An interesting concept in peer-reviewed climate communication papers has pop up. It’s “Climate Online”. I don’t know if this is going to work, but it has a feature of interest to bloggers: A non-scientists step in the peer review. I think many of you might be interested in submitting your names as performing this second step. I’ll describe the role and them tell you how to submit your names.
Under The Peer-Review Process we see the usual steps. Afterwards, we see
Assignment of Scientific and Non-scientific Referees
A.The Co-editor finds two Scientific Referees whose expertise cover the Manuscript […]
B. The Co-editor finds two Non-scientific Referees who agree to write a Review report within 3 weeks. The Non-scientific Referees are randomly chosen from Climate Online’s member list. All Manuscripts are assigned two Non-scientific Referees without exception.
It appears that the non-scientific referrees will be selected from among people who registered; to pre-register fill out the form on their pre-registration page. You may register as either a non-scientific reviewer, or if you think you are qualified as a scientific reviewer. It appears scientific reviewers can also request to be editors of some sort.
I think there is some potential up side and little down side to pre-registering at which ever level attracts you. If the journal does not take off, nothing bad can happen to you. If it does take off, there is some chance you will be asked to review some of these documents. Having lukewarmers and skeptics in the batch of non-science reviewers might reduce some of the more egregiously awful ‘climate communication’ messages seen in the past (e.g. those involving things exploding children or polar bears tumbling through they sky and splatting on the sidewalk.) But if it turns out the editorial staff does ‘pal-review’ by fishing though to find non-science reviewers only on the alarmist side, you can always quit.
I pre-registered. 🙂
Nice notice. I pre-registered as well. 😀
i registered.
Make sure this isn’t the new SKS/Lewandosky scam to out “skeptics”.
Be very cautious
Eli,
Even if your theory of Amway science is true, I don’t see any potential for harm in signing up to be a reviewer. One can always quit.
Consider the implications of the first link.
Eli,
What implications are you suggesting? McGill university is evil? What?
Lucia,
Perhaps McGill serves rabbit stew in the undergrad cafeteria.
.
But seriously, it is difficult to understand why Eli regularly leaves comments which can best be descried as non-sequiturs. I assume he is trying to say something cogent…… it just doesn’t work out for him very often. Maybe it is simple laziness which keeps him from providing a logical context for his (usually) orthogonal comments.
As someone who is involved with marketing and studying marketing, the implications of Eli’s obscure remarks and links is that Frontiers and its members- Lewandowsky & gang in this case- are motivated disinformation agents pushing an agenda dressed up as science.
It helps explain Lewandowsky’s recent nomadic behavior.
Another is that there is the potential for a Frontiers network of motivated people who can use publications to advance and protect their network and to punish perceived enemies.
Eli is sure that they do serve rabbit stew at McGill, damn them, it is, after all in Quebec although English speaking, but look at how long he was there and think of the academic career path. Not a slam dunk but worthy of consideration.
Hunter darlin’ Lew got a Chair in Cog Psych. People have been known to move large distances for such.
I went to Eli’s page and clicked on the link in the first comment by MikeH to a blog entry by Roger Jones (2risk blog). Here’s a gem from that post:
“The issue is not about winning the debate, it’s about understanding how the negative influences on scientific opinion can be better understood and managed.”
IOW, winning the debate.
I looked into Eli’s first link (McGill) and found some papers….solar UV stuff…stuff that gets tossed around by skeptics sometimes…but nothing too wierd. The suggestion is maybe he lost his job a la Murry Salby for being a crank…? I’m not sure how it ties in.
Not sure the appropriate thread for placing this but this recent post ought to generate some discussion:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/how_global_warming_broke_the_thermometer_record.html
Also reinforces that the Berkeley Approach is doing well.
I wonder if Lewandowsky or perhaps a real psychologist will write a paper about the reactions from Eli et al. to the Frontiers retraction. Surely it would be a more interesting paper than Fury and these people are providing plenty of unique (odd) theories about the Fury retraction and the journal Frontiers.
Robert Way,
Does that post as SKS have anything new in it? It looks like mainly a discussion of your earlier paper. Did I miss something?
Eli,
So what if he gets a chair? The move was salutory either way, since Australia is leading the way in tossing climate kooks out of power. And the Amway model does explain how junk papers like Lew & gang specialize get ‘peer’ reviewed.
Its a completely new discussion regarding the GHCN issues that we’ve outlined in our update (released today). We’ve found evidence that GHCN’s algorithm for homogenization is reducing the trend of several important stations in the Arctic which are very important to GHCN based datasets because they have less coverage than CRU (by a large margin).
The initial paper was on the impacts of coverage bias in the hadcrutv4 dataset – this new update focuses on the differences between our result and GISS’ with the evidence suggesting that GISS is underestimating Arctic warming because of using GHCNv3 as an input.
Robert Way,
Why would anyone who cares about discussing things in a serious manner go to SkS?
Yes Steve F it does have new stuff. Important new stuff.
For me the highlights were
1. looking at individual stations where GHCN changes need to be examined.
2. Adding Merra
3. Looking at AIRS
I would also suggest that you can envision more improvements.
There is data out there that hasnt been tapped..
short version. as we add data the current period becomes warmer and the past becomes cooler.
For a long time folks worried about bias to to spatial sampling issues. Skeptics worried that we were sampling the warmer trends and ignoring locations were there were cooler trends.
Turns out, just the opposite. As we recover more old data, as we add new current sources ( satillite and bouys etc) we see the opposite.
Go figure.
Since I was one of the people who worried we were missing cooling stations.. I have to raise my hand and say that worry appears to have been misplaced.. in fact, worse than misplaced
Steven,
So to be clear: Your take is that the evidence is showing that the past was even cooler, and the present is even warmer? And you are satisfied that there is little chance we are seeing a processing or sampling bias?
bill_c, scientific debate should be about arriving at the truth.
“Negative influences on scientific opinion” could be seen as those that unduly influence the opinion towards obviously false conclusions, or push the debate in directions that ignore the underlying uncertainties of the problem, without regard to the underlying veracity of those opinions.
I’m glad that Robert and Kevin are pursing the question of effects of coverage. I wouldn’t agree with Steven Mosher that the concern was we “were sampling the warmer trends and ignoring locations were there were cooler trends.”
Many of us realized that adding in the missing polar regions was likely to increase the observed trend, just as adding in missing Southern Hemisphere data prior to 1950 was likely to reduce the trend for that interval.
I do note that this paper of Cowtan and Way suffers from the same inflation of significance of the result as their previous one did, by describing the effect of the addition of the missing region as multiplicative rather than additive:
Because the trend could have either sign, it’s possible to have an infinitely higher result, in the case that the uncorrected trend exactly cancelled to zero, or an infinitely smaller, in the case that the corrected trend cancelled to zero.
It’s a very deceptive way to represent the result and IMO undermines the credibility of what is otherwise an earnest effort to understand the impact of the missing geographical coverage.
Very easy to register via the provided link. Cant wait to review.
Carrick (Comment #128913)
“Many of us realized that adding in the missing polar regions was likely to increase the observed trend, just as adding in missing Southern Hemisphere data prior to 1950 was likely to reduce the trend for that interval.”
Not with HADCRUT. They publish a NH+SH average. NH and SH are weighted equally, notwithstanding missing data.
hunter (Comment #128910)
April 25th, 2014 at 1:16 pm
Steven,
So to be clear: Your take is that the evidence is showing that the past was even cooler, and the present is even warmer? And you are satisfied that there is little chance we are seeing a processing or sampling bias?
########################.
What I can speak to is what I see in those cases where we add stations that we didnt have before. And my experience is that added data either does nothing.. or it bumps the past down a bit
or it bumps the present up a bit.
Carrick gets at some of the reasons. There were to be sure those who knew more arctic stations would mean a warmer average.
But a large crowd of people were convinced that the sample bias ran the other way.
Is sample bias totally eliminated? nope. There are another 2000 new stations I have identified. Maybe they will go the other way.
I would not bet on it.
Im not sure what I will do with these 2000 stations. Im thinking of an out of sample paper. Not sure.. lots to do.
Bottomline. The best skeptical arguments are not over the temperature record. they are
1. sensitivity
2. reconstructions
3. projections.
2000 stations? wow that’s quite an out-of-sample set. Whats coverage like for those stations?
Nick Stokes:
I agree
Yes, combining NH + SH will help. It’s just a much cruder version of the zonal averaging that I’ve suggested using to remove geographic bias.
“What I can speak to”
Sorry Mosher, I’m afraid that you have proven yourself not objective when it comes to the temperature record.
Andrew
Re: Andrew_KY (Apr 26 07:33),
Apparently your definition of ‘objective’ is different from that of most people. One of the properties of being objective is being able to change your mind when confronted with data that doesn’t match your previous beliefs. I suspect that your definition of objective would be more like most people’s definition of prejudiced.
DeWitt,
ob·jec·tive adjective \əb-ˈjek-tiv, äb-\
: based on facts rather than feelings or opinions : not influenced by feelings
It’s Mosher’s “opinion” that “C02 makes it warmer.”
Surely you must see the issue here.
Andrew
Splutter,
Here come the spruikers
Ie Mr “Honest ” Way.
Let’s get this correct Bob.
You state categorically that you have proved that
1. Neighbouring areas are more likely to warm at vastly different rates
and
2. Unobserved areas warm at vastly different (and always warmer?) rates to observed areas
Not to mention that this is in the “sparsely sampled and rapidly warming arctic”
Now I love to point out the obvious to you.
This is utter and mendacious rubbish, utter rubbish.
As you wish with your skeptical science blogging mate to promote AGW you have to say stuff like this.
GHCN used a perfectly natural and reasonable algorithm with the data they had to say If we do not know we will assume that areas near each other warm at a similar rate and that unobserved areas will warm at a similar rate to observed areas.
You call this conservative because it does not fit with your story. Everyone else would call this common sense, particularly Mosher.
Steve 2000 new stations , how what, when, why.
New data will be appreciated but do we get the raw data or the modelled data?
GHCN data to be altered (shudder) by Merra which is not data but a “weather model re analysis”. Tell me you are not going to replace real data because a model says so.
Looking at GHCN stations 2 Russian and 1 American stations were cherry picked (oops, so sorry selected) by BEST data and the Merra weather model to be fit to be altered .
Only 3 cherry picked stations out of what 50 ?, 200?, 500? But hey they must be wrong, right.
Cannot have stations that show wild swings away from what you want, unless of course you want them to go upwards in the wayward rigged data. Or want to argue against the GHCN algorithm
Looking at AIRS Of course more data is always valuable.
Oh well you know best as usual.
Cheers.
Sorry, I genuinely meant krigged data but the apple reset it with the wrong word
What is left out of these discussions is the confidence intervals (CIs) for the temperature series and any trends calculated from that data. I personally like to see these works on temperatures series with different approaches and methodologies because it is my judgment that adjusting and compiling temperature series are works in progress. Every time a newer method yields a temperature series and resulting trends with significant differences from a series derived from an older method, we have a case where probably the true CIs were underestimated with the older version and by implication could be also with newer one.
The comparison standard that makes the most sense to me in comparing temperature series adjustments is the benchmarking process whereby temperature series can be simulated for adjustment. In the simulations the true climate temperature is known and non climate effects on temperatures are added into the simulated temperature series. A test of this nature could be modified, I would think, to include sparse coverage of regions where the true “full” coverage temperatures are known.
In order for the benchmarking to make valid comparisons the climate and non climate effects in the simulations have to be reasonable representations of the real world. This proposition is not easily fulfilled as there are possible unknown unknowns lurking out there. Adjustment algorithms that use breakpoint methodologies are, for example, prone to being unable to detect (and subsequently adjust for) non climate changes that have a gradual effect on temperature over time. “Weather noise” in climate can make temperature series differences from even closely located stations difficult to discern as climate or non climate related.
Mosher: “as we add data the current period becomes warmer and the past becomes cooler.”
Of course it does. Always. You couldn’t find a cooler station if one walked up to you and threw a pie in your face.
Re: Andrew_KY (Apr 26 08:07),
It’s not just Mosher’s opinion that “CO2 makes it warmer.” It should be the opinion of any rational person that understands the physics involved. The question is, as Mosher pointed out above, the sensitivity. We know beyond a reasonable doubt that the sensitivity is greater than zero. The people who don’t believe that give skepticism a bad name.
Dewitt, is the rate of warming after 1945 greater than the rate of warming before 1945?
No it isn’t. Using HADCRUT4:
1900 to 1945 = 0.0110866C / Year
1945 to 2014 = 0.00954579 / Year
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:1945/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:1945/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1945/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1945/to:2014/trend
It is perfectly reasonable to be skeptical about man-made CO2’s role in warming even if one is not skeptical about CO2’s role in warming. They are not the same thing.
De Witt CO2 makes it warmer? Nearly right.
Exactly is increasing CO2 makes it warmer.
All else being equal.
But it is not all equal
Making it warmer increases CO2.
Could you possibly disagree with this?
In which case sensitivity may be negative, neutral or positive depending on the feedbacks, not a fait accomplish or beyond reasonable doubt
I would suggest your doubt is beyond reason in this specific case.
Specifically it has been warmer in the past and CO2 has been said to follow it up. Warmer seas will release more CO2.
But also more water vapour bigger greenhouse but more reflection greater albedo dropping temps hence possible negative sensitivity in the long run. Kicker is that life has been supported for over a billion years so CO2 , built into all our marble and limestone etc from living organisms from CO2 has never been able to break the negative feedback constraints that mean sensitivity to CO2 rises may well be negative when CO2 is going up but positive when it is low.
Is it legal to say that climate sensitivity to CO2 is a variable that can be negative, neutral or positive depending on the actual ambient temperature?
Yes Tm angech
angech
It’s legal. It just happens to be incorrect. Climate sensitivity to CO2 cannot be negative. It is strictly positive.
“The people who don’t believe…”
Wow. Straight up pulpit-speak. Well done, DeWitt.
Andrew
“Climate sensitivity to CO2 cannot be negative. It is strictly positive.”
While I believe this is the reality based on the data we have, are you saying this is physically not possible, or just extremely unlikely based on current physics models and observations? Or are you speaking to just the primary physics effect?
Why is it that positive feedbacks to CO2 could increase the effect by 3x or more, but it is not possible to “imagine” that the feedbacks could be significantly negative, as in producing prodigious amount of clouds or some other secondary effect?
I think I saw a PDF somewhere a long time ago that had some minimal odds of a negative influence. Might be mis-remembering.
DeWitt,
If it was a simple chemical equation or physical process, we would not be in a debate because the data would not be so ambiguous nor would there be a need for such an incredible effort to discern the impact of CO2.
COI2’s role in climate is not at all straight forward, if reality is a guide.
Yes, CO2 will act to warm things up, all things being equal. But things are apparently not all equal.
I don’t get the swipes at Mosher. Mosher has crunched as much or more temp data than anybody who ever commented here and done so transparently and is respected for it.
He was one of the first to break and digest the Climategate content and he is also persona non grata with the High Warmists because he is a known lukewarmer though does not appear to want to proselytize.
Denying the radiative physics of CO2 then sneering at Mosher or lucia as an alarmist for accepting that scientific reality…I don’t get it. Like lucia, he is far more threatening to the CAGW project than all Sky Dragon ilk combined by always taking the numbers as they are and drawing the reasonable inference that CO2 sensitivity just ain’t all that high and therefore projections based on assumptions contrary to that empirical reality are not reliable.
Lumping Mosher in with Mann et al…mindless. Let’s leave the idiot litmus tests to True Believer blogs.
George,
Thanks. It’s good to know I’m not the only one who finds this offensive enough to remark about it. Seems like a good quarter of my comments these days on some blogs are about this.
Tom Schraf,
Physics… or logic. What have you.
Feedbacks that cause the total effect to be in the opposite direction of the primary effect don’t make any sense. For what follows, assume the primary egfect of C02 is a rise. Remember the “feedback” works thise way:
Primary effect causes temperature to rise an amount dT. Then as a function of temperature rise, the feedback does something that either causes temperature to rise more or less. Now, ‘imagine’ some feedback that is so strong it causes temperatures to drop more than primary effect caused it to rise Now: the total temperature is lower than before. So, that’s what you are “imagining”.
But now you have a logical problem because the feedback doesn’t care what caused the temperature to be higher or lower. It’s just something that is a function of the actual temperature. So now because the temperature is lower that it started, that exact same “feedback” has to cause the temperature to rise— thereby cancelling the “drop” you imagined. If you ponder this a while, you realize that no matter what the “physics” the feedback can only be sufficiently negative to make temperature very, very stable: that is sensitivity to could at most approach 0 but it can’t go negative.
The fact is: By their nature if they are feedbacks they can weaken the primary effect or they can enhance it, but they can’t actually reverse it. So: sensitivity to CO2 has to be strictly positive. It can’t be negative.
antech
“Steve 2000 new stations , how what, when, why.”
1. How. simple. during climategate folks made a huge stink
about transparency. A group was formed to make a new
dataset. There was also a complaint about lost data.
An effort was raised to rescue old data.LOTS has been rescued
2. What? Temperature data recovered from areas that are
currently not in the database. South america, Africa, Canada
3. When. The paper has been submitting documenting the whole
dataset. It has stations that we currently dont have. Not
sure when the paper will be published but the data is posted
Had been for some time. so I play with it. That way I know shit that you dont. ( hint, my typical entry conditions for an argument )
4. Why. Because we want all the data we can get. There are
some stations in canada that recently were unearthed.
There are 100s in India that they dont release. over 400 in
Korea ( density of 10-15km) that I am trying to get. 1000s
in the US that are commercially available. 100s to 1000s
of hourly stations in the US.. I just found 72 in Michigan..
woohoo!
#################################
New data will be appreciated but do we get the raw data or the modelled data?
Idiot question.
The minute a data value is written down and you trust it it
has been modelled. That said, the data we use and the new data is all “first reports” what you would call raw. We are at a point where we can do the whole world with daily data. daily data is “raw” or first report data. Of course when you find raw data that says 15000C, you learn to not worship “raw” data. In any case we use first report data. always have.
##################################
GHCN data to be altered (shudder) by Merra which is not data but a “weather model re analysisâ€. Tell me you are not going to replace real data because a model says so.
Huh. another idiot question. Merra is a reanalysis product. One of many. The inputs to Merra are station data. In any case we dont replace temperature data with Merra. Personally I think Merra shas issues at lower latitudes, see our poster on it. It Gigabytes of data, wanna job?
#############################################
Looking at GHCN stations 2 Russian and 1 American stations were cherry picked (oops, so sorry selected) by BEST data and the Merra weather model to be fit to be altered .
Wrong. Merra is not used to make any changes to data. GHCN has some errors in its homogenization. Those errors were found by using our data and re analysis. Re analysis is nothing more than station data propagated over time and space using physics rather than statistics.
#########################
Only 3 cherry picked stations out of what 50 ?, 200?, 500? But hey they must be wrong, right.
The field of expectation was used as a QC check on the GHCN homogenization. So all stations were examined.
################
Cannot have stations that show wild swings away from what you want, unless of course you want them to go upwards in the wayward rigged data. Or want to argue against the GHCN algorithm
1. I didnt do the work. I helped Robert W with a nasty
R algorithm so he could use our data to examine all stations.
2. They identified outliers in GHCN adjusted. ( we use raw)
3. They contacted Matt and Claude, I hear they found the issue
and fixed it.
###############
Looking at AIRS Of course more data is always valuable.
Yes, and what does that data say?
That data says we got it right.
Sorry it didnt turn out the way you wanted. data is like that.
Again. Look guys I’ve spent 7 years now trying to find a real problem. Every little piece of crap you’ve thrown up has been gone over again and again. You will not find a final coffin nail in the temperature record. That is not the screw to turn. Turn the sensitivity screw. Turn the impacts screw. turn the projections screw. apply your force where you have leverage.
lucia writes “Climate sensitivity to CO2 cannot be negative. It is strictly positive.”
Above the ERL its strictly negative.
lucia writes “Feedbacks that cause the total effect to be in the opposite direction of the primary effect don’t make any sense.”
Whilst I agree that the overwhelming likelyhood is an overall positive sensitivity, your answer still comes from a particular perspective.
lucia writes an explanation full of assumption “It’s just something that is a function of the actual temperature.”
Isn’t that a major assumption right there that CO2 can only effect temperature and not, say, effect evaporation more directly?
Again, I’m not disagreeing with your overall opinion on this but its coming from faulty logic through assumption.
Thanks Steve for your lucid and detailed explanation
Mark, George, Mosher’s views don’t fall into either camp hence he gets double the amount of swipes of most commentators.
Lucia.
Surely if one can have positive feedbacks in general you can also have negative feedbacks. If you limit it to just CO2 up temp up yes it is positive if you assess the effect of temperature rises independent of CO2 you may well find increased albedo will have a negative feedback on temp.
The fact that we remain temperature neutral for life for a billon years implies strong negative feedbacks that balance any positive feedbacks.
angech
Of course. I haven’t said there aren’t any nor that there can’t be.
(a) no it doesn’t mean they are “strong” (however high you define “strong”) and
(b) that doesn’t mean that my argument above doesn’t still hold.
If you want to counter my argument, it would help if you actually engage it rather than merely ignore it.
timtoolman
In the paragraph long thought experiment, I did just say temperature. Do you have any reason to believe CO2 affects evaporation directly as opposed as through temperature? If yes– what do you propose as the mechanism for CO2 affecting evaporation directly as opposed to the intermediary of temperature? Plants? Animals? If you propose a mechanism, then we can discuss it and talk about the order of magnitude relative to the effect on evaporation through elevation of temperature.
If you think the faulty assumption is CO2 affects evaporation directly, explain the mechanism you propose.
TTM
Sure. And so far, the only hint of “other” perspecitive you’ve suggested is CO2 has a direct effect on evaporation. If you think it does, you should explain your mechanism and then give an order of magnitude estimate how it works.
I am– for what it’s worth– willing to accept the idea that some sort of 2nd order 3dimensional effects could kick in to modify stuff– but those would be smaller and only worth discussing after resolving the big effects. But bringing up imaginary physics that “might” happen on the grounds that we “don’t know everything” (or something similar) is grasping at straws. Or leprechauns.
lucia wonders “If yes– what do you propose as the mechanism for CO2 affecting evaporation directly as opposed to the intermediary of temperature?”
I’ve mentioned it before. Increased DLR is absorbed into the very topmost molecules of the ocean where it must increase evaporation independently of all other factors. Its straightforward physics.
Let me ask you in return why you think increased (DLR) energy deposited into the topmost layer of the ocean wont affect evaporation directly?
Steve Mosher is right on in so many areas. His dedication to finding the unvarnished facts in this has always been as strong as is humanly possible. The cryptic posts are sometimes disconcerting, but that is a *very* minor non-issue. It is the social dysfunction of AGW: the cult-like obsession with climate apocalypse and the nastiness that goes along with it that is bad- bad politics, bad policies, bad laws, bad expenditures, etc.
It is facts that will ultimately supply the tools to help this social miasma fall apart.
Steve has focused on the facts for a long time. If he (and others) say focus on impacts and sensitivity, that is a pretty good hint.
“Mosher has crunched as much or more temp data than anybody”
George Tobin, this is a variation of the “size fallacy.”
You can do better.
Andrew
Re: Andrew_KY (Apr 28 06:48),
Speaking of logical fallacies, you might want to look up argumentum ad hominem.
“Speaking of logical fallacies, you might want to look up argumentum ad hominem”
DeWitt,
Good idea. Here’s an example of it from you:
“The people who don’t believe that give skepticism a bad name.”
Andrew
Andrew_KY,
Could you post something other than snide remarks and insults? If you can’t I’ll moderate you.
TTM
You may have explained this somewhere before, but given the novelty or your claim, that hardly means you aren’t required to explain the claim multiple times.
As it happens, your mechanisms of “DLR” results in evaporation either (a) does not meet the definition of evaporation not being the consequence of increased temperature or (b) is based on a misunderstanding of how DLR causes evaporation to increase.
What happens is DLR is absorbed, and increases temperature of the water and increased water evaporates in consequence of the increase in vapor pressure which is known to be a function of temperature. In contrast, if, through some magic, DLR was absorbed without increasing temperature, no extra evaporation would occur because the vapor pressure would not change— as that only changes as a function of increase in temperature. This is how the ‘physics’ of evaporation occurs:
increased DLR->increase in Temperature-> increased vapor pressure-> increased evaporation.
So: in your discussion of how evaporation increases, evaporation rises as a result of the increase in temperature due to CO2 not as a thing that happens on “its own” unconnected to a rise in temperature. And this is true even if the evaporative effect is so strong that one ends up being able to measure the increase in humidity (somehow) while barely being able to detect the increase in temperature.
As far as I can see, your notion that this evaporation is independent of temperature must be based on a false assumption that DLR can magically cause increase in evaporation without the intervening rise in temperature. But that’s just a mistake about the physics.
I think I just did. It affects evaporation indirectly by raising the temperature and the surface and thereby affecting the vapor pressure. So, the increase evaporation is a function of the increase in surface temperature.
By the way: This is exactly how adding heat energy to a pot of boiling water increases evaporation at the surface of the pot of boiling water: by increasing temperature, which increases vapor pressure leading to evaporation. In contrast, adding heat energy to the pot or water cannot increase evaporation without increasing temperature (with the exception occurring just at the boiling point because above that temperature liquid cannot exist at all). Except at the boiling point, increased evaporation cannot happen except as an increase in temperature first. That’s how evaporation “works”.
This is pretty well understood about evaporation involving energy addition from anything and everything. Postulating unique physics for DLR from CO2 that somehow doesn’t apply to all other cases of evaporation as understood by engineers designing evaporative coolers, or any other system involving evaporation would amount “special exception for one problem out of all other similar problems physics”.
Mosher, maybe you can give us a hint.
What is the warming rate of these new stations from 1900 to 1945 compared to 1945 to 2014?
lucia writes “What happens is DLR is absorbed, and increases temperature of the water and increased water evaporates in consequence of the increase in vapor pressure which is known to be a function of temperature.”
Well thats your interpretation of what is happening and its a macro level interpretation based on the whole of the surface but its not mine.
My interpretation is that individual molecules evaporate, not the “whole surface” and for an individual molecule to evaporate it has to acquire sufficient energy to do so.
It can get that energy from other surrounding water molecules, from conduction with the atmosphere or from a photon supplied by DLR.
So, no I dont accept you “temperature must increase” argument.
And in support of my argument I will point out that the very surface of the ocean is the coldest part of the ocean for the first mm or so. And that is because the molecules there are losing energy from both radiation and evaporation. DLR doesn’t increase the temperature in that region, it very likely cools it.
TTM,
The liquid-vapor interface is a “macro level” feature. Individual molecules don’t really “evaporate.” At the top of a pot of water, there are many “liquid” water molecules zipping out into the air and “vapor” molecules plopping back into the water all the time. The state of equilibrium (set by the temperature and pressure) is what allows (causes?) the surface to be there at all.
Regarding the ocean skin, it would be cool compared to the water a few mm deeper under certain conditions (e.g., evaporative loss + outgoing radiation > DLR + conduction + turbulent mixing). DLR still ought to be “warming” the water in any case.
As an aside: the cool skin likely isn’t the “coldest” part of the ocean. 😉
TimTheToolman
Mine is the one that works in engineering and physics. You’ll need to show yours works for simple problems like pots of boiling water or droplet evaporation before anyone can take it seriously.
Good luck designing evaporative coolers and etc. with your interpretation or with believing that somehow switching from microscopic to macroscopic view actually helps you here.
This is precisely what one would expect if evaporation works the way I say it would. So, I can’t imagine how this supports your view. Of course the surface loses heat by radiation and evaporation. (It doesn’t quite make sense to say that molecules lose heat as the idea of ‘heat’ is a continuum mechanics idea.)
oliver writes “At the top of a pot of water, there are many “liquid†water molecules zipping out into the air and “vapor†molecules plopping back into the water all the time.”
Agreed but how does that alter anything? Molecules that pop out do so because they have sufficient energy to do so. Of course the liquid’s temperature has a large bearing on that. And so does pressure.
In the past DeWitt has described the main drivers of evaporation correctly as being ocean temperature, wind speed and so on.
But this is about how DLR can potentially cause more evaporation independently of bulk liquid temperature or atmospheric temperature.
lucia writes “Good luck designing evaporative coolers and etc. with your interpretation or with believing that somehow switching from microscopic to macroscopic view actually helps you here.
But you haven’t refuted my argument have you. So just to see where you stand on this, can a DLR photon cause a water molecule to evaporate or not?
Oliver
precisely. If the DLR is in the bulk of water, then heat conducts/convects up. Evaporation happens at the surface– not internally, causing surface to be cool relative to the region below.
I’m not quite sure what TTM thinks happens– DLR happening 12″ below the surface causes a molecule to “jump” to vapor and ‘burst out’ in some way without every transferring ‘heat’ to the water? Evaporation is a continuum mechanics idea. It’s true that one can go back and forth between “micro” (i.e molecualar) views and macro (i.e continuum view), but it takes a lot of work to do right and it really doesn’t help much here. Moreover, if one comes to conclusions based on the ‘molecular’ view that don’t happen at the continuum view one has made a mistake in the complicated averaging etc required to go from the micro to macro world.
Beyond that: TTM isn’t even making an attempt to do the hard stuff required to go from micro-to marco. He’s just decreeing something about what happens to a molecule without doing any sort of averaging, applying any sort of laws to whole collections of molecules and his final solution doesn’t seem to match what we know about continuua and knew long before anyone thought to do statistical mechanics!
And how do I know TTM isn’t even making the attempt? Because I’m not seeing any discussion of collections of molecules, averaging over collections, averaging energy and so on.
TTM
The answer is: it can’t.
You haven’t even made an argument. You are talking about what 1 individual molecule might do. But evaporation is about what collections of molecules do and so on. When one molecule “pops off” other molecules “pop back in” . On the macroscale, the way to view this is by understanding equilibrium, and using knowledge of vapor pressure as a function of temperature. If you want to do the microscale problem, to talk about “more” evaporation, you still need to look at entire collections of molecultes, derive conditions for equilibrium and so on. You haven’t done that and hence you have no argument to rebut.
I am pointing out that you can’t use your “view” in any engineering problems because you have not developed it to the point of predicting anything at all.
You are just trying to make some sort of claim about what 1 molecule in some sort of isolation would do if you gave it a “jolt” of energy and then jumping to some sort of conclusion about a whole collection without applying any laws of conservation of mass, energy or anything. That’s not an argument. There’s no “there there”. There is nothing to rebut or refute.
oliver also wrote “DLR still ought to be “warming†the water in any case.”
DLR is certainly supplying photons/energy to the topmost molecules but warming the surface? That isn’t a given and would depend on how many of those photons were used in evaporation.
and “s an aside: the cool skin likely isn’t the “coldest†part of the ocean.”
…hence the “for the first mm or so” in my statement 😛
Andrew,
It is not simply that Mosher has crunched a lot of numbers.
He has done a lot of good quality crunching.
I do believe there are important questions to answer, for example:
The Chinese study that was miselading due to UHI, if I recall. That Australia and NZ both seem to be suffering from adjustment-created warming. That there are paleo-records showing much larger increasees in temps more rapidly than we have experienced in the current era. The uselfulness of dendro-proxies for temps. And so forth.
Steve is doing the hard work, transparently and fully documented. Win lose or draq he is doing this the right way and that is worthy of respect, imho.
lucia writes “I’m not quite sure what TTM thinks happens– DLR happening 12″ below the surface causes a molecule to “jump†to vapor and ‘burst out’ in some way without every transferring ‘heat’ to the water?”
CO2/H2O DLR is absorbed into the topmost 100um or so.
lucia wrote “DLR happening 12″ below the surface causes a molecule to “jump†to vapor and ‘burst out’ in some way”
The physics of AGW over the oceans is far from intuitive lucia.
Re: TimTheToolMan (Comment #128966)
I guess I don’t really understand what you’re arguing here. If you write down a heat budget, then the DLR would be a “warming” term. Are you saying that all the photons could potentially be “used up” to heat molecules that leave from the surface, so that there is no net warming of the liquid body due to DLR?
I’m also confused here. Are you saying that the cool skin with thickness of O(1 mm) is the coldest part of the first mm or so of the ocean?
Oliver writes “I’m also confused here. Are you saying that the cool skin with thickness of O(1 mm) is the coldest part of the first mm or so of the ocean?”
I’m saying the very top is the coldest part of the top 1mm of the ocean. There is a good picture in the wiki of the cool skin of the ocean but I’m on a tablet at the moment and it’s too awkward to do links and stuff.
Oliver also wrote “Are you saying that all the photons could potentially be “used up†to heat molecules that leave from the surface, so that there is no net warming of the liquid body due to DLR?”
Potentially, yes. And in that case there would be a net loss of energy from the liquid body. In practice not all the DLR would be involved in evaporation though!
TimTheToolMan
You seem to be attempting to rebut my argument by rebutting something I never claimed.
oliver
As far as I can tell, TimTheToolMan is trying to avoid writing down any heat budget and relying purely on “intuition”. The argument can’t be rebutted because it has not been described.
I think I was mostly just examining the thought model a bit, as in “not possible”. I was not aware if this forcing had a hard physical limit at zero. I don’t have a theory for how it is happening, and don’t believe it is happening, but not excluding it’s existence.
CO2 -> Temp -> Feedback A +
CO2 -> Temp -> Feedback B
vs.
CO2 -> Temp -> Feedback A +
CO2 -> (magical secondary effect) -> Temp -> Feedback B
As in adding independent processes versus dependent processes.
Also (cleverly changing the argument here), it’s not just about “CO2”, it’s mostly about emissions, so an example of where this could occur is via the Hansen theory of black carbon soot (or whatever) that provides an independent aerosol cooling affect potentially greater than the CO2 warming affect.
But yeah, I wouldn’t place any bets on the sum CO2 feedbacks being negative. Worthy of discarding.
lucia,
I agree that TTM needs to describe his argument precisely before the discussion can get anywhere.
Oliver,
“I agree that TTM needs to describe his argument precisely before the discussion can get anywhere.”
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
“Climate sensitivity to CO2 cannot be negative. It is strictly positive.”
I’ll chip-in from a different angle than TTM:
If I added more CO2 to the atmosphere of a hypothetical Earth that was above its equilibrium (spit) temperature, would it not cool?
lucia:
It’s worth pointing out this is only true for equilibrium values. A feedback could invert the sign of a forcing for a time. A feedback of -.2 would creating an oscillating signal which eventually converged to zero. The signal’s frequency would determine how long that took, but until it converged, the sign of the forcing would fluctuate.
I don’t think it’d ever come up in climate discussions, but it makes for interesting math problems.
George Tobin:
As a person who has been insulted by Steven Mosher based upon fabricated claims, many times, I think swipes at him are a perfectly natural thing. You can respect certain work a person does while not respecting other things he does.
I dislike Mosher’s tendency to sabotage useful discussions by making things up to insult people, but I don’t think he should be grouped in with Michael Mann and the like.
michael,
I am making a pseudo-equilibrium argument. But then, ‘climate sensitivity’ only compares one pseudo-equlibrium value to another pseudo-equlibrium. So I haven’t imposed any assumption on the problem. If you want to compare a pseudo-equilibrium value to something that was not in pseudo-equilibrium, that might be interesting, but it would tell us nothing about “climate sensitivity”.
…and I think I can suggest one possible mechanism:
There is always a substantial amount of air supersaturated with water vapor that does not emit strongly in some of the IR bands of CO2. Increased CO2 would increase the cooling rate of this supersaturated air which is, by definition, above its local thermodynamic equilibrium.
That is a direct effect. Resultant condensation forming clouds sooner would produce an additional negative feedback.
Hadn’t seen your reply before my follow up , Lucia, but I still think it may be relevant to a “steady state” argument.
Brandon
Climate sensitivity is defined as changes in pseudo-equilibrium values. Can temperature differ from the pseudoequilibrium value? Yes. It can and often will. But discussing whether climate sensitivity is positive or negative assumes we are comparing pseudo-equilibrium values.
michael,
But you are just changing the subject away from the one TTM and I were discussing which is the effect of CO2 on climate sensitivity.
The question about whether the earth is above of below its pseudoequilibirum value is relevant to predicting what is likely to happen next. So the question of what can happen if the earth is not at pseudoequalibrium can be relevant to some arguments– and it’s relevant to the quesitons like “are we at steady state”.
But the question of what happens if the earth is temporarily above its equilibrium state is utterly irrelevant to the question of what is the effect if CO2 on climate sensitivity because be definition climate sensitivity compares two pseudoequilibrium values. And TTM and I are discussing the effect of CO2 on climate sensitivity. The fact that questions about steady state might matter to other problems– even interesting ones– does not make that relevant to the question of determining the effect of CO2 on climate sensitivity. To determine the effect of CO2 on climate sensitivity, you must start by comparing two values both of which are in pseudoequilibrium. And discussion about non-equilibrium is merely changing the subject to some other topic.
lucia:
Agreed. I just think if a person brings up the possibility of the sign of the forcing changing, they may not instinctively think of changes in the equilibrium. The extra detail might help them understand why their intuition can be correct despite the answer seeming to contradict it.
But to be honest, I mostly brought it up because I think it’s an interesting idea. It doesn’t really matter when dealing with one combined forcing to which all feedbacks are applied, but I’ve had a couple problems where it was important. Ignoring the possibility led me to getting imprecise, and sometimes even completely wrong, answers.
“It is facts that will ultimately supply the tools to help this social miasma fall apart.
Steve has focused on the facts for a long time. If he (and others) say focus on impacts and sensitivity, that is a pretty good hint.”
It has long been my contention that one way the skeptics hurt themselves is by wasting energy on bad arguments.
Bad arguments allow the alarmists to clump all skeptics together.
Offer 3 arguments, 2 good and 1 bad and the discussion will slide to your bad argument, not your two good ones.
In the begining the scatter gun attack everything approach was effective. wack a mole..
But now what we have been talking about here since 2007/8
1 model comparisons, 2 sensitivity, is in the forefront, where it has always belonged.
You cant have an intelligent dialog about model comparsions when half of your tribe is still off on the great thermometer drop out.
You cant press the issue on sensitivity with all hands on deck when morons are discussing the coloring schemes of noaa charts, or the adjustments made by hansen, or Salby, or planetary cycles or skydragon bullshit.
There comes a point, especially when the ‘standard model’ is showing some warts, that you can take the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to understanding. Watch Nic Lewis. Do likewise.
you want some unsolicated advice? durr I’ll give it anyway.
Pick a speciality
1. Temperatures? Go read Fall et all and our paper. Get your
hands dirty. Dig into that problem. same with UHI. there is
a ton of online lit. Understand, you’ll only be talking about a
marginal issue.. Avoid conspiracy crap like Goddard. The issues
here are bounded and not that important. I used to think they were more important.
2. Model comparisons. Read Lucia and everything else except Monckton. There is plenty of work here we are just scratching
the surface.
3. Sensitivity: read Nic lewis and associated papers and blog posts here.
4. Reconstructions? read Mcintyre and shut up until you have a positive contribution. Dont dilute his message by screwing it up in translation.
Now that I think about it, there’s no inherent reason a “negative” feedback need be bounded so values would converge to 0. A small forcing can trigger a series of over-corrections that lead to a much larger effect. For example, a bad driver who starts to lose control of their car may over-correct so much they make the problem worse. That creates a runaway effect (until they crash).
Anyway, sorry for the diversion.
George,
I have never had a problem with Mosh. He probably gets involved in too many food fights at Judith’s blog….. but that blog is food-fight-central. Even in a food fight he is usually generous toward his adversaries, never cruel, never destructive; seems to me he usually focuses on the argument, not the person. He is one of the good guys. Best of all, he knows where the real technical issues in climate catastrophe lie, and discounts all the rubbish, on both sides. Like I said, no problem.
Brandon,
I think you are confusing the requirement that the planet actually reaches the pseudo-equilibrium with what the equilibrium point is. Skipping the pseudo for now… An equilibrium point can “exist” but solutions near that point can be unstable. The classic problem 2-D problem you can draw on paper is a sphere placed at the top of a hill. The top of the hill is a pseudoequilibrium point, but if you move the sphere a little, it will roll away.
In contrast at the bottom of a “well”, the sphere can oscillate about a point– the point it tends to oscillate around would be considered the “pseudo-equilibrium” point. If the sphere could be placed in that point with a velocity of 0, it would stay there.
Lots of complicated things can happen– but the “equilibrium” point is not the location of the sphere, it is the location of “the well”. The definition of “climate sensitivity” would be a shift in the location of the “bottom” of the well, not a change in position of the sphere.
Mosh,
“There comes a point, especially when the ‘standard model’ is showing some warts, that you can take the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to understanding. Watch Nic Lewis. Do likewise.”
.
Indeed. In any other technical field the kind of obvious divergence between models and reality would, IMO, have long ago started the process of model revision. The lack of significant model revision, which is desperately needed to develop rational long and short term energy policies, is only going to happen if there are enough smart, honest people consistently showing just how wrong the models are. It is a ‘teachable moment’…. certainly not for the leading lights of climate science (far beyond hope) but rather for politicians and the public. Raging about 0.02C of heat island influence, or worse, nutty theories about radiative physics, epicenters, lapse rates, and ENSO controlling everything, only distracts from the important arguments that should be heard right now by politicians and the public: the models and the projections are just wrong. Focusing on the wacko arguments is the best possible way to ensure that climate model driven hysteria gets a free pass with the public. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory…. jeeze!
It’s hard to summarily dismiss TTTM’s postulation about IR directly evaporating water from the ocean’s surface. Roy Spencer has recently polled the audience on his blog (and from skimming the answers, didn’t get good ones).
The difference looking at this idea can make at a molecular scale is informative to me. We can stipulate that the ocean skin profile (as on Wikipedia) shows the daytime cool skin effect in the top mm. Statistical mechanics tells us that additional downwelling IR will slow the cooling of the surface (raise the skin temp a bit).
All good, but what if the microscale arrangement of molecules in the layer where IR is absorbed, is such that IR radiation at the wavelengths associated with CO2 tends to pry off individual molecules or groups, speeding up the net evaporation from what would be expected based on T and P? From a very cursory online search it doesn’t seem like this has been proven/disproven.
The trouble is, it’s all speculation. We know that CO2 lasers can rapidly evaporate water, but bulk heating seems to be the mediating process. Then again, it doesn’t seem to have been subjected to the sort of test that would rule out some kind of “quantum” effect.
Although, if it were true, then I guess condensation should cause a corresponding spike in the emission spectrum…
CF http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012825210000176
but this is a 2010 article with only self cites, not a good sign, I guess nobody’s listening to Tatarchenko.
Re: Brandon Shollenberger (Apr 28 13:55),
Your example is flawed. Over-correction is a positive, not a negative feedback. A damper (the proper name for a shock absorber) is a negative feedback. There is no way a damper can increase the magnitude of an oscillation of a mass and spring. You need amplification for that. Over-correction is amplification. It’s all about the phase.
SteveF, I’ve had dramatically different experiences. Maybe he just doesn’t like me 😛
lucia, I don’t think I am confusing the two. I agree with everything you just said.
bill_c
Why in the world should the “microscale arrangement of molecule” in on the liquid water side of an interface differ from the plain old “microscale arrangement” of liquid water? We have lots of examples of liquid water in many places on earth– including the my toilet bowl. Speculating that there is some special arrangement of molecules in the top layer or water in the ocean and that special arrangement has somehow not been noticed by people looking at the water in the ocean, and that somehow that arrangement means the vapor pressure or water at the surface of the ocean is not governed by the same Claussius-Clayperon equation that governs water all over the planet– including the surface of swimming pools, toilet bowls, boiling cauldrens and so on is really pushing one into “leprechaun physics” regions.
The notion that somehow taking a “quantum view” is going to change things doesn’t work. There is no ‘disconnect’ between continuum mechanics and “quantum physics”. It can be hard work showing how one gets continnum equations form the quantum formulations but they are based on the exact same physics.
I guess if you want to go create yourself a laboratory with a sunlamp, chamber full of CO2 (rather than mostly nitrogen) and a pool of water at the bottom you can see whether vapor pressure of water depends not just on Temperature, but also on whether the tank contains CO2 rather than nitrogen. Good luck. Read derivations and explanations of Classius-Clapyeron first though.
Re: bill_c (Apr 28 14:50),
No, it isn’t. The only way to increase evaporation, assuming constant wind velocity and humidity, is to increase the average kinetic energy of the molecules in the skin. That’s the definition of a temperature increase. TTTM has not proposed a real physical mechanism that contradicts this. He only asserts that it might exist.
bill_c,
“It’s hard to summarily dismiss TTTM’s postulation about IR directly evaporating water from the ocean’s surface.”
.
I think it is really easy to dismiss. It is on a par with Jovian cycles and claims about the second law refuting GHG driven warming. Add more heat and things get hotter. It is just that simple. Roy Spencer is pretty clearly frustrated with all the crazy arguments… including this particular one.
Lucia writes “As far as I can tell, TimTheToolMan is trying to avoid writing down any heat budget and relying purely on “intuitionâ€. The argument can’t be rebutted because it has not been described.”
Why are you suggesting there is an issue with the heat budget? I’m not suggesting energy is coming anywhere for free, I’m suggesting DLR directly increases evaporation by impacting directly on evaporating molecules.
DeWitt Payne, I didn’t do a good job making the point of my example (I also put quotation marks around “negative” instead of “negative feedback”). Let me try a more direct explanation.
A lot of people will see “positive feedback” as any value greater than one and “negative feedback” as any value less than one. To them, a “negative” feedback could change 1 to .5 or -.5. To them, over-correcting while steering a car is a “negative feedback” because they’re applying force in the opposite direction.
It may not be “right,” but it’s a very intuitive way of thinking. I don’t think most people would instinctively think of over-correcting as a positive feedback.
TTTM,
The surface of the water (the first several microns at least) for sure will be warmed by absorbance of infrared. But consider that heat transfer rate between that few m icrons of surface skin and the water say 100 microns below (which is NOT directly warmed by IR) is quite high. If I have done the math right, 3 watts/M^2 of added IR flux will be transferred down the first ~100 microns at a rate of 3 watt/M^2 when the first 10 microns is about 2 millikelvin warmer than the water 100 microns below. And for sure evaporation doesn’t take place from 100 microns below the surface. Do you seriously think a few millikelvin would cause a large increase in surface evaporation? This is all crazy talk. Increasing IR flux warms the surface (water or land). In the ocean the net influence of higher IR flux is warming of the entire well mixed layer, and so a higher surface evaporation rate (according to C-C, for the same wind velocity) due to that warming. All you have to do is write down a heat balance and you can see what is going to happen…. no need for any claims of brand new physics. Please focus on the real issues…. this is not one of them.
Regardless of terms, the steering example is a bit opaque because — I think– you’ve left out a feature involved in climate feedback. In your steering example, I think you are ‘correcting’ in “jerks”. So, the person controlling is sort of not responding continuously, but sort of doing so either
(a) in bursts with the car running along between control bursts (sort of like the driver gets to hit it with a bat and gives it a huge smack when he sees it’s in the wrong place,then waits… Then gives it another smack.)
(b) the person controlling somehow doesn’t have sufficient information to apply the correction in near real time so the car turns on a dime, but the drivers reaction time is just too slow. He ends up out of phase.
(a) is certainly nothing like climate. The earth doesn’t just coast along and then suddenly say ‘Oh. It’s 1990 now. Let’s reset physics, freeze it and coast along another 10 years.)
Some aspects of climate might be like (b), but mostly, we expect something like humidity in the atmosphere or even clouds to be rapid relative to the time it takes to really increase the temperature of the earth. That is: water evaporates, rains out, forms cloud, hurricanes which dash around and vanish in time periods that are certainly less than a year. Some longer term cylces do exist, but few consider those “feedback” issues. (They can make it difficult to measure climate sensitivity and know lots of things. But they aren’t really “feedback” thingies.) So whatever this is, it’s a lot more like a driver with very fast reflexes given the speed of his car.
TimTheToolMan
I’m suggesting there is an “issue” with a heat budget because this is a thermodynamics problem. You can’t just intuit where things go, you have to count all the ‘energy beans’ and etc.
I haven’t suggested you are saying energy comes for free. I’m saying you are avoiding writing down a budget, applying things to collections of molecules and seeing what happens collectively. This is the sort of “budgetting” of mass, momentum, energy one must do in thermo problems. This has nothing to do with accusing you of suggesting energy comes for “free”– and I haven’t accussed you of any such thing.
You seem to be trying to “intuit” things by thinking of isolated molecules and not watching where all the energy goes. That doesn’t work. You need to do a budget.
SteveF writes “The surface of the water (the first several microns at least) for sure will be warmed by absorbance of infrared.”
I think you’ll find that the surface is net cooling so the DLR doesn’t “warm” it and make it hotter like you suggested above. Of course you can feel free to argue “Willis style” on this and revert to “hotter than it would be without the DLR” and thats fine but skirts the issue.
I like to think of the DLR as concentrating energy in the topmost molecules (100um).
SteveF then writes “the first 10 microns is about 2 millikelvin warmer than the water 100 microns below.”
The top 10 microns are cooler than those 100 microns below. Now I’m back on something with a keyboard…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MODIS_and_AIRS_SST_comp_fig2.i.jpg
lucia writes “You seem to be trying to “intuit†things by thinking of isolated molecules and not watching where all the energy goes.”
Not at all true lucia. Ocean warming accounts for about 0.4W/m2 according to Levitus and others. Where do you think the rest of the increased DLR goes?
TTTM,
Of COURSE the surface skin is cooler, that is where the evaporation is taking place. Most solar energy is absorbed well below the ocean surface (meters) and nearly all heat is lost through evaporative cooling of the skin. Willis’ argument is right, and you my friend are flat wrong. Sorry, I don’t think anybody can help you on this. A deus.
lucia writes “You seem to be attempting to rebut my argument by rebutting something I never claimed.”
If you thought the DLR penetrated to 12″ then its no surprise you’re having trouble understanding my argument.
TimTheToolMan wrote (Comment #128951)
“I’ve mentioned it before. Increased DLR is absorbed into the very topmost molecules of the ocean where it MUST [my emphasis] increase evaporation independently of all other factors. Its straightforward physics. Let me ask you in return why you think increased (DLR) energy deposited into the topmost layer of the ocean won’t affect evaporation directly?”
Most LWR doesn’t penetrate further than the top 10 um of the ocean – NOR does LWR escape to the atmosphere when it is emitted by water molecules BELOW the top 10 um. It is absorbed before it can reach the surface. OLR emitted by the surface of the ocean (nearly blackbody radiation) comes from the same “topmost molecules of the ocean” that absorb DLR. Since the atmosphere is usually colder than the “topmost molecules of the ocean” AND has lower emissivity, the “topmost molecules of the ocean” lose more energy as OLR than they gain from DLR. There is NO excess energy that “MUST” be immediately lost through evaporation. To make matters worse, evaporation occurs from the very top of the “topmost molecules of the ocean”. The idea that the “topmost molecules of the ocean” are almost boiling away after being heated by DLR is absurd when ALL of the fluxes are considered. Furthermore, experiments with infrared and microwave sensors show that the “topmost molecules of the ocean” are usually colder than the water immediately below.
If one looks at the KT energy balance diagram for the earth (which is 70% ocean), the “topmost molecules of the ocean” lose an average of about 60 W/m2 through the NET LWR channel and another 80 W/m2 by evaporation. WIthout SWR, this layer would freeze, like the Arctic ocean when winter darkness arrives. However, SWR from the sun is mostly deposited far below the “topmost molecules of the ocean”, but within the top 10 m. Heat would be rapidly accumulating in the top 10 m, if it couldn’t find a way back to the “topmost molecules of the ocean” – from where it can escape as OLR or evaporation. The heat from SWR reaches the surface by convection and conduction. One might say that SWR “heats” the bulk ocean and LWR+evaporation “cool” the “topmost molecules of the ocean”.
— catching up —
Mosh, thanks for weighing in with your observations. Your late-thread advice (Comment #128986) strikes me as very sound. You’ve even followed it, yourself!
Dewitt, George Tobin, SteveF — appreciate you adding your respective perspectives on Mosh’s approach to the temp record at points where the thread was wobbling.
TTTM, I can’t make any sense of your central arguments, only of Lucia’s and now SteveF’s responses. If you’re sure you’re a lot smarter and more knowledgeable than me, I guess that might not be a bad sign. FWIW, I don’t enjoy even whiffs of skydragon scents in Blackboard threads.
AMac,
What was it Hugo Chavez said at the UN: “And it smells of sulfur still today”? 😉
AMac writes “FWIW, I don’t enjoy even whiffs of skydragon scents in Blackboard threads.”
Skydragons scents? Well thats just obnoxious.
Put simply DLR is absorbed into the topmost molecules of the ocean, the molecules that are evaporating. The fact that there is a net loss of energy from the surface is irrelevent.
Adding energy onto the surface like that, must (and nobody has described why it isn’t so) increase evaporation.
For example Frank writes “The idea that the “topmost molecules of the ocean†are almost boiling away after being heated by DLR is absurd when ALL of the fluxes are considered. ”
That is precisely what is happening, though. The topmost molecules of the ocean ARE heated by DLR and ARE “boiling away” as you put it. Which part of that is absurd?
lucia:
Aye. That’s an unfortunate part of the metaphor. It does work better at lower values (which will converge to zero) though. The “corrections” are applied pretty smoothly if a person is only over-correcting by a small amount.
Anyway, I was hoping people would get the idea despite the shortcomings in the example. It’s difficult to find a good metaphor for some things.
This is what I was thinking save a car might not turn on a dime due to something like sliding or skidding. Also, it’s not just a lack of information but the ability to process said information. Panicking often leads to people making things worse.
But yeah, I don’t think there are feedbacks relevant to estimating climate sensitivity which actually act like this. Maybe it’d come up if you were modeling fine scale climate, like over one small region. I don’t know. I was just trying to work out how terms may get used.
TTTM,
You seem offended by references to Skydragons. Fair enough, I will not comment on that any more. But please try to understand that from a purely technical POV your argument makes absolutely no sense (and is exactly the kind of nonsense argument which Skydragon slayers regularly offer). The top mm of ocean receives much more heat from below (via convection) than it receives from DLW radiation. The fact that the skin is colder than some cms below is saying clearly that there is far more evaporative cooling than DLR. Yes the DLW changes the surface balance a bit, and makes the surface a bit warmer, and so slightly increases evaporation…. but any net surface warming means that the whole of the well mixed layer must warm by a comparable amount to maintain energy balance. The idea that you can assign photons from DLW radiation the job of “boiling off” specific water molecules is what is so weird about your argument.
.
Look a little deeper at what is happening. The first micron of water will absorb ~18% of 15 micron photons… 82% are absorbed below 1 micron. 1 micron of water is ~ 3000 water molecules deep (it is more complicated because of clustering, but as a first approximation ~3000 molecules/micron of depth). So which of the 3000 molecules is going to be the lucky one that absorbs the photon? We don’t know, of course, and 4 times out of 5 NONE of the top 3000 water molecules will absorb that photon…. the absorption will take place somewhere deeper; on average at a depth of ~9000 molecules. So the question is: if a lucky water molecule in the top 3000 happens to absorb that photon, what will happen? It will be “promoted” by the quantum energy content of the photon to a higher energy state. If it happens to be located in the first layer or two of water molecules, it may well be a bit more likely to evaporate from the surface, but almost always it will be nowhere near the surface, and the ‘hot’ molecule it will be quickly quenched via impacts with other water molecules (impacts between water molecules take place at very high frequency, while molecular diffusion, even over ~1 micron to reach the surface, takes much more time).
.
So here is the situation: even within the top several microns, most “promoted” water molecules simply lose their energy content to surrounding molecules…. raising the average skin temperature. There is no possibility of “individual photons” consistently “boiling off” the specific water molecule which happens to adsorb them. Even the top few microns represents a vast ensemble of water molecules, and which of those happens to be struck by a DLW photon has nothing to do with which specific water molecules evaporate from the surface. To prove this you need only look at the relative energy content of the DLW photons (~1.3*10^(-20) joules) and compare to the energy required to evaporate a water molecule (~7.3 * 10^(-20) joule). In other words, you have to “store-up” the energy from about six individual 15 micron photons in a single water molecule to generate the energy needed to evaporate that molecule. Since “promoted” water molecules are quickly quenched, there is almost no possibility of that ever happening.
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You see, the whole argument is just nuts. There is nothing like a mechanism where individual photons “boil off” specific water molecules from the surface. Evaporation takes place because the molecular motion (AKA the temperature) at the water surface provides the energy to evaporate water molecules…. and the surface cools in the process. DLW radiation form GHG’s is just one contributor to the energy balance. That’s all. No new physics.
Paging Dr. Dunning…Dr. Kruger…
🙂
This comment’s a bit… well, more than a bit… off topic. But then, the subject of the OP is “registering as a reviewer,” so I don’t see much harm in continuing!
.
At his blog, Emanuel Derman posted the text of his recent speech at a Berkeley commencement. The guy was one of the first theoretical physicists to be attracted by the challenges and riches of Wall Street, applying the tools of his trade to model financial market. In recent years, quants have certainly made a lot of money for their employers and themselves. The movement also contributed to the 2008 Meltdown and to other, smaller crises as well… Whether the world is a better place as a result of their practice is an open question.
Derman’s point #5 is a discussion of the ethics of financial modeling. Perhaps his words should also apply to those attempting to develop mathematical tools to characterize complex physical systems whose characteristics are poorly understood — notwithstanding the confident assertions of those workers.
@SteveF (Comment #128990),
You summed up one of the central issues of the AGW dysfunction very well.
It seems to me that a reluctance to review/correct models is what differentiates science-based from faith-based movements.
TimTheToolMan
Huh?
lucia wrote “I’m not quite sure what TTM thinks happens– DLR happening 12″ below the surface causes a molecule to “jump†to vapor and ‘burst out’ in some way without every transferring ‘heat’ to the water?”
Well what did you mean by this?
SteveF writes “There is no possibility of “individual photons†consistently “boiling off†the specific water molecule which happens to adsorb them.”
But thats exactly what happens. The fact that DLR may heat a water molecule hundreds or thousands of molecules down makes no difference to my argument. The photon does not have to exactly hit the water molecule thats going to evaporate.
The point is that the energy imparted by DLR directly impacts on evaporation independently of other factors.
Dont forget where we came from with this discussion, lucia thought it was impossible that sensitivity could be negative because CO2 must cause heating. Well I’m showing a possible physically plausible mechanism where that isn’t so.
Now, I still dont believe that to be true but we need to be especially careful when invoking simplified physics (ie DLR warms as a no brainer) to explain a phenomena we believe is true.
TTTM What I mean is you’ve been utterly vague about your description leaving us to guess what the heck you mean. I have no idea– none– what you are trying to say because you just want to talk about what you think “a molecule” is somehow going to do in isolation of all other molecules.. It’s as if you somehow think you can analyze what one “target” molecule you “like” does and then know what happens to “everything”. That doesn’t work– you need to talk about collections of molecules. That’s how going from quantum descriptions to macro descriptiosn works.
FWIW: I also don’t know what you think happens if you replace 12″ with 0.5mm in the quote above– or even 1 micron. The number is an arbitrary detail in that statement.happening. Do you think molecules just “jump” to from “liquid” state to “vapor” and burst out of the ‘interfae” into the “gas”. What? Explain in detail what you think– and discuss collections of molecules. Until you do…. you are basically putting forth a ‘non argument’ because you aren’t saying what happens overall. Beyond that no one can either (a) understand what you are suggesting happens or (b) rebut it because you are so incomplete that there is simply no “there” there.
TTTM,
I’m not going to try to do it, but I’m pretty sure that one could prove that an increase of the evaporation rate from an increase in DLR without an increase in temperature would violate the Second Law. One would start, I think, with the fundamental relationship that δU = TδS – PδV.
Or to put it differently: There are two limiting cases for an increase in energy input, balance is restored by evaporation only and balance is restored by increased radiation only. Neither can happen. Radiation and evaporation will both increase because the temperature increases.
TTTM,
A bizarre analysis, and clearly not worth spending any more tine on.
DeWitt writes “Radiation and evaporation will both increase because the temperature increases.”
I absolutely agree that both will increase with increased DLR.
I dont think there is a contradiction with the second law because any increased evaporation must also cool the surface and/or the atmosphere (the energy doesn’t come from nowhere) and its not clear to me that entropy is necessarily decreased.
But its a good argument that I’ll have to think on…
lucia writes “I also don’t know what you think happens if you replace 12″ with 0.5mm in the quote above– or even 1 micron. ”
I think that the energy supplied by the DLR is supplied to the evaporating molecules vs …not.
DeWitt,
The thing is, there is no analysis in TTM’s claims.
SteveF,
Yep. Bizarre. And beyond that too vague to engage. It looks “skydragonish” as in “invent new physics” followed by “don’t prove the new physics” then complain that others who have been using perfectly good physics that describe tons of problems somehow need to ‘disprove’ these vaguely described “new physics” .
Sorry… but no. If the disproof of AGW requires inventing entirely new physics that no one has yet seen (and which even contradicts well established things like Classius Clayperyon) … then maybe TTM better just accept that he needs to spend time proving Classius-Clapeyron is wrong, and vapor pressure is not a function of Temperature but rather a function of Temperature, concentration of CO2 and something to do with downwelling radiation.
TTM
First: molecules can’t evaporate because phase is not a property of individual molecules. It’s a property of collections of molecules. So DLR can’t be supplied to “evaporating molecules”.
As for other stuff: No one has accused you of necessarily violating the 1st law. You stand accused of being (a) too vague for anyone to know, (b) not doing sums and (c) not considering collections of molecules.
The fact that you can even entertain this notion
Shows how far off you are. To know what happens to temperature or evaporation rates you must consider what happens to collections of molecules– not individual ones. The reason this is so is none of the following even exist when you consider only individual molecules:
1) phase (i.e. gaseous, liquid, solid).
2) temperature.
3) pressure.
You also can’t apply the 2nd law unless you look at collections of molecules.
You really can’t do this problem by thinking of individual molecules. It can’t be done. (And the fact that you try suggests you have never taken Statistical Thermodynamics– or if you have you have forgotten everything you learned.)
lucia writes “maybe TTM better just accept that he needs to spend time proving Classius-Clapeyron is wrong, and vapor pressure is not a function of Temperature but rather a function of Temperature, concentration of CO2 and something to do with downwelling radiation.”
C-C is right and its not under dispute. I’m describing a possible mechanism whereby the required vapour pressure is reached at the given temperature. As I said earlier in the thread, energy is supplied from the nearby water molecules, atmosphere through conduction or photons from DLR.
From what I can tell in this thread, the general consensus seems to be that no energy comes from photons from the DLR and I’m at a loss as to why.
Lucia,
I suspect you are right about no statistical thermo.
lucia “You really can’t do this problem by thinking of individual molecules.”
Only you seem to be hung up on looking at individual molecules. The argument that increased DLR increases evaporation certainly doesn’t rely on it.
TTTM,
the vapor pressure of water is determined by temperature. Temperature is a property of large collections of molecules. Absorbed photons add to the total energy content of a collection of molecules, which is the same as saying the collection of molecules becomes warmer when photons are absorbed.
SteveF writes “Absorbed photons add to the total energy content of a collection of molecules”
…and if the energy is added in the region of evaporation then it must contribute to that evaporation. But we’re going around in circles.
Lucia It’s legal. It just happens to be incorrect. Climate sensitivity to CO2 cannot be negative. It is strictly positive.
DeWitt Payne (Comment #128931)
It’s not just Mosher’s opinion that “CO2 makes it warmer.†It should be the opinion of any rational person that understands the physics involved. The question is, as Mosher pointed out above, the sensitivity. We know beyond a reasonable doubt that the sensitivity is greater than zero.
Hunter if it was a simple chemical equation or physical process, we would not be in a debate because the data would not be so ambiguous nor would there be a need for such an incredible effort to discern the impact of CO2.
Lucia Feedbacks that cause the total effect to be in the opposite direction of the primary effect don’t make any sense.
oooh think of a pulley or a lever the primary effect is down, the load moves the other direction [up] feedbacks can be massive I believe if the lever is long enough.
Think of the Roman empire pushing out and the massive, negative feedback from the barbarians wiping them out.
Think of catalysts enabling massive conversions.
Lucia “The fact is: By their nature if they are feedbacks they can weaken the primary effect or they can enhance it, but they can’t actually reverse it. So: sensitivity to CO2 has to be strictly positive. It can’t be negative.”
Sorry this statement actually says the feedback can be weak [when it weakens the primary effect] or strong in a positive manner only [they can’t actually reverse it]. Your logic is hence impeccable only because you have already defined the feedback as actually going only in 1 direction.
You are right. Mosher is right, everyone is right CO2 by itself in a platonic world model will increase temperature.
Lucia “If you want to counter my argument, it would help if you actually engage it rather than merely ignore it.”
But, and here you asked for specifics, the world is a lot more complex than just add CO2.
CO2 is everywhere, It has been converted by plants and animals into oil, limestone, bone and marble and exists in a complex balance with its various other compounds.
When the temp goes up more CO2 comes out of the water, does this put the temp up and make more CO2 come out and put the temperature up ad infinitum? No
so no positive ongoing feedback loop then.
A balance or pseudo balance has been struck.
Now if the temperature has gone up more CO2 is a logical consequence with or without mans efforts.
Will it keep on going up? The evidence of life existing for a billion years suggests that increasing temperatures lead to other feedbacks [which will be missed if you insist on only looking at the effect of CO2 on its own]
These effects include increased albedo, More water saturation of the land from increased rainfall hence lower sea levels increased concentration of sea chemicals giving precipitation of CO2 out in the sea floor as solid substances.
Heck I could even argue that the increased concentration of CO2 in the water makes the specific tension of the water much less leading to much increased humidity of the atmosphere and a greatly enhanced albedo. TM angech [only a hypothesis].
“Climate sensitivity is known and measurable”
I attribute this to Steve Mosher ? a year and a half ago but cannot remember where he said it. I think he argued that you could work it out from TOA measurements but he never gave an actual figure.
I think you have to separate out textbook Climate Sensitivity of adding CO2 to other gases and real Climate Sensitivity to CO2, H2O, temperature, the chemicals in the seabed, clouds soot S04 etc. You are right in the narrow interpretation and we have no idea in the broader sense
angech
First: Please recall I have told you numerous times I did not say feedbacks cannot be negative. I said sensitivity can’t be negative. Changing the subject is not a valid method of engaging a claim or rebutting it. I’m not going to engage you if your method is going to be paying no attention whatsoever to what I actually claimed and then rebutting something else. Your doing that is disrespectful of my time and that of other readers here. Spend a bit of your own to at least rebut claims I or others actually made. Or go ‘rebut’ claims no one here somewhere else (preferably somewhere where someone is making those claims).
Second: The support for your view is an analogy involving barbarians and Romans? Really? Wow. I suggest you try physics — possibly first or second law of thermo and/or heat transfer of some sort.
TimTheToolman
You are going in circles because you will not take the step of considering collections of molecules. even if as you imagine a molecule on the liquid side of the vapor/liquid interface absorbs a photon and “vaporizes”, it will then merely join all the other vapor molecules just on the vapor side of ‘the skin’. At that point, all those “vapor” molecules will collecgtively have some temperature and pressure. These vaporizing molecules will increase the partial pressure of water in the vapor. And if the pressure exceeds the local vapor pressure — which is a function of the local temperature— some of them will ‘liquify’ such that partial pressure of water vapor will be in equilibrium. So there will be no net change in the partial pressure of the water vapor without a change in the local temperature.
I know for some mysterious reason you seem to think the presence of other molecules doesn’t matter to your thought experiment but it does. You simply can’t discuss concepts like “pressure”, “humidity” or “temperature” and “phase change” without considering collections of molecules and doing mass and energy budgets for the collection and applying the 2nd law to the collection. (You can’t apply the 2nd law to one molecule. You can’t even define things like “disorder” at the molecular level).
You seem to want to resist thinking of collections– and then at the same time discuss features like “temperature” and “humidity” which don’t even exist for individual molecules. They only exist for collections!!
It’s pointless to discuss evaporation with you or anyone who wants to keep advancing a “one molecule theory” of enhanced evaporation and it’s relationship to temperature. The only advice that can be given to you is: take a course on statistical thermodynamics. Or retake the course you once took. Because the mere fact that you want to discuss the idea you seem to want to discuss shows you know nothing about statistical thermodynamics nor how that relates to continuum notions. If you want to discuss that with someone else… maybe go find Claes Johnson’s blog. He likes to make up new physics too. But I’m not going to waste my time on your utterly confused notion here. It’s so far from anything that could even be right that it’s ‘not even wrong’.
lucia, sorry re sensitivity v feedbacks , some misunderstanding on my part, working on it.
SteveF (Comment #129012)
April 28th, 2014 at 7:07 pm
(& Lucia)
Thank you, this explains it for me. I DO think there is utility in looking at the microscale picture, thought I guess maybe if one has enough experience with the field one doesn’t have to. Regardless, the necessary information is related to the # of molecules contained within the zone where DLR is absorbed, as you demonstrated. I think Roy Spencer would be happy with your answer.
Following on that, I don’t see why TTTM subsequently says:
It makes a huge difference. If the IR photon is absorbed anywhere but the top layer of molecules, or maybe the top several, the only available path to evaporation is via subsequent molecular collisions AKA heating of the liquid.
If the situation was such that a high % of the DLR was absorbed in the top layer (of molecules), it would be a different story. Anyway, count my vote for accurate explanations that are founded in theory and experiment. Saying “This has been experimentally proved to be wrong because xxxx” and “This is impossible because physics!” are obviously not the same quality level of explanation.
lucia (Comment #129036)
April 29th, 2014 at 7:57 am
Minor point, I think in this (imaginary) scenario you would have a net increase in the temperature of the air immediately above the interface, which would allow C-C to still hold. Maybe that has been disproven too…but I think TTTM’s argument is most effectively refuted by the explanation SteveF gave.
TTTM,
“and if the energy is added in the region of evaporation then it must contribute to that evaporation”
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So your conclusion appears to boil down to” If you heat the surface of the water with infrared radiation, there will be more evaporation”.
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Well, ya, that is what people have been consistently trying to tell you. Energy is fungible…. even in a surface skin of several microns thickness. It does not matter if the flux of energy to the (cooler) surface layer increases because the water below is warmer, or if the flux of energy to the surface layer increases because more 15 micron photons are being absorbed in the first several microns; any increase in energy flow to the surface layer will lead to a higher surface temperature and an increase in evaporation according to C-C. There is nothing mysterious or special about the energy that happens to come from 15 micron DLW radiation….. the surface energy budget has to change to reflect ANY change in energy flux. If DLW increases, then surface skin temperature will increase, as will (slowly, lots of thermal mass) the temperature of the entire well mixed layer below. Most solar energy is transported through the (somewhat cooler) surface layer via convection and conduction; raise the surface temperature a bit and the underlying water will warm the same amount to maintain the same net energy flow to the surface. The claim that the ocean’s well mixed layer does not warm due to increased DLW radiation from increasing GHG’s is just Skydragon Slayer nonsense; which is I think were the whole crazy conversation started.
bill_c,
Actually, no. The story stays the same because you do need to look at collections of molecules on both sides of the interface. And you can’t just look at some particular molecules that you think gain the photons, you have to recognize that all molecules will eventually transfer energy with their surroundings on both sides of the gas/liquid interface. So, those water molecules TTM thinks have “vaporized” when they grabbed on to a photon, would– under his view– join the vapor. But now, they still need to act like vapor, which includes transferring energy by existing mechanisms to other vapor molecules and such like– and contributing to the “Temperature” and “Pressure” of the vapor phase.
At that point, claussius-clayperon which is both well understood theoretically and observed experimentally will control, And if owing to the addition of these vaporized molecules, partial pressure of the “water vapor” exceeds the vapor pressure for the local temperature, dictate that some water vapor molecules will condense back out– thereby forcing the connection between Temperature and Partial Pressure. And the net effect of particles condensing back out is for evaporation to be directly connected to the temperature rise.
Claussius-Clayperon is well known physics. It is dictated by the application of the laws of thermodynamics to collections of molecules and violating it would violate the 2nd law of thermo. (See application of 2nd law at wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clausius%E2%80%93Clapeyron_relation ). It is understood theoretically and observed empirically. TTM’s has not even tried to consider collections of particles in his “intuition” about what individual molecules do. And to discuss pressure and temperature, you do need to do so– and if he did consider these molecules (which he insists on ignoring), he would discover that what other molecules he insists on ignoring must do if we are not to violate the 1st and 2nd laws of thermo is to evaporate or condense in such a way that (absent things like increased convection because of higher windiness or something– which we’ve all been pretty much assuming as one of the things held constant) we cannot get more “evaporation” without seeing a rise in skin temperature of the water.
It. Can’t. Happen.
And as long as he keeps stamping his metaphorical little foot and wanting to talk about “individual molecules” and not looking at collections his argument is so incomplete as to be “not an argument”.
bill_c
It is precisely this increase in temperature that TTM is denying occurs. He ‘wants’ net evaporation to increase with no increase in temperature.
Or put another way: the point in the argument with TTM is that the net evaporation cannot increase unless the temperature increases.
Lucia,
I wasn’t picking up that no increase in air temperature was allowed. The instant that happens, we’d get enhanced convection, increasing the partitioning of the incident energy into the air as opposed to the water.
??????? (indicates speculative assertion)
Lucia,
“It is precisely this increase in temperature that TTM is denying occurs. He ‘wants’ net evaporation to increase with no increase in temperature. ”
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Yes, that seems to be the real issue…. anything (ANYTHING!) to refute that GHG “back-radiation” causes surface warming. It is as risible an effort as main stream climate scientists arm waving their way through endless excuses for the obvious deficiencies of climate models and the obvious overstatement of (measured!) warming, none of which include the most likely: the models’ parameterized feedbacks are way wrong. Both groups seem to me quite desperate to avoid facing reality. Climate scientists offer more sophisticated arguments than slayers, of course (after all, they are real scientists), but at bottom both suffer from a very bad case of motivated reasoning.
Boris
“Having lukewarmers and skeptics in the batch of non-science reviewers might reduce some of the more egregiously awful ‘climate communication’ messages seen in the past
Paging Dr. Dunning…Dr. Kruger”
1. the topic is communication of science not science itself.
2. the claims are modest. Might reduce the MORE aweful messages.
3. As an expert in communication I will say that input from non experts is always welcome. rarely followed but always welcomed.
bill_c
His claim seems to be no effect on temperature at all:
We can of course argue about whether the air and liquid temperatures are any different on either side of “the skin” even down to the tiniest microscopic level. Often, the notion of “slip” at interfaces has to do with using an approximation to replace a rapid transition within a very thin boundary layer–similar to “slip” for velocity at the solid/fluid interfaces.
Lucia,
Yeah….
I re-read Roy’s post and still don’t see any really good answers. And Roy’s question is different..it’s really phrased as a question about the efficacy (?) of ocean heating by DLR opposed to SW.
DeWitt Payne wrote (Comment #129023):
“There are two limiting cases for an increase in energy input, balance is restored by evaporation only and balance is restored by increased radiation only. Neither can happen. Radiation and evaporation will both increase because the temperature increases.”
From my perspective, DeWitt has just provided a “surface energy balance description” of a key element of climate sensitivity: What fraction of increasing DLR from increasing GHGs will raise surface temperature and what fraction will be lost as evaporation?
However, fundamental physics doesn’t demand that there be an increase in surface temperature (though I’m sure there will be some in practice). As with radiation, with evaporation one needs to consider the flux in both directions. The temperature of the skin layer of the ocean determines how quickly molecules evaporate. The saturation of the air immediately above the ocean determines the rate at which water vapor molecules return to the ocean. (At 90% relative humidity, the downward flux of water molecules is 90% of the upward flux, making the NET rate of evaporation only 10% of what is theoretically possible at that temperature.) A thin layer of still air above the ocean is saturated or nearly saturated with water vapor. The rate of transport of water vapor away from the surface and into the boundary layer controls how fast “net evaporation” occurs, which is why wind speed has a major impact on the rate of evaporation. And why you feel colder getting out of a pool on a windy day that a calm day.
More CO2 -> More Temp -> Even More CO2 -> Even More Temp
runs out of steam eventually. What is the suppressing element here? (not rhetorical, I don’t the answer)
What has caused this feedback to end in past temperature run ups?
SteveF (Comment #129040)
> So your conclusion appears to boil down to…
SteveF —
As you know, there’s a growing shortage of words that can be used in puns on “evaporation” (I guess because it’s an increasingly dry subject).
Thus, I must object to this casual reference to P(vap) > P(atm) !
Tom.
Start here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RffPSrRpq_g
OT — Markets Gird for Return of El Nino, in today’s WSJ. Fair-use extract:
Fun fact:
Tom Scharf,
Positive feedback doesn’t mean ‘runaway’ feedback. It can result in a finite amplification factor (for example: twice what you’d expect for CO2 alone. Or half what you’d expect. The former is ‘positive’ the later is ‘negative’.)
There is no difficuly involved in positive feedback and past climate being stable– unless feedback was so high as to permit runaway warming– but really, even that can’t go on forever (it can look so in a model, but in reality the earth would eventually experience something that causes the assumptions in the model to be violated– like for example 100% humidity or no more oceans or something. An analyst would need to switch to a different model.)
Frank
Windspeed is controlling if you assume a constant partial pressure of water at the surface. If you increase the temperature of the surface, and hold wind speed constant, you also get higher net evaporation relative to what you saw at lower temperatures because there is more water vapor in the boundary layer and gusts of wind transport a volume of air that contains more water molecules. Water evaporates to replace the amount transported away. So: if windspeed is constant, but Temperature can vary, suddenly Temperature is controlling. (Basically, it’s controlling because it’s the only knob.)
The effect of temperature is obvious if you heat water in a pan and apply very slight flow using the hood over your store. In that case, temperature has a much greater effect than ‘wind’ speed. So what’s ‘controlling’ depends on what you expect to vary and what you expect to be relatively constant in your problem.
Just to avoid “dragon slayer” arguments: I’ve never heard anyone suggest CO2 has a direct effect on windspeed. Of course, that’s not to say it can’t affect it– one would expect an effect through … the effect on temperature and humidity! (But that’s feedback, so indirect. )
Tom Scharf:
I didn’t see an answer I liked, so I’ll give mine plus a link to the one layer energy balance model. Or perhaps this one.
If you have a system with a net positive feedback, the only way you don’t get runaway is by the addition of a stabilizing nonlinearity.
In the case of the climate system, the primary stabilizing nonlinearity comes from the $latex T^4$ dependence of radiative heat energy loss given by the Stefan-Boltzman law.
Lucia: I agree with everything you write above. The fundamental issue may be the rate-determining step in the evaporation/convection process:
a) water molecules leaving the surface of the water,
b) water molecules leaving the laminar layer of air clinging to the ocean surface and entering the boundary layer,
c) water molecules leaving the boundary layer for the free troposphere,
d) after cloud formation, the heat released by condensation escaping to space as radiation. But that release of heat also causes an increase in buoyancy, potentially moving the heat to an altitude where escape is more likely.
When step b) is rate-limiting (so that the rate of evaporation and SST are unimportant), an increase in surface wind speed increases evaporation. The average humidity in the boundary layer over the ocean could rise from the present value (80%?). Then upward transport of water vapor would be the rate-limiting step. Upward transport will certainly be limited by the heat released upon condensation (which will change the lapse rate).
The whole process results in an average lapse rate of 6.5 degK/km, but I’m not aware of any physics that says that 6.0 degK/km is impossible. That would lower the surface temperature in convective regions by above 2.5 degK (assuming the average escaping photon is emitted from 5 km above the surface.
How well can we expect AOGCM to model this process?
One might consider hurricanes to be areas where an increase in wind speed, evaporation and convection are cooling the surface of the ocean much more rapidly than normal. Hurricanes leave trails of colder SSTs behind them, but some of this is from bringing colder deeper water to the surface. At Issac Held’s blog your can see videos of cloud-resolving models where “permanent hurricane-like storms” provide all of the heat loss by convection.
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/blog/isaac-held/2013/12/31/43-rotating-radiative-convective-equilibrium/
I do like your idea of experimenting with a pan of hot water on a stove. I think a vacuum cleaner might be the best way to produce a flow over the surface of the water. Would you like to make any predictions?
Re: Frank (Apr 29 12:05),
That calculation is more complex than you indicate. You can’t simply rotate the temperature profile around a point at 5 km and assume that you will get the same OLR to space. You won’t, not even close. The 5 km point is a fiction. It’s simply the altitude where the atmospheric temperature equals the effective radiative temperature, not the actual average height of emission. The atmosphere isn’t a black or gray body. You’re lowering not only the temperature at the surface, but also the lower atmosphere, the source of most OLR. You can’t make up the loss of radiation from this by increasing the temperature of the upper atmosphere, which is optically thin.
Mosher, Thanks for the link.
The control knob for the ice age cycles is the orbital changes. Orbits change temp, and CO2 lags this change, but reinforces/amplifies these changes. The exact mechanism for the Temp -> CO2 causation in this cycle is a bit sketchy, but these two factors are inter-linked in this cycle.
On the very long term cycles, the theory is a “CO2 rock weathering” thermostat. At least 500,000 years for this thermostat like feedback to stabilize changes. “Turn up the temperature and CO2 is drawn down (due to increased rate of rock chemistry sucking up CO2), turn down the temperature and CO2 builds up”.
Eventually a very long 100m year carbon cycle, similar to the water cycle. Volcanoes blow it out, it eventually gets extracted back from the atmosphere in a very slow process, and buried for an eventual volcano eruption , repeat.
So…
1. Very long cycles the higher temps work to lower CO2 through chemistry. (More temp = less CO2)
2. The ice ages, the higher temps work to increase CO2 through a not yet sure mechanism, possibly by allowing for an increase in carbon emitting life. (More temp = more CO2)
3. For now, “unnaturally” higher CO2 is causing increasing temperatures due to much discussed mechanisms. (More CO2 = more temp).
I guess all we need to do is wait 500,000 years for the earth’s geo-engineering to suck all the new carbon back out.
Re: Tom Scharf (Apr 29 13:17),
I suggest you read the series on ice ages at Science of Doom (starting here). I think you will be a lot less confident in that statement afterward.
Carrick,
Right, as you said. This section from the second link was one of the answers I was looking for:
“The most important negative feedback regulating the temperature of the planet is the dependence of the outgoing longwave radiation on temperature. If the planet warms up then it radiates more heat back into space”.
I do like it when a text states things in a very basic manner before diving into mathematical equations.
I could have stated my question better by asking “what regulates these temperature increases?”. Or what is the primary negative feedback on temperature increases.
I tend to look at these systems from a circuitry point of view, if you have an amplifier with a positive feedback, it dutifully runs away until something stops it, like hitting the voltage rail of the op-amp.
Atmospheric physics is obviously not my strong point.
DeWitt,
One of the few things I’ve learned is that anything paleo leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and that definitive answers are far and few between.
Every now and then I will check on some of these stated facts. Like “How do they really know how far away that star is?” or “How did they figure out how much the earth weighs?”. One of those was “How do they know what the temperature on Earth was a 1000 years ago?”.
Some of these questions have some pretty ingenious methods, some have a lot more arm waving.
I’m still working on “Why does my wife think that way?”.
Tom.
Cue up the video.
Watch harder
DeWitt: I did state that 5 km was an assumption (based on the altitude where the temperature is about 255 degK. If 5 km is “fiction”, what is a better altitude to use? Whatever altitude you pick, a change in lapse rate from 6.5 to 6.0 degK/km is likely to have a significant effect on surface temperature. What isn’t clear to me is how unreasonable it was to assume a change in lapse rate of 0.5 degK/km. If you called that assumption “fiction” (which it very well may be), I’d ask you to explain why the mean global lapse rate is 6.5 rather than 6.0 degK/km.
An unpublished manuscript by the late Noor van Andel discusses the importance in wind in evaporation. As TTTM demonstrates, evaporation and convection provide more fertile ground for skeptics than radiation. As you said above, surface energy balance after increased DLR will be restored by a mixture of evaporation/convection and warming/radiation. The factors that apportion energy flux into each of these channels characterize climate sensitivity from a surface energy balance perspective. That narrow perspective does miss many important things (like clouds), but I think it supplements a narrow focus on the energy balance across the tropopause. (We do live on the surface, after all.) The gap between the two is dominated by the lapse rate.
http://climategate.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/CO2_and_climate_v7.pdf
Tom Scharf wrote (Comment #129057):
“The control knob for the ice age cycles is the orbital changes.”
Tom may benefit from reading some of the long series of posts on Milankovitch cycles (“Ghosts of Climate Past”) at ScienceofDoom (a strong supporter of conventional climate physics). Doom’s punch line:
“There are many theories with a common premise – solar insolation changes via orbital changes “explain†the start and end of ice ages – but then each with a contradictory theory of how this change is effected.
Therefore, a maximum of one of these theories is correct.
And my current perspective – and an obvious one from reading over 50 papers on the causes of the ice ages – is the number of confusingly-named “Milankovitch theories†that are correct is zero.”
http://scienceofdoom.com/2013/11/11/ghosts-of-climates-past-part-six-hypotheses-abound/
Even though the orbital hypothesis is extremely attractive, it isn’t what I would call “settled science”.
Tom Scharf:
Yes there needs to be enough of an explanation to comprehend the equations.
Since the physical sciences are mathematical in nature, there is a limit to what you can truly understand with verbiage alone.
So the math is needed to acquire an understanding.
Mosher: the video is full of it. Tectonics and volcanism are the control knobs, CO2 is a minor byproduct. Let me give you a couple physical science hints: 1) leverage, not average changes the world; 2) It’s the mass, stupid.
Go interact with the real world harder.
Frank,
The case for orbital cycle control may be stronger than you think. Have you seen:
http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/GerardWeb/Publications_files/Roe_Milankovitch_GRL06.pdf
where Gerard Roe shows that 65N summer isolation correlates almost perfectly not with the Earth’s total ice volume but rather with the rate of change in total ice volume? The correlation is remarkably good (for climate science, shockingly good 😉 ).
Howard (Comment #129065),
Alley does overstate his case… but that is what advocates do. Some of what he says (speculation about reaching 37C tropical Atlantic sea surface, or reaching astronomical maximum atmospheric CO2 levels from fossil fuel use) fall into the ‘scary story’ genre that the late Stephen Schneider advocated. Everywhere Alley emphasizes the maximums, never the minimums. Everywhere the worst case, never the likely case, and certainly never the best case.
.
But that does not mean there is no case to be made at all. The evidence for GHG influence on surface temperatures is clear, even if Alley overstates the paleo evidence.
Frank,
By the way, I think Roe’s paper didn’t get a lot of attention (even though I think it is a great paper) because Roe included these (impolitic) words in the abstract:
.
“Furthermore, variations in atmospheric CO2 appear to lag the rate of
change of global ice volume. This implies only a secondary role for CO2
– variations in which produce a weaker radiative forcing than the orbitally-induced changes in summertime insolation – in driving changes in global ice volume.”
.
That comment probably displeased a fair number of influential people in climate science. The paper has only 66 citations (and some of those apparently hostile) on Google scholar, while mealy-mouthed rubbish papers from James Hansen get hundreds.
Well I did go look at the Science of Doom stuff. Obviously the correlation between the orbital cycles and the ice ages is not likely to be a (un)lucky coincidence. The explanation for what exactly triggers the start and end is a matter very much unresolved.
The difference in solar does not appear to be the simple answer.
It seems the modeling guys would very much like it if the models were able to reproduce this behavior to validate the ability to reproduce large scale changes in climate. Not much luck so far.
SteveF,
One of the problems they talked about over at science of doom was that the paleo data is effectively redated to the orbital cycles, so some of the amazing correlation may be artificial. Depends on if this correction is valid.
http://scienceofdoom.com/2014/02/02/ghosts-of-climates-past-fifteen-roe-vs-huybers/
http://scienceofdoom.com/2014/02/03/ghosts-of-climates-past-sixteen-roe-vs-huybers-ii/
Frank,
Lapse rate feedback is considered to be negative. It reduces, somewhat, the amplification by water vapor. The lapse rate starts from zero altitude. It is not extrapolated downward from some fixed altitude above the surface, although that’s how people like Leonard Weinstein like to explain how the greenhouse effect works. It is also not an independent variable that you can alter arbitrarily. The lapse rate would only change if the surface temperature and atmospheric humidity profile changed. It doesn’t work the other way around. Because the lapse rate feedback is negative, cooling the surface would lower average specific humidity and the lapse rate would increase, not decrease, but probably not by much.
Lucia
What can I offer? My life time experiences on the Great Lakes? My journeys traversing ocean expanses? I am but a humble observer, ready to compare what I read, to what my experiences tell me, mostly, is a disconnect.
SteveF: SOD has at least two posts dealing specifically with Roe.
http://scienceofdoom.com/2014/02/02/ghosts-of-climates-past-fifteen-roe-vs-huybers/
http://scienceofdoom.com/2014/02/03/ghosts-of-climates-past-sixteen-roe-vs-huybers-ii/
DeWitt says:
In the tropics this appears to be true (to some level of accuracy that I can’t state). This is because lots of convection takes place due to high solar insolation in the tropics. Still, I’m a little confused why the lapse rate is so consistent across the whole tropical area when in fact the area covered by subsiding air is larger than the area covered by convected air.
But outside the tropics the lapse rate is not determined in the same way, due to lack of convection. It’s not an independent variable but what does it depend on? Lots of papers and meteorological textbooks say “baroclinic instability” without a formula for the lapse rate. At least, if there is a rich seam of papers on the lapse rate I haven’t yet found it. I’ve had a few stabs at finding something helpful, and spent much time with James R. Holton’s textbook, An Introduction to Dynamic Meteorology on fascinating subjects like trying to picture why potential vorticity should be conserved and what it really meant..
I’d like to go back and spend some more time on this question.
Perhaps a quick back of the envelope calculation might be a good start – the % of OLR by month in the tropics vs extra-tropics, then what variation in mid- and high-latitude lapse rate would cause something on the scale of the radiative forcing due to current vs pre-industrial CO2.
That is – given a fairly predictable tropical lapse rate determined by surface temperature and humidity, what kind of lapse rate change outside the tropics is needed to equal the CO2 radiative forcing?
SteveF suggested:
After reading a couple of hundred papers on ice ages I think many people in the “non consensus camp” on climate change would be surprised by ice ages papers.
It is often suggested that climate science wants to “pin everything onto CO2”. Maybe so in the blogosphere and some high profile papers. I don’t know.
But in the arena of ice age papers you would think there was a conspiracy to *remove* CO2 from consideration as anything but the most minor of players in major climate change. Surprising?
Perhaps I will write a blog article on this point with many extracts.
So, I don’t think that is the reason Gerhard Roe hasn’t had a big following.
In a way, he has just restated what is generally believed without solving the fundamental problem. He glosses over the fundamental problem towards the end of the paper.
I flog this problem to the death in Ghosts of Climates Past – Eighteen – “Probably Nonlinearity†of Unknown Origin.
In brief, the waxing and waning of ice sheets appears very well correlated with high latitude solar insolation, and this has been clear since Hays, Imbrie & Shackleton 1976.
But the same high latitude insolation does not correlate with ice age terminations. This is actually the big question.
SOD: “Perhaps I will write a blog article on this point with many extracts.”
I think you should. Be prepared to attract a lot of attention..
SOD,
Thanks for your comments. I haven’t read than a dozen or so ice age papers, so perhaps I don’t see the same things as you. Those I have read mostly point at the importance of the contribution of CO2.
.
WRT sudden terminations: my personal view is that slow isostatic adjustment is involved. The (slow) depression of the crust under accumulating large ice sheets should be about 30% of the total ice thickness at equilibrium, but approaching equilibrium takes many thousands of years. As the ice sheet thickens, it gradually sinks at its base even as it grows in height, ultimately reaching a much lower (eg half a KM) base altitude than when accumulation started. The ever falling base altitude sets the ice sheet up for catastrophic collapse, because the potential melt front is at ever decreasing (and warmer) altitude. When melting begins, ever more artificially low elevation land is exposed, subjecting the ice sheet to more rapid melting. As the ice sheet melts, isostatic adjustment raises the land, gradually leading to temperatures cold enough to initiate a new cycle of ice sheet growth. It is the relatively slow rate of isostatic adjustment compared to the rate of melting which provides the phase delay required of all oscillating systems. I think the relatively gradual onset of ice ages, the relatively sudden end of ice ages, and the relatively short length of interglacials are all consistent with isostatic adjustment being an important contributor to the cyclical process.
SteveF
I’m not saying CO2 won’t warm. It’s a natural feedback for sure and an unnatural forcing that we should reduce and adapt to. However, it’s not the thermostat, water is.
Your ice theory is one of many being considered. The SOD blog is worth drilling down deep. Lots of papers to read and no real consensus.
SoD (#129075) –
One of the first climate paper I read was Caillon et al. 2003 on the temperature-CO2 relationship at glacial termination. The authors concluded that Antarctic temperatures increased first, and the CO2 increase lagged. The final paragraph reads:
Now, this is certainly not a “pin everything on CO2” quote, and I don’t disagree with anything in it. But I recall being jarred by its appearance — it is out of character with the majority of the article. It has the appearance of a credo added during review in order to obtain an imprimatur.
SOD: Thanks for the very informative website.
When I looked at all these graphs and solar trends with orbits etc, I was having a difficult time trying to find anything exceptional going on at the ice age intervals. It seems people are definitely looking for something at least unique that triggers the start and end of the ice ages, but even if it was unique, it sure didn’t look particularly exceptional.
This would seem to support a case that the known changes preceding the beginning and end of the ice ages were potentially pretty minor in scope, which seems counter-intuitive?
BTW, I did figure it all out. Causation is backwards. The orbital changes are caused by the periodic redistribution of mass on the earth northwards which changes the earth’s center of gravity and induces long term orbital changes. I’ll let you know where to send the Nobel to, ha ha.
Re: SteveF (Apr 30 05:28),
That was the subject of this post at SoD. Ice sheet modeling is an active field of research. There’s definitely a signal in the ice volume record from orbital cycles, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to tune the dating to the calculated cycles. But the orbital cycles do not explain terminations. As I remember, Roe states something to that effect in his paper. The rate of ice volume change at a termination is much, much larger than would be expected from the orbital forcing.
DeWitt,
Maybe you are seeing something on that link I am missing. I do not see any references to the contribution of isostatic adjustment to the rapid onset of deglaciation. In fact, I have never seen any paper which addresses that issue, though I admit to having only read a dozen or so. If someone knows (maybe SOD) of published work including something like I describe in #129077, then I would sure like to read the paper.
SteveF you are right, my bad. I didn’t read your theory carefully. I don’t remember reading a paper that takes that view.
AFAIK, the early Pleistocene glacial periods were ~40K years and matched pretty well with obliquity. The late Pleistocene has seen an increase in glacial periods ranging from ~80 to 120K and the 100K eccentricity cycle was thought to be the cause. However, it is now thought that the associated forcing is too low and the timing does not appear to match. Some think the NH ice sheets extend further south and may become more vulnerable in the warmer climes. Also, there are indications that the end of the LGM started in the southern hemisphere.
IOW, no one knows. My guess is that it’s several things that combine to cause a tectonic-like failure of a portion of the ice sheets that leads to ocean circulation feedbacks. It might be triggered by a D O event in combo with your isostatic theory.
Re: SteveF (Apr 30 10:19),
You have to go to the linked comments referring to
Insolation-driven 100,000-year glacial cycles and hysteresis of ice-sheet volume [paywalled].
Specifically this quote from the paper:
[emphasis added]
DeWitt,
Thanks. That is an interesting paper. The contribution of isostatic adjustment to the 100K-year cycle appears to have been first modeled in 1980 (Oerlemans, J. Model experiments on the 100,000-yr glacial cycle. Nature 287, 430–432), but even that was based on 1960’s suggestions that rebound might explain the slow build/rapid loss typical of the ice age cycle. I would be surprised if rebound does not ultimately become part of a ‘standard model’ for ice age cycles. Makes perfect sense to me. 😉
DeWitt Payne (#129085) –
A non-paywalled version of that paper (Abe-Ouchi et al.) is available here.
Yep I registered. To all those who did, consider reviewing this …
Fly a helicopter to the top of Mt Everest in summer (July) and lower a large drum of very salty water (heated to near boiling point and opened at the top) onto the surface at the start of a nice sunny day – as it would be above the clouds up there. We will assume there is enough salt to lower the freezing point to -10°C. In July, the warmest month, the average summit temperature is -19°C. Will the water freeze? Yes. So how good is the Sun at raising ocean temperatures below the clouds with all its direct radiation? How absurd is it to imagine that the 1cm thin transparent surface layer of the oceans is warmed to 15°C by direct solar radiation? How absurd then are all the models which use ocean emissivity in Stefan-Boltzmann calculations and expect to get the temperature due to absorption?
Howard.
looks like you didnt watch.
too bad
Yet more o/t:
Roy Spencer has a post up “Top Ten Skeptical Arguments that Don’t Hold Water”.
The main criticism I would have of his post is that it’s not clear how many of these summarized arguments people make in practice. It gets exhausting to compile people’s individual comments, link urls to them, and then attempt to summarize them.
But that does avoid the criticism of these being strawman arguments rather than ones made by misguided climate science skeptics.
I suspect the explanation for “7. WARMING CAUSES CO2 TO RISE, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND” can be strengthened by looking at isotopic ratios.
The comments are worth a look, even if just for the laughs. This one by E.M. Smith is particularly silly:
WTH!?
Carrick, in the Eemian CO2 rise followed warming. And CO2 peaked after temperature peaked. And CO2 fell after Temperature started to fall.
Rising CO2 did not stave off the end of the Eemian.
Rising CO2 did not cause runaway warming.
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html
Re: Carrick (May 1 10:46),
We have an example of someone who shall not be named but who is noted for using sock puppets making arguments No. 2 (Second Law Violation) and No. 6 (warming caused by Lapse Rate/Adiabatic Compression) on a thread right here.
E.M. Smith’s comment has a small point in that when you average measurements like that, you don’t truly get an average temperature. You get an index we title “average temperature” that’s really an abstraction.
It’s only a small point though. Aside from issues of semantics, the distinction will rarely matter.
Re: Brandon Shollenberger (May 1 14:13),
But temperature itself is an abstraction. You can’t actually measure it. You only measure a physical property that we’re pretty certain is proportional to the abstract concept called temperature, like the resistance of a coil of platinum wire, volume of a liquid or the EMF of a thermocouple junction. As for averaging, that’s really all about sampling theory. I’m sure that you could hand wave an argument that there is no such thing as the average BTU value (or the sulfur, arsenic or mercury level) of a rail car full of coal either, but it’s done every day.
A paraphrase of Box’s comment about models (all are wrong, some are useful) would seem to be appropriate.
DeWitt Payne, indeed. That’s why I said it’s only a small point.
I don’t agree with your example though. The average level of a substance within a defined volume of liquid has a much clearer meaning. You can back out of it into a specific measurement of the substance (within uncertainty levels, of course). Density is just a ratio of two volumes. You don’t have anything like that when combining temperatures across the globe. The degree of abstraction is far greater.
Average temperature doesn’t tell you if it is hotter (more frequent and/or higher maximums) or if it is less cold (higher minimums and/or higher minimums).
I once graphed the Tmax for my hometown for each day.
The trends go from -4.4C/decade all the way up to 5.4C/decade.
I have a hard time believing this has anything to do with CO2.
http://sunshinehours.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/temperature-trend-by-julian-day/
just being pedantic – the global temperature indices assume that each part of the measured globe is showing the same max/min temp at the same time. We all know that this is impossible. But it is a useful simplification – at least in my world. So call it a temperature index rather than a temperature.
DeWitt, yes, he-who-shan’t-be-named espouses a couple of these wacko theories.
Re EM Smith, temperature itself is an average, being a measurement of the mean kinetic of the molecules in a substance. The idea that it is an intrinsic property is an abstraction. Practically, you can never measure $latex T(x,t)$, only the value of that abstract quantity averaged over time and space (modulo possible typos):
$latex T_{avg}(\vec r, t) = {\displaystyle \int_{V} \int_{-T/2}^{T/2} \; T(\vec r + \vec \rho, t+\tau) \; W(\vec \rho, \tau) \,d^3\! \rho\,d\tau \over \displaystyle \int_{V} \int_{t-T/2}^{t+T/2} \; W(\vec \rho, \tau) \,d^3 \!\rho \, d\tau }$.
($latex W(\vec r, \tau)$ is the instrumentation weighting function, $latex V$ is the volume and $latex T$ the time interval over which $latex W$ is nonzero.)
I agree the distinction between a temperature index and an average temperature is a useful one to make. But Smith’s criticism is just nonsense.
Anytime you take a measurement that is averaged over a finite space and time, that is going to impose a spatial and temporal cutoff.
It doesn’t lose “meaning” to make the averaging volume $latex V$ and time interval $latex T$ larger, it just changes the spatial and temporal resolution of the average to change the size of the volume measured from e.g., the column of air passing over a sensor over one day of measurement versus the entire Earth.
diogenes:
Why do you think it assumes this? I don’t believe this is true.
Carrick,
I’m not sure how it make a big difference even if were true. The daily cycle of temperatures ought to be largely filtered out by spatial averaging (half the world being day and the other night, etc.).
I call it an index. And technically its a prediction.
Technically, I predict Arctic basin temperatures will behave rather differently depending on whether there is, or isn’t, floating ice present.
Maybe we shouldn’t average temperatures based on night/day in Polar regions, and maybe we shouldn’t average based on ice/water in polar regions. What does that leave?
“But temperature itself is an abstraction. You can’t actually measure it. ”
Sure you can, the instrument is called the ideal gas thermometer and it defines temperature (there is another equivalent definition called the thermodynamic temperature defined by the Carnot cycle.)
Exactly what quantity are you measuring with your realizable gas thermometer?
Re: Eli Rabett (May 1 21:35),
Except there is no such thing as an ideal gas and, while thermodynamic temperature is defined by an ideal gas thermometer, what you’re actually measuring is the pressure of a known quantity of gas in a fixed volume. In the real world, though, we don’t actually know the quantity of gas and the volume probably isn’t fixed either. We postulate that the pressure is the result of the average kinetic energy of the gas molecules, but we don’t actually measure it. The ideal gas thermometer is just as much an abstraction as temperature itself.
A perfectly reversible Carnot cycle takes an infinite amount of time and requires perfect insulation and an ideal gas, among other things. No process that proceeds less than infinitely slowly is perfectly reversible.
They don’t call the International Practical Temperature Scale ‘practical’ for no reason. It’s defined at certain fixed points like the triple point of water and the freezing point of pure zinc metal. Temperatures between those points are defined using an interpolating instrument like a Standard Platinum Resistance Thermometer.
To continue:
A helium gas thermometer using either 3He or 4He is used as the interpolating instrument for very low temperatures, but it’s hardly ideal. The equations used to convert pressure to temperature at least appear to be empirical, not theoretical. See for example here.
The latest discussion about measuring temperatures appears to be a subject ideally suited for resolution by the jury in the Steyn v. Mann trial. (:
Mosher: You caught me. If you think it’s that useful, I’ll slog through it. Carbonate geochemistry is uber important, so I get the hint why you are flogging this so hard. The guy’s speaking style is worse than nails on a chalkboard, so I hope it’s worth it. Thanks for the recommendation.
Off topic. However, I just finished the May 5, 2014 article called “The Climate Inquisitor” by Charles C.W. Cooke, published in the National Review.
The cover of this issue reads “The Case Against Michael Mann”.
Wow.
What a great article.
Well researched and covering many of the topics previously covered on this blog.
I highly recommend this article.
I think DeWitt hit the nail on the head…the concept of macroscopic temperature is a useful concept in the sense of “models are useful”.
Ideal gases don’t exist, so what you are really calibrating against is the imperfectly known equation of state of a real gas.
Because this is known very accurately, you can get an accurate measurement of bulk temperature (that is the averaged quantity I gave above). But the value varies depending on the averaging volume and time interval.
“Intrinsic temperatureâ€, measured at a point in space and time is still an abstraction, though. It is not a measurable.
The temperature of the atmosphere 1-m above the Earth’s surface averaged over the surface and over a month duration is as useful of a quantity, and probably more so, than the temperature at a single station averaged over a month.
yes, dewitt nailed it
DeWitt did not nail it, because the value of absolute zero is known to better that 100 picokelvin.
http://ltl.tkk.fi/wiki/LTL/World_record_in_low_temperatures
That’s a bizarre comment, Eli. Your link discusses how close to absolute zero researchers have gotten:
On the Kelvin scale, absolute zero is exactly “0K”. It’s known exactly.
Carrick,
Maybe the chemists know something that we don’t…
Steve,
I have skimmed the video. He has an interesting case to make. His case is seriously diluted by his starting with an entertaining bit of strawman distraction, well two actually:
His sleight of hand in implying that all who are skeptical of him are the sort writing him mean emails. He should that is not true, but would rather pose as sweet guy victim than deal with real problems.
His cake-and-eat-it-too with CO2: His talk is about CO2 as *the* control knob, which he qualifies but actually does not seem to put into perspective.
Frankly he comes across as the sort of guy who, if he was in the hammer business, would claim that every problem looks like a nail.
Yes, I will watch more, etc. But you know what they say about first impressions…..
Re: Carrick (May 3 20:23),
Indeed. But what we don’t and can’t know exactly, because there is no such thing in the real world as an ideal gas thermometer, is the value of the defining points of the IPTS, currently IPTS-90, as I remember. Those points are defined by agreement among the various national standards laboratories. For example, the triple point of water is, by agreement, 273.16K. And there is agreement on what instrument(s) to use to interpolate between those points. It’s specifically stated that where the official ranges of the interpolating instruments overlap, it is expected that the different instruments may indicate different temperatures (except, obviously, at the defining points themselves).
Oliver,
I’m a chemist and in this case, Eli is wrong, just like he was wrong about the vertical temperature profile of an isolated column of gas in a gravitational field that has been allowed to equilibrate.
Re: Eli Rabett (May 3 18:54),
I’m curious. Have you ever used an NIST calibrated Standard Platinum Resistance Thermometer to measure a temperature? I have.
Have you ever even seen, much less used, a water triple point cell for calibrating the offset of said thermometer before making a measurement?
DeWitt,
“Eli is wrong, just like he was wrong about the vertical temperature profile of an isolated column of gas in a gravitational field that has been allowed to equilibrate.”
.
Ya well, the depth of his critical thinking in science is something to bring wonder… especially to his students.
Steven Mosher: Just for you, I made it through the Richard Alley video. It’s worse than I thought. He is the most desperate and pathetic speakers I have ever watched. His weak theory is correlation=causation (even though the timing doesn’t fit) and everything else is too hard to figure out, so it must be the CO2.
You need to look harder at the primary literature WRT the last couple million years, the post 2009 research is not exposing a CO2 thermostat.
Can you link to any real papers that drill down deeper into his thermostat theory?
Thanks
Howard,
The first clue I had that Alley is full of it was his deception regarding skeptics at his intro. To start his talk by falsely and cynically implying that there are no serious skeptics is a pretty big tell he is just pushing hiw POV, facts be damned. And since we are tens of millions of years from a snowball earth I found his thermostat to be more evidence of his carbon obsession than anything close to serious science.
As I mentioned to Steve Mosher, he is like a hammer salesman who is convinced that all problems look like nails.
Howard,
.
Yes, Alley is painful to listen to. Yes, he overstates his case, which is what advocates generally do. (He is primarily an advocate, after all.) Yes, he simplifies the data too much, he ignores that the size and sign of feedbacks (not the direct warming due to GHG’s) are what is at issue, and his characterization of skeptics is both unfair and inaccurate. Which only confirms that like most global warming advocates, he does not want a substantive technical debate, he wants to discredit all skeptics by pointing to risible statements by a few, so as to avoid a substantive technical debate, and to start discussions ASAP on how much more expensive we should make fossil fuels.
.
But a poor technical argument like Alley makes does not mean increasing GHG’s do not cause warming; all else being equal, increasing GHG’s have to increase surface temperature. Alley’s presentation fails to acknowledge the critical roll of very uncertain feed-backs, and so IMO, from a purely technical POV, it is pretty weak tea. How it does as propaganda probably depends on the political predispositions of the listener.
.
You should not play into the hands of advocates like Alley: if you say increasing GHG will not cause warming, then you immediately discredit yourself technically, and give advocates like Alley a free pass on the real technical issues. Don’t do it.
Contrary to the most of the crew here, I actually like R. Alley and find him to be one of the most interesting advocates of the AGW debate. I don’t agree with everything he says but his “control knob” lecture is from 2009 and he has softened his stance a bit since then. He is one of the few scientists that will freely admit that NH temps were likely higher than today during the MWP and Climate Optimum period. He also believes that the LIA was likely -2C in the NH and they don’t know why. Both of these statements are rare and refreshing among climate scientists as he accepts the fact that there is a lot of variability we cannot yet account for with climate models. He does still believe CO2 is the primary driver of rising global temps.