NOAA on water vapor – 2019 edition

[click on image to enlarge]

NOAA’s latest offering on this topic is here. Of course we’re pitched into the world of ‘greenhouse gas’ theory. But it seems to be a world of considerable uncertainty, if the phrases highlighted (by the Talkshop) are anything to go by. Most attention is given to CO2 in the media, but it’s only a very minor player in the atmosphere (0.04%). There’s no accepted figure for ‘water vapor’ (NOAA uses US spelling) as exact data doesn’t exist, although ballpark estimates from various readings can be found. Why do greenhouse gas believers obsess about CO2 when they don’t know a lot about what’s going on with water vapor, which is on the face of it far more important to their theory?

Water Vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which is why it is addressed here first. However, changes in its concentration is also considered to be a result of climate feedbacks related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialization.

The feedback loop in which water is involved is critically important to projecting future climate change, but as yet is still fairly poorly measured and understood.

Oil and gas majors plan to spend $4.9 trillion on fuel exploration

North Sea oil platform [image credit: matchtech.com]

Stating the obvious, but they’re either going to find a lot of fuel or lose a lot of money. Chances of the demand fading any time soon still look remote, with global consumption at or near 100 million barrels of oil *per day*. Many believers in greenhouse gas theories of course continue to swallow the propaganda that climate disaster lurks around every corner.

Plans by oil and gas majors to spend $4.9 trillion on fuel exploration are “poles apart” from the goal of the Paris climate deal to limit the global temperature rise, a new analysis showed Tuesday.

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb annually, a string of warnings from the world’s top climate scientists have questioned mankind’s ability to prevent the worst effects of global warming while sticking with an economy geared around fossil fuels.

In October, the UN’s climate change panel (IPCC) issued a landmark report saying that a 1.5 Celsius target laid out in the Paris accord could only be hit with near-immediate and drastic cuts in production and consumption of oil, gas and coal.

Natural climate processes overshadow recent human-induced Walker circulation trends

Credit: PAR @ Wikipedia

If you think you saw something about this a few days ago, you’re right. This article is a sort of follow-up that has appeared in Nature Climate Change on 1st April [sic] – abstract here. The ‘recent human-induced Walker circulation trends’ in the headline seem to be an artefact of some of the climate models, judging by the report. The authors make a telling point: ‘In contrast to the observed strengthening, the majority of climate computer models simulate a gradual weakening of the Walker Circulation when forced by increasing greenhouse gas concentrations’. So they got it exactly backwards? How unfortunate.

A new study, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that the recent intensification of the equatorial Pacific wind system, known as Walker Circulation, is unrelated to human influences and can be explained by natural processes, reports Phys.org.

This result ends a longstanding debate on the drivers of an unprecedented atmospheric trend, which contributed to a three-fold acceleration of sea level rise in the western tropical Pacific, as well as to the global warming hiatus.

WCC4 Rome: Interview with Nikolov and Zeller

I got back from Rome last night following the highly successful World Climate Conference. Quite a number of CO2 sceptics gave presentations, which were politely received and discussed by all present. We even made a few converts. Here’s a short interview I made with Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller where they give their impressions and some insight into their paradigm shifting discovery of the temperature-pressure relationship which holds good across the entire solar system.

Ned and Karl’s two papers are here:

New Insights on the Physical Nature of the Atmospheric Greenhouse
Effect Deduced from an Empirical Planetary Temperature Model

On the average temperature of airless spherical bodies and the magnitude of Earth’s atmospheric thermal effect

They show that the uplift in temperature on Earth’s surface due to the presence of the atmosphere is not 33K as the current greenhouse theory states but 90K, and is due to atmospheric pressure at the surface, not the back radiation from ‘greenhouse gases’.

We’ve been following Ned and Karl’s work since 2010 here at the Talkshop. They are finally getting heard in a wider forum.

Understanding multi-decadal global warming rate changes

Credit: sciencedaily.com

Maybe a glimmer of recognition for natural warming from the oceans here, while still believing that alleged man-made effects on air temperatures are somehow warming the water in a cyclical fashion. Could there be a hint of strained logic here? Phys.org reports.

Despite persistently increasing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries, the globally averaged surface temperature has shown distinct multi-decadal fluctuations since 1900, including two weak global warming slowdowns in the mid-20th century and early 21st century and two strong global warming accelerations in the early and late 20th century.

The multi-decadal global warming rate changes are primarily attributed to multiple ocean surface temperature changes, according to research by Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

India to fight climate change through less flatulent livestock

Credit: pbs.org

You couldn’t make it up. Heartlander Magazine reporting.

Despite its recent announcement it may not adopt the Paris Climate agreement before the end of 2016, India is moving ahead with a unique effort attempting to reduce the greenhouse gases its agricultural sector emits into the atmosphere: creating cows and livestock that burp and fart less. 

ESA finds a frigid surprise hiding at Venus’ poles

Ultraviolet image of Venus’ clouds [credit: NASA]

Is it the cloud cover or the enormous atmospheric pressure at the surface that makes Venus hot? Whatever, it seems the poles are colder than Earth, and by a wide margin, as Astronomy.com reports. Models based on a ‘greenhouse effect’ weren’t expecting this.

Thanks to a thick layer of cloud cover trapping in heat, Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system, with temperatures boiling over at 850 degrees Fahrenheit (454 C). But in a study published last week in Nature Physics, the European Space Agency found something surprising at the planet’s poles: temperatures more frigid than anywhere on Earth.

Why the science of clouds is still cloudy

Cloud formation [image credit:NASA]

This extract from a Phys.org article looks at some of the difficulties climate models have with clouds, a subject the Talkshop featured recently. One scientist says: ‘A key problem is that we generally do not have data on clouds from the pre-industrial era, before there was pollution, for comparison with the clouds of today.’ Another good reason to use more caution over possible future climate trends, perhaps?

Cloudy complexity

Currently, when scientists use models to calculate the extent to which aerosols—through clouds—affect the earth’s climate, they get a much, much wider range and greater uncertainty than for greenhouse gases. Why?

What is the adiabatic lapse rate of air?

That’s the question posed by Scottish Sceptic here.

When explaining the greenhouse warming effect, I’ve avoided going into the cause of the adiabatic temperature change of the atmosphere as we get higher and instead used a hand waving argument that expanding air is cooler which has been enough to explain the necessary temperature gradient up through the atmosphere (link).

However, this isn’t really the mechanism behind the adiabatic lapse rate.

Water World

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Let’s put this up for discussion as the dominant role of WV often gets buried in all the focus on man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Musings from the Chiefio

This posting just points to a very well done page that calculates the relative contributions to the greenhouse effect as used by the AGW thesis, by various gasses. In particular, it includes water vapor. The result is a conclusion that human caused CO2 is not relevant to global temperature. Something I have said before, but without the nice graphs and calculations.

It really is all about the water on our water world.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Just how much of the “Greenhouse Effect” is caused by human activity?

It is about 0.28%, if water vapor is taken into account– about 5.53%, if not.

This point is so crucial to the debate over global warming that how water vapor is or isn’t factored into an analysis of Earth’s greenhouse gases makes the difference between describing a significant human contribution to the greenhouse effect, or a negligible one.

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New result shows CO2 has almost no effect on temperature

An article in the Daily Mail today piqued my interest. It trumpets empirical results which they say empirically confirm the theoretical CO2 greenhouse effect for the first time:

“Scientists have witnessed carbon dioxide trapping heat in the atmosphere above the United States, showing human-made climate change ‘in the wild’ for the first time.

A new study in the journal Nature demonstrates in real-time field measurements what scientists already knew from basic physics, lab tests, numerous simulations, temperature records and dozens of other climatic indicators.

They say it confirms the science of climate change and the amount of heat-trapping previously blamed on carbon dioxide.”

“These instruments, located at ARM research sites in Oklahoma and Alaska, measure thermal infrared energy that travels down through the atmosphere to the surface.

They can detect the unique spectral signature of infrared energy from CO2.

Other instruments at the two locations detect the unique signatures of phenomena that can also emit infrared energy, such as clouds and water vapor.

Ferenc Miskolczi: The Greenhouse Effect and the Infrared Radiative Structure of the Earth’s Atmosphere

Ferenc Miskolczi

Well here’s a nice surprise. Out of the blue, Dr Ferenc Miskolczi has dropped a link onto Tim Channon’s thread, which goes to his major new paper, published by the SEI. So we are privileged to be among the first to read it and start a discussion. It challenges the entire basis of the IPCC AGW theory by deriving a theoretical atmosphere which fits observations and demonstrates stability of the Earth’s radiative balance. Thanks Ferenc!

Ferenc Mikolczi 2014 Abstract

Roy Clark: A null hypothesis for CO2

Roy Clark phd has spent the last three years researching and writing this paper. It confirms my own research on the average sunspot number and the ocean equilibrium value, as well as extending my thoughts on the multi-decadal retention of heat energy in the worlds oceans into properly quantified analysis. This has enabled Roy to make much more detailed and definite statements about the relative importance of co2 in the atmosphere as an agent of climate change than I could. The paper is pay for, but at least the journal (Energy and Environment) has been consistently open minded about reviewing and publishing those scientists whose research findings are sometimes at odds with the so called mainstream consensus on this issue. The paper runs to 30 pages with many graphs and digrams and represents much better value and more bang for your buck than any other published paper on the subject I know of.  A version of the CA climate article should be published on the SSPI (Science and Public Policy Institute) website quite soon and I will revisit this paper after that has gone online.

Journal: Energy & Environment
Publisher: Multi Science Publishing
ISSN 0958-305X Issue Volume 21, Number 4 / August 2010
Category: Research Article DOI 10.1260/0958-305X.21.4.171 Pages 171-200
Date Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Author: Roy Clark, Ph.D.1 1
1336 N. Moorpark Road #224, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360 USA

Abstract:

Energy transfer at the Earth’s surface is examined from first principles. The effects on surface temperature of small changes in the solar constant caused by the sunspot cycle and small increases in downward long wave infrared (LWIR) flux due to a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration are considered in detail. The changes in the solar constant are sufficient to change ocean temperatures and alter the Earth’s climate.

Figure 4

The surface temperature changes produced by an increase in downward LWIR flux are too small to be measured and cannot cause climate change. The assumptions underlying the use of radiative forcing in climate models are shown to be invalid. A null hypothesis for CO2 is proposed that it is impossible to show that changes in CO2 concentration have caused any climate change, at least since the current composition of the atmosphere was set by ocean photosynthesis about one billion years ago.

http://multi-science.metapress.com/content/9p72043270187318/?p=2c519815645444e4ae47651096f785d4&pi=2

Via email, Roy has added an extra summary:

Why the sun is so important to climate

Why do we spend our time working on obscure stuff about the way the planets and sun bob about in space? Because changes in solar output are the primary driver of climate change on Earth not changes in the atmosphere. This shown by Miscolczi’s theory which is that the ocean/atmosphere is a self regulating system which maintains an equilibriated and saturated ‘greenhouse effect’. His calculations are backed up by empirical radiosonde data. Some people don’t want you to know that. This letter from Dr Miklos  Zagoni in Budapest (one of my favourite cities) gives a clue as to what is now afoot:

Why Dr Ferenc Miskolczi and Dr Miklos Zagoni have been put under pressure to be silent about Miskolczi`s research concerning the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect.

In 2004 Dr Ferenc Miskolczi published a paper ’The greenhouse effect and the spectral decomposition of the clear-sky terrestrial radiation’, in the Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service (Vol. 108, No. 4, October–December 2004, pp. 209–251.).

The co-author of the article was his boss at NASA (Martin Mlynczak). Mlynczak put his name to the paper but did no work on it. He thought that it was an important paper, but only in a technical way.

When Miskolczi later informed the group at NASA there that he had more important results, they finally understood the whole story, and tried to withhold Miskolczi’s further material from publication. His boss for example, sat at Ferenc’s computer, logged in with Ferenc`s password, and canceled a recently submitted paper from a high-reputation journal as if Ferenc had withdrawn it himself. That was the reason that Ferenc finally resigned from his ($US 90.000 /year) job.

I want to make it clear: NASA never falsified or even tried to falsify Ferenc`s results, on the contrary, they fully understand it. They know that it is correct and see how important it is.

To make sense of their actions, they probably see a national security issue in it. Perhaps they think that AGW is the only way to stop, or to slow, the coal-based growth of China.

In my circumstance where I have been dismissed from my Government paid position in Hungary, I think the information vacuum (in Hungary), has the same type of origin.

I believe someone is in the background trying to convince the establishment (media, science, politics) that Miskolczi’s results are against our national security interests.

First, they tried to frighten me, and then when that did not work, they kicked me out from my job. So now I am turning to the wider internet to publicise Miskolczi`s work, as I know that his results are valid and true. There is no way and no need to hold them back for the world to understand them.

Tomorrow, for the first time in my life, I am jobless.

Budapest, 31 Dec, 2009

Dr Miklos Zagoni
(57)
physicist
Hungary
http://miskolczi.webs.com

I hope everyone joins me in wishing Ferenc and Miklos well for the future.

Zagoni summarizes Miscolczi’s theory here:
http://heliogenic.blogspot.com/2009/12/miklos-zagoni-short-summary-of.html

As you might imagine, the response in the literature to the theory has been deafening silence…