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Post by socold on Sept 6, 2008 23:42:44 GMT
socold, Satellite and radiosonde data say that the humidity has risen below 850 mB over the last 50 years, while it has dropped, progressively, above that level. I am guessing this is relative humidity, I found this paper that fits with that ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/57676.pdfAdditionally there are about 4 or 5 pages starting on page 271 on water vapor trends in chapter 3 of the IPCC WG1 AR4 report: ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch03.pdfWhich summarizes: "the available data do not indicate a detectable trend in upper-tropospheric relative humidity. However, there is now evidence for global increases in upper-tropospheric specific humidity over the past two decades, which is consistent with the observed increases in tropospheric temperatures and the absence of any change in relative humidity." |
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Post by nautonnier on Sept 7, 2008 19:31:52 GMT
socold, Satellite and radiosonde data say that the humidity has risen below 850 mB over the last 50 years, while it has dropped, progressively, above that level. Much of that humidity rise is traceable to reforestation areas and/or addition of irrigation (based on pan humidity testing in areas where land use has changed in North America...Google it). It is not unthinkable that major contributors to our "warming" of the last 40 years are a) man-made increased humidity in the first 1000 feet, and b) man-made change of heart vis-a-vis cement dust control and acid aerosol control; and as those deltas have plateaued, so have their effects. The reason the Population Bomb forecast by Ehrlich did not result in mass starvation was due to the huge amount of irrigation 'turning deserts green' etc. The amount of water being extracted from deep aquifers is huge. Google 'cubic kilometers fossil water' The amount is such that the aquifers are turning briny as sea water is being drawn in. There are also areas like the Aral Sea which have dried up as the water that would have gone to them has been used for irrigation. Irrigation means water is provided to the plants for them to use to pull nutrients from the ground and transpire (evaporate) into the air. A single adult maple tree for example will transpire around 200litres of water an HOUR in summer. So yes - reforestation and greening deserts has led to a huge increase in low altitude water vapor. If I was looking for a reason that I could accept for Anthropogenic global warming it is irrigation. It matches in the time as the real growth in irrigation commenced in the late 60s. Not quite such a politically easy target to refuse to let people grow food though - its easier to get at SUVs - which of course generate water vapor alongside the CO2  |
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Post by latecommer on Sept 8, 2008 18:17:19 GMT
In reality the temperature you read on your thermometer is the temperature of the inert gases, not the greenhouse gases.
Greenhouse gases are in fact the way the atmosphere cools itself.
The absorption and re-radiation of energy in the atmosphere is omni directional with slightly more than 50% radiating eventually into space, thus reducing the temperature of the atmosphere.
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Post by nautonnier on Sept 8, 2008 20:38:41 GMT
In reality the temperature you read on your thermometer is the temperature of the inert gases, not the greenhouse gases. So the water vapor does not get warmer when it absorbs all that IR and starts vibrating so hard that the weak bonds between molecules break? I am not sure that I see or follow your logic. |
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Post by donmartin on Apr 10, 2009 20:01:34 GMT
OK, once again, I'm confused: absorption; collision; excitement; vibration, etc. If a nucleus were the size of a marble, and an electron therefore the width of a hair, the electron would be approximately 2 miles in distance from the nucleus. And this atom would be some distance again from the next atom (or molecule). How on earth would these things "collide"? Or excite one another? Does the kinetic theory of gases work at the quantum level?
It is my understanding that atoms and molecules, as classically understood or conceptualized, do not exist. There may be fields of force or energy which come into and out of existence randomly. Bosons (massless energy) and fermions (mass) interchange unpredictably.
How can models be constructed pursuant to no longer extant historical concepts of matter and energy? And exactly what is "energy?" Does "energy" derive from curved space and time, not "collisions" and "emissions?"
How is it possible to "add" a gas to the atmosphere? Does this mean there is more CO2, for example, per square metre at a given altitude than prior to the "addition?" I do not understand this to be possible save for gas states in disequilibrium. Is heat a function of temperature ( velocity conserved through angular momentum) and pressure (gravity (curved space/time prop. to mass), and is heat then "distributed" in accordance with Klog/w. And does this latter entropic solution result in climate unpredictability save as determined by macro solar events not susceptible to analysis with current knowledge? Please, no models.
In summary, we may be entering a period of glaciation within an ice age. The only question, as far as I can see, is how rapidly, and what determines the speed of such event?
I only have questions.
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Post by gettingchilly on Apr 10, 2009 22:01:49 GMT
socold
"Exactly, what temperature does in the next 10 years will make all the difference. I fully intend to change my mind if temperature over the next 10 years declines or stays flat short of a large volcanic cooling occurring or the Sun going staying low."
So if volcanic activity increases due to the solar minimum as has happened before you Won't change your mind!
If the Sun Goes low (already) stays low (probable) then you Won't change your mind! ROARS WITH LAUGHTER!!!
Obvious thing here socold is that you did not mention CO2. I think you are close to a cure but are still in denial.
So what you are saying is that if you are totally wrong and everyone else is proved totally right you WON'T CHANGE YOUR MIND!.
So if all your past postings are proved totally wrong, you won't change your mind and will stick with the polemic.
Don't ever leave us socold as your postings allow me to end my day with a huge belly laugh! So you are no longer a warmist and are now a closet coolist!
Ha, Ha... Ha, Ha... Ha, Ha... etc etc....
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Post by nautonnier on Apr 12, 2009 15:06:52 GMT
You don't need a supercomputer to run a radiation model. You could probably prototype a simple one yourself in half a day, and run it on a laptop. The computer models obey the law of conservation of energy. You said: "With conservation of energy, if any layer of the atmosphere is warmed, then less energy will get back to the Earth. They can't have it both ways, or count the energy twice. Its the same energy from the sun. If more heats the atmosphere, less reaches the surface. " Agreed. But the point doesn't make your argument. Structural changes and natural variability aside, the energy imbalance caused by adding CO2 causes an incremental increase in temperature in all layers of the atmosphere below a particular level over a long period. If you put the lid on a boiling pan you do not say that "Ah the layer of air in the top 1cm of the pan has got hotter, therefore through conservation of energy the rest of the pan must have got colder". The CO2 emission bands are *not* saturated throughout the atmosphere. While physically the concept breaks the laws of physics, if they were saturated throughout the whole atmosphere, then no IR in the CO2 absorption bands would escape at all! I'm a computer modeller and a physicist, but I don't think that proves anything other than the fact that given enough time we both ought to be able to become experts in this. As an aside, through much of the atmosphere, most of the time, energy is transferred between molecules through collisions rather than through emission and absorption of radiation. ie the collision rate is much greater than the reemission timescale. If this were not so then the CO2 would not be in thermal equilibrium with the rest of the atmosphere. Steve, "The CO2 emission bands are *not* saturated throughout the atmosphere. While physically the concept breaks the laws of physics, if they were saturated throughout the whole atmosphere, then no IR in the CO2 absorption bands would escape at all!"
At some point of pressure the atmosphere of the Earth is considered to have ended. At that point the scattering of the IR will be a certain percentage back into the atmosphere (less than 50% due to the curvature of the atmosphere) and a greater percentage out to space. This is of course only in the 9% or so of the spectrum that CO 2 absorbs and at these rarified levels the chance of encountering a CO 2 molecule becomes vanishingly small. Nevertheless, the other 90% IR would escape without any hindrance from the occasional CO 2 molecule. Your point seems to hinge on the atmosphere being infinitely extended with layer after layer, whereas Kiwi is dealing with it as a 'slab' or point atmosphere (an accepted method in the GCMs). Your 'aside' is also an important point. Radiation of IR is only of any real importance above the tropopause most of the heat transport to that level is by convection as a high percentage of radiation is captured by water and a very small amount by CO 2 and the warmed volumes of atmosphere then convect upward. The warmed CO 2 obviously assists in this convection. Of course as everyone is aware, 2/3rds of the Earth's surface is water and most of the rest has transpiring plants - so huge amounts of heat is transported up by water vapor evaporated at the surface with no radiative effects at all. The convected heat is transported to the more rarified levels in the atmosphere where it is radiated away and the small amount in the CO 2 absorption band stands a greater chance of escaping into space due to the reduced atmospheric density, while the remaining 90% radiates away as there is little water vapor above the tropopause. Of course at the same time the convective clouds reaching those levels have a very strong negative forcing as much as minus 100 w/M-2. If you want to limit your arguments to radiation WITHIN the atmosphere then you need to include all the complexities of convection and albedo etc. If you deal with the Earth as a black box/point source then you do not. Kiwi was arguing from the black box perspective and you from the fully detailed multi-layered atmosphere. With one playing tennis the other water polo there are going to be difficulties reaching agreement on the final score |
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Post by icefisher on Apr 12, 2009 17:21:36 GMT
socold, Satellite and radiosonde data say that the humidity has risen below 850 mB over the last 50 years, while it has dropped, progressively, above that level. Much of that humidity rise is traceable to reforestation areas and/or addition of irrigation (based on pan humidity testing in areas where land use has changed in North America...Google it). It is not unthinkable that major contributors to our "warming" of the last 40 years are a) man-made increased humidity in the first 1000 feet, and b) man-made change of heart vis-a-vis cement dust control and acid aerosol control; and as those deltas have plateaued, so have their effects. The reason the Population Bomb forecast by Ehrlich did not result in mass starvation was due to the huge amount of irrigation 'turning deserts green' etc. The amount of water being extracted from deep aquifers is huge. Google 'cubic kilometers fossil water' The amount is such that the aquifers are turning briny as sea water is being drawn in. There are also areas like the Aral Sea which have dried up as the water that would have gone to them has been used for irrigation. Irrigation means water is provided to the plants for them to use to pull nutrients from the ground and transpire (evaporate) into the air. A single adult maple tree for example will transpire around 200litres of water an HOUR in summer. So yes - reforestation and greening deserts has led to a huge increase in low altitude water vapor. If I was looking for a reason that I could accept for Anthropogenic global warming it is irrigation. It matches in the time as the real growth in irrigation commenced in the late 60s. Not quite such a politically easy target to refuse to let people grow food though - its easier to get at SUVs - which of course generate water vapor alongside the CO2 Those questions hang out there. On the flip side of that another factor that maybe increasing that effect is the burning fields is a 6,000 year old agricultural technique that only really began to diminish in the latter half of the twentieth century for aesthetic reasons. . . .even forestry practices of slash and burn has changed over the same time period. Seems before looking at a single point source for blame for warming one should first answer the question as to why this interglacial period is so much cooler than previous ones. |
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Post by lamont on Apr 12, 2009 17:30:04 GMT
Kiwi was arguing from the black box perspective and you from the fully detailed multi-layered atmosphere. With one playing tennis the other water polo there are going to be difficulties reaching agreement on the final score Actually Kiwi in the OP on this thread was arguing from a position of fundamentally not understanding hydrostatic equilibrium and radiative transfer. If you want to understand it, I'd actually suggest starting with the theory of stellar interiors and the Schwartzchild-Milne equations: www.amazon.com/Introduction-Stellar-Astrophysics-Erika-B%C3%B6hm-Vitense/dp/0521348706 |
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Post by nautonnier on Apr 12, 2009 21:28:12 GMT
Kiwi was arguing from the black box perspective and you from the fully detailed multi-layered atmosphere. With one playing tennis the other water polo there are going to be difficulties reaching agreement on the final score Actually Kiwi in the OP on this thread was arguing from a position of fundamentally not understanding hydrostatic equilibrium and radiative transfer. If you want to understand it, I'd actually suggest starting with the theory of stellar interiors and the Schwartzchild-Milne equations: www.amazon.com/Introduction-Stellar-Astrophysics-Erika-B%C3%B6hm-Vitense/dp/0521348706Thanks for the reference and the subsequent surfing  It does appear that the equations are more for dealing with the initial scattering of radiation from a source. I am not sure that they will remain valid with the secondary, tertiary, quaternary...etc.. scattering. It is of interest also that some of the reading showed that in scattering the photon's energy is slightly changed but there is no energy exchanged with the scattering molecule, whereas Steve seems to be talking in terms of photoionization or photoexcitation - both of which will 'raise temperature' but not result in any photon emission from the excited molecule just kinetic transfer of energy to other molecules in the atmosphere. Did I get that right ? |
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Post by donmartin on Apr 13, 2009 7:23:10 GMT
The Schwarzschild-Milne equations: an extension of the philosophy of Boltzmann and statistical probability in relation to the kinetic theory of gases. Is it not arguable that the cause of radiative transfer, if it exists, is unknown, but most certainly does not result from the collision of atomic particles, emission of photons, or particle vibration. Is no weight to be given to quantum theory?
It is my understanding that Schwarzschild/Boltzmann lead directly to the theory of greenhouse gases and global warming.
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Post by kiwistonewall on Apr 13, 2009 8:53:10 GMT
The Schwarzschild-Milne equations: an extension of the philosophy of Boltzmann and statistical probability in relation to the kinetic theory of gases. Is it not arguable that the cause of radiative transfer, if it exists, is unknown, . Is no weight to be given to quantum theory? It is my understanding that Schwarzschild/Boltzmann lead directly to the theory of greenhouse gases and global warming. No, its not arguable. Radiative transfer is well understood. "but most certainly does not result from the collision of atomic particles, emission of photons, or particle vibration" is total rubbish. (sorry) where do you get these ideas? And the Earth isn't a stellar interior! ;D The problem is that experiments are carried out in well controlled ways, with one or two gases. The atmosphere is very complex, and so everything is arguable. The fundamentals we know. How the whole shooting match hangs together is the big argument. |
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Post by lamont on Apr 13, 2009 15:31:04 GMT
And the Earth isn't a stellar interior! ;D No it isn't but taking the author of that book (Prof. Bohm-Vitense) stellar interiors course is what gave me the background to understand what climatologists are talking about with 1 dimensional simulations of the atmosphere. And after I got done with her course I spent a little time as an undergrad trying to do some computational integrations of stellar envelopes and wound up confirming that the numerical solutions tend to run away and you have to use more advanced solutions. Given the numerical problems and the added complexity (really) in going from a stellar envelope to the Earth's atmosphere I fully believe the references that 1-d climate models of the Earth are tough. I've broken my teeth on easier problems. If I didn't have a real job, I'll spend a month or three re-learning how to do those problems, looking for free numerical libraries written in a sane language (not the effing fortran libraries that physicists still produce all the time) that weren't around 10 years ago. This thread, however, is about the basics, not the "whole shooting match", and it is really laughable how badly off this forum is on the basics. At a quantum level thermal scattering of particles is just coulomb interactions between electron clouds. The derivation of classical ideal gas theory from quantum mechanics is basic 2nd year sophomore "modern physics" stuff (which was "modern" more like 80 years ago): www.amazon.com/Modern-Physics-Paul-Tipler/dp/0716775506That's the latest revision of the book that I used a decade ago. I don't remember the derivation anymore, unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to use that since I got out of school. All the whinging in this thread over the conservation of energy is also amusing. Of course radiative balance and hydrostatic balance require conservation of energy and physicists would have noticed and fixed the equations over 100 years ago if they didn't work. Dusting off my brain cells and trying to get really basic, if you have absorption at one layer you do heat that layer up, but that layer is coupled to lower layers through hydrostatic balance. Heat will flow between the layers of the atmosphere, just like through any other substance until equilibrium has been reached -- by pushing energy into one layer, you push that layer away from equilibrium and the rest of the atmosphere will have to react to that in order to reach equilibrium again. Its like trying to heat up only a slice of a chunk of aluminum. That isn't going to work so well, since the heat will rapidly conduct to the rest of the chunk of aluminum. Same thing happens in the atmosphere, although its slower than aluminum, but over the course of years it is all coupled. |
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Post by donmartin on Apr 13, 2009 18:17:44 GMT
Lamont: when you refer to "stellar envelope" are you referring to space curvature? And I believe I use the term destabilization when you refer to loss of equilibrium.
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Post by donmartin on Apr 13, 2009 18:23:11 GMT
Interesting also, this morning I am reading a Book of Knowledge published in 1899 that states that heat and radiation from the sun is caused by atoms colliding due to the sun's gravity. The article goes on to say that the sun otherwise would have "burned out" by now. Schwarzschild was a fish out of water.
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