Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres by Miskolczi - a review

Since this controversial peer-reviewed paper was mentioned by Lubos Motl I have noticed increasing side-talk about it. It warrants more attention and effort to understand in depth.

While this is a mathematical paper, simple equations of radiative flux balance would present no challenge to people familiar with the field, although some of the concepts are new, such as the ‘virial theorem’. His previous paper, “The greenhouse effect and the spectral decomposition of the clear-sky terrestrial radiation (Miskolczi & Mlynczak 2004)“, provides a gentler introduction to the field of greenhouse spectral analysis, and is a better first read. As in this paper, he drops some real zingers. This paper redefines global warming. But not in a weird way. Of additional equations related to Kirchhoff’s law, constraining the atmosphere to be in thermal equilibrium with the surface, Miskolczi writes:

The physical interpretation of these two equations may fundamentally change the general concept of greenhouse theories.

The model suggests negligible sensitivity of 0.24C surface temperature increase to doubling CO2 increase.

For example, a hypothetical CO2 doubling will increase the optical depth (of the global average profile) by 0.0241, and the related increase in the surface temperature will be 0.24 K.

In understanding a theoretical model I like to look for the invariants, those quantities that remain stable despite perturbations of the system. In this model, optical depth emerges as the invariant. The optical depth, or opacity of the atmosphere to IR sits loosely in a kind of ’sweet spot’, making this another example of a niche model.

The system is locked to the optical depth because of the energy minimum principle prefers the radiative equilibrium configuration, but the energy conservation principle constrains the available thermal energy. The problem for example with the highly publicized simple ‘bucket analogy’ of greenhouse effect is the ignorance of the energy minimum principle (Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, et al., 2005).

The climate system makes regulatory adjustment to compensate for changes in CO2 with changes in humidity and clouds, in order to most efficiently convert short wave incoming solar energy, into long wave outgoing energy. The problem with radiative models used until now is a discontinuity between the atmospheric and surface temperatures. This violates Kirchhoff’s law, that two bodies in thermal equilibrium must have equal temperatures, and is one of the reasons for mysterious unphysical behavior of climate models. Incorporating this simple constraint introduces an energy minimization principle that makes runaway greenhouse warming impossible. This corrects a major deficiency in the current theory, which doesn’t explain why “runaway” greenhouse warming hasn’t happened in the Earth’s past.

I find the argument compelling that problems of instability of global climate models stem from inadequate constraints. Miskolczi also presents considerable empirical data for both the Earth and Mars in support of the superiority of his new model of planetary atmospheres. The view of the atmospheric system as an equilibrated system occupying a kind of niche also appeals, although the challenge of this theory will be to explain temperature variability at longer scales adequately.

Moreover, Miskolczi’s approach to explaining the climate system illustrates the difference between a layman and a physicist. The layman tends to need a simple analogy to understand systems, such as the ‘leaky bucket analogy‘ for explaining the greenhouse effect, due to limited numeracy. The physicist explains a system simply as the solution set of necessary conservation laws. But simple analogies can be misleading, and sometimes wrong.

The popular explanation of the greenhouse effect as the result of the LW atmospheric absorption of the surface radiation and the surface heating by the atmospheric downward radiation is incorrect, since the involved flux terms are always equal. The mechanism of the greenhouse effect may better be explained as the ability of a gravitationally bounded atmosphere to convert incoming to outgoing radiation in such a way that the equilibrium source function profile will assure the radiative balance, the validity of the Kirchhoff law, and the hydrostatic equilibrium.

If the model is correct, the real cause of recent warming is not related to the enhanced greenhouse effect, as the surface temperature can only change through changes in the energy input to the system. Perturbations of the system by gases, or volcanoes, should result in small, rapid temperature spikes, followed by a reversion to equilibrium conditions. This describes exactly the current lack of global warming despite increasing CO2.

Another reason I think this paper is worth the effort to understand, is the conclusions are supported by other research. Steven Schwartz of Brookhaven National Labs, here gave statistical evidence that the Earth’s response to carbon dioxide was grossly overstated and explained why current global climate models predict more warming than observed.

As well there is a very interesting back story in the DailyTech about how publication of the paper was blocked by NASA and the author resigned in protest. His story is similar to others’ treatment of controversial results.

NASA refused to release the results. Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple. “Money”, he tells DailyTech. Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research. Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year. Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, “Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results.”