Modeling the main factors driving climate is riddled with and precluded by observational error. Some scientists now acknowledge this.
Clouds are a main factor – even the “most important factor” – controlling changes in the Earth’s radiation budget, or climate (Sfîcă et al., 2021, Lenaerts et al., 2020).
Image Source: Sfîcă et al., 2021 and Lenaerts et al., 2020
But as scientists acknowledge in a new study (Ademakinwa et al., 2024), substantial errors in calculating cloud effects on climate are inevitable because three-dimensional (3D, vertical and horizontal) cloud affects are reality, and current calculations only consider one-dimensional cloud properties (1D, vertical).
“Failed retrievals” in radiative property simulations of cloud effects occur over 40% of the time. This leads to biases, errors amounting to ±36 W/m².
Considering this error margin of 72 W/m² is 360 times larger than the total forcing from CO2 over the span of 10 years (0.2 W/m²) for an imaginary clear-sky-only (cloudless) Earth (Feldman et al., 2015), it is not possible to detect the real-world effect of CO2 forcing in any radiative transfer calculation.
Summary:
“Since clouds in reality have three-dimensional (3D) structures, the simulation of radiative transfer (RT) in clouds should ideally consider the transport of radiation in both vertical and horizontal directions (referred to as ‘3D RT’).”
However, “operational bispectral cloud retrievals are almost exclusively based on the one-dimensional (1D) RT theory that considers only the vertical and ignores the net horizontal transport of radiation.”
Consequently, “the radiative properties of clouds under 3D RT are substantially different from those under 1D RT.”
It’s really a great and helpful piece of info. I’m glad that you shared this useful information with us.
” it is not possible to detect the real-world effect of CO2 forcing in any radiative transfer calculation.” So what about the “scientists” and the politicians who control the CO2 narrative?
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The one-dimensional model is based on spherical symmetry. If that symmetry is significantly broken, we have to model in three dimensions. This would be a simple reasoning which I have not found in this presentation.
Of course, the Earth is not an ideal sphere, it a kind of potato-shaped, but these are minor differences. The differences between the oceans and the continents provide a further asymmetry.
So what is a useful model like?
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Remember, the CO2 “back-radiation” myth is also modelled in 1D.
So the same errors exist there.. right back to Arrhenius. !