Yong Tuition is an extensive series of videos by a math and physics tutor whose professional identity is Y. C. Zhong based in Queensland Australia. The recent video below briefly covers the history of climatism describing several errors that have rendered the hypothesis untenable. For those who prefer to read I provide a transcript from the closed captions in italics with my bolds.  At the end is a synopsis of a linked June 2023 paper published by Y.C. Zhong in Progress in Physics.

Welcome to Yong Tuition. Let’s continue discussing basic issues in atmospheric physics that you may or may not know but would be delighted to. Watch this short talk in plain language for ordinary people. Please Like, make Comment, Subscribe, and activate your Bell so that you wouldn’t miss any development and dramas in my ongoing climate research.

Greenhouse effect has been taught at schools, frequently heard in the mass media, superficially explained by many climate believers, and occasionally discussed by well-trained climate researchers and theoretical physicists. But what can you remember the most?

♦  The 33 K global warming by the greenhouse gases?
♦  The perfectly right CO2 concentration 300 ppm just before the Industrial Revolution?
♦  The stratospheric cooling predicted by Manabe and Wetherald in 1967?
♦  The runway greenhouse effect advocated by James Hanson for his grandchildren?

I will consider them all in light of the latest zero surface (radiation) hypothesis as you might have known by now. By the way, the zero surface radiation hypothesis is actually not merely a hypothesis. Rather, it is a direct corollary from the zeroth law of thermodynamics. So, are you ready? Let’s go and have fun.

In history, Fourier was one of the first thinkers who thought the apparent diurnal temperature difference between the Earth and the moon might be due to the atmosphere. Instead of developing a thermodynamic model, he drew people’s attention to a possible obscure radiation by the Earth’s surface apart from that from the Sun.

in 1836, Pouillet, another Frenchman, argued that the equilibrium temperature of the atmosphere must be higher than the temperature of outer space but lower than the temperature of the Earth’s surface, which is not true unless he meant the average temperature of the atmosphere.

In 1861, Tyndall first observed the infrared absorption by gases in a pipe, including water vapor and CO2, by using boiling water as a source, called the Leslie Cube. All of a sudden, the radiative transfer in the atmosphere had become the focus of the studying climate, while Fourier’s thermal insulator atmosphere was gradually forgotten.

In particular,Tyndall’s observation has been interpreted as a direct evidence for the atmospheric infrared absorption from the surface of the Earth, often called the terrestrial radiation, although the source was separated from the gas pipe in Tyndall’s experiment. In other words, the gas and the infrared source had different temperatures. It is due to this subtle difference, I believe, that the time bomb was installed at the core of climate modeling by many.

In 1896, Arrhenius proposed his climate model in line with this misconception by merely considering the so-called radiative equilibrium. To do so, he was obliged to physically separate the gaseous model atmosphere and the condensed matter surface of the Earth. As a result, he completely omitted thermal conducting, convection, and mass transfer between the surface and the atmosphere as shown in this diagram.

This is the first problem of the greenhouse effect hypothesis. As a result, it has been taken for granted by many climate researchers that the surface must constantly emit infrared radiation at the intensity around 390 watt per meter-squared as a black body does, from which over 95 percent of the terrestrial radiation was assumed to be absorbed by water vapor, CO2, and ozone in the atmosphere. While the radiative equilibrium formulated by Arrhenius is called the greenhouse effect, these infrared absorbers in the atmosphere are now called the greenhouse gases.

How does the greenhouse effect work? Here is a diagram from an online talks by Sara Harris, which represent the typical viewpoint of the consensus on this issue. First, Sara was correct to conclude the global mean surface temperature should be 288 K in the absence of the atmosphere, by treating the Earth as a black body. Then, by adding a reflective layer, but without any infrared absorbers hovering about the black body, she obtained the surface temperature would be 255 K. So far, this number 255K, instead of 288 K, has been widely considered as the surface temperature in the absence of the greenhouse gases.

This is the second problem of the greenhouse effect hypothesis. By adding the infrared absorbers, or the so-called greenhouse gases, it was argued by both Sara Harris and Sabine Hossenfelder that the CO2 can block the upward surface radiation and re-emit back to the surface. As a result, the cold surface could be heated up by the greenhouse gases. What A Magical Tale for children!

So, they claimed quantitatively that the surface temperature would reach to exactly 288 K when the CO2 concentration was 300 ppm. This is known as the Greenhouse Effect Type 1, in which the CO2 concentration 300 ppm seems just perfectly right in raising the surface temperature exactly by 33 K, together with the water vapor of course.

This is the third problem of the greenhouse effect hypothesis. Based on this problematic idea, it was speculated that the radiative equilibrium in the climate system would be destroyed whenever the CO2 concentration in ppm is different from the magic number 300. This speculation is called greenhouse effect type 2.

In history, both Arrhenius and Manabe and of course his supervisor Wetherald based on this idea to predict both the possible global warming and the global cooling when the CO2 concentration is doubled or halved, respectively. What could happen to air temperature near the ground? I’m sure you must have been told many times, 1.5 K, 3.6 K, or even 7 K by the end of this century, or even recently the Earth is getting boiling. “Yes and it’s the area, the era of global boiling has arrived.”

But how did the climate researchers get these numbers? In short, based on stratospheric cooling. Back in the 1960s, it was first predicted, by calculations, by Manabe and Wetherald that the stratosphere, which is above the troposphere, might become colder as the CO2 concentration increased over there. Hence the term stratospheric cooling became a fashion, even Freeman Dyson talked about it. “For the stratospheric cooling is something we really know a lot about, because that’s easy to calculate. It’s a direct effect of carbon dioxide which cools the stratosphere just by radiation. It’s independent of weather and it’s very large….” although he distanced himself from this notion during his final years on this planet.

Why cooling instead of warming? Well, they argued that if any atmospheric constituent emits, the space around them would become colder because some thermal energy is being sent away, although they didn’t say where the thermal energy comes from. If it is true the outgoing infrared radiation by our planet would be reduced because, according to Stefan-Boltzmann law, the atmospheric radiation intensity is proportional to its temperature to the power of four. This idea is indicated by the green curve here which represents the outer flow infrared radiation, but notice the electromagnetic waves are described as a kind of fluid in space, which is absurd by the way.

The tale continues. In a long run, an imbalance in radiation in the stratosphere would occur above the tropopause, just the isothermic layer immediately above the troposphere. By treating electromagnetic waves as a kind of moving heated fluid, of course, one could argue that the air temperature in the troposphere would increase, because more incoming heated fluid than the outgoing fluid as shown in this diagram.

Nowadays, it is believed by many that the global warming between two and seven Kelvin would be just a matter of time and humans’ reaction. Furthermore, as the CO2 concentration continues increasing, there is another alarming scenario namely the run(a)way greenhouse effect. As you know, a runway in an airport is used for an airplane to take off from the ground to the sky, the runway used in front of the greenhouse effect here is a metaphor for extremely rising global warming due to increasing CO2 that might completely vaporize water in the ocean and the turns the Earth into a Venus-like planet, sounds horrible.

Nevertheless, all of the predicted climate scenarios associated with either the radiative equilibrium or radiative imbalance have been formulated based on the strong and constant surface infrared radiation at its thermal equilibrium temperature. This would be true if, and only if, the condensed-matter surface could be physically isolated from the emitting layer of the greenhouse gases as Arrhenius suggested over a century ago.

So, what are the repercussions when there is no such a surface radiation? First, without the surface radiation, therefore, it can be foreseen that the infrared absorption by the so-called greenhouse gases would be significantly reduced no matter how much CO2 is in the atmosphere. Second, without the surface radiation upward all the time, the surface temperature can be stabilized with the least action given the internal and external heat sources.

Think about it. No radiation absorption by CO2 from the surface, no downward back radiation by the greenhouse gases, the efficiency of the climate system would be much higher which would be the First Choice by the nature. Recently, however, Sabine Hosenfelder told her viewers and fans that it is the absorbed infrared radiation by the greenhouse gases from the surface that can keep the surface warm and stable. “The incoming radiation from the Sun goes through the atmosphere and hits the surface. It’s converted into infrared radiation and that heats the atmosphere from below…”

But this can hardly be true. The troposphere is in fact warmed up by means of general circulation of the air that is driven by gravity-constraint convection and pressure-difference driven advection. None of them are radiative processes. She might have convinced herself by analogy of caloric theory for heat and phlogiston for fire.

Similarly, the runway greenhouse effect is as absurd as to use a paper bag to contain a fire, even Sir John Houghton, the former chairman of the IPCC Scientific Advisory Group, thought it was unlikely.

Third, return to the greenhouse effect type 1. If there is no surface infrared radiation, how can CO2 make the tropospheric warmer by blocking nothing? This implies CO2 and other so-called greenhouse gases can hardly act like a blanket to keep the surface warm, just as one cannot keep his body warm in the winter night by hanging his blanket at the roof.

Many people nowadays might have only thought of fishes in water, but forgotten that, like fishes, we humans are also submerged in the sea of air, rather than a vacuum. Indeed, it is nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air layer physically attached to the surface that keeps the surface temperature stable day and night.

Fourth. Let me talk about the predicted stratospheric cooling by Manabe and Wetherald. Recently, I have evaluated their published data and found the imbalance in the outgoing radiation is just 1.2 watt per meter square due to CO2 doubling, which is three times less than the value 3.7 watt per meter square used by the IPCC and many climate researchers. I will discuss this in detail soon.

Basically, this implies either the CO2 concentration in the stratosphere or the CO2 emissivity was overestimated by Manabe and Wetherald. This new finding seems consistent with Manabe’s recently remarks on the observed stratospheric cooling. In the lower parts of the stratosphere the observed cooling could be partially due to ozone. Besides, to me, it would appear strange why there was no reported observation in the higher altitudes where they predicted stratospheric cooling to be more significantly much larger and hence easier to be measured.

Fifth. Using the original definition of radiative forcing, RF equal to I sub s minus OLR, it is apparent that the radiative forcing would be always equal to the OLR, the outgoing long wave radiation, in magnitude though opposite in sign when the surface radiation is zero. Or the sum of radiative forcing and the OLR is zero.

What does this mean? Simple. The so-called “greenhouse effect” simply denotes the total absorbed solar radiation by the atmosphere, including the solar radiation at the surface that is completely transformed into the internal thermal energy of the atmosphere by convection, conduction, and the mass transfer involving latent heat. Whenever the planet is overheated, the OLR is spontaneously turned on. So, no surface radiation blocking, no back radiation into the surface. Above all, the “radiative forcing” actually originates from the radiation by the sun rather than from the surface. If you can understand this logic, then you won’t have much trouble to explain those problems listed above.

Problem 1. Like other careless climate researchers, both Sabine and Sara made the same terrible mistake. How? Because they must have naively thought the real atmosphere and the surface could be physically separated as Arrhenius first suggested.

Problem 3. Because they imagined global warming by the greenhouse effect type 1 is just a 10 K rather than 33 K, to use CO2 concentration 300 ppm as just the right number is just a joke, isn’t it? As I noticed that Sabine Hossenfelder has tried to make her talks humorous, I hope one day she would tell her fans that she was kidding. It’s unlikely though, as she has become a saleswoman rather than a professional researcher.

In summary, the presence of the Real atmosphere on the Real surface implies they are at thermal equilibrium, which was first overlooked by Pouillet in 1836 and the climate researchers after him. No surface radiation appears as the natural choice for the climate stability. Any surplus in the infrared absorption by the atmosphere can be spontaneously emitted to space rather than making the surface warmer. As I said earlier, no one can contain a fire by using a paper bag. Thank you for your viewing. 

Y.C. Zhong Letter to Progress in Physics June 2023

Calculation of Outgoing Longwave Radiation in the Absence of Surface Radiation of the Earth Y. C. Zhong ERICHEN Consulting, Queensland, Australia.

Abstract

Based on the observed equilibrium at the surface of the earth, it is argued that almost no infrared radiation would be emitted by the surface of the earth that is in physical contact with the nearest isothermic air layer. By assuming the outgoing longwave radiation is the cumulative upward thermal radiation by the air, an analytic formula with four dependent observables is proposed which is used for the first time to calculate the effective air emissivities at different lapse rates in the troposphere. Given the observed global mean outgoing longwave radiation 239W m−2and the stable tropospheric lapse rate 6.5 Tkm−1, the calculated effective air emissivity near the surface is 0.135, in agreement with early experimental observations.

Discussion and conclusion

To explore the implications of the zero surface radiation hypothesis, the outgoing thermal radiation by the air is formulated and quantitatively calculated in the absence of the surface infrared radiation. Based on the calculation, it appears that long-term global climate stability might be simply explained in relation to the tropospheric lapse rate, adjustable by changing the water vapor in the troposphere, that provides a natural mechanism to control the OLR for the earth to re-emit the absorbed solar radiation back to outer space while keeping the global mean surface temperature constant.

Further, it is revealed that the four coupled variables, namely OLR, effective air emissivity, the tropospheric lapse rate, and the surface temperature, are linearly dependent on each other, as shown in (10) and (11). So far, the linear dependence of the monthly mean OLR on the sea surface temperature (SST )has been observed on several locations [7]. But the theoretical interpretations in terms of water vapor feedback and speculated emergent properties seem complicated and confined to the cloud-free observations [8]. By way of contrast, (11) is simply deduced from the hypothesis that the surface radiation is zero.

Without invoking the greenhouse effect, it seems the current global energy balance can be quantitatively explained, i.e. the solar shortwave radiation at the surface, 161 W m−2, is completely transferred into the atmosphere by means of convection and conduction. And then is thermally radiated by the atmosphere into outer space, together with the shortwave absorption by the atmosphere at 78 W m−2. Which makes the OLR at the top of the atmosphere equal to 161 +78 =239 W m−2 as observed [3].

Further experimental observations both in lab and in space are necessary for further evaluating this proposed description with fundamental implications for understanding the long-term global climate stability.

See Also:

Sun and Water Drive Climate, Not Us