There are a series of papers by Arthur Viterito published over the past 6 years that show a strong correlation between global temperature, sub-oceanic seismic activity, and the speed of movement of the North magnetic (Dip) Pole from 1979 to the present. See for example this 2017 paper:
“Shifting Plates, Shifting Poles, Shifting Paradigms”
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/shifting-plates-shifting-poles-shifting-paradigms-2573-458X-1000130.php?aid=90547
Viterito’s most recent paper is from 2022: https://juniperpublishers.com/ijesnr/IJESNR.MS.ID.556271.php
I do not agree with Viterito’s hypothesis that all these correlations were caused by geothermal heat released from the bottom of the World’s oceans. I think these correlations point to the Sun’s active role in controlling (influencing) global seismicity, cloud cover, and the migration of the North Dip Pole electromagnetically. One thing can be concluded with certainty based on Viterito’s research, however: Human carbon emissions were NOT the driver of Earth’s climate over the past 40 years as claimed by IPCC!
My precise calibration of the Greenhouse effect of 133 Kelvin by molar mass for the Earth is. Nitrogen imparts 100.6 Kelvin, Oxygen imparts 30.3 Kelvin, Argon is third accounting for 1.7 Kelvin, and Water vapour is fourth accounting for 0.3 Kelvin. Carbon Dioxide only produces 0.0532 Kelvin by molar mass at 400ppm. So would not 280ppm impart 0.03724 or 0.04 Kelvin?
Is this on the N&Z radar?
Earth’s Albedo Puzzle – A Question Of Balance
Tuesday 26th April 2022 | Dr David Whitehouse, Science Editor
You only have to look at a globe of the Earth to realise what a lop-sided planet we live on, most of the land is in the Northern hemisphere (NH), most of the ocean in the Southern hemisphere (SH). Since we were able to make space-based measurements of the Earth’s reflectance – its albedo – that dichotomy has become a puzzle as for some reason, despite their differences, the Northern and Southern hemispheres reflect the same amount of sunlight to within observational uncertainties!
https://www.netzerowatch.com/earths-albedo-puzzle-a-question-of-balance/
@Paul Cottingham
The Earth’s “greenhouse effect” is about 90 K, not 133 K. We’ve shown this in an extensive paper in 2014:
“On the average temperature of airless spherical bodies and the magnitude of Earth’s atmospheric thermal effect“: https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2193-1801-3-723
@oldbrew
Yes, the amazing hemispherical symmetry of Earth’s total albedo (despite 11% difference in surface albedos between NH and SH) has been documented by at least 2 independent studies now:
– Stephens et al. (2015) The albedo of Earth. Rev. Geophys.,53,141–163, doi:10.1002/2014RG000449. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2014RG000449
– Datseris G and Stevens B. (2021) Earth’s albedo and its symmetry. AGU Advances, 2, e2021AV000440. DOI: 10.1029/2021AV000440. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021AV000440
And here is a 2021 paper based on flawed climate models that tries to explain away the observed hemispherical albedo symmetry as a “transient phenomenon” caused mainly by human aerosol emissions in the Northern Hemisphere: https://www.essoar.org/doi/abs/10.1002/essoar.10511017.1
The model-driven junk climate science never misses an opportunity to downplay and/or distort phenomena that do not fit into the CO2-climate paradigm… 🙂
Thanks Ned. I note the Essoar climate modelling paper has zero citations.
I believe I read that Venus could have received the same amount of water from the comets as the Earth, and that the Earth could have had an atmospheric pressure from 10 bar up to 100 bar. So if Venus had seas with an atmospheric pressure of between 10 bar & 100 bar pressure. Could not the seas on Venus have boiled off, with then the ultraviolet radiation breaking apart the water molecules into their constituent atoms, and then the hydrogen from that, escaping into space. If so then Venus has lost at least 99.9% of its Atmospheric Hydrogen. https://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/physics/astrocourses/AST101/readings/water_on_venus.html
Bubbles in Fossilised Amber go up to 10 bar and Planetary Chemistry says it could have been up to 100 bar pressure. https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0909/0909.4050.pdf
Amended: My precise calibration of the 90.5 Kelvin Greenhouse effect by molar mass for the Earth. Nitrogen is the main Greenhouse gas at 68.5 Kelvin and Oxygen imparts 20.6 Kelvin. Argon is third accounting for 1.2 Kelvin, and Water vapour is fourth accounting for 0.2 Kelvin. 413ppm of Carbon Dioxide only produces 0.0374 Kelvin by molar mass. So I presume an additional 280ppm of CO2 would impart 0.004 Kelvin, not 0.02534 Kelvin by molar mass, because of non-linear regression.
Thank you for hosting this.
At some point people will wake up. Papers like this, and blogs like this, help.
This thread linking Ned and Karl’s post is getting some traction.
Everything in climate science is back to front.
@Philip Mulholland
That is correct, Phillip! Thank you!
However, while the 19th-Century scientists had an excise to confuse effect for cause (since they did not have access to modern satellite data and knew virtually nothing about the physical conditions and climates on other planets and moons), the 21-Century scientists have no excuse to continue regurgitating a false physical concept from 120+ years ago, let alone assist politicians to push energy policies based on such a nonsensical “theory”… I believe it’s the research funding provided by politicians to career scientists to prove “anthropogenic global warming” that perpetuated the “greenhouse” falsehood in climate science for the past 35 years.
@tallbloke
Great Twitter thread, Roger. Thank you!
I wish I could reply to it, but Twitter suspended my account last summer. I asked them twice this year to restore it, but they refused. If Elon Musk takes over Twitter, he’ll face a huge job of cleansing that company from the Fascist Left. I think the entire upper management of Twitter needs to be replaced with people, who respect free speech and care for true democracy.
Your account is missed Ned. Hopefully it’ll be restored soon.
In the meantime, I’ll keep posting links to your articles there.
Ned,
Congratulations on all your hard work. We agree much more than we disagree.
You are annoying all the right people!
Thank you!
My goal is not to annoy people, but trigger a civilized dialog that will lead the climate science out of the current mediocre intellectual state that has confused politicians worldwide and gave birth to insane energy policies as well as initiatives disrupting the global food supply such as killing millions of sheep and cattle to “meet climate targets”:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/22/northern-ireland-faces-loss-of-1-million-sheep-and-cattle-to-meet-climate-targets
This is akin to the medieval practice of burning “witches” to avert bad weather.
FYI…
A Long-Lived Sharp Disruption on the Lower Clouds of Venus
First published: 27 May 2020 https://doi.org/10.1029/2020GL087221
Key Points
— Discovery of an equatorial cloud discontinuity at the middle and lower clouds of Venus, where no planetary wave had been found before
— This disruption propagates to the West faster than the winds, keeps coherent for weeks, and alters clouds’ properties and aerosols
— Past observations confirm its existence since 1983; numerical simulations suggest a physical origin as a nonlinear Kelvin wave
‘Considering the overall data, the rotation period of this disruption is 4.9 ± 0.5 days (Figure 3a). Separate analyses of data for the middle and lower clouds yield periods of 4.7 ± 0.4 and 5.0 ± 0.5 days, respectively.’
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020GL087221
testing
What’s the mechanism for pressure increasing surface temperature? Many say it doesn’t make sense that it would, like how a pumped tire heats up but then cools.
But compression doesn’t ‘heat’ the surface. All it does (in my two-year-old way of thinking) is make the atmosphere most dense at the surface; hence, the total (kinetic) energy of the atmosphere is greatest at the surface. If I have my terminology right, then the enthalpy of the atmosphere is greatest at the surface and this has nothing to do with ‘compressive heating’ but everything to do with the density of the gas.
The lapse rate can be explained completely by the different pressures of the atmosphere leading to an enthalpic gradient: a lapse rate.
It’s hotter at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for exactly the same reason that the thermosphere is cold despite that the individual molecules are ‘hot’: there are more molecules packed more densely together at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
My point in all this is that the exact mechanism for ‘compressive heating’ seems to be quite clear, but is misunderstood because of the word ‘compressive.’ Compression isn’t ‘doing’ anything. Nothing is heating anything else. The molecules are just packed more tightly together.
Does this make sense? And if so, doesn’t this mean that the ‘greenhouse effect’ is simply that most of the atmospheric energy is packed close to the surface?
Criticisms of my thinking are welcomed.
When you compress gas in a container the work input is complete when compression stops.
When a planet holds a gas molecule from escaping it is constantly working to hold it down. So does that continuous work generate heat?
Ned, I dont understand how the albedo of a planet can be a byproduct of TSI and pressure. Could you explain me? If the strong albedo of Venus, because of its clouds, limite the TSI at its surface, how can the temperature of the surface not be influenced by the albedo. If the albedo of Venus was less, without this clouds, the temperature of this planet will be hotter no?
Question asked on Twitter:
I really appreciate your internet site and Ned contributions. I just dont understand how albedo can be a byproduct of TSI and atmospheric pressure. If Venus had not all this clouds, albedo decrease,TSI at surface will increase, so temperature of surface, so global planet temperature too. How can albedo not play a role in the global planet temperature?
Don: What’s the mechanism for pressure increasing surface temperature? Many say it doesn’t make sense that it would, like how a pumped tire heats up but then cools.
A pumped tyre heats up. It cools because the surrounding environment is cooler, and energy is lost from the tyre to it by conduction etc. But with the atmospheric compression, the whole of the near surface atmosphere is compressed, so there’s no ‘surrounding environment’ for it to cool to, except via the gradient and back out to space. In a more massive atmosphere, that transfer process is slower, so the surface temperature stays higher.
Tallbloke, thank you for your reply. I believe this is the confusion: “with the atmospheric compression, the whole of the near surface atmosphere is compressed, so there’s no ‘surrounding environment’ for it to cool to, except via the gradient and back out to space.”
I’ve had drawn-out discussions on WUWT and I think this is the confusion. I believe I now understand what’s really happening. There’s no compressive heating at all: the only thing pressure is doing is packing the molecules closer together, and because they’re closer together, a volume of gas therefore necessarily contains more energy. The analogy with the tire is wrong because the pressure isn’t heating up the atmosphere by virtue of compressive heating; it’s heating up the atmosphere merely because it’s packing things closer together.
This is why if I stick my hand in the thermosphere, it feels cold: ‘hot’ molecules are too far apart. Likewise, the bottom of the Grand Canyon isn’t hot because of ‘compression’; it’s hot because the atmospheric molecules, which are moving at exactly the same speed as the ones higher up (and hence contain the same amount of kinetic energy) are packed closer together. By pressure and ‘compression,’ yes, but the compression isn’t doing anything but pushing things together.
It seems to me that this notion of compressive heating has been the stumbling block to the wider acceptance of a theory that makes perfect sense.
I had a discussion once where I showed a pressure gradient in the atmosphere and said,
‘that’s a temperature gradient.’ The reply was, no, I just see pressure. I should have said, no, you do see temperature, but you just don’t realize it. And the logic of it is crystal clear but I don’t think we have a name for what’s really happening: density itself, all other things equal (i.e., molecules moving at the same speed) necessarily increases ‘temperature’ in a volume of gas. So that’s why I ask if the concept we’re looking for might be ‘enthalpy.’
The Standard Atmosphere pressure and density graphs look almost identical, but from the surface, pressure declines by half sooner than density does (using ‘Table’ in this link).
https://www.digitaldutch.com/atmoscalc/graphs.htm
Thanks for the link to the cool tool, oldbrew.
If we can describe surface heating by density, why do we need the idea of compressive heating at all? It seems to me that there’s a proportional relationship between density and temperature.
Don – yes, it can be worked out from that table link if I remember rightly, but it’s been a few years since I looked at it.
– – –
According to the Standard Atmosphere calculator, the temperature gradient works like this:
Average temperature increases the nearer you get to the surface at the same rate as the variable: ‘pressure divided by density’.
Comment ref — https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/irradiance-and-surface-pressure-only-match-of-rocky-planet-surface-temperature/comment-page-1/#comment-106010
The formula is in the example below the table.
So here’s my question. Using Occam’s razor, if the ATE can be explained by atmospheric density alone then does the theory need to invoke ‘compressive heating’?
The theory of compressive heating of the atmosphere seems to be speculation. It’s not clear at all how it would work. On a hot summer day, I feel molecules moving up in convection, not being compressed downwards.
I agree that pressure is the key mechanism. But ‘how’ it causes heating of the surface atmosphere isn’t clear– unless it’s asserted that it’s solely through packing molecules closer together. Then the speculative element of ‘how’ this happens disappears.
I don’t understand any of the maths: definitely not a mathematician (I make no apologies: if a process can’t be understood through clear concepts, then the math doesn’t matter.) What I’m getting at are the concepts.
I can understand atmospheric ‘compressive heating’ through density, an adiabatic process (the lapse rate.) I can’t quite get my head around atmospheric ‘compressive heating’ as similar to what happens when a tire is pumped up.
When we pump up a tire the temperature rises because the molecules are being packed more tightly together in a confined space (but then the heat can convect away.) Even though the atmosphere exerts a downward pressure, the tightly-packed molecules near the surface can still convect away, but if heat from the sun is constantly added, then convection from the surface continually adds energy. Still, this isn’t compressive heating akin to pumping up a tire.
So again, it seems that density is the key concept to explain the ATE. The lapse rate doesn’t invoke radiative effects at all; those who promote the radiative greenhouse theory perhaps assume these effects as a given ‘ghost in the machine.’ But density requires no ghosts.
Don – re ‘I can’t quite get my head around atmospheric ‘compressive heating’ as similar to what happens when a tire is pumped up.’
Tallbloke answered that one? N&Z say: ‘Since the mean surface atmospheric pressure (P) is a function of gravity and the mass of an atmospheric column above a unit surface area’…
‘Since the mean surface atmospheric pressure (P) is a function of gravity and the mass of an atmospheric column above a unit surface area.’ Notice in this sentence there is zero relationship stated regarding how pressure, as pressure, heats the lower atmosphere. My answer would be that it does not, and insisting that it does ruins the ATE theory (I’m being strict with my words, so I’m not actually refuting the ATE theory but instead refuting the way it’s stated.) The relationship has to be crystal clear, logical, and irrefutable.
What I’m getting at is this answer isn’t convincing to skeptics who say something like this: “the pressure is static. No one is pumping anything into any rigid container. Compressive heating of the atmosphere is a fiction.”
Once again: if you don’t need the concept of compressive heating because you already have density– which does the job nicely– then why add the concept of compressive heating to account for the surface heating of the planet by pressure? The concept of atmospheric temperature as a function of density is clear, logical, and (it seems to me) irrefutable. It’s the basis for the lapse rate. It relates directly to pressure. And surface pressure is a force that can (and does) crush railroad tankers that have near-vacuum inside, which back-radiation can’t possibly do.
What I’m getting at is a crystal-clear concept of how the ATE heats the planet and accounts for the planet’s thermal effect. I’m asking for this because it’s important to refute the theory of catastrophic CO2 warming, and refuting the theory of the radiative greenhouse effect does this nicely. But it seems to me that the ATE has to be conceptually (logically) more rigorous in its accounting for the surface thermal effect.
The way forward seems to be that more pressure=more density=necessarily more ‘heat’ in a volume of gas. So pressure really is doing all the work, but now the mechanism for heating is clear without resorting to ‘compressive heating,’ an amorphous concept, even if it really is exactly ‘compressive heating’ that’s warming the lower atmosphere.
Don – if you have the same gravity and atmospheric mass every day, what do you mean by ‘more pressure’?
Oldbrew, I’m repeating what the critics of the ATE say, insofar as I remember it. As I recall, they (at WUWT) especially had a problem with ‘compressive heating’ because there isn’t any ‘more pressure’ added to the atmosphere, as there is in a bicycle tire that heats when actively pumped up.
The whole long debate at WUWT fizzled out pretty much because no one spoke up to refute the ‘if you have two bottles, one with low pressure and the other with normal atmosphere, and you put them out on a cold day, the contents will be at the same temp. Hence, pressure has no effect on temp.’ Something like that. Seems to make sense. But it’s wrong, of course. The bottle with low pressure will not have the same heat content as the one with ‘normal’ pressure. The molecules within both bottles will of course have the same speed, but the gas volume within the bottles won’t have the same temperature. I suppose most everyone supporting the ATE had by then gotten tired and weren’t following along.
At the time, I had to admit that this refutation of the ATE was valid. It is not. For some reason I continued to mull this over then recently realized it was wrong. Hence, I’m back on the track of the ATE, but a valid mechanism for how the ATE heats the atmosphere has to be clarified. Then I’ll be back at WUWT for another round ….
As I said, it’s important that the catastrophic CO2 theory is defeated, but so far when arguing within the radiative paradigm, it’s been pretty much polemics: nothing is logically irrefutable. However, I believe the ATE is actually logically irrefutable. So I’m asking for a bit of help and the Talkshop seemed like a good place to ask.
OK, so then please explain exactly and precisely what ‘compressive heating’ is on our surface atmosphere. I’ve already mentioned I think this is the wrong concept to use, at least as it’s been stated: “A pumped tyre heats up. It cools because the surrounding environment is cooler, and energy is lost from the tyre to it by conduction etc. But with the atmospheric compression, the whole of the near surface atmosphere is compressed, so there’s no ‘surrounding environment’ for it to cool to, except via the gradient and back out to space. In a more massive atmosphere, that transfer process is slower, so the surface temperature stays higher.” Of course, the heat can immediately convect or radiate (through the atmospheric window) away: there’s really nothing containing it, as this explanation implies. Even the ATE states that our atmosphere radiates to space at all levels. And the critics of the ATE latch onto this. There actually is, then, a ‘surrounding environment,’ and to say that the transfer process is slower and that’s what compressive heating is really about, is a fudge unless exactly how slow, and why, is clarified.
I’m trying to help, even though I’m being critical. It’s all about the concepts. The scientists have been busy at the math and physics, but it can all be (and must be) stated logically and conceptually if it’s valid.
I put this on the Mensa debating Forum: Put simply, radiative heating & gravitational heating do not occur. The reason being that the random nature of the movement of molecules means that half of the molecules moving towards the radiation or away from the gravity field, are slowed down or cooled. So then radiative forcing or gravitational forcing is real, but only positive for half of the molecules vibrating at any given moment in time. So in reality no heat is created in this process. The simplest way of proving that “Pressure-induced Thermal Inertia” is true, and not “Radiative or Gravitational Forcing”, is the fact that the average temperature at the one bar pressure points on each of the planets, is the same, adjusted for distance from the Sun, despite the different main gases, Nitrogen for the Earth & Titan, Hydrogen for Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn & Uranus and Carbon Dioxide for Venus. Most people think intelligence is about complexity. So you could read this by Max Planck: https://ia804508.us.archive.org/26/items/theheatradiation00planrich/theheatradiation00planrich.pdf and this https://whyclimatechanges.com/crisis.pdf
“As I said, it’s important that the catastrophic CO2 theory is defeated..,”
We living in an Ice Age. Unless more CO2 makes our Ice Age colder, there is not problem.
Now, some say that global warming can cause cooling….
Anyhow we in an ice house global climate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth
And the Ice Age we are in is called, Late Cenozoic Ice Age. Which is said to be ongoing for last 33.9 million years.
And the last 2.5 million years has been the coldest time of than 33.9 million years.
Not only that, but the Holocene interglacial period has cooler than past interglacial periods.
And in terms of Holocene, we have cooling for last 5000 years, or peak warming of Holocene was about 8000 years ago.
The other thing is that people don’t seem to understand what warming period looks like.
Global surface air temperature is control the average temperature of the ocean, which currently about 3.5 C.
If ocean was instead 4 C, it seems everyone it would be warming global climate.
And Ocean was 4 C or warmer in the past.
And reason we in ice house global climate is because our ocean is cold.
And a 5 C ocean is still in ice house climate, or probably most of 33.9 million year was an ocean of 5 C or more.
“More than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped in the Earth system due to human-caused global warming has been absorbed by the oceans.”
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content
And all this warming has increased the ocean average temperature by about .05 C.
Anyhow the general terror is Ocean will warm up to, say 4 C at some point centuries in the future.
NASA says more 90%, I tend to think is more 90% -or closer to 95%.
What is bad about ocean which is 4 C. Yes there is some sea level rise from the thermal expansion, and…
We have no chance of the Ocean warming by .5 C, any time soon, but it would increase global average air by a significant amount. And it would have ice free polar sea ice in the summer.
Well, 8000 years ago, we had ice free polar sea ice in summer. And the Sahara desert was most grassland with forests, lakes, and rivers where isn’t this now. And obviously if Sahara desert was green, Earth has much higher global water vapor.
And higher global water vapor is also something to be feared for some reason. 1/3 of land surface is desert, do we need so much desert for some reason?
When Earth is cold [as it is now, and of course when it’s even colder] one has more extreme temperature swings. Or global warming is about having a more uniform global temperature- which is what you get if ocean has a higher average temperature than 3.5 C.
“So then radiative forcing or gravitational forcing is real, but only positive for half of the molecules vibrating at any given moment in time. So in reality no heat is created in this process. The simplest way of proving that “Pressure-induced Thermal Inertia” is true, and not “Radiative or Gravitational Forcing”, is the fact that the average temperature at the one bar pressure points on each of the planets, is the same, adjusted for distance from the Sun, despite the different main gases, ”
I say, it does not prove anything. But if you tell me what elevation is 1 atm is at IF Venus was at Earth distance from the Sun that would be different.
Or Venus at Venus distance from the sun, absorbs about 160 watt per square meter, and Venus has about twice as much sunlight vs 1 AU with Earth absorbing about 240 watts.
Or it seems if Venus had 1/2 as much sunlight {Earth distance}, it would absorb a lot less than 160 watt per square meter.
What would that number be?
I would say that Venus at Earth distance from the sun would has a less uniform surface air temperature- and would be colder than Earth.
– – –
The Standard Atmosphere data confirms that temperature, pressure and density are related in a defined way. This is put forward by mainstream science. Commenters on websites can’t easily overthrow it by demanding a precise mechanism.
Why should the theory of catastrophic CO2 be defeated if, some say, CO2 warming is good? For one reason, because Great Reset theory (and practice) is premised almost entirely on the necessity for a reset in order to prevent climate catastrophe. I’m not going to get into why we wouldn’t want a tyrannical global government, as is implied in the Great Reset narrative.
The link to Planck is beyond me: I’m not a mathematician. Not even close. But I like the Ward paper and will spend some time with that. Thanks.
Regarding the idea that temperature, pressure, and density are related in a defined way: I agree 100%. But saying this doesn’t prove the ATE, because it could be that radiative thermal effects (standard greenhouse theory) heats the lower atmosphere and the pressure is raised due to this heating. So again, where does the heat in the lower atmosphere come from? And once again, the idea of compressive heating seems to be obscuring, not illuminating, the ATE. I don’t think the central idea of compressive heating is wrong; I think the way the idea is expressed, is. We’re talking strict logic here.
Thanks for the comments. I’m still thinking about this. There must be a simple, elegant, and irrefutable way to state the ATE, and I suspect it has a lot to do with the lapse rate. It seems to me that a very simple fact holds great significance: the derivation of the lapse rate requires no radiative inputs. Is this where the irrefutable logic comes in?
In answer to gbaikie: (1) Deep Ocean Thermal Inertia is up to one thousand years maximum: The Ice core data shows that there is a 800 year lag for natural CO2 level increase. The Medieval Warm period peaked 800 years ago, so that proves that most of the increase was natural CO2 from the deep Ocean which has a 275 ratio mixing with the Atmosphere over a period of 800 years. The upper Ocean has a 50 ratio mixing with the Atmosphere over a seven year period. “Carbon cycle modelling and the residence time of natural and anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, (1997) by Tom Segalstad” shows up the scientific fraud in the Carbon Cycle for man-made CO2. The IPCC morons do not understand Henrys law. (2) The atmosphere of Venus is at one bar pressure at an altitude of 30.75 miles. The only significant change to the temperature of the atmosphere of Venus is with altitude, the atmospheric temperature drops by an average of 100 Kelvin for every 11 miles, up to an altitude of 60 miles. From Venus the Sun appears 38 percent bigger than it does from the Earth, an atmosphere that is 96.5 percent CO2 and 93 times both the mass and the surface pressure of the Earths atmosphere, as well as having a quarter of a million times more CO2 than the Earth. The observations came from the Magellan mission. Also, if you think the Earth’s surface is a problem, then you could chose the half bar point on these planets as the evidence, which would put all the planetary pressure points above the surface.
Is Don132 saying that there is a missing step in the causal chain?
Instead of:
Solar radiation + Earth’s EM field –> ⬆️ Pressure –> ⬆️Temperature
You have:
Solar radiation + Earth’s EM field –> ⬆️ Density –> ⬆️ Pressure –> ⬆️Temperature
I’m probably coming to a conclusion that many of you already have: the ATE is so obvious and logical that anyone who ignores it is being (deliberately) obtuse.
I found this in reviewing my folders on the lapse rate: https://climateofsophistry.com/2016/04/20/lapse-rate-refutes-radiative-greenhouse-effect/
But how does pressure heat the atmosphere? I think this is where proponents of the ATE aren’t so careful. There is no ‘compressive heating,’ and if there were, the bicycle tire (US English!) is a terrible analogy.
Pressure “packs things (i.e., molecules) in.” Therefore, more molecules in a volume of gas means the volume (not the molecules!) has more kinetic energy registering as temperature. This is what the lapse rate means.
@Don132
I have explained this several times elsewhere, but I’ll repeat it here again. In the thermodynamic chain of causation, gas density is NEVER a driver of temperature, pressure is. Density is always a function (i.e. a consequence) of pressure and temperature. This stems from the fundamental Gas Law:
PV = nRT
where the product PV defines the thermal kinetic energy of a gas measured in Joules. That’s right, the energy that sets the gas temperature T is physically defined by Pressure and Volume (not density!). Pressure directly relates to energy, because it is a force acting on unit area. By definition, energy cannot exist without a force; hence, temperature cannot exist without a force as well! Not many people realize this, but a radiation flux measured in W m-2 is physically a product of photon pressure and the speed of light. So, even solar radiation has pressure (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_pressure)!
ATE is a form of compression (or adiabatic) heating, because the relative ATE is a sole function of pressure (not density!) across planetary bodies in the solar system as shown in Fig. 2 above. Trying to explain ATE with density is a major physical mistake!
It’s a common confusion among many to think that compression means the act of compressing and decompressing. Not so! Compression in this case means the state of being compressed. A static pressure gradient as the one existing in the troposphere can and does create a vertical temperature gradient. In atmospheric physics, the dependence of temperature on pressure in the troposphere is described by the classic Poisson’s relation a.k.a. Potential temperature formula. See:
https://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Poisson_equation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_temperature
Note that Poisson’s equation contains NO dynamic compression, only static pressures and equilibrium temperatures.
The fact that air density is a function of temperature and pressure is proven by the observation that, while sea-level pressure is about the same everywhere, the air density varies with latitude being the smallest at the Equator and the highest at the Poles. The average surface air pressure on Earth is 98.55 kPa and only depends on the air mass above unit area and the gravitational acceleration. This pressure does not depend on temperature!
Dr. Nikolov, thanks for that. I’ll abandon my density reasoning and try to understand what you said.
@Don132,
Please watch this video and pay particular attention to the segment on the “Enhanced Greenhouse Effect” (EGE) beginning at 19:47, where I explain in math terms the change of pressure with altitude and the dependence of temperature on pressure in the troposphere:
That video got me to reconsidering the ATE again. In fact I was particularly interested in the lapse rate segment. But I obviously missed something. Thank you.
Sounds good, Don. This stuff is sometimes difficult to grasp even for professional scientists… 🙂
Mark says:
“Is Don132 saying that there is a missing step in the causal chain?
Instead of:
Solar radiation + Earth’s EM field –> ⬆️ Pressure –> ⬆️Temperature
You have:
Solar radiation + Earth’s EM field –> ⬆️ Density –> ⬆️ Pressure –> ⬆️Temperature”
Mark, I’m still mulling this over because it’s not clear to me. Of course I’m not going to argue against Dr. Nikolov when he says I’m wrong about density. But I don’t get it yet and I’m trying to sort it out, and I’d say that ‘pressure leads to density’ rather than that ‘density leads to pressure’; ‘pressure leads to density’ is/was actually my main line of thinking. But I’m still sorting it out and reviewing what Connollys have said about molar density and pressure.
@Don123,
As I pointed out above, the average surface pressure on a planet is defined as
P = (M/A)*g
where M = mass of the atmosphere (kg), A = planet’s surface area (m^2), and g = gravity (m s-2).
The product Mass x Acceleration = Force (Newton). Force per unit area is pressure. So, the units for pressure is N m-2 (Newton per square meter). Another unit for pressure is Pascal = 1 N m-2. There is also the unit Bar = 100,000 Pascal. Earth’s mean surface air pressure is 98,550 Pa = 0.9855 bar.
So, surface pressure is a fundamental quantity that comes before temperature and density, because it only depends on atmospheric mass and gravity.
Another key point is that pressure only has a relative effect on temperature, not absolute. This means that pressure adiabatically enhances whatever energy is available from the Sun. That’s why in Fig.2 above, pressure only explains the ratio Tsb/Tna. By itself, pressure cannot explain the absolute baseline temperature Tsb. To explain Tsb, one needs both pressure and solar irradiance S. The latter determines Tna. The relative effect of pressure on temperature is universal and found in all thermodynamic systems including the Poisson’s relation I mentioned earlier.
Here is how pressure enhances the available energy in a compressible gas system. When gravity forces the gas molecules to be closer together, their electric fields start interacting and give rise to repulsive forces that make the molecules vibrate faster, which increases the gas’ internal kinetic energy and temperature. One should not forget that gas molecules are not like inert billiard balls, but represent (on a quantum level) vortices of spinning electromagnetic energy in space. The energy originates from the charged particles (protons and electrons) composing the molecules.
“When gravity forces the gas molecules to be closer together ….” This is “density.” No matter, there are bigger fish to fry but I think your description of the mechanism of “how” pressure heats, Dr. Nikolov, works better than the tire analogy for the purpose of convincing unbelievers.
Is Robert Holmes wrong, then, in his description of this effect or is this merely a restatement of the same basic idea?
Now for the atmospheric window: as stated in the video, the earth emits from all levels of the atmosphere and not just from the top. The atmospheric window allows for transmission of IR energy directly from the surface. But if this is so, then wouldn’t any level of the atmosphere at all that emitted at the atmospheric window wavelengths be emitting directly to space? Meaning that the atmospheric window isn’t merely whatever W/m2 it is at the surface (as calculated for the window?) but there are many W/m2 ‘surfaces’ throughout the atmosphere up to the top. So the questions are: are emissions from the window calculated just from the earth’s surface in classic GH theory; and is the idea that emissions from the window can occur basically everywhere at the surface and throughout the atmosphere correct? If this idea is correct, then it seems that there can be a huge amount of energy emitted from the surface/atmosphere that demolishes the idea of a fixed emissions height.
I’m attacking the concept of lapse rate/raising emissions height because it doesn’t make sense and seems a weak spot in the catastrophic CO2 theory.
Don,
Gravity forcing gas molecules closer together is not density, it’s the FORCE of pressure! You can have the same surface air pressure for a range of densities, because pressure is set by atmospheric mass and gravity, while density depends on the volume of the atmosphere, which in turn depends on the solar heating. If you move Earth to the orbit of Mars, the surface pressure will remain about the same, but atmospheric volume will shrink substantially and, as a result, the surface air density will increase significantly.
Robert Holmes published a paper, where he attempted to use the Gas Law to predict surface temperatures of planets. He used density as a predictor of temperature, which is physically incorrect, since density depends on pressure and temperature. He also had one equation (the Gas Law) with 2 unknowns (temperature and density). That’s mathematically unsolvable. Thus, his approach is both physically & mathematically incorrect.
Pressure: got it.
Atmospheric window?
Open thread on WUWT. Here’s my chance (maybe.) But I’d like to know two things first:
1. Irregardless of any considerations of pressure, isn’t it true that all else equal, a denser gas will have a higher temperature than a less dense gas, by virtue of having more molecules?
2. Does the atmospheric window of IR radiation occur at all levels of the atmosphere, and if so, is this taken into account in the calculation of the W/m2 leaving through the atmospheric window?
“1. Irregardless of any considerations of pressure, isn’t it true that all else equal, a denser gas will have a higher temperature than a less dense gas, by virtue of having more molecules?”
Upper atmosphere doesn’t have denser gas molecules.
It seems to me, the theory regards upper atmosphere as important.
By Jove, I think I’ve got it.
The lapse rate, according to the GHE, cools the surface that’s been warmed by a radiative atmosphere. But there are no terms for radiative effects in either the dry or wet lapse rate equations.
The wet lapse rate is slower than the dry lapse rate. If the GHE were true, then we’d expect this to be because of radiative effects: back radiation or whatever. But, it’s not: the wet lapse rate is slower than the dry because of water vapor’s latent heat of vaporization. If it were true that radiative gases somehow slow the earth’s cooling, then water vapor would slow the lapse rate because of this (in addition to the latent heat of vaporization) but latent heat of vaporization accounts for all the slowing.
The warmists know this, so to save the theory they fudge and say that the emission’s height is where planetary cooling occurs, and we count down from there using the lapse rate to get the temperature of the surface. But remember, they said that the lapse rate is essentially an atmospheric cooling function from the heat that was added by radiative effects, but this cannot be because we know that water vapor slows the lapse rate not because of back-radiation, but because of the latent heat of vaporization; hence, there cannot be any warming effect from back radiation or else it’d be reflected in the wet lapse rate’s slower rate of atmospheric cooling from the surface.
It’s already been demonstrated through several avenues that ‘back-radiation’ cannot warm a surface. The whole idea is absurd. To save the theory they resort to the emissions height gambit, but this relies on the back-radiation premise: the surface is warmed by the sun and then additional back-radiation, and the lapse rate, we’re told, ‘merely’ cools from the surface. But if this is so, then the lapse rate would also merely warm from the height of emissions, given the gas laws.
This is a rough-and-dirty draft. Criticisms welcome.
Thanks for listening.
Correction: “But if this is so, then the lapse rate would also merely warm from the height of emissions, given the gas laws.”
The atmosphere does warm along the lapse rate as we go down, of course.
Like I said, rough draft but I hope the main point isn’t too obscure. Trying to point out contradictions in the GHE theory.
The theory of CO2 warming is confused and maybe I fell for it. I believe the current version of the theory is that all the warming from CO2 is due to the higher emissions height caused by the murkiness of the (emissions height) atmosphere from increased CO2. If I’m not mistaken, the ‘old’ version is that CO2 back-radiated and warmed the surface.
So even though the CO2 absorption of IR is nearly saturated and even doubling CO2 will hardly absorb any more IR, that doesn’t matter: as Dr. Pierrehumbert stated in the video excerpt from Dr. Nikolov’s video, adding CO2 will raise the emissions height and when we count down from the lapse rate, we get a warmer world. But I don’t think this is right, either.
So it seems this emissions height scenario is the real crux of the logic of the current version of catastrophic CO2 warming.
@Don132,
The effective radiating altitude is mathematically and physically a fiction, as I showed in my video. Also, this ridiculous concept was first proposed as a pure conjecture by Nils Ekholm in 1901 without any support from data/observations or a validated physical theory, and it flies in the face of standard Atmospheric Thermodynamics. Ekholm simply made it up based on a flawed logic/understanding about atmospheric processes.
This silly concept became an “established” science through mere repetition by generations of copycat (non-thinking) scientists… It’s that simple!
@Ned Nikolov,
Understand. I’ll review your video. As I recall, you said that the atmosphere emits radiation to space at all levels, and in a way I get it but I don’t yet understand the details. This is really a key idea though, isn’t it?
Rising CO2 levels do not explain our recovery from the Little Ice Age, nor sea level rise.
CO2 levels don’t explain the warmest period of our Holocene period which was about 8000 years ago. Rising CO2 has not increased global water vapor.
No one can say how much warming has occurred from higher CO2 levels we have.
I tend to guess at most it’s about .2 C which is tiny amount which isn’t really measurable- though I hope someday it might be measurable.
Nor can anyone predict how much warming would occur of CO2 levels reach 560 ppm [a doubling of CO2 levels] and I am not certain CO2 levels will reach 560 ppm before 2100 AD.
Governments have done nothing to lower CO2 {not that I think they should] but governments have wasted vast amounts of tax dollars, promising to reduce CO2 levels.
And instead of allowing more natural gas and allowing nuclear power, they are cranking up the use
of coal- and have spend billion subsidizing the burning of wood for electrical power generation.
An atom or molecule emitting a photon is radiating out to space. And we have lot’s of photons at all levels
What would Earth’s average temperature be, if it had 2 atm of pressure rather than 1 atm of pressure?
Or what if Earth had .6 atm of pressure?
Earth surface would be dimmer with 2 atm of pressure and solar panels would work even worse as compared to 1 atm of atmosphere.
With .6 atmosphere solar panels work a lot better and Earth would be less dim. And more sunlight would reach the polar regions.
@gbaikie Got it. Actually with 2 atm of pressure it’d be hotter than heck. But the people supporting the GHE will circle back to their physics, which is really akin to the epicycles supporting pre-Newtonian physics. So this is why it seems to me that their own physics has to be used to dismantle the GHE, in their own terms.
The emissions height theory seems to be key. But in a way it’s already been refuted because there’s no slowing of atmospheric cooling caused by GHG, since the slowing of the wet lapse rate from the dry lapse rate isn’t caused by any radiative effects of H2O, when, according to the GHE theory, it should be. Hence, radiative effects don’t impact the lapse rate. If the lapse rate calculations haven’t changed in 50 years if known inputs give reliable results, then it stands to reason that radiative effects are having no impact on the lapse rate.
If this is true, then there can be no ‘counting down’ from higher up in the atmosphere using the lapse rate to get a warmer surface temperature, if radiative effects have no impact whatsoever on the lapse rate. This is because IR-absorbing gases are not causing any murkiness to the atmosphere that can be detected given the equations that account for the measured lapse rates without any radiative considerations. The ‘higher emissions height’ gambit relies on the IR murkiness of the atmosphere that’s supposedly impacting cooling, but this murkiness cannot be detected in the lapse rate. This all related to what the Connollys have found, among other things.
It’s all confused, but I expect it’ll take some time to get everything clear and unmuddled. Once the GHE is thoroughly dismantled, the ATE can be shown to be a valid and clear description of average surface temperature that’s a simple and elegant solution devoid of ‘epicycles.’
re: “@gbaikie Got it. Actually with 2 atm of pressure it’d be hotter than heck. …”
I replied here:
https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/06/evs-fossil-fuel-economy-no-better-than-ice-vehicles/#comment-1321281
Don,
Yes, our ATE concept based on pressure and derived from actual observations (as opposed to conjectures as the case is with GHE) is indeed much simpler and more elegant than the convoluted, feedback-riddled “greenhouse” theory.
Gbaikie,
The question, how the global temperature would change, if we had 2 atm of pressure instead of 0.985 atm at present has already been answered by our research. Past atmospheric pressures on Earth have exceeded 2 atm. Watch this presentation about drivers of Earth’s paleoclimate:
@ Ned Two thumbs up, will watch video. Thank you.
Most people assume we in Ice age because our ocean cooled.
The mass of Earth’s Atmosphere is 5.1480 × 10^18 kg
doubling it would adding 5.1480 × 10^18 kg of atmosphere.
And 60% of 5.1480 × 10^18 kg is 3.0888 × 10^18 kg
Our ocean average temperature is currently about 3.5 C and average global surface air temperature
is about 15 C.
Our tropical ocean surface temperature is about 26 C.
I would say our tropical ocean surface temperature has been around 26 C for tens of millions of years. And what varies a lot are regions closer to polar regions.
Our polar region get the least amount of sunlight- for numbers of reasons.
But one reason is sunlight light is at low angle above the horizon and sunlight at low angle must travel thru more atmosphere. When sun is at 30 degree above the horizon it passes thru twice as
much atmospheric mass. Also when at 30 degree, the shadow cast is twice the horizontal distance as vertical height.
Since sun rises and sets, the sun will pass thru 30 degrees above horizon, twice a day if in summer and most place people live. And roughly between 30 degrees rising and setting is period of time called solar peak hours.
If you point a solar array at the the sun when it’s 30 degrees or lower you can a lot less energy as compared to sun at 30 degrees or higher above the horizon,
And sunlight gets progressive weaker as lower than 30 degrees above horizon.
And this is worse if one has 2 atm atmosphere and if had .6 atmosphere at 30 degree the amount sunlight would close to amount sunlight you when sun is nearer zenith [zenith is 90 degrees above horizon]
@Jopo “An atom or molecule emitting a photon is radiating out to space. And we have lot’s of photons at all levels.”
See, that’s sort of what I’m getting regarding emissions height but don’t have the background. My thinking is that if molecules are emitting at all levels in the atmosphere and if these emissions are at many levels in the EM spectra, then it’d seem that at least some of these emissions would fall in the realm of the wavelength of the atmospheric window and thus be emitted to space. But I don’t know if that’s right. Just at thought at the moment.
Hi Don,
seems like your thoughts and my thoughts are seeking informed responses.
I too believe that emissions occur at ALL LEVLES.
And that these emissions are subject to the Stefan Boltzmann law as well.
Atoms or molecules emitting energy at 500millibar are no different to that being emitted from the sun at ?????????? BAR
My views are that all elements are emitting at a wavelength via emission or conduction at a lower energy than what what was absorbed.
Dont ask me the mechanism. I want to know that too.
I need more education in that area to assist my thoughts or to be told NO I am on the wrong tact.
@Jopo People are busy so I appreciate responses so far. Yes, it can be a bit difficult for those who aren’t physicists to figure things out, but that’s what books (and websites) are for.
Dr. Nikolov and others are working at a very high theoretical level but I’m looking more at the logic of the concepts. I come at this from the point of view that ‘nothing makes sense’: nothing is happening that we’re told is happening from CO2. In particular, I come from a reef science perspective (but not a reef scientist.) We’re told that reefs are dying due to CO2, but this is complete BS, and easily demonstrated. We know the true causes of reef decline: overfishing and pollution. CO2 has zero to do with it.
Same with sea level rise: it’s happening, but it makes no sense to say that this is because of CO2 because it’s been going on since 1900, at least. Much of this rise is actually due to subsidence, not rising seas.
Same with polar bears: polar bears are fine. Etc., etc.
So I can demonstrate that nothing is really happening but more importantly to me, I need to know something about the physics of the theory that says something is happening. So I’m currently looking at skew-t diagrams and I have an idea to look at historical skew-t diagrams (don’t yet know how far back they go) to look for the signature of atmospheric CO2 murkiness that (supposedly) inhibits cooling at TOA in more recent skew-t diagrams. I doubt I’ll find it.
And then I’m trying to figure out how radiative effects come into this when there are no radiative terms in the lapse rate equations. It’s a puzzle.
@Don132
You mentioned Skew-T and I am lost.
I am an electrician who was taught how electricity worked back in the Eighties.
Electron hole theory and gas discharge systems still resonates with me pretty good. Hence my dubious approach to the ghe bs. Understanding who / what Faraday, Lorenz and Kirchhoff were preaching back then relative to magnetic field and electrons/flow was a prerequisite for being a sparky. Today I have so much scepticism and I call bull shit.
Note. A coulomb is but a derivative of the FARADAY CONSTANT. Our atmosphere is a capacitor! And like a capacitor the atmospheric charge and discharge is dependent upon the inverse square law.
I am still winging it but I know I am close.
@Jopo a skew-T is a diagram of atmospheric radiosonde readings. https://airsnrt.jpl.nasa.gov/SkewT_info.html
Real-time diagrams: https://weather.rap.ucar.edu/upper/
Apparently these go back to at least 1947 but I haven’t had time yet to look into historic charts.
The back radiation story is, I think, dead: no one can seriously believe that back-radiation warms the surface (even though that theory still hangs around.) So that leaves the murkiness theory: the atmosphere is murky to IR emissions except at TOA, which is getting higher due to CO2. Yikes. Like Pierrehumbert says, it’ll only take a couple of hundred feet of raising emissions height, and then we “count down from the lapse rate” to get a boiling planet. Yikes. Except, we have an atmospheric IR window ….
So emissions height is a key concept and that’s related to lapse rate, and lapse rate is reflected in skew-T diagrams. In fact in these particular diagrams I believe that’s the lapse rate line also plotted, along with dew point and temperature: https://weather.cod.edu/analysis/
https://weather.cod.edu/analysis/ Go to ‘upper air soundings’ to get skew-T diagrams for various locations (added bonus: a slider for various times and days on the bottom.) Here’s a site that has historic skew-T diagrams, with some going back as far as 1947 (although for practical purposes, I’ve found that 1960 is about as early as one can go.)
So far this is what I’ve found and I’m going to build on this. They’ve been many different types of refutations of the CO2 warming theory but this one relies on what atmospheric profiles derived from balloon measurements actually tell us.
A quick tutorial on Skew-T diagrams: temperature is at the bottom and is skewed to the right at 45 degrees, hence the name. Pressure is on the y axis. On the diagrams in the above link, the lapse rate for the parcel of air is plotted as a blue line. So: fairly smooth blue line is lapse rate, plotted reddish line is temp, and squiggly black line is dew point. On the right y-axis is a reading called L57, and this is the lapse rate in degrees C/kilometer for the 700 mb–500mb pressure levels. Here is explanation of various symbols for those interested: https://www.theweatherprediction.com/thermo/parameters/
The earth’s emissions height is given as something like 8-10 kilometers up. On the other hand, Clive Best notes the effective emissions height for CO2 at 400 ppm at about four km. No matter: the effective emissions height is in the troposphere and we’re told that with added CO2 murkiness, the emissions height will rise.
If the emissions height rises, then the atmosphere won’t be able to cool as quickly as it had prior to atmospheric CO2 murkiness that inhibits cooling through radiative epicycles.
But does it?
If we look at Skew-T diagrams from 1960 to 2020 (for example) and we pick 10-year intervals and the same time and day each month (say, every June 25) then we find that the air cools about the same as it always had, and that the tropopause is seen where the air becomes isothermal, somewhere around 150mb. For the stations I’ve looked at so far, this ‘ultimate cooling temp’ of the troposphere has remained roughly the same throughout the decades. In some cases cooling levels off at about -70C, in some cases, -50C, etc. Roughly the same, although there’s a good deal of variation.
So using these diagrams, we can see that the ‘count down from emissions height’ argument makes no sense, since these diagrams clearly contain cooling rates, not heating rates (if we do want to ‘count down, then let’s start at the tropopause whose temperature at any given station for any given month since 1960 appears to be roughly the same: no effect from CO2.) We can see that the lapse rate varies considerably, too, for what it’s worth. We can see that there’s been no detectable interference in the rate of cooling of the atmosphere as CO2 has increased. In fact, we know from the dry lapse rate equation that even water vapor doesn’t inhibit atmospheric cooling with temp, since the rate is the same no matter how much water vapor is in the air up to the dew point, where the moist lapse rate equation takes over.
This is where I am so far.
Historical Skew-T (forgot link earlier): https://clouds.ucdavis.edu/teachtools/skewt/
I might be presenting these ideas to an audience of people connected to the medical profession. But can someone please point me to answers to objections raised by Wentworth in his objects #4 and #5, in this link? https://www.quora.com/Did-Nikolov-and-Zeller-prove-that-atmospheres-warm-planets-only-through-pressure-and-not-as-a-result-of-greenhouse-gases/answer/Bob-Wentworth#hdbdE
Thanks in advance!
Bob Wentworth:
Summary of objections:
4.Connection to Physics: Hypothesis that Pressure Determines Temperature
I offer a simple “big picture” argument that demonstrates that the idea of pressure causing planets to be warmer can’t possibly be true.
For those interested, I also explain why the existence of an “adiabatic lapse rate” doesn’t mean that adiabatic processes can heat a planet.
5. Connection to Physics: Hypothesis that Radiative Properties do not affect Temperature
I offer a simple “big picture” argument to demonstrate that core principles of physics say it must be true that greenhouse gases warm planets.
Detailed objections (explanations of above):
4. To see the big picture, assume that what N&Z says is true: that an atmosphere without any greenhouse gases would warm a planet.
Suppose our planet initially has no atmosphere, and has a temperature T(na). The surface of the planet is receiving energy from the Sun, P(in) . This is balanced by energy being radiated to space with power P(out) , where P(out)=P(in) . Now we add an atmosphere which is transparent to electromagnetic radiation, and allow the situation to come to a new equilibrium. If N&Z’s pressure-warms-planets hypothesis is true, the temperature rises to a new steady state temperature T>T(na) . But, according the Stefan-Botzmann law, the power radiated is proportional to [t to 4th power] . So, the power radiated by the surface has increased. Because the atmosphere is assumed to be transparent to thermal radiation, all of what was radiated by the surface will reach space, so T(out) will be larger than it was. Now, P(out)>P(in) . This means that the system is not in equilibrium, and T is not the steady-state temperature of the planet. The power flow imbalance will cause the surface of the planet to cool down, contradicting the hypothesis that the atmosphere had created a new, higher, steady-state temperature for the surface of the planet.
The only way around this logic is if the atmosphere spontaneously creates energy out of nothing, and uses this something-from-nothing energy to increase the energy flow
to the surface. However, energy conservation rules out this possibility.
5. [I don’t think I can easily summarize that here without the diagram in the link.]
@Don123,
You are becoming dangerously incoherent in your reasoning. Arguing against empirical evidence from across the Solar System and basic Atmospheric Thermodynamics using some half-baked thought experiment is simply insane… Get it together, my friend! 🙂
@ Dr. Nikolov
The more I think about it, the more elegant it is. I believe many people don’t understand gravitational acceleration because they’re swimming in it. The ideas (realities) of weight, mass, gravity, offer a surprising view of our atmosphere that’s a Copernican revolution that logically explains surface temp.
Regarding Wentworth’s objections, I think I have those pretty much figured out. No time now to explain but his objection #5, in a nutshell, assumes the conclusion.
[…] Don132 on Ned Nikolov & Karl Zeller:… […]
[…] ongoing adjustment of global temperature datasets. This new study applies theory developed in Ned and Karl’s previous paper to enable quantification of the global temperature drop during the “1970s ice-age scare”. […]
Gravity is related to a planet’s mass, is related to gravitational acceleration is related to weight is related to pressure is related to temperature.
If we have a more massive earth with twice the gravity of our own, that means that the gravitational acceleration is doubled. Plug that into the dry lapse rate formula and account for minor differences in the specific heat of dry air and we have a massive change in surface temperature even if we assume that the 500 hPa height is the same for both earths, roughly 6 km up (assume a specific time and location– e.g., radiosonde data for Albany, NY, 00Z on 23 July 2021, for present conditions.) The 500 hPa level would in actuality be much higher in a twice-gravity earth but for the sake of argument we’ll assume it’s the same.
This assumes we use the ‘count down from a certain height’ trick of the CO2 catastrophists. They use emissions height. We’re using the same principle but using a pressure level of 500 hPa (about 6 km up.) We necessarily have a greater lapse rate with a higher gravity (because we have a higher value for gravitational acceleration in our numerator,) thus more temperature change with elevation and thus a hotter surface temp as we ‘count down.’ As we increase gravity we necessarily increase atmospheric pressure, since the atmosphere’s weight is dependent on mass and gravity.
This is a fairly simple proof that atmospheric pressure derived from gravity determines temperature, all else equal. It’s not exactly ‘gravitational heating,’ since there are some folks who can’t seem to wrap their heads around the relationships; it’s actually ‘gravitational acceleration’ heating. If that helps 🙂
Isn’t N&Z’s ATE just the additional energy resulting from the “work done” on the atmospheric mass by gravity?
@ Ian F that’s what I’ve been thinking.
Take an earth with a gravity 2x earth’s, then gravitational acceleration is doubled (according to Wikipedia!) Plug that new acceleration into a new dry lapse rate and get 19.5 K/km and multiply by a height of 18 km and we get 351 K temp difference. Assume the temp at 18km is 0 degrees K, ‘count down’ 18 km and the surface temp is of course 351 K, or 78 C or 172 F.
That seems to prove that gravitational acceleration matters because we know that the temp at 18 km must be greater than 0 K.
Keep it simple Don 132, The N&Z paper adequately quantifies the ATE from real observed data.
@Ian F
I’m trying to keep it simple. 99% of folks can’t understand the N&Z papers. It has to be expressed in a way that common folk understand, and I think that’s what Dr. Nikolov was trying to do in his excellent video. I think what I said about the lapse rate with 2x gravity is fairly easy to understand, and addresses the predominant idea at WUWT that gravity ain’t doing nothing no-how.
One of the key points is that the ‘hot spot’ is nowhere seen in radiosonde data, and we see no signature of the IR cooling rates that are plugged into the models. So this is also an easy-to-understand idea.
But another thought I had while reading someone’s reference to Einstein from the Talkshop somewhere (https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/02/16/albert-einstein-said-no-to-co2-radiative-warming-of-the-atmosphere/) is that the slower processes of conduction, convection, and gravitational acceleration happen around the radiative processes, which are at the speed of light. So in a sense all the radiative stuff is flashing in the sky and meanwhile in the background, as it were, conduction, convection, and gravitational acceleration are happening. In a sense, the larger, slower atmospheric processes are transparent to the speed-of-light radiative processes.
To put this another way, those who uphold the atmospheric radiative paradigm (for a warmer surface) believe that gravity functions within the context of radiative processes, while it seems that the truth is that radiative processes exist within the context of gravity.
This is my maybe feeble attempt to simplify N&Z into a conceptual framework that can be grasped easily. I’m not a physicist so that’s why I’m sounding off here to see if anything I’m saying makes sense.
I’m connected to a decent audience through substack, and because of what happened during Covid and because many people understand that all of it was irrational and unscientific, I know people are waking up to the fact that bad science is a feature, not a glitch, in a lot of the scientific/medical world. It really is an opportunity, and actually an obligation, to now get the N&Z ideas out to a wider audience. Many people are ready to hear this, and just like they’re now saying to the medical established, F— off, I believe they’re ready to say this to our alarmist scientists as well. One more thing: the idea of catastrophic CO2 warming is central to the UN/Great Reset ideology, and give that ideology moral justification. So we really do have an obligation and an opportunity now.
Don 132: Take an earth with a gravity 2x earth’s, then gravitational acceleration is doubled (according to Wikipedia!) Plug that new acceleration into a new dry lapse rate and get 19.5 K/km and multiply…
Have a look at lapse rates on other planets/moons and you’ll find it doesn’t work that way.
But keep trying to make an easy to understand formulation and we’ll work on it together, because I agree with you that we have to find a way to debunk the CO2 myth that anyone can understand.
@ Tallbloke
I don’t have time to figure this out right now but yes, the slopes look the same at 0.5 bar pressure. But this is pressure, whereas the lapse rate is given in units of elevation.
This might or might not be interesting: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-Niclasen-2/publication/306082807_The_Lapse_Rate_Atmospheric_Model/links/57cc048808ae59825185aad6/The-Lapse-Rate-Atmospheric-Model.pdf?origin=publication_detail I haven’t had time to look at this carefully yet.
Lapse rates in K/km here:
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Atmospheric-lapse-rates-of-the-planets-and-selected-satellites_tbl2_281525629
Thanks.
Don132,
I think it’s noble to try explaining science concepts to the public. Keep in mind that even the mere repletion of a new idea over time opens people’s mind to accept it. For example, repeating the statement “the atmosphere warms the surface through its weight above unit area or total pressure” is sufficient to start changing people’s perspective. This is how the greenhouse-gas warming got to be accepted by the public despite the fact that the proposed self-heating mechanism is physically absurd.
I think the best illustration of the pressure effect on air temperature is the cooling one experiences when ascending a mountain. Technically, this is the lapse rate, which is a product of 2 rates of change: temperature change with pressure and the pressure decrease with elevation. In math terms:
dT/dz = (dT/dP)*(dP/dz)
Everyone can understand the concept that air temperature decreases with altitude because pressure drops with elevation.
UCAR says: ‘Air pressure changes with altitude.
Air is all around us, but we cannot see it. Gravity from the Earth pulls air down – this is called air pressure. We don’t feel this pressure because our bodies push an equal amount of pressure outward.’
https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/atmosphere/change-atmosphere-altitude
– – –
Somehow these explanations don’t sound convincing 🤔
Dr. Nikolov said:
“Here is how pressure enhances the available energy in a compressible gas system. When gravity forces the gas molecules to be closer together, their electric fields start interacting and give rise to repulsive forces that make the molecules vibrate faster, which increases the gas’ internal kinetic energy and temperature. One should not forget that gas molecules are not like inert billiard balls, but represent (on a quantum level) vortices of spinning electromagnetic energy in space. The energy originates from the charged particles (protons and electrons) composing the molecules.”
The idea that there’s massive pressure at our surface– much more than people realize because they’re swimming in it– is easy to convey to people. This idea alone blows a lot of minds and can start people thinking.
But, what Dr. Nikolov said in the above quote is the heart of the matter and for everything I know, is the real sticking point. How can this be explained in more-or-less irrefutable concepts? Where’s the proof of this mechanism? So point me in the right direction, please, and I’ll work on that. Here’s something I’ve found which is right up my alley: fairly simple to understand: https://opentextbc.ca/chemistry/chapter/10-1-intermolecular-forces/ So, things like that.
@oldbrew in your link, they forgot to tell us that 14.7 psi atmospheric pressure is equal to 2117 pounds per square foot, which is more than a grand piano weighs. We don’t feel it because the pressure is equalized, inside and out, above and below. A deep sea fish doesn’t feel the pressure, either. So, this idea is easy to convey to the public and is fairly mind-blowing and will get people thinking.
Another thing I’m working on is comparing radiosonde data for July, 1975 to data for July, 2021. Using four locations: Albuquerque, Albany, Grantley Adams (Barbados) and Tasiilag (Greenland.) My idea is that CO2 murkiness that supposedly raises the emissions height must slow the lapse rate in the troposphere; I’m comparing surface data to the level where there’s no noticeable isotherm (tropopause,) which varies from station to station and is noted by looking at daily skew-T’s for that month (i.e., eyeballing.) So for each day of July, I only use four data points: surface elevation (doesn’t vary for location for that year; 1975 and 2021 elevations might vary slightly) surface temp, 200 hPa height (the pressure level varies because I don’t want any data in an isotherm at higher elevations; sometimes it’s 250 hPa or 500 hPa, but this height is the same for that station for the month and for 1975 and 2021) and then temp at the 200 hPa (or whatever) level. From these I calculate lapse rate for each day, among other things. If CO2 is inhibiting cooling of the troposphere, we should see evidence of that from 1975-2021. So far, I don’t. This is part of the proof that CO2 isn’t really doing anything and doesn’t directly relate to the N&Z theory.
The people I’m talking to are ready to hear this stuff and are ready to accept the N&Z theory. I have to make sure I have it right, though. So, I deeply appreciate all the help here. Thank you!
“Everyone can understand the concept that air temperature decreases with altitude because pressure drops with elevation.”
But here’s the trick: the alarmists say that the lapse rate only cools the atmosphere, it doesn’t heat it. The greenhouse effect is what warms the surface.
But then they invoke the lapse rate to save the theory when they say we count down from the new, higher, colder emissions height using the lapse rate and then get a warmer surface temp. Yikes!
(Apologize if this is a duplicate comment. Glitches.)
Dr. Nikolov said:
“Here is how pressure enhances the available energy in a compressible gas system. When gravity forces the gas molecules to be closer together, their electric fields start interacting and give rise to repulsive forces that make the molecules vibrate faster, which increases the gas’ internal kinetic energy and temperature. One should not forget that gas molecules are not like inert billiard balls, but represent (on a quantum level) vortices of spinning electromagnetic energy in space. The energy originates from the charged particles (protons and electrons) composing the molecules.”
The idea that there’s massive pressure at our surface– much more than people realize because they’re swimming in it– is easy to convey to people. This idea alone blows a lot of minds and can start people thinking.
But, what Dr. Nikolov said in the above quote is the heart of the matter and for everything I know, is the real sticking point. How can this be explained in more-or-less irrefutable concepts? Where’s the proof of this mechanism? So point me in the right direction, please, and I’ll work on that. Here’s something I’ve found which is right up my alley: fairly simple to understand: https://opentextbc.ca/chemistry/chapter/10-1-intermolecular-forces/ So, things like that.
@oldbrew in your link, they forgot to tell us that 14.7 psi atmospheric pressure is equal to 2117 pounds per square foot, which is more than a grand piano weighs. We don’t feel it because the pressure is equalized, inside and out, above and below. A deep sea fish doesn’t feel the pressure, either. So, this idea is easy to convey to the public and is fairly mind-blowing and will get people thinking.
Another thing I’m working on is comparing radiosonde data for July, 1975 to data for July, 2021. Using four locations: Albuquerque, Albany, Grantley Adams (Barbados) and Tasiilag (Greenland.) My idea is that CO2 murkiness that supposedly raises the emissions height must slow the lapse rate in the troposphere; I’m comparing surface data to the level where there’s no noticeable isotherm (tropopause,) which varies from station to station and is noted by looking at daily skew-T’s for that month (i.e., eyeballing.) So for each day of July, I only use four data points: surface elevation (doesn’t vary for location for that year; 1975 and 2021 elevations might vary slightly) surface temp, 200 hPa height (the pressure level varies because I don’t want any data in an isotherm at higher elevations; sometimes it’s 250 hPa or 500 hPa, but this height is the same for that station for the month and for 1975 and 2021) and then temp at the 200 hPa (or whatever) level. From these I calculate lapse rate for each day, among other things. If CO2 is inhibiting cooling of the troposphere, we should see evidence of that from 1975-2021. So far, I don’t. This is part of the proof that CO2 isn’t really doing anything and doesn’t directly relate to the N&Z theory.
The people I’m talking to are ready to hear this stuff and are ready to accept the N&Z theory. I have to make sure I have it right, though. So, I deeply appreciate all the help here. Thank you!
Don 132,
I am inspired by your efforts to find a simplified mathematical explanation as to why CO2 does not have a material effect on on atmospheric temperature so I thought I might give a simple non mathematical explanation that may be of interest to you.
First let me say that I am not a scientist I am an engineer. This is my non mathematical understanding of why it is physically impossible for CO2 to have a material effect on our atmospheric temperature. This simplistic reasoning is of course open to challenge.
My basic criteria. Radiation is electromagnetic energy of oscillation that of itself does not have temperature because it has no mass and temperature is a measure of mean kinetic energy. The range of electromagnetic frequencies given off by an object is a function of the temperature of the object. In space or a gas radiation exists as a continuum of frequencies of oscillation that do not interact and therefore their energy values cannot be added only averaged. The energy value at each frequency is equal to Plank’s constant times the frequency. The electromagnetic energy is transferred to molecules in a gas by resonating with the molecules atomic bond oscillating frequencies (absorption frequencies) and the sharing of amplitudes (energies).
In 1901 the Swedish physicist Ångström by experiment showed the limited absorption spectrum of CO2 debunking the Arrhenius’ thesis by arguing that “Arrhenius did not distinguish water vapor from C02, and attributed the effects of the former to the latter”. Rasool and Schneider of NASA calculated in 1971, the same limited effect which Ångström also calculated and experimentally demonstrated in 1901.
The absorption spectrum of the CO2 molecule shows that it that it is only able to absorb about 16% of the infrared frequencies emitted by earth. A midrange of infrared frequencies with an average energy value of about 0.08 electron volts. To put that into perspective the average energy value of visible light frequencies is about 2.4 electron volts or about 30 times the energy absorbed by CO2. Further, the CO2 in our atmosphere is currently about 400 parts per million (ppm). Bearing in mind that temperature in our atmosphere is a measure of the mean kinetic energy of all of the molecules in the atmosphere that means that this tiny amount of energy absorbed by the CO2 molecule must be shared with 2500 other molecules in the atmosphere such that its effect on temperature would be miniscule. A miniscule amount quantified in N&Z’s CO2 sensitivity calculation using CO2 partial pressure.
@ Ian F
Thank you. I’ll have to read that over several times. I like it. It explains why we see no reflection of CO2’s inhibition of tropospheric cooling in radiosonde readings.
What happens to the electron volts of gas molecules as they get compressed together? How does compression increase the average translational (kinetic) speed of the molecules?
I find the idea that air cools as it rises because the molecules do ‘work’ to expand and thus lose energy, unsatisfactory. The idea that it’s about the energy between molecules rather than the work they’re doing makes sense.
Don 132,
Don’t complicate things. What I have conveyed to you is a simple alternative explanation as to why the CO2 molecules in our atmosphere are not able to absorb sufficient infrared energy to have a material effect on our atmospheric temperature. That’s all. It’s not related to pressure or reflection.
An electron volt is a unit of energy equivalent to 1.60218e-19 joules.
Ian F,
Got it. I’m quite sure I can easily refute the theory of CO2 catastrophic warming from a variety of angles, including the one you presented. The other angles include: no predicted hotspot, no evidence that CO2 is affecting reefs at all (despite claims of catastrophe,) no acceleration in sea level rise (which is natural,) and, from Koonin’s latest book, no evidence that record highs in the US are increasing despite that we’re told they are. Also, my research into skew-T diagrams.
But if there’s a clear way to explain the ATE, then I’d like to include that, too. This is a bit more complicated because it involves overturning a well-established paradigm, so that’s why I’m asking if your ideas can be related to the ATE.
For anyone wondering where all this is going, it’s here: https://jimreagen.substack.com/ This is me under a pseudonym to protect the innocent. My substack is no big deal (I’m a bit embarrassed to even link to it) but through comments I’ve made on others’ substacks regarding big picture ideas of what’s happening in our world today, I’ve gotten subscriptions from people who themselves have much, much larger audiences.
People are ready to accept alternative explanations that don’t depend on authoritative ‘the science is settled’ pronouncements.
What happens to the electron volts of gas molecules as they get compressed together?
More per unit of volume, presumably 🤔
Don 132.
I am surprised that you asked me if I had a clear explanation of the ATE because I thought that Dr Nikolov’s explanation was clear, accurate and concise. I can’t offer anything better. I noticed that you ask for proof of his explanation. The problem with that is that the proof is likely found in the very complicated mathematics of quantum mechanics. Mathematics that neither you, me nor 95% of the public would hope to understand. If it’s simplicity your looking for, I say, don’t go there.
I am indulging in a bit of mentoring here because I have whizzed around the sun nearly 78 times so I am well traveled. I don’t mean to offend but it seems to me that you don’t have a clear picture in your mind of what you want to achieve with all the information you have accumulated. Maybe I’m wrong, but to me from reading your comments you don’t seem to have a clear end goal.
I won’t be making any further comment.
@Ian F I take no offense, believe me, and appreciate your comments.
My clear end goal is to explain to others in a convincing manner, with logical concepts that are as close to self-evident as possible, in order to convince my readers that 1) the science of catastrophic CO2 warming is complete pseudoscience, and 2) the NZ description of atmospheric physics is the correct one. I’m doing this because people are ready to hear this, because so many people now understand that so-called ‘medical science’ has been deeply warped and they’re ready to see that climate science is the same, only maybe worse (but having followed so-called medical science for years, I doubt it.) #1 is easy: consider it done, so far as the logic of it goes.
I ‘intuitively’ understand the NZ explanation and it seems simple to me. But as I see it, this paradigm directly and fiercely contradicts the reigning paradigm, so to overthrow the reigning paradigm it has to be more than, ‘look, it’s so simple!’ It’s about logic: the logic of the paradigms. That’s my focus, and that’s what I’m struggling for.
I’m reading this: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-loschmidt-gravito-thermal-effect-old-controversy-new-relevance/ Very interesting. I’m trying to sort it out for myself so that I have a clear understanding of what I’m saying. I haven’t quite figured out about the lapse-rate and how it can be proved that this is from gravity, not radiative effects.
I was heartened to find comments in the above link that echoed my own: radiative effects happen within the context of gravitational effects, and so one. Ideas about enthalpy as what we measure and not so much ‘temperature.’ And so on.
Please continue commenting. I’m thinking out load here and I’m doing it so that I can present these ideas to a wider audience.
@Don132,
I agree that the main problem for some people to grasp our new concept of the Atmospheric Thermal Effect (ATE) is that it’s so much different from the current paradigm centred around IR back radiation. It’s difficult once you’ve been conditioned to think in a certain way for decades to suddenly switch viewpoints and realize that the atmospheric infrared LW radiation is a byproduct (consequence) rather than a cause of ATE. Confusing the effect for its cause has a dramatic negative impact on our ability to properly understand the system at the most fundamental level. This is why so many aspects of the radiative “greenhouse” theory are backward and upside down with respect to physical reality such as the belief that Earth’s global surface temperaures is controlled by the radiative balance (or imbalance) at the top of the atmosphere…
@ Ned Nikolov, Ph.D
I re-read your 2017 paper. It makes sense.
I also read the Kennedy paper that tallbloke referenced and found that interesting. https://www.naun.org/main/NAUN/energyenvironment/2015/a302011-078.pdf Not going to pretend I have more than a dim understanding of this paper but I’m working on it. What it seems to be saying is that pressure re-distributes the energy of molecules such that more pressure means more translational energy (‘temperature’) at the expense of rotational and vibrational energy. So this seems to be the mechanism I was looking for. Just a bit of confirmation of the NZ theory that explains the molecular mechanism.
The ideas in Kennedy’s paper seem to explain Chinook winds, for example, at a molecular level, and to confirm that this ‘compressive heating’ actually exists. It would also explain how the lapse rate works.
So when those who say the radiative paradigm is dominant look at how pressure itself induces more translational energy corresponding to the lapse rate, then it should be apparent that there’s no room for radiative effects to dominant. Radiative effects exist within the context of a gravitational field and these supposed CO2 radiative effects are nowhere to be seen in skew-T diagrams that span some 45 years.
Don 132.
I will make one last response since you have taken the trouble to reply to my last not so kind comments. I notice that you describe in your goal 1) catastrophic CO2 warming as science. To me it is not science but mostly propaganda and this will be the challenge for you in your quest to overthrow the reigning paradigm as you put it.
The trouble is that the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis harbors a “prophecy of doom” which is easily propagandized by the media, the weak politicians, the self-righteous UN bureaucrats who hypothesize a world where the people will own nothing (except them) and everybody will be happy (except them who will be ecstatic) and the business elites who just follow the money. The AGW fraternity have relentlessly pounded the general public for 35 years with homogenized and cherry picked data and images, such that the public has been indoctrinated into accepting an illusory truth that the poor CO2 molecule is public enemy No.1 and needs to be exterminated less we all sizzle on the beach in the middle of winter with no water to drink or dive into the sea from the roofs of our once comfortable homes.
It’s ridiculous, but this is what you will be up against in your quest to reach your goal 2). So I wish you well in your quest but I fear that only the power of nature itself will awaken the public from its coma by a bone chilling cold brought on by a natural solar minimum.
I know what I’m up against. People are ready to hear the truth because many people now understand that Covid was nothing but lies, and the mainstream media was part of those lies.
The global government that’s trying to establish itself is premised on the necessity to do this to ‘stay safe’ from catastrophic CO2 warming. Many people now understand what’s been going on in the background: Covid has opened many eyes. People are ready to listen to reason.
Don132,
I hope that you are successful in your endeavour to make people see reason.
Don132,
I agree that COVID made many people see the lies coming from “reputable” Institutions, and that fact may have helped them become open to alternative explanations about “climate change” as well…
For one, we now have a solid numerical proof that the global temperature record has been fabricated to show a continuous warming throughout the 20th Century, while in reality the, the last Century saw a negative temperature trend:
I agree less clouds ( caused by more solar wind and less cosmic rays ) has caused warming .
However
“…adiabatic enhancement of such energy by atmospheric pressure,…”
And the pressure is enhanced by temperature, which is enhanced by gravity.
Roger,
The surface air pressure is NOT enhanced by temperature! It’s a gross mistake to think like this, because the average surface air pressure depends on atmospheric mass, gravity and the planet’s surface area, and has NO dependence on temperature.
[…] Fonte : Tallbloke […]
I made a quick calculation.
The surface atmospheric pressure of earth is 101325 pascals. This is the same as an energy density of 101325 joules per cubic meter.
If density of air at 288K is 1225 grams per cubic meter and the specific heat capacity is 1.007 Joules per gm K, then if:
Heat capacity (C) = Q joules/mass (m) x Change in Temperature
Change in Temperature = Q/m x C = 101325/1225 x 1.007 = 82K
This says that atmospheric pressure increases temperature by 82K. Tell me what I am doing wrong.
Dr. Nikolov, have you sent this paper to any scientific journal in order to be peer-reviewed? If not, what was the reason?