Douglass et al. 2007 may represent a history-of-science-in-the-making showdown between two theories, the infinitely-thick theory of atmospheres as used in GCMs, and the semi-transparent atmospheric model as proposed by Miskolczi.
It misses the point — that the observations discriminate between theories — to focus on the details of the statistical test of the GCMs. To get to the point of understanding why basic theory
might be wrong takes, for me, a lot of work as its not
my field. But its much more interesting and profound
than arguing about parameter uncertainty. For example, the
Michelson–Morley experiment, one of the most important and famous experiments in the history of physics,
resulting in the trashing of an old theory, not just an adjustment to one of the parameters.
Here, the change in lapse rate of the tropical troposphere is the experiment. GCMs predict faster warming in the troposphere than the surface due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases aloft. It is believed that faster mid-tropical warming than the surface is a NECESSARY condition for warming to be due to greenhouse gasses. But observations only show a slower rate of warming aloft than at the surface. Therefore, warming is not due to greenhouse gasses — QED.
Douglass et al. 2007 only goes so far as to conclude that the projections of future climate based on these models be viewed with caution (due to their lack of correspondence in reality).
However, as Boris states insightfully on CA and lucia liljegren’s blog
If the Douglass analysis is correct and the tropical troposphere is not warming faster than the tropical surface, then it’s not just GCMs that are wrong, but also theory (from RC).
I think the theory that recent warming occurs via warming of the troposphere by GHGs is at fault. A new theory of greenhouse effect, the semi-transparent theory proposed by Miskolczi, predicts that very little warming of the troposphere is possible due to atmospheric compensations (mainly reduction in humidity) that hold the optical depth constant. It emerges from the solution of energy conservation relationships that a constant optimal greenhouse effect maximizes efficiency of transfer of shortwave into longwave energy.
Figure from Douglass et al. 2007 “A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions” annotated to compare forcing of the GHG theory (red arrow) and stratospheric compensation theory (blue arrows).
The effects of the theories is shown on the annotated figure of Douglass et al. 2007. This figure shows the decadal rates of change in temperature for the average of the models, compared to the observations, at various heights in the atmosphere. The two show a very different pattern, with models predicting much higher rates of increase in the lapse rate of the tropical troposphere than observed.
The difference in the theories can be seen from the annotations. The rate of change in temperature is none other than heating, measured in W/m2, or ‘forcing’. Marked on the figures are the different points of maximum forcing for the two curves.
In the models, the main forcing is at 10km, with the lapse rate temperatures pushed up over the whole troposphere. This demonstrates a theory of warming due to ‘blocking’ of radiation in the troposphere, as embodied in the infinitely thick model of planetary atmospheres.
In the observations, the main forcing is at the surface and at the stratosphere, while the troposphere is almost constant. Temperature changes occur in a ’seesaw’ effect, with warming at surface the inverse of the cooling in the stratosphere. This relationship is the one of the main findings of the Miskolczi semi-infinite theory of planetary atmosphere, linking surface to outgoing radiation in an apparently novel effect called stratospheric compensation.
I have a note appearing in the AIG newsletter on stratospheric compensation, not greenhouse effect, as the possible mechanism for global warming. If correct, the recent warming must either be due to 1) warming of the surface due to albedo or emissivity changes, or 2) cooling of the surface due to depletion of ozone, or 3) a combination of both.
Thus the most reasonable interpretation of these observations reported in Douglass et al. 2007 is that the theory behind GCMs based in the infinitely-thick atmosphere is falsified, and stratospheric compensation based in a semi-transparent atmosphere theory is confirmed.
10 responses so far ↓
Is this theory better able to explain the lack of stratospheric cooling since 1996 that I find here?
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b370/gatemaster99/stratosphere.png
Andrew, the short answer is yes. I recently posted on the stratospheric stability since 1995 here. Note that surface temperatures have also been stable of late.
Thanks! I’ll follow this idea for sure!
Those interested in the subject of this post may wish to know that David Douglass has posted an extended comment on the Climate Audit site: see http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3058#comments .
Dr. Douglas concludes with this important observation:
‘Each modeling group may find comparison of its results to results from other groups interesting but a much more important comparison is to the observations. I would expect each group following the scientific method to do this. A corollary of this is that each group would have to say that some, perhaps most, models are wrong. It is in the interest of every group to do this.’
You have to wonder what climate modelers have accomplished in the last 10 years.
[...] So far this is a considerable achievement. There are a number of results that render the main issues of 10 years of climate modeling irrelevant: constant greenhouse effect, constant fractional cloud cover, to name only two. The busy-work of modelers is confirmed by the independent evaluation of models such as Douglass et al. 2007 and Koutsoyiannis et al. 2008, who conclude in an Assessment of the reliability of climate predictions based on comparisons with historical time series (M)odel outputs at annual and climatic (30‐year) scales are irrelevant with reality; also, they do not reproduce the natural overyear fluctuation and, generally, underestimate the variance and the Hurst coefficient of the observed series; none of the models proves to be systematically better than the others. [...]
[...] Niche Modeling » The Virial Theorem (Miskolczi Part 2) @ Douglass et al 2007 and Atmospheric Models [...]
[...] This just sketches out a model for the greenhouse effect based in the natural convection in the atmosphere. This could be further quantified in future posts. In particular I am thinking of contrasting this model with the ’steel shell’ model of Willis, and another model of greenhouse warming applied to ice beads called the solid-state greenhouse effect. This might help to show there are different types of greenhouse effect, and that the heat engine is the correct one for the Earth’s atmosphere. I think its not useful to dismiss a theory because it has a few loose ends. At some point I should go through all the ways conventional greenhouse theory is a frayed mess. Very often a theory starts out as speculative, but based on good correspondence with empirical observation, and is only firmed up decades later. Perhaps M’s theory is like this. The points of concern raised by Pat and Nick seem to be based in lack of good motivation for these relationships in the paper. At this stage, I can’t see that they constitute errors that undermine the theory. The atmospheric greenhouse effect as a heat engine might provide some of the motivation. It might also be argued that it is the greenhouse effect that drives the atmospheric heat engine and not the other way around. However, if there was no atmospheric heat engine driving warm air packets into the upper atmosphere, the atmosphere would like as a stable layer on the surface. Heat would transfer by thermal conduction, and temperature would be driven by the coefficient of conductivity of the air. This would be a situation like inversion conditions. This brings to mind the measurements of actual air temperature by Douglass et al 2007. The temperature profile of GCMs in the atmosphere due to increased greenhouse gases shows increased heating in the troposphere, kind of like a temperature profile of inversion conditions. The actual observations show increased surface temperatures, but little increases in tropospheric temperatures as predicted by Miskolczi’s theory. I wonder if anyone has made the connection between the profile of GCM’s and inversion conditions. This suggests GCM’s inadequately represent convection processes in the atmosphere. [...]
Dear admin, you wrote in the ‘Douglass at al…’ main text that
“I think the theory that recent warming occurs via warming of the troposphere by GHGs is at fault. A new theory of greenhouse effect, the SEMI-INFINITE theory proposed by Miskolczi, …”
Pls correct to SEMI-TRANSPARENT … this is the crucial point …
Thnx
Miklos
[...] M’s assessment of the situation would seem to be correct: As a consequence, Eq. (16) will underestimate A t , and Eq. (17) will largely overestimate G t (Miskolczi and Mlynczak, 2004). There were several attempts to resolve the above deficiencies by developing simple semi-empirical spectral models, see for example Weaver and Ramanathan (1995), but the fundamental theoretical problem was never resolved. The source of this inconsistency can be traced back to several decades ago, when the semi-infinite solution was first used to solve bounded atmosphere problems. About 80 years ago Milne stated: “Assumption of infinite thickness involves little or no loss of generality”, and later, in the same paper, he created the concept of a secondary (internal) boundary (Milne, 1922). He did not realize that the classic Eddington solution is not the general solution of the bounded atmosphere problem and he did not re-compute the appropriate integration constant. This is the reason why scientists have problems with a mysterious surface temperature discontinuity and unphysical solutions, as in Lorenz and McKay (2003). To accommodate the finite flux optical depth of the atmosphere and the existence of the transmitted radiative flux from the surface, the proper equations must be derived. Weaver and Ramanathan (1995) concur: Radiative equilibrium solutions are the starting point in our attempt to understand how the atmospheric composition governs the surface and atmospheric temperatures, and the greenhouse effect. The Schwarzschild analytical grey gas model (SGM) was the workhorse of such attempts. However, the solutions suffered from serious deficiencies when applied to Earth’s atmosphere and were abandoned about 3 decades ago in favor of more sophisticated computer models. However it remains to be shown that computer models (GCMs) have truly thrown off these deficiencies, or whether the poor, (or should I say abysmal) reproduction of atmospheric temperature profiles is due to the persistence of the semi-infinite model in the structure of the code. [...]
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