I downloaded and analyzed 10 Gigabytes of data fully covering years 2003 to 2019 from “the only project worldwide whose prime objective is to produce global climate data records of ERB [Earth’s Radiation Budget] from instruments designed to observe the ERB” [site] [data] in order to see the effect of clouds at the surface, especially the Upwelling Longwave Radiation (LW_UP).
NASA Reminds us …
High clouds are much colder than low clouds and the surface. They radiate less energy to space than low clouds do. The high clouds in this image are radiating significantly less thermal energy than anything else in the image. Because high clouds absorb energy so efficiently, they have the potential to raise global temperatures. In a world with high clouds, much of the energy that would otherwise escape to space is captured in the atmosphere. High clouds make the world a warmer place. If more high clouds were to form, more heat energy radiating from the surface and lower atmosphere toward space would be trapped in the atmosphere, and Earth’s average surface temperature would climb.
— NASA
In contrast to the warming effect of the higher clouds, low stratocumulus clouds act to cool the Earth system. Because lower clouds are much thicker than high cirrus clouds, they are not as transparent: they do not let as much solar energy reach the Earth’s surface. Instead, they reflect much of the solar energy back to space (their cloud albedo forcing is large). Although stratocumulus clouds also emit longwave radiation out to space and toward the Earth’s surface, they are near the surface and at almost the same temperature as the surface. Thus, they radiate at nearly the same intensity as the surface and do not greatly affect the infrared radiation emitted to space (their cloud greenhouse forcing on a planetary scale is small). On the other hand, the longwave radiation emitted downward from the base of a stratocumulus cloud does tend to warm the surface and the thin layer of air in between, but the preponderant cloud albedo forcing shields the surface from enough solar radiation that the net effect of these clouds is to cool the surface.
— NASA
Here’s the global percent of clouds by type:
Clouds Average 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
Type_1 008.379 007.999 007.839 008.140 008.443 008.367 008.345 008.524 008.550 008.229 008.157 007.984 007.999 008.028 008.256 008.465 009.469 009.641
Type_2 024.677 023.556 023.799 024.149 024.438 024.168 024.382 024.580 024.419 024.181 024.766 024.539 024.534 024.796 025.193 025.493 026.317 026.195
Type_3 036.259 035.815 035.721 035.894 036.028 035.646 036.004 036.248 035.742 035.566 036.363 036.144 036.194 036.563 036.856 036.918 037.531 037.173
Type_4 066.637 067.458 067.597 067.381 066.701 066.395 066.248 066.500 066.579 066.149 066.087 066.093 066.003 066.103 066.577 066.569 067.425 066.972
Type_5 133.275 134.917 135.194 134.763 133.403 132.790 132.496 133.001 133.157 132.298 132.173 132.186 132.007 132.206 133.154 133.139 134.851 133.944
Cloud Types: 1 = High (50-300 mb), 2 = UpperMid (300-500 mb), 3 = LowerMid (500-700 mb), 4 = Low (700 mb-Surface), 5 = Total (50 mb - Surface)
The project keeps track of 4 different types of observed LW_UP: All, Clr, AllNoAero, and Pristine. All is normal observed sky. Clr (clear) is no clouds. AllNoAero is All minus aerosols. Pristine is Clr minus aerosols.
Since clouds play an important role in Earth’s supposed greenhouse effect, and this effect leads to a supposed serious warming at the surface, we should see a very large difference between all these 4 scenarios.
The results (Units = W/m²):
Series Average 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
clr_sfc_lw_up 397.445 397.191 396.820 397.667 397.222 397.033 396.243 396.924 397.166 396.364 396.883 397.063 397.361 398.266 398.894 398.455 398.166 398.848
all_sfc_lw_up 398.167 397.921 397.559 398.404 397.945 397.750 396.955 397.632 397.876 397.076 397.598 397.795 398.090 398.992 399.625 399.189 398.874 399.551
pristine_sfc_lw_up 397.387 397.135 396.763 397.610 397.165 396.974 396.182 396.866 397.107 396.306 396.825 397.006 397.305 398.207 398.836 398.397 398.106 398.790
allnoaero_sfc_lw_up 398.129 397.885 397.522 398.368 397.907 397.711 396.914 397.594 397.838 397.038 397.560 397.758 398.054 398.953 399.587 399.152 398.834 399.513
But in fact there is very little difference. The difference in surface LW_UP between a Pristine sky (no clouds, no aerosols) and All sky (see above cloud data) is just 0.78 W/m².
I would even argue it might be ZERO. It’s only not zero because a satellite can’t measure the same scenario in the same place at the same time. They can only measure some place nearby or same place at another time. Even if I’m wrong on this, this value is still very unimpressive.
Now let’s look at downwelling longwave radiation (LW_DN) and longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere (TOA_LW):
Series Average 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
clr_sfc_lw_dn 317.924 317.702 317.175 318.077 317.760 317.364 316.483 317.572 318.370 316.923 317.328 317.615 318.045 319.242 319.663 318.692 318.146 318.559
all_sfc_lw_dn 347.329 347.436 347.344 348.132 347.250 346.673 345.582 346.526 347.440 346.029 346.573 347.385 347.673 348.678 349.256 348.454 346.994 347.173
pristine_sfc_lw_dn 316.207 316.004 315.473 316.394 316.063 315.611 314.691 315.852 316.654 315.192 315.589 315.934 316.384 317.490 317.954 316.968 316.400 316.867
allnoaero_sfc_lw_dn 346.359 346.490 346.395 347.196 346.297 345.669 344.546 345.549 346.466 345.048 345.590 346.448 346.754 347.694 348.296 347.489 345.987 346.195
Series Average 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
clr_toa_lw_up 262.503 262.373 262.267 262.645 262.446 262.584 262.087 262.268 262.521 262.179 262.185 262.499 262.543 262.668 263.075 262.942 262.535 262.735
all_toa_lw_up 237.889 237.990 237.924 238.257 237.970 238.339 237.685 237.764 238.165 237.975 237.581 237.895 237.973 238.027 237.999 237.848 237.167 237.557
pristine_toa_lw_up 262.979 262.833 262.720 263.102 262.911 263.070 262.598 262.743 262.988 262.665 262.684 262.965 263.009 263.165 263.547 263.419 263.033 263.198
allnoaero_toa_lw_up 238.168 238.260 238.189 238.523 238.242 238.626 237.987 238.042 238.438 238.260 237.874 238.167 238.245 238.320 238.274 238.126 237.456 237.827
Let’s now compare the averages side by side for all 3:
Series Average
clr_toa_lw_up 262.503
all_toa_lw_up 237.889
pristine_toa_lw_up 262.979
allnoaero_toa_lw_up 238.168
clr_sfc_lw_dn 317.924
all_sfc_lw_dn 347.329
pristine_sfc_lw_dn 316.207
allnoaero_sfc_lw_dn 346.359
clr_sfc_lw_up 397.445
all_sfc_lw_up 398.167
pristine_sfc_lw_up 397.387
allnoaero_sfc_lw_up 398.129
The standard greenhouse effect narrative is that infrared absorbing gases prevent radiation from reaching space and this causes warming at the surface (thus more radiation). Well we clearly see that’s not case. If clouds (water vapor + aerosols) hardly changes outgoing surface radiation, then the whole hypothesis is in error. Less top-of-atmosphere outgoing radiation doesn’t cause surface heating and thus more radiation from the surface, despite the increase in downwelling radiation.
Enjoy 🙂 -Zoe
Update 02/28
Resident Biden’s Senior Climate Advisor reminds us
We quantify the impact of each individual absorber in the total effect by examining the net amount of long‐wave radiation absorbed in the atmosphere (G, global annual mean surface upwelling LW minus the TOA LW upwelling flux) [Raval and Ramanathan, 1989; Stephens and Greenwald, 1991]. This is zero in the absence of any long‐wave absorbers, and around 155 W/m2 in the present‐day atmosphere [Kiehl and Trenberth, 1997]. This reduction in outgoing LW flux drives the 33°C greenhouse effect defined above, and is an easier diagnostic to work with.
— Gavin Schmidt et al.
that the greenhouse effect (G) is just SFC_LW_UP minus TOA_LW_UP. So let’s do that for all scenarios:
clr_toa_lw_up 397.445 - 262.503 = 134.942
all_toa_lw_up 398.167 - 237.889 = 160.278
pristine_toa_lw_up 397.387 - 262.979 = 134.408
allnoaero_toa_lw_up 398.129 - 238.168 = 159.961So there is definitely a mathematical “greenhouse effect” difference between the 4 scenarios, and yet this makes no difference to surface upwelling radiation, and by extension to surface temperature.
Varying the amount of “greenhouse effect” means nothing to surface temperature.
Since the absorption of radiation by IR active gases makes no difference to surface temperature, the greenhouse effect hypothesis is simply incorrect and should be abandoned for the sake of empirical science.
-Zoe
Code clouds.sh:
# Zoe Phin, 2021/02/09
require() { sudo apt install -y hd4-tools; }
download() {
mkdir -p ceres; n=4
for y in {2003..2019}; do
for m in {01..12}; do
[ $y$m -ge 201507 ] && n=5
[ $y$m -ge 201603 ] && n=6
[ $y$m -ge 201802 ] && n=7
wget -O ceres/$y$m.hdf -c "https://opendap.larc.nasa.gov/opendap/hyrax/CERES/SYN1deg-Month/Terra-Aqua-MODIS_Edition4A/$y/$m/CER_SYN1deg-Month_Terra-Aqua-MODIS_Edition4A_40${n}406.$y$m.hdf"
done
done
}
cmd() { ncdump-hdf -l999 ceres/$1$2.hdf -v "$3"; }
lwup() { series='init_clr_sfc_lw_up init_all_sfc_lw_up init_pristine_sfc_lw_up init_allnoaero_sfc_lw_up'; lw; }
lwdn() { series='init_clr_sfc_lw_dn init_all_sfc_lw_dn init_pristine_sfc_lw_dn init_allnoaero_sfc_lw_dn'; lw; }
lwta() { series='init_clr_toa_lw_up init_all_toa_lw_up init_pristine_toa_lw_up init_allnoaero_toa_lw_up'; lw; }
lw() {
printf "\n%-20s %-11s" Series Average
for y in {2003..2019}; do printf "$y "; done; echo
for s in $(echo $series); do
printf "%-20s = " $s
for y in {2003..2019}; do
for m in {01..12}; do
cmd $y $m ${s}_glob | sed -n 3173,+2p
done | awk -vv="${s}_glob" '$1==v{s+=$3}END{printf "%07.3f ",s/12}'
done
echo
done | awk '{ s=0
for(i=3;i<=NF;i++) s+=$i;
$2 = sprintf("%07.3f", s/17);
printf "%s\n", $0
}' | sed -r 's/init_|adj_//' | column -t
}
clouds() {
rm -f .m* .y* .cld
printf "\n%-7s %-11s" Clouds Average
for y in {2003..2019}; do printf "$y "; done; echo
printf "Type_%d =\n" $(seq 5) > .cld
for y in {2003..2019}; do
for m in {01..12}; do
cmd $y $m obs_cld_amount_glob | sed -n 3173,+2p | grep -o '[0-9].*[0-9]' | tr ',' '\n' > .m$m
done
paste .m* | awk '{ S=0; for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) s+=$i; printf "%07.3f\n", s/12 }' > .y$y
done
( paste -d ' ' .cld .y* | awk '{ s=0
for(i=3;i<=NF;i++) s+=$i;
$2 = sprintf("%07.3f", s/17);
printf "%s\n", $0
}' | column -t
echo -e '\nCloud Types: 1 = High (50-300 mb), 2 = UpperMid (300-500 mb), 3 = LowerMid (500-700 mb), 4 = Low (700 mb-Surface), 5 = Total (50 mb - Surface)'
)
}
Run:
$ source clouds.sh; require && download
$ clouds; lwup; lwdn; lwta
Zoe's Insights 
Rest assured you are right Zoe. The Greenhouse Effect hypothesis is not supported by observation. The predictions of the models that incorporate the supposed effect produce wildly inflated predictions of the rate of temperature increase that are not supported by observation. And we have now had forty years of observation.
Mildura is close to the junction of the Murray and the Darling Rivers, where most of Australia’s grapes, citrus, almonds, pistachios, olives, carrots, and asparagus are grown. Mildura prides itself on four hundred more sunlight hours per annum than the Gold Coast. It has rich red, energy absorbing soils that radiate strongly.
We have average monthly minimum and maximum temperatures for Mildura since1890.
The minimum in the warmest month, February, both prior to and after 1950, is close to 16.5C. No change. Contrary to the expectation based on greenhouse theory, all the energy that is picked up during the day is dissipated overnight. There is no inhibition of the cooling process overnight. No ‘greenhouse effect’. No increase in temperature in 130 years. The same applies in relation to the daily maximum. There are another four stations with that length of data and all tell the same story.
Another example: The Earth is 3% closer to the sun in January than in July. Nevertheless, the average monthly temperature for the planet is higher by 3C in July than in January. In July irradiance from the sun is 6% weaker than in January. How can the Earth be warmer at that time? Because the continents of the northern hemisphere heat the atmosphere strongly in mid year giving rise to a global minimum in cloud cover in July. So, more solar radiation reaches the surface.
The global maximum in cloud cover occurs in January when the northern continents are at their coldest coinciding with the Earth being 3% closer to the sun than in July so irradiance is 6% stronger. But in January the Earth is 3C cooler than in July.
The message is that the presence of cloud as a reflector of solar radiation trumps any back radiation effect from the cloud.
That stacks up with your assertion that the back radiation effect can’t be measured.
NASA is full of excrement. Continued funding depends upon having a purpose and rendering a return on investment. Sadly, there is much less return for the funds invested in NASA than they would have us believe. James Hansen ran the show. What would you expect?
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Thank you. Mildura looks lovely on google Earth.
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–No change. Contrary to the expectation based on greenhouse theory, all the energy that is picked up during the day is dissipated overnight. There is no inhibition of the cooling process overnight. No ‘greenhouse effect’.–
That makes sense to me. But it tells me, the Southern Hemisphere hasn’t had much change in temperature.
The southern hemisphere is about 1 C cooler than Northern. Which has been mystery/paradox for over 100 years.
Or since southern hemisphere has more ocean {and everyone has known ocean absorb more sunlight] it should warmer than northern hemisphere]. Any reasons given for this are many, but it seems a common reason given is southern Hemisphere transport more net heat to Northern Hemisphere.
And I would say, the larger land mass of northern hemisphere draws more heat, and/or Atlantic “pushes” more deep water into Global Conveyor Belt which also drawing up the Gulf stream which warms Europe {adds about 10 K to European land temperature- which averages about 9 C, and would below 0 C without having the warmed tropical waters].
Mildura seems somewhat isolated from El Nino type variations and these strong weather patterns having large “global effect”. And seems isolated from variations of heat exchange with S and N hemisphere. And pretty far Global Conveyor Belt {if that deep water circulation variation “could have any effect in terms variation”] though it also seems far enough Antarctica surface circulation and any changes of ocean conditions. Though one would of course have weather/rain from ocean but I would it would tend say land is more dominate factor {land does not change like ocean surfaces which are always changing}
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Also I tend to cut the world in halves. Tropical zone is 40% of world. And cut in half by widening tropical zone so it’s 50% of world, and then got the two halves of north and south. And Mildura would near that tropical half or near southern edge of southern half.
And global warming is largely about polar amplification. Ie Canada should warm more during global warming or get much colder with global cooling. And global tropical zone remains mostly unaffected by glaciation and interglaciation cooling and warming periods. Or in Mildura there be not much effect if you were in deepest part of the cold global temperature of glaciation period, nor much warmer in warmest part of an interglacial period.
And we not anywhere near the warmest time of the past interglacial periods.
But why Canadians or Europeans are worried their near frozen lands getting warmer, is a mystery. Maybe the concern has to do with being able to skate on their frozen lakes.
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The whole AGW-theory is based on the theory that certain gasses in the atmosphere receive heat energy from the surface. So this heat transfer (if we imagine a sudden introduction of such gasses to the atmosphere) inevitably makes the surface a little bit colder, and these gasses a little bit warmer. And now some magic is supposed to happen. Half of the heat energy received by these gasses is sent back to the surface and supposedly warms the surface to a level higher than before the surface lost energy to the gasses in the first place. I really don’t understand how educated people are supposed to believe this.
Here is an animation made by a central person in the norwegian Meteorological Institute. An istitute that cooperates with organisations which sole existence relies on upheld belief in AGW, and which also meddle in climate policy.
https://forskning.no/klima-meteorologisk-institutt/forklarer-drivhuseffekten-med-animasjonsvideo/1345603
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The door of your refrigerator/freezer prevents your body from radiating to its cold interior. The heat flow from you to the door to the inside must be kept equal mathematically. When you do the calculations you will see it for yourself, your body will warm up. Ignore the real world. Math is physics 😉
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Zoe, I really hope you can contribute to climatology leaving this nonsense pseudo science. Unfortunately, this pseudo science is also believed by most skeptics. Even when these skeptics themselves perform experiments to try and detect the effect and find no effect, they continue to believe in this crazy hypothesis (and at the same time they say that when a hypothesis does not agree with observation, it should be abandoned). Maybe they just throw over board their integrity in order to at least have a chance to be heard in the public debate, and proceed to make claims such as: “the climate sensitivity is low and nothing to worry about”, and “the effect is logarithmic and as such the main part of the warming has already taken place”
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I guess, I am compelled to confess that I believe that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere does make some warming effect, though I am also willing to allow it doesn’t.
And I have admit that I believe in God. I am willing to say I know that God exists, but I can’t say I know that CO2 can cause a warming effect. Or I think there is evidence God exists, but less evidence CO2 causes a warming effect.
I am willing to say I know that CO2 in the atmosphere does not cause Earth to be colder.
Such is the state of my thinking, that I will say, it seems to me, a doubling of CO2 concentration probably cause 0 to .5 C to global temperature and not say +/- .5 C.
I know that God exist in same sense that I know we living in an Ice Age.
And that I know that 15 C air temperature is cold.
Obviously it air can colder than 15 C, but without protection from the coldness of 15 C, I think 15 C air could be factor leading to my death- it seem to me that without proper clothes, it seems cold. I have heard monks wearing little amounts of clothing can endure {and even “feel” quite warm] in much colder air. So perhaps with proper training 15 C air might seem warm to me, and then not in any way be a threat to my life- maybe it could be more healthily and make me live longer, even. Anyhow, I tend to like to set the thermostat at about 70 F [about 21 C] and I wear clothes and sleep in warm bed.
And perhaps there immortals which can save a lot on heating bills, and set their thermostat at 15 C {59 F} or even lower and don’t bother with having a blanket.
But being in 15 C water should kill anyone.
And human body controls it’s temperature by evaporation, if one control how much you “sweat” and be in proper state of mind, one could be able to be to happy in 15 C or colder air without blanket.
Btw the “recommended temperature” in winter is 20 C – so I am biased towards a bit more warmth, but don’t think 20 C is unreasonably cold, and be ok with 20 +/- 3 C and in summer I am ok with 25 +/- 4 C
But anyhow, I tend to think that warming from CO2 is mostly near surface {within 1000 meters}, rather than 7 km up. And seems a common belief within the global warming cargo cult is that a lot cooling going on around 7 km and up. If I thought that was true, than I might imagine CO2, causes the Earth to be colder.
Instead I think surface of ocean controls global air, a cool ocean surface, has cool air above it, and have warmer surface you have warmer air above it. And regarding Venus “the surface” is the Venus clouds.
And since topic is clouds, Earth clouds don’t work as well “as a surface” as clouds on Venus work “as a surface”. Venus clouds are acid, and have quite intense sunlight and clouds are really high above the rocky surface.
Or rocky surface of Venus is sort of similar to the rocky surface of most of earth [and most of Earth rocky surface is under average depth of our ocean- which is 3.7 km under the ocean surface. Obviously ocean floor of Earth is utter darkness, but it’s fairly dim at the Venus rocky surface. Or if you have rock on Earth, the side in sunlight is warmer, and Venus, a rock in sunlight, I predict is not much warmer on sunlight side- I would not say it’s zero difference, but I would say that it’s close to a zero difference.
Now a question would be, what cargo cult believer say? There reasons they could agree, but there also reasons they could strongly disagree. I guess how they understand “back radiation” could give different expectation- and cargo cult believers do not agree with themselves on the matter of “back radiation”.
But loosely speaking, I would say rocks on Earth’s ocean floor would have about the difference of temperature like difference of rocks on Venus rocky surface {of course it’s very hot on Venus floor and cold on ocean floor]
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I am not physics literate, I understood your first sentence but lost on the second and third. This is what happens when science disconnects from the real world. With AGW ,Math is physics has taken a beating over the last 30 years by allowing pseudo science, by many qualified scientists to influence politics to influence science. Thus it has become a numbers game with real world voters. Thanks for your site, I find many of the comments insightful. Math will prevail but how long and how much damage will be done depends on how and to who the message is presented. The PR has not been overly effective to date despite the many great websites about.
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I think you should send your findings to NASA.
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As a Unix guy from way back, I am very impressed by what you are able to do with shell scripting. Have you ever considered switching to Python?
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Thank you very much. Python? Don’t like the format requirement. I can do some NodeJS:
https://phzoe.com/2021/01/29/automated-twit/
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“Here’s the global percent of clouds by type”
I don’t understand the figures in the bottom row, which are more than 100.
I look forward to your reply, keep up the good work!
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Type 5 is the total sum of all others. It can be more than 100%. We can have more than 1 layer of clouds.
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Thanks, serves me right, I should have scrolled across to see the word “total” 🙂
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Seems to my amateur eye that this finding meshes well with Lindzen And Choi 2011.
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Lindzen believes in the greenhouse effect though.
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Well one has the greenhouse effect theory and you have the term greenhouse effect which existed prior to when
the “greenhouse effect theory” was given. The “greenhouse effect theory” is pseudo science. This pseudo science has religion which call a cargo cult due to it’s similarity to a cargo cult. Wiki:
“A cargo cult is a millenarian belief system in which adherents perform rituals which they believe will cause a more technologically advanced society to deliver goods. ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
There is a lot pseudo science in our world. Marxism, Racism, critical theory, etc., etc. They all have religious “believers”. Roughly they adhere to the idea, that it was bad mistake for the Human to climb down from the trees and they are against using technology and the science which created technology. And tend call themselves progressive but they are not progressive. It’s political, and if you have not noticed, politicans tend to be evil and very stupid.
It seems to be me, that term greenhouse effect is related Europeans wondering why they weren’t freezing to death.
Which is roughly, that Europeans are freezing to death, though Europe is warmed by the Gulf Stream {makes the conditions less severe].
A part of greenhouse effect is that the tropical ocean is the heat engine of the world. By world I mean the tropical ocean even warms the poles.
Another aspect of tropics is it’s warm and it’s a large portion of the world {40% of world} and large warm area bring the average score of average global temperature up to about 15 C. So you have the curious situation where Canada’s average temperature is – 3 C, and Canadians can worried about getting warmer.
It seems Canadians must be worried about other people {or other living creatures} getting warmer conditions- because it’s utter madness to imagine Canada as warm. Anyhow most Canadians pick warmer parts of Canada to live in- most live near Canada/US border for example. But even in Antarctica it is somewhat warm in the summer- assuming one has the comforts of modern technology.
But usually what is “forgotten” about greenhouse effect is the effect of the world’s ocean.
In a real greenhouse it can kept warmer by having water in it. How does barrels of water in greenhouse keep it warmer? Well the purpose of greenhouse is to stop freezing temperature from killing plants. Or warmer is not causing ice to form which can kill many plants. Anyhow barrels of water have a significantly dense thermal mass.
Likewise every square meter of Earth surface has 10 tons atmospheric mass, air has about 1/4 of specific heat of water or it’s equal to about 2 1/2 meter depth of water.
So a significant part of greenhouse effect is it’s thermal mass.
Of course there is greenhouse effect. But greenhouse gases don’t cause 33 K to Earth average temperature- that is just cargo cult religious doctrine. And Lindzen is not a cargo cult believer. And is HATED by cargo cult believers.
He is Satan.
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I think you know what I meant by saying that Lindzen believes in the greenhouse effect. He believes that if man puts more CO2 into the atmosphere, the planet will heat up.
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“He believes that if man puts more CO2 into the atmosphere, the planet will heat up.”
I don’t think Lindzen believes he knows how much warming doubling global CO2 will cause, but rather
he willing to give upper limit which is reasonable possible.
As I recall, he said something like all greenhouse gases add to greenhouse of effect by about 1/2 of 33 K
which said to be caused by the “greenhouse effect theory”. And as most agree, water vapor has largest warming effect.
Or doubling of CO2 would cause about 1 C to global air temperature.
I don’t try to predict what ultimate effect of a doubling of CO2 would do, instead I limit it to the effect which could occur
within a 100 year time period. Mainly because it’s seems useless to me to try to predict anything more 100 years into the future. Though in terms of say settlements on Mars, I say it they could happen within 100 years. Or Earth could getting electrical energy from Space environment within 100 years. Though tend to say it’s very unlikely Earth will get electrical power from space environment within 50 years. Though not willing to say Mars settlement could not happen within 50 years.
Anyhow, I think a doubling of global CO2 within 100 years will not occur. Or Global CO2 levels will not be 800 ppm before 2100, though 560 ppm could occur before 2100 AD {which is doubling from 280 ppm}.
If global CO2 levels reach 560 ppm and stay at 560 ppm, and within 100 year time period, I don’t think the result will be more than .5 C from that doubling.
And Lindzen might say it could be about 1 C.
The IPCC imagines they are very confident that already the increased CO2 levels have caused at least .2 C.
I see no reason to assume this.
I see no reason to assume we currently, are warmer than it’s ever been in last 1000 years. And pretty certain Earth was warmer within last 5000 years. And it’s seems everyone agrees that during last interglacial period it was much warmer than our current global average temperature, and at it’s warmest was thought sea levels were about 5 meter higher {or more}- and our ocean temperature were at least 4 C {and ours is thought to be presently about 3.5 C}.
But I think our ocean was about 4 C , 5000 or more years ago.
And don’t really understand why people aren’t assuming we have already reached our peak global temperature of our Holocene interglacial period, more than 5000 year ago- when our Sahara desert was green and trees growing well above our current tree lines. And we had ice free polar sea ice.
[[Though I do tend to think our present sea levels are somewhere around highest they have been in the Holocene, and highest sea levels are usually regarded as warmest of times of an interglacial period. Which makes sense to me {roughly, broadly, they seem like they should coincide with highest global air temperature, but for whatever reason the evidence seems to indicates they didn’t – with our Holocene}.]]
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“He believes that if man puts more CO2 into the atmosphere, the planet will heat up.”
One more thing about this, this largely about warming night time temperature, winter temperatures, and polar regions.
Which everyone agrees. I would add, and lowering of highest daytime high temperatures.
And we have already had a lowering of highest daytime high temperatures- the highest recorded daytime high in world, which occurred over century ago.
Or “heat up” means roughly more like tropics everywhere on Earth. And Tropics {despite getting the most sunlight} is not hot, it has a higher and more uniform air temperature.
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Hi Zoe, Sorry, but your conclusion “Less top-of-atmosphere outgoing radiation doesn’t cause surface heating” is incorrect. According to your average data, the effect of clouds and aerosols is to decrease outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) by 25.09 W/m2 (all_toa_lw_up – pristine_toa_lw_up) and the increase of surface upward longwave radiation is 0.78 W/m2. [You incorrectly calculated 0.82 W/m2.] The data implies that 3.1% (0.78/25.09) of the global system warming from the TOA energy imbalance is at the surface and that 96.9% of the warming goes into the oceans, assuming that the average energy fluxes are correct. However, this is much more than expected. This article https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content
says that “More than 90 percent of the warming that has happened on Earth over the past 50 years has occurred in the ocean.” The 0.78 W/m2 of increased of sfc_lw_up due to clouds and aerosols over the pristine case gives a temperature increase of 0.14 °C global average temperature rise.
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1) The ERB manual says to expect ~4 W/m^2 error margin
2) We can’t measure the same place at the same time with and without clouds.
3) Why can’t the ocean SKIN radiate back the extra 25 W/m^2? or half?
4) The simple greenhouse model is wrong either way as it excludes thermal mass.
5) The GH effect is born out of this simple model. Ergo it is false.
What was I subtracting?
Thanks for spotting the math error. Fixed.
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gbaikie,
“One more thing about this, this largely about warming night time temperature, winter temperatures, and polar regions.
Which everyone agrees.”
Are you implying that due to the above, CO2 must be the cause?
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No, we are recovering from a colder period, which was several centuries in duration which is called the Little Ice Age. During this period global glaciers we’re advancing, and stopped and retreated at around 1850 AD.
During this period sea levels dropped and entire ocean cooled by a small amount, perhaps cooling to about 3.3 C, and now it’s about 3.5 C.
I would say the ocean has been around 3.5 for last 1000 years. And Little Ice Age was perhaps the coldest period in last +10,000 years.
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Yes. Good that we escaped from the cold spell and returned to a better temperature. Sad that people don’t appreciate it, but are instead afraid. The big lie will be put to shame. More and more scientists will make sure of that. Like this professor from Berkeley: https://newtube.app/TonyHeller/NniFBsd
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Yes, and it’s possible that within a century or two, we will be as cold as we were in 1970’s, but I don’t expect we will be as cold as we were during the Little Ice Age. Though perhaps will be, within several centuries.
And IPCC in it’s past was allowing that such thing was possible. Presently, IPCC does not think [or claim] cooling in the future is possible.
To their credit, IPCC doesn’t claim all warming is caused by CO2. But it might be doing that in latest report- I have not read it.
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Oh, I am not allowing for any volcanic activity. Volcanic {particularly oceanic volcanic activity} can make a large difference- both in regards to cooling and warming. No one can predict volcanic activity- and IPCC also does not pretend it can. And there is other stuff, other volcanic activity which could have large effect. But if you are betting, roughly global temperature remains about the same in terms of human lifetimes.
And of course weather any more than couple weeks into the future, is roughly unpredictable, but with lower global temperatures weather has even wilder effects. Or recent warming {last hundred years] has reduced extreme weather events and things like long term droughts.
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Being a guy who worked in physics and nuclear reactors, I am always confused by the idea of using degrees C instead of Kelvin when working with heat transfer and fluid flow. When you do, you find that most of what they say is going to be change is little more than instrument error. Also, the absorption and reflection of certain wavelengths can be studied easily enough with IR spectroscopy. Nasa, James Hansen in particular, changed a lot of the measured temperature data and called it science. So in general, hard to figure out what the truth really is and can only imply an answer based on the global warming crowd working so hard to hide data. Interesting though, they stopped measuring the CO2 levels during the pandemic. It would have proved their case, of course it could have proved they were wrong as well.
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Jennifer Kay gave a talk in January 2021, “How Do Clouds Affect Global Warming?” She states an estimate of the net effect being -21.1 Wm^-2, which means a small net cooling effect as the net consequence of clouds’ cooling effects and clouds’ warming effects. https://www.physics.utoronto.ca/news-and-events/events/colloquium/talk-jan-21/
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You have no idea what 21 W/m^2 refers to. It’s not a difference at the surface. Don’t post garbage.
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Of course I know what the -21 Wm^2 refers to, as that is clear in the video. It is the net effect on energy balance from the perspective above the atmosphere looking down on the planet. Your reply “It’s not a difference at the surface” is of course true but irrelevant.
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This article is about the SURFACE effect of clouds. YOU and your link are irrelevant.
Clouds have a miniscule (maybe zero?) effect on the surface. That’s what makes this post interesting! Most people don’t know this.
I don’t need your pathetic linking to mainstream sources. I’m aware of what they say. I didn’t start a blog to recycle other work.
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Clouds are *not* “water vapor + aerosols.” Clouds are just liquid water, not water vapor.
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Doesn’t matter. It’s all the same to radiative greenhouse effect. Do not liquids prevent surface from emitting to space? Do they not absorb EM?
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It does matter, in multiple ways. Fundamental physics matters. If you’re going to convincingly critique scientific knowledge, you must at least have that fundamental knowledge.
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The “fundamental physics” of measuring fluxes with clouds doesn’t care if clouds have vapor or liquid.
“does matter, in multiple ways”
And those would be …
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Zoe claimed “The standard greenhouse effect narrative is that infrared absorbing gases prevent radiation from reaching space and this causes warming at the surface (thus more radiation). Well we clearly see that’s not case. If clouds (water vapor + aerosols) hardly changes outgoing surface radiation, then the whole hypothesis is in error.”
Wrong. Clouds are *not* infrared absorbing gases. So the effect of clouds on outgoing radiation is irrelevant to whether infrared absorbing gases prevent radiation from reaching space. So the effect of clouds on outgoing radiation is irrelevant to the existence of the greenhouse gas effect.
Clouds are relevant only as feedbacks to the greenhouse gas effect, in their contributions to the magnitude of the energy balance (in + out, longwave and shortwave) resulting from the cascade of feedbacks from changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.
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Dumb dumb, liquid water still absorbs IR.
Dumb dumb, liquid water still blocks surface from radiating to space.
Ergo, dumb dumb, this is still the greenhouse effect, and as you can see it makes little difference to surface flux.
Clouds reduce outgoing radiation precisely because they absorb IR. You can see that in the data, dumb dumb.
Why are you so dumb?
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Liquid water is unlike water vapor (and carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases), because liquid water (e.g., cloud) reflects shortwave radiation. So clouds have mechanisms both for increasing Earth’s warming and decreasing Earth’s warming. The net of those two competing effects differs across types of clouds, locations of clouds, and many other factors.
So it is not legitimate to infer greenhouse gas forcing from the behavior of clouds.
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Why are you so dumb and stating irrelevant things?
The net effect is 0.78 W/m^2 at the surface. QED.
You must have Aspergers or something. It is commonly claimed (as in … dumbed down to the public) that clouds warm. THAT IS WHAT IS ADDRESSED. On net, they barely do.
You for some reason keep injecting all of science into something addressed for the layman, many times belaboring the obvious and often bolstering my point.
CO2 also absorbs and scatters shortwave. Why are you overcomplicating the main point?
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By “locations of clouds” I was including not just vertical location, but horizontal location. Horizontal location effects differ based not just on latitude and longitude, but also on the geography of the underlying surface, such as ocean versus land, and ice versus liquid water. There is huge variation in clouds’ effects, at quite fine resolution of location.
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“It is commonly claimed (as in … dumbed down to the public) that clouds warm. THAT IS WHAT IS ADDRESSED. On net, they barely do.”
You are creating a straw person just so you can (claim to) knock it down. Here is NASA’s Climate Kids post explaining that the net effect of clouds is cooling. https://climatekids.nasa.gov/cloud-climate/
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Well, clouds don’t cool, now do they? They have a net warming effect of 0.78 W/m^2.
Apparently you are not familiar with this popular analogy:
https://skepticalscience.com/SkS_Analogy_03_Greenhouse_Cloudy_Night.html
It’s not my strawman, you are just not familiar with the arguments I had online.
Now tell me why NASA lies to kids about clouds having a net cooling effect!
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That SkepticalScience analogy is clouds *at night*, when the cooling from clods’s reflection of the Sun does not happen.
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Night time only is not interesting. It still leaves the reader with the impression that clouds warm.
“That’s largely because water vapor itself is a powerful greenhouse gas, which means that clouds should trap more heat than they are likely to reflect back into space.”
https://e360.yale.edu/features/the_effect_of_clouds_on_climate_a_key_mystery_for_researchers
“People have argued that clouds will amplify global warming because of solar impacts, so less reflected sunlight from low clouds, but also because of the greenhouse effect of clouds, where high clouds rise, which makes them have a larger warming effect,” he said.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072021/climate-driven-changes-in-clouds-are-likely-to-amplify-global-warming/
But we see the difference between cloudy and clear-sky to be 0.78 W/m2, where the error range is 0.6 W/m^2. In other words, maybe nil.
“Greenhouse effect of clouds instrumental in origin of tropical storms”
https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/greenhouse-effect-clouds-instrumental-origin-tropical-storms/
That’s interesting. You just argued that there is only a net greenhouse effect at night, but storms occur round the clock … which means they must think clouds have a net greenhouse effect round the clock to even form their hypothesis.
And there’s more places that insinuate that clouds have a GH effect.
So you see, dummy, picking sites that show more awareness of how clouds really work doesn’t negate the ones that don’t. If you already know the net effect of clouds on the surface is miniscule … then yes … this article will not tell you anything new – but in a simple data driven way you can replicate with code.
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No, I did *not* “just argue that there is a net greenhouse effect only at night.” I corrected your misuse of that particular SkepticalScience analogy, which is clearly titled “analogy.”
Indeed, earlier I wrote “So clouds have mechanisms both for increasing Earth’s warming and decreasing Earth’s warming. The net of those two competing effects differs across types of clouds, locations of clouds, and many other factors…By “locations of clouds” I was including not just vertical location, but horizontal location. Horizontal location effects differ based not just on latitude and longitude, but also on the geography of the underlying surface, such as ocean versus land, and ice versus liquid water. There is huge variation in clouds’ effects, at quite fine resolution of location.”
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Analogies are intended to influence people’s thinking.
Even for night time … is it warmer with clouds due to GH effect of clouds (as they say)? or due to horizontal transfer from warmer region? I would argue the latter (and you seem to acknowledge that), but that’s not what they say. So why would they say that?
Do you now understand the usefulness of this post?
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Zoe referenced: “‘People have argued that clouds will amplify global warming because of solar impacts, so less reflected sunlight from low clouds, but also because of the greenhouse effect of clouds, where high clouds rise, which makes them have a larger warming effect,’ he said.”
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/19072021/climate-driven-changes-in-clouds-are-likely-to-amplify-global-warming/
That is totally irrelevant to our current topic of discussion, of whether clouds have a net effect of warming or cooling. That reference instead is about potential future *changes* in the net effect of clouds, as a feedback from forcings on global warming.
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lol
“because of the greenhouse effect of clouds … which makes them have a larger warming effect”
Couldn’t be any more clear.
“our current topic of discussion, of whether clouds have a net effect of warming or cooling.”
We settled this for the globe on average. There is a negligible warming at the surface, maybe none.
Your references to a net global cooling are useless because they don’t claim where this cooling occurs. If you’re looking from space, the cloud tops (and mean center of mass) are in cooler areas, but that obvious observation shouldn’t lead one to think there is a cooling effect.
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Actually aerosols can act as nucleation sites so water vapor can become water droplets. And has no one else ever heard of Mie theory or dielectric spheres? And the experiments proving that clouds reflect infrared were done decades ago. In fact, and ironically, it was after CO2 pulsed lidars were starting to be used. Those wavelengths were in the so-called “atmospheric window” region. Enough was reflected back to the spectrometers to find clouds that were not visible to the unaided eye from the ground.
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CO2 gas in Earth’s atmospheric conditions inconsequentially absorbs and scatters shortwave radiation. This knowledge is rudimentary. https://gml.noaa.gov/education/info_activities/pdfs/LA_whats_so_special_about_co2.pdf
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Doesn’t matter that it’s a small amount, you still have Aspergers.
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For sake of argument, I’ll assume as correct, Zoe’s calculation of effectively 0 as the difference between cloudy and clear skies, in longwave upwelling from surface.
That is evidence *for* clouds’ role in absorbing longwave from the surface and then emitting it back down to the surface, thereby warming the surface.
That’s because we know that clouds reflect a substantial amount of shortwave back to space, preventing that energy from reaching and being absorbed by the surface. That results in the surface having less energy and therefore emitting less longwave up. The average global reduction in shortwave for the entire planet is -47 Wm^2. Not all that 47 is going to be removed from surface longwave emission, but enough will to be easily measurable. https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/cloud-radiative-effect/
What we see instead, by Zoe’s numbers, is that the presence of clouds has effectively zero effect on longwave up from surface. That means some other effect of clouds is adding to the surface, enough energy to completely compensate for the incoming energy removed by the clouds’ reflections.
That other effect is longwave absorption from the surface by clouds, and longwave emission toward the surface.
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“0 as the difference between cloudy and clear skies, in longwave upwelling from surface”
“That is evidence *for* clouds’ role in … warming the surface.”
Perfect! We got it!
You broke the puzzle into 2 pieces to sound sophisticated, but I skipped all that and correctly stated the overall effect is [nearly] zero.
Because you broke it into 2 pieces you can then claim clouds have a greenhouse effect, but because I took a holistic approach I see NO GH effect overall.
Secondly, clouds move from hotter to colder areas, and you can’t really claim GH effect made it warmer.
If you doubt this, just put a heated frying pan cover on your head. Why the pain? Is it because the pan is blocking your head from radiating to the ceiling, or because it came hot from another place?
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From Zoe’s original post: “The standard greenhouse effect narrative is that infrared absorbing gases prevent radiation from reaching space and this causes warming at the surface (thus more radiation). Well we clearly see that’s not case. If clouds (water vapor + aerosols) hardly changes outgoing surface radiation, then the whole hypothesis is in error. Less top-of-atmosphere outgoing radiation doesn’t cause surface heating and thus more radiation from the surface, despite the increase in downwelling radiation.”
That extrapolation from clouds to greenhouse gases is false. Greenhouse gases lack the shortwave reflective behavior that clouds have. Greenhouse gases have only the surface warming influence.
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And yet all these sources keep bringing up the comparison.
And again, you admitted CO2 can cause reflection too, even if a little.
“Greenhouse gases have only the surface warming influence.”
The question is how much is really the GH effect and how much is horizontal heat transfer.
Do you at least finally agree that OVERALL clouds barely effect global AVERAGE surface flux, if at all?
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“All these sources keep bringing up the comparison” for clouds at night, which is when they lack the reflection component, which is what makes them an adequate though rough analogy as part of a high level introduction as an entry ramp to more accurate descriptions of the greenhouse gas effect. Sometimes people instead use as analogy only the particular types and locations of clouds whose IR absorption and emission outweigh their shortwave reflection. In stark contrast, you are including clouds’ reflective component, which makes clouds utterly fail as an analogy, even roughly, for the greenhouse gas effect.
I wrote that CO2 has inconsequential reflection in Earth’s atmosphere. Its reflection plays effectively zero role. See figure 3.5a in http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/rss/bertinoro/source/text/03.pdf
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Tom, why are you lying? Not all sources say at night. Look at the ones that fail to mention that. I provided several.
“CO2 has inconsequential reflection in Earth’s atmosphere. Its reflection plays effectively zero role”
Really? HITRAN tells me CO2 can absorb ~1.7 W/m^2 from a full 1361 W/m^2 solar in the lowest kilometer of the atmosphere. After absorption, CO2 can radiate 50% up, away from the surface. That’s 0.85 W/m^2 lost.
While 0.85 W/m^2 may seem like “effectively zero” it’s more than the overall total effect of clouds, and this is just for the lowest kilometer.
While my calculation is simplistic, CO2’s reflective role is not “effectively zero”. It seems to be on the same order as the entire warming effect of clouds. If that is “effectively zero” to you, then that’s just you.
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Reflection is a completely different physical phenomenon from absorption followed by emission.
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Doesn’t matter what happens at the quantum level. Shortwave won’t reach the surface. It’s effectively reflected.
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Your HITRAN calculation of absorption of “total solar” includes longwave, not just shortwave, so your subsequent conclusion that CO2 prevents shortwave from reaching the surface is false. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/1006
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The question is how much CO2 interferes with the sun’s ability to reach the surface. Read your own link, dummy.
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The article I linked has a diagram of “Spectrum of Solar Radiation.” Shortwave, including visible light, is at the left end of the diagram. CO2’s absorption is way over on the right in the longwave, IR, region. CO2 absorbs an inconsequential amount of shortwave radiation from the Sun. Your HITRAN experiment did not isolate shortwave, it included longwave.
Of course CO2 absorbs longwave from the Sun. CO2’s greenhouse gas effect is a consequence of the vastly larger amount of CO2-absorbable radiation coming from the Earth, than comes from the Sun. See the diagram above the Spectrum of Solar Radiation diagram. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/1006
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Are you retarded? We are talking about CO2’s interference of the sun’s ability to reach the surface, and here you are desperately trying to insist that the arbitrary divide between shortwave and longwave is important.
Climate scientists consider solar “shortwave” all the way up to 4 microns. Because what is important here is what mostly comes from the sun and what mostly comes from Earth.
The ~2 micron band of CO2 soaks up SOLAR energy, not Earth’s, even if it’s in the “infrared” portion, you dummy.
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As I already explained, CO2 absorbs the same wavelengths of radiation regardless of whether that radiation comes from the Sun or from the Earth. The greenhouse gas effect arises from the vastly larger amount of radiation in those particular wavelengths, that comes from the Earth than come from the Sun.
The great strength of that greenhouse gas effect arises not from just that bare directional imbalance, but from the atmosphere’s lapse rate causing a rise in the effective radiation altitude, to a height of reduced emission by CO2, of the energy it absorbed. CO2’s absorption of radiation, unlike its emission, is unaffected by its temperature.
For more explanation of energy in versus energy out, see https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth103/node/1007
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“The greenhouse gas effect arises from the vastly larger amount of radiation in those particular wavelengths, that comes from the Earth than come from the Sun.”
Retard, it’s already been explained to you, and your link confirms that there is more sun than Earth below 4 microns. This means that I can count CO2’s absorption below 4 microns as half blocking the sun.
Do you need it explained again, retard?
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As I explained, the greenhouse gas effect arises from the imbalance between the amount of energy that greenhouse gases intercept from the Sun, and the amount of energy that greenhouse gases intercept from the Earth. When the latter is larger, Earth’s total energy in is greater than Earth’s total energy out.
As I mentioned, the major reason for that imbalance is the asymmetry in radiation’s absorption from above versus from below. The lapse rate causes the higher layers of CO2 to be colder, so they emit less. That raising of the effective emission height increases the amount of energy that greenhouse gases absorb from the Earth, by the atmospheric layers in between the surface and the effective emission height. That mechanism is asymmetrical insofar as it does not operate in the reverse direction–from the Sun side of the atmosphere down–because the lapse rate is vertically asymmetrical.
The consequence is that the atmosphere absorbs more energy coming up, than it absorbs going down. The result of that, is accumulation of energy until the resulting increased emission (due to increased energy contents) again balances the incoming energy–which can take years, decades, centuries, and millenia for all the feedbacks to operate fully.
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You’re jumping all over the place. We were talking about ONE specific thing: CO2’s interception of solar radiation. You said there was effectively none of that, but that is not true.
You understand that or not?
Only 1-2% of solar radiation reaches the surface of Venus. 80% is due to albedo, but the rest is CO2 blocking passage.
What then happens with the GH effect is irrelevant to this fact.
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Years, decades, centuries, and even millennia are needed not just for feedbacks to operate, but also for energy absorbed by the skin of the surface to be distributed among the sub-skin matter sufficiently to stop siphoning the extra energy away from the skin. Only then can the skin reattain steady state energy interchange with downwelling energy. Until then, upward emission from the skin will not equal the downwelling energy absorbed. That’s why a more accurate measure of Earth’s warming is heat content rather than surface upwelling radiation and even temperature. In particular, the oceans absorb the vast majority of the entire planet’s energy imbalance: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content
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I’ve made a heat simulator and that’s not really the case for 99.99% of what’s needed. Make one yourself.
As for ocean heat content, adding up joules is irrelevant to fluxes.
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Here is a graph comparing heat content of oceans to that of land and other: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Earth%27s_Heat_Accumulation.png
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TOA CERES at the top … LMAO!
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In that last diagram I linked, “Ice” includes the energy used to convert ice to liquid water–to break the bonds that hold the water molecules together in the ice crystal. That energy is not available to make the resulting water warmer than the ice was. Doing the latter requires energy beyond the energy required for that phase transition.
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Do not misstate what I wrote. I wrote that CO2 *reflects* an insignificant amount of downwelling radiation from the Sun. The only reason I addressed reflection is that you claimed CO2’s reflection is an important element of Earth’s radiation balance. Radiation reflected back to the Sun contributes 0 energy to Earth. That is completely different from absorption followed by emission.
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No, I did not suggest CO2’s reflection is an important element of Earth’s energy budget. Why are you lying? I saif it’s not zero. YOU said GHGs differ from clouds because they don’t reflect. I showed you to be wrong, but you can’t admit it, and so have to bring other things into the discussion to distract from that fact.
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Zoe wrote “Only 1-2% of solar radiation reaches the surface of Venus. 80% is due to albedo, but the rest is CO2 blocking passage.”
On Venus as on Earth, CO2 blocks downwelling radiation only in the infrared.
“• Although Venus receives almost twice as much solar radiation as Earth
– Its clouds reflect ~76% of the incident radiation
– Total available radiation is ~170 W/m2
• About half of the absorbed solar flux is deposited within or above the cloud tops (~65 km)
– Visible absorption by the unknown UV absorber,
– Near IR absorption by the H2SO4 clouds and CO2
• Only ~2.6% of the solar flux incident at the top of the atmosphere reaches the surface
– Solar flux at the surface is ~17 W/m2 (global avg.)
• Surface temperature of ~730 K maintained by an efficient atmospheric greenhouse mechanism
– Net downward thermal flux at surface ~15,000 W/m2
– There are no true atmospheric windows at IR wavelengths > 3 μm”
Click to access crisp.pdf
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Tom this is possibly your last comment. You are on notice for being an obnoxious midwit and not sticking to what is discussed.
“CO2 blocks downwelling radiation only in the infrared.”
CO2 blocks solar downwelling radiation. THAT is all that was mentioned. PERIOD. What else CO2 may do is not in the discussion.
When scientists talk about shortwave and longwave they use it to distinguish what comes from the sun and earth. They don’t use the 1 micron dividing line of infrared. Period. Perhaps it would clearer if they used the term “shorterwave”, but they use “shortwave”. I know what they mean, but you still haven’t absorbed this.
On Venus, CO2 has absorption bands that don’t exist on Earth. Pressure actually creates them.
In fact, without our Nitrogen and Oxygen, H2O and CO2 would absorb very very weakly.
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Most will agree that Moon has no greenhouse effect. And Moon has extreme temperatures.
I would a greenhouse effect is most about making a more uniform surface temperature.
Or you add a lot non greenhouse gases to the moon, it would cause the Moon to have a greenhouse effect- because
it would cause a more uniform temperature.
This is not in accordance to what I could the global warming cargo cult which a committee of fools could not
imagine what could increase global average temperature other than the radiant effects of certain gases that are called greenhouse gases. But if add enough non greenhouse gas, say 20 trillion tons of nitrogen gas, it should increase the average temperature.
Instead of adding gases,, one increase the speed that Moon rotates relative to Sun, this should likewise increase the average temperature. And so faster spin speed is a greenhouse effect in same added gas would be.
Earth increase or decrease of global temperature in the past has also been about making Earth have a more uniform
global temperature.
Or what causes is biggest factor of causing Earth to have a more uniform temperature is the ocean.
And we are in Ice house global climate because we have a cold ocean, and ocean average temperature is about 3.5 C and if ocean instead was 4 C, it would cause a more uniform global temperature, and increase global average air temperature by about 3 C. And it is largely about increasing night time and winter time air temperature.
And “everyone” agrees that global warming is mostly about increasing night and winter air temperatures.
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You are going down their rabbit hole and will never win on their chosen battle ground.
But clouds are very relevant to the whole issue.
Climate Scientists claim that there is a 33 deg greenhouse effect due to greenhouse gases.
They do this by working out sunlight absorbed, which is the weighted average of sun absorbed by “clouds two-thirds of surface and the one-third of earth that is not covered in clouds” (which I call ‘effective surface’) = between 235 and 240 W/m2 absorbed. Good.
They then pretend that clouds don’t exist and that 240 W/m2 all hits the actual sea level surface. Assuming 100% emissivity (not true either), the surface would be 255 K (effective temperature). Not good.
If you put the clouds back into the picture and look how much radiation the ‘effective surface’ emits, you factor in
a) the lower temperature (5 km altitude = 255K) and low emissivity (70%) of clouds, they emit 168 W/m2 to space
b) warmer temperature (288K) and high emissivity (96%) of ocean and land, they emit 374 W/m2 to space.
Take weighted 2/3 to 1/3 weighted average of those, you get 237 W/m2.
In other words, earth’s cloud-free surface and the clouds emit are exactly the right temperature to emit as much radiation as they receive. There is no missing or trapped radiation. There is no 33 degree difference.
Between the cloud-covered surface and the clouds above it is a whole different system, with gravito-thermal lapse rate, latent heat of evaporation and condensation, convection, and of course clouds absorb radiation and emit some back down and/or reflect it straight back down. But that has nothing to do with radiation received from the sun or emitted to space.
Seeing as the 33 degree is the cornerstone of their whole belief system, and that is somewhere between sloppy science and an outright lie, I assume that the rest of it is all nonsense as well.
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