The conceptualization of a 33 K warmer Earth due to the presence of water vapor and CO2 (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere is wholly based on the unobserved and unknown, or assumptions about what an imaginary world with no atmosphere would be like.
It is widely believed that we can determine the effective radiating temperature, a uniformly global temperature, the globally uniform albedo…of a rocky planets simply by conjuring up thought experiments about what a made-up world would be like if it did not have an atmosphere (e.g., no N2, O2, atmospheric pressure, clouds, water vapor…).
This “thought model” has been subjected to critical analysis in a new paper published by four atmospheric physicists.
Image Source: Kramm et al., 2022
The authors use observational measurements from 24 datasets for the moon — which actually is the closest real-world proximity to a rocky planet without an atmosphere — as their testbed. They conclude that the globally averaged surface temperature is necessarily “about 60 K” lower than the effective radiation temperature, rendering the “thought model” presumptions about a 33 K “greenhouse effect” differential for the effective radiating vs. global average temperature (255 vs. 288 K) “meritless.”
Other instances of a disqualifying contrast between observations and modeled assumptions include:
“[I]n the case of the Earth in absence of its atmosphere, [the effective radiating temperature] would only correspond to a globally averaged surface temperature if the surface temperature were uniformly distributed [i.e., the temperature at the poles was the same as in the tropics], which is, by far, not the case.”
“[T]he power law of Stefan and Boltzmann is only valid on a local scale. Applying it on a global scale notably disagrees with the prerequisites and assumptions on which the derivation of this power law is based.”
“The DLRE [moon] data provide observational evidence that the effective radiation temperature must be discarded for planets and their natural satellites.”
‘The assumption of a global albedo of about 0.30, however, is far from reality because this value is related to the entire Earth-atmosphere system. The cloud cover primarily contributes to this value of the global albedo, but a cloud cover cannot exist in the thought model of the Earth in the absence of its atmosphere.”
A lot of words, when all you have to do is measure the actual radiation from the moon right now and see how it compares with 1361/4W/M2 adjusted for the moon’s 0.12 albedo.
[…] From NoTricksZone […]
Back of the Envelope calculation that CO2 has no bearing on warming the atmosphere.
1) Average temperature of Earth 14 or 15 degrees Celsius. Depending on the references used (Wikipedia). 15 degrees is equal to 288K
2) The effective temperature as measured from space is 255K (around 5 to 6km above Earth)
3) Adiabiatic Lapse Rate is 6.5 degrees per Km.
4) Using 5km and 6.5 we get 32.5 degrees. Rounding it up is 33 degrees
5) 255K + 33 = 288K
6) Therefore CO2 does not cause the warming of the Earth’s Atmosphere PERIOD.
Regards
Climate Heretic
The lapse rate means that everywhere in the atmosphere it is colder than the surface below that point. The 2nd law of thermodynamics in a simple form states that heat only flows from hot to cold. So the CO2, H2O(g) and other gases in the atmosphere can not heat the surface. Thus, there are no greenhouse gases. Clouds however are a different matter. When H2O condenses it gives off heat. The water(l&s) can both absorb and radiate heat plus reflect radiation from the sun. Clouds are important for weather and climate. On Titan (a moon of Saturn) CH4(g,l&s) has a similar action to water (g,l&s) on Earth
It is pretty much the same thing they already published in 2017. Since then they have not learned what the GHE is, and what it is not. Apart from quoting Gerlich and Tscheuschner, it is neither very helpful to argue the GHE was larger than the orthodoxy claims, when indeed it is smaller.
Btw. if the GHE was larger, then you would need to attribute larger contributions to it by the respective GHGs, and you would end up with higher climate sensitivity. This is pretty odd if you want to argue against AGW, which they intend to do.
Too much. I wouldn’t feed this to a class of school children. The greenhouse effect is real and arises mostly from the water on this planet. Carbon dioxide is also a greenhouse gas, but its effects are very small, and it grows things like trees and flowers and food. We wouldn’t be here without it.
I would like to figure out why Kenneth Richard despoils this website with so many haphazard or meaningless “studies”. Any study that claims CO2 is unimportant gets his attention like catnip gets my cat’s attention. That anti-co2 bias is not science. It’s conformation bias. The biggest improvement possible for this otherwise fine website would to be to ban future Kenneth Richard articles,
Since water covers 71% of the Earth surface and 93% of the manifestation of global warming (EEI imbalances) is ocean warming, cite the real-world laboratory experiment that quantifies the extent to which CO2 and water vapor gas molecules heat water (solid). We can use these quantified results to determine the extent to which these greenhouse gases affect the surface temperature.
Apparently CO2 only radiatively affects only the top 0.01 mm of the ocean. The ocean is 4,000,000 mm deep, and the top 0.1 to 1 mm “layer” is where evaporative cooling occurs.
So, again, explain why it is believed these GHGs provide 33 K worth of surface warming – of which 71% is water – when it has not been established that GHGs heat water.
Calling for censorship?
You could not make your lack of arguments any clearer.
In every situation where you have a warm body and you add water to it, the temperature of that body drops massively.
You say the opposite. Why? Why does water have the opposite effect on the planet as a whole, to the effect it has on all things ON the planet surface?
Heretic:
1) The earth’s atmosphere is more transparent to shortwave radiation from the sun than it is to the longwave radiation from the earth’s surface. This is due to the presence of (poorly named) greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is all known through controlled repeatable laboratory experiments.
2) Due to this differential, the atmosphere gains thermal energy (“is heated”) primarily from the bottom and loses thermal energy (“cools”) primarily from the top.
3) This means that the atmosphere is (generally) warmer at the bottom than the top – what we call a negative lapse rate. If the magnitude of this lapse rate is larger than adiabatic, this is known as an unstable lapse rate, and convection starts with the effect of reducing the lapse rate toward adiabatic.
4) As you note, the “average” effective temperature of the earth where it radiates to space is about 255K, so its outgoing power flux roughly balances the incoming solar power flux.
5) Due to the lapse rate below this, the earth’s surface is generally warmer than this. But this lapse rate is due to the LW absorption of those “greenhouse gases”, primarily H2O and CO2.
Since water covers 71% of the Earth surface and 93% of the manifestation of global warming (EEI imbalances) is ocean warming, cite the real-world laboratory experiment that quantifies the extent to which CO2 and water vapor gas molecules heat water (solid). We can use these quantified result to determine the extent to which these “’greenhouse gases’, primarily H2O and CO2″ affect the surface temperature.
Apparently CO2 only radiatively affects only the top 0.01 mm of the ocean. The ocean is 4,000,000 mm deep, and the top 0.1 to 1 mm “layer” is where evaporative cooling occurs.
So, again, explain why it is believed these GHGs provide 33 K worth of surface warming – of which 71% is water – when it has not been established that GHGs heat water.
Kenneth,
The surface of water radiates as a gray, body with emissivity above 0.95. (A while back I saw a formal paper arguing that emissivity was closer to 0.97 than 0.96, but I can’t find it now). This radiation comes from the top 0.01 mm or so of the ocean (to use your number), the same layer that absorbs downwelling longwave radiation.
At a typical temperature of 15C (288K), the output thermal radiation flux density from this surface can be calculated as:
q = eps * sigma * T^4 = 0.96 * 5.67E-8 * (288)^4 = 375 W/m2
A typical measurement of downwelling longwave radiation is 325 W/m2. The net radiative balance of this surface layer is 375 – 325 = 50 W/m2. This measurable DWLWIR comes from “greenhouse gases”, and it reduces radiative cooling by 87%. This is a huge difference, and it has definite knock-on effects on the layers below.
We can measure the spectrum of this DWLWIR, which shows that it comes from the emissions of H2O and CO2. These can be found in introductory textbooks on the subject.
Have you really never noticed the following? On a winter night where the air temperature gets down close to freezing but never reaches it, you can still get freezing on puddles when the sky is clear and the humidity is low. But when there are clouds and/or significant humidity, you don’t get freezing at the same air temperature due to the warming effect of the DWLWIR from GHGs and clouds.
You can measure yourself the water vapor content (humidity) in the atmosphere with a simple kitchen infrared thermometer from the warming effect of the radiation on the sensor. The higher the humidity, the lower down in the atmosphere the radiation comes from, so the higher the flux density, and the higher the reported temperature by the thermometer.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258488377_Measuring_Total_Column_Water_Vapor_by_Pointing_an_Infrared_Thermometer_at_the_Sky
When I formally studied engineering heat transfer in the 1970s, we were told to treat the clear night sky in temperate zones as equivalent to a blackbody at -20C (253K) for radiative transfer calculations. If we did not use a figure like this, with the resulting power transfer to the surface layer (whether liquid water or solid surfaces), our calculations would be very wrong.
All this is the stuff of textbooks and undergraduate labs. For a textbook, I recommend “A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation” by Grant Petty.
Ed Bo,
There has been a 200-yaer long confusion about the role of atmospheric IR LW radiation in climate. Just because this down-welling IR flux can objectively be measured, it does not mean that it’s the “cause” for the so-called “greenhouse effect” (a much better terms is Atmospheric Thermal Effect or ATE).
Our analysis of NASA planetary data showed that ATE is a form of adiabatic heating caused by total air pressure independent of atmospheric composition, and that the atmospheric LW radiation is simply a BYPRODUCT of atmospheric temperatures, which in turn are set by solar heating (a diabatic process) and atmospheric pressure (an adiabatic process). “Greenhouse gases” are NOT a source of extra energy to the climate system. For details, please watch this video:
Demystifying The Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect:
https://vimeo.com/602819278
Ned,
You claim there is “a form of adiabatic heating caused by total air pressure independent of atmospheric composition”. Let’s examine that claim.
The power transfer due to pressure can be quantified as:
Power = (Pressure x Area) x Velocity
For the earth’s atmosphere and the surface (unlike the moving piston in an engine), the velocity is zero, so the power transfer due to pressure is also zero.
The earth’s surface emits about 500 W/m2, averaged over time and area. But the earth and its atmosphere absorb only about 240 W/m2, again averaged over time and area. These numbers are known to within a few percent.
Nobody thinks the surface is more than 1 W/m2 out of balance. The pressure of a transparent atmosphere cannot contribute anything to closing this gap. LWIR from radiatively active gases can.
The fact that static pressure does not transfer any power is a matter of basic high school physics. It has been pointed out to you many times, but it is totally beyond you.
Because CO2 can only radiatively affect the top 0.01 mm of the 4,000,000 mm deep ocean, the extent of any radiative influence it can muster stops at that depth. The top 0.1 mm of the ocean surface/skin layer is where evaporative cooling occurs. So the CO2 impact extends only to the evaporative cooling processes for the ocean.
Wong and Minnett (2018) quantified the extent to which the top 0.01 mm of the surface can affect radiation: 0.049%. This is obviously not enough to be a driver of – or even a nominal factor in – ocean heat content changes.
These same authors point out that the CO2 impact on water temperatures cannot even be measured because it is too small to be detected. They admit they have to use clouds as a proxy for CO2, as cloud LW effects can reach 200 W/m², whereas it takes centuries for CO2’s effects to even reach 2 W/m². As such all scientists can do is offer up hypothetical explanations for how CO2 or H2O (gas) might possibly heat the water. There are no observations (i.e., real science) to validate this cause-effect assumption, or belief.
Scientists still have yet to provide real-world experimental observation evidence that CO2 molecules drive changes in 0-2000 m ocean heat content. All you’ve done is repeat the talking points about downwelling LW W/m² values. You’ve offered no real-world proof that CO2 has the capacity to affect, let alone cause and drive, changes in ocean heat content.
That’s what I was asking you for. I knew you wouldn’t be able to deliver, and you didn’t disappoint.
Kenneth,
You say, “Because CO2 can only radiatively affect the top 0.01 mm of the 4,000,000 mm deep ocean, the extent of any radiative influence it can muster stops at that depth.”
You then cite Wong and Minnett (2018) to try to back up your argument. So let’s take a look at that paper.
The abstract says, “The additional energy from the absorption of increasing IR radiation adjusts the curvature of the TSL such that the upward conduction of heat from the bulk of the ocean into the TSL is reduced. The additional energy absorbed within the TSL supports more of the surface heat loss. Thus, more heat beneath the TSL is retained leading to the observed increase in upper ocean heat content.”
This is what I was arguing, and it directly contradicts your argument.
The conclusion says, ” This thus provides an explanation for the indirect heating of the ocean by increasing levels of incident infrared radiation and the observed increase in upper ocean heat content.”
Again, this is what I was arguing, and it directly contradicts your argument.
You then say, “Wong and Minnett (2018) quantified the extent to which the top 0.01 mm of the surface can affect radiation: 0.049%.” When you read that part of the paper, it is very clear that they are referring to the absorption of shortwave solar radiation in the surface layer – only 0.049% is absorbed there because water is highly transparent to SW radiation.
Next you say, “cloud LW effects can reach 200 W/m², whereas it takes centuries for CO2’s effects to even reach 2 W/m².” Here you are confusing — as you often do — total effects with differential effects. The 200 W/m2 cloud effect is total, compared to no clouds, but the 2 W/m2 CO2 effect you cite is differential, compared to pre-industrial levels, not zero CO2.
The fact that you can so thoroughly misinterpret a paper like this shows that you are clearly out of your depth (no pun intended) on these topics. It is very clear that you have never done even the most basic analysis or experimentation on thermal systems. You desperately need more experience in these before you can comment productively.
Yes, Ed, the abstract is a summary of their very hypothetical explanation for how CO2 might possibly maybe perhaps warm the ocean. Problematically, they admit they don’t even use CO2 as a variable in any observation or experiment, as its causal effects are too small to be measured. They must use clouds instead, as they have a 50x larger radiative impact with effects that can actually be measured.
This is precisely what I keep explaining to you, and you keep dismissing/denying: There is no real-world cause-effect observational evidence to suggest CO2 or H2O gas molecules cause the temperature of the 4 km deep ocean to warm up. All you are doing is regurgitating hypothetical explanations for how some people believe it might possibly work. Your job would be to falsify their – or your – hypothesis. But the explanation itself is unfalsifiable, as CO2 can’t even be used as a variable in an observation or experiment…and observations are required to even form a hypothesis, let alone falsify one. When hypotheses are unfalsifiable, they are no more than statements about what one believes to be true. That’s really all you have.
Correct. It’s just an explanation. Anyone can offer an explanation for how they think or believe something they’ve not observed in the real world might work. That you think all one needs is an explanation, and no observational evidence (i.e., not even using CO2 as a variable) is needed to claim that the explanation is Truth is a testament to your lack of intellectual curiosity and/or skepticism.
There is no evidence that CO2 molecules heat the ocean, Ed. You haven’t provided any. Wong and Minnett didn’t provide any. All you have are hypothetical explanations, which are sufficient for believers.
This comparison between CO2 effects vs. cloud effects comes directly from Wong and Minnett’s paper:
“The advantage in using cloud cover as a surrogate of GHG’s is the large signal in incoming longwave, LWin (about an increase of 200 W/m²) produced in short time intervals, as compared to a typical forcing of 3.7 W/m² anticipated for a doubling of CO2”
The authors compare the varying effects of clouds over short intervals to the total effects of CO2 after centuries (doubling). I used the value associated with the CO2 changes from 1750 to present. They used doubled CO2 (560 ppm). So we were comparing the same thing, but here you seem to think this sentence misrepresents what they actually wrote. It didn’t.
Wong and Minnett further explain that CO2 would have to triple to 1,071 ppm to even have a 500 mW/m² (0.5 W/m²) effect vs. clouds’ ~9 W/m² effect at the skin layer depth. Wong and Minnett also say clouds affect the top 0.09 mm to CO2’s 0.01 mm impact limit. Consequently, even small changes in clouds effectively cancel out any of CO2’s effects. It’s a wonder they even think it’s appropriate to use clouds as a “surrogate” for CO2 considering how much larger (50x) the cloud impact is in LW. Can I assume you disagree with these authors that cloud impact is so much larger? If so, why?
Kenneth,
You say, “There is no evidence that CO2 molecules heat the ocean, Ed. You haven’t provided any. Wong and Minnett didn’t provide any.”
Hogwash! You don’t even understand the concept of scientific evidence. W&M (and I) provided multiple lines of evidence. You may not find them conclusive, or even persuasive, but they are indeed evidence.
W&M compared clear nights to cloudy nights. They measured the downwelling IR in both cases, and the resulting effect on subsurface temperatures (among otherthings). They found significant differences between the two cases.
We know that clouds increase the downwelling IR compared to clear sky. We also know that CO2 increases the downwelling IR compared to no CO2 (as nothing else emits in the 14-16 micron band). We know that liquid water absorbs virtually all downwelling IR.
W&M showed that the absorption of IR by the surface layer has knock-on effects on the layers below. This is very strong evidence that the same effects occur with IR from CO2. You are effectively arguing that the IR from CO2 is somehow different from the IR from clouds. Seriously?
Do you think that sunlight heats the oceans at depth? It is absorbed in the top few meters, or tens of meters in the case of very clear water. As with IR, this is a trivial depth compared to the 4km full depth. By your standards, we have no evidence that this is the case.
That CO2 heats up the oceans?! No, you did not. All W&M did was offer up a hypothetical explanation for how it might possibly work. They have ZERO observational evidence using CO2 as a variable to offer as evidence. Without observational evidence of cause-effect, and the requisite quantification of this cause-effect, they, and you, are doing nothing more than stating what you believe to be true. Nothing more. Stating what you believe is not evidence.
W&M even admit that the sole objective of their study is only to “understand” and “provide an explanation” for how CO2 might possibly heat the ocean. They admit that they only “hypothesize” how it might work, as they admit it is “not clear” and the fact that the heat flux is from the ocean to air, “this raises questions about the cause of the observed increase in upper OHC”. So you are overselling and misrepresenting their paper by claiming they “provided multiple lines of evidence” that CO2 heats the ocean…especially since they openly admit they don’t even use CO2 as an observed variable because its effects are too small to even be measured.
Correct. They didn’t use CO2 vs. no CO2, as these conditions (0 ppm) do not exist in the real world. Since this is a never-observed state, all they and you can do is offer hypothetical and unfalsifiable explanations for what you believe happens.
W&M also note that CO2 would have to triple to 1,071 ppm to even have an 18x smaller radiative effect than clouds do (9 W/m² vs. 0.5 W/m²). Consequently, even a tiny change in cloud cover necessarily cancels out the effects of CO2. This is because we don’t have a real world in which clouds do not exist, and thus we cannot assume that the 50x larger LW effects of clouds do not supersede the 50x smaller LW effects of CO2 in the real-world atmosphere. Maybe you are a believer that we can assume this, but believing something to be true doesn’t make it any less of an assumption.
Again, Ed, there are no observations of a “no CO2” world, just as there are no observations of a “no clouds” world. This is an unfalsifiable conceptualization of an imaginary world (no CO2 vs. ___ ppm CO2, no clouds vs. ___% clouds, etc.). Once again, what you say is “known” is nothing more than a statement of your beliefs. Belief statements aren’t evidence.
You actually think W&M showed the same effects occur with CO2 as they do with clouds? This is a total misrepresentation of what they actually wrote, Ed. They directly compare clouds’ 200 W/m² effects to CO2’s 3.7 W/m² effects when doubled. As mentioned, they report CO2 must triple to 1,071 ppm to have an 18x smaller effect than clouds do. That you actually think 200 vs. 3.7 W/m² is “the same,” or 0.15 W/m² vs. 9 W/m² is “the same” is a testament to just how committed you are to heralding CO2 as a critical constituent in the forcing of ocean heat content changes.
Kenneth,
So you really are hanging your hat on the idea that IR from CO2 and H2O gases is fundamentally different fro IR from H2O cloud droplets. Talk about an idea for which there is no evidence! Absolutely none!
Your arguments are so bizarre that it is not worth continuing this any longer. Just keep in mind that scientifically literate people will by default disregard all of your work when they realize your limitations of scientific understanding.
No. For the 4th time now, I am “hanging my hat” on the conclusion (that even the CO2-heats-the-ocean believers promulgate) that the values from cloud LW forcing are so much larger than that of CO2 forcing that they (clouds vs. CO2) are indeed “fundamentally different” in terms of their effects. W&M compare 200 W/m² variable LW forcing for clouds to 3.7 W/m² for doubled CO2 (which takes centuries to realize) LW forcing. 200 vs. 3.7 is not the same, Ed. A tiny change in cloud cover consequently can easily wipe out the effects of CO2. Do you deny this? As Ramanathan et al. (1989) say in a study that has been cited 2,000 times, the greenhouse effect from clouds is larger than that resulting from a 100-fold increase in CO2 (35,000 ppm). Do you agree that this isn’t even close?
Your stated “idea” isn’t what I wrote, of course. What I have written is that the LW effects of clouds on surface water are large enough to be measured. That’s why W&M used clouds as a “surrogate” (their word) for CO2 concentration changes. The LW effects of CO2 concentration changes are orders of magnitude smaller, and consequently they cannot be measured in a real-world observation. Real-world observations are required in physics. We need to know how much a CO2 concentration change of, say, 100 ppm actually affects ocean heat content. We don’t know that. All we have are beliefs.
To make matters (much) worse, the effects of a CO2 concentration change of 100 ppm, even if known, could easily be wiped out by even a 0.5% change in cloud cover, as cloud LW effects are 10s of times larger than CO2 effects. Can you control for cloud cover changes in the real world of observation? No, you can’t.
So you are down to, once again, explaining how you think it might possibly work, but having no real-world observations or cause-effect quantification to show for these beliefs. You keep claiming you have evidence, but when asked to produce a quantification or cite a real-world experiment indicating the cause-effect of CO2 forcing on water bodies, you have nothing.
So, as usual, you’re down to issuing veiled insults like “Your arguments are so bizarre that it is not worth continuing this any longer” and insinuating that you are the “scientifically literate” one in this exchange, as I must understand that offering up hypothetical explanations is what science or “evidence” is.
Ed Bo,
Thermopiles can’t measure incoming radiation from a body colder than itself. A pyrgeometer is a thermopile with some added electronics. The pyrgeometer is always warmer than the atmosphere. It uses a form of the SB-equation that is nonsense. What it really does is a remote measurement of the atmosphere temperature which then is falsely claimed to be DLR. (And it only has a reach of about 25 meters upwards.
Look for yourself, the equation is under downloads in the instruction sheet:
https://www.kippzonen.com/Product/17/CGR4-Pyrgeometer#.Y7RWTBZwHDs
It’s really ridiculous when people refer to measurements with instruments that they don’t know how they work. And it’s deceptive of manufacturers that they claim it to measure something it doesn’t. They know very well that a thermopile directed towards a colder body measures OUTGOING radiation, not incoming. Only when directed towards something warmer the thermopile will have a gradient for incoming heat.
And when it comes to water…
What happens when you put an empty pot on the stove with full power on? It eventually starts to glow red, right? What happens when you fill iy with water? It cools down massively.
So, when 70% of the crust on this planet, which is red hot inside, is covered with a ~4000m layer of very cold 3C water, what happens to the temperature of the crust? That’s right, it becomes much colder than it would be without that water. Add to that, those parts are the thinnest, there is enormous het transfer from the ocean floor to the water on top of it. And still, the water stays cold, average temperature 3C constant. This is because of the currents to the ice blocks at the poles, and the evaporation transferring heat into the very cold -18C atmosphere.
You have everything exactly backwards. Everything. You need to learn the basic principles of heat transfer. For example, cold water and cold air cools warm bodies. You can try it yourself easily. Go outside naked in the winter night. You feel that cooling? That’s your greenhouse effect when the air absorbs your body heat. Now jump in a cold lake. You feel that cooling? That’s the same effect the ocean has on the planet surface.
Lit,
Thank you for an amusing response. It’s always funny when someone who is completely confused about the basics of a subject tries to tell a knowledgeable person he needs to study the subject.
FIrst, you need to acquaint yourself with the concept of radiative exchange. This is the core concept for any scientific or engineering text on radiative heat transfer.
I can suggest a good (and free!) on-line textbook from MIT, which can be found here
https://ahtt.mit.edu/”
I refer you to Chapter 10, which covers radiative heat transfer. The first section in the chapter is titled “The problem of radiative exchange”. There is nothing unusual about this particular textbook – it explains the topic in the same way as in multiple other heat transfer textbooks do, including those when I studied these topics at MIT many years ago. (Yes, I studied this at MIT – heard of the place?)
This is relevant to your post because you don’t understand how these sensors work. They are differential sensors, measuring the DIFFERENCE between incoming and outgoing radiative fluxes through their effect on the sensor temperature (and therefore electrical properties). The concept is analogous to differential tire pressure and/or vacuum gauges, whose diaphragm is displaced in proportion to the difference from atmospheric pressure.
These radiative sensors work equally well when the target is colder than the instrument or hotter. (My inexpensive kitchen infrared thermometer does equally well at the contents of my freezer and refrigerator — it can tell them apart — as it does with the contents of my oven.)
When the target is hotter, the NET radiative transfer is from the target to the instrument sensor. When the target is colder, the NET radiative transfer is from the instrument sensor to the target. But through a sophisticated algorithm sometimes known as “subtraction”, the GROSS radiative flux from the target to the sensor can be calculated.
And speaking of getting things “exactly backwards”, you do so when you claim that “What it really does is a remote measurement of the atmosphere temperature which then is falsely claimed to be DLR”. No, it measures the DLR (subtracted out from the next exchange), and any temperature value is derived from the DLR based on an assumed emissivity value. For atmospheric radiation, this is often an “effective blackbody temperature”.
My kitchen infrared thermometer assumes a very high emissivity value, near 1.0, which is valid for most objects, but it is not good for aluminum foil, which has a very low emissivity value.
Your arguments about water have nothing to do with any of my claims…
Thanks for this reference!
Ed Bo, the lapse rate is due to expansion of the atmosphere out from the surface. The cooling with expansion is a thermodynamic effect used in refrigeration and liquifying gases such as nitrogen, oxygen and LNG (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate). Temperature at the surface of planets is due to two factors a) radiation from the sun adjusted for distance b) the pressure of the atmosphere at the surface. The temperature on Venus is due to a very high pressure 95bar or 9624 kPa which comes from a very great depth of atmosphere some 350km and from a relatively heavy molecular composition in comparison to Earth (95% is CO2 and there is some SO2 as H2SO4 and other S compounds which may result in the clouds, it is possible there is some CO2 l&s) CO2 there is not a greenhouse gas as the lapse rate is the adiabatic lapse rate which I think due to slightly lower gravity is 9.5K/1000m.
At a pressure of 10Pa the temperature in the atmosphere on both Earth and Venus only differs by the ratio of distance from the sun (0.72)
CaF,
The great physicist JC Maxwell figured out in the 19th century that a thermally isolated column of gas in a gravitational field would be isothermal in steady-state conditions – that other temperature profiles would lead to 2nd Law violations.
In his famed Lectures on Physics, Richard Feynman makes the same point, which he does not consider subtle or difficult. It can be found here:
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_40.html
About a decade ago, Duke physics professor Robert Brown wrote a post at WUWT using the same argument as Feynman. I read through most of the over 1000 comments, and no one could make a coherent argument as to why a non-zero lapse rate in an isolated column would not lead to a 2nd Law violation. All of the arguments basically amounted to: “If I throw a ball up in the air, it slows down as it gets higher.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/24/refutation-of-stable-thermal-equilibrium-lapse-rates/
No, the generally negative lapse rates we see on earth (and other planets) are due to the fact that the atmosphere is mostly “heated” from the bottom and “cooled” from the top. When this is not the case, we get positive lapse rates, aka temperature inversions. The most notable temperature inversion on earth is the one that forms over Antarctica each winter lasting for months, because most “cooling” is from the surface at the bottom of the atmosphere.
Dear Mr. Ed Bo,
please read again what was written:
At a pressure of 10Pa the temperature in the atmosphere on both Earth and Venus only differs by the ratio of distance from the sun (0.72)
Nobody said anything about Isothermal. If any, you seem to suggest that there is no lapse rate. But it certainly exists.
The lapse rate if looked at from the 10 Pa downwards is positive. Maybe this helps with understanding the above argument.
John,
Several of the posters here think that gravity alone creates a negative lapse rate. If this were correct, an isolated column of gas in a gravitational field would have this lapse rate.
I have simply pointed out, citing Maxwell and Feynman, that this cannot be true, as it would lead to 2nd Law violations.
My argument is that the lapse rate comes from the opacity of many gases to infrared radiation, causing the atmosphere to be heated from the bottom and cooled from the top.
(cont.)
Please re-read the Wikipedia article on lapse rate you cited. It states that without convection, the earth’s surface would be significantly hotter than it is (and implicitly, there would be a negative lapse rate of greater magnitude). So the convection actually reduces the magnitude of the lapse rate, driving it toward adiabatic.
The fact that lapse rates larger than adiabatic are unstable, combined with the fact that the (poorly named) greenhouse effect is strong enough on all of these planets to create lapse rates greater than adiabatic, means that the observed lapse rates on all of these planets are approximately at adiabatic, and the difference between the temperature at the surface and that of the radiating height (usually ~0.1 bar) is proportional to the surface pressure. But the underlying cause is that the atmosphere is more opaque to longwave IR than to shortwave solar radiation.
Ed Bo, may be in Feynman’s lecture you missed the following sentence “Suppose that we have a column of gas extending to a great height, and at thermal equilibrium—unlike our atmosphere, which as we know gets colder as we go up.” Do you see the word “unlike”. Our atmosphere is not at equilibrium but thermodynamic facts apply. Maybe you should look up the 5th postulate of Chemical engineering thermodynamics that relates to pressure, temperature and volume (P1V1/T1=P2V2/T2). As the volume increases both the pressure and temperature decrease. Note the 4th Postulate in terms of entropy is usually called the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The reduction of the lapse rate is called the environmental lapse rate and is due to the condensation of water vapour. Read Ned’s articles. This site is worth looking at https://claesjohnson.blogspot.com/ for explanations on the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
CaF,
You said that ” the lapse rate is due to expansion of the atmosphere out from the surface” and nothing to do with the composition of the atmosphere. For this to be true, gravity ALONE would create the lapse rate, and the lapse rate would be the steady state case for an isolated column of gas in a gravitational field. I cited Maxwell and Feynman to show that this could not be true.
So I did not “miss” Feynman’s qualification that an isolated column of gas is “unlike our atmosphere”. It was my whole point! The generally negative lapse rate in our atmosphere is due to the FACT that it is not thermodynamically isolated. As the Wikipedia page YOU cited says, the atmosphere is primarily heated from the bottom, creating a large lapse rate that induces convection.
While it is true that a parcel of rising convective gas expands and cools as it rises, this convection is a RESULT of a negative lapse rate, not a CAUSE. There needs to be a lapse rate larger than adiabatic (known as an “unstable” lapse rate) for convection to occur.
This new paper by Kramm et al. (2022:https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=120241) only confirms what we found and published 8 years ago, see Volokin & ReLlez (2014: https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2193-1801-3-723).
The canonical 33 K estimate of the atmospheric “greenhouse” effect is both mathematically and physically wrong, because it’s based on an incorrect application of the S-B law to a sphere.
I’m puzzled as to why Kramm et al. did not cite our 2014 paper…
Kramm et al. cited your 2014 and 2016 papers in their 2017 paper (which this 2022 paper is an addendum to). See refs 37 and 38.
https://www.scirp.org/pdf/NS_2017083014381959.pdf
Hi Kenneth,
Yes, I’m aware that Kramm et al. (2017) discussed our 2014 paper, but they should have also mentioned it in their most recent paper, because our analytical formula before the 0.754 empirical adjustment (or Eq. 10) produces a very close result (200.4 K) to the average bolometric Moon surface temperature derived from Diviner IR measurements (201.1 K). The difference is only 0.7 K!
Also Kramm et al. (2017) misquoted our 2014 results. Their Eq. 5.3 referring to our Eq. 11a is INCORRECT, because our Tna formula does NOT contain an “effective radiating temperature” term Te as stated by Kramm et al. (2017). That’s a critical MISREPRESENTATION of our findings by these authors. I’m not sure if this was intentional or a result of sloppiness on their part.
Dear Ned,
I beg your pardon, but your statement is inadequate. For the purpose of comparison with the formula of Gerlich & Tscheuschner (2009),
{Ts} = 2^1.5/5 Te = 0.566 Te
where {Ts} is the global average of the surface temperature, Ts, and Te is the effective radiation temperature (listed in our paper as Equation (3.7)), we rearranged your Equation (11a) using 4^(1/4). Thus, we obtained
Tna = 2^1.5/5 Te Phi(eta_e).
To avoid any confusion, we used Tna = 2/5 Te Phi*(eta_e) because the square root of 2 may also be inserted in the Phi function.
The paper of Kramm et al. (2022) is, among others, dealing with the evaluation of the simulation results of Kramm et al. (2017). The paper of Nikolov & Zeller (2014) was fairly discussed by Kramm et al. (2017). In that paper, we showed that the difference in the computed global average of Moon’s surface temperature is 0.6 K. Because of the inherent uncertainty, one may state that your results and our results are in substantial agreement. Compared with the global average of 201.1 K +/- 0.6 K derived from the DLRE data, one may conclude that Nikolov & Zeller (2014) and Kramm et al. (2017) did a good job.
Happy New Year
Gerhard
Hi Gerhard,
Yes, I agree that the results from your lunar dynamic temperature model agree with our analytical formula, and that Te is not a kinetic temperature to be compared to any actual measured temperatures at the surface or elsewhere.
Your explanation above regarding your Eq. 5.3 makes sense. However, this explanation is missing in your 2017 paper. On p. 270 of your paper, you state (https://www.scirp.org/pdf/NS_2017083014381959.pdf):
“By ignoring also Hsl(θ ϕ, ), they (Volokin & ReLlez 2014) finally proposed
{Ts} = (2/5)*Te*Phi(eta) (5.3)
”
But this is NOT what we proposed (derived) in Eq. 11a of our 2014 paper (https://springerplus.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/2193-1801-3-723). I hope you’d agree with this…
Happy New Year to you and your family!!
-Ned
Sorry Ned and Gerhard, I did not get to read your comments before I replied above. I do agree with Ned’s formula. As a Chemical engineer I have been aware of dimensional analysis since my Uni days. In my working life I have often come across formulae which give the wrong results due to not being dimensionally correct. In the use of imperial units the gravity correct factor is often left out. I use SI units.
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