|
Post by dmapel on Jun 4, 2009 21:36:39 GMT
steve: If the earth really has not warmed much since 2003 then that may be because the forcing from greenhouse gases is being balanced by some other aspect of the weather, or some other aspect of forcings (including solar, aerosol, dust, other ghg, etc).
Now I would like to know exactly what this aspect of the weather etc. is, but the observational evidence (eg. of clouds) appears to be too short term and too limited to be quite sure of trends.
However, we have had "flattish spots" in the past, and they came to an end. And we've had steep rises in the past and they came to an end. Since the current flattish spot was preceded by a steep rise, and since it doesn't seem to have seriously impacted the long term trend yet, it may be too early to say that it must continue.
I suggest that there is some average set of conditions between the flattish spots and the steep rises that means that when we return to the average conditions, the net flow of energy into the earth will be higher than the outgoing longwave radiation resulting in an average warming trend.”
Not only has the earth not warmed much (if at all) since 2003, the earth has not warmed much from a long-term perspective, since significant amounts of anthropogenic CO2 began to accumulate in the atmosphere. And along with what you call “flattish spots” and “steep rises”, there has been a relatively long period of temperature decline that caused many “scientists” and hysterical media types to fear the coming of another ice age.
Didn’t the cooling period that set off a mini-panic last longer than your favored “steep rises”? Maybe your average conditions favor ice ages and it is irrational to panic at the sight of a little warming.
|
|
|
Post by dmapel on Jun 4, 2009 21:43:03 GMT
soclod: “It's clear from this and other sentences in your post that you don't yet understand what the "pipeline" refers to.
It has nothing to do with a lack or of warming. It would exist even if the last 5 years had shown a warming trend.”
Look, I am not an idiot. I know what YOU THINK the “ pipeline” is. But it has been clearly explained to you why your goofy “pipeline” invention does not make sense, nor is it relevant to the discussion on: WHERE’S THE HEAT?
I will help you: The heat is not in any imaginary “pipeline”. The heat is either in the atmosphere, the earth’s surface, or in the sub-surface of the oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, puddles, etc. . That’s it. The heat is in those places or it doesn’t exist. It is not late. It will not be along, any time now. It just does not exist.
Work on that.
|
|
|
Post by socold on Jun 4, 2009 21:58:32 GMT
soclod: “It's clear from this and other sentences in your post that you don't yet understand what the "pipeline" refers to. It has nothing to do with a lack or of warming. It would exist even if the last 5 years had shown a warming trend.” Look, I am not an idiot. I know what YOU THINK the “ pipeline” is. But it has been clearly explained to you why your goofy “pipeline” invention does not make sense, nor is it relevant to the discussion on: WHERE’S THE HEAT? I will help you: The heat is not in any imaginary “pipeline”. The heat is either in the atmosphere, the earth’s surface, or in the sub-surface of the oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, puddles, etc. . That’s it. The heat is in those places or it doesn’t exist. It is not late. It will not be along, any time now. It just does not exist. Work on that. You have simply just repeated your incorrect reference to the "pipeline" in terms of missing heat despite me making clear the two are unrelated. You even state the "pipeline" is not "relevant to the discussion on: WHERE’S THE HEAT" before bring it up yet again in relation to the question "where's the heat" I have never claimed "missing heat is in a pipeline" or anything like that. I have also answered this "where is the heat?" question multiple times now. If you need a refresh, check my very recent posts on this very thread.
|
|
|
Post by dmapel on Jun 4, 2009 22:39:29 GMT
soclod: "You have simply just repeated your incorrect reference to the "pipeline" in terms of missing heat despite me making clear the two are unrelated. You even state the "pipeline" is not "relevant to the discussion on: WHERE’S THE HEAT" before bring it up yet again in relation to the question "where's the heat"
I have never claimed "missing heat is in a pipeline" or anything like that.
I have also answered this "where is the heat?" question multiple times now. If you need a refresh, check my very recent posts on this very thread."
I mentioned the imaginary "pipeline" again just to admonish you to not go there again to find the missing heat. Isn't the following an attempt to explain where the missing (not yet realized) heat is?
soclod: "The pipeline refers to warming warming from the current forcing that hasn't yet been realized. If the total forcing will cause 10C warming, but due to the lag in temperature response the warming so far is only 6C, then there is another 4C in the pipeline. That is without changing the forcing at all you will get another 4C warming."
Why don't you explain where that other 4C would be located? Where is the "pipeline" located? How long does it take the current forcing to do it's forcing? How long is the lag in temperature response? How many different ways do the questions have to be framed for you? Would smaller words help?
|
|
|
Post by nautonnier on Jun 5, 2009 1:37:01 GMT
"The pipeline refers to warming warming from the current forcing that hasn't yet been realized. If the total forcing will cause 10C warming, but due to the lag in temperature response the warming so far is only 6C, then there is another 4C in the pipeline. That is without changing the forcing at all you will get another 4C warming."A lag could be seen if the warming had only just started but that is not the case. What has happened is that there has been a continual slow rise in global heat content since the end of the 1980's with a peak in 1998 then a topping off at 2003 then the rise stopped for 4 years and then dropped. This CANNOT be a lag as the heat content was increasing and HAS NOW STOPPED then DROPPED. What do you mean by "global heat content"? With Ocean heat content there is no peak in 1998, the peak is in 2003. With global surface temperature or the satellite record they were affected by the El Nino in 1998 which is why they peaked there. As far as the surface record and satellite record over the past 10 years, the cold draught can be explained as both ENSO and solar minimum. ENSO and solar output have dropped since 2003. Lets throw some numbers in. If the solar minimum has bought us 0.1C cooling and recent ENSO conditions are another 0.1C beneath the El Nino conditions of 2003, then that means an application of 0.2C cooling in 2009 compared to 2003 from these two factors. That's faster rate of cooling than the expected rate of warming from rising ghg, hence a decline in temperatures is not at odds with this. OK - thank you SoCold - you agree with me that there was a peak in heat content in 2003. El Nino and La Nina are just redistribution of heat in the Pacific and while they have exciting effects - the peak ocean heat content globally was 2003. Since then it has been at best level and (as it was the peak) the ocean heat content has dropped. The input heat is constant The global Heat content is dropping Output heat must have INCREASED But GHG have increased and therefore *if* AGW is true and GHG are inhibiting outgoing IR to the extent that Earth was warming - then how come increased GHG leads to an INCREASE in outgoing heat? Perhaps the input heat is not constant? Or Some not known to SoCold negative feedback? Seems AGW is an extremely shaky hypothesis at the moment.
|
|
|
Post by hilbert on Jun 5, 2009 3:00:54 GMT
hibert writes "it just slows down the heat transfer." I think this is called Newton's Law of Cooling. I'm not sure of that. It's a heat transfer problem, not something cooling off from an initial value.
|
|
|
Post by dmapel on Jun 5, 2009 3:10:22 GMT
OK soclod, I will help you. The oceans have an enormous capacity to hold heat. If there is any missing heat, look for it in the oceans. Like the famous bank robber Willy Sutton replied, when he was asked why he robbed banks:"Because that's where the money is." But there doesn't seem to be any missing heat to be found in the oceans, soclod. See here: wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/the-global-warming-hypothesis-and-ocean-heat/ A selected comment from the article that you might find informative, but I doubt it. "Hidden Heat. A few explanations have been proposed for the change in ocean heat. One popular suggestion is that there is “hidden” or “unrealized” heat in the climate system. This heat is being “masked” by the current cooling and will “return with a vengeance” once the cooling abates. This explanation reveals a fundamental ignorance of thermodynamics and it is disappointing to see scientists suggest it. Since the oceans are the primary reservoir of atmospheric heat, there is no need to account for lag time involved with heat transfer. By using ocean heat as a metric, we can quantify nearly all of the energy that drives the climate system at any given moment. So, if there is still heat “in the pipeline”, where is it? The deficit of heat after nearly 6 years of cooling is now enormous. Heat can be transferred, but it cannot hide. Without a credible explanation of heat transfer, the idea of unrealized heat is nothing more than an evasion."
|
|
|
Post by poitsplace on Jun 5, 2009 5:28:13 GMT
Now CO2 happens to take a chunk out of outgoing radiation. But the "high school science" points out plain as day that as long as the CO2 is at the same temperature of the surrounding atmosphere...it absorbs and emits equally well resulting in NO affect at all. Back to our little chart we see that wherever the heck that CO2 is, it must be at about...220 kelvin. It's only absorbing because it's too cold to emit again. That co2 at 220 kelvin is high in the atmosphere absorbing energy emitted from below which was otherwise destined for space. Ie it is presenting a significant obstruction to Earth's cooling mechanism. If we removed that co2 then the Earth would suddenly be emitting a lot more radiation into space and would cool down. If the co2 wasn't there the whole emission spectrum would drop downwards. All the cooling was done down in the troposphere though. That's why that very pronounced gradient is there. CO2's net affect is to absorb based on concentration and emit based on temperature and concentration. 220k is the lowest temperature in the atmosphere (until the edge of space anyway where the concentration is less than 1/1000 that of lower levels) CO2 CAN'T emit less than the 220k radiation. No amount of additional CO2 can ever change that bottom line significantly. That bottom line is set by water vapor. That's the reason the temperature gradient is so high in the troposphere. Most of the energy is eliminated at the level most of the water vapor finally condenses out. CO2 cannot have the affect suggested by the increased absorption because absorption is only half of what it does. It has an absolute minimum emission amount...and it's energy budget is controlled by the gradient maintained by water vapor. Complete saturation of CO2's spectrum would still follow the 220k black body curve...but most of the bands are so weak that's never going to happen. AND any increase to the overall energy budget below due to "back radiation" would be emitted across the WHOLE black body spectrum, not just in CO2's wavelengths. Your bench physics approach is only correct when you're talking about an external source of light ONLY in CO2's spectrum with a perfectly insulated container of infinite length...not for a complex system of finite size in which CO2 is participating in emissions AND in which CO2's part has already been confined to a role in which its emissions are part of a lower energy black body curve.
|
|
|
Post by william on Jun 5, 2009 8:07:06 GMT
Another consideration is the number of ions increases with altitude in the atmosphere.
An ion will emit as a black body due to thermal motion, in addition to its characteristic quantum frequencies when it absorbs an electron.
Evidence that the CO2 mechanism does saturate is that there are periods in which CO2 is high for millions of years and the planet is in an ice epoch and incidents when the planet is not in an ice epoch when CO2 levels are low for millions of years. In fact the only period when CO2 levels have more or less correlated with planetary temperature is the current epoch. However when one looks in detail at the current ice epoch there are periods when planetary temperature does not correlate with CO2 levels on a long term basis. In this ice epoch as the planet cooled and the ice sheet formed on the Antarctic continent, CO2 increased and the ice sheet did not melt.
The example of Venus is often repeat as an analogue to prove the mechanism does not saturate, however, as pressure increases the the fixed bands of quantum absorption/emission broaden and the gas emits like a liquid. The atmospheric pressure on Venus is 90 atmospheres.
|
|
|
Post by steve on Jun 5, 2009 9:27:42 GMT
steve writes "If the earth really has not warmed much since 2003 then that may be because the forcing from greenhouse gases is being balanced by some other aspect of the weather, or some other aspect of forcings (including solar, aerosol, dust, other ghg, etc)." steve, you seem to have omitted the possibility that there is no appreciable signal from CO2 at all, and all the variation is from natural causes. This is my interpretation of what has happened. Jim, I know we disagree on this point, but the omission was deliberate given that I am confident that the basic CO2 forcing is well understood. As I've pointed out, I'm not entirely happy with the "climate variability" explanation for the current apparent pause in the ocean heat content. And I'm less content with claims that the past 100 or so years of warming are due to "natural variability". It is possible to be more precise than that as we are talking about a physical system and the laws of conservation of energy etc.
|
|
|
Post by steve on Jun 5, 2009 9:37:28 GMT
steve: If the earth really has not warmed much since 2003 then that may be because the forcing from greenhouse gases is being balanced by some other aspect of the weather, or some other aspect of forcings (including solar, aerosol, dust, other ghg, etc). Now I would like to know exactly what this aspect of the weather etc. is, but the observational evidence (eg. of clouds) appears to be too short term and too limited to be quite sure of trends. However, we have had "flattish spots" in the past, and they came to an end. And we've had steep rises in the past and they came to an end. Since the current flattish spot was preceded by a steep rise, and since it doesn't seem to have seriously impacted the long term trend yet, it may be too early to say that it must continue. I suggest that there is some average set of conditions between the flattish spots and the steep rises that means that when we return to the average conditions, the net flow of energy into the earth will be higher than the outgoing longwave radiation resulting in an average warming trend.” Not only has the earth not warmed much (if at all) since 2003, the earth has not warmed much from a long-term perspective, since significant amounts of anthropogenic CO2 began to accumulate in the atmosphere. And along with what you call “flattish spots” and “steep rises”, there has been a relatively long period of temperature decline that caused many “scientists” and hysterical media types to fear the coming of another ice age. I don't think there is anything wrong with your statement that "the earth has not warmed much from a long-term perspective". It has warmed about as much as we would expect given that CO2 levels have increased by about 120 ppm in 250 years. What mini panic? Most of the panic at the time seemed to be from the WUWT crowd. If you searched back you'll find that back in February and March I was sticking firmly to my prediction for a 0.3C HadCRUT3 anomaly for 2008, and 0.4C for this year.
|
|
|
Post by steve on Jun 5, 2009 9:51:30 GMT
OK soclod, I will help you. The oceans have an enormous capacity to hold heat. If there is any missing heat, look for it in the oceans. Like the famous bank robber Willy Sutton replied, when he was asked why he robbed banks:"Because that's where the money is." But there doesn't seem to be any missing heat to be found in the oceans, soclod. See here: wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/06/the-global-warming-hypothesis-and-ocean-heat/ A selected comment from the article that you might find informative, but I doubt it. "Hidden Heat. A few explanations have been proposed for the change in ocean heat. One popular suggestion is that there is “hidden” or “unrealized” heat in the climate system. This heat is being “masked” by the current cooling and will “return with a vengeance” once the cooling abates. This explanation reveals a fundamental ignorance of thermodynamics and it is disappointing to see scientists suggest it. Since the oceans are the primary reservoir of atmospheric heat, there is no need to account for lag time involved with heat transfer. By using ocean heat as a metric, we can quantify nearly all of the energy that drives the climate system at any given moment. So, if there is still heat “in the pipeline”, where is it? The deficit of heat after nearly 6 years of cooling is now enormous. Heat can be transferred, but it cannot hide. Without a credible explanation of heat transfer, the idea of unrealized heat is nothing more than an evasion." The author of this piece has misunderstood what has been said by the scientists. Here's a quote from Tom Wigley, which doesn't of course address the reason why the ocean has been particularly damp for the past few years: Science 18 March 2005: Vol. 307. no. 5716, pp. 1766 - 1769 DOI: 10.1126/science.1103934 The Climate Change Commitment T. M. L. Wigley
|
|
|
Post by jimcripwell on Jun 5, 2009 12:37:48 GMT
steve writes "Jim, I know we disagree on this point, but the omission was deliberate given that I am confident that the basic CO2 forcing is well understood."
Point taken, and agreed. However, I think there is a much bigger issue here. In the old days, before the internet, it took weeks for someone to guess at something, someone else to quote it, etc, and for this to become gospel. The classic example of this is the Black Death, where in the late 19th century someone guessed this was caused by bubonic plague, and now encyclopedias quote it as gospel. In AGW, we have global warming potential, where methane is 21 times as "effective" as CO2. I have read all I can about this, and dont understand it. My concept was that GWP was invented for monetary purposes; if CO2 "costs" 1 dollar, then methane "costs "21 dollars. Yet I see this number all over the popular press, and I am sure the writers dont know what it means. The Internet has made this process happen with lightning speed. I think we need to remember that there is no direct evidence that if you add CO2 to the air, this causes global temperatures to rise. Again, I have read all I can about radiative forcing. I dont pretend to understand it. I see figures of 4.2 or 3.7 watts/sq.m bandied about. I am convinced that no-one knows what the actual figfure is within a factor of 10, and the values used are all on the very high side. I feel people need to be reminded that the scientific basis, that at current concentrations additional CO2 is a potent GHG, is not very solid.
|
|
|
Post by steve on Jun 5, 2009 13:53:29 GMT
Jim, GWP is a separate (and more complex) matter because it aims to integrate the forcing over time, which requires knowledge about the lifetime in the atmosphere (hard to measure) and side effects such as, with methane, the impacts on atmospheric chemistry (also hard to measure).
|
|
|
Post by jimcripwell on Jun 5, 2009 14:29:47 GMT
steve writes "Jim, GWP is a separate (and more complex) matter because it aims to integrate the forcing over time, which requires knowledge about the lifetime in the atmosphere (hard to measure) and side effects such as, with methane, the impacts on atmospheric chemistry (also hard to measure)."
Agreed, but that is not the point I am trying to make. The main stream media use GWP, at least according to my reading, as if it means that methane has 21 times the radiative forcing of CO2. It is this misinterpretation of the basic science that is dangerous. You post as if it is absolutely scientifically established that increasing CO2 in the air increases temperature. So far as I am concerned, this is an assumption; a hypothesis. As long as this sort of misinterpretation of the basic science is going on, I feel it is necessary to point what the facts are, so that people dont believe every thing that appears on the internet, and go back and check what is fact and what is assumption.
|
|