One of the most basic concepts in physics is that causes precede effects and effects follow causes. Determining the directionality sequence is thus essential in any causality analysis.
The assumed CO₂→T causality direction cannot be scientifically supported
The assumption in climate models is that CO₂ causes changes in temperature, or T. More specifically, it is assumed modern global warming has been caused by increases in anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.
However, scientists (Koutsoyiannis et al., 2023) have now expanded upon last year’s 2-part study on stochastics-formulated causality published in The Royal Society (Koutsoyiannis et al., 2022 (1) and Koutsoyiannis et al., 2022 (2)) where they notably contend:
“Clearly the results […] suggest a (mono-directional) potentially causal system with T as the cause and [CO₂] as the effect. Hence the common perception that increasing [CO₂] causes increased T can be excluded as it violates the necessary condition for this causality direction.”
The analysis is in complete agreement with several posts here, especially:
The scientific and wider interest in the relationship between atmospheric temperature (T) and concentration of carbon dioxide ([CO2]) has been enormous. According to the commonly assumed causality link, increased [CO2] causes a rise in T. However, recent developments cast doubts on this assumption by showing that this relationship is of the hen-or-egg type, or even unidirectional but opposite in direction to the commonly assumed one. These developments include an advanced theoretical framework for testing causality based on the stochastic evaluation of a potentially causal link betweentwo processes via the notion of the impulse response function. Using, on the one hand, this framework and further expanding it and, on the other hand, the longest available modern time series of globally averaged T and [CO2], we shed light on the potential causality between these two processes.
All evidence resulting from the analyses suggests a unidirectional,
potentially causal link with T as the cause and [CO2] as the effect.
That link is not represented in climate models, whose outputs are also examined using the same framework, resulting in a link opposite the one found when the real measurements are used.
Discussion and Further Results
The mainstream assumption of the causality direction [CO2] → T makes a compelling narrative, as everything is blamed on a single cause, the human CO2 emissions. Indeed, this has been the popular narrative for decades. However, popularity does not necessarily mean correctness, and here we have provided strong arguments against this assumption.
Since we have identified atmospheric temperature as the cause and atmospheric CO2 concentration as the effect, one may be tempted to ask the question: What is the cause of the modern increase in temperature? Apparently, this question is much more difficult to reply to, as we can no longer attribute everything to any single agent.
We do not claim to have the answer to this question, whose study is far beyond the article’s scope. Neither do we believe that mainstream climatic theory, which is focused upon human CO2 emissions as the main cause and regards everything else as feedback of the single main cause, can explain what happened on Earth for 4.5 billion years of changing climate.
The examined processes in the Appendices are internal to the climatic system. Other processes affecting T, not examined here, could also be external (e.g., solar and astronomical [43,44] and geological [45,46,47,48,49]). Generally, in complex systems, an identified causal link, even though it gives some explanation of a phenomenon, raises additional questions, e.g., what caused the change in the identified cause, etc. In turn, causal links in complex systems may form endless sequences.
For this reason, it is naïve to expect complete answers to problems related to complex systems or to assume that a complex system is in permanent equilibrium and that an external agent is needed to “kick” it out of the equilibrium and produce change. Yet the investigation of a single causal link between two processes, as is the focus of this paper, provides useful information, with possible significant scientific, technical, practical, epistemological and philosophical implications. These are not covered in this paper.
As already clarified, the scope of our work is not to provide detailed modeling of the processes studied but to check causality conditions. We highlight the fact that the relationship we established explains only about 1/3 of the actual variance of Δln[CO2]. This is not negligible for investigating causality, but also leaves a margin for many other climatic factors to act.
Conclusions
With reference to points 1–7 of the Introduction setting the paper’s scope, the results of our analyses can be summarized as follows.
All evidence resulting from the analyses of the longest available modern time series of atmospheric concentration of [CO2] at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, along with that of globally averaged T, suggests a unidirectional, potentially causal link with T as the cause and [CO2] as the effect. This direction of causality holds for the entire period covered by the observations (more than 60 years).
Seasonality, as reflected in different phases of [CO2] time series at different latitudes, does not play any role in potential causality, as confirmed by replacing the Mauna Loa [CO2] time series with that in South Pole.
The unidirectional 𝑇→ln[CO2] potential causal link applies to all timescales resolved by the available data, from monthly to about two decades.
The proposed methodology is simple, flexible and effective in disambiguating cases where the type of causality, HOE or unidirectional, is not quite clear.
Furthermore, the methodology defines a type of data analysis that, regardless of the detection of causality per se, assesses modeling performance by comparing observational data with model results. In particular, the analysis of climate model outputs reveals a misrepresentation of the causal link by these models, which suggest a causality direction opposite to the one found when the real measurements are used.
Extensions of the scope of the methodology, i.e., from detecting possible causality to building a more detailed model of stochastic type, are possible, as illustrated by a toy model for the T-[CO2] system, with explained variance of [CO2] reaching an impressive 99.9%.
While some of the findings of this study seem counterintuitive or contrary to mainstream opinions, they are logically and computationally supported by arguments and calculations given in the Appendices.
Interview of Prof. V. Zharkova by Franco Battaglia for the Italian newspaper La Verita Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
The following interview will show – if there were still the need to show it – that the climate system is quite far to be well understood, thereby it is quite far from the truth any claim according to which on the matter “science is settled”, as Al Gore and the IPCC have been claiming for 20 years. Valentina Zharkova is an outstanding Ukrainian scientist: she graduated from the University of Kiev in Applied mathematics, first, and then completed her PhD studies in Astrophysics from the Main Astronomical Observatory in Kiev. For the past 30 years she worked in the UK Universities of Glasgow, Bradford and Northumbria, since 2005 as a Professor of Applied Mathematics. At the present she is Professor Emeritus at Northumbria University (Newcastle, UK) and Director of ZVS Research Enterprise Ltd. (London UK).
Q. Prof. Zharkova, people say that the Earth is warming since the beginning of the Industrial revolution and that this is due to human activities. Do you have any comment on that?
A. Actually the Earth is warming since 1690, the minimum of the Little Ice Age. In 1976, Prof. John Eddy established that the terrestrial temperature follows solar radiation deposition during solar activity cycles, increasing during the solar cycle maxima and decreasing during solar minima. Then, in 1995, prof. Judith Lean and collaborators discovered and later in 2016 Prof. Don Easterbrook confirmed that the input of solar radiation to Earth was decreased during the Maunder minimum in 1645-1710 by about 3 W/m2 leading to a decrease of terrestrial temperature during what is now called the Little Ice Age. Since 1700 and the recovery of the Maunder minimum the solar radiation deposition to Earth restored to previous level and terrestrial temperature followed solar activity cycles.
Q. Has then the solar activity been increasing during the last few decades?
A. No. Actually the solar activity has been decreasing since the 80’s of the last century.
Q. This is why IPCC has concluded that the present warming is due to humans?
A. Exactly, the warming is present but it is not due to humans. They make a mistake: they assume that solar radiation is essentially constant, thereby attributing the warming to CO2’s enhanced concentration in the terrestrial atmosphere.
Q. Could you clarify?
A. Within solar activity there are two important cycles: one – the small solar cycle – with a 11-year period and the other – the grand solar cycle – with a 350-year period. The grand solar cycles are separated by grand solar minima (GSMs), the most recent of them occurred during Maunder minimum (1645-1710). The GSM acts on the terrestrial environment via the cold air jets coming from Arctic and Antarctica because of the reduction of solar UV radiation and ozone abundances in the terrestrial atmosphere. Now there is a current solar cycle (cycle number 25) is showing to have the largest numbers of spotless days than any other cycles of the last 280 years of observations. During the modern GSM, similar to Maunder minimum, the solar radiation is expected to decrease by about 3 W/m2. The terrestrial temperature is then expected to decrease in the next three decades by about 1C. This was recorded during the Maunder Minimum and the same is expected in the modern GSM (2020-2050).
But the further change of solar irradiance deposited to the Earth can be caused by other effects.
Q. Namely?
A. By orbital effects. There are well known Milankovitch cycles caused by various variation of the earth orbit eccentricity, inclination of its axis to the ecliptics, aberrations. These periods vary from 15K to 100K years and well protocolled in the terrestrial biomass. There is a shorter period of solar radiation changes with a period of about two millennia: Hallstatt’s cycle. It reflects medium-scale variations of the solar radiation level whose origin comes not from the dynamo activity inside the Sun but from the Sun’s position with respect to the orbit focus, or barycentre, where it supposed to reside according to Kepler motion, or so called, solar inertial motion (SIM). This means that the Sun is shifted, or wobbling from its focus/barycentre position on two millennial scale, so that Sun-Earth distance has to change on the two millennial period.
Basically, this happens because of the gravitation from Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus, the Sun does not sit in the focus of the ellipse of the Earth orbit, but performs the motion called SIM (wobbling on smaller orbits) about this focus. This principle of wobbling stars is used to search for exoplanets because wobbling star proves that it has a planetary system attached. In fact, the official ephemeris of the Sun-Earth distance taken from Paris-Meudon observatory and NASA JPL sites show that in the millennium 1600-2600 the Sun in February-June of every year is closer to the Earth orbit when the Sun is closer to the point of the spring equinox of the Northern hemisphere, leaving the Earth to be further from the Sun in August-December than in the usual elliptical orbit when the Sun is in its focus.
This SIM leads to an increase of the solar radiation deposited to the Earth every year during the first half of a year and, thus, to the increase of the terrestrial temperature in March-July of every year by approximately 10-12 W/m2 for each hemisphere. With the exchange of solar heating via the ocean the terrestrial atmosphere is heated to higher temperatures owing this SIM, and this extra heating occurs since the Maunder Minimum to last until 2600. The SIM provides the extra-solar heating of terrestrial atmosphere, which is not considered in the IPCC models.
Hence, the solar irradiance is not a constant, but changes on a scale
of 11 and 350 years, as induced by the solar dynamo action,
and on a two-millennial scale as induced by the solar inertial motion.
Q. In other words, you are saying that IPCC found in the CO2 the wrong source of increasing terrestrial temperature?
A. Yes. In fact the increase of CO2 abundances is a consequence of the temperature increase but not its reason as Patrick Moore of Canada has shown in his book. The main part of solar radiation energy is stored in the Ultraviolet (UV) region, much less in the visible spectrum and even less in the infra-red spectrum where molecules of CO2 emit. CO2 molecules only re-scatter the UV solar emission in much weaker infrared part of solar spectrum. CO2 does not have the emission energy to heat anything because its radiation is the in low energy infra-red range! The abundances of CO2 molecules increases every year, this is correct, but because the Sun deposits more radiation to Earth and other planets owing to SIM.
The IPCC models calculate the emission from the layer containing increased number of CO2 molecules by simply adding all the emission by each extra CO2 molecules appeared in the past 200 years. This is not correct! Because the emission from a thick layer of CO2 is locked inside this layer by radiative transfer effects, so that the emission emitted outside this layer has a saturation effect independent on the abundance of CO2 inside the layer!
Instead, I have shown that owing to SIM, the increase of solar radiation in this millennium will be about about 10-12 W/m2 per hemisphere and per year, until around 2600. This means that the temperatureincrease will continue by further 2.5-3.0C until 2600 independently of any actions on the Earth and other planets. If this extra-solar heating is included then the whole temperature increase since Maunder Minimum is provided by the solar radiation because of SIM as it should because it is the only heating we have in the solar system.
In conclusion, the real reason of the current heating of terrestrial atmosphere since
the Maunder minimum is this extra-solar heating caused by the orbital motion of the Sun.
And currently the Sun is already visibly closer to the Earth (and other planet orbits)
during the springs and summers.
Q. Is there a way to test your theory?
A. Sure, it is. In the next 30 years it will be shown what is heating the Earth atmosphere: the Sun or human activity. Currently, the Sun is approaching the grand solar minimum (GSM) predicted by us in 2015, when the Sun itself is going into hibernation as all the observations of sunspots show, producing less and less active regions, flares, sunspots and coronal mass ejections. This should cause a steaming decrease of the terrestrial temperature by up to 1C in cycle 26 (2031-2042). This decrease should happen in spite the Sun already closer to Earth and increased by 2020 its temperature by 1.2C since the Maunder minimum.
If AGW were in action, then we would not observe any decrease
of the terrestrial temperature, only its increase.
However, this year and a few previous years show clearly that the Earth is on the course to a decrease of terrestrial temperature. We will see the terrestrial temperature to decrease and rather dramatically decrease in the next decade or two because of the reduced activity, or GSM, of the Sun.
Q. I imagine that the whole issue, including your finding, is still quite controversial. Would you then agree that it is safe to say that the matter is quite far from being settled?
A. Definitely!
Well, in the medieval age the settled model of the solar system was Ptolemy’s model where the Sun and planets revolve about the Earth. They invented two circles for each planet to explain their strange jumps on the sky. The church considered the science settled then.
So settled that when Copernicus proposed in 1532 the heliocentric system, where the Sun is the main central star and all planets revolve about it, they considered it as heresy. We know what happened to Giordano Bruno and led to Galileo to deny Copernicus model to survive.
Until nearly a century later, in 1610-1620 Kepler formulated three laws of the planets revolving about the central star. But only in 1665 or 1666 Isaak Newton discovered the gravity, which was only roughly (via central star-planets) included into Kepler’s laws.
And only in 1965 Josecalculated the gravity effects not only of the central star on its planets but also of the planets on the central star, thus discovering the star’s motion, naming it SIM.
Maybe it is the time to progress correctly with the orbital effects
of solar and planetary motion!
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 metersquare 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 radiativeforcing 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
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.
You may have heard claims recently that the ocean is now “boiling”. Fortunately, a world expert in ocean heat uptake provides a deep dive into oceanic temperature history, thereby putting that fear to rest.
Geoffrey Gebbie of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has published an highly informative studyCombining Modern and Paleoceanographic Perspectives on Ocean Heat Uptake in Annual Review of Marine Science (2021). H/T Kenneth Richard. Below are the main findings, along with some excerpts in italics with my bolds, explaining some oceanography for the rest of us.
The large climatic shifts that started with the melting of the great ice sheets have
involved significant ocean heat uptake that was sustained over centuries and millennia,
and modern-ocean heat content changes are small by comparison.
Abstract
Monitoring Earth’s energy imbalance requires monitoring changes in the heat content of the ocean. Recent observational estimates indicate that ocean heat uptake is accelerating in the twenty-first century. Examination of estimates of ocean heat uptake over the industrial era, the Common Era of the last 2,000 years, and the period since the Last Glacial Maximum, 20,000 years ago, permits a wide perspective on modern-day warming rates. In addition, this longer-term focus illustrates how the dynamics of the deep ocean and the cryosphere were active in the past and are still active today. The large climatic shifts that started with the melting of the great ice sheets have involved significant ocean heat uptake that was sustained over centuries and millennia, and modern-ocean heat content changes are small by comparison.
Objective
This review seeks to put the most recent ocean heat uptake estimates of 0.5–0.7 W m−2 into the context of longer (multidecadal to millennial) timescales. Such timescales put a wider perspective on present-day heat uptake. In addition, the dynamics of these longer timescales may still have some expression today. This research direction leads to the long temperature time series of paleoceanographic proxies that predate the instrumental record. Ocean heat uptake over the last deglaciation (∼20,000–10,000 years ago) and the Common Era (previous two millennia) will serve as examples to explore the longer-timescale dynamics of ocean heat uptake.
Common Era Evolution of Mean Ocean Temperature
The Ocean2k global-mean SST compilation is derived from 57 marine proxy records that, in aggregate, show a statistically significant cooling trend from 700 to 1700 CE over the MCA–LIA transition (Medieval Climate Anomaly, Little Ice Age). The data compilation contains a time series of 200-year averages that have been nondimensionalized. Here, we dimensionalize the values with the recommended values of McGregor et al. (2015) to obtain temperature anomalies, and the inferred global-mean surface cooling over the MCA–LIA transition is near the high end of the expected 0.4–0.6°C range (Figure 4a).
Figure 4 The Common Era.(a)The evolution of Ocean2k SST (blue circles, with σ/2 error bars) and mean ocean temperature, , as inferred from noble-gas measurements (red circles, with σ/2 error bars), the Gebbie & Huybers (2019) Common Era inversion (red line), and a power-law estimate (black line, with 2σ error shown in gray), referenced to global-mean SST in 1870. (b,c) Average ocean heat uptake over a running 50-year interval (panel b) and a 500-year interval (panel c) plotted from the Gebbie & Huybers (2019) inversion (red line) and a power-law estimate (black line, with 1σ error shown in gray). Heat uptake is expressed in terms of an equivalent planetary energy imbalance. Abbreviation: SST, sea-surface temperature.
One realization of the Common Era was produced by an inversion that attempted to reconstruct the three-dimensional evolution of oceanic temperature anomalies over the last 2,000 years (Gebbie & Huybers 2019). The inversion fits an empirical ocean circulation model to modern-day tracer observations, historical temperature observations from the HMS Challenger expedition of 1872–1876 (Murray 1895), and the global-mean Ocean2k SST. The resulting ocean temperature evolution is dominated by the propagation of surface climate anomalies from the MCA and LIA into the subsurface ocean, where the propagation is coherent for several centuries (red line in Figure 4a). Although the Gebbie & Huybers (2019) inversion was not constrained with oceanic power laws, the resulting mean ocean temperature is consistent with a power-law estimate over the Common Era.
Early-twenty-first-century SST may already be warmer than MCA SST, but it is
less likely that modern mean ocean temperature has surpassed MCA values.
From the Gebbie & Huybers (2019) inversion, it was inferred that the MCA ocean stored 1,000 ZJ more than the ocean of the year 2000, and that the ∼500 ZJ of heat uptake during the modern warming era is just one-third of what is required to reach MCA levels. Amplification of the high-latitude SST signal relative to the global mean can produce a greater MCA–LIA mean ocean cooling, which explains the greater MCA heat content relative to the present day. When considering the range of Common Era scenarios consistent with a power law, however, some cases are admitted where the MCA and the present day have similar oceanic heat content.
Deep-Ocean Heat Uptake During Modern Warming
Figure 6 Ocean heat uptake below 2,000-m depth, in terms of a planetary energy imbalance, for 50-year averages given by Zanna et al. (2019) (blue line), Gebbie & Huybers (2019) (red line), and the power-law estimate from this review (black line, with 2σ error in gray). An observational estimate (purple, with 2σ error bar) for 1990–2010 is also included (Purkey & Johnson 2010).
The confidence in upper-ocean heat content during the modern warming era starkly contrasts with the remaining uncertainties in heat content below 2,000-m depth (Figure 6). Observational estimates have indicated a deep-ocean heat uptake of 68 ± 61 mW m−2 (2σ) when differencing hydrographic sections between 1990 and 2010 (Purkey & Johnson 2010, Desbruyères et al. 2017). Estimation of deep-ocean heat uptake over the entire instrumental era relies to a greater extent on circulation models. Simulations of modern warming that are initialized from equilibrium in 1870 suggest that heat penetrates downward (Gregory 2000) and that average deep-ocean heat uptake is small over 50-year time intervals (Zanna et al. 2019). These estimates would not capture ongoing trends from the earlier Common Era, if any existed. An inversion that accounts for the LIA found a deep-ocean heat loss of 80 mW m−2 early in the modern warming era (Gebbie & Huybers 2019), and our power-law estimate suggests that an even greater cooling is possible, although the uncertainties are large. These discrepancies highlight the ongoing effect that Common Era variability could play in the modern-day ocean. Unfortunately, recent observations do not appear to be sufficient to distinguish between these scenarios, as they all suggest a weak deep-ocean heat uptake in the early twenty-first century.
Deep-ocean cooling could exist as the result of
disequilibrium between the upper and deep ocean.
Oceanic disequilibrium exists at a range of spatial and temporal scales, from local, short-term variability to longer-term changes that are anticipated to generally have greater spatial extent. Oceanic disequilibrium has been anticipated as a resultof the 1815 Tambora (Stenchikov et al. 2009) and 1883 Krakatoa (Gleckler et al. 2006) volcanic eruptions and their lingering effects on energy imbalance. More generally, ocean disequilibrium can result from the differing adjustment times of the interior ocean to surface forcing, where the deep-ocean response may take longer than 1,000 years (e.g., Wunsch & Heimbach 2008). Accordingly, some influence of changes in surface climate over the last millennium is potentially present today. The most isolated waters of the mid-depth Pacific, for example, should still be adjusting to the MCA–LIA transition. In this scenario, these deep waters are cooling, but they are anomalously warm due to the residual influence of the MCA.
The degree to which the ocean’s long memory affects today’s ocean is uncertain due to difficulties in integrating state-of-the-art circulation models over the entire Common Era. An accurate assessment may also require a model that can skillfully predict ocean circulation changes in both the past and the future. The climate history of the Common Era should also be better constrained by recovering additional observations, such as historical subsurface temperature observations and paleoceanographic data. Proper inference of climate sensitivity depends on the past oceanic heat uptake, which this review suggests is tied to the long timescale of deep-ocean dynamics.
Do notice the scale on the left axis. As though we can measure the whole ocean (71% of earth surface) to 0.05 C. It’s a formula converting zettajoules to temp change.
One year time lapse of precipitable water (amount of water in the atmosphere)
from Jan 1, 2016 to Dec 31, 2016, as modeled by the GFS.The Pacific
ocean rotates into view just as the tropical cyclone season picks up steam.
Lately the media refers increasingly to how important is the water cycle in our climate system. Unfortunately, as usual, the headlines confuse cause and effect. For example, Climate change has a dramatic impact on the global water cycle, say researchers. from phys.org. How perverse to position climate change as an agent rather than the effect from water fluxes in the ocean and atmosphere. The headline misleads entirely (written by scientists or journos?) as the beginning texts shows (in italics with my bolds).
For Christoph Schär, ETH Zurich’s Professor of Climate and Water Cycle, “global warming” is not quite accurate when it comes to describing the driver of climate change. “A better term would be ‘climate humidification,'” he explains. “Most of the solar energy that reaches the Earth serves to evaporate water and thereby drives the hydrological cycle.” Properly accounting for the implications of this is the most challenging task of all for climate modelers.
In order to build a global climate model, grid points spaced around 50 to 100 kilometers apart are used. This scale is too coarse to map small-scale, local thunderstorm cells. Yet it is precisely these thunderstorm cells—and where they occur—that drive atmospheric circulation, especially in the tropics, where solar radiation is highest.
The workaround, at present, is to add extra parameters to the model in order to map clouds. “But predicting future climate change is still pretty imprecise,” Schär says. “If we don’t know how many clouds are forming in the tropics, then we don’t know how much sunlight is hitting the earth’s surface—and hence we don’t know the actual size of the global energy balance.”
The climatist paradigm is myopic and lopsided. A previous post below provides a cure for those whose vision is impaired by the IPCC consensus view of climate reality.
Curing Radiation Myopia Regarding Climate
E.M. Smith provides an helpful critique of a recent incomplete theory of earth’s climate functioning in his Chiefio blog post So Close–Missing Convection and Homeostasis. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
It is Soooo easy to get things just a little bit off and miss reality. Especially in complex systems and even more so when folks raking in $Millions are interested in misleading for profit. Sigh.
Sabine Hosenfelder does a wonderful series of videos ‘explaining’ all sorts of interesting things in and about actual science and how the universe works. She is quite smart and generally “knows her stuff”.But… It looks like she has gotten trapped into the Radiative Model of Globull Warming.
The whole mythology of Global Warming depends on having you NOT think about anything but radiative processes and physics. To trap you into the Radiative Model. But the Earth is more complex than that. Much more complex. Then there’s the fact that you DO have some essential Radiative Physics to deal with, so the bait is there. However…
It is absolutely essential to pay attention to convection in the lower atmosphere
and to the “feedback loops” or homeostasis in the system.
The system acts to restore its original state. There is NO “runaway greenhouse” or we would have never evolved into being since the early earth had astoundingly high levels of CO2 and we would have baked to death before getting out of our slime beds as microbes.
Figure 16. The geological history of CO2 level and temperature proxy for the past 400 million years. CO2 levels now are ~ 400ppm. Source: Davis, W. J. (2017).
OK, I’ll show you her video. It is quite good even with the “swing and a miss” at the end. She does 3 levels of The Greenhouse Gas Mythology so you can see the process evolving from grammar school to high school to college level of mythology. But then she doesn’t quite make it to Post-Doc Reality.
Where’s she wrong? (Well, not really wrong, but lacking…)
I see 2 major issues. First off, she talks about the “lower atmosphere warming”. Well, yes and no. It doesn’t “warm” in the sense of getting hotter, but it does speed up convection to move the added heat flow.
In English “heating” has 2 different meanings. Increasing temperature.
Increasing heat flow at a temperature.
We see this in “warm up the TV dinner in the microwave” meaning to heat it up from frozen to edible; and in the part where the frozen dinner is defrosting at a constant temperature as it absorbs heat but turns it into the heat of fusion of water. So you can “warm it up” by melting at a constant temperature of frozen water (but adding a LOT of thermal energy – “heat”) then later as increasing temperature once the ice is melted. It is very important to keep in mind that there are 2 kinds of “heating”. NOT just “increasing temperature”.
In the lower atmosphere, the CO2 window / Infrared Window is already firmly slammed shut. Sabine “gets that”. Yay! One BIG point for her! No amount of “greenhouse gas” is going to shut that IR window any more. As she points out, you get about 20 meters of transmission and then it is back to molecular vibrations (aka “heat”).
So what’s an atmosphere to do? It has heat to move! Well, it convects. It evaporates water.
Those 2 things dominate by orders of magnitude any sort of Radiative Model Physics. Yes, you have radiation of light bringing energy in, but then it goes into the ocean and into the dirt and the plants and even warms your skin on a sunny day. And it sits there. It does NOT re-radiate to any significant degree. Once “warmed” by absorption, heat trying to leave as IR hits a slammed shut window.
The hydrological cycle. Estimates of the observed main water reservoirs (black numbers in 10^3 km3 ) and the flow of moisture through the system (red numbers, in 10^3 km3 yr À1 ). Adjusted from Trenberth et al. [2007a] for the period 2002-2008 as in Trenberth et al. [2011].
So what does happen? Look around, what do you see? Clouds. Rain. Snow. (sleet hail fog etc. etc.)
Our planet is a Water Planet. It moves that energy (vibrations of atoms, NOT radiation) by having water evaporate into the atmosphere. (Yes, there are a few very dry deserts where you get some radiative effects and can get quite cold at night via radiation through very dry air, but our planet is 70% or so oceans, so those areas are minor side bars on the dominant processes). This water vapor makes the IR window even more closed (less distance to absorption). It isn’t CO2 that matters, it is the global water vapor.
What happens next?
Well, water holds a LOT of heat (vibration of atoms and NOT “temperature”) as the heat of vaporization. About 540 calories per gram (compared to 80 for melting “heat of fusion” and 1 for specific heat of a gram of water). Compare those numbers again. 1 for a gram of water. 80 for melting a gram of ice. 540 for evaporating a gram of water. It’s dramatically the case that evaporation of water matters a lot more than melting ice, and both of them make “warming water” look like an irrelevant thing.
Warming water is 1/80 as important as melting ice, and it is 1/540 th as important as evaporation of the surface of the water. Warming air is another order of magnitude less important to heat content.
So to have clue, one MUST look at the evaporation of water from the oceans as everything else is in the small change.
Look at any photo of the Earth from space. The Blue Marble covered in clouds. Water and clouds. The product of evaporation, convection, and condensation. Physical flows carrying all that heat (“vibration of atoms” and NOT temperature, remember). IF you add more heat energy, you can speed up the flows, but it will not cause a huge increase in temperature (and mostly none at all). It is mass flow that changes. The number of vibrating molecules at a temperature, not the temperature of each.
In the end, a lot of mass flow happens, lofting all that water vapor with all that heat of vaporization way up toward the Stratosphere. This is why we have a troposphere, a tropopause (where it runs out of steam… literally…) and a stratosphere.
What happens when it gets to the stratosphere boundary? Well, along the way that water vapor turns into water liquid very tiny drops (clouds) and eventually condenses to big drops of water (rain) and some of it even freezes (hail, snow, etc.). Now think about that for a minute. That’s 540 calories per gram of heat (molecular vibration NOT temperature, remember) being “dumped” way up high in the top of the troposphere as it condenses, and another 80 / gram if if freezes. 620 total. That’s just huge.
This is WHY we have a globe covered with rain, snow, hail, etc. etc. THAT is all that heat moving. NOT any IR Radiation from the surface. Let that sink in a minute. Fix it in your mind. WATER and ICE and Water Vapor are what moves the heat, not radiation. We ski on it, swim in it, have it water our crops and flood the land. That’s huge and it is ALL evidence of heat flows via heat of vaporization and fusion of water.
It is all those giga-tons of water cycling to snow, ice and rain, then falling back to be lofted again as evaporation in the next cycle. That’s what moves the heat to the stratosphere where CO2 then radiates it to space (after all, radiation toward the surface hits that closed IR window and stops.) At most, more CO2 can let the Stratosphere radiate (and “cool”) better. It can not make the Troposphere any less convective and non-radiative.
Then any more energy “trapped” at the surface would just run the mass transport water cycle faster. It would not increase the temperature.
More molecules would move, but at a limit on temperature. Homeostasis wins. We can see this already in the Sub-Tropics. As the seasons move to fall and winter, water flows slow dramatically. I have to water my Florida lawn and garden. As the seasons move to spring and summer, the mass flow picks up dramatically. Eventually reaching hurricane size. Dumping up to FEET of condensed water (that all started as warm water vapor evaporating from the ocean). It is presently headed for about 72 F today (and no rain). At the peak of hurricane season, we get to about 84 or 85 F ocean surface temperature as the water vapor cycle is running full blast and we get “frog strangler” levels of rain. That’s the difference. Slow water cycle or fast.
IF (and it is only an “if”, not a when) you could manage to increase the heat at the surface of the planet in, say, Alaska: At most you would get a bit more rain in summer, a bit more snow in winter, and MAYBE only a slight possible, of one or two days that are rain which could have been snow or sleet.
Then there’s the fact that natural cycles swamp all of that CO2 fantasy anyway. The Sun, as just one example, had a large change of IR / UV levels with both the Great Pacific Climate Shift (about 1975) and then back again in about 2000. Planetary tilt, wobble, eccentricity of the orbit and more put us in ice ages (as we ARE right now, but in an “interglacial” in this ice age… a nice period of warmth that WILL end) and pulls us out of them. Glacials and interglacials come and go on various cycles (100,000 years, 40,000 years, and 12,000 year interglacials – ours ending now, but slowly). The simple fact is that Nature Dominates, and we are just not relevant. To think we are is hubris of the highest order.
Figure 9: Two contrasting views of the effects of how the continuous intensification of deep cumulus convection would act to alter radiation flux to space. The top (bottom) diagram represents a net increase (decrease) in radiation to space
Footnote
There are two main reasons why investigators are skeptical of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarm. This post intends to be an antidote to myopic and lop-sided understandings of our climate system.
CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.
Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”
2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.
Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
The notion that CO2 from human activities causes global warming has multiple flaws, many of which have been dissected and rebutted here and elsewhere. But The Big Lie is to fundamentally misrepresent how Earth’s climate system works. Richard Lindzen explains in the above interview with Jordan Peterson. For those who prefer reading I provide a transcript from the closed captions in italics with my bolds and added images.
JP: When you started to object to the narrative, back say in ‘92, To what narrative were you objecting and on what grounds were you objecting?
RL: You’re touching on something that took me a while to understand. You know Goebbels famously said: If you tell a big enough lie and repeat it often enough, it’ll become the truth. there’s been a lot of that in this. But there are aspects of establishing the narrative, that is, what makes something the truth that I hadn’t appreciated.
So the narrative was the climate is determined by a greenhouse effect
and adding CO2 to it increases warming. And moreover besides CO2
the natural greenhouse substances–water vapor, clouds, upper level clouds–
will amplify whatever man does.
Now that immediately goes against Le Chatelier’s principle which says: If you perturb a system and it is capable internally of counteracting that, it will. And our system is so capable.
So that was a little bit odd. You began wondering, where did these feedbacks come from? Immediately people including myself started looking into the feedbacks, and seeing whether there were any negative ones, and how did it all work?
But underlying it, and this is what I learned: if you want to get a narrative established, the crucial thing is to pepper it with errors, questionable things. So that the critics will seize on those and not question the basic narrative.
The basic narrative was that climate is controlled by the greenhouse effect. In point of fact the earth’s climate system has many regions, but two distinctly different regions. There are the tropics roughly minus 30 to plus 30 degrees latitude, and the extra Tropics outside of plus or minus 30 degrees.
They have very different dynamics, and this is the crucial thing for the Earth by the way. And this is a technicality and much harder to convey than saying that greenhouse gases are a blanket or that 97 percent of scientists agree.
This is actually a technical issue. The Earth rotates. Now people are aware that we have day and night, but there is something called the Coriolis effect. When you’re on a rotating system it gives rise to the appearance of forces that change the winds relative to the rotation. So at the pole the rotation vector is perpendicular to the surface, while at the equator it’s parallel to the surface:it’s zero.
And this gives you phenomenally different Dynamics. So where you don’t have a vertical component to the rotation, vector motions do what they do in the laboratory in small scales. If you have a temperature difference, it acts to wipe it out.
Figure 11. Most sunlight is absorbed in the tropics, and some of the heat energy is carried by air currents to the polar regions to be released back into space as thermal radiation. Along with energy, angular momentum — imparted to the air from the rotating Earth’s surface near the equator — is transported to higher northern and southern latitudes, where it is reabsorbed by the Earth’s surface. The Hadley circulation near the equator is largely driven by buoyant forces on warm, solar-heated air, but for mid latitudes the “Coriolis force” due to the rotation of the earth leads to transport of energy and angular momentum through slanted “baroclinic eddies.” Among other consequences of the conservation of angular momentum are the easterly trade winds near the equator and the westerly winds at mid latitudes.
And so if you look at the tropics the temperatures at any surface are relatively flat: they don’t vary much with latitude. On the other hand you go to the mid Latitudes, in the extra Tropics the temperature varies a lot between the tropics and the pole. We know that about how temperatures are cold at high Latitudes. And if you look at changes in climate in the Earth’s history, what they show is a Tropics that stays relatively constant, and what changes is the temperature difference between the tropics and the pole.
During the Ice Age it was about 60 degrees Centigrade, today it’s about 40. During 50 million years ago something called the eocene the difference was about 20. So that’s all a function of what’s going on outside the tropics. Within the tropics the greenhouse effect is significant but what determines the temperature change between the tropics and the pole has very little to do with the greenhouse effect.
It is a dynamic phenomenon based on the fact that a temperature difference with latitude generates instabilities. These instabilities take the form of the cyclonic and anticyclonic patterns that you see on the weather map. You can see the tropics are very different from even a casual look at a weather map. The systems that bring us weather travel from west to east at latitudes outside the tropics. Within the tropics they travel from east to west. The prevailing winds are opposite in the two sections.
Sometimes people say that changes due to the greenhouse effect are amplified at the poles. That is not true: there’s no physical basis for that Statement. All they do is determine the starting point for where the temperature changes in mid-latitudes and that’s determined mainly by Hydrodynamics.
Okay that’s complicated to explain to someone and yet it’s the basis for those claims of seemingly large significance of these small numbers. You know they’re saying if Global mean temperature goes up one and a half degrees it’s the end. That’s based on it getting much bigger at high latitudes and determining that. But all one and a half degrees at the equator would do or in the greenhouse part of the Earth is change the temperature everywhere by one and a half degrees, which for most of us is less than the temperature change between breakfast and lunch.
HT to Dr. David Whitehouse writing at GWPF regarding a recent study claiming Arctic Amplification is causing a wavey polar vortex, resulting in winter warming and cooling extremes. His critique is Extreme cold snaps and global warming: A speculative explanation.
This post is challenging the notion of Arctic Amplification itself. The term is bandied about with the connotation that man-made global warming is multiplied in the Arctic and responsible for weather extremes.
As the animation above shows, there have been in recent years alternating patterns of unusually cold or warm weather in the Northern Hemisphere. There are several problems in the attempt to link these events to global warming/climate change, i.e. claiming causation from a slow increase in baseline global average temperatures.
Arctic Amplification is an artifact of Temperature Anomalies
Arctic Surface Stations Records Show Ordinary Warming
Arctic Warmth Comes from Meridional Heat Transport, not CO2
Clive Best provides this animation of recent monthly temperature anomalies which demonstrates how most variability in anomalies occur over northern continents.
1. Arctic Amplification is an artifact of Temperature Anomalies
Beyond the issues with the measurements and the questionable adjustments, there is a more fundamental misconception about air temperatures in relation to “climate change.” Clive Best does a fine job explaining why Global Mean Temperature anomalies do not mean what people think. Below is my synopsis of his recent essay entitled Do Global Temperatures make sense? (link)
Background: Earth’s Heat Imbalance
ERBE measurements of radiative imbalance.
The earth’s temperature at any location is never in equilibrium. It changes daily, seasonally and annually. Incoming solar radiation varies enormously especially near the poles which receive more energy per day in summer than the equator.
The earth cools primarily by moving heat from hot tropical regions towards high latitudes where net IR radiation loss cools the planet, thus maintaining a certain temperature profile.
Key Point: GMT Anomalies Are Dominated by the Highest Latitudes
The main problem with all the existing observational datasets is that they don’t actually measure the global temperature at all. Instead they measure the global average temperature ‘anomaly’. . .The use of anomalies introduces a new bias because they are now dominated by the larger ‘anomalies’ occurring at cold places in high latitudes. The reason for this is obvious, because all extreme seasonal variations in temperature occur in northern continents, with the exception of Antarctica. Increases in anomalies are mainly due to an increase in the minimum winter temperatures, especially near the arctic circle.
To take an extreme example here is the monthly temperature data and calculated anomalies for Verkoyhansk in Siberia. Annual temperatures vary from -50C in winter to +20C in summer. That is a seasonal range of 70C each year, and a year to year anomaly variation of ~8C is normal. The only global warming effect evident is a slight increase in the minimum winter temperatures since 1900. That is not due to any localised enhanced greenhouse effect but rather to an enhanced meridional heat transport. Temperatures in equatorial regions meanwhile have only ~4C seasonal variations, and show essentially no warming trend.
2. Arctic Surface Stations Records Show Ordinary Warming
Locations of 118 arctic stations examined in this study and compared to observations at 50 European stations whose records averaged 200 years and in a few cases extend to the early 1700s
A recent extensive analysis of Northern surface temperature records gives no support for Arctic “amplification” fears.
The Arctic has warmed at the same rate as Europe over the past two centuries. Heretofore, it has been supposed that any global warming would be amplified in the Arctic. This may still be true if urban heat island effects are responsible for part of the observed temperature increase at European stations. However, European and Arctic temperatures have remained closely synchronized for over 200 years during the rapid growth of urban centres.
And the warming pattern in Europe and the Arctic is familiar and unalarming.
Arctic temperatures have increased during the period 1820– 2014. The warming has been larger in January than in July. Siberia, Alaska and Western Canada appear to have warmed slightly more than Eastern Canada, Greenland, Iceland and Northern Europe. The warming has not occurred at a steady rate. Much of the warming trends found during 1820 to 2014 occurred in the late 1990s, and the data show temperatures levelled off after 2000. The July temperature trend is even slightly negative for the period 1820–1990. The time series exhibit multidecadal temperature fluctuations which have also been found by other temperature reconstructions.
3. Arctic Warmth Comes from Meridional Heat Transport, not CO2
Key Point: Heat Distribution Changes, not Global Temperatures
Rising CO2 levels modify that radiation imbalance profile slightly. Surface temperatures in the tropics are not really warming at all. Any excess heat induces more clouds and more convection while surface temperatures remain constant. What really happens is that the meridional radiation profile changes. Slightly more heat is transported polewards so that hot places are shifting more heat to cold places which are doing the warming. If CO2 levels stop rising then a new temperature and radiation profile would rather quickly be reached. This is then called ‘climate change’ but any such changes are concentrated in colder regions of the world. The global ‘temperature’ itself is not changing, but instead the global distribution of temperature is changing.
Key Point: More Atmospheric Heat means Warming in the Coldest Places
Temperatures at the poles during 6 months of darkness would fall well below -150C if there was no atmosphere, similar to the moon. Instead heat is constantly being transported from lower latitudes by the atmosphere and ocean and so that temperatures never fall much below -43C. If more heat is transported northwards than previously, then minimum temperatures must rise, and this is what we observe in individual measurements.
Long term changes in temperature anomalies occur mainly in northern continents in winter months. This is not because the earth as a whole is warming up but rather that meridional heat transport from the equator to the poles has increased and the largest effect on ‘anomalies occurs in winter. The average absolute temperature of the earth’s surface is unknown. Basing the evidence for climate change on the 150 year trend in global averaged temperature anomalies still biases the result towards higher latitudes where most of the stations are located.
Summary
When heat is released into the atmosphere from the oceans, it is transported toward the poles to dissipate into space. Places in higher latitudes are warmed, not by radiative effects of greenhouse gases in those locales, but by the incursion of warmer air from the equator.
What happens if more CO2 is added into the atmosphere? No one knows, but there are many opinions, a popular one being that more heat is retained in the atmosphere. But in that case, that additional heat will be shed by the planet in exactly the same manner: transport to the poles with slightly less extremely cold air at the higher latitudes.
Why in the world would we pay anything to prevent a little bit of warming in the world’s coldest places?
London, 23 September – A prominent climate scientist has warned that the picture of climate change presented in the IPCC’s narrative is simplistic, ill-conceived, and undermined by observational evidence. In a new discussion paper, Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) points out that the official picture, focusing narrowly on carbon dioxide as a warming agent, becomes implausible when applied to the details of the climate system. According to Lindzen,
“If you are going to blame everything on carbon dioxide, you have to explain why, on all timescales, temperatures in the tropics are extremely stable while those in high latitudes are much more variable. The IPCC’s story is that small amounts of greenhouse warming near the equator are ‘amplified’ at high latitudes. But neither theory nor data support the idea of amplification.”
Instead, says Lindzen, this pattern – of stable tropical temperatures and fluctuating ones in high latitudes – is mostly a function of natural processes in the atmosphere and oceans; in other words, changes in oceanic and atmospheric currents that transport heat poleward while drawing varying amounts of heat out of the tropics. These changes in transport affect the tropics, but they are not determined by the tropics.
“The changes in the earth’s so-called temperature are mainly due to changes in the temperature difference between the tropics and the poles – at least for major changes. The changes in tropical temperature, which are influenced by greenhouse processes, are a minor contribution.”
A steady and remarkable rise in average global ocean temperatures this year is now outpacing anything seen in four decades of satellite observations, causing many scientists to suddenly blare alarm over the risks and realities of climate change. But even those typically aligned on climate science can’t agree on what, exactly, triggered such rapid warming and how alarmed they should be.
Some climate researchers suspect that a drastic reduction in air pollution from ships has allowed more sunlight to radiate into oceans, a conclusion others vigorously criticize. Meteorologists also say a weakening of Atlantic winds may be encouraging warming; normally these winds help cool waters and carry sun-blocking plumes of Saharan dust.
Scientists nonetheless agree on this: Conditions are ever ripening for extreme heat waves, droughts, floods and storms, all of which have proven links to ocean warming.
In the Pacific Ocean, warming temperatures are to be expected during El Niño — its impacts on weather around the world stem from warmer-than-normal surface waters along the equatorial Pacific. But the extreme warmth extends beyond the Pacific. Record warmth is also occurring in the equatorial and northern Atlantic — and in the tropics, where hurricanes form.
“This is totally bonkers and people who look at this stuff routinely can’t believe their eyes,” Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, wrote on Twitter. “Something very weird is happening.”
Antarctic sea ice concentration on June 27, 2023, with white representing solid ice and dark blue representing open ocean. The median ice edge for 1981–2010 is drawn in orange. (Credit: Map by NOAA Climate.gov, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center)
And of course there is the added warning about Antarctic sea ice not freezing as rapidly as usual in SH winter. The media always refers to “climate change” as the causal factor, which is code for rising CO2 and humans to blame. For a more reasonable discussion, see Antarctic Sea Ice Varies, It’s Complicated.
What About Natural Factors?
Because the power, glory and money comes from CO2 hysteria and taking over the energy industry, the theories are all about the atmosphere. Realists know that Oceans Make Climate, and look for more direct means by which sea temperatures can warm.
The HadSST4 AMO dataset was finally updated and showed dramatic 2023 warming in the North Atlantic. Let’s consider two possibilities.
An international team of scientists led by CICOES researcher David Butterfield
work together to rapidly find and explore large hydrothermal vents
on the world’s longest mountain range.
Sometimes Mid-Atlantic ridge is called the “40,000-mile Volcano”
Scientists have discovered three new hydrothermal vent fields over a 434-mile-long stretch of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge during the first scientific expedition aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s recently launched research vessel Falkor (too).
The multidisciplinary science team representing 11 institutions from the United States, Canada, and France used advanced ocean technologies to make the discovery. Scientists used autonomous and remotely operated underwater vehicles resulting in 65 square miles (170 square kilometers) of seafloor mapped at one-meter scale resolution, an area approximately the size of Manhattan Island.
The discovery of the active hydrothermal vents is the first on this section of the world’s longest underwater mountain range, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, in more than 40 years. One of the discovered vent fields was located at the Puy des Folles volcano and has five active sites over 6.95 square miles (18 square kilometers). High-temperature ‘black smoker’ vents were also found at the Grappe Deux vent system and Kane Fracture Zone.
This discovery of new hydrothermal vents under the Atlantic ocean reminds of hundreds of thousands of sea mounts active on the ocean floor, with a high concentration in the North Atlantic For a more complete discussion of bottom up ocean warming, See Post:
The eruption of the submarine Hunga volcano in January 2022 was associated with a powerful blast that injected volcanic material to altitudes up to 58 km. From a combination of various types of satellite and ground-based observations supported by transport modeling, we show evidence for an unprecedented increase in the global stratospheric water mass by 13% relative to climatological levels, and a 5-fold increase of stratospheric aerosol load, the highest in the last three decades. Owing to the extreme injection altitude, the volcanic plume circumnavigated the Earth in only 1 week and dispersed nearly pole-to-pole in three months.The unique nature and magnitude of the global stratospheric perturbation by the Hunga eruption ranks it among the most remarkable climatic events in the modern observation era, with a range of potential long-lasting repercussions for stratospheric composition and climate.
The perturbation of stratospheric water vapour burden by 13% is tremendous and has no frame of comparison in the entire observation record dating back to 1985. As there are no efficient sinks of water vapour in the stratosphere, this perturbation is expected to last over several years. Indeed, in 9 months since the eruption, the water vapour mass anomaly has gradually decreased only by 2.5% (4.3 ± 0.1% annual rate), which should lead to the perturbation timescale of over 3 years, assuming the further linear decay trend. The persistent stratospheric moist anomaly may lead to changes in atmospheric radiative balance; stratospheric dynamics as well as amplification of the polar ozone depletion through wider occurrence of polar stratospheric clouds. The ability to assess the longer-term impacts of the HT eruption on stratospheric chemistry will depend strongly on the quality and availability of global satellite observations such as MLS in the coming years.
In addition to blasting seawater to the stratosphere, the event shook the ocean floor worldwide.
The massive volcanic blast in the Pacific last year was felt 18,000km away on the other side of the world, on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The cataclysmic eruption of Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha’apai on 15 January 2022 sent pressure waves through Earth’s atmosphere that connected with the sea surface and triggered 50 highly sensitive seismometers placed 5,000m under water on the seabed. It was one of a number of intriguing phenomena picked up by the instrument network in the Azores-Madeira-Canary Islands region. Source: BBC
Summary
Let’s stop pretending we can alter nature by spending trillions of dollars “fighting climate change.” Better to solve actual problems we are causing and can fix, rather than obsessing over imaginary ones.
Paul Noel ,Former Research Scientist 6 Level 2 UAH (2008–2014) wrote this response. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.
I have researched this issue in depth. As a good scientist I have gone deeply and gotten the facts. I have gotten:
the Satellite data on the global profiles,
the weather data.
the storm data and disaster data
the polar ice data.
the historical data.
I have looked in deeply on this issue. I have studied the physics too! I have studied the history too! I have studied the archeology and even the paleo geology and even the ice core data.
This isn’t easy to get because lots of people are producing lies on the topic. So I have worked very hard to get down to the facts. Then the job becomes one which is very hard. If I just tell you the answers I got , it is a case of if you believe me or not. If I tell you the science data it is likely to get way in over your understanding and that is back to if you believe me or not. This is a job of explaining to you very carefully what the data is using things you can see and understand.
So taking this from the top there are 2 ways I can go.
One way is to go into the advocates of the topic that are so scaring you deeply
and the other is to go into the science.
The explanation of the science is pretty easy and such but explaining to you the motives of people and their actions and methods is much harder. But I am going to start with the people.
Why are they scaring you about the climate?
Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer.
This is what this is all about. There is no other motive. You may dispense with your worries here if you are worried for the world environment. But I will now switch to the facts and reality on the ground. Remember this alone should pretty much put an end to your worries. You are facing a very large deliberate well funded and most professionally constructed set of lies and propaganda designed to get you scared like you are. This is 5th generational warfare. It is not anything you are used to thinking about. That is why it is effective.
What are the climate facts on the ground?
The fact on the ground are that if the changes you are supposing to see are real they should be obvious. They should be something you can see, feel, hear and touch. That is where we are going right now!
If the world is warming up the paleo-climate data says that the polar regions warm first. That is what you are being told about arctic ice melting and sea level raise. If you go to the Denmark Polar Portal on the web you can get the data.
Greenland Ice Sheet is not Melting Away
Because these people have to comply with the IPCC they put in all kinds of disclaimers trying to keep you scared of melt down etc.. The reality is we are solidly into the melt season and the ice is not melting down more than usual.
Arctic Sea Ice Is Not Going Away
The polar ice is at normal levels. I can go on and on here but the reality is that there is no emergency.
Global Warming is Not Accumulating
The data from UAH which is technical showed from January 1995 to January 2023 the global temperature did not increase at all. And from 2016 actually went down (-0.7C) . That isn’t some melting or Global Warming or some Climate Catastrophe. It just is not.
CO2 Is Rising But Far Below Its Optimum
Is CO2 rising it sure is and it isn’t even to the maximum level that occurred in the last maximum in the last interglacial period of earth. CO2 is not 1% it is 0.042%. The earth has thrived with maximum life at 1% CO2 there are no melt down periods.
Is the climate variable, You bet it is. We have seen in the last 2000 years it go up and down in temperature and we are actually near the bottom of that period. The reality is that we have been up to 10C warmer and guess what that time mankind did his very best. We don’t thrive on cold.
Warming Has Been Beneficial and More Would be a Good Thing
Now let’s look at the trends and in a way you never imagined. I have looked into this matter because Alabama where I live has a cute lovely vacation town called Orange Beach. I highly recommend Orange Beach for a vacation it is beautiful. Orange Beach was named in 1898 when the US Post Office (Now the USPS) opened a new post office there. The unincorporated town’s principal business was raising oranges commercially. Alabama used to raise oranges up to about Evergreen Alabama or almost to Montgomery Alabama the state capitol.
Production of Oranges Limited by Freezing Temperatures in SE US
No commercial orange production exists in Alabama at this time. The reason is simple. The growing season in Orange Beach Alabama went from 365 days a year to 268 days a year. The orange trees froze out. Now they have new varieties that can grow in the colder weather but even they are severely limited in Alabama. The orange trees have frozen out almost to Orlando Florida now.
Orange beach would be right next to North Florida along the Gulf of Mexico. Literally Florida is just across the Perdido River from Orange Beach.
The Gulf Stream Makes Climate Change in the North Atlantic
The reality is the climate from 1898 to the present has gotten colder in the USA. This is significant to the whole earth for a very important reason.
You see the heat from the whole earth gets aimed directly at Alabama! We cool down so is the rest of the world. The whole circulation for the whole earth focuses on the Gulf of Mexico and Alabama.
This by the way is why Greenland has so much ice. You see it is the warm water from the Gulf Stream that generates the steam that freezes and comes down as snow. You have to make the steam to make the ice.
Sea Level Depends on Land Buoyancy, not CO2
Now on to sea level rise. First of all if you believe that the sea level is rising and such it is only reported to be rising in the order of the thickness of 2 US 5 Cent coins per year. So if you believe it is happening it is no emergency and no real problem. It isn’t worthy of losing sleep over. The stories of melting sea ice are silly. First of all even if they melt they will have absolutely no effect on the sea level because they are floating. But there is another thing these people don’t tell you about.
The sea level is not the product of the amount of water in the ocean. It is in fact the product of a large sum of buoyancy issues and the gravity of the earth. The continents are where they are because they have less gravity than the other areas. The seafloor is a zone of higher gravity. Because the continents are floating that means that their level above the sea is determined by the laws of buoyancy. If Greenland were to melt off, the resulting reality would cause the area to buoy up because it would weigh less. At the same time the water added to the oceans would simply sink the sea floor deeper.
Continents Can Sink to Form New Seas
But to illustrate this you must learn about the Great Rift Valley of Africa. That valley is a place where the base continental rocks have spread apart. The land is sinking there and has already sunk to form the Red Sea! A new ocean is forming in Africa. This is what has sunk the continental shelves of the continents. The edge of the continents tinned out and lost the thick granite below that floats on the magma and they sunk. So sea level is not in any way related to ice melting. Sea level is related to this continental buoyancy issue. So nothing in their story not melting ice nor rising seas is happening. But I will show you this in pictures because we have these now.
Many Coastlines Show Water Receding Rather than Rising
Tell me if you see any sea level rise in the past 246 years now. (None!)
[Since we are looking in New England:]
This is just about due south of London–Pevensey Castle.
It was started construction in about 203 AD. It was built right on the sea on a coastal island. Such a fort only has value as far as an archer can shoot an arrow. It guarded the entrance to Pevensey Bay. The bay doesn’t exist it is nearly 30 meters above sea level now. Lots of people just refuse to see them. The fort itself is 110 feet above sea level and 5/8 mile from the sea.
If it isn’t clear yet that you have been hoaxed into a panic I don’t know what I can do. I have shown you that it got colder not warmer. That the ice is not melting. That the seas are not rising. Shall I go on?
CO2 Is Plant Food not a Pollutant
How about the real truth of CO2 and what it is doing on our earth. Look at these pictures carefully they tell the truth beyond any possible doubt.
C3 photosynthesis plants are growing 800% better than they were. Our C4 plants are doing 650% better.
The whole earth is growing better and the forests are growing because of CO2. Sorry this isn’t a “doom and gloom” story here.
Wild fires are down too!
The fact is that in 1960 the world was running out of food because our plants and farms were at their limits. Today we are run over with food and 45% of our crop land has been turned back to the forests. We are not at the limits. This has led to an explosion of wildlife too!
Life is Thriving Not Facing Extinction
There literally is no mass extinction going on. We are in the largest bloom of life on earth that has been seen in the past 10,000 years.
The human race is on the edge of unlimited energy, unlimited food, unlimited technology and we are sitting here in terror of some imaginary doom and gloom hating the very system that is feeding mankind and building him up.
Everything is quite literally the opposite of what you are told!
In Sum;
The only catastrophe would be ill-advised climate policies willfully destroying
our energy platform and economic supply processes out of irrational CO2 hysteria.
E.M. Smith explains Curing Radiation Myopia Regarding Climate
E.M. Smith provides an helpful critique of a recent incomplete theory of earth’s climate functioning in his Chiefio blog post So Close–Missing Convection and Homeostasis. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. The reference is to a video by Sabine Hossenfelder you can view below in the post.
It is Soooo easy to get things just a little bit off and miss reality. Especially in complex systems and even more so when folks raking in $Millions are interested in misleading for profit. Sigh.
Sabine Hosenfelder does a wonderful series of videos ‘explaining’ all sorts of interesting things in and about actual science and how the universe works. She is quite smart and generally “knows her stuff”.But… It looks like she has gotten trapped into the Radiative Model of Globull Warming.
The whole mythology of Global Warming depends on having you NOT think about anything but radiative processes and physics. To trap you into the Radiative Model. But the Earth is more complex than that. Much more complex. Then there’s the fact that you DO have some essential Radiative Physics to deal with, so the bait is there. However…
It is absolutely essential to pay attention to convection in the lower atmosphere
and to the “feedback loops” or homeostasis in the system.
The system acts to restore its original state. There is NO “runaway greenhouse” or we would have never evolved into being since the early earth had astoundingly high levels of CO2 and we would have baked to death before getting out of our slime beds as microbes.
Figure 16. The geological history of CO2 level and temperature proxy for the past 400 million years. CO2 levels now are ~ 400ppm. Source: Davis, W. J. (2017).
OK, I’ll show you her video. It is quite good even with the “swing and a miss” at the end. She does 3 levels of The Greenhouse Gas Mythology so you can see the process evolving from grammar school to high school to college level of mythology. But then she doesn’t quite make it to Post-Doc Reality.
Where’s she wrong? (Well, not really wrong, but lacking…)
I see 2 major issues. First off, she talks about the “lower atmosphere warming”. Well, yes and no. It doesn’t “warm” in the sense of getting hotter, but it does speed up convection to move the added heat flow.
In English “heating” has 2 different meanings. Increasing temperature.
Increasing heat flow at a temperature.
We see this in “warm up the TV dinner in the microwave” meaning to heat it up from frozen to edible; and in the part where the frozen dinner is defrosting at a constant temperature as it absorbs heat but turns it into the heat of fusion of water. So you can “warm it up” by melting at a constant temperature of frozen water (but adding a LOT of thermal energy – “heat”) then later as increasing temperature once the ice is melted. It is very important to keep in mind that there are 2 kinds of “heating”. NOT just “increasing temperature”.
In the lower atmosphere, the CO2 window / Infrared Window is already firmly slammed shut. Sabine “gets that”. Yay! One BIG point for her! No amount of “greenhouse gas” is going to shut that IR window any more. As she points out, you get about 20 meters of transmission and then it is back to molecular vibrations (aka “heat”).
So what’s an atmosphere to do? It has heat to move! Well, it convects. It evaporates water.
Those 2 things dominate by orders of magnitude any sort of Radiative Model Physics. Yes, you have radiation of light bringing energy in, but then it goes into the ocean and into the dirt and the plants and even warms your skin on a sunny day. And it sits there. It does NOT re-radiate to any significant degree. Once “warmed” by absorption, heat trying to leave as IR hits a slammed shut window.
The hydrological cycle. Estimates of the observed main water reservoirs (black numbers in 10^3 km3 ) and the flow of moisture through the system (red numbers, in 10^3 km3 yr À1 ). Adjusted from Trenberth et al. [2007a] for the period 2002-2008 as in Trenberth et al. [2011].
So what does happen? Look around, what do you see? Clouds. Rain. Snow. (sleet hail fog etc. etc.)
Our planet is a Water Planet. It moves that energy (vibrations of atoms, NOT radiation) by having water evaporate into the atmosphere. (Yes, there are a few very dry deserts where you get some radiative effects and can get quite cold at night via radiation through very dry air, but our planet is 70% or so oceans, so those areas are minor side bars on the dominant processes). This water vapor makes the IR window even more closed (less distance to absorption). It isn’t CO2 that matters, it is the global water vapor.
What happens next?
Well, water holds a LOT of heat (vibration of atoms and NOT “temperature”) as the heat of vaporization. About 540 calories per gram (compared to 80 for melting “heat of fusion” and 1 for specific heat of a gram of water). Compare those numbers again. 1 for a gram of water. 80 for melting a gram of ice. 540 for evaporating a gram of water. It’s dramatically the case that evaporation of water matters a lot more than melting ice, and both of them make “warming water” look like an irrelevant thing.
Warming water is 1/80 as important as melting ice, and it is 1/540 th as important as evaporation of the surface of the water. Warming air is another order of magnitude less important to heat content.
So to have clue, one MUST look at the evaporation of water from the oceans as everything else is in the small change.
Look at any photo of the Earth from space. The Blue Marble covered in clouds. Water and clouds. The product of evaporation, convection, and condensation. Physical flows carrying all that heat (“vibration of atoms” and NOT temperature, remember). IF you add more heat energy, you can speed up the flows, but it will not cause a huge increase in temperature (and mostly none at all). It is mass flow that changes. The number of vibrating molecules at a temperature, not the temperature of each.
In the end, a lot of mass flow happens, lofting all that water vapor with all that heat of vaporization way up toward the Stratosphere. This is why we have a troposphere, a tropopause (where it runs out of steam… literally…) and a stratosphere.
What happens when it gets to the stratosphere boundary? Well, along the way that water vapor turns into water liquid very tiny drops (clouds) and eventually condenses to big drops of water (rain) and some of it even freezes (hail, snow, etc.). Now think about that for a minute. That’s 540 calories per gram of heat (molecular vibration NOT temperature, remember) being “dumped” way up high in the top of the troposphere as it condenses, and another 80 / gram if if freezes. 620 total. That’s just huge.
This is WHY we have a globe covered with rain, snow, hail, etc. etc. THAT is all that heat moving. NOT any IR Radiation from the surface. Let that sink in a minute. Fix it in your mind. WATER and ICE and Water Vapor are what moves the heat, not radiation. We ski on it, swim in it, have it water our crops and flood the land. That’s huge and it is ALL evidence of heat flows via heat of vaporization and fusion of water.
It is all those giga-tons of water cycling to snow, ice and rain, then falling back to be lofted again as evaporation in the next cycle. That’s what moves the heat to the stratosphere where CO2 then radiates it to space (after all, radiation toward the surface hits that closed IR window and stops.) At most, more CO2 can let the Stratosphere radiate (and “cool”) better. It can not make the Troposphere any less convective and non-radiative.
Then any more energy “trapped” at the surface would just run the mass transport water cycle faster. It would not increase the temperature.
More molecules would move, but at a limit on temperature. Homeostasis wins. We can see this already in the Sub-Tropics. As the seasons move to fall and winter, water flows slow dramatically. I have to water my Florida lawn and garden. As the seasons move to spring and summer, the mass flow picks up dramatically. Eventually reaching hurricane size. Dumping up to FEET of condensed water (that all started as warm water vapor evaporating from the ocean). It is presently headed for about 72 F today (and no rain). At the peak of hurricane season, we get to about 84 or 85 F ocean surface temperature as the water vapor cycle is running full blast and we get “frog strangler” levels of rain. That’s the difference. Slow water cycle or fast.
IF (and it is only an “if”, not a when) you could manage to increase the heat at the surface of the planet in, say, Alaska: At most you would get a bit more rain in summer, a bit more snow in winter, and MAYBE only a slight possible, of one or two days that are rain which could have been snow or sleet.
Then there’s the fact that natural cycles swamp all of that CO2 fantasy anyway. The Sun, as just one example, had a large change of IR / UV levels with both the Great Pacific Climate Shift (about 1975) and then back again in about 2000. Planetary tilt, wobble, eccentricity of the orbit and more put us in ice ages (as we ARE right now, but in an “interglacial” in this ice age… a nice period of warmth that WILL end) and pulls us out of them. Glacials and interglacials come and go on various cycles (100,000 years, 40,000 years, and 12,000 year interglacials – ours ending now, but slowly). The simple fact is that Nature Dominates, and we are just not relevant. To think we are is hubris of the highest order.
Figure 9: Two contrasting views of the effects of how the continuous intensification of deep cumulus convection would act to alter radiation flux to space. The top (bottom) diagram represents a net increase (decrease) in radiation to space
Footnote
There are two main reasons why investigators are skeptical of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarm. This post intends to be an antidote to myopic and lop-sided understandings of our climate system.
CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.
Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”
2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.
Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
Science Matters 