jae writes:

These really were KT1997’s estimates for SU & EU. Miskolczi’s thesis is not that because they’ve got some things wrong, they’ve got everything wrong. What’s the problem with him noting in passing that he agrees with KT1997 on the SU & EU?

Because he doesn't note even in passing that KT97 completely disagreed with him on AA and ED. He quotes KT97 for EU but not for ED. You don't find that strange?

BTW, Barack Obama has never favored a carbon tax. Like John McCain, he favors a cap-and-trade scheme, which I think is a better way to go. And, of course, massive switching away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources of energy.

jae writes:

What I have been saying for over two years. I still think that the greenhouse effect is simply the ability of the atmosphere, soil, water, etc. to STORE energy.

What you think is wrong, pal.

Kinetic and potential energy = heat (temperature) at the surface. Period.

A meaningless equation if you try actually putting some numbers in.

It is modulated/regulated by water, just as Miskolczi (and Lindsen and Douglass) say.

Read my lips: Miskolczi and Lindzen both accept the greenhouse effect. Don't remember who Douglass is offhand.

We have a gradual warming, as the oceans gradually suck up and STORE heat from a brighter Sun since the LIA. That has probably been halted for awhile–or, horrors of horrors,–for a long time (scary scenario evidently not even considered by the politically inspired fanatical AGW freaks), since the Sun is now in a state of extreme calmness.

True, the mean solar constant has shown no trend over the past 50 years. Of course, that means it can't have been causing the sharp upturn in global warming of the last 30 years.

The AGW scare is almost certainly over. Oh, it is too bad that the economy interfered with the dreams of the communists among us. The state of the economy assures that it nothing will be done, regardless of all the posturing of the Al Gore and James Hansen-like morons. Even BO can’t pull off a tax of the kind contemplated by the idealistic, misguided, uninformed, elitist, hyprocrital environmental-extremists. LOL.

When all else fails, call your opponents communists.

jae writes:

temperature CAUSES the IR radiation; the IR radiation does not CAUSE the temperature. That is why the whole “climate science community” (whatever the hell THAT is) is so screwed up in their logic. The temperature of the atmosphere is regulated by convection/latent heat/clouds. NOT BY RADIATION. The radiation FOLLOWS the temperature and is a MEASURE of it. That’s why everyone gets so confused.

Absorption of IR radiation by any object, including a layer of atmosphere, absolutely DOES affect the temperature, jae. Ever touched an asphalt parking lot or road, maybe as a child, on a hot summer day? The sunlight was heating the asphalt. Similarly, IR radiation from the air can (and does) heat the ground. And IR from the ground can heat the air. To find out where the balance lies you have to a lot of modeling, or at least create a system of equations where the processes are highly simplified. But your idea that radiation can't influence temperature is just contradicted by thousands of years of human experience.

Jan Pompe writes:

Like Eddington-Milne equations work reasonably well for stars because of their size and they don’t depend on incident radiation but they don’t work for earth or any of the planets except perhaps jupiter.

Sure they do. Here's an example of my applying them to Venus, Earth and Mars. Just take out the hyphen:

http://www.geoci-ties.com/bpl1960/NewPlanetTemp...

jae writes:

BPL: Are you avoiding my question about Zagoni? Do you think the Hungarian meterology book, cited by Zagoni, is also wrong, when when it says Aa = Ed?

If it says that, it's wrong, yes. Are you sure that's what it says?

Aa has to have a certain associated temperature, and therefore it radiates at that temperature. That radiation is Ed. Doesn’t it make sense that Aa = kT^4 = Ed?

No, it doesn't. The atmosphere and the ground are at different temperatures, and the atmosphere radiates down as well as up. If AA were the only source of energy for the atmosphere, the sum of Eu and Ed would have to be the same amount, not Ed by itself.

Jan Pompe writes:

What’s more, it has been falsified. It fails the following empirical tests:

1. Gray infrared optical thickness τ of Venus.
2. τ of Jupiter.
3. τ of Saturn.
4. τ of Titan.
5. τ of Uranus.
6. τ of Neptune.
7. τ of early Earth (Faint Young Sun problem).
8. τ of early Mars (Faint Young Sun problem).
9. Existence of ice ages.

None of them are relevant

Hey! That's a new way to account for problems with your theory! Just declare that the problems don't matter!

Let me try and explain this to you, Jan. The standard greenhouse theory can account for ALL of those cases. Miskolczi's can't. That means the standard theory is a better theory. Do you really not understand this?

Jan Pompe writes:

Which part of “vapor pressure goes up with temperature” did you not understand?

The part where cooler air that has been warmed by the water can heat the water.

Huh? What? Come again? Why would it have to do that? What are you talking about?

Aerosols and flying mermaids can disturb the optical depth, but not the tendency to theoretical 1.8414 ?
Earth is not at the theoretical exact., so get out the telescopes, and spy the flying mermaids.

BPL # 364:

Your post suggests you haven't read the papers, note the plural, very carefully at all. Throughout both MM2004 & M2007 the inadequacies of the USST76 atmosphere are discussed often. The table values you refer to, from memory, are simply given for reference. By showing that the values they obtain from the TIGR radiosonde archive are completely different is one of the reasons Miskolczi considers the USST76 atmosphere as useless.

I'm not following you on the 'intellectual dishonesty' point.

The following quote is, I assume, what you're referring to?

In the average sense the atmosphere is very close to the radiative equilibrium, and, as a consequence, the zonal and global average upward emittance is about half of the average surface upward flux density. This fact is supported by the recent assessment of the Earth’s annual global mean energy budget by Kiehl and Trenberth (1997). Their estimates of S mean energy budget by EU are 390 and 195 W m -2, respectively.

These really were KT1997's estimates for SU & EU. Miskolczi's thesis is not that because they've got some things wrong, they've got everything wrong. What's the problem with him noting in passing that he agrees with KT1997 on the SU & EU?

BPL # 364:

I'm not following you here.

MM2004, p.

Steve #384 & Nick #382

compare Petty's and HARTCODE it seems that HARTCODE doesn't miss many lines does look like the satellite interferometer (?) might even have lower resolution.

Nick #383 looking at the above two do you think the omission of aerosols makes a huge difference? Does it really matter much when the intent is to measure possible influence of interaction between H2O and CO2 on τ ? What impact do you think it has on the results?

#384 Steve Short
"meaning of M’s tau in respect of aerosols"

Rreaching high above the tropopause.
Snowflakes and hail stones get thrown up
But percolate at a certain height

For aerosols the the pause is on the ground
tau for clods, hail, snowflakes, ballons, space shuttle ?
More equations, please.

Per Zagony: (4) AA=ED which is a consequence of Kirchhoff’s law
"enclosed radiation" is the key comcept
"function of temperature only"
http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Kirchhoff.htm

However, radiation does leak in and out, in equal amounts, balancing.

I agree. At the moment I am getting seriously screwed up on the issue of the meaning of M's tau in respect of aerosols.

Need to take a red wine break I think.

Steve #380
Nick Stokes here. Like Eli, its seems I need a nom de guerre to get past the spam filter.

All I'm saying in #304 is that the claims here that tau is stable are based not on measured radiation but on LBL calculations with gas concentration input. So it can't tell you about anything like aerosols which were not part of the data supplied.

Jae #379
Intermediate range of frequency. This goes back to my http://climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=... CA post, and the Fig 8.2b (scroll down), which I colored in. It's a frequency plot of Ed, and the light blue curve is the ground upward radiance Sg. In part of the spectrum, marked with a red line, they are equal. That's where, as Jan says. IR is rapidly absorbed. In the IR window region (eg vertical blue line) Sg, Ed and Aa are all zero. The intermediate range is the jagged stuff in between, which carries a lot of the IR flux, and is the part that is sensitive to GHG concentration. Radiation here travels on average a considerable distance before absorption (and a fraction gets through without absorption). Part of the downward radiation comes from higher colder levels.

IR causes and is caused by temperature. Warm things radiate, and radiation warms.

jae #379
Intermediate range of frequency. This goes back to my http://climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=... CA post, and the Fig 8.2b (scroll down), which I colored in. It's a frequency plot of Ed, and the light blue curve is the ground upward radiance Sg (or Su). In part of the spectrum, marked with a red line, they are equal, and equal to Aa. That's where, as Jan says. IR is rapidly absorbed. In the IR window region (eg vertical blue line) Sg, Ed and Aa are all zero. The intermediate range is the jagged stuff in between, which carries a lot of the IR flux, and is the part that is sensitive to GHG concentration. Radiation here travels on average a considerable distance before absorption (and a fraction gets through without absorption). Part of the downward radiation comes from higher colder levels.

IR both follows and causes temperature - it warms things.

What I have been saying for over two years. I still think that the greenhouse effect is simply the ability of the atmosphere, soil, water, etc. to STORE energy. Kinetic and potential energy = heat (temperature) at the surface. Period. It is modulated/regulated by water, just as Miskolczi (and Lindsen and Douglass) say. We have a gradual warming, as the oceans gradually suck up and STORE heat from a brighter Sun since the LIA. That has probably been halted for awhile--or, horrors of horrors,--for a long time (scary scenario evidently not even considered by the politically inspired fanatical AGW freaks), since the Sun is now in a state of extreme calmness. The AGW scare is almost certainly over. Oh, it is too bad that the economy interfered with the dreams of the communists among us. The state of the economy assures that it nothing will be done, regardless of all the posturing of the Al Gore and James Hansen-like morons. Even BO can't pull off a tax of the kind contemplated by the idealistic, misguided, uninformed, elitist, hyprocrital environmental-extremists. LOL.

Nick Stokes#304

"Well it might. But there is no evidence that tau is stable, based on actual measurements of radiation. "

This is presumably also equivalent to saying (after Ozawa and Ohmura, 1997; Lorenz and McKay, 2003 etc) that the convective flux is free to vary with tau?

nick:

"But there is something in your logic. It’s true that for frequencies totally blocked by GHG, Aa=Sg (all radiation is absorbed), and the back radiation comes from air at about the same T as the ground. So in that frequency range, Aa=Ed. In the IR window where IR is not absorbed, then indeed Aa=Ed=0. It’s in the intermediate range where there is a discrepancy between Aa and Ed, and that’s important, because it is where the greenhouse effect is operative."

I don't understand that. Could you explain it more simply? Intermediate range of what? I think the essence of all this radiation cartoon nonsense is that the cart is being put before the horse (it's bassakwards): temperature CAUSES the IR radiation; the IR radiation does not CAUSE the temperature. That is why the whole "climate science community" (whatever the hell THAT is) is so screwed up in their logic. The temperature of the atmosphere is regulated by convection/latent heat/clouds. NOT BY RADIATION. The radiation FOLLOWS the temperature and is a MEASURE of it. That's why everyone gets so confused.

Aa is at atmosphere absorbed from the surface.
Near the surface, it is warmer, so lines are broader
What does get by and captured, is thermalized higher above, from the fringes to stronger lines. In both cases waiting for the convection conveyor.

Then there is the part of F - atmosphere absorbed from above

All adds up to Zagoni: (4) Aa=Ed
Per simulations (HARTCODE)

"No, what you are talking about is the first part of the spectrum that I mentioned, where there is almost total blockage."

Yes Nick that is what's relevant what passes through isn't. Do you think you are able to understand this?

$$S_G \neq A_A$$ in a semi transparent finite atmosphere.

We don't experience the sort of pressures on earth that turns the atmosphere black/grey deep in the atmosphere of the sun.

Jan #375
No, what you are talking about is the first part of the spectrum that I mentioned, where there is almost total blockage. There Sg=Aa=Ed, and there is very little nett IR transport. About 20% of total IR goes through the IR window, with little absorption. The remaining outgoing flux is carried by intermediate wavelengths, where Sg>Ed (the difference is the power carried), and the extinction length ranges from hundreds of metres to several kilometres.

Nick #374

And Ed, the back radiation, comes from colder air at higher altitudes, so Ed<Sg.

With extinction occurring over a distance of ~10 - 15m just how much higher is that back radiation coming from?

jae #371
I'll come in on this, because I'm glad to see you talking sense about back radiation. Zagoni's claim is a beatup. There's no sign that the textbook says anything about Aa=Ed as an operative rule.. They just have a K&T style cartoon in which Aa=110, Ed=106 (in % terms).

But there is something in your logic. It's true that for frequencies totally blocked by GHG, Aa=Sg (all radiation is absorbed), and the back radiation comes from air at about the same T as the ground. So in that frequency range, Aa=Ed. In the IR window where IR is not absorbed, then indeed Aa=Ed=0. It's in the intermediate range where there is a discrepancy between Aa and Ed, and that's important, because it is where the greenhouse effect is operative.

So at a frequency where IR is absorbed over a characteristic length of say a few km, then Aa<Sg, because not all is absorbed (Sg=ground radiation). And Ed, the back radiation, comes from colder air at higher altitudes, so Ed<Sg. Aa and Ed could be approximately equal, but there's no reason for this to be exact.

Bottom line - there is reason for Aa and Ed to be of comparable size. But it's the marginal region which determines how effective GHG's are, and also the difference between total Aa and Ed.

jae #371

Folks have been asking that question for a LONG time, and we never see a detailed answer. I think it just comes from computer models, not physics.

computer models don't have to obey the laws of physics they rely on the skill of the programmer to get it right if he doesn't you have no real way of knowing unless you specifically test for it. The same is true when developing equations that describe physical behaviour.

Like Eddington-Milne equations work reasonably well for stars because of their size and they don't depend on incident radiation but they don't work for earth or any of the planets except perhaps jupiter.

Rabbit Reality:
"at no point is the water vapor decoupled from the atmosphere"

Hail and rain percolating above. Vapor removed. ground pressure not.

Flying pink pigs, with lipstick, can see the reality of the hailstones. Alas, rabbits are limited to jumping high. But ,an occasional hailstone bump on the head, can prompt to the safety of the burrow.

Jan:

"Oh how? Please tell us all how you get heat to go from cool to warm with out doing work on it?"

Folks have been asking that question for a LONG time, and we never see a detailed answer. I think it just comes from computer models, not physics.

BPL: Are you avoiding my question about Zagoni? Do you think the Hungarian meterology book, cited by Zagoni, is also wrong, when when it says Aa = Ed? Aa has to have a certain associated temperature, and therefore it radiates at that temperature. That radiation is Ed. Doesn't it make sense that Aa = kT^4 = Ed?

franko #354

Any input function can be represented by a sequence of impulses. The paper gives the transfer functions. So, day, night, seasons can be modeled. Your resistive model can be added to via complex numbers. Even energy limited active devices etc.

I agree but let's take it one step at a time.

Buggsy #368

You object to chewing gum and walking?

I can even chew gum when I'm sleeping but relevance?

at no point is the water vapor decoupled from the atmosphere around it or the IR from above or below or at the same level which will be very happy to warm it

Oh how? Please tell us all how you get heat to go from cool to warm with out doing work on it?

Jan:

Which part of “vapor pressure goes up with temperature” did you not understand?

The part where cooler air that has been warmed by the water can heat the water.

You object to chewing gum and walking? at no point is the water vapor decoupled from the atmosphere around it or the IR from above or below or at the same level which will be very happy to warm it

BPL #363

What’s more, it has been falsified. It fails the following empirical tests:

1. Gray infrared optical thickness τ of Venus.
2. τ of Jupiter.
3. τ of Saturn.
4. τ of Titan.
5. τ of Uranus.
6. τ of Neptune.
7. τ of early Earth (Faint Young Sun problem).
8. τ of early Mars (Faint Young Sun problem).
9. Existence of ice ages.

None of them are relevant

Whoever wrote this

There is no reference to cloud effects or cloudy skies in MM2004 or M2007.

didn't get as far as M7-pp:19. and skipped over pages 5 & 8.

Which part of “vapor pressure goes up with temperature” did you not understand?

The part where cooler air that has been warmed by the water can heat the water.

Let me specify, for those who haven't read it, that KT97 gives 350 W/m^2 for AA and 324 W/m^2 for ED.

Has anyone noticed that Miskolczi's theory doesn't support the existence of clouds? There is no reference to cloud effects or cloudy skies in MM2004 or M2007. He's using a semigray energy budget for the Earth to refute greenhouse calculations made using RCMs that account for greenhouse gases, clouds, and aerosols.

Something kept nagging me about MM2004 (thanks, Alex!), so I looked at it again. M&M have (in their Table 1) ED = 290.1 W/m^2 and AA = 306.6 W/m^2 for the 1976 USSA. Then later, for their own figures, they get 311.4 and 311.9. What's more, this is "as a consequence of Kirchhoff's Law," yet another example of Miskolczi clearly not getting what Kirchhoff's Law is all about.

But here's something a lot more fun -- just before (p. 232) they give their estimates for ED and AA, they quote -- guess who? KIEHL AND TRENBERTH 1997 for SU and EU! They quote KT97 for the upward flux, then compute their own figure for the downward flux, never mentioning that KT97 got completely different figures! Can you say "intellectual dishonesty?" I knew you could!

Alex Harvey notes, correctly:

Miskolczi’s theory, on the hand, is quite falsifiable.

What's more, it has been falsified. It fails the following empirical tests:

1. Gray infrared optical thickness τ of Venus.
2. τ of Jupiter.
3. τ of Saturn.
4. τ of Titan.
5. τ of Uranus.
6. τ of Neptune.
7. τ of early Earth (Faint Young Sun problem).
8. τ of early Mars (Faint Young Sun problem).
9. Existence of ice ages.

Alex Harvey quotes MM2004:

Based on our data set, the global average clear-sky downward atmospheric emittance is 311.4 W m–2, while the global average of the absorbed radiation by the clear-sky is 311.9 W m–2. This equivalence – for the highly variable atmospheric emission spectra and for global scale – was not shown before with such a high numerical accuracy.

"Was not shown before" = "everybody before us got a different answer." (And maybe everybody after them as well?) Note, too, that clear-sky conditions aren't usual on Earth; mean global cloud cover averages 62%. What figures did they get for cloudy? You have to know both figures before you can declare that AA = ED.

Jan Pompe posts:

BPL #333

That’s why I mentioned relative humidity.

In that case you don’t have an answer for jae’s:

Can you explain with reasonable equations, just how we can have a “positive water vapor feedback?”

Which part of "vapor pressure goes up with temperature" did you not understand?

Pedantics hinder the efforts to stop Runaway CO2 Taxing. If you disagree, correct, or provide an alternative.

Alex #357

I’m sorry, WHO CARES?

Well, it may not matter much, because both sources are pretty inaccessible by normal means - I couldn't readily find the latter paper on the Idojaras site.
I raised it mainly because you had used the discrepancy to berate Eli for not reading MM2004, when he was perfectly right. I have myself now read MR1998, since it has become available.

Nick # 356:

The references given here are:

F. Miskolczi, Időjárás, 2007, 111, No. 1 :
Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary tmospheres.

F. Miskolczi and M. Mlynczak, Időjárás, 2004, 108, No. 4 :
The greenhouse effect and the spectral decomposition of the clear-sky
terrestrial radiation.

F. Miskolczi, Időjárás, 2001, 105, No. 4 :
High accuracy skin temperature retrieval from spectral data of multi-channel
IR imagers.

http://www.heartland.org/bin/media/newyork08/Po...

There's probably a story to go with what happened to Rizzi's authorship, but that's a good pickup, Nick. Yes, it's longer, very interesting, indeed. I wonder what effect those four extra pages are going to have on global warming and the question of whether or not the Rudd Government really should press ahead with the 2010 start date for the ETS.

Nick:

I'm sorry, WHO CARES?

The damned thing is available for anyone who wants to read it, if they want to read it. This won't include you, because you don't want to read it. The only way to get you to read a thing is for me to quote the relevant sections to you verbatim. And even then, there's no point, because a few months later you'll just pretend it never happened. You just want everyone to believe that your famous rebuttal that still appears on the RealClimate Wiki is the Last Word On The Matter. Isn't that right? That's all this is about to you.

You are pretending to establish 'unfalsifiability.' The most famous example of an unfalsifiable theory is Freud's theory of psychoanalysis. And you know what, Nick? That was also one of the clearest, most beautifully written theories in the history of science. Freud's prose is marvellous, and you'll love this, he references all his sources. The trouble is, his theory is UNFALSIFIABLE. Do you even understand what that means, Nick? Miskolczi's theory, on the hand, is quite falsifiable. If something is unclear, you just ask! Witness Sam Urbinto's very sensible advice on this at ClimateAudit.

Talking to you is like talking to the various juniors I've had to train in my IT career. There's never any documentation, and instead of doing what they're supposed to do, and trying to figure things out for themselves, they'll often sit at their desks & do nothing & complain, "Where's the documentation?" Then they'll ask stupid questions because they can't be bothered reading the documentation even after you've found it for them. These objections are just irrelevant, time-wasting excuses.

Until you apologise for telling the world for months that there was no detail given for the profile selection before you had actually bothered to read the paper that gave the profile selection strategy, I am afraid that I, for one, have lost all respect for you.

Alex #353

I suppose I’ll have to respond to this latest piece of misinformation though: MR1998 is certainly a published paper, and if you had actually read all the material like the rest of us who are genuinely interested in the theory, you would know this already.

No, you're dead wrong again. MR 1998, as referenced in MM2004 and as supplied by Zagoni, is a conference paper referenced thus:
Miskolczi, F. and Rizzi, R., 1998: High accuracy skin temperature retrieval using spectral measurements of multi-channel imagers. International Radiation Symposium 1998, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
The abstract you have linked to has a similar title, but Rizzo is no longer an author, and it appeared in Idojaras 2001-2. It has grown from 4 to 8 pages, but may well have similar contents.

Only the paranoid bunnies survive.
Others, hare today, ghoulash tomorrow

#344 Jan Pompe
Any input function can be represented by a sequence of impulses. The paper gives the transfer functions. So, day, night, seasons can be modeled. Your resistive model can be added to via complex numbers. Even energy limited active devices etc.

Your laptop webcam, used to measure instantenous optical depth ? changes as a local weather predictor ?

Eli # 348:

Since you've brought your charged objections out from ClimateAudit back to Niche Modeling, whose job is it to rewrite my still-unanswered responses -- mine or yours?

I suppose I'll have to respond to this latest piece of misinformation though: MR1998 is certainly a published paper, and if you had actually read all the material like the rest of us who are genuinely interested in the theory, you would know this already.

Here it is:

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsid...

ABSTRACT:

The increasing number of IR spectral channels of recent satellite imagers implies the more accurate retrieval of surface skin temperature. In this paper the theoretical accuracy limits as a function of channel numbers, viewing angles and noise equivalent radiances have been studied. Based on LBL computations of the channel radiances regression type relationships have been established between the brightness temperatures and the skin-temperatures. In this study model filter functions of the 7 IR channels of the GLI imager of the ADEOS-I have been used with a large set of temperature profiles. The global and seasonal distribution of temperature profiles were considered by groups of climatologically representative temperature profiles. Standard singular value decomposition program package was used to solve the multivariable linear regression problem. Results show that the accuracy limits of the skin temperature retrievals are depending mainly on the noise equivalent radiances and up to around 60 degree viewing angles remaining in the range of 0.1-0.2 K.

I feel honored to have such a celebrity posting at my site. Sorry about the snafu.

Dave # 350:

However, it's good that Bugs has finally revealed his true identity. :D

A number of Eli's posts were caught by Askimet, the spam filter. I don't moderate posts, but it is cached and filtered. If anyone does have problems just let me know using the contact form above.

It's kind of amusing to figure out what Dave has done. Bye Dave

A few last words, as Eli was saying over at the Climate Audit Discussion list, Niche Modelling appears again to be Rabett hostile, so this is more or less an answer to things going on there as well as here and a ta ta. The Rabett asked

Alex appears to have finally read the Miskolczi papers and noted that the reference is to the 1983 TIGR. Problem is that there are three subsequent versions. TIGR 3 for example, has a lot higher tropical humidity than TIGR 2. There is not so much difference between TIGR 2000 and TIGR 3 in the trop.

http://ara.lmd.polytechnique.fr/htdocs- ... IGR.html#2

More humidity means higher optical depth, and the difference is ~a factor of two in the average humidity in the tropics from the link, so this is no small correction. In other words, Miskolczi appears to have selected from a dry and unrepresentative sample of measurements.

This goes to Nick's point over there and here, when people give vague references you can't tell what they are talking about, and after the twentieth time they avoid being precise enough for you to find the information the only rational conclusion is that they are dissembling.

To which Alex quickly replied

alexharv074 wrote:Here you are, boys. The paper, MR1998. Zagoni has just put it up there for you.

http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Miskolczi/RS_Madison_...

So Zagoni just put up what looks like a conference paper, not generally available, but OK, it is TIGR 2 (check the number of profiles). The tropical dry one.

Bye Dave

As Eli was saying over at the Climate Audit Discussion list, Niche Modelling appears again to be Rabett hostile, so this is more or less an answer to things going on there as well as here and a ta ta. The Rabett asked

Alex appears to have finally read the Miskolczi papers and noted that the reference is to the 1983 TIGR. Problem is that there are three subsequent versions. TIGR 3 for example, has a lot higher tropical humidity than TIGR 2. There is not so much difference between TIGR 2000 and TIGR 3 in the trop.

http://ara.lmd.polytechnique.fr/htdocs- ... IGR.html#2

More humidity means higher optical depth, and the difference is ~a factor of two in the average humidity in the tropics from the link, so this is no small correction. In other words, Miskolczi appears to have selected from a dry and unrepresentative sample of measurements.

This goes to Nick's point over there and here, when people give vague references you can't tell what they are talking about, and after the twentieth time they avoid being precise enough for you to find the information the only rational conclusion is that they are dissembling.

To which Alex quickly replied

alexharv074 wrote:Here you are, boys. The paper, MR1998. Zagoni has just put it up there for you.

http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Miskolczi/RS_Madison_...

So Zagoni just put up what looks like a conference paper, not generally available, but OK, it is TIGR 2 (check the number of profiles). The tropical dry one.

Bye Dave

franko #341

Maximum power transfer is at complex conjugate impedance. If you substutute complex numbers, can you get time varying insight ? Day and night — seasons ?

You probably have a sound idea here but I'm rather disinclined to drive myself nuts with all the different time constants involved so at least for the time being I'll stick with static type models.

How far can you strech a minimalistic rubber band ?

About half the body length of an inch worm.

BPL # 335:

What the paper says:

Based on our data set, the global average clear-sky downward atmospheric
emittance is 311.4 W m–2, while the global average of the absorbed
radiation by the clear-sky is 311.9 W m–2. This equivalence – for the highly
variable atmospheric emission spectra and for global scale – was not shown
before with such a high numerical accuracy.

MM2004, p. 232. You might then like to read pp. 210-232 to see their method. You would need to read MR1998 for the TIGR profile selection strategy.

BPL # 335:

On Anthony Watts' blog, on 05:12:07 12th August, 2008, Neal J. King & I were discussing MM2004. In your usual, charming manner, you wrote:

[Alex is] wrong, of course, and if this is what Miskolczi is saying there’s another mistake by the latter.

"If this is what Miskolczi is saying," implies, "I have not read the paper you're discussing; nor do I care to, but if Miskolczi really said that it proves ." No? The remainder of your comments on that thread also implied that you had not read the paper we were discussing, and anyone may go to the thread and read it to confirm that I am not lying. I then asked you, okay, how about you write a second paper, 'Why Miskolczi & Mlynczak (2004) were WRONG!" to go with the little refutation of M2007 paper of yours. You didn't respond. To the day, you have not on a single occasion referred to any content in MM2004, and to the day, you continue to refer to 'Miskolczi's paper' in the singular (indeed in this very post). For this reason, I stated, correctly, I should say, that there is no evidence that you have read MM2004.

I recall reading, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." Look that one up, too, whilst you're at it.

#252 Jan Pompe
"Algebra maybe but definitely not simple linear like ohms law"

Maximum power transfer is at complex conjugate impedance. If you substutute complex numbers, can you get time varying insight ? Day and night -- seasons ? How far can you strech a minimalistic rubber band ?

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin:
"embroil my agency in a controversy in fight that we don't have a dog"

Pat Cassen: " As Pascal’s imaginary dog said, I think not."

Dogs , with great insight, actually understand this ?
Can only bark, but cannot stop Runaway Global CO2 Taxation

Calling on all the hares, rabbits, warewolves, ice cube counters, even ordinary mongrel dogs; Once the CO2 is sequistered, all are dead.

Miskolczi theory leads to certain results.
What results do the other theories lead to ?

BPL:

". Miskolczi doesn’t present ANY “empirical finding” that AA = ED. You’re either making that up; or you, yourself, have not read the paper; or you don’t understand what an “empirical finding” is. Empirical refers to evidence, observations or experiments. It’s opposed to theoretical, which Miskolczi’s paper largely was."

Have you really read the links to M and Zagoni in these discussions? Evidently the Hungarian meterologists have been saying Aa = Ed for over 30 years! e.g., Rudolf Czelnai: Introduction to meteorology I., 1979., p90., fig45. See here for a summary of the empirical evidence: http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/MET-ZM_v08c_eng.pdf
pp. 47ff.

Jan #332
Yes, for every circle, there is a black dot, about 4% to the right. It's actually easier to count the black dots.

BPL #335

Miskolczi doesn’t present ANY “empirical finding” that AA = ED.

It's in figure 2. Are you sure you have read the paper? Perhaps you just haven't understood it.

BPL #333

That’s why I mentioned relative humidity.

In that case you don't have an answer for jae's:

Can you explain with reasonable equations, just how we can have a “positive water vapor feedback?”

Now you need to explain and show with equations how the heat that the atmosphere has absorbed from the water and warmed the atmosphere while it cooled the water can now be returned to the water to evaporate it.

Alex Harvey writes, in his usual, charming manner:

What would be interesting, what might really move this discussion forward, is for you to look at the MM2004 — where the empirical finding AA = ED was actually presented — and show us what Miskolczi did wrong THERE. When we discussed this on Anthony Watts’ blog, it was clear that you had not read the MM2004 paper at all. I still have not seen any evidence that you have read it since then.

1. I have read it. Your calling me a liar is ad hominem as well as incorrect. It just points out that you have no idea how to debate.

2. Miskolczi doesn't present ANY "empirical finding" that AA = ED. You're either making that up; or you, yourself, have not read the paper; or you don't understand what an "empirical finding" is. Empirical refers to evidence, observations or experiments. It's opposed to theoretical, which Miskolczi's paper largely was.

Steve Short writes:

Total anthropogenic emissions of carbon-based aerosols have always far outweighed sulfur-based aerosols, especially since the widespread adoption of SOx and NOx emissions controls in North America and Europe decades ago.

How high do "carbon-based aerosols" get? How high do sulfur oxide aerosols get?

Aerosols affect the climate differently depending on what altitude they are at, what their albedo is, the distribution of particle sizes, etc. They can't all be lumped together. A global dust storm on Mars cools the surface (e.g. 1971), but low-level dust during "clear" days warms the surface. You really can't tell what's going to happen until you apply the equation of radiative transfer with scattering accounted for.

Jan Pompe writes:

Here “where dP/dT is the first time derivative”

it’s a time derivative? Maybe you just don’t understand the physics behind the equations.

You got me. I used the wrong term. It should have read simply "first derivative." My bad.

The relation actually is \frac {dP} {dT} = \frac L {T \Delta V} there is incidentally no law that states that saturation vapour pressure must be reached or maintained in an open system. If there was and it did then it would be rain without ceasing over ocean and coastal regions and we definitely don’t see that.

That's why I mentioned relative humidity.

Nick #331

The open circles in Fig 2 are supposed to correspond but there seem to be fewer; in fact, when I tried to count (not easy because of overlap) there seemed to be a lot less than 228.

Didn't you notice when you were trying to count them that the circles have the same pattern as the black dots shifted left?

#330 Alex
Re MM2004, I'll take the opportunity to note one thing I saw when comparing. Fig 20 in that paper corresponds to Fig 2 of M2007, but because the axis in Fig 20 is temperature, the fit is a T^4 type curve. Still, stretching the x-axis should create a match. But Fig 20 seems to have a lot more dots, and more scattered. This is particularly obvious at the top right end. The open circles in Fig 2 are supposed to correspond but there seem to be fewer; in fact, when I tried to count (not easy because of overlap) there seemed to be a lot less than 228.

There may be an issue with different TIGR versions.

BPL:

What would be interesting, what might really move this discussion forward, is for you to look at the MM2004 -- where the empirical finding AA = ED was actually presented -- and show us what Miskolczi did wrong THERE. When we discussed this on Anthony Watts' blog, it was clear that you had not read the MM2004 paper at all. I still have not seen any evidence that you have read it since then.

I haven't had a lot of good to say about you, largely because your tone doesn't call for it. But I'll have to say, unlike Nick Stokes & Eli Rabbett, you have at least demonstrated a consistent, if in my opinion, completely circular, position throughout that is at least about more than just your own face-saving.

So, here's the challenge: download the MM2004 paper, as well as the MR1998 paper, it's required reading, and show us what Miskolczi did wrong. If it's impossible to know what he did wrong because there is a lack of detail at some point, please say exactly what you would need to know so that we could ask Ferenc to clarify.

How does that sound?

Funny, I'd guessed he never had done.....

Steve #326

Standard theory? Clausius-Clapeyron constraint on rainout?

With favorable atmospheric flow conditions, the analyzed dependency is about +15 % increase per degree temperature rise, thereby exceeding the Clausius-Clapeyron relation which is often used as a temperature related constraint on changes in extreme precipitation by approximately a factor of two.

On must then wonder how well C-C relation holds outside of a pressure vessel where volume expanded by pressure is constrained by only by gravity instead of rigid walls.

Well, on the way out the door Eli can post what he wanted to and finally put over at the Climate Audit Bulletin Board

Niche Modelling appears again to be Rabett hostile, so this is more or less an answer to things going on there as well as here

Alex appears to have finally read the Miskolczi papers and noted that the reference is to the 1983 TIGR. Problem is that there are three subsequent versions. TIGR 3 for example, has a lot higher tropical humidity than TIGR 2. There is not so much difference between TIGR 2000 and TIGR 3 in the trop.

http://ara.lmd.polytechnique.fr/htdocs- ... IGR.html#2

More humidity means higher optical depth, and the difference is ~a factor of two in the average humidity in the tropics from the link, so this is no small correction. In other words, Miskolczi appears to have selected from a dry and unrepresentative sample of measurements.

This goes to Nick's point over there and here, when people give vague references you can't tell what they are talking about, and after the twentieth time they avoid being precise enough for you to find the information the only rational conclusion is that they are dissembling. And yes, LBL codes themselves are clear sky calculations.

And after a short while, this appeared from Alex

alexharv074 wrote:Here you are, boys. The paper, MR1998. Zagoni has just put it up there for you. http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Miskolczi/RS_ ... n_1999.pdf.

So OK, it is TIGR 2 (check the number of profiles). The tropical dry one.

Bye Dave

Funny, Eli Rabett does not work. . . .

Hmmm

Standard theory? Clausius-Clapeyron constraint on rainout?

http://www.knmi.nl/publications/showAbstract.ph...

North Sea, Baltic Sea and Bay of Biscay all coastal shelf areas of high cyanobacterial primary productivity with intense generation of organic and sulfur-based biogenic aerosols (not to mention dense shipping lanes generating sulfur-based aerosols) and thus high AOT.

Nick #324

Your “integral equation” makes no sense (try explaining the various meanings of s).

The meaning of s is immaterial try evaluating the integral.

Scientist Rob says no connection.

That would be Politician Rob

Worthy citizen Noor believes AA=ED

AD hominem Alert Noor has a qualifications and a track record that show that he is quite an effective scientist.

Jan #309
Your "integral equation" makes no sense (try explaining the various meanings of s). But it doesn't seem to be connected to anything anyway.
I'd criticise other things, but come back to this central puzzle. What have Rob's results to do with AA=ED? Scientist Rob says no connection. Worthy citizen Noor believes AA=ED, but for some theoretical reason. As far as I can see, the notion that there are Dutch experimental results affirming AA=ED originated on this blog.

BPL#313

"Both you and Steve Short have “secondary organic aerosols” conflated with “aerosols” in general. The anthropogenic aerosols that most affect the climate are not organic; their major ingredient is oxides of sulfur."

Strawmen/BS Alert

Total anthropogenic emissions of carbon-based aerosols have always far outweighed sulfur-based aerosols, especially since the widespread adoption of SOx and NOx emissions controls in North America and Europe decades ago. Most remaining sulfur-based emissions come from China and world shipping but still do no match total carbon-based aerosol emissions.

Marine biogenic emissions of sulfur-based aerosols (sulfate from DMS) outweigh terrestrial anthropogenic sulfur-based emissions.

Terrestrial and marine carbon-based emissions both primary and secondary far outweigh anthropogenic carbon-based emissions (both primary and secondary).

Recent studies (last 4 - 5 years) on the magnitude and nature of organic carbon-based emissions both primary and secondary (largely biogenic) are revealing that these most probably affect climate (via cloud-related affects) more than sulfur-based emissions. I (and Nick) have given references. Several good reviews now available. There have been major conferences on this with another upcoming in January 2009.

Barton Paul Levenson
(4) Aa=Ed -- Incorrect approximation ?
Please do a derivation
Using radiated = 1/3 internal flux
Molecular collision modelling of conduction

BPL #

But to really understand what’s going on you need to know the math.

From what I've seen you seem somewhat challenged in that department.

Here "where dP/dT is the first time derivative"

it's a time derivative? Maybe you just don't understand the physics behind the equations.

The relation actually is $$\frac {dP} {dT} = \frac L {T \Delta V}$$ there is incidentally no law that states that saturation vapour pressure must be reached or maintained in an open system. If there was and it did then it would be rain without ceasing over ocean and coastal regions and we definitely don't see that.

BPL: Perhaps you can answer the questions that got me interested in all this crap: Why are July temperatures (average and max) always higher in the desert than in humid areas at the same latitude and elevation, when GHG levels are about 4 times higher in the humid areas? Why don't temperatures in the tropics ever get much above 33 C?

BTW, I am just a dumb chemist, so I certainly should be able to learn from you about the climate.

BPL:

"Sure. The Clausius-Clapeyron law is:

dP/dT = L/δV"

This explains how water vapor gets in the air (and out), but it has nothing to do with "positive water vapor feedback," relative to GHG heating. Most importantly, it ignores clouds!

Some math. It seems to me that Aa = kT^4 = Ed.

jae posts:

Boy, BPL you post like you absolutely know EVERYTHING.

Nope. I don't know anything close to EVERYTHING; only God knows that. But I know a bit about atmosphere physics because -- note this very carefully -- I studied atmosphere physics for years. You can do the same. Start with J.T. Houghton's "The Physics of Atmospheres" (I did) or G.W. Petty's "A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation." If the math is too hard, there are non-mathematical explanations of AGW in S.T. Philander's "Is the Temperature Rising?" and S. Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming." But to really understand what's going on you need to know the math.

jae writes:

Can you explain with reasonable equations, just how we can have a “positive water vapor feedback?”

Sure. The Clausius-Clapeyron law is:

dP/dT = L/δV

where dP/dT is the first time derivative of vapor pressure with respect to temperature, L is the latent heat of a volatile substance, and δV is the volume change of the phase transition. For water vapor the transition is, of course, from water (or ice) to water vapor, so the equation will give a different answer depending on whether we are discussing evaporation or sublimation.

An approximation for Earth conditions that is somewhat easier to use is

P = 611.18 * exp((Lw / Rw) * ((1.0 / T0) - (1.0 / T)))

where Lw is the latent heat, Rw is the gas constant for water vapor (R / MWv), To is reference temperature and T is temperature of interest.

You can see that the vapor pressure goes up exponentially with temperature, which is why the Venus ocean evaporated and the hydrogen was lost to space. Of course P is the saturation vapor pressure, to get the actual figure you need to multiply by the relative humidity.

I didn’t think so.

See above.

As I see it, the ONLY comprehensive theory of the “greenhouse effect” has been provided by Miskolczi.

This is simply an admission of vast ignorance. We had a comprehensive theory of the greenhouse effect in the 1890s. Rupert Wildt applied it to Venus in 1942. For the standard theory, crack a book. J.T. Houghton's "The Physics of Atmospheres" is a good place to start; see especially chapters 2, 4 and 7.

And it is the ONLY theory that agrees with the empirical observations.

But it doesn't. It gives approximate answers for present conditions on Earth and Mars and fails miserably when conditions change a bit. It doesn't get Venus right at all, ditto Titan or the giant planets. And the standard theory does give correct answers for those. As I've said before, it also can't account for ice ages or the Faint Young Sun problem.

Boy, BPL you post like you absolutely know EVERYTHING. If that's true, I can easily learn whatever I need to know by simply asking you! However, based on the above misstatements, I don't think you understand what Miskolczi is saying at all. For one thing Eu occurs in the upper part of the atmosphere. Have you read his papers and Zagoni's explanations? Do you have any empirical data to back up your bastardized versions of M's equations? M does.

BPL #313

50 Tg C per year a piddling amount compared to our 2.5 Tg/year I’m sure.

Both you and Steve Short have “secondary organic aerosols” conflated with “aerosols” in general.

When you start taking my jokes seriously I start to worry about your sanity. In any case no-one is conflating anything Steve makes it quite clear that he is comparing VOCs with VOCs apples with apples.

Jan writes:

50 Tg C per year a piddling amount compared to our 2.5 Tg/year I’m sure.

Both you and Steve Short have "secondary organic aerosols" conflated with "aerosols" in general. The anthropogenic aerosols that most affect the climate are not organic; their major ingredient is oxides of sulfur.

jae writes:

Aa results in a certain temperature (kinetic energy), which causes a characteristic amount of radiation, which is Ed. So, of course, they are equal when expressed as radiation equivalents. (Does this make sense?)

No. A layer of air will radiate from both its top and bottom surfaces, so you would have AA = 2 Ed (or, more generally, AA = Eu + Ed). That's if AA is the only source. But the real atmosphere also has solar and nonradiative heat coming in, so it's going to be AA + K + F = Eu + Ed, due to conservation of energy (total in must equal total out at equilibrium, or the layer will be changing its temperature continually). Miskolczi's system has AA going only to Ed and K + F going only to Eu, which is silly. The layer can't "know" where its heating comes from, and there's no way to partition the incoming energy so that all the longwave goes down and all the other sources go up. It would require magic. Physics won't do it.

jae quotes Zagoni:

To those who assert anthropogenic global warming and the runaway greenhouse effect,

Strawman alert, as Steve Short would say. AGW has nothing to do with the "runaway greenhouse effect." The last runaway greenhouse effect in the solar system took place on Venus billions of years ago.

jae writes:

Visualize a little parcel of air. It has a certain Aa. If Ed is higher, it’s Aa will increase until there is equilibrium (where Aa = Ed).

Why? If the only energy source is AA, the output from the parcel will be 0.5 AA downward and 0.5 AA upward, like in real life. And if the amount being radiated is higher than the amount coming in, how can that change the amount coming in? Is the parcel telekinetic?

If the Aa is increased by Su, it will cause Ed to increase until there is equilibrium. I believe this is called LTE.

You believe wrong. LTE stands for "local thermal equilibrium," and is a prerequisite for Kirchhoff's Law to apply. Basically a layer of air is in LTE if it has a temperature you can measure.

Well, Alex appears to have finally read the papers and noted that the reference is to the 1983 TIGR. Problem is that there are three subsequent versions. TIGR 3 for example, has a lot higher tropical humidity than TIGR 2. There is not so much difference between TIGR 2000 and TIGR 3 in the trop.

http://ara.lmd.polytechnique.fr/htdocs-public/p...

More humidity means higher optical depth, and the difference is at least a factor of two, so this is no small correction. In other words, Miskolczi appears to have selected from a dry and unrepresentative sample of measurements. And yes, LBL codes themselves are clear sky calculations.

Nick #302

Rob has nothing? Well, he has a PhD, for a start;

No matter how many people praise a chef or how many certificates he has the proof of his pudding is it's eating.

Like mathematics PhDs that cant see $$I\left( s \right) = I_o + \int_0^{\infty} Ids$$ is a semi-infinite integral equation.

The calculations show “Kirchhoff’s rule” cannot be obtained using my measurements. These measurements consist of downward radiation at the surface and the mixing ratio’s of water vapor at the surface (that is what I sent to Noor van Andel).

If that is indeed all that Noor had then what he says is right however Noor tells us

The real ground temperature has not
been measured; instead, one takes the air temperature TA at 2 m. The humidity has been measured too. Out of these profiles, the LWD or Long wave Downward Radiation is calculated using existing computer programs, similar to HARTCODE.

Having looked at the data it's actually enough to determine with water content and absorber measures what energy will be absorbed by the atmosphere in the first 20 m or so, with a HARCODE like tool, that can be compared with downwelling radiation using a pyrgeometer.

Just from this alone I conclude that Noor has a better understanding of the processes involved. Then on top of that Noor, a champion of sustainability, has put his knowledge and experience into building practical solar etc heat and energy management systems. These are the sorts of runs on the board I can respect.

Roelofs (2007) reviews all those references and much more. BTW, FYI phytoplankton don't necessarily just bloom in summer - they bloom when water temperatures pass through the preferred band of the regionally most acclimated suite of species. Broadly, the Southern Hemisphere oceans bloom in one season per year, the Northern Hemisphere oceans bloom bimodally (twice) per year. Non-one has ever proven whether this is because NH oceans tend to contain more iron or because NH oceans experienced glacial terminations soonest or whether (radical notion) it might even be a more recent adaptation to anthropogenically elevated CO2 near to sources.

Having spent 15 years happily doing pure research, I am comfortable with the proposition that 'it is a serious issue being seriously studied'. I am uncomfortable with the body of evidence which shows heavy-handed promotion of short-sighted dogmas has become an abiding characteristic of much modern climate science.

#305 Steve
I have no particular issue with biogenic aerosols - I just don't think there's any evidence about them in FM's clear-air calculations. The IPCC AR4 report has plenty to say about them, eg sec 7.5.1.3

Biogenic organic material is both directly emitted into the
atmosphere and produced by VOCs. Primary emissions from the
continents have been thought to be a relatively minor source but
some studies suggest that these emissions could be much higher
than previously estimated (Folberth et al., 2005; Jaenicke, 2005).
Kanakidou et al. (2005) estimate a global biogenic secondary
organic aerosol production of about 30 Tg yr–1 and recognise the
potentially large, but uncertain, flux of primary biogenic particles.
Annual global biogenic VOC emission estimates range from 500
to 1,200 Tg yr–1 (Guenther et al., 1995).

or

New evidence shows that the ocean also acts as a source
of organic matter from biogenic origin (O’Dowd et al., 2004;
Leck and Bigg, 2005b). O’Dowd et al. (2004) show that during
phytoplankton blooms (summer conditions), the organic
aerosols can constitute up to 63% of the total aerosol.

I think it is a serious issue being seriously studied.

Oops, sorry, typo, that was meant to be: ‘Global Dimming as we knew it ended in 1990 - the tipping point is nigh!’

Nick Stokes #304

"In fact as far as I can see, they don’t even allow for clouds."

Evidence is fast emerging that the scale of both continental and oceanic emission of biogenic aerosols (and their relationships to clouds) is forcing a rewrite of orthodox AGW simplistics (BPL rants regardless).

"We estimate that globally about 75 TgCyr−1 of organic matter from marine origin enters the aerosol phase. An approximate 35% of his occurs through formation of secondary organic aerosol and 65% through emission of primary particles."

Roelofs, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 7, 5675–5700, 2007

Anthropogenic aerosol emissions are starting to look very small indeed in the overall scale of things.

That 'Global Dimming as we knew it ended in 1998 - the tipping point is nigh!' AGW mantra of the last decade is now seen for what it was - just a fairy tale manufactured for consumption by the hordes of gullible green cannon fodder and job-hugging AGW bandwagon bureaucrats.

Nick: If you really think Miskolczi Theory is just another fairy tale then you are welcome to run that one right up against the wall of reality as well!

#303 Steve

This may well be the smoking gun behind a relatively stable tau.

Well it might. But there is no evidence that tau is stable, based on actual measurements of radiation. We have an LBL modelling from FM, based on temperatures and gas concentrations, and then an exercise in which the calculations were repeated using H2O and CO2 concentrations varying over time. There is no way in which those calculations could have been affected by biogenic aerosols. In fact as far as I can see, they don't even allow for clouds.

Marine biogenic aerosols - it's a topical subject:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/esthag...

http://ams.confex.com/ams/89annual/techprogram/...

http://iccpa.lbl.gov/presentations/iccpa-08-sci...

This may well be the smoking gun behind a relatively stable tau.

It took a while to get Alex to the point where he identified the TIGR version that Miskolczi is using.

If, as Alex and the papers say, Miskolczi is using TIGR (1983) then he has serious problems. For example TIGR 3 has a lot more water vapor in the tropical samples than TIGR 2, and I suspect that TIGR (1983) is still drier. The differences are not so great between TIGR 3 and TIGR 2000. In other words, if Miskolczi had used a random selection out of TIGR3, the optical depth of the atmosphere on average would have been a lot higher.

http://ara.lmd.polytechnique.fr/htdocs-public/p...

Jan #300
Rob has nothing? Well, he has a PhD, for a start; Noor is citing his thesis. And he has that tribute to his eminence from Noor that I quoted.

But the puzzle of all this is that I cannot find a statement anywhere that says Rob's results do affirm AA=ED. It's not in Noor's papers, where the results cited are from FM; nor in the emails that David has posted. And Rob's saying they don't. What have we got?

Here's a plot of SeaWiFS chlorophyll a (black line) and normalized water leaving radiance at 555 nm (green line; a measure of sea surface albedo) for the same SE Asian coastal shelf area over the same 10 year period.

http://reason.gsfc.nasa.gov/OPS/cgi-bin/Giovann...

Once again you would need to copy and paste the full URL to your browser command line.

Note:

(1) the close temporal correlation between levels of chlorophyll and normalized water leaving radiance at 555 nm; and

(2) the increasing trends of both parameters.

Nick #297

Noor has some serious runs on the board that I can respect Rob has nothing, at the very least he has shown that he has access to an LBL tool similar to HARTCODE and knows how to use it. Despite what Rob said his data is sufficient for Noor's analysis & if I or you had access to an LBL tool we'd be able to produce the same results.

Again, but totally muddled there

I have no trouble understanding that why do you?

LTE could not possibly be a Hartcode result.

Yes it can and what is more it can be the result of any LBL that computes total radiant heat transport. Or any FTIR or scattering IR spectrometer for that matter with varying accuracy.

But more relevant, he doesn’t even seem to be claiming that AA=ED is an empirical result; he just asserts it with some arm-waving about photon paths.

Not in an explanation of the physics behind the empirical result, you must have a strangely compartmentalised mind as he shows his empirical result elsewhere in the article.

Nick:

"Go on, keep it up. I have nothing to lose here; it’s your own reputation that suffers whilst you continue these disingenuous objections ad nauseum."

I keep asking for the "alternative explanation" to how the atmosphere works. Maybe you know? Can you explain with reasonable equations, just how we can have a "positive water vapor feedback?" I didn't think so. As I see it, the ONLY comprehensive theory of the "greenhouse effect" has been provided by Miskolczi. And it is the ONLY theory that agrees with the empirical observations. Santer is trying to reconcile the stupid models with reality, but he has to truncate the data set to do so, as is clearly shown on CA. And, if you have been watching, Santer won't voluntarily release his code and data! Why? I've been watching this psuedoscience on the part of the "climate science community" for over 2 years now, and it is clear that the emperor has no clothes. Put up (something better) or shut up.

Alex #296
"So if it’s Chedin & Scott (1983), it’s version 1, right?"
No, that doesn't follow at all. The normal convention would be that M is just pointing to C&S as a place where you can see the archive described. It isn't where the archive is located. And if, as Zagoni says, he's also using ERBE 2004, then something else is going on. Again, there is no substitute for actually saying what you are doing, instead of leaving people to guess.

Jan #294
Well, Noor van Andel might just refer you on:

Rob is the major atmospheric IR radiation expert in the Royal Institute of Meteorology in the Netherlands,

He's not claiming so much authority:

Now, I must confess that I cannot follow FM in his terms “radiation pressure”, his “Virial theorem” or his “Kirchhoff law”. But he is, in my opinion, right in his Hartcode results that all along the atmospheric height, there is Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium in that the absorbed part of the upward IR radiation is always equal to the downward IR radiation. This follows from the fact that the mean free path of the photons that interact with atmospheric components is so short that there are no appreciable temperature differences along this path [order of meters]. Not even higher up in the stratosphere.

Again, but totally muddled there - LTE could not possibly be a Hartcode result. It's an independent assumption which even FM makes quite clear ((c), p3, M7). But more relevant, he doesn't even seem to be claiming that AA=ED is an empirical result; he just asserts it with some arm-waving about photon paths.

Nick # 293:

Let's have a look at your latest nonsense objection, "but but but I don't know what version of TIGR it is!":

MR1998:

REGRESSION DATA SET. The present study uses a subset of the TOVS Initial Guess Retrieval (TIGR), database of 1761 radiosonde observations, Chedin and Scott (1983).

MM2004:

GLOBAL DATA SET and LBL SIMULATION. Our qualitative estimates of the meridional distributions of the FIR, MIR, and WIN flux density components were based on a representative subset of the TIROS Initial Guess Retrieval (TIGR), global radiosonde archive (Chedinand Scott, 1983). From the TIGR archive, about 230 atmospheric profiles were extracted in a way that the temporal and spatial statistical characteristics
of the original data set were preserved.

So if it's Chedin & Scott (1983), it's version 1, right? There's no mystery here, is there. The issue of data quality is addressed by the profile selection strategy, given at a high-level in MM2004, and at the level of detail you (claim to) desire in MR1998, the paper you don't have, and have not read.

Go on, keep it up. I have nothing to lose here; it's your own reputation that suffers whilst you continue these disingenuous objections ad nauseum.

Aerosol optical thickness (AOT, also called aerosol optical depth) is a measure of the extent to which small particles in the atmosphere affect the transmission of sunlight through the atmosphere. The larger the optical thickness at a particular wavelength, the less light of that wavelength reaches Earth's surface. A typical aerosol optical thickness value for visible light in clear air is roughly 0.1. A very clear sky may have an AOT of 0.05 or less. Very hazy skies can have AOTs of 0.3 or greater.

Here is a plot for SE Asian coastal shelf waters of SeaWiFS satellite sensing of both sea surface chlorophyll a (a direct measure of cyanobacterial population in the top few metres of the sea) (black line) and AOT at 865 nm (green line) for the period September 1997 to September 2008 (some recent data gaps due to update issues). You will need to copy and paste the full URL to your browser command line.

http://reason.gsfc.nasa.gov/OPS/cgi-bin/Giovann...

Note how both chlorophyll a and AOT trend steadily upwards over the last decade since the strong 1997-8 El Nino. We have not had El Nino conditions since the weaker El Nino of 2002.

However, most of these waters are subject to a markedly increasing fertilizing input of reactive N and P nutrients due to increasing populations of Indonesia etc., in addition to the fertilizing effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 (and hence dissolved CO2/bicarbonate).

Nick #293

If I had a problem with radiative transfer you would be the last person I'd ask about it then bunny second last followed by Rob van Dorland.

Given Noor van Andel's knowledge and experience I would have no hesitation consulting him.

Rob van Dorland just collected the data it doesn't mean he understood what it meant and how more information can be gleaned from it using tools like LBL integrators software.

the data is similar to the TIGR profiles but over a lower altitude which is adequate for Ed and Aa measurements with the additional benefit over the TIGR of pyrgeometer measurements.

Jan #288
"Who measured that particular empirical fact?" - Rob van Dorland
And, yet again, what Rob said
"The calculations show “Kirchhoff’s rule” cannot be obtained using my measurements."
Actually, it isn't clear where to find any quantitative Dutch statement of this "empirical fact".


The title of your linked paper is "TIGR-like atmospheric-profile databases..."
As Eli said, there are many versions, TIGR updates and TIGR-like, and we don't even know which FM used.

jae #289

It looks to me like Ed is simply a result of Aa.

Not exactly Ed is a function of the temperature (and LBL analysis) no matter how it got there from Su*A (Aa) and K in fig 2, assuming F is absorbed to high to affect the surface layer and P insignificant. Since Ed=Aa only an amount of heat equal to K makes it to TOA to be radiated as Eu (+F).

50 Tg C per year a piddling amount compared to our 2.5 Tg/year I'm sure.

oops:0

Steve if you don't know and haven't time to hut that's fine but do you have any estimate of what CO2 and N compound fertilisation contributes to biogenic production of SOAs by oceanic biota? I expect that the overall production from the ocean would be much greater than continental.

Steve Short:

"Global annual production of tropospheric Secondary Organic Aerosols (SOAs) derived from anthropogenic Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) is estimated to be about 2.5 Tg C per year, a factor of 20 times smaller."

And that fact is completely lost on the "environmentalist" community.

It looks to me like Ed is simply a result of Aa. Aa results in a certain temperature (kinetic energy), which causes a characteristic amount of radiation, which is Ed. So, of course, they are equal when expressed as radiation equivalents. (Does this make sense?)

Who measured that particular empirical fact?

Rob van Dorland
then there is the TIGR profiles
here

The answer to that question has literally a cast of thousands. Data is not generally peer reviewed it is used hopefully with due diligence applied.

Global annual production of tropospheric Secondary Organic Aerosols (SOAs) derived from continental biogenic Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) is estimated to be about 50 Tg C per year.

Global annual production of tropospheric Secondary Organic Aerosols (SOAs) derived from anthropogenic Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) is estimated to be about 2.5 Tg C per year, a factor of 20 times smaller.

This estimation does not take into account biogenic production of SOAs by oceanic biota.

BPL # 281 etc.:

Oh, that's right. The sacred peer-review process. An Idojaras-published article doesn't count. Only JGR, which rejected your own article, and the others from your RealClimate-approved shortlist.

You really know how to bury your head in the sand, don't you.

Go to Zagoni's site, look for the words, "To those who assert anthropogenic global warming and the runaway greenhouse effect, you are asked to plot your own dots on the above graph." Have another look at the graph.

http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Proofs_of_the_Miskolc...

It's waving to you, "Look at me! I'm 'empirical evidence', Barton Paul Levenson! Stop ignoring me, I want you to be your friend!"

Remember, when you take your head out of the sand, the graph's still going to be there. And I'm going to continue to draw everyone's attention to it. On & on & on, forever, until you disprove it. You'd be better to withdraw from the discussion altogether, if you really want this to go away. The more you post, the more I respond. Capische?

And it's getting worse. Eli Rabbett has conceded above that there's no good reason to doubt Miskolczi's ability to use HARTCODE, he's conceded that Miskolczi has correctly computed the earth's tau as 1.87, and it follows in a few small steps that there's no good reason to doubt that he has measured AA to be equal with ED. Sure, he won't respond to this. That's because he knows he's stuffed up. He's let the cat out of the bag, hasn't he. Nick Stokes still has his neurotic objections that a profile selection strategy published in MR1998 doesn't count because M2007 only refers to MR1998 indirectly, via MM2004. I bet you don't want to follow Nick Stokes down that path, either.

What's it going to be? You need to stare this in the face, BPL. Of course there's no prior evidence of AA = ED because it's only just been discovered. Kepler couldn't refer to previous studies on the elliptical nature of planetary orbits, either, could he, because, oh yes, like Miskolczi, he discovered it.

BPL:

"Who measured that particular empirical fact? Can you cite a paper in a peer-reviewed science journal that describes such an observation? What’s your source?"

I thought you said awhile back that you have read Miskolczi's papers. It now looks like you have not!

Visualize a little parcel of air. It has a certain Aa. If Ed is higher, it's Aa will increase until there is equilibrium (where Aa = Ed). If the Aa is increased by Su, it will cause Ed to increase until there is equilibrium. I believe this is called LTE.

BPL#279

"1. The ocean is not wall to wall phytoplankton, which would be required for evaporation to be under the control of ocean biota...."

Strawman Alert. Claim of total control on evaporation not made, only partial (significant on continents (ET), possibly significant on oceans (esp. continental shelves

"2. If CO2 is completely under the control of biota, why does the increase in atmospheric CO2 correlate so neatly to the burning of fossil fuels? If fossil fuel CO2, other than that which is taken in by geophysical sinks, does not go into the atmosphere, where does it go?"

Strawmen Alert. Claims to the contrary never made.

BPL#283

"Steve, climatologists have been aware of ocean-generated aerosols for a long time now. The fact that you don’t know something doesn’t mean professional scientists don’t. Don’t mistake your own ignorance for theirs."

Ad hominem Alert.

You really are a vicious old piece of work, don't you know? An absolute paragon of self agrandising rectitude.

So glad that my posts get under your skin. Go ahead, make my day.

Steve, climatologists have been aware of ocean-generated aerosols for a long time now. The fact that you don't know something doesn't mean professional scientists don't. Don't mistake your own ignorance for theirs.

Alex Harvey writes:

Meanwhile, you agree that even the empirical result AA = ED contradicts the received theory in a big way; good.

Sure it does. And despite the ravings of jae and Jan Pompe, there is no empirical evidence to support that idiotic equation. The atmosphere is not sentient and it is not psychic. It can't know what source of heat came from where. Heat is heat. There's no way to partition it when it's reradiated. Radiation is going to proceed according the Stefan-Boltzmann law as modified for a non-blackbody radiator:

I = ε σ T^4

For a flux equation, multiply by the fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum occupied by the band in question.

Franko quotes some crackpot:

Consequently, neither solids, liquids, or gases can maintain the behavior predicted by the laws of thermal emission.

Gee, I wonder how they discovered those laws in the first place, if nothing actually exhibits them?

The fact is that neither the Planck distribution law, nor the Stefan-Boltzmann law, nor Kirchhoff's law are violated by anything that happens in the atmosphere. For the fact that gases absorb/emit at particular wavelengths, you just add an emissivity term to the Stefan-Boltzmann law. If you want to say gases aren't perfect blackbody radiators, then of course you're right, but to go from that to "the laws don't apply" is just incompetent.

jae writes:

The empirical FACT is that Aa = Ed

Who measured that particular empirical fact? Can you cite a paper in a peer-reviewed science journal that describes such an observation? What's your source?

Steve Short--

1. The ocean is not wall to wall phytoplankton, which would be required for evaporation to be under the control of ocean biota. As long as there is open water, the Clausius-Clapeyron law will apply.

2. If CO2 is completely under the control of biota, why does the increase in atmospheric CO2 correlate so neatly to the burning of fossil fuels? If fossil fuel CO2, other than that which is taken in by geophysical sinks, does not go into the atmosphere, where does it go? You're aware that mass is conserved in non-nuclear reactions, right? Just invoking biology doesn't make physics go away.

jae writes:

The atmosphere doesn’t “know” where its heating came from, and FM’s theory requires it to do just that.”

Well, the empirical evidence shows that it DOES KNOW, somehow.

What empirical evidence? Care to list it?

Ocean salt spray corrodes circuit board edge connectors, a hundred miles away. Sahara sand, with Mercury, and Camel products, fall on coral reefs. Bats gorging on insects, high above, produce unusual raindrops.

Atmosphere is very complicated, but energy constrained.

Here is a paper produced by the 'gurus' of both the Australian and US AGW 'establishment'.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006JD007...

Read the abstract. Read the paper itself if you can get it. The paper itself will show you that the authors only really envisage an increasing 'anthropogenic' production of aerosols in SE Asia by means of burning of fuel for cooking and the clearing forests. The idea that variable biotic productivity of shallow continental waters might also generate (climate affecting) atmospheric aerosols never occurs to them (or alternatively they are in denial).

However, here is a plot of MODIS Aqua satellite-sensed seawater diffuse attenuation coefficient at 490 nm (black line; a recognised measure of total particulate biomass in seawater to about 50 m depth) plotted against atmospheric aerosol optical thickness at 869 nm (green line) between mid 2002 and late 2008 for the SE Asian continental shelf area. I have deliberately used a relatively short time span to maximize time resolution.

http://reason.gsfc.nasa.gov/OPS/cgi-bin/Giovann...

Perhaps someone could explain to me why sometimes (but NOT always) the atmospheric aerosol optical THICKNESS at 869 nm should increase tightly in synchrony with an INCREASE in the underlying seawater diffuse ATTENUATION coefficient at 490 nm.

Hey, guys (+ BPL), surprise, surprise!

"There’s no 'physical' mechanism for that to happen"

BPL # 263:

And before Kepler, using Tycho Brahe's most accurate measurements, showed that planetary orbits are, amazingly, elliptical, there were, what, 2 millennia worth of data showing that the planets' motions are in fact circular. It was, of course, preposterous blasphemy, to say that planets should follow the ellipse: how could God have the planets moving in the inferior path of an ellipse when He could just as easily have had them go in circles?

As for the mechanism? It was over 200 years before the mechanism behind the inverse square law could be derived from physical principles. For 200 years the empirical facts were accepted without anyone knowing the mechanism.

The onus is on you to explain why science should work differently in the case of climatology? Is climatology an empirical science, or isn't it? And if you want to say that climatology is, in fact, an empirical science, then you might like to explain why we should dismiss an empirical result, based on state of the art measurements, because we don't know the mechanism?

Meanwhile, you agree that even the empirical result AA = ED contradicts the received theory in a big way; good. So it is becoming clearer & clearer that the empirical result, AA = ED, is a hugely important result in its own right, if future studies confirm it. The whole argument about 'it's NOT Kirchhoff's Law!' is proving to be less & less relevant.

273chps provided link;
"Similarly, liquids will give way to the gas phase. That thermal conductivity eventually decreases in the solid signals an inability to further dissipate heat and the coming breakdown of Planck’s law. Ultimately, this breakdown is reflected in the thermal emission of gases. Interestingly, total gaseous emissivity can decrease with increasing temperature. Consequently, neither solids, liquids, or gases can maintain the behavior predicted by the laws of thermal emission. Since the laws of thermal emission are, in fact, not universal, the extension of these principles to non-solids constitutes a serious overextension of the work of Kirchho, Wien, Stefan and Planck."

Conservation of energy, momentum, constrain.
Otherwise perpetual motionn

...and doesn't hold for liquids which is important for our "planete bleue".

What about this ?
http://fs.gallup.unm.edu/PP-04-2007.pdf#page=26

Stefan's Law doesn't hold for gases.

jae #270

Steve's very interesting post notwithstanding BPLs problem is with simple algebra.

Total energy balance is given by M7 -Eq-1 the 'Kirchoff term" bracketed:
$$ F+P +K + \left(A_A -E_D\right)- E_U = 0$$

Then empirically measured $$A_A = E_D$$ the expression in brackets is equal to zero then M7-EQ-1 becomes
$$F+P +K = E_U$$

What he says might be correct if it wasn't for the empirical data.

BPL:

"“There is no physical reason for the atmosphere’s absorbed sunlight plus nonradiative fluxes to equal the atmospheric output upward, nor for the absorbed longwave to equal the atmospheric output downward, both of which are required by Miskolczi’s model. There’s no physical mechanism for that to happen, and Miskolczi doesn’t suggest one — probably because there’s no way to come up with one. "

The empirical FACT is that Aa = Ed. Thus the only thing that can explain the atmospheric output is the absorbed sunlight and the non-radiative heat transfer. And the mechanisms are so simple that I think I even understand them: absorption of some of the near IR by water vapor and CONVECTION/latent heat. I also think LTE explains the Aa = Ed. Do you have an alternative explanation for how these terms would NOT be equal?

BPL#261

"There is no physical reason for the atmosphere’s absorbed sunlight plus nonradiative fluxes to equal the atmospheric output upward, nor for the absorbed longwave to equal the atmospheric output downward, both of which are required by Miskolczi’s model. There’s no physical mechanism for that to happen, and Miskolczi doesn’t suggest one — probably because there’s no way to come up with one. The atmosphere doesn’t “know” where its heating came from, and..."

Hmmm....

Modern concentrations of all major greenhouse substances – water vapour, clouds and CO2 – are under control of the global biota of Earth, being involved in global biogeochemical cycles. Terrestrial vegetation determines the rate of water evaporation from land through regulation of evapotranspiration (Shukla and Mintz, 1982). In the ocean, the rates of gas (esp. water vapor) exchange are highly dependent upon the abundance of surface-active substances produced by marine biota (Zutic et al., 1981; Goldman et al., 1988; Frew et al., 1990). Mono- and multilayers formed at the sea surface by such substances significantly dampen rates of gas exchange (e.g. Asher, 1996), which may impact on levels of specific humidity over oceanic surfaces, thus leading to biotic control of evaporation. Regulating concentrations of biotically produced aerosol particles, constitute a significant part of atmospheric aerosols both on land and above the ocean (Pruppacher and Klett, 1978). Biota are thus able to exert widespread control of the ratio r between the optical thickness of water vapor and liquid water.

In the oceans, the dominant parameter controlling absorption of the incident solar radiation is the concentration of photosynthetic pigment contained in phytoplankton cells (Sathyendranath, 1991). Regulating this parameter, marine cyanobacteria are able to change the average depth at which the short-wave radiation is absorbed and dissipated into heat. The resulting heat flux will thus transfer from different depths, covering different
numbers of layers of liquid water (mw). In the atmosphere, the optical thickness of water vapor is exponentially dependent on temperature. In
contrast, mw is temperature-independent, being uniquely determined by the average depth where solar radiation is absorbed, which, in its turn, depends on the concentrations of cyanobacteria.

As for the stationary case of thermal radiation into space is fixed by the value of the co-albedo, it is possible increasing penetration of sunlight into depth can in effect move a considerable or even dominant part of the greenhouse effect into the ocean. Temperature of the oceanic surface corresponding to mw = 0 will then decrease, an effect similar to the decrease of temperature of the upper atmospheric layers corresponding to small values of optical depth . It is not unlikely that the known higher transparency of oligotrophic equatorial waters with respect to solar radiation (Jerlov, 1976) is a manifestation of such biotic cooling of areas with the largest incoming solar fluxes. In colder regions coccolithophoric cyanobacteria may increase reflectivity of surface waters, thus reducing sunlight absorbed near the surface and increasing surface temperature up to the maximum value that is locally possible. Accordingly, the colder regions of the world ocean are known for higher surface concentrations of biological nutrients.

The atmospheric concentration of CO2, the second important greenhouse gas, is also under biotic control. Given the large number of publications on this topic, we only note the following. The global biological production (and, consequently, decomposition) is of the order of 102 Gt C year−1. The global atmospheric CO2 content is of the order of 103 Gt and coincides in its order of magnitude with the carbon content in the global biota (see, e.g. Sundquist, 1993). Even a minor imbalance in the fluxes of biological production and decomposition may lead to drastic changes of atmospheric CO2 content over geologically instantaneous time periods, e.g. if biological decomposition 20
exceeds biological production by only 10%, the CO2 concentration will double in less than 100 years. No geophysical processes are comparable in power with the biological control of atmospheric CO2.

We note finally that the biological processes (photosynthetic production and metabolic consumption of organic matter) are based on consumption of solar energy. Accordingly, the maximum (Carnot) efficiency B of these processes is equal to B = (TSun − TEarth)/TSun (6000K − 300 K)/6000 K = 0.95 (Gorshkov et al., 2000). Conversely, the maximum efficiency of the processes of global circulation, based on the difference between the temperatures of the polar and equatorial regions, is equal to
GC = (Tequator − Tpoles)/TEarth 30K/300K = 0.1, which is an order of magnitude lower than B. Thus, the biotic potential for climate control is larger than that of physical dynamic processes on the Earth’s surface.

Under the modern conditions of increasing anthropogenic impact on the global environment, including human-induced changes to the biosphere (e.g. massive nitrogen and phosphorus enrichment of coastal shelf waters on a scale greater than CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere) further investigations into the nature of climate stability on Earth are undoubtedly needed.

BPL: Also, I don't understand where your equations came from.

261 Barton Paul Levenson
"The atmosphere doesn’t “know” where its heating came from, and FM’s theory requires it to do just that."

Atmosphere is not capable of knowing.; But
Random photon direction gas interaction determines the distance

Distance increases as square root of N
Although light is very fast, cannot wonder far

BPL

"There is no physical reason for the atmosphere’s absorbed sunlight plus nonradiative fluxes to equal the atmospheric output upward, nor for the absorbed longwave to equal the atmospheric output downward, both of which are required by Miskolczi’s model. There’s no physical mechanism for that to happen, and Miskolczi doesn’t suggest one — probably because there’s no way to come up with one. The atmosphere doesn’t “know” where its heating came from, and FM’s theory requires it to do just that."


Well, the empirical evidence shows that it DOES KNOW, somehow. Where is the empirical evidence for the K&T. How do you explain the discontinuity?

Boy, that came out looking lousy, didn't it? Is there any way to get a monospaced font in this blog? For those who want to see the output more clearly, cut and paste it into Word and change the font to Courier New.

For those who didn't notice Jan Pompe's mistake about infinite optical depth, here's a simple basic program to demonstrate it:

tau = 0.01
Te = 254
print "Tau", "Ta", "Ts", "% difference"

for i = 1 to 5
tau = 10 * tau

Ta = Te * (0.5 + 0.75 * tau)^0.25
Ts = Te * (1.0 + 0.75 * tau)^0.25

percent = 100 * (Ts / Ta) - 100

Print tau, Ta, Ts, percent
next i

end

And here's the output:

Tau Ta Ts % difference
0.1 221.182457 258.634129 16.9324784
1 268.572301 292.141482 8.77573059
10 427.175379 433.699027 1.52715924
100 748.721759 749.958298 0.16515333
1000 1329.44811 1329.66948 0.01665140

You will note that, the higher the optical depth, the smaller the temperature discontinuity between the surface and the atmosphere. An infinite (or "semi-infinite") optical depth would show no temperature discontinuity at all.

Do the math, guys. It clarifies things better than verbal argument can do.

Alex Harvey writes:

it seems to me to be pretty clear that the eqn.4 is inconsistent with the KT1997 energy budget.

It's inconsistent with ANYBODY's energy budget. Check the dozen or so earlier energy budgets tabulated in K&T97.

There is no physical reason for the atmosphere's absorbed sunlight plus nonradiative fluxes to equal the atmospheric output upward, nor for the absorbed longwave to equal the atmospheric output downward, both of which are required by Miskolczi's model. There's no physical mechanism for that to happen, and Miskolczi doesn't suggest one -- probably because there's no way to come up with one. The atmosphere doesn't "know" where its heating came from, and FM's theory requires it to do just that.

Jan Pompe writes:

Yes indeed the TOA is set at infinity the ground at zero so it’s bounded at the surface and unbounded at the top i.e it’s semi-infinite. The upshot is that if you take the integral of this taking τ=0 at the top and monotonically and not asymptotically over an infinite distance you end up with an infinite optical depth at the bottom. It’s this infinite optical depth that leads to the temperature discontinuity at the bottom.

You haven't actually used the equations, have you?

When optical depth is infinite, the discontinuity disappears. Try it:

Ts = (1 + 0.75 tau)^0.25
Ta = (0.5 + 0.75 tau)^0.25

Plug in some figures and see what happens as you increase the optical depth.

60 Pat Cassen
"1. Dig in, learn the stuff, and do the work yourself."

Absolutely, keep digging at the same spot, till options exhausted.
Even if Miskolczi wrong, there is a correct answer.

The goal should be to do it simple as possible,
so a high school student can follow along

We now have 10 months of data for 2008.
The specific humidity at all levels in the atmosphere have declined significantly from 2007.
Here is a graph of the specific humidity at the 400 mb level, including 10 months of 2008.
Here is a table of specific humidity and temperatures for 10 months of 2008.

Pressure level (mb) 300 400 500 600 700 850 925 1000
2007 SH (g/kg) 0.239 0.551 1.195 2.066 3.229 5.845 8.026 10.516
2008 (10 mo) SH 0.235 0.541 1.160 2.031 3.205 5.798 7.969 10.508
Change (%) -1.63 -1.87 -2.90 -1.68 -0.75 -0.81 -0.72 -0.07

Here is a graph of specific humidity at the 400 mb level including 10 months of 2008:
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/Ken/SH400mb.jpg

221 Pat Cassen says:
"I’ve browsed around NOAA’s re-analysis data website a bit, but could only find megafiles of gridded data. Did Ken do some averaging of this, or what? Maybe somebody could help out with the source of that timeseries."

The data is from the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory here:
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/Timeseries/time...

The data sent to Miskowczi was annual, with area weighted grids.
To get annual data, select:
Seasonal Average
First month: Jan
Second month: Dec
For global data, select:
Latitude: 90, -90
Longitude: 0, 360

The spreadsheet I sent to Miskowczi, with a few graphs added later, is here:
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/Ken/Optical%20Dept...

The optical depth calculations varies water content and CO2, but holds all other minor greenhouse gases constant. The calculations use the 60 year data from the NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory database from 1000 mbar to 300 mbar. The humidity profiles were extended from there up to 70 km altitude using the TIGR average thermal structure.

Pat # 220:

On the whole, except where I've already stated above my disagreements, I am on the same page with you. As I said above, I disagree with you on eqn.4, in that it seems to me to be pretty clear that the eqn.4 is inconsistent with the KT1997 energy budget. In fact, a number of points about the KT1997 energy budget raised as asides by Miskolczi suggest that the energy budget can't be saved anyway (for example, his point that they modified the H2O content in the USST76 atmosphere, apparently for no reason other than that they couldn't get their analysis to work any other way). Until someone responds to justify KT's thinking here, I could only conclude that Miskolczi is right on this point. I agree that we should begin with the data, and that means Miskolczi's profile selection strategy as given in MR1998. In that paper, he has made it quite clear how he chose his 228 profiles, and it's quite clear also that he & NASA were not doing anything at that time to disprove the AGW theory. It was purely a paper about measurement. On the NOAA result, anyone interested would probably need to contact Ken Gregory, I suppose, since it's obviously not a published result. Finally, you can be assured that, for myself, I am equally skeptical of all theories. I don't believe science has arrived at the truth, quite yet, anywhere. Most of my posts are about trying to fight off attempts to silence this discussion, or lead it off in irrelevant directions in order to stop others from thinking. I am not referring to yours.

Franko:

"The problem seems to be, not with the math, but with the “methapor”."

It always is.

Nick : LOL

Jan #252
"(What is the plural of impedance anyway?)"
Skeptics :)

"But I thought his paper was muddled."

It is terribly muddled, mainly because critical logical steps have been omitted. Help me fix it.

IEEE has a circuit model of the atmosphere somewhere. For example; mechanical system analysis is based on Electrical Engineering Math. Complex exponentials, even memistors.

All roads, mathematically, symbolic logically, lead to Rome. The problem seems to be, not with the math, but with the "methapor". As Freeman Dyson questioned; the fixation on the unmeasurable surface temperature. All we got is, not even a vapor, but a global "methapor", A "methapor" of a pertubation, interpreted locally ?

IEEE has a circuit model of the atmosphere somewhere. F

My point is that the max power theorem relates to matched impedances , while M’s algebra deals with fluxes. However, if you think it just amounts to algebra, let’s see it.

At last an interesting challenge. Beats the Dickens out of your questioning assumptions found in every astrophysics text book printed over the last 80 years. (What is the plural of impedance anyway?)

It's also about mismatched impedance and that the current in both impedance is the same. (Kirchoff's law states that the current into the node between then sums to zero and you said it had nothing to do with Kirchoff's law). The thermal version will apply to node at the surface.

Algebra maybe but definitely not simple linear like ohms law I'll give it a go give me a day or two I'm working on the weekend and I should be asleep now.

David #250
You can make an electrical analogy with temperature as voltage and fluxes as current. There is an implied resistance, but it's hard to quantify. My point is that the max power theorem relates to matched impedances, while M's algebra deals with fluxes. However, if you think it just amounts to algebra, let's see it.

You could regard them as currents, but there are no quantities corresponding to resistances, which are what the max power theorem equates.

What is resistance but a resistance to current evidenced by a voltage difference? How often is the greenhouse effect described as a blanket of atmosphere resisting the exit of radiation? Could not flux differences such as Su-F be regarded as a potential difference? The rest, peak power at z1=z2 and efficiency of 50% is just algebra.

Nick #248

I’m patiently waiting for some authority, or even some argument, to justify this.

I don't even spoon feed my patients I paid to be patient with them ass I teach them what they need for independent living. I'm not paid to do likewise for you I have given you an easy method for finding out for yourself you don't want to do that fine but don't tell me you are waiting patiently for authority or an argument before accepting the fact.

If you were a physicist like you pretend to be you would likely know it any way now just do as I say and google Eddington Milne semi-infinite and pick the first text book that you see. It will probably open at the proper page.

Your maximum power theorem just says that you can transfer maximum power by matching impedances. It doesn’t say that any system will organize itself to do so.

No usually it's up to the engineer and I'm pretty sure I can design one that will self optimise. Never mind that. Whether or not the climate system can self optimise it's cooling rate we can be fairly sure that it cannot raise the opposition to cooling it needs more energy for that and the energy incoming is also reduced. If you are thinking that the absorbed incoming cannot change think again because the rate at which a black boy can absorb heat is negatively correlated with the 4th power of it's temperature. $$\frac Q {\sigma} = T_{source}^4 - T_{surface}^4$$

Jan #246

Edington-Milne model is a semi-infinite model

I'm patiently waiting for some authority, or even some argument, to justify this.

Jan #223 224
Your maximum power theorem just says that you can transfer maximum power by matching impedances. It doesn't say that any system will organize itself to do so.

I don't think it will work here anyway, because we have statements about fluxes. You could regard them as currents, but there are no quantities corresponding to resistances, which are what the max power theorem equates.

"But I thought his paper was muddled."

you get that with drafts written by some whose first language isn't English. Honorary PhD or not he has done far more practical work in heat transport/management than either you or Rob van Dorland ever will.

The issue is whether the Eddington approx requires a semi-infinite assumption.

For crying out loud Nick the Edington-Milne model is a semi-infinite model therefore it requires a semi-infinite assumption by definition.

Jan #243 "Now you go too far."
Well, maybe, although I note the Dr is honorary. But I thought his paper was muddled.
Cohenite #244 I don't recommend this advice (as usual). It's not enough to find a google hit where the words appear in one paper. The issue is whether the Eddington approx requires a semi-infinite assumption. If it was true, someone would be able to find a statement to that effect. None of this googling is relevant.

I took Jan's advice (as always) and googled semi-infinite atmosphere; the oldest links I could find go back to the early 1960's and seem very germane; Jean I. F. King has 2 papers;

A Radiative equilibrium algorithm for semi-infinite atmospheres; at http://openlibrary.org/b/OL5840724M

And; Greenhouse effect in a semi-infinite atmosphere; the url is too long for this one and there is a full html version of the paper; from the abstract;

"The strong dependence of the greenhouse effect on the ratio of absorption coefficients at differing spectral regions is expected. It comes as an intuitive surprise, however, to note that a pure gray atmosphere [uo = 1, H(uo) = 2.9078] whose heating is concentrated at the upper levels nonetheless exhibits limb-darkening and steady state increase of temperature with depth."

The more things change the more they stay the same; a semi-infinite model with always give extra heating.

Nick #240

"Noor van Andel, who seems to be an unscientific onlooker."

Pot calling the kettle black Nick. Now you go too far.

Dr. Noor van Andel is a physicist which is more than we can say for you and an expert in thermodynamics

Nick # 240:

Actually, I hadn't seen that discussion; this is news to me. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Pat Cassen #221

Dr. Miskolczi elevates eqn. 4 to an “atmospheric Kirchoff’s law”, which is ok with me as long as it isn’t confused with anybody else’s Kirchoff’s law (which obviously happened).

It's not so OK with me, because Kirchhoff had nothing to do with it. I think FM should drop the false modesty and call it Miskolczi's Law. That may even be easier to spell :)

Alex #234

Eqn.4 for which there is the strongest empirical support in Miskolczi’s data — and now of course independent experimental confirmation from scientists in the Netherlands

Alex, you really do stretch things outrageously. The Dutch results are being pushed by Noor van Andel, who seems to be an unscientific onlooker. The person he quotes as his authority, who actually did these experiments, says unambiguously :

The calculations show “Kirchhoff’s rule” cannot be obtained using my measurements.

David #238

It's important that the equations actually reflect the physical system. Lapse rate is I feel a major player it's not a simple toy unfortunately. I think there is a reverse cycle heat engine involved that can't be seen in a zero or one dimensional energy balance model.

Not possible? Well here is a thought just to add to the headaches.

I do expect that lapse rate will reduce with more absorbers not just water in the atmosphere.

Science is full of wrong intuitions! Thats why I have to see things as equations. I guess the main driver would be the lapse rate. If lapse rate lessens with higher CO2 and temperatures then that would be a strong negative feedback on water vapor uptake and decrease the water vapor content, particularly in the mid-troposphere.

David #232

That would be too sweet if it fell into place like that!

It would but it's too simple. It is however not intuitive because intuitively higher temperatures mean higher energy and higher capacity to do work which is of course the basis of the claim that more CO2->higher temperatures -> more water vapour but the maximum power theorem which is actually calculated and can be demonstrated shows this is not so and a temperature rise due to increased $$\tau$$ is not accompanied by more useable heat but less.

If insolation increases or a PDO releases stored heat (with water vapour and CO2) of course there is more energy available and the latter can mistaken for positive feedback as discussed by Roy Spencer in a recent paper (no time to dig just now).

This doesn't yet take into account the activities in the biosphere where true feedback is possible.

Thanks Nick, I think we are in agreement that optical depth is largely due to precipitable water, that you get a small negative slope from the beginning of the record in 1948, which does just cancel the consistently rising effect of CO2 over that period. Then, if you cherry pick the the start date at any year later than 1955 there is a small positive slope. So using all the data it is consistent with FM’s constant tau, but stops far short of proof, given uncertainties in the data.

BPL # 218:

... I read Miskolczi’s paper, which is how I was able to quote it. I understand what he was saying thoroughly. I just think it’s wrong. Do you understand the difference between not understanding something and disagreeing with it?

Unbelievable.

You understand it 'thoroughly'? On a number of points, you have clearly been shown to have no idea what Miskolczi was saying. Witness your concession to Jan, just today. I was going to commend you, there, on a change to a spirit of intellectual honesty, till I saw this response to jae. The page at your website -- that was rejected as a paper by JGR's peer-review -- in its shortness and mostly-irrelevance to the topics we're discussing, shows what passes as 'thoroughness' in your mind.

Miskolczi's theory was presented in a series of three papers. Did you, in your infinite thoroughness know that? MR1998, MM2004 & M2007. You have read M2007 only and here you are talking up your 'thoroughness'.

jae # 222:

Exactly, no one wants to even acknowledge the two-edged nature of these rebuttals of Miskolczi's theory. Eqn.4 for which there is the strongest empirical support in Miskolczi's data -- and now of course independent experimental confirmation from scientists in the Netherlands -- shows that the energy budget of KT1997 is, not just a little, but very, very wrong. BPL's # 2 above, that he wants posted all over the internet, provides a lovely reverse proof, in the event that his arrogant presumption of correctness in KT1997 falls over in front of him, that the IPCC2007 energy budget was wrong in a way that will make the hockey-stick debacle look like a typo.

Miskolczi, in his capacity as a NASA scientist working on the frontier of remote IR sensing, has shown us data that, if correct, shows the IPCC2007 energy budget was completely, totally wrong.

Pat #221 David #225
Ken's OD plot essentially is determined by the precipitable water concentration from the NCEP data set, and tracks it very closely. If you regress water from 1948 to present, you get a small negative slope, which does just cancel the consistently rising effect of CO2 over that period. But if you start the data at any year later than 1955 (where the data starts to get more reliable), then water vapor is actually increasing. So is CO2, and hence, in this calculation, the optical depth. So the "confirmation" of FM's constant tau depends not only on picking the right year, but that peak water vapor in the 50's, based on dodgy data.

I've posted the plots over at CA:
http://www.climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.ph...

Jan, Intuitively, you are saying that as CO2 is doing more of the work of maintaining the optimal greenhouse effect, less of the available work is being done by water vapor, as evidenced by decreases in specific humidity, pan evaporation and average wind velocity. That would be too sweet if it fell into place like that!

I'm not comfortable with these invocations of additional laws of thermodynamics. The max power theorem is a straighforward consequence of basic conservation that says peak power is delivered to a sink load when the source and sink loads expend equal power, and at that point the efficiency is 50%. It would be weird if at some level the 50% efficiency figure were related to the Eu/Su ration that M ascribed to the virial theorem, and the balance of source/sink power were related to eqn 7, that Su-F=Ed-Eu. Even weirder if they were related. The virial theorem appears to be almost algebraic in origin so it wouldn't surprise me.

Two more links perhaps relevant but interesting nonetheless

general systems

and

more circuit theory

Thanks David I'll ponder. If counting joules to do the job of increasing pressure, pan evaporation or wind speed, which is all work and the energy constraint that comes with Fo =OLR and OLR is decreased due to increasing τ and Fo must also decrease then we must conclude that the joules available to do the above mentioned work must also decrease.

Sure. The trend significance is straightforward, and with the high variance of the tau, my guess that the result of constant tau trend is marginally significant. Taking into account the prior probability of the radiosonde data versus some other data is more difficult. The best approach is to find another completely independent result, such as air pressure as Miskolczi mentions. What about pan evaporation and average wind speed? Should they increase or decrease? I don't know.

Fair enough. Is there a way to get a handle on the probability that the result is a coincidence for the statistically challenged.

Well its a matter of degree I suppose. I mean trend constant.

David #225

But of course, uncertainties mean the probability the result of constant tau is simply a coincidence cannot be excluded.

It's a small point but I wouldn't characterise the τ as constant since it jumps about all over the place but it has zero trend. Does it make a difference?

Pat:

Then comes Ken Gregory’s satellite data purporting to show that relative humidity has systematiclly declined for the past 50 years or so, and when HARTCODE is applied, lo, it’s declined in a way that the average optical depth is the current value, matching theory to three significant figures! I suppose that this is potentially good news. But we are told it’s ok to ignore conflicting data of all sorts, I’m not sure why.

Are you saying its OK for everyone else to cherry-pick but we can't? Seriously, any publication would need to defend this or bolster it with additional data. There is an argument for deprecating data that is 'contaminated' with radiative models and in elevating data that is more 'direct'. Morover, the publications I have seen used less than 15 years data, not 60 years as Ken did. But of course, uncertainties mean the probability the result of constant tau is simply a coincidence cannot be excluded. I don't have a handle on that probability right now. There is so much conflicting data, I wonder at how the IPCC could come out so confidently on the side of increasing specific humidity -- by deprecating conflicting data.

Dave #223 Pat #220

I just goofed and broke a post I was preparing that had some of the same as Dave's 223. Main point being maximum power theorem as a way of looking at the problem.

Pat I'm wondering if you are treating $$B_G$$ as an energy source rather than the result of an interaction between incoming, measured as the outgoing ( $$F_o = OLR$$ ) and the atmospheric optical depth.

Pat, Resubstitution leads to a relationship B0=ORL(1+Ta)/2 which is already implicit I think, and related to the ORL=2/[1+τ+Ta]·Su, which is also monotonic increasing with τ. So you could equally ask why is the ORL=2/[1+τ+Ta]·Su equation not unimodal for Su with increasing τ. My understanding is that Ferenc treats this as the perturbation effect of increased optical depth (eg CO2 doubling), not a long term equilibrium.

Its worth noting in passing that even if there was no negative feedback, no minimum energy, and ORL=2/[1+τ+Ta]·Su was correct and not ORL=2/[2+τ]·Su, this gives a sensitivity to perturbation by 2xCO2 of 0.26C, consistent with empirical observations, and making the IPCC models 'climate scientist consensus' of a range of 1.5-6C look ludicrous.

OK, So eqn 20 does have an optimum, which may be by virtue of holding Bg constant, and you think that is invalid. Again there is nothing internally inconsistent, but the question of whether Bg should be held constant in this case. I asked Ferenc if Bg should be varied, and his position was that according to the Kirchhoff law you may set Bg to Su, but logically you can not set it to Su=OLR/f because it would force the Su=Bg, since Su=OLR/f was obtained under that condition. Which I guess explains why your substitution produces an already arrived at identity.

My understanding is that the increasing ORL=2/[1+τ+Ta]·Su function of optical depth, simultaneously satisfies OLR=2Su/3 (ultimately) through the eqn 7 that you have the most trouble with. So the claims of optimum may come also from eqn 7, a different direction than the one used in Fig 3 (eqn 20).

Its interesting to note that in Zagoni's presentation that eqn 7 is stated to assume maximum energy. To my mind, the maximum power theorem may be another way to arrive at Su-F=Ed-Eu and Su=2Eu. Would be interested in a physicists thoughts on that.

Pat:

"It’s hard to tell, but I think that this conclusion agrees with what Dr. Miskolczi is saying, and. as far as I know, it does not contradict direct observations of the atmosphere, or “orthodox” theory."

?? I thought that this did contradict orthodox theory. If not, why does K&T show only 24 watts for "thermals?" Doesn't "thermals" mean convection?

Alex, regarding the empirical nature of Dr. Miskolczi’s discovery:

The upfront empirical result is that the downward LW radiation balances that part of the upward LW radiation which is absorbed by the atmosphere, under a very broad range of atmospheric conditions (eqn. Aa = Ed and Fig. 2). This result is obtained by applying HARTCODE (the validity of which is not being questioned) to measured atmospheric properties. I take this result at face value, as applying to the current atmosphere. Dr. Miskolczi elevates eqn. 4 to an “atmospheric Kirchoff’s law”, which is ok with me as long as it isn’t confused with anybody else’s Kirchoff’s law (which obviously happened). A plausible conclusion to be made from this result is that energy is being transmitted upward by dynamical processes, i.e., convection, much more effectively than by radiation alone. It’s hard to tell, but I think that this conclusion agrees with what Dr. Miskolczi is saying, and. as far as I know, it does not contradict direct observations of the atmosphere, or “orthodox” theory.

Now Dr. Miskolczi sets out to prove that this result is inevitable (for an Earth-type atmosphere) because the atmosphere is self-regulated to maintain a constant average optical depth. He does this by (1) appealing to some equations of ambiguous or dubious validity (“virial-like”, eqn. 7; empirical or derived from first principles?); (2) invoking an energy minimum principle, which must be considered speculative since it’s not derived from anything; (3) applying the energy minimum principle to an equation (purely radiative) that does not apply in regions of strong convection, despite the empirical evidence for strong convection; and (4) deriving what seems to me to be an internally inconsistent solution.

From this solution, he produces a gorgeous match to the atmospheric structure he used to derive the atmospheric Kirchoff’s law (Fig. 5). Proof of the pudding? Not for me; it’s like pulling a bunny out of a hat – I don’t know how it’s done. [No Franko, not that bunny :-) ]

Then comes Ken Gregory’s satellite data purporting to show that relative humidity has systematiclly declined for the past 50 years or so, and when HARTCODE is applied, lo, it’s declined in a way that the average optical depth is the current value, matching theory to three significant figures! I suppose that this is potentially good news. But we are told it’s ok to ignore conflicting data of all sorts, I’m not sure why.

I agree with you, Alex, that these humidity results deserve an effort to verify them. Which should start not with HARTCODE, but with the data, because they have ramifications well beyond Miskolczi’s theory, in that they would establish an heretofore unrecognized but significant negative feedback. I’ve browsed around NOAA’s re-analysis data website a bit, but could only find megafiles of gridded data. Did Ken do some averaging of this, or what? Maybe somebody could help out with the source of that timeseries. I’ve also read over at the Miskolczi wiki, and although I appreciate the effort, there were lots of statements that made me wince.

Anyway, that’s about all I have to offer. I hope that you can see why I recommend regarding all this work with the same critical eye that you apply to “orthodox” climate research. And I commend you for trying to get through Dr. Miskolczi’s theory paper – it’s not an easy read for anyone.

Jan, #184

I’m just trying to follow Miskolczi’s analysis. In Appendix B, he takes H = OLR (cf. eqns B7 and B9), which means that he is applying eqns. 12 and 13 to the total radiative flux. Then his solution B11 demands that Bg = B(TauA); just plug B11 into the general solution and evaluate at TauA. And it follows that Bo is monotonic.

BPL #217

Do you agree that 0.69 is not infinite?

I don't know it's awfully big. 1.7 is better gives us a warmer world. Neither is infinite.

Ok let's move on. First of all an infinite optical depth for the solid surface surface is fine it's not relevant to the optical depth the atmosphere though emissivity < 1 does reduce available flux and aught to be taken into account when calculating absorbance in the atmosphere as you can see in the difference between black and white dots in M7 Fig 2. An infinite optical depth there is a fair approximation.

Secondly your derivation doesn't get there because the Eddington-Milne approximation leads to two equations one for each of surface an atmosphere:

$$t_A^4 = \frac {t_e^4\left(1+\tau \right)} 2$$
$$t_S^4 = \frac {t_e^4\left(2+\tau \right)} 2$$

(M7 eqn 16 & 17 or Lorenz & McKay 2003 - take your pick)
which for your τ = .69 and an effective temperature of 255K leads to a surface temperature of 274K and he atmosphere temperature of 244K.

brrrr my freezer isn't that cold

Do you see where the temperature discontinuity comes from?

jae -- Yes, I read Miskolczi's paper, which is how I was able to quote it. I understand what he was saying thoroughly. I just think it's wrong. Do you understand the difference between not understanding something and disagreeing with it?

cohenite -- a finite number of levels is not an infinite number of levels, nor is it an semi-infinite (whatever that means) number of levels. A GCM typically uses 11-40 vertical layers of atmosphere. Where I come from, even 40 is not infinite.

You know what, Jan? You were right and I was wrong on that one. A blackbody object does, by definition, have infinite optical depth. I sabotaged myself on that one.

So let me take it over, assigning a graybody absorptivity/emissivity a = 0.5 to each level. By the definition of optical thickness, that would give each layer of atmosphere τ = 0.69. Do you agree that 0.69 is not infinite?

The two-level system then has:

a σ Ts^4 = 2 a σ T1^4 (atmosphere) [1]

Fs + a σ T1^4 = a σ Ts^4 (ground) [2]

From equation [1], we have

Ts = 2^0.25 T1 [3]

For the three-level system, we have:

a σ T2^4 = 2 a σ T1^4 [4]

a σ T1^4 + a σ Ts^4 = 2 a σ Ts^4 [5]

Fs + a σ T2^4 = a σ Ts^4 [6]

And equations [4] and [5] give us:

Ts = 3^0.25 T1 [7]

So once again, the general equation for the surface temperature is

Ts = T1 (1 + τ)^0.25 [8]

No infinite thickness, no infinite optical depth for the atmosphere. And yet the final equation is practically identical to the Eddington approximation. How about that.

Nick #214

Could you put some nouns in there - eg what is unbounded?

The antecedent for 'it' is TOA, I would have thought that was obvious.

Do you really need baby steps?

This is almost true in the sun and more true in larger suns for which the approximation was initially developed.

If you are genuinely concerned that no-one talks about Eddington Milne model being a semi-infinite atmosphere then I suggest you just put it into google and watch it light up with text and papers and monographs etc all to do with stellar atmospheres where it belongs.

Someone who is a mathematician really needs to spell this out, step by step. Start with Milne (1922), derive the maths, and show how you arrive at the graph from the contemporary climatology textbook, referred to above. Something suitable for an undergraduate 1st year physics student. It could save us all so much pain! Wish I could do it.

Jan #
"Yes indeed the TOA is set at infinity the ground at zero so it’s bounded at the surface and unbounded at the top i.e it’s semi-infinite"
Could you put some nouns in there - eg what is unbounded? The condition defining TOA is just that the downward emission from the atmosphere is zero. Nothing has to be infinite for that to be met. And there's no infinite optical depth; FM has no trouble applying the Eddington approx with tau=1.87.

Alex #211 Yes, there is indeed a derivation in G&Y. It's essentially the derivation of M-11, which is just a local differential equation. The simplification to M-12 and beyond is as in M2007. No use of semi-infiniteness there.

David # 203:

Yes, what I found most intriguing, though, was the exerpt from the Hungarian textbook on meteorology, showing a diagram with a number of the relations Miskolczi has taken for granted that seem to be completely unknown in the West. This really does prove, I think, that we have a bit of a case here that Hungarian atmospheric physics is further advanced than what we have in the English-speaking world, and this has caused utter confusion for Ferenc, who took it for granted that others had learnt all of this at university as well.

I refer to Rudolf Czelnai 1979: Introduction to Meteorology I., p. 90., fig45. or p. 47 from Zagoni's presentation.

I would love to see that book translated.

Nick #210

The issue is semi-infinite, not discontinuity

Sure Nick the semi-infinite approximation leads to that unreal discontuity.

I’ve explained in #198 and elsewhere that the Edd approx is a solution of an approximate first order differential equation, set to match at TOA.

Yes indeed the TOA is set at infinity the ground at zero so it's bounded at the surface and unbounded at the top i.e it's semi-infinite. The upshot is that if you take the integral of this taking τ=0 at the top and monotonically and not asymptotically over an infinite distance you end up with an infinite optical depth at the bottom. It's this infinite optical depth that leads to the temperature discontinuity at the bottom.

It's simply disingenuous for you say that one and not the other is the issue. It's also disingenuous to suggest that in the Eddington approximation the TOA is not at infinity.

Nick # 210:

At the risk of going around in circles again on this, see Goody-Yung (1989), p. 44, eqns. (2.86) and (2.87) from where, after a lot of transformations, they arrive at eqn.(2.140) which is Miskolczi's eqn.(11). Somehow, what needs to be answered, is how you've convinced yourself that Goody-Yung's contemporary textbook is no longer relevant to atmospheric physics.

Alex #209
The issue is semi-infinite, not discontinuity. I've explained in #198 and elsewhere that the Edd approx is a solution of an approximate first order differential equation, set to match at TOA. If the solution passes through a region where the approx does not apply, then the solution diverges from reality, which is seen as a discontinuity. That happens near the ground. So the Eddington solution extrapolated to the ground does not match observation.

Nick # 206:

Right, but you do see the word 'DISCONTINUITY' in big letters, you do note the fact this is said to follow from 'EDDINGTON APPROXIMATION', and you do acknowledge that it is a contemporary climatology, published in 2008? Just from reading your post, one might get the impression that I made all of this up!

Nick, I liked it too: "I did like his commendation of the fixed tau."

#205 cohenite
"semi-infinite seems to be appropriate" - why? What exactly is supposed to be semi-infinite, and how is that assumption related to the model? Why not just call it infinite, or transcendental, or any other word that sounds impressive?

Alex #200
OK, I read the presentation, which contains little new, but does gather it helpfully. There is nothing about semi-infiniteness, except their customary and unusual use of the word to describe the Eddington approximation. All the graph on p25 shows is the Eddington relation rendered into temperature versus altitude; nothing semi-infinite there.

I did like his commendation of the fixed tau: "I regard this deduction one of the most beautiful results in the history of Hungarian theoretical physics"

The word "semi-infinite" is a reasonable description of the standard AGW atmospheric model based on a series of layers through which the IR has to pass with extra CO2 increasing the vertical layering; this was described in Spencer Weart's RC piece, "A Saturated Gassy Argument." The term "semi-infinite" is also appropriate to Neal J King's description on this thread pt1 where he describes the effect of more CO2 as raising the 15-micron photosphere where optical-depth=1. And Eli at http:rabett.com/2008/06/once-more-since-world-no-longer-needs.html (// excluded) also describes this vertically increasing layering. Other than calling it the layer model, semi-infinite seems to be appropriate.

DS #199
No, I don't believe Fig 7 shows that. It's not clear what it does show, but I don't thinbk it is a profile. The reason is that the familiar 228 dots are on the plot, and they are not profile locations; they represent places on the surface. I think the variable tau represents the ground optical depth at those different places, and the other curves, presumably, represent the ground values of the approximations (16 and 17).

However, it's very unclear what the y-axis is. It is supposed to be a relative error in the computation of S_U, but then what are the dots? What is the relative error of an experimental profile?

If anyone can figure out what the caption to Fig 7 actually means, please say. But I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with semi-infiniteness.

Alex, That presentation by Zagoni is GREAT! There are logical connections in there I have struggled with. It derivation of Eqn 7, from Aa=Ed was clear, then he flags that Eqn 7 assumes that the atmosphere converts the incoming SW solar flux to LW outgoing radiation optimally. Given this assumption is not stated in the preamble, this may be an area that needs work (but don't take my word for it). I suspect it is true, but rigorous proof may lie elsewhere.

"This gets very frustrating - It seemspeople are just blindly following FM here. As far as I can tell, no-one but FM (and followers) have used the word semi-infinite here. Maybe Milne used the approximation in the context of an infinite atmosphere, but there is no notion of infinity required for the approximation. No-one has shown where any use is made of infiniteness, either in Schwarzschild, Milne, G&Y or M2007."

Are you getting caught up in wording? Do you have a better "term?" Doesn't matter what you call it, the original equations were wrong.

Alex. Yes. He (and his ilk) are becoming desperate, because they have no theory of their own, just GCMs which produce "data." No science there at all, and they are getting worried.

Nick # 198 etc:

FYI Miklos Zagoni has produced another presentation, this time making the use of 'semi-infinite' a little clearer, in my humble opinion.

http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/MET-ZM_v08c_eng.pdf

See esp. pp. 25ff, where you'll see a screenshot from a contemporary climatology textbook that graphs the semi-infinite surface discontinuity.

But the solution proposed by FM does not 'fail' at the surface, and produces a much more realistic lapse rate throughout the profile, as per Figure 7?

Jan #183 "You are already assuming infinite optical depth for that sort of number."
Davids #186 "classic semi-infinite solution"
BPL #181 ""because Milne (1922) originally derived it assuming an infinite atmosphere"

This gets very frustrating - It seemspeople are just blindly following FM here. As far as I can tell, no-one but FM (and followers) have used the word semi-infinite here. Maybe Milne used the approximation in the context of an infinite atmosphere, but there is no notion of infinity required for the approximation. No-one has shown where any use is made of infiniteness, either in Schwarzschild, Milne, G&Y or M2007.

The basis for the Eddington approximation is plain. There is a first order differential equation (M-12) of the very simplest kind. dB/dtau=constant. You can apply one boundary condition - conventionally, for good reason, at TOA. Then you get the Edd approx M-15. It is the solution of M-12 that applies at TOA and downwards for as long as M-12 remains true. There's no assumption that that range is infinite. In reality, as you approach solid ground, M-12 fails because of convection, latent heat etc.

jae # 196:

May I ask you, have you not studied BPL's posts, at all? Your # 196 suggests that you haven't noticed already that nearly every one of BPL's posts assumes, at one point or another, but usually right at the beginning, that the received, hallowed theory of man-made global warming is already, completely true. From that point, he demonstrates that it follows that Miskolczi is wrong. Have a look above where he shouts 'DO THE MATH!' and see if you can see that he has just assumed that the received theory, the very assumptions that are under question, are already true.

BPL: Have you really studied M's papers. Your 181 shows to me that you have not a clue what he is saying ??? You go right back to the flawed physics that M shows, with empirical data and logic, is not correct. It seems to me that the burden is on you to prove that the atmosphere is actually semi-infinite, which it clearly is not, according to all observations.

Alex #194

He seems to be interested only in following through the steps in the maths.

It's not the maths; that's just algebra which generally is fine but leads to a wrong result because what he starts with does not describe an earth like atmosphere.

Thus it's the physics that is the problem.

Jan # 194:

In fairness, I don't take that statement to imply that Pat actually believes eqn.4; I think he's allowing B(tA) = B(TauA) 'for the sake of argument'. He seems to be interested only in following through the steps in the maths.

BPL #191

Crikey again.

Nope. Nowhere. Just a temperature.

$$\sigma T^4$$ is not just a temperature but a black body (i.e. one with infinite optical depth) flux.

Alex #190

What people do and what they try to imply they are doing aren't necessarily the same thing.

2. Since B(tA) = B(TauA), then BG = B(TauA).

is equation 4 for absorptivity A=1 (and emissivity = 1) i.e. kirchoff's law. It is also the semi-infinite approximation.

Jan Pompe writes:

The atmosphere radiates (of course) σ T1^4 both upwards and downwards,

You are already assuming infinite optical depth for that sort of number.

Nope. Nowhere. Just a temperature.

Jan # 188, 189:

Pat Cassen implied at Eli Rabbett's blog that he rejects eqn.4 on the basis of a misapplication of Kirchhoff's law:

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=166122...

He may like to clarify this remark.

Do I see where the reviewers of Miskolczi (2007) went wrong? Frankly, I see no evidence that any of the reviewers even read the paper. What is clear is that they saw a conclusion that contradicted the consensus position, perhaps an appeal to Kirchhoff that they couldn't follow, and then dismissed it out of hand.

Alex #187


Darn an extra pair of dollars try again!

Pat explicitly accepts Eqn M7-4 in 1

$$A_A = S_UA =S_U (1-T_A) =E_D $$

what he does that I disagree with is he sets A to 1 (and $$T_A =0$$ so it reads

$$A_A= S_U=E_D$$
as in
(1) their respective Planck functions B(tg) and B(tA) are equal.[Miskolczi uses BG to designate B(tg).]

With $$T_A=0$$ there is no room for the atmospheric window when $$A_A = 1$$ over the whole spectrum. There will be some absorption lines in the water spectrum which may be considered infinite but there are large portion of the spectrum where this is not the case. This is why a tool like HARTCODE that takes each line and sums over the spectrum, is needed to calculate τ (Do you see where the reviewers of M7 went wrong?)

The effect of this in Eqn M-20 is to set to the second term $$\frac {\pi B_G T_A}A = 0$$ so it then is a monotonic function and cannot have a maximum.

Alex #187

Pat explicitly accepts Eqn M7-4 in 1

$$A_A = S_UA =S_U (1-T_A) =E_D $$

what he does that I disagree with is he sets A to 1 (and $$T_A =0$$ so it reads

$$A_A= S_U=E_D$$
as in
(1) their respective Planck functions B(tg) and B(tA) are equal.[Miskolczi uses BG to designate B(tg).]

With $$T_A=0$$ there is no room for the atmospheric window when $$A_A = 1$$ over the whole spectrum. There will be some absorption lines in the water spectrum which may be considered infinite but there are large portion of the spectrum where this is not the case. This is why a tool like HARTCODE that takes each line and sums over the spectrum, is needed to calculate τ (Do you see where the reviewers of M7 went wrong?)

The effect of this in Eqn M&-20 is to set the second term $$\frac {\pi B_G T_A}A = 0$$ so it then is a monotonic function and cannot have a maximum.

Jan # 184:

I fully realise that Pat doesn't accept eqn.4, and I know that none of the other vocal opponents of the theory do either. But there are also a growing number of silent readers who do. Franko, pochas, are two examples. Gary Gulrud at Anthony Watts' blog, is another. Having scanned the blogs, I see other anonymous readers with backgrounds in physics who find no problem with the relationship, AA = ED.

For their benefit, and my own, do you agree that eqn.28 / B11 can be derived from eqn.4?

I draw your attention to M2007, p. 30:

Based on Eq. (28) we may also give a simple interpretation of EU : EU=SUf −SUTA. Since the total converted F0+P0 to OLR is SU f , and SU TA is the transmitted part of the surface radiation, the SUf −SU TA difference is the contribution to the OLR from all other energy transfer processes which are not related to LW absorption: EU =F+K+P. Substituting this last equation into the energy balance equation at the lower boundary, and using Eq. (3) we get: ED−AA= 0. This is the proof of the Kirchhoff law for the surface-atmosphere system. The validity of the Kirchhoff law requires the thermal equilibrium at the surface. Note, that in obtaining Eq. (28) the Kirchhoff law was not used (see Appendix B).

Miskolczi's intention is of course to derive eqn.4 using the principle of minimum energy from eqn.28, but it works in both directions.

BPL #182: I have seen that proof before. It would be interesting to incorporate transmittance so that its semi-transparent not semi-infinite, and generalize to one equation with earth and atmosphere global average thermal equilibrium at the surface instead of two discontinuous solutions. Then you would have something resembling Miskolczi's model:

Ts = T1 (1 + τ + e^-τ)^0.25

The exponential term being the effect of transmittance, neglected in the classic semi-infinite solution.

If I am thinking correctly, Kiehl Trenberth show an optical depth of 2.28 (-ln(40/390). That's not so far from M's 1.87. If you add 20 watts more to KT's window radiation (60/390), the optical depth becomes 1.87.

Alex #179 Pat 174

it might be interesting to consider the case where we accept eqn.(4), AA = ED.

I Ferenc does do that I'm not sure Pat does.

In #61

1. Equality of the ground temperature tg and the base atmospheric temperature tA demands that their respective Planck functions B(tg) and B(tA) are equal. [Miskolczi uses BG to designate B(tg).]

2. Since B(tA) = B(TauA), then BG = B(TauA).

For the Planck functions B(tg) and V(tA) both must have identical spectra since the surface is considered a near blackbody (emissivity ~.96) and the atmosphere is not (it's coloured because of it's emission spectrum) they do not have identical spectra so the assumption is untrue and and 2 does not hold. Bg = B(τA) the atmosophere must be completely opaque with no atmospheric window and the optical depth tending toward the infinite.

OK for suns maybe Venus (I don't pretend to know) but not for earth and definitely not for Mars.

BPL #181

The atmosphere radiates (of course) σ T1^4 both upwards and downwards,

You are already assuming infinite optical depth for that sort of number. Since the atmosphere does not radiate as a black body you are wrong already. On the other hand if you were deep in the sun's atmosphere for which the Eddington approximation does work you will get that sort of black body radiation.

# 176

Jan, nobody thinks the optical depth of the Earth’s atmosphere is infinite, least of all global climate modelers.

you seem to in 181.

Oops! Put all the equation numbers in angle brackets. Well, number them and read it again. Sorry about that.

Ferencz Miskolczi appears to believe that the temperature-optical depth relation derived from the Eddington approximation:

Ts = Te (1 + 0.75 τ)^0.25

is incorrect because Milne (1922) originally derived it assuming an infinite atmosphere. I will here derive a similar relation without that assumption.

Picture first a two-level system. The first (upper) layer, the atmosphere, is transparent to sunlight but a blackbody absorber of infrared. The second (lower) layer, the ground, absorbs both sunlight and infrared, but has a nonzero albedo for sunlight equivalent to that of the present Earth. The atmosphere radiates (of course) σ T1^4 both upwards and downwards, where T1 is the temperature of the atmosphere; the ground radiates σ Ts^4 upwards only. The radiation balances are:

σ Ts^4 = 2 σ T1^4

for the atmosphere, and

Fs + &sigma T1^4 = σ Ts^4

for the ground. Fs is the flux absorbed by the climate system:

Fs = (S / 4) (1 - A)

where S is the solar constant and A the bolometric Bond albedo.

Since σ Ts^4 appears in both energy balance equations, we can set equations and equal and solve for T1:

T1 = (Fs / σ)^0.25

And given T1, we know Ts from equation . For S = 1,366 watts per square meter and A = 0.306, we have Fs = 237 W/m^2, T1 = 254 K (the radiative equilibrium temperature of the Earth, how about that), and Ts = 302 K. Note that, from equation ,

Ts = 2^0.25 T1

Now try two layers of atmosphere and one of ground, with temperatures T1, T2, and Ts. The energy balances are:

σ T2^4 = 2 σ T1^4

σ T1^4 + σ Ts^4 = 2 σ Ts^4

Fs + σ T2^4 = σ Ts^4

Solving in steps as before, equation allows us to lose the T2 term when substituting into , leading to

Ts = 3^1/4 T1

Compare and . In each case, the ratio is one plus the number of blackbody atmosphere layers, to the 1/4th power. For systems of this type, the number of blackbody layers functions as the optical thickness, so the general equation for surface temperature becomes

Ts = T1 (1 + τ)^0.25

The expression derived from the Eddington approximation is:

Ts = Te (1 + 0.75 τ)^0.25

The two expressions differ only in the coefficient of the optical thickness term, which is 1 for the "glass slab" system and 0.75 for the Eddington system. Results for the two are not terribly different:

N Ts (glass) Ts (Eddington)

1 302 292
2 334 319
3 359 341
4 380 359

Note that at no time did I require an infinite atmosphere or infinite optical thickness.

Eli # 150, 151, 163:

Alright, let's ignore the layers & layers of filtering & processing, the undisclosed theory & assumptions behind your satellite data.

What you have clearly conceded above -- that Miskolczi knows exactly how to compute fluxes using HARTCODE and that we have absolutely no good reason to doubt his computations -- leads you to many other places you don't want to be.

At Miklos Zagoni's site, for instance, is a plot relating to Miskolczi's eqn.4, AA = ED. Search for the words, "To those who assert anthropogenic global warming and the runaway greenhouse effect, you are asked to plot your own dots on the above graph." Have a look at the graph, too. Let go of the fact that Miskolczi has attributed the result to Kirchhoff if you think this is nonsense, and focus on the computed result.

Acceptance of AA = ED, whether derived as theory, or computed empirically -- a point that has been missed by most, but certainly not by Zagoni, and not by Barton Paul Levenson either (I refer to BPL # 2 and this same post of his that he's posted enthusiastically at various blogs all over the internet) -- because this blows a great big hole in Kiehl & Trenberth's energy budget, and the conclusions, and not to mention the competence, of the IPCC.

Can you tell me then how you are avoiding THIS conclusion then?

Jan, Pat:

On the dispute about Appendix B & the derivation of B11, it might be interesting to consider the case where we accept eqn.(4), AA = ED. Miskolczi shows in M2007 that if you accept eqn.(4), then without accepting the principle of minimum energy at all, the same result can be derived. It's a very simple proof; even I can follow it! For the sake of argument, I would like to know if this derivation holds, given the overwhelmingly strong empirical evidence Miskolczi brings for eqn.(4), would we then arrive at B11?

Nick # 160:

Alex, again you’re missing the point of the transparency discussion above. No-one can falsify FM’s result. That is because it is quite inadequately described. That’s why scientific journals have standards. You have to declare stuff like, what are those 228 data sets, and how were they chosen? What is that NOAA data and how was it used? What data for other GHG gases was used? What assumptions were made about clouds? This is the minimum before you can expect anyone to try to reproduce the results.

I am not missing any point about transparency.

- NOAA data: you want transparency on an unpublished result discovered on ~ 20th October, 2008. How long did your last paper take?

- the remainder of your points, all have been discussed elsewhere. It boils down to, you haven't read the high-quality-journal peer-reviewed paper, Miskolczi & Rizzi (1998), where the profile selection strategy was described. You don't want to read it, either. But you still want to say the result is unfalsifiable. So, you just say it anyway! And you keep on saying it! And come hell or high water, nothing's gonna stop you! All your other questions were answered previously as well, you have either forgotten, or you haven't read them.

- EVEN if you don't accept the points above, then tell me why NASA can't devise their own profile selection strategy, using any criteria they please, and their own LBL codes?

BPL # 175:

Where exactly did I say that 'silence means consent'? Rather, we should all agree, given the importance of climate change, that silence is utterly irresponsible.

Have you heard of Pascal's wager?

Pascal argued persuasively that it's better to believe than not to. He drew up a little truth table, and considered four scenaria: (1) God doesn't exist, and I don't believe in God; (2) God doesn't exist, and I do believe in God; (3) God exists, and I do believe in God; (4) God exists, and I don't believe in God. Now let's assign values, 1 point for case 1, 1 point for being right; -1 to (2) lose 1 point for being wrong; (3) 1 million + 1 points for being right and going to heaven; (4) -1 million points for going to hell and -1 point for being wrong as well. You add it all up, and it pays to choose (3).

Pascal was a great risk manager.

So now let's look at NASA.

(1) Miskolczi is wrong, AGW is right: what's that, one scientist + 1 computer for two weeks = $1000, we save the world, let's say +1 million -1 points.
(2) Miskolczi is wrong, AGW is wrong: $1000, billions wasted in research, we destroyed the global economy with at ETS we didn't need, and discover that the Sun causes climate change & there ain't nothin' we can damned well do about it. Let's hope we don't get here, eh! -1million -1 points.
(3) Miskolczi is right, AGW is wrong: $1000, we save the global economy for $1000! +1million +1 point.
(4) Miskolczi is right, AGW is right. Well, look at that. You can't even get here! That's logic for you.

Now you seem to be pretty good at maths. So you tell me: How much does the response to Miskolczi really cost?

Jan Pompe writes:

That is not what Eli appears to be saying.You think the basis for the existing theory, infinite unbounded atmosphere with infinite optical depth at the surface is correct?

Well think again. First the atmosphere is bounded and finite, and second the atmospheric window puts lie to infinite optical depth straight away. Sorry the atmosphere is not completely opaque at the surface.

Jan, nobody thinks the optical depth of the Earth's atmosphere is infinite, least of all global climate modelers.

Alex Harvey writes:

C’mon, Eli. Your position is utterly untenable. Give us a single plausible explanation for the silence of NASA, or the University of Bologna, where HARTCODE was developed, or a number of other centres that could falsify Miskolczi’s result. Just one plausible reason.

Alex's mistake, of course, is to assume "silence means consent." The fact is that there are many, many crackpot papers published every year and no one wants to spend time refuting them all. Miskolczi is just one more nut.

Jan –
Let’s shake hands over our disagreement about whether Bg is a boundary condition or not. Please note that the exercise in #61 does not depend on this point. Nor does it depend on using a semi-infinite atmosphere vs. a bounded atmosphere. It only depends on such statements as:
If, for each and every value of TauA, there is a corresponding value of Bg, then Bg is a function of TauA.

Now Dr. Miskolczi appears to suggest that the first part of eqn B11, which specifies Bg(TauA), is not to be taken literally. So we are to take it how...metaphorically?

If you disagree with the conclusion that there is no local maximum in Bo(TauA), please identify which step(s) of #61 you disagree with.

Alex Harvey –
My apologies for not yet responding to your comments; I am not ignoring them. I’m still trying to catch up, and other matters have been pressing.

Jan: I was referring to the radiosonde data.

Unchained, Energized, Rabbit of War is no Chicken.
The HARTCODE comparision links, he provided, pose questions. Process with one, invert with another. How well is energy conserved ? Sensitivity to perturbation etc. ?

jae #169

FM is not using exotic or obscure data you can actually use google to track it down though it is easier just to ask him for it. Though to run the dat and do the calculations you need something like HARTCODE, MODTRAN, LBLTRM or FASCODE to name a few and access to HITRAN or GEISA databses. The people behind those tools could easily verify or falsify FMs work but are silent. Charles (cba) he should also be able to with his own one dimensional model. He's to busy.

"But you think the boys with thermometers at the surface are getting it right? "

That depends on where they put them.

Digital ear thermometers overstate temperature

BTW, if M isn't making his data available to allow reproduction of the results, then I agree with Nick. Without such transparency, all these arguments are a waste of time.

Rabbitspeak:

"Eli is not only enamored of Dressler et al, but also of the links (formerly known as footnotes) in the paper. Also if you should read what the bunny wrote, in the same article about Soden, et al, who among other things explain why putting your trust into boys with balloons and the NOAA reanalysis is not a cool thing"

But you think the boys with thermometers at the surface are getting it right? LOL.

"Fog above a swamp, gets it’s energy from below"

Very important point that energy cannot go back down and do more work to create more fog. If it wants to do more work it must go to a colder place.


Bunny in a self-made trap ?
Ghoulash soup, with lots of spices, the result ?


Rabett stew?

Fog above a swamp, gets it's energy from below.
Energizer Bunny, similarly, not infinitevily powerful

Bunny in a self-made trap ?
Ghoulash soup, with lots of spices, the result ?

ps the quote above is from Soden et al paper.

Eli #163

The bunny should take his own advice.

It's the boys with balloons who calibrate the instruments of the boys with rockets.

If water vapor concentrations do increase in a warmer world, the added absorption will act to further amplify the initial warming. Models of Earth's climate suggest that this serves as a powerful positive feedback,

What is this? Amplify and powerful positive feedback both imply more energy output than is coming from the input. That requires an internal power source do you think you could identify that power source for us?

The links appear to work at least now.

Eli is not only enamored of Dressler et al, but also of the links (formerly known as footnotes) in the paper. Also if you should read what the bunny wrote, in the same article about Soden, et al, who among other things explain why putting your trust into boys with balloons and the NOAA reanalysis is not a cool thing

Given the radiative importance of moisture changes in the upper troposphere (9, 10), it is important that humidity changes there are demonstrably consistent between models and observations. Although an international network of weather balloons has carried water vapor sensors for more than half a century, changes in instrumentation and poor calibration make such sensors unsuitable for detecting trends in upper tropospheric water vapor (27). Similarly, global reanalysis products also suffer from spurious variability and trends related to changes in data quality and data coverage (24).

Note to management: Could you make the box for posting comments a bit larger? It would make things easier for those of us who enter our wisdom directly.

cohenite #158

Any way eli seems enamoured of Dessler et al and increasing SH; Steve, Jan and Alex, have you guys read the paper in question?

Not yet but a slight increase in humidity at the surface does not necessarily translate into increased optical depth over the entire atmospheric profile. FMs latest run shows that it doesn't.

Nick #156

No, we’re talking about the validity of a theory.

That is not what Eli appears to be saying.You think the basis for the existing theory, infinite unbounded atmosphere with infinite optical depth at the surface is correct?

Well think again. First the atmosphere is bounded and finite, and second the atmospheric window puts lie to infinite optical depth straight away. Sorry the atmosphere is not completely opaque at the surface.

But the main one is that his whole theory is based on this statement by FM: “The principle of minimum energy requires the most efficient disposal of the thermal energy of the atmosphere.” No one, FM or anyone else, has provided any justification or authority for this claim. There is none.

Minimum entropy principle along with it's isolated system's cousin the maximum entropy principle are pretty well established thermodynamic, 2nd law, principles. IIRC you tried to debunk with a poor understanding of it and getting all confused about the difference between isolated and closed systems.

As for Pat Cassen I don't quite understand his objection it strickes me as rather confused as he's basically got the boundary conditions wrong, though they might well be a reasonable approximation for a solar atmosphere.

What sort of argument is this for Bg not being a boundary condition?

A boundary condition is something you specify, independent of the values of other parameters of the problem. If we could do that for Bg, it would mean that we knew the surface temperature under all conditions

Can you at least explain the math and physics in that bit of nonsense?

Alex #148
"One of NASA’s modellers, could surely falsify Miskolczi’s result over a weekend or two."
Alex, again you're missing the point of the transparency discussion above. No-one can falsify FM's result. That is because it is quite inadequately described. That's why scientific journals have standards. You have to declare stuff like, what are those 228 data sets, and how were they chosen? What is that NOAA data and how was it used? What data for other GHG gases was used? What assumptions were made about clouds? This is the minimum before you can expect anyone to try to reproduce the results.

There's plenty of properly published stuff for them to work on. Why should they spend time on claims that are not even properly stated, let alone published?

As Eli says, Hartcode is not the issue. I don't know if it is valid, but there are other codes that do the same thing. The issue is what is done with it.

I don't know if tau has been stable for the last 60 years. The is the transparency issue; the necessary basis for believing it is not supplied. I am actually doubtful, because CO2 has been rising and water has not been behaving in the way that would be needed to maintain this constancy - ie steadily declining. Mostly it has been rising too, as have the other GHGs.

#158 cohenite
It isn't just a matter of re-wording. You need
1. a statement of the minimum energy principle claimed
2. some authority for believing that it is correctly applicable here, and
3. a good argument that it does actually mandate "efficient disposal" in these circumstances (an unusual claim)

Eli #151

Anyone talking about HARTCODE as forcing a specific optical depth clearly is out of their depths and does not understand what line by line models do

Building strawmen again Eli just who do you reckon is saying this of "HARTCODE as forcing a specific optical depth", apart from you?

Well; Alex's summary shows we are whittling the areas of dispute down; at law this is called a Statement of Agreed Facts between the parties; Nick's concern is encapsuled in his statement that "the principle of minimum energy requires the most efficient disposal of the thermal energy of the atmosphere." This may be clumsily expressed (and I don't necessarily agree that it is) but it seems consistent with any number of laws to do with nature's parsimony; energy doesn't run up hill, the line of least resistance, conservation of energy, entropy and so on and so forth. If all that is required is a rewording of this sentence the parties can't be far apart.

Any way eli seems enamoured of Dessler et al and increasing SH; Steve, Jan and Alex, have you guys read the paper in question?

Eli # 150, 151:

You have stated that HARTCODE is valid, as you should have. You have said nothing about Appendix A; that's fine. You accept that the earth-atmosphere's tau is currently ~ 1.87 on the basis of Miskolczi's analysis of the TIGR & ERBE data. This implies that you are not doubting Miskolczi's ability to actually measure tau; you acknowledge moreover that he has measured it. You haven't looked in Appendix A because, presumably, you see no reason to suppose you would find anything wrong there.

Have I understood you?

You are, therefore, but a few smalls steps -- the sort of steps you take on day 1 of philosophy 101 when the instructor tells you, "All swans are white; I am a swan; therefore I am white!" -- a few smalls steps from the conclusion you don't want to reach, namely, that Miskolczi has shown empirically that the earth's tau has sat on ~ 1.87 +/- 1% since 1948.

Can you please explain how you are somehow managing to NOT arrive at this conclusion?

Jan #155
"Where is their empirical evidence?" No, we're talking about the validity of a theory. There are a lot of reasons to be doubtful about FM's claim that there is a fixed optical depth that has to be satisfied, even if the gas composition of the air has to be adjusted. But the main one is that his whole theory is based on this statement by FM: "The principle of minimum energy requires the most efficient disposal of the thermal energy of the atmosphere." No one, FM or anyone else, has provided any justification or authority for this claim. There is none.

Eli #150

The points are that claim that theory set the optical depth of the atmosphere to 1.87 has been demolished (Nick and Pat)

Oh really? Where is their empirical empirical evidence? Their theorising based on incorrect assumption that earth's atmosphere is infinite in one direction or that optical depth is infinite (reasonable for solar atmospheres) just doesn't cut it.

Cohenite#152 regarding EliRabett#151

"...it also contradicts the NOAA data showing declines in SH at all atmospheric levels except near the surface; ..."

It also contradicts the continental pan evaporation (potential evaporation; Ep) data for the last 30 years which exhibits a downward trend.

Roderick et al. 2007 have shown there is insufficient trending in both Vapor Pressure Deficit and air temperature just above the continental land surface over the last 30 years to explain the decline in Ep. They ascribe the downward tend in Ep to declining air speeds.

Thus at least over the continents there is no evidence to show that near surface (lower) water column density varies significantly with near surface air temperature on global and local distance scales over the last 30 years.

I should clarify; I agree there is little lag between water levels, SH, and their effect; Eli argues for a +ve effect; I favour Spencer and M's view of a -ve or moderating effect. In addition, if water vapour is the real driver of EGH, with no lag, presumably there is no need for the ocean pipeline. But as I say, temperatures for the last decade seem to contradict this scenario.

Eli; your 1st and 3rd links at 151 aren't working; in respect of your comment at 150; this not only defeats M but also Spencer and Braswell's work and empirical findings on -ve feedbacks from water vapor in its various forms; it also contradicts the NOAA data showing declines in SH at all atmospheric levels except near the surface; it also means that with increasing CO2 and a relatively inexhaustible supply of water from the oceans that there is no impediment to runnaway hot-house conditions. Since also, as you say, and I agree with this, there is no lag with water levels and their +ve effect, how can one explain the declining temperatures over the last decade when CO2 levels and, as you assert, presumably on the basis of Dessler, SH has been increasing as well?

Just to be clear HARTCODE is a line by line code which allows calculation of emission and absorption of radiation in the atmosphere GIVEN a specification of greenhouse gas distributions. Since the specification of greenhouse gas distributions is what is under discussion, HARTCODE is irrelevant to the discussion. Anyone talking about HARTCODE as forcing a specific optical depth clearly is out of their depths and does not understand what line by line models do

http://www.ecmwf.int/newsevents/meetings/worksh...

FWIW there are about a dozen line by line codes which are all equally good and bad in different places. HARTCODE is competitive but not superior to these. Indeed it is difficult to say that any one of them is the best unless you are talking about the one you wrote and since I have not written any, I won't take sides.

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/itwg/itsc/itsc15/pre...

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/itwg/itsc/itsc14/pre...

Alex, HARTCODE is not the issue, nor has it ever been, nor have I said anything about Appendix A.

The points are that claim that theory set the optical depth of the atmosphere to 1.87 has been demolished (Nick and Pat)

That the optical depth of the atmosphere is 1.87 currently.

That to first approximation the optical depth is controlled by the water vapor and CO2 column densities (we can also account for ozone, methane, etc but those are relatively small corrections)

That we have data showing that the water column density varies directly (not inversely as Miskolczi claims) with surface temperature on global and local distance scales and on relatively rapid time scales (sub yearly)

Therefore Miskolczi's claim that the optical density is constrained to 1.87 fails on theoretical and observational grounds.

Oh, the Popper reference is:

Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1963, pp. 33-39.

See http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/popper_fals...

jae # 142:

I mentioned the lack of any equations that support HOH-enhanced AGW in my 135. I would like to also ask for empirical demonstrations of HOH-enhanced AGW. We have NONE, so far. McIntyre has blown the latest offering by Santer, et. al. out of the water (also done by Douglass, Lindsen, etc.) So, we now have a situation of a theory by M that gives both the equations AND the empirical data VS. ?? It’s time for the supporters of “The Theory” to put up or shut up. They only have an unwritten “theory” supported by models that are based on the unwritten “theory.” That’s real science???

On the subject of what 'real' science is, Karl Popper writes:

... It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations. ... Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.

But he continues:

Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.") ... Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. ...

One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not about to say that conflicting evidence isn't a problem for both camps. No one wants to go down the RealClimate path of just pretending.

But it is worth noting that in nearly all of Eli's studies, the Soden, Brown et al., the agenda of confirming AGW predictions is announced in the abstract. The data went through layers of processing before the 'expected' AGW signature was found. Presumably, the studies were funded for exactly the same purpose, viz. for confirming the predictions of IPCC and the GCMs.

This is not the case for Miskolczi's theory.

His 228 TIGR profiles were assembled for a completely different purpose, and the discoveries of new relationships in the data were made accidentally. It's obviously not the case for Ken Gregory's NOAA data, either, as he has no idea how HARTCODE works and could not have 'cooked' his data if he'd wanted to. Miskolczi's theory is clearly testable, and in fact, very easily testable. Indeed, it took Ferenc, what, a week or two to compute tau from the NOAA data. That was two weeks of unpaid work for one specialist with an LBL code to compute tau.

NASA is funded billions for climate research. One of NASA's modellers, could surely falsify Miskolczi's result over a weekend or two. In fact, I'll bet that their scientists have already done so, privately.

C'mon, Eli. Your position is utterly untenable. Give us a single plausible explanation for the silence of NASA, or the University of Bologna, where HARTCODE was developed, or a number of other centres that could falsify Miskolczi's result. Just one plausible reason.

Very good Franko; and those mafia members just love Pole dancing.

Quote; Luboš Motl
"If someone asked me what all of this money transfer is, I would answer that it is a big scale organized crime."

Break the code of silence;
Loose your job, Righteous Rabid Assasin Rabbits unchained, on your trail. For high on CO2 warewolves, every night has a Miskolczi Moon. Other Mafia members just throw ice cubes.

Nick # 132:

Why this new focus on Appendix A? It isn’t the main thing - it’s an Appendix. But it isn’t about alternative boundary conditions either; it’s just a rather technical discussion about how optical depths are calculated in a LBL code. Did you mean Appendix B?

For myself, yes, I meant Appendix A.

Given that Barton Paul Levenson concedes that HARTCODE is valid (as I'm sure everyone does), what is, in your words, "just a rather technical description about how optical depths are calculated in a LBL code", is possibly the difference between, "earth really has held tau = 1.87 since 1948" (in the case that Appendix A is perfectly valid) and "Miskolczi has made some sort of mistake", no? Or failing that, tell me where I'm wrong?

By the looks of it, Eli has already accepted that there's nothing wrong in Appendix A. So I wonder, again, on this remark that Ferenc made page 1, # 33:

I am more interested to the oppinion of those ‘distinguished’ scientists who are able to compute the correct IR optical thickness of the atmosphere and verify (or falsify) my results (here I think of the people behind the GENLEN, FASCODE, LBLTRM, MODTRAN etc.). Unfortunately they are silent.

Yes, why are they silent?

Eli # 125, 126:

On your blog you have written:

So now [Miskolczi's theory] ... is reduced to the claim that the optical depth of the atmosphere is held constant at 1.87 by compensating variations in the water vapor column density in the atmosphere. Well, at least for the Earth's atmosphere right now that is the value, but is it fixed and if it is what is the mechanism?

You then proceed to show that a number of studies are claiming an increase in water vapour based on satellite data, without any reference to all the studies that are showing the decrease in water vapour. You conclude, Misk0lczi must be wrong.

Others have pointed out above that you can hardly falsify something by just wishing away all the conflicting evidence. I have nothing to add there.

What interests me is that you now seem to be conceding, not only that HARTCODE is valid, but also that Miskolczi's calculations of the earth-atmosphere's tau are likely to be correct, at tau ~ 1.87? Presumably, then, you have accepted Miskolczi's analysis of the TIGR data, and by and large the conclusions of MM2004, but you reject the recent conclusion that the atmosphere has held this value for 60 years?

Eli # 125:

Is it really necessary to cross-post?

Miskolczi himself stated on page 1, # 281:

I am a bit confused with the term ‘empirical’. As long as you look at the simulated data points and they show that Su=3OLR/2 (Earth) or Su=3OLR/(2+Ta) (Mars) with a reasonable correlation, they are certainly empirical.

But if you accept the theoretical assumptions that the LTE requires the Ed=B(1-Ta) (Atmospheric Kirchhoff law) and the system maintains the maximum greenhouse effect (based on the entropy maximum principle) and you derive the above relationships from the (Su-OLR)+(Ed-Eu)=Fo or (Earth) or (Su-(OLR-St))+(Ed-Eu)=Fo-St (Mars) energy conservation equations then these relationships are not anymore ‘empirical’. They are in fact based on theoretical assumptions (not to be confused with ‘approximations’) which are supported by empirical (simulation) data….

Telling the truth, in the original versions of the manuscript only the empirical facts were presented. However, one Hungarian astrophysicist (reviewer of the Idojaras journal) insisted on giving reference or theoretical support for the new equations. He accepted the Su=OLR/f based on the mathematical proof in the Appendix B, but he thought that the other relationships needed some kind of theoretical backing (Su=Ed/A, Su=3OLR/2, Su=2Eu (Earth) and Su=3OLR/(2+Ta) and Su=3Eu/(2(1-Ta)) (Mars). Since no reference existed in the literature for the above relationships I had to create the new ‘laws’. At that time I was not happy about his arguments since new empirical facts alone used to be published, but know I am very grateful to him that he forced me to look deeper into the reasonings behind the equations and found some theoretical explanation.

However, this is not a ‘perfect’ greenhouse theory, (in science nothing is settled forever, no matter what IPCC believs) but could be a contribution to the better understanding of the radiative processes in the atmosphere.

You do me too much credit...

I mentioned the lack of any equations that support HOH-enhanced AGW in my 135. I would like to also ask for empirical demonstrations of HOH-enhanced AGW. We have NONE, so far. McIntyre has blown the latest offering by Santer, et. al. out of the water (also done by Douglass, Lindsen, etc.) So, we now have a situation of a theory by M that gives both the equations AND the empirical data VS. ?? It's time for the supporters of "The Theory" to put up or shut up. They only have an unwritten "theory" supported by models that are based on the unwritten "theory." That's real science???

The formula that does not parse
$$G = \frac A {1 \pm AB }$$

Steve #139

As I have noted, the one which most interests me is the feedback created by CO2 fertilization of photosynthetic organisms i.e. land plants and most particularly fertilization of the oceanic cyanobacterial biomass and hence increases in oceanic primary productivity. In areas of blooming this leads to increased nucleation of low level cloud (via production of DMS and isoprenes etc), increased albedo and decreased rate of evaporation.

I know I haven't shown it but I am holding on to these thoughts. AS you are probably aware I don't think that feedback of the sort that is described by the general transfer function

$$G = \frac A {1 \pm AB \}$$

is thermodynamically possible as it described a signal which is energy or power going back up the potential gradient. Life however even in its simplest form is capable of reversing local entropy (at a cost of increasing it elsewhere) to suite its needs. So I would posit that it is the only true form of feedback there is, it's more than just plausible in my book. The rest is Adaptive control which must use incoming, either immediate or delayed so it should be characterised as a feedforward adaptive control.

Just the thoughts on the matter of feedback from a retired old feedback and control engineer.

admin#138

"It occurred to me that the while M says negative feedback to maintain Eqns M7 (and M8) could occur via water vapor, he leaves it open for cloud cover mechanisms such as Lindzen's Iris effect too. If M8 is a limit set by energy balance there is a predicted mechanism, thats all."

And I also suggest that there are other plausible feedback mechanism which while they may partly indirectly work via cloud cover they may also work via a suite of mechanisms.

As I have noted, the one which most interests me is the feedback created by CO2 fertilization of photosynthetic organisms i.e. land plants and most particularly fertilization of the oceanic cyanobacterial biomass and hence increases in oceanic primary productivity. In areas of blooming this leads to increased nucleation of low level cloud (via production of DMS and isoprenes etc), increased albedo and decreased rate of evaporation.

About a year ago there appeared an excellent review of the performances of GCMs over the Pacific Ocean and it was quite marked how poor they were at simulating existing coverage of low level cloud. This is why the well-funded VOCALS (VAMOS Ocean Cloud Atmosphere Land Study) program, which considers in detail the complex feedbacks between clouds, ocean, and land (the Andes) was recently put in place to consider this problem for the Eastern Pacific.

FAO and various workers have also documented the increased plant biomass on the continents which has occurred over the last 30 - 40 years. Despite all we read about burning and deforestation in SE Asia and the Amazon Basin, it is a documented, if surprising fact that the net global area of afforestation has actually increased over this period. Continental plants, especially trees, emit large masses of organic aerosols, again principally isoprenes, which reduce lower atmosphere transmission and increase low cloud nucleation.

Considering the patterns and timing of CO2 enrichment of the atmosphere through the last 3 million years I actually have no problem with the notion of large scale CO2-driven biogenic feedback mechanisms (effects) which, over decadal timescales could produce the empirical effects which M appears to have identified.

There is much tantalizing evidence that these effects are already in play such as decadal trends in (continental) pan evaporation, opposing trends in continental wind and oceanic wind speeds (not vectors; Roderick et al. 2007), not to mention other effects which others such as Spencer et al., Chahine and Chen etc have pointed-out.

There is also plenty of evidence in the interglacial paleobiological records to support this notion of a suite of CO2 fertilization driven feedback effects. I spent 15 years as a full time, high publishing rate research isotope geochemist and am thus totally unimpressed by the hand waving assertions of those who proclaim that the Late Pliocene/Pleistocene/Holocene glacial/interglacial records somehow refute M's thesis (for this phase of this current interglacial). Its baloney. What about the record on cyanobacterial productivity/paleothermometry markers just for a start?

It occurred to me that the while M says negative feedback to maintain Eqns M7 (and M8) could occur via water vapor, he leaves it open for cloud cover mechanisms such as Lindzen's Iris effect too. If M8 is a limit set by energy balance there is a predicted mechanism, thats all.

You need to reject M7-8 which applies only on "Earth-like" atmospheres, failing on Mars as its too thin, and failing on Venus as its too thick, allowing temperature to increase linearly with $$\tau$$ as per eqn M13.

Thanks Jan, The issue I was referring to as the 'main thing' is the general greenhouse equation M21, derived through Appendices A and B, with the use of the lower boundary condition to "resolve the longstanding misinterpretation of the Eddington solution", with demonstrated improvement in accuracy over the semi-infinite and USST-76 profiles.

Do you regard this as a solid contribution to the field, as M appears to from the text following Eqn 21, or do you dispute the generalization of the solution of the source function for the bounded atmosphere? I didn't see a discussion of this. Do you regard it as uncontroversial?

I have to be careful with my characterization. This is a paper with many interacting theoretical and empirical elements. Pat stated that it is "empirically justified", Nick called it a "fallback empirical notion", Eli called it an "empirical claim", but I said it was "inspired by observations that begged for explanation". Ferenc has said from his earliest emails to the effect, "if you don't like the explanations, explain the observed relationships some other way". Different things.

The omniscient bunny says:

"Alex Harvey let the cat out of the bag when he said

But since then, it has been made quite clear that Miskolczi’s theory was, in the first instance, an empirical discovery. The mathematical theory of M2007 that you are objecting to here was adduced “after the fact” to explain a series of well-documented empirical observations, as Ferenc has made quite clear earlier in this thread.

In plain English, the “theory” in Miskolczi’s paper has been demolished, by among others Nick and Pat and what is left is an empirical claim."

Since WHEN is this a problem in science? As far as I know, there is nothing scientifically wrong in developing a theory, after observations have been made, as long as the theory explains the data in a way that makes physical sense.

And someone still has to show me just how the theory has been "demolished." But most rabbits have no trouble JUMPING to conclusions. :)

So much effort has gone into bashing M. Can someone sumarize where we are at this point?

Also, isn't it time that we got to look at the equations supporting the "conventional theory" and all the magic GCMs, especially those equations that prove a positive water vapor feedback?

Dave #133

It's in the same thread and starts on this page

Hi Nick, Thanks for the link to the high quality discussion which moved on since I last looked at it. I will have to go through it when I have time, but can you post a link to a discussion of Appendix B? The link you gave goes to a Kirchhoff discussion.

As Neal said (page 102!) "I do not at all agree that "all substantial objections" have been worked through."

#124 David (and Alex)

Appendix A about the solution with alternative boundary conditions is the main thing, and hasn’t been addressed.

Why this new focus on Appendix A? It isn't the main thing - it's an Appendix. But it isn't about alternative boundary conditions either; it's just a rather technical discussion about how optical depths are calculated in a LBL code.

Did you mean Appendix B? And did Alex? If so, that was extensively discussed on the CA BB site (address below).

I'm curious that, after starting this exercise off with extensive discussions of the virial theorem and Kirchoff's law , you now say they are peripheral. One of the problems with this fallback empirical notion is that, if you take out the ditched theory, it isn't at all clear what argument remains, with the various bits of "experimental" data that are in the paper. It's clearer from Zagoni's website , but of the four regressions presented there to affirm the main principles, only one was in the original paper. So it's not clear to me what the original argument of the paper could have been.

The Appendix B discussion is at the following address, which is too long to show as a hyperlink here:
http://climateaudit.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=...

BPL#119

"Did you read what you wrote? Hint: The pan measurements are all taken on continental surfaces. The ocean wind speeds are all taken above the ocean. You don't even have to do the math to see the problem here.

Average wind speeds will almost always be lower on continents than over the ocean because land has surface relief and the ocean doesn’t (except brief excursions like tsunamis). You might want to review chapter 7 in Houghton. Beware, it involves some vector calculus."

Yet another silly, petulant straw man argument. That dyspepsia must be really biting.

Haven't been talking at all about the absolute magnitudes of wind speeds but long term DOWNWARD TRENDS in wind speeds on continents and UPWARD TRENDS over the oceans.

Get a life, BPL.

Cohenite #130

"....the increase in SH as a correlation with temperature; “q” is contradicted by NOAA’s SH data and the pan evaporation paradox that Steve has been talking about; which means the increased SH can’t be coming from the land surface but the ocean; if that is the case then Spencer and Braswell’s stochastic -ve feedbacks must come into play through increased cloud cover."

I agree. If as Roderick et al 2007 appear to have shown, there is an insufficient degree of variation of the Vapor Pressure Deficit (VPD) AND surface temperature at the bottom of the troposphere over the continents to explain a widespread 30 year DOWNWARDS trend in pan evaporation (a measure of potential evaporation Ep) then there is indeed a significant problem with the notion that increased SH is sourced from the continents.

Nice work, Cohenite. All good cogent points.

Eli is cock-a-hoop about the Dessler paper, and indeed, if RH is constant while SH increases while CO2 increases, then the paper's "super-greenhouse" and AGW will finally get on the scorecard. But, as David notes, the latest attempt to produce an AGW fingerprint, Santer et al, was as horrible as Sherwood; the temps are still sufficiantly contradictory so as to make people wonder about Dessler's "q", the increase in SH as a correlation with temperature; "q" is contradicted by NOAA's SH data and the pan evaporation paradox that Steve has been talking about; which means the increased SH can't be coming from the land surface but the ocean; if that is the case then Spencer and Braswell's stochastic -ve feedbacks must come into play through increased cloud cover. In addition, the Dessler effort assumes an even mixing ratio for CO2 which is contradicted by other AIRS data and the work of Chahine and Chen; in addition, the Dessler paper regards Ts as both a proxy for latitude, thus vindicating, or agreeing with the Pielke Snr paper on Stefan-Boltzman differentatiated OLR, and the cause of the increase in both Ta (which as the Santer debacle shows is not occuring) and "q"; given the pan evaporation paradox which limits, apparently, the land surface as a source for the water and, given that Spencer and Braswell's effect limits the "q" effect over the SS, the issue remains: where is the source of the increase in "q"?

Probably a bit early for a victory hop. Some extracts:

Dessler et al pp7.

One reviewer of this paper questioned whether our comparison involved circular logic: the AIRS retrieval of Ta and q involves a radiative transfer model, so the comparison between the models and the retrievals thus are both based on radiative-transfer models.

Spencer, R.W., Braswell, W.D., Christy, J.R., Hnilo, J., 2007. Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations.

What Spencer and colleagues found breathes new life into the iris hypothesis. Spencer’s team identified an increase in low-level water clouds during the warming phase of the tropical intraseasonal oscillations, but found that while the amount of high altitude ice clouds increased initially, they unexpectedly reversed course and rapidly declined as the temperatures continued to climb. This decline in ice clouds progressed until the temperatures peaked and began to fall again. Figure 1 shows how the two types of cloud cover (water and ice) evolved over the course of the rise and fall of temperature during a composite of the nine strongest intraseasonal oscillations identified by Spencer’s team.

<img src="http://www.worldclimatereport.com/wp-images/spencer_iris.JPG" width="300"></img>
By the looks of it, this behavior seems much like that originally described by Lindzen, and this time it is detected in a study that is much larger in scope, both spatially and temporally, than Lindzen’s original study.

To close of if you want to see a whether a relationship exists, direct or inverse, between water vapour and CO2 concentration then that is what you should chart not water vapour versus temperature.

Eli #151

Miskolczi’s paper has been demolished, by among others Nick and Pat and what is left is an empirical claim.

Could since you understand it so well then you could perhaps explain the "easy to follow" math in #61 where he sets Bg as a variable rather than a boundary condition (this is not an easy thing to do because it is wrong).

He justifies it with this:

If we could do that for Bg, it would mean that we knew the surface temperature under all conditions, and we could get on with the rest of our lives.

which is really a fallacy of undesirable consequences and a straw man because Bg is globally averaged it really says nothing about surface temperature under all conditions that information is lost in averages. I wonder how it is he doesn't know that.

I eagerly await your response.

PS. Dessler's chart does not purport to show the same thing (with different results) as FMs time series chart, so there again you miss the point.

to close this off, note that water vapor concentrations vary on a very fast timescale, so local values can be used to examine the issue.

Alex Harvey let the cat out of the bag when he said

But since then, it has been made quite clear that Miskolczi’s theory was, in the first instance, an empirical discovery. The mathematical theory of M2007 that you are objecting to here was adduced “after the fact” to explain a series of well-documented empirical observations, as Ferenc has made quite clear earlier in this thread.

In plain English, the "theory" in Miskolczi's paper has been demolished, by among others Nick and Pat and what is left is an empirical claim.

This claim, however, is easily falsified. For example, look at Andy Dessler's new paper (follow the link), Soden's paper which appeared in Science this year, or a bunch of references cited in those papers.

Moreover, both of these papers make hash of the argument that outgoing longwave radiation is not measured, and even if it were the measurements would not agree with the models.

Toot sweet.

#56 Alex:

an empirical discovery...
At any rate, the facts remain: Appendix A has not been criticised.

Yes, the empirical inspiration does not invalidate the theory. Appendix A about the solution with alternative boundary conditions is the main thing, and hasn't been addressed. The virial and kirchhoff have been peripheral.

BPL #100

But which factors would those be?

OK lets count the plausible options.
1. Changes in air pressure (Earth, Mars, Venus)
2. Changes in albedo
3. changes in emissivity
4. Changes in distribution of temperature lattitudinally
5. Changes in distribution of temperature attitudinally
6. Changes in solar insolation thru the stratosphere from ozone
7. Changes in solar insolation thru the stratosphere from sulphates (volcano ejecta)

BPL #116

How is the volume of Venus’s atmosphere constrained, Jan?

Gravity. Im' sure you've heard of it.

The state of Venus’s atmosphere can’t keep Venus hot because Venus radiates.

It does indeed an the Co2 atmosphere radiates OK too and as it cools there is downward convection to balance the upward convection. The downward moving gas loses absolute potential energy at twice the rate it gains kinetic energy as it moves through the gravitational field. This gain in kinetic energy will generally register as a rise in temperature. It will do this until it reaches the supercritical layer where the virial theorem will also no longer apply and the law will change.

However there will be a continual flux between the supercritical layer and the gaseous atmosphere and convection will occur there to keeping it all nice and toasty.

This by the way will work with no absorbing species in the atmosphere but with slower convection because those gases don't radiate as well so will retain heat longer.

Of course, that means you should be against Miskolczi’s theory, since his theory CLEARLY assumes there IS a greenhouse effect.

I don't know where you get the notion from that I don't think there is a greenhouse effect. I suppose we can expect any sort of fairy tale from you.

GHE is far from the only game in town and and as I pointed out above adiabatic (i.e. no Extra energy is taken on board) compression alone is quite capable of heating a planetary atmosphere above its equilibrium temperature.

The average insolution over a year changes very little, Jan, and I have done the math. And you’ve got it backwards — the average annual insolation INCREASES as eccentricity rises, it doesn’t DECREASE. The factor involved is 1 / sqrt(1 - e^2).

Bart you have to do the math of something real not physical systems that exist only in your imagination. During glacials the eccentricity is a lot larger than it is now. The greater the eccentricity the further from the sun the earth goes at aphelion and not much closer at perihelion.

I don’t understand your point here.

That water will sublimate and boil off even at current Mars temperatures the planet could have been quite icy for billions of years after cooling with water continuing to "boil" off.

Finally it's not necessarily your maths that is at fault but your understanding of the physics definitely is.

BPL:

"The state of Venus’s atmosphere can’t keep Venus hot because Venus radiates. It is in thermal equilibrium with the sun. Its high surface temperatures are due to the greenhouse effect, something you appear to have joined jae in not believing in."

You are being very unfair here. I have told you several times that I believe in the greenhouse effect. I just think it works differently (and more simply) than most others do. I also think it is fully compatible with Miscolczi's view.

Oops. I read jae's post carelessly, he said that we've been warming since the LITTLE Ice Age, not the Ice Ages per se. He's quite right that we've been warming since 1850.

Steve Short writes:

The mainstream ‘climatologists’ (as BPL would call them)

It's a real word, Steve, and it's many decades old. I didn't invent it.

are now saying that we have a situation over the last 30 years where near surface potential evaporation over the continents is trending down simply because the wind speeds are trending down.

Yet at the same time all available evidence suggests wind speeds over the oceans are trending upwards!

Did you read what you wrote? Hint: The pan measurements are all taken on continental surfaces. The ocean wind speeds are all taken above the ocean. You don't even have to do the math to see the problem here.

Average wind speeds will almost always be lower on continents than over the ocean because land has surface relief and the ocean doesn't (except brief excursions like tsunamis). You might want to review chapter 7 in Houghton. Beware, it involves some vector calculus.

jae writes:

I was thinking that the CC relationships are another demonstration that their CANNOT be a discontinuity, as shown by Kiehl Trenberth and other similar radiation balances.

jae, that doesn't mean anything. There's no temperature discontinuity at the surface because the atmosphere is not in radiative equilibrium; it convects. The Clausius-Clapeyron relation has nothing to do with removing the discontinuity.

jae writes:

It is my understanding that the Earth has, indeed, been gradually warming since the Little Ice Age. About 0.6 C/century.

Your understanding is wrong. We passed the peak of the interglacial 6,000 years ago and were on our way to another ice age 20,000 years in the future (or 50,000, the stade is deeper then) when anthropogenic global warming intervened.

Jan Pompe writes:

I have like I said PV = nRT on Venus too so get to it.

Actually, since the lower layers of Venus's atmosphere are a supercritical fluid, you need a different equation of state from the ideal gas law, but let's use the ideal gas law.

How is the volume of Venus's atmosphere constrained, Jan? You know that the "V" in the ideal gas law stands for "Volume," right?

The state of Venus's atmosphere can't keep Venus hot because Venus radiates. It is in thermal equilibrium with the sun. Its high surface temperatures are due to the greenhouse effect, something you appear to have joined jae in not believing in.

Of course, that means you should be against Miskolczi's theory, since his theory CLEARLY assumes there IS a greenhouse effect.

As for orbital variation you think a 30% variation in insolation over a year over compared to the current 6.6% variation is not enough to have you skiing from Helsinki to Rome in the summer you should do the maths.

The average insolution over a year changes very little, Jan, and I have done the math. And you've got it backwards -- the average annual insolation INCREASES as eccentricity rises, it doesn't DECREASE. The factor involved is 1 / sqrt(1 - e^2).

Planet’s cooled from their molten state long before the Sun’s brightness increased significantly.

I know.

Cooling from molten state is one thing then cooling the 1000K or more still takes a long time

That's the point -- it does NOT take a long time, not on a geological scale. There is no planet where the surface is still cooling down from its formation.

but Mars doesn’t have much mass to keep it’s water, and frozen water will even sublimate.

I don't understand your point here.

Density dominates. Inversion of density is corrected by convection T^4. Venus temperatures, haze above the swamp, hot lava underneath, all density explained

Hmmmm....

Actually the question of whether there is a true equilibrium between the temperature of the (true) surface and the temperature of the lowest level of the troposphere is not quite as straightforward as one may imagine, despite the dictates of simple equilibrium thermodynamics involving pure water (or sea water) and air and on the continent as an 'inert inorganic sponge' of soil or rock.

On the oceans the consequence of increasing atmospheric CO2 is to increase cyanobacterial primary productivity near the surface. While the AGW orthoodoxy is in denial about this it is an inevitable and present fact.

Thus almost totally ignored is the fact that this in turn increases the likelihood of an organic monolayer or multilayer lying on the sea surface and marked increases of the density of sulfate nucleii above that interface.

This in turn significantly decreases the rate of evaporation and hence the rate of approach to water liquid/vapor thermodynamic equilibrium posited on the primitive basis of a simple air/water interface.

On the continents, especially dry areas which have a variable water table which spends a significant time below about 2 m depth may also not be able to come to surface/air/water vapor equilibrium very quickly.

What are winds but the consequence of the whole system trying to come to thermodynamic equilibrium?

This is the message I have been trying to lead readers towards by highlighting the the so-called pan evaporation paradox.

The mainstream 'climatologists' (as BPL would call them) are now saying that we have a situation over the last 30 years where near surface potential evaporation over the continents is trending down simply because the wind speeds are trending down.

Yet at the same time all available evidence suggests wind speeds over the oceans are trending upwards!

At the end of the day GCMs are models built on a framework of 'subset cells' controlled by instantaneous equilibrium thermodynamics interconnected by 'choke points' based on supposedly well known rate determining steps.

As Miskcolczi repeatedly points out the system is continually moving back towards a preferred steady state. But it is a mistake to believe that steady state actually reflects complete thermodynamic equilibrium of specific, well defined subset cells of the whole system.

It is also a mistake to believe that we yet know everything about all the rates of all the choke points or indeed even acknowledge or have properly have identified all applying choke points.

In this context assertions about ice ages, snowball earth etc are also naive.

If you put a cup of warm coffee in an enclosure, water will continue to evaporate from the coffee until the coffee temperature is the same as the air temperature in the enclosure. If the air in the enclosure becomes saturated, it might even cause condensation and "rain" in the enclosure!

jae #111

Interesting point thanks jae. I think it's reasonable to expect vapour pressure to be in equilibrium near the surface where there is sufficient water and is relevant to optical depth .

Janp: as I understand the relationships, when applied to the climate, it is impossible for the very surface of liquid water to be different than the air directly above the surface. The vapor pressure must be in equilibrium. If the air gets hotter, vaporization immediately occurs; and conversely, if the air gets colder, you have instantaneous condensation. Therefore, I don't see how you can have a discontinuity at the surface, at least when water is present. Of course, it's different in the desert, where the surface can be much hotter than the air next to it (you can sometimes fry eggs on it!).

jae #109

I was thinking that the CC relationships are another demonstration that their CANNOT be a discontinuity, as shown by Kiehl Trenberth and other similar radiation balances.

I'm intrigued can you expand on this please?

Nope, you will have to take my word for it or just go on believing I am a liar.

Dunno about BPL but I think I can live with that :D

BPL:

"WHAT discontinuity at the surface? The discontinuity in temperature in a radiative equilibrium model of the atmosphere? Clausius-Clapeyron has nothing to do with that. It simply relates saturation vapor pressure to ambient temperature."

You definitely need to actually read Miskcolczi's papers, if you don't understand the surface discontinuity.

I was thinking that the CC relationships are another demonstration that their CANNOT be a discontinuity, as shown by Kiehl Trenberth and other similar radiation balances.

BPL:

"I find it very, very hard to believe that you are a scientist of any kind, jae. Please give the university or corporation you work at and list some of your journal publications so we can check what you’re saying."

Nope, you will have to take my word for it or just go on believing I am a liar. :)

BPL:
"4. Temperature is rising as measured by land surface temperature stations, sea surface temperature measurements from ships and buoys, borehole measurements, balloon radiosondes, satellite observations, and corollary effects such as melting glaciers, tree lines moving toward the poles, insect and bird migration toward the poles, spread of tropical diseases into previously temperate areas, longer growing seasons, earlier first-hatching dates for birds and insects, etc., etc., etc.

Which of the above four do you dispute?"

This one. It is my understanding that the Earth has, indeed, been gradually warming since the Little Ice Age. About 0.6 C/century. However, at the present time (since about 2001), we are in a cooling period, despite the continual rise of the evil pollutant.

BPL #105

EARLY Mars and Earth refers to 4.5 billion years ago

4.5 billion years ago earth had (it is supposed) a small altercation with a mars size object how long of you think recovery took?

The Pleistocene ice ages all took place in the last 3 million years.

Ordivician ice age happened when? It was warmer before and after than it is now.

Point is there is enough about to confound your pet theories about how the planets would look with a constant optical depth the you really cannot verify of falsify so why don't stop wasting time.

BPL #101

DO THE MATH.

I have like I said PV = nRT on Venus too so get to it.

As for orbital variation you think a 30% variation in insolation over a year over compared to the current 6.6% variation is not enough to have you skiing from Helsinki to Rome in the summer you should do the maths.

Planet’s cooled from their molten state long before the Sun’s brightness increased significantly.

Cooling from molten state is one thing then cooling the 1000K or more still takes a long time but Mars doesn't have much mass to keep it's water, and frozen water will even sublimate.

Jan Pompe writes:

Thus if Miskolczi is right, we should not have had ice ages, Venus should be temperate, and early Mars and early Earth should have been frozen over.

no ice ages but frozen over? Good one.

Pay attention, Jan. EARLY Mars and Earth refers to 4.5 billion years ago, when the sun was 72% as bright as it is now. The Pleistocene ice ages all took place in the last 3 million years.

Correction -- that should have been 72% for the Faint Young Sun, not 62%. My bad.

The approximation of Gouge et al. for the solar luminosity is:

L/L0 = 1 / (1 - 0.38 * (t/4.55))

where t is time measured from the present in Ga and 4.55 Ga is the estimated age of the sun.

For t = -4.55 Ga you get 1/1.38 or 72%.

With a linear approximation like this, it takes about 163 million years for the Sun's brightness to rise by 1 percentage point. All the Pleistocene ice ages have been in the last 3 million years.

BPL #100

Thus if Miskolczi is right, we should not have had ice ages, Venus should be temperate, and early Mars and early Earth should have been frozen over.

no ice ages but frozen over? Good one.

Jan Pompe writes:

1) There would have been no ice ages.

Earth gets colder when the ellipse stretches so why?

Not cold enough, Jan. DO THE MATH.

2) Venus would not be especially hot.

Given its orbit and the mass of the atmosphere and I think a valid assumption that PV=nRT holds on Venus, at least until the atmosphere turns supercritical, it’s not especially hot. Where atmospheric pressure is similar to earth’s the temperature is similar (PV=nRT remember) then follow the adiabat down another 50km it’s going to be hot and stuffy. Higher than this the lapse rate is not dissimilar to earths so I’m asking what difference does it make?

Where's the energy coming from, Jan? The surface of Venus is hotter than a self-cleaning oven. If there's no greenhouse effect, or if Venus's greenhouse effect is fixed at some low temperature, that heat would have radiated away by now. DO THE MATH.

3) Early Mars would not have had running water.

Why? Planets take a long time too cool after formative collapse it could have been warm enough for for long enough this and for the bulk of it to evaporate off there isn’t much gravity there to keep it on planet.

Planet's cooled from their molten state long before the Sun's brightness increased significantly. Check out any introductory planetology text. Hartmann's "Moons and Planets" is a good one. Or look up any of Cameron or Boss's papers on planet formation and compare the time scales.

Making assumptions about the history of a planet from a disance like this is pushing the boat out a bit far.

The surface temperature of Venus was measured by probes that landed on Venus -- Venera 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 and Vega-1 and Vega-2.

The temperature variations during the ice ages are from ice cores and sediment radioisotope data.

The flood plains on Mars were mapped from low orbit.

The presence of running water on the early Earth was measured in surface rocks by geologists on Earth.

Davids, true, if other factors change you can change the temperature despite a constant optical depth. But which factors would those be? The Sun's brightness has been approximately the same for a long time; you would have to go back millions of years before the difference had a measurable effect. And for the early Mars and early Earth, the change is in the wrong direction -- the problem is to explain how both could have been so warm when the Sun only emitted 62% of what it now emits.

Reflectivity? That can account for some of it. But to get big changes in Earth's albedo, you have to drastically affect the size of ice caps or the cloud cover or the arrangement of continents. We had big albedo changes in the ice ages, but they were effects, not causes (other than in the feedback sense).

Thus if Miskolczi is right, we should not have had ice ages, Venus should be temperate, and early Mars and early Earth should have been frozen over.

BPL #96

Miskolczi’s theory is contradicted by masses of evidence. If his theory were true

1) There would have been no ice ages.

Earth gets colder when the ellipse stretches so why?

2) Venus would not be especially hot.

Given its orbit and the mass of the atmosphere and I think a valid assumption that PV=nRT holds on Venus, at least until the atmosphere turns supercritical, it's not especially hot. Where atmospheric pressure is similar to earth's the temperature is similar (PV=nRT remember) then follow the adiabat down another 50km it's going to be hot and stuffy. Higher than this the lapse rate is not dissimilar to earths so I'm asking what difference does it make?

3) Early Mars would not have had running water.

Why? Planets take a long time too cool after formative collapse it could have been warm enough for for long enough this and for the bulk of it to evaporate off there isn't much gravity there to keep it on planet.

Making assumptions about the history of a planet from a disance like this is pushing the boat out a bit far.

#96. BPL how do you know that 1-3 are not possible with constant optical depth. Optical depth is not the same as surface temperature. Planets varying in temperature does not contradict optical depth.

BPL #90

Jan, do the math, okay?

I did and and using TIGR profiles I got a value for {PE}/{KE} = -2.06. Using more accurate figures for graviational constant and radius etc gets even closer to -2.

Don’t listen to me

I won't I an promise you that hell will freeze over before let a software hack teach me physics.

don’t listen to Miskolczi

i didn't the result surprised even him.

Here’s my work.

but you just told me not to listen to you - it's good advice from you and you should know about that so I'll take it.

jae writes:

Anyway, it looks to me that the only way the correlation shown can be true is if the optical depth is constant at 1.87.

And if the optical depth is constant at 1.87, we can't have had ice ages, since the variations in the distribution of sunlight by the Milankovic cycles are not enough, quantitatively, to explain the observed differences in temperature. If you don't have carbon dioxide to amplify them, you don't get ice ages. Do the math.

Miskolczi's theory is contradicted by masses of evidence. If his theory were true

1) There would have been no ice ages.
2) Venus would not be especially hot.
3) Early Mars would not have had running water.

And that's why, even without analyzing his equations, we know that his theory is WRONG. Analyzing the equations and pointing out the fallacies just puts the icing on the cake.

jae writes:

In fact, it’s rather ironic (idiotic?) that the warmers rely so much on the CC relationships, when they completely counter the discontinuity at the surface.

WHAT discontinuity at the surface? The discontinuity in temperature in a radiative equilibrium model of the atmosphere? Clausius-Clapeyron has nothing to do with that. It simply relates saturation vapor pressure to ambient temperature.

jae writes:

Chris: Get off your dogmatic high-horse, cut to the quick, and give us ONE frigging empirical piece of evidence that CO2 has increased the temperature.

1. John Tyndall demonstrated that carbon dioxide was a greenhouse gas in 1859. No one has ever found differently.

2. Roger Keeling and others demonstrated that carbon dioxide was rising in 1958. This had been suspected earlier, but Keeling's group has given quantitative measurements ever since '58.

3. The new carbon dioxide is coming from fossil fuel combustion, as we can tell from its radioisotope signal. The presence of CO2 from fossil fuels was first detected in ambient air by Hans Suess in 1955.

4. Temperature is rising as measured by land surface temperature stations, sea surface temperature measurements from ships and buoys, borehole measurements, balloon radiosondes, satellite observations, and corollary effects such as melting glaciers, tree lines moving toward the poles, insect and bird migration toward the poles, spread of tropical diseases into previously temperate areas, longer growing seasons, earlier first-hatching dates for birds and insects, etc., etc., etc.

Which of the above four do you dispute?

Especially now that we have a cooling trend.

We don't have a cooling trend. Eliminate the hyphens and read:

http://www.geoci-ties.com/bpl1960/Ball.html

http://www.geoci-ties.com/bpl1960/Reber.html

BPL #89

Because the Earth is receiving sunlight, which peaks in the visual, and emits in the thermal infrared. There’s no a priori reason to expect the emissivities/absorptivities to be the same.

This is a common fallacy that Kirchoff himself and Planck knocked on the head. Kirchoff's law cannot be wavelength dependent because a body in thermal equilibrium must also be in radiative equilibrium it is therefore implicit that absorptivity and emissivity are equal irrespective of wavelength.

jae writes:

I, personally, as a scientist, have lost a LOT of faith in the normal manner of scientific “verification/citation.”

I find it very, very hard to believe that you are a scientist of any kind, jae. Please give the university or corporation you work at and list some of your journal publications so we can check what you're saying.

Chris Colose writes:

More warming in the tropical troposphere is certainly a prediction by models, though I don’t take it as rigorous an expectation as stratospheric cooling which is much more well-grounded in basic radiative principles (others might disagree, Nick, BPL??).

No, you are exactly right here. The energy balance of the stratosphere is between absorption of sunlight by ozone and radiation of thermal energy by carbon dioxide. With more CO2 in the stratosphere, the stratosphere cools. There has also been cooling due to ozone depletion, but quantitatively that isn't enough to account for the observed change. As the models predicted, greenhouse warming of the troposphere goes along with cooling of the stratosphere.

Jan Pompe writes:

Sorry Barton after that bit of nonsense I don’t we need bother with anything you say. First problem is the Calusius virial theorem is NOT relevant to the empirically measured Eu=Su/2 a number S&T 97 agrees with BTW. Secondly the Clausius virial theorem tells us that the potential function of particles moving through a force field (gravitational or electrical) must satisfy the PE/KE =-2. Not the ridiculous number that you have come up with.

Jan, do the math, okay? Don't listen to me, don't listen to Miskolczi, just DO THE MATH!!! I did, and I found that the gravitational potential energy of the atmosphere was 684 times its kinetic energy, obvious proof that the virial theorem doesn't apply. Here's my work. Just eliminate the hyphen and paste it into your address window:

http://www.geoci-ties.com/bpl1960/Miskolczi.html

If I'm wrong, why don't you DO THE MATH yourself and tell us what you come up with? And show your work, please.

Jan Pompe writes:

Could you please educate us what Kirchoff’s law is then and then tell us how this equilibrium equation

~1368 W/m^2 * (1-0.3)*pi r^2 = 4 pi r^2 sig T^4

that has a term for absorptivity [the (1 - .306) albedo term] on the LHS does not have an equal absorptivity (.694) term on RHS?

Sure. Because the Earth is receiving sunlight, which peaks in the visual, and emits in the thermal infrared. There's no a priori reason to expect the emissivities/absorptivities to be the same.

The radiative equilibrium equation is very, very basic physics that goes back many, many decades. The mere fact that you're disputing it says something about how little you've studied the field.

Venus difference;
Molecular weight of the tropopause gas -- H2O=18 -- lifts --|*|-- SO2=64 -- drags.
Density violations are quickly convected; While temperature changes just conducted and radiated. Example is a lake, frozen at the top, 4°C at the bottom. Temperature, but not density inversion.

Chris,

But, if you pay attention to recent literature, I think everyone has tropical tropospheric warming now

I think you must be referring to Santer et al. 2008 and the misleading analysis where Santer's own method failed t-tests on UAH when data up to 2008 (or even 2007) were used, and their SI included a sensitivity test on their H1 hypothesis up to 2006, but omitted the corresponding test on the H2 hypothesis (the results reported in Table III).

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4195

BTW, in my comment 84, I am referring to the version of van Andel that David put on Wicki.

Chris,

Read the following carefully:

The signature for GHG warming, according to IPCC and Modellers, includes the following:

1) upper trop warming at a higher rate than ground in the tropics.

2) stratospheric cooling.

3) increase in height of tropopause.

If all 3 are present GHG warming is probable. If any one or more is missing GHG warming is not likely. Let me remind you again, this relationship is determined by the physics in the models.

Pretty simple Chris.

You state:

"But, if you pay attention to recent literature, I think everyone has tropical tropospheric warming now, and a bit moreso than the surface."

How many studies have shown a higher trend than ground without using GCM type processing to reprocess and "adjust" the data??

NONE???

Telling me the strat temps are decreasing does NOT tell me there is GHG warming.

Cherry picking the portion of observations you like and ignoring the rest is bad form at the least.

Stating that the reality is there but not being able to measure or quantify it is just sorry.

What you should be showing is that the relationship of the Magnitude of Strat decrease, Tropopause increase, and Hot Spot increase, is reasonable based on ground temp increase. Interestingly, I have read no one doing this.

Maybe you can point me to a paper where some one has put numbers to this relationship?? I would think it would be pretty straight forward based on the GCM physics and the "solid" GISS temp observations. I am not asking for 20 years from now. I am asking for CURRENT!!! You know, predicting something based on the GCM theory??

Of course, your vaunted literature is summed up by the following statement:

You can not EXCLUDE the POSSIBILITY of a Hot Spot.

Actually, yes I can. Every day the satellites measure the temps of the atmosphere over the tropics and it is NOT THERE!!!! None of the sonde data shows it either.

By the way Chris, take a look at the RSS data:

http://www.remss.com/msu/msu_data_description.html

and explain to me how you get strat cooling since about 1994??? 14 years of flat temp is cooling??

When we talk about global cooling we aren't even talking about 10 years, yet, here is a record of 14 years, much longer than Hansen had when he first started crying AGW, showing NO STRAT COOLING!!!!

We can just ignore those step functions after volcanoes can't we Chris??

Again, if the physics in the models are correct, there has been no notable GHG warming of the earth since the satellite record began.

Now, let's let the guys who know more than we do, and can show it with the math, discuss real issues.

Pat, et. al. I'm rather new in this debate, but it seems to me that the discussion and empirical data in van Andel's summary addresses this matter. See Figure 24 (I recently put some numbers on the figures so I can refer to them). The ? in the discussion refers to tau (I haven't yet figured out how to get the tau letter in there). Anyway, it looks to me that the only way the correlation shown can be true is if the optical depth is constant at 1.87.

jae #80

It may be easier than that. I think you have to prove that the clausius clapeyron equation is false, in order to negate M’s statement here.

I think there is enough degrees of freedom in \tau, \bar \tau, \tilde \tau and \hat \tau for some serious confusion. I think maybe Pat is at cross purposes with Ferenc but I'll wait and see what Dave (or Ferenc) turns up.

OOpps, Pat and others: Ignore the above; I got off on a tangent, here.

In fact, it's rather ironic (idiotic?) that the warmers rely so much on the CC relationships, when they completely counter the discontinuity at the surface.

Pat, 61

"The function Bo(TauA) appears in an expression which Dr. Miskolczi claims to be the correct solution of the radiative equations in the case where the temperature at the base of a bounded atmosphere, tA, equals the temperature of the ground, tg.

OK, this sounds complicated, but the math is easy. So grab a copy of Dr. Miskolczi’s paper and a pencil, and follow along."

It may be easier than that. I think you have to prove that the clausius clapeyron equation is false, in order to negate M's statement here.

Pat #77

If you had followed the discussion you would have seen that Neal really can't make up his mind between his own {KE} =3{PE}/2 and BPL's 1/1.54e-3 (see 171 previous thread) so it isn't really clear to him. I think he doesn't care either way as long as it isn't -2.

Isn't your Bg = Bo of equation 13 (and 20) which is the solution of DE 12 and is the constant of integration therefore a boundary condition. No?

I notice David is looking into it and I'm happy to see what will come of it.

Sorry about the outage everybody. Something happened on the provider site.

Pat, good to hear from you again. Your issue in #61 deserves resolution and I am working on it a bit now. I have a few ideas, but hope to put something together in a few days. Cheers

Jan #69

“... that earlier nonsense about it not being passive...”
Hmmm. All I meant was that the support of the ground distinguished the bounded case from the purely self-gravitational case, and that force was “not passive” in the sense that it had to be included explicitly in the VT. Or something like that. In any case, my interest in this issue was satisfied by NJK’s clear exposition, with due respect for your contrary views. I’m not particularly interested in trying to change your mind about it.

“Isn’t Bg a boundary condition...?”
No. A boundary condition is something you specify, independent of the values of other parameters of the problem. If we could do that for Bg, it would mean that we knew the surface temperature under all conditions, and we could get on with the rest of our lives. Which is what I am about to do anyway :-)

jae, #72

As I said, “for better or worse.” Looks like you should stick with option 1 in my #60.


Alex, #76:
Your comment deserves a more thoughtful response than I have time for right now. So I hope to get back to you soon. Here I’ll just say that the purpose of my #61 was to provide a “transparent calculation” (motivated by one of your previous comments) that anyone can follow, that bears heavily on the main claim of Dr. Miskolczi’s paper.

Pat Cassen # 61:

I respect the fact that you are a professional scientist, and I acknowledge that your points are valid. But you talk about the virtues of "patience" and "sincerity." Have you actually read Dr. Miskolczi's earlier papers? Did you really try to understand Ferenc's mathematical derivations? I saw an email exchange between the two of you that ended after four or five exchanges, perhaps after a few weeks. My background is in computer science and history & philosophy of science, and I can tell you that picking up this theory, however partially, has been a huge learning curve for me. Parts of it I can never understand, without taking a degree in physics. As far as waiting for the peer-review process to deliver us the 'truth'? Well, history shows us that a correct theory is often passed over by the mainstream of science because it simply wasn't sold properly -- and that's when the peer-review process is working. Do I have any faith in the peer-review process? No, I'm afraid I don't. I, too, believe that the process has completely broken down in the case of climate science. The peer-review process, to function normally, needs to be completely divorced from politics. In climate science, this condition is very clearly not met. It follows, quite logically, that the peer-review process in climate science simply should not work. I am amazed that anyone has faith in it.

...if you, like me, believe that you cannot ignore the mathematical consequences of your mathematically derived theory, then you would conclude that there is no theoretical justification for a revised greenhouse effect.

Alright, you've been absent from this debate because, as you stated publicly months ago, you lost interest in it. That's fine, welcome back. But since then, it has been made quite clear that Miskolczi's theory was, in the first instance, an empirical discovery. The mathematical theory of M2007 that you are objecting to here was adduced "after the fact" to explain a series of well-documented empirical observations, as Ferenc has made quite clear earlier in this thread.

I will keep out of the discussions of the theory because, you're right, I don't understand this either.

But I am not stupid, and I can see very clearly what a number of posters don't want us to see: whatever problems in the theory may exist are not immediately relevant. The million-dollar question (the multi-billion dollar question?) is: can Miskolczi's well-documented empirical observations be falsified? To answer that, in my humble opinion, the question that needs to be asked is, does anyone have an objection to what Miskolczi has done in M2007, Appendix A?

To this date, not a single commentator has criticised anything in Appendix A. Is this because there is not a single commentator who is actually qualified to have an opinion about this? I don't know, but I suspect so.

At any rate, the facts remain: Appendix A has not been criticised. I suppose, then, given how much pleasure a number of people have taken in pulling the paper to pieces, the fact that no one has commented on Appendix A suggests that no one can find any issue with it. From this, it would follow, given that we all agree now that HARTCODE is valid, that Miskolczi's empirical observation of the earth-atmosphere's tau must hold as well?

FIG 9.1(c) AR4, p675, unequivocally attributes, as a result of AGW, that there will be a THS due entirely to GHG's; since AR4 allocates 2/3's of the GHG forcing to CO2 it is disingenuous to say, as has been stated, that the absence of a THS is not contradictory to AGW; my views on temperature trends are here;

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/temper...

Equally problematic is the fingerprint of stratosphere cooling as Lucia has shown;

http://rankexploits.com/musings/2008/embrace-th...

The double standards that prevail with Miskolczi and the dearth of empirical verification of the standard model is typical of this debate.

Nick Stokes#70

"No, in their Table 2, they do assemble evidence that wind speeds have declined in the regions where reduced pan evaporation has been observed.

I’m not aware that GCM’s have any firm predictions about average wind speeds, so I don’t know what the tough questions are."

I had an enormous amount of trouble with the download web reference of the pdf of the Roderick et al paper but got it via other means. Incidentally this is not the first time I have had trouble with downloads or disappearing web pages for this group and related sites such as the Australian Academy of Sciences.

IMO the paper is of very good quality and I liked the suggestion of deconvoluting the data records for the worldwide network of pan evaporimeters to recover information about the radiative and aerodynamic drivers of evporative demand.

However, the paper does contain a goodly amount of cherry picking e.g. ignoring several recent Chinese papers identifying regions close to the Tibetan Plateau which show an increase in pan evaporation and an earlier Canadian review which showed no effect of wind speed on prairie pan evaporation trends.

The paper doesn't really deliver the definitive solution you seem to be claiming. The following summary text is well worth noting:

"[16] Whether the ‘‘stilling’’ reported here is local, i.e., attributable to changes in the immediate environment of the pans (e.g., growing trees or other obstacles progressively obstructing the air flow), or a more regional phenomenon is difficult to assess. Rayner [2007] investigated that by comparing the BoM wind observations against two alternative sources, (1) wind fields in the NCEP reanalysis, and (2) wind calculated using BoM surface air pressure observations. The results were inconclusive because the trends derived from (1) and (2) were inconsistent, and neither result was consistent with the BoM surface observations.
[17] Some of the wind speed decreases reported here are no doubt due to local effects. lternatively, the very widespread nature of the stilling is by itself some evidence of a more robust regional effect. Indeed, the changes reported here are very similar to those reported elsewhere (Table 2). Whilst largely anticipated in the climate change impacts community, previous analyses have predicted a slowing in the overall circulation rate in tropical regions and, presumably, a reduction in averaged wind speed in those regions with greenhouse warming [Betts, 1998; Held and Soden, 2006; Vecchi et al., 2006]. Although not strictly comparable to surface winds, the summary compiled by Lorenz and DeWeaver [2007] shows that climate models generally predict changes in zonally averaged mid-latitude wind speeds (at 850 hPa) of about -0.5 to -1.5 m s-1 over the 21st Century with largely complementary increases nearer the poles. This would qualitatively fit the pattern in the observations (Table 2, increase in Antarctica, decrease elsewhere). The model projections are equivalent to trends of -0.005 to -0.015 m s-1 a-1 and are of the same order as the observed trends (Table 2). In contrast to the terrestrial based anemometer records (Table 2), recently reported satellite retrievals indicate increases in oceanic wind speed averaging 0.008 m s-1 a-1 for 1987–2006 [Wentz et al., 2007]. This emphasises the urgent need for research on the wind measurements and the modelling given the scientific importance as well as the widespread interest in wind power generation."

Given that: this paper carefully chooses only that world literature which supports the authors' finding for Australia only; and Raynor [2007] could not get a correlation with wind speeds derived by two other different methods, I'd say we still have to keep an open mind on the pan evaporation paradox issue.

But regardless, and perhaps most importantly, it is truly heart-warming to read a 'mainstream paper' which is actually firmly claiming that over the 30 year period 1975 - 2004 there were absolutely no trends in either (near surface) vapour pressure deficit (VPD) OR air temperature at 41 sites all over Australia (page 3, Figures 2e and 2f). That has to be a stunner for sure.

I sure hope both Luke and David pick up on that! Let's ALL have our cakes and eat them too!

Chris: Get off your dogmatic high-horse, cut to the quick, and give us ONE frigging empirical piece of evidence that CO2 has increased the temperature. Especially now that we have a cooling trend.

"Why the published literature? Simply because that’s where things get settled, for better or worse."

Yeah, under the present (previous?) paradigm. But, due to the HORRENDUS, disgusting, politically-motivated abuses in famous "scientific" journals, related to the published hockey stick studies (complete with advance press releases), that paradigm may well change in the future. I, personally, as a scientist, have lost a LOT of faith in the normal manner of scientific "verification/citation." You had better try to get the politics in the "PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS" under control, or they will destroy theirselves. And rightfully so. If the public had any clue, it would all be over for government-sponsored scientists in this field (and maybe many other fields). It is truly SHOCKING. And I'm talking about MAINSTREAM science journals. There is unequivocal PROOF of rotten publications, failure to enforce policies, editorial politics, etc. in some of those journals. If you don't see what is going on, you are truly blind.

kuhnkat,

your comment makes little sense. You agreed that the upper atmospheric warming is a fingerprint of all forcings, not just GHG's. Yet somehow you confine your statements to just GHG warming, when it is just as applicable to the sun or cosmic rays. You then agree that stratospheric cooling is a fingerprint of only GHG effect, and the stratosphere is cooling-- so how can we deduce from only this information that the warming is mostly natural? Actually if we follow rigorous logic the only conclusion from these premises, is that there has been no warming.

But your premises are incorrect to begin with. For one thing, the upper trop. warming has to do with the moist adiabat which is not unique to GHGs, as we have established. More warming in the tropical troposphere is certainly a prediction by models, though I don't take it as rigorous an expectation as stratospheric cooling which is much more well-grounded in basic radiative principles (others might disagree, Nick, BPL??). That is, the moist adiabatic prediction could be wrong, and it would take a lot of rethinking about convective responses to GW, but I'm not sure it is a contradiction to warming from any source. On the other hand, if we seen no stratospheric cooling (assuming nothing going on with ozone or anything else), it would make me very skeptical of AGW. But if the upper troposphere did not warm as much as models show, then the only conclusion we can draw from this aside from the model error, is that models have *underestimated* climate sensitivity because the negative lapse rate feedback would not be as strong. We obviously can't conclude that the planetary temperature is incapable of changing.

But, if you pay attention to recent literature, I think everyone has tropical tropospheric warming now, and a bit moreso than the surface. There has been a lot of issues with data on this topic (including measurements in the troposphere being contaminated by stratospheric cooling), but recent literature shows no real disagreement with observations and models. This is probably a topic where you need to keep up, so if you're using 5 year old arguments, it's time to move on.

#66 Steve Short

it is implausible to suggest that wind speeds have broadly declined over most of the land fraction of the globe over the last 30 years

No, in their Table 2, they do assemble evidence that wind speeds have declined in the regions where reduced pan evaporation has been observed.

I'm not aware that GCM's have any firm predictions about average wind speeds, so I don't know what the tough questions are.

Pat Cassen #67

No Jan, I don’t believe that the stationary ground does work on the atmosphere.

Good I'm pleased then what was that earlier nonsense about it not being passive all about then? I can understand your not wanting to get into it again.

But it needn’t do so for the base atmospheric pressure to appear in the VT.

I agree it should I have never said otherwise. It is included in the kinetic energy but NJK adds it into the potential energy as well i.e. he's counting it twice something you have consistently denied. I certainly included it in my calculation that verified that the TIGR profile satisfied the VT {KE}/{PE} = -2 and the USST76 profile does not {KE}/{PE} = -3.8.

Proof of the pudding is in the eating.

I can understand you don't want to get into it again. Some long standing pet theories are being called into question. Please don't come back with more strawman arguments like this one.

Follow the math; all F r ·terms do not necessarily represent work being done. Just as potential energy terms are not “work being done”.

No again I agree but Neal's pressure term is a kinetic energy term and that is work being done. It's work he attributes to the rigid surface that it as you have agreed it can't do. The problem is not with the math but comes in identifying the terms that should be included in the math that's where he and you go wrong. If you can't see that a kinetic energy term (that is already included in the {KE}) does not and not represent a potential energy offset the I'd suggest you need to revise your systems theory.

The other thing that you do want to discuss

In correspondence between Dr. Miskolczi and myself, posted somewhere at this website by our host David, Dr. Miskolczi explained things to me as follows:
“You may not interpret Eq. B11 as a Bg(tauA) function.....”

If you accept this explanation, then I suppose you are free to ignore all the other alleged inconsistencies and errors in the paper, and believe that Dr. Miskolczi has successfully revised “orthodox” GHG theory. But if you, like me, believe that you cannot ignore the mathematical consequences of your mathematically derived theory, then you would conclude that there is no theoretical justification for a revised greenhouse effect.

Isn't Bg a boundary condition and therefore a constant?

Barton Paul Levenson,

I agree, the "hot spot" shows almost any type of general atmospheric warming. Unfortunately for you we also show stratospheric cooling which, according to GCM physics, tells us the warming is most likely GHG's.

All that is just hunky dory except the little problem that the only evidence of the hot spot comes from reprocessing data through those same GCM's physics. Circular logic anyone??

The upper trop is supposed to be warming faster than surface for GHG warming also. It hasn't within the satellite or sonde record.

Not only do you NOT have a hot spot, you don't even have a useable TREND toward it!!!!

Does that mean there has been no GHG warming in the last 30 years?? According to the GCM physics it does!!!!!!!!

We have been told that the GCM's are using the right physics. Maybe we should believe them when they tell us there is little GHG warming!!!

Jan, #65

No Jan, I don’t believe that the stationary ground does work on the atmosphere. But it needn’t do so for the base atmospheric pressure to appear in the VT. Follow the math; all F r ·terms do not necessarily represent work being done. Just as potential energy terms are not “work being done”.

I appreciate your attempts to understand the VT, but I really don’t want to get into this again. I think that NJK did a good job.

Steve, #66

Thanks for the info, and I stand corrected regarding “experiments”.

“Anyone with an interest in meteorology knows this.” Well, maybe almost everyone...

Pat Cassen#62

"1. Do the pan evaporation experiments present problems for any theory (and observations) of warming, or just AGW?

2. One might suppose that pan evaporation rates have diminished due to an increasing global specific humidity, driven by warming oceans. I expect that this simple-minded idea has been rejected, but I do not have access to the full text of papers you reference. Can you enlighten me?"

We are not talking about 'pan evaporation experiments'. That is a bit like asserting the baker who makes your bread has been experimenting with dough for his whole lifetime (;-)!

I don't knwo why I should have to state this to you, but Class A pan evaporation (the Russians and others have equivalent standard open, elevated evaporation tanks) has long been a basic meteorological measurement the data for which has been collected for well over a century. It is regarded as the measure of potential evaporation off of water at temperature equilibrium with the bottom of the atmosphere (not the ground surface). Anyone with an interest in meteorology knows this.

In most climate models, Ep may be calculated from:

λEp = ρλ[ q* (T0)-q]/raV where λ is latent heat of vaporization of water, ρ is air density, q* (Tsub0) is the saturation specific humidity at surface temperature (T0), q is the specific humidity of the lowest model level, and raV is the aerodynamic resistance. T0 changes with each time step.

This first-principle flux-gradient parameterization is energy balanced and is popularly used in most climate models. It can be shown to be similar to the Penman-Monteith formulation, except that it uses actual surface temperature rather than a wet equilibrium temperature.

The global trend in the Class A pan data for the last 30 years represents a problem for any theory of warming which attempts to make assumptions about the drivers affecting the propensity of water to evaporate at the lowest level of the atmosphere.

Nick Stokes#64

"Pan evaporation is not a good proxy for temperature change,..."

I agree, and this has not been asserted.

"In that recent paper, they suggest that the observed reduced pan evaporation may well be due to slightly less windy conditions."

I am familiar with the work of Farquhar and others. While they make valid points about the likely driver of declining Ep in specific areas over specific (shorter) periods, it is implausible to suggest that wind speeds have broadly declined over most of the land fraction of the globe over the last 30 years.

If that were true (and there is no good evidence for it), it would also raise tough questions about other aspects of GCM theory.

Pat #60

1. Dig in, learn the stuff, and do the work yourself. David and Jan Pompe, for instance, have apparently done this. They wind up disagreeing with Neal J. King, Nick Stokes and myself, among others. But at least they seem to have satisfied themselves.

I'm still wondering how you, Neal, (not to mention Barton also) and Nick (though I'm not sure Nick does) reach the conclusion that the rigid surface can do work on the atmosphere and the atmospheric pressure can do work on the rigid surface. It's a real puzzle.

Steve Short (and Pat)
Pan evaporation is not a good proxy for temperature change, because as Graham Farquhar and others have shown, it is much more strongly affected by wind and sunlight penetration. In that recent paper, they suggest that the observed reduced pan evaporation may well be due to slightly less windy conditions.

About simple radiative errors, the most fundamental error in nuclear heat transfer is to model radiation only and ignore convection. You always get a very wrong answer. I noticed with interest that Judith Curry mentioned the current feeling among modelers is that the tropo problems probably stem from ignoring convection too.

The trouble with much of this debate is that when measurements disagree with theory there is a tendency for theoreticians to brush it aside. But in practice it's often not poor base theory that gives the wrong answer, it is the bit of corrective theory you had missed out until you checked it out against reality.

Steve Short, thanks for your posts on the pan evaporation issue. I was aware of this, but am just learning about it. Two questions:

1. Do the pan evaporation experiments present problems for any theory (and observations) of warming, or just AGW?

2. One might suppose that pan evaporation rates have diminished due to an increasing global specific humidity, driven by warming oceans. I expect that this simple-minded idea has been rejected, but I do not have access to the full text of papers you reference. Can you enlighten me?

Thanks in advance for your response.

Dr. Miskolczi’s paper purports to show, by theoretical analysis, that the atmosphere must maintain a preferred long-wavelength optical depth, thereby limiting the greenhouse effect. The preferred optical depth (TauA) is asserted to correspond to maximum radiative cooling of the atmosphere, and is found to be that value which maximizes a function, Bo(TauA). The function Bo(TauA) appears in an expression which Dr. Miskolczi claims to be the correct solution of the radiative equations in the case where the temperature at the base of a bounded atmosphere, tA, equals the temperature of the ground, tg.

OK, this sounds complicated, but the math is easy. So grab a copy of Dr. Miskolczi’s paper and a pencil, and follow along.

1. Equality of the ground temperature tg and the base atmospheric temperature tA demands that their respective Planck functions B(tg) and B(tA) are equal. [Miskolczi uses BG to designate B(tg).]

2. Since B(tA) = B(TauA), then BG = B(TauA).

3. Set BG = B(TauA) in Dr. Miskolczi’s eqn. 21, which he states is “the general form of the source function for the bounded atmosphere”, and solve for B(TauA), or BG.

4. Use the definitions of A, TA, and f to derive this expression for B(TauA), or BG:
pi*BG = (H/2)*[ exp(-TauA) + 1 + TauA],
which is the same as Dr. Miskolczi’s eqn. B11. (H is the total outgoing radiative flux.)

5. Find (by inspection, or by eqn. B7), this expression for Bo(TauA):
pi*Bo = (H/2)*[ 1 + exp(-TauA) ]

All this is straightforward substitution, nothing fancy or tricky.

Notice that Bo(TauA) has no local maximum. So there is no preferred value of TauA. Thus there is no particular constraint on the atmospheric optical depth. No grounds for an energy minimum principle. No “simple theoretical proof of the Kirchhoff law for atmospheres in radiative equilibrium”. No limit on the greenhouse effect.

Why, then, did Dr. Miskolczi find a preferred value of TauA? You can figure this out too. Hint: What assumption is required to derive eqn. B9? Is this assumption consistent with the result found above, or eqn. B11?

In correspondence between Dr. Miskolczi and myself, posted somewhere at this website by our host David, Dr. Miskolczi explained things to me as follows:
“You may not interpret Eq. B11 as a Bg(tauA) function.....”

If you accept this explanation, then I suppose you are free to ignore all the other alleged inconsistencies and errors in the paper, and believe that Dr. Miskolczi has successfully revised “orthodox” GHG theory. But if you, like me, believe that you cannot ignore the mathematical consequences of your mathematically derived theory, then you would conclude that there is no theoretical justification for a revised greenhouse effect.

Do the above exercise for yourself. Check my math (I have been known to make silly errors). Thanks for reading this.

Alex Harvey (#25) says:
“Let’s see your...transparent calculations.”

I offer one in the next comment.

But first, some thoughts for those who would really like to evaluate the validity of Dr. Miskolczi’s theory. David said somewhere in these discussions “Blogs are where it’s at”, or words to that effect. Well, yes, they can be fun, and one can find a good deal of opinion, and a lot of good, provocative ideas. But perhaps you’ve noticed that it’s rare for anything to be settled on blogs. When was the last time you saw something like: “OK, folks, we had our differences there, but now we all agree on such and such, and can move on”?

So it seems to me that there are two options for genuinely inquiring folks, like Sadun Kal, et al.:

1. Dig in, learn the stuff, and do the work yourself. David and Jan Pompe, for instance, have apparently done this. They wind up disagreeing with Neal J. King, Nick Stokes and myself, among others. But at least they seem to have satisfied themselves.

2. The second option is to be patient, keep up with the published literature, and use Google Scholar to follow the fate of Dr. Miskolczi’s paper. If, after one or two or three years, work appears that cites Dr. Miskolczi’s theory favorably, uses it, expands on it, explicitly confirms it, then one must conclude that it is a real contribution. If, on the other hand, the paper languishes in obscurity (except in the perpetually contentious blogosphere), it would be reasonable to entertain the idea that Dr. Miskolczi has failed to revolutionize GHG theory. Why the published literature? Simply because that’s where things get settled, for better or worse.

Now consider the exercise in the next comment. It’s easy. It does not rely on the validity of any particular dataset, any subtle arguments about energy conservation or the virial theorem, or any consideration of feedback mechanisms. It considers only Dr. Miskolczi’s own equations and conclusions. I have followed some of the discussion here and understand that some of the equations that Dr. Miskolczi originally presented as general physical laws are now regarded by many as simply empirically justified. I also understand that many are excited by certain data that are presented as confirmation of Miskolczi’s theory. Below, I purposely avoid discussion of these issues to focus on the theoretical basis of the theory.

BPL #52

The potential energy is not 2 times the kinetic energy, it’s 684 times the kinetic energy.

Sorry Barton after that bit of nonsense I don't we need bother with anything you say. First problem is the Calusius virial theorem is NOT relevant to the empirically measured Eu=Su/2 a number S&T 97 agrees with BTW. Secondly the Clausius virial theorem tells us that the potential function of particles moving through a force field (gravitational or electrical) must satisfy the PE/KE =-2. Not the ridiculous number that you have come up with.

BPL # 56:

Thank you, you agree that HARTCODE is valid. The next obvious question is, do you disagree with any part of M2007, Appendix A?

Classical Greenhouse Theory says that:

In response to global warming due to increasing atmospheric CO2:

• Global mean potential evaporation (Ep) increases,
• Global mean cloud cover decreases,
• Global mean downward solar radiation decreases despite the decrease in cloud cover (because of increased cloud water content, leading to increased cloud albedo),
• Global mean rainfall increases despite the decrease in cloud cover. Global mean actual evaporation increases, consistent with an increase in global mean rainfall,
• Global mean diurnal temperature range (DTR) decreases,
• Global mean surface energy fluxes increase (hence Ep increases).

Yet over the last 30 years we have seen:

(1) a broadly based global decline in Class A pan evaporation (a measure of Ep) despite some specific regional increases only; and
(2) No significant reduction in global mean cloud cover (no matter what mean you use to to measure it - ground-based or satellite-based - the latter showing first and increase and then a decrease over the period since satellite based measurements were implemented).

Putting aside arguments as to whether there is a tropical troposphere hot spot, forget about the arguments as to whether there has been cooling since 1998....

The emperor STILL has no clothes.

Oh, and as to HARTCODE -- nobody here, not myself, not Nick Stokes, not Chris Colose, or anybody else posting here, has said that there's anything wrong with HARTCODE. But HARTCODE doesn't do what you guys seem to think it does. It simply and solely calculates radiative transfer "Line By Line," which is what LBL stands for. It can't tell you anything about Venus except how extinction varies through the Venus atmosphere. It certainly can't back up Miskolczi's crackpot theory.

Well, Louis Hissink's post was just a matter of time, wasn't it? If we throw out the greenhouse effect, we might as well bring in Velikovsky's crackpot astronomy. Interesting that he decides the Venus greenhouse effect was based on "no evidence." He knows about the history of planetology the way Jan Pompe knows about atmosphere physics. (Hint: radio observations in 1956. Different models. Steam tables.)

Jan Pompe writes:

I’m yet to be convinced that Venus’ surface temperature would be greatly different if she had the same mass in a mix of 80% N2 and 20% O2.

After you've said that, why should we pay attention to anything else you have to say at all? You have clearly never studied the subject. Will you for God's sake crack a book?

jae writes:

Wow, look who is talking! That is what is wrong with the whole CO2-AGW hypothesis! All you have to support your hypothesis is “data” from a bunch of voodoo GCMs (which I think HAVE been falsified, especially by the last 10 years of no warming and the last 5-6 years of absolute cooling.

1. The theory of anthropogenic global warming was first proposed by Svante August Arrhenius in 1896. I can guarantee you that he did not use a computer model. Neither did G.S. Callendar in 1938.

2. There has not been cooling. Eliminate the hyphens and read:

http://www.geoci-ties.com/bpl1960/Ball.html

http://www.geoci-ties.com/bpl1960/Reber.html

Also by the fact that measurements do not confirm the presence of the “hot spot” that the models predict (using your “physics”) for the tropical troposphere).

jae, the hot spot would exist for any warming, not just AGW, and BTW, it is there.

Speaking of feedbacks, I’m curious as to why didn’t we have a run-away catastrophic warming, caused by positive feedbacks, in connection with the big El Nino in 1998? After all, it pumped millions of tons of one of the strongest greenhouse gases (water vapor) into the atmosphere. You know why? Because of all the “safety valves” in our system, as so well explained by M’s comprehensive theory.

Well, no, that's not why. It's because of the Stefan-Boltzmann law and the fact that greenhouse warming is a converging series, not a diverging one. Your expectation that a positive feedback always runs away is wrong in the first place.

Jan Pompe writes:

Error? Application of he virial theorem? you didn’t understand that so how can you say it was an error? It was an observation from empirical work that Eu=Su/2 he just called it a “virial” relationship.

Jan, it doesn't work. The potential energy is not 2 times the kinetic energy, it's 684 times the kinetic energy. Miskolczi's application of the virial theorem to Earth's atmosphere is just plain wrong. Don't you understand that his theory gives the wrong answer? Do you understand that quantitative problems usually have specific answers, and that other answers are considered wrong? A quadratic equation only has two roots at the most; if someone comes up with a third root different from the other two, his third root is wrong.

I showed after the fact that the (Clausius) virial realtion also held for Earth’s atmosphere when TIGR (empirical) profiles were used and it didn’t hold when USST76 profiles were used that too was an empirical observation.

Jan, if the Clausius-Clapeyron relation holds, then Miskolczi's theory is wrong. He says water vapor goes down when carbon dioxide goes up. The Clausius-Clapeyron relation says water vapor goes up when carbon dioxide (or anything else) increases the temperature.

Jan Pompe writes:

It’s not relevant to Venus for which the same observations are not available and certainly does not have 2/3 of the surface covered with oceans like earth.

Neither does Mars, Jan.

The worldwide dataset of weather observations from land stations and ocean ship observations offer a detailed archive. Following the pioneering work of London, Hahn and Warren selected 5400 stations as having long periods of record with reliable reports; they cover all continents and many islands (Warren et al., 2003). These researchers analysed about 185 million synoptic reports for total cloud cover and for the amounts of nine different cloud types, for the 27-year period 1971-1997. Monthly and seasonal averages were formed for day and night separately. Inter-annual variations in Europe, particularly of nimbostratus, were well correlated with the North Atlantic Oscillation; significant correlations were also found across northern Asia. Inter-annual variations in many parts of the tropics were well correlated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index.

In summary, cloud cover increased from 1971 to 1997 over the ocean by 0.4% per decade (Norris, 1999) but decreased over land by 0.7% per decade (from data given by Hahn and Warren, 2003) giving a global average change of only +0.1% per decade. An independent analysis of the same surface data set (Minnis et al., 2004) was generally consistent but with a small positive oceanic change balanced by a small negative trend on land.

The modest increase in cloud amount found in many places during the twentieth century agreed with model predictions of an intensifying global hydrological cycle under greenhouse warming. An increasing cloudiness trend is, however, not substantiated over the 30 years of the observed pan evaporation decline. Thus, cloud increases alone seem not to be the cause of the apparent potential evaporation decrease.

Less direct ways in which cloudiness could possibly affect the surface energy budget so that evaporative demand is decreased (e.g. through a raised cloud base height - less down-welling infrared radiation) or by decreased cloud amount (achieved in such a way that it causes a decrease in down-welling infrared at the surface that exceeds the opposing increase in solar radiation incident at the surface) have not been systematically examined.

Clouds cannot be said to be a clear and direct cause of the past 30 year pan evaporation decline. However, plausible scenarios can be constructed in which cloud amount and character could be implicated in the observed pan evaporation decline.

Minnis, P., Ayers, J.K., Palikonda, R. and Phan, D., 2004, Contrails, cirrus trends, and climate, J. Climate, 17, 1671-1685.

Norris, J.R., 1999, On trends and possible artifacts in global ocean cloud cover between 1952 and 1995, J. Climate, 11, 1864-1870.
Warren, S.G., Eastman, R. and Hahn, C., 2004, Recent changes in cloud cover and cloud types over land, Abstract for GEWEX meeting, 3-5 November 2004, Paris.

Alex #48
No, transparent isn't the wrong word. It means, in this context, that it can be seen, and is a minimum starting point (not met here). Once a result has been shown, explained, whatever, then you can talk of verifying it. The problem with this stuff is that we never get to that first stage,

Nick # 47:

All these questions can, and I'm sure will, be answered, and you know that. Did I use the wrong word? Sorry. Do you agree that this result should be verified?

Alex #46
The correctness of Hartcode is not the issue here, and past papers can't help. The contention is that M has "transparently" used NOAA (NCEP?) data to show that tau (optical depth) is constant. That is a new proposition unrelated to any published work.

Ken G doesn't help here - he described everything in terms of relative humidity, whereas specific humidity is the quantity that determines the radiative properties. When I queried that he said he spoke of RH because that showed an alleged disagreement with models. That didn't help explain what he (or M) actually used to calculate tau. And it certainly doesn't help explain how you match global (annual?) humidity data to local TIGR profiles. And no-one, anywhere, has any explanation of what historical data was used for other significant GHG's. That isn't covered by NCEP.

And yet its all supposed to produce tau stable to a fraction of a %. It may be able to be demonstrated (I am doubtful) but it certainly isn't transparent.

Nick # 25:

You have what I regard as a rather eccentric definition of 'transparent'. Forgive me if I simplify this, but you complained of a lack of detail offerred on the one hand, whilst refusing to read Miskolczi's earlier papers (e.g. Miskolczi & Rizzi, 1998), where the detail was given.

Ferenc has made it quite clear, at least as far as I am able to understand it, that his method of calculating tau is given in M2007, Appendix A. His profile selection strategy was given in a number of papers, including Miskolczi & Rizzi (1998). The workings of HARTCODE are available for download. There are a number of other papers detailing methodology that are freely downloadable from M. Zagoni's website. As for the NOAA data, it seems that Ken Gregory answered all of your questions about this at ClimateAudit; I am sure he would answer any further questions you have.

The fixation about Venus being an exemplar of a runaway CO2 greenhouse is quite problematical - it does drive James Hansen's agenda.

For those who may not be aware of it, but in 1950 Velikovsky pointed that if his interpretation of the ancient history was correct, Venus had to be a young planet, newly formed, and must therefore be very hot. At the time Venus was regarded as Earth's sister planet with an equitable climate.

Subsequent space probes confirmed Velikovsky's prediction - but mainstream science, decided, on no observational evidence, to explain the Venusian temperature by a runaway CO2 greenhouse effect.

Mainstream science won the argument not from evidence, but from the power of the scientific mafia in suppressing any dissent.

AGW is a logical pseudoscientific consequenceof that episode.

Some letters lost there - Ni is me

Alex #24

How is it that Miskolczi’s (transparent) analysis of the NOAA data has shown a constant tau for the last 60 years?

Transparent? Huh? More like that elusive infinite optical depth. I presume you mean the NCEP reanalysis data. Do you even know what data he used? Relative humidity? Specific humidity? Annual? I don't. How did he relate the globally averaged data to his 228 TIGR sites? Or did he?

NCEP data is a rough record of water in the atmosphere. CO2 is reasonably well known. But they are just two of the gases determining OD. What did he use for CH4 over that time? N2O? You can't calculate OD without that.

Transparent?

And spend an hour playing this:

http://gingerbooth.com/courseware/swingdaisybal...

Chris,

David Stockwell wrote (# 32):

A serious rebuttal would focus on why HARTCODE is wrong.

Here is one paper I trust you have already read:

Kratz, D.P., Mlynczak, M.G., Mertens, C.J., Brindley, H., Gordley, L.L., Martin-Torres, J., Miskolczi, F.M., Turner, D.D. (2005), An inter-comparison of far-infrared line-by-line radiative transfer models, Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy, 90, 323-341.

http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Miskolczi/p27jqsrt.pdf

The conclusion:

The results from this study have demonstrated remarkably good agreement among the models [i.e. which include HARTCODE], with differences being of order 0.5%, thereby providing a high measure of condence in our ability to accurately compute spectral radiances in the far-infrared.

This is NASA's quite-recent research, and it is NASA's quite-recent conclusion. By the way, I sent an email to Martin Mlynczak, who to this day, according to the Langley website, still leads the remote-sensing research, asking for his opinion; he declined to respond. Perhaps someone from RealClimate would have better luck.

You might also look at the 'Proof of HARTCODE’s ability to quantitatively analyze Fourier interferometer spectra' section of Miklos Zagoni's website.

http://hps.elte.hu/zagoni/Proofs_of_the_Miskolc...

Steve #38

A degree of homeostasis might be being delivered by this highly complex world climate system in ways which are as yet still too subtle for us jumped-up chimps!

Add life to a lifeless planet and the game changes dramatically this much I'm sure of. There is a lot of carbon sequestered (by life) in the White Cliffs of Dover and the many many karst areas in the world just to name a couple.

David #37

Differences of opinion keep the blog interesting. I wouldn’t want to be preaching to the converted all the time.

I agree but I think greater headway can be made if certain people could leave their rebuttal by mockery at the blogs where they learnt it.

The questions of Venus and the Ice age object while interesting in themselves IMO should perhaps wait until a better understanding what is happening here and now with data we can be more certain of than for example the proxy data required to analyse what happened in the distant past. After all it's the modern data we must use to calibrate data from the past.

Hans Erren asked about a mechanism for the observed maintenance of optical depth with rising CO2 levels. I'm not sure we can answer this yet apart from saying "it's observed" an answer Hans has been known to give too.

However this much is certain that this maintenance depends on a comparatively thin atmosphere with the main absorbing gas gas on Venus a trace gas here and a virtually inexhaustible supply of water. It's difficult to see how the Venus objection is actually relevant to the case on earth. I'm yet to be convinced that Venus' surface temperature would be greatly different if she had the same mass in a mix of 80% N2 and 20% O2.

Is there any way this can actually be known?

One of the ways in which the AGW 'consensus' has dealt with the issues of:

(1) the deficiency in the rate of increase in global surface temperatures over the 2nd half of the 20th century predicted (by GCMs etc) to be caused by the observed rise in atmospheric CO2;

(2) the wide spread decline in Class A pan evaporation (a measure of near surface potential evaporation) over many decades predicted by GCMs,

was to raise the issue of Global Dimming.

Here is a useful panel discussion which clarifies the orthodox scientific position on Global Dimming:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/articl...

Global Dimming refers of course to the cooling effect of aerosols in the atmosphere.

As you can see the orthodox position has been that this was caused by anthropogenically generated particulate aerosols (transport, industrial, agricultural burning etc) and that after about 1990 the levels of these in the atmosphere dropped dramatically. This was/is predicted to thus reveal the 'full strength' of the CO2-induced greenhouse effect.

Well as we now know there hasn't been a real lot of global surface heating over the period 1990 - 2008 so the 'dramatic reduction in 1990 theory' has already flown out through the (optical window).

But what if the assumption that Global Dimming is a largely due to human-induced direct particulate emissions is wrong? What if the the increased levels of atmospheric CO2 are causing not only greater rates of plant growth (e.g. reforestation) on the continents, as well as increased blooming rates of oceanic cyanobacteria (the latter also aided by the increased loads of reactive nitrogen humans are pouring into continental shelf waters)?

Both land plants and oceanic cyanobacteria emit a lot of particulates (i.e. isoprenes, dimethysulfide etc) AND also significantly increase water cloud nucleation. These effect are well known and in some cases their mass effects estimated. The continental generation of isoprenes by plant biomass is massive (for Aussies think 'Blue Mountains'). The role of the cyanobacteria in increasing marine aerosols and clouds is less well characterized quantitatively.

Perhaps it is THIS effect which was/is responsible for the so-called Global Dimming Effect.

At the end of the day this argument is all about the apparent stability of the effective optical depth of the atmosphere, is it not?

A degree of homeostasis might be being delivered by this highly complex world climate system in ways which are as yet still too subtle for us jumped-up chimps!

Differences of opinion keep the blog interesting. I wouldn't want to be preaching to the converted all the time. What I am saying is that the issues that have so far been raised about FM's theory are not central, even though they are begging for greater explanation. The same goes for the Venus and the Ice Age objections. I would like to see how these are explained via the theory too, and have had a crack at it myself via albedo changes. FM has shown me some preliminary results for Venus and it will be very strong if they pan out.

I don't see how the questions can be answered without running the LBL simulations. For example, what is solution space for CO2 and O3 in which solar radiance is unchanged, but the Earth's surface is largely ice covered or ice free? I would think that would be an interesting question for HARTCODE.

Sadun #35

Nobody has any responsibility to convince anyone here. It should only be a calm and respectful exchange of ideas ideally.

In principle I agree but once a person has been trained by the RealClimate crowd it's difficult to detrain him.

Nobody has any responsibility to convince anyone here. It should only be a calm and respectful exchange of ideas ideally.

My main interest at present is in experimental tests of the theory not speculations about VT and KL, for which you can go to here and many other places on the web. Whether you or I are convinced is immaterial.

speculations indeed. Why don't you share with me how his version of VT and KL are correct, answer Hans Erren question on the mechanism behind water vapor decrease, why optical depth necessarily remains constant. I read the paper and I'm not convinced, so convince me.

Chris, Your mockery has no resemblance to the LBL HARTCODE simulations that the VT and KL speculations were based on. A serious rebuttal would focus on why HARTCODE is wrong. However, HARTCODE has been extensively validated many years ago and shown to correspond well with reality.

David,

Okay fine, I'll play along.

Let the temperature of the earth = the flux from martian rays + flux from phlogiston rays from the moon squared + (heat flux from the interior of the planet)*pi^3. I won't derive that, or make any sense of it, but that is the answer, and you now need to accept my premise for the rest of this reasoning. In fact, let's call it the next form of Kirchoff's law. Now, based on Kirchoff's law, it is quite obvious that changes in solar output or greenhouse gases do not change the temperature of the Earth.

Now prove me wrong!!

Ferenc, thank you for replying here, and thank you for clarifying your observations, I have no problem with them. However, I am still struggling what the implications of your findings are.
Am I correct that you have found that a decrease of emissivity in the co2 band (caused by increasing CO2) is compensated with an increase in optical depth in the water vapour band? If so what would be the mechanism?

Chris, a lack of derivation of the VT and KL is not a basis for rejecting everything in the paper(s). If you want to call it a "problem", sure, its a basis for more work, not a rebuttal.

Chris, you very clearly have not read this discussion.

I never said anyone copied anyone. I didn't and I don't need to to understand the problems. The real question should be why people have blinded themselves to the problems I and others have pointed out.

Chris, by the way, I ought to let you know that I am not the same 'Alexander Harvey' who posts at RealClimate. I probably should have mentioned this awhile ago. I hope this hasn't caused any confusion.

Chris # 23:

A lot of people claimed the paper has 'errors' back in March, 2008, seven months ago now. The debate has moved on. There is new evidence. Let's move past the ad nauseum, the ad hominem, the straw man, the red herring. Let's see your data, your own LBL code, transparent calculations. How is it that Miskolczi's (transparent) analysis of the NOAA data has shown a constant tau for the last 60 years?

Chris # 24:

So now you're saying that your teachers have copied you? Gosh, you are not making a good advertisement for the quality of education at your school.

And for the record, I contacted raypierre with some errors and questions long before this issue was even raised at RC. They are not very hard to find.

Alex,

a lot of people have pointed out the similar errors. See Eli Rabett and Arthur Smith's postings as well. I did see gavin's response a while back, but the fact we're all seeing the same problems is not a coincidence. And I actually didn't see that response from raypierre...that is weird.

Chris # 9:

Ray Pierrehumbert wrote 25th March, 2008:

The main use of this paper is as an exercise in “spot the errors” for a grad student in radiative transfer.

Today Chris Colose has written:

The only thing Miskolczi’s paper for is an exercise in spotting the error for undergraduates.

Gavin Schmidt wrote 17th May, 2008:

... First [Miskolczi] assumes that Kirchoff’s [sic] Law implies that absorbed radiation is equal to emitted radiation in the atmosphere (it is not - absorptivity and emittance are the same, but not the fluxes), he uses the virial theorem to calculate the KE of the atmosphere without any demonstration that it is valid (it is not)...

Today Chris Colose has written:

We have already pointed out numerous errors- the application of virial theorem to calculate the KE of the atmosphere without any demonstration that it is valid, the implication that that absorbed radiation is equal to emitted radiation in the atmosphere, the equating of total internal energy of atmosphere with a flux...

Chris, passing off your teachers' words as your own is hardly the way to demonstrates that you've been taught to think independently. Was this unconscious plagiarism?

admin,

Perhaps you can try to touch on the problem in my calculus statement? For instance, that E_U=S_U/ 2 is not as precise as a virial theoretical basis would suggest, and the fact "it's close" is a coincidence for Earth. FM still says a lot of new stuff without any proof. This is nice, but it's not how science is advanced, and it is not my obligation to "disprove it."

I have already shown how his statements about water vapor are not correct, how his understanding of Kirchoff's law is misplaced, how Venus and the faint young sun provides falsifying examples.

I don't know what you're talking about with the sensitivity. For one thing, we don't really have a "CO2 sensitivity" but a climate sensitivity which is nearly the same for all forcings. There is no empirical evidence for a low sensitivity that you are suggesting, and the best evidence agrees with the central values in GCM's (e.g., http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdan... ). It is simply impossible to look at the modern change or past changes (ice ages, hothouses) and argue for a very low sensitivity. It's a contradiction to the other fad arguments like "it's the sun" or "climate always changes!" Granted, there is still a large range due to cloud responses, and paleoclimatic and observational constraints can only go so far due to uncertanties in forcings, aerosols, proxies, etc.

Chris, I don't see anything wrong with taking some semi-empirical observations from the LBL simulations and suggesting a theoretical explanation. Almost every paper in science does that. Whether it is or is not KL of VT is debatable. That are needs more work as FM says. Some empirical relationships survive for 100 years before a strong theoretical basis is found (eg. Mannings formula).

Second, because FM results on CO2 sensitivity bring it more into line with recent empirical measurements of CO2 sensitivities, this suggests to me firstly a better explanatory theory than the theory embodied in GCMs. Secondly, the very high variance of GCM suggests inadequate constraints due to an incomplete theory as a possible explanation for that uncertainty [1.5 to 6C or more]. FM has proposed a couple of additional constraints that are a real attempt to contribute to narrowing the variation. I am wary the argument for variation in GCM is systemic papers over model misspecification.

Third, an explanation by global constraints is just as valid as an explanation by mechanism. You don't need to explain how the system 'knows' the difference between short and long wave radiation if it emerges as the solution of valid energy conservation equations. The solution should be explanation enough. Same as you don't need to explain why a planet 'knows' its orbit. The orbit is the satisfaction of energy conservation equations, thats all.

Chris #13

So now we prove things based on an empirical consistency

Absolutely if you don't have hat you have nothing.

I've explained your high school "calculus" problem.

Let the grown ups talk for a while.

Good idea now off you go.

Note that M says that Ed = Su
= 0.96(sigma)T^4(1-Ta). IOW, Ed is simply a function of the surface air temperature, T. That agrees with my notion that the greenhouse effect can also be viewed as the storage of heat by the atmosphere. It is really the same thing as M is saying, but he is expressing it in terms of radiation.

OOOhhh, got you angry, eh? :)

jae,

the flat earth society is looking for some new members. Let the grown ups talk for a while.

Chris: incidently, your cute calculus example fits YOUR logic, exactly.

Chris:

"It seems you guys have set up a theory which is impossible to prove wrong, and any errors pointed out are simply “new physics.”"

Wow, look who is talking! That is what is wrong with the whole CO2-AGW hypothesis! All you have to support your hypothesis is "data" from a bunch of voodoo GCMs (which I think HAVE been falsified, especially by the last 10 years of no warming and the last 5-6 years of absolute cooling. Also by the fact that measurements do not confirm the presence of the "hot spot" that the models predict (using your "physics") for the tropical troposphere).

Steve Mc and others have been begging the true believers for a comprehensive physical explanation of how a devastating AGW, enhanced by positive feedbacks, is supposed to happen. Steve even asked IPCC to address this issue, when he served as an expert reviewer. IPCC ignored him, totally. So have your buddies at the universities.

At least M has a comprehensive theory on how catastrophic CO2-caused AGW CANNOT happen. You don't even seem to have any "old physics" to support you belief, let alone "new physics."

Speaking of feedbacks, I'm curious as to why didn't we have a run-away catastrophic warming, caused by positive feedbacks, in connection with the big El Nino in 1998? After all, it pumped millions of tons of one of the strongest greenhouse gases (water vapor) into the atmosphere. You know why? Because of all the "safety valves" in our system, as so well explained by M's comprehensive theory.

So now we prove things based on an empirical consistency? Did you figure out the problem with my calculus proof yet?

jae #7

The beauty of M’s paper is that he supports his equations with empirical data.

I think you might have that reversed I'd say it's empirical data supported by equations he has told us that's how it evolved. Somewhere in the preceding mess he says in it's original form it was just the observations but one of the reviewers insisted he should add a theoretical basis. Now I'm sure that if the attempts to poke holes in the theoretical basis leads to a better one he'd be delighted but I don't think we'll get there by the purely destructive comments we've been seeing.

Chris #9

The only thing Miskolczi’s paper for is an exercise in spotting the error for undergraduates.

And one we've been waiting for from raypierre's undergraduate class for some months now those undergrads must be very busy indeed.

We have already pointed out numerous errors- the application of virial theorem to calculate the KE

Error? Application of he virial theorem? you didn't understand that so how can you say it was an error? It was an observation from empirical work that Eu=Su/2 he just called it a "virial" relationship. I showed after the fact that the (Clausius) virial realtion also held for Earth's atmosphere when TIGR (empirical) profiles were used and it didn't hold when USST76 profiles were used that too was an empirical observation. In order to disprove it you have to disprove the observations and in the process nullify much of the work out of climate science in the process.

Your claims a positive feedback can’t exist are clearly wrong for instance. It seems you guys have set up a theory which is impossible to prove wrong, and any errors pointed out are simply “new physics.”

You claim it's wrong because it's impossible to prove wrong. Wow what are they teaching you these days? Don't you see the absurdity in such a statement?

It's every bit as good an argument as your "proof" of your hypothesis. The only difference is change the word "proof" to "example" and there is nothing wrong with it except you don't have a proof.

Now that your red herring is dealt with get back to basics and set out to prove the empirical relationships Eu=Su/2 and Ed = Aa wrong.

In order to do it you'll need to do some hard work in finding a data set and do a line by line convolution integral with spectral data for the absorbing species and the Kirchoff-Planck function for the temperature and the concentrations of absorbing species. Then in the unlikely event you get a different result you will have to show why the data sets and the tools that you used are superior and produce correct results.

That's the sort of work that went intp getting the results that's the sort of work needed to refute it. Theorising about correct application of Kirchoff's law and or the Virial Theorem isn't going to do it.

I suspect Raypierre knows this and is why we haven't see his or his students refutation yet.

This is beginning to read like a Usenet newsgroup.

Jan, I don't really think you understand anything that you're reading. The only thing Miskolczi's paper for is an exercise in spotting the error for undergraduates. We have already pointed out numerous errors- the application of virial theorem to calculate the KE of the atmosphere without any demonstration that it is valid, the implication that that absorbed radiation is equal to emitted radiation in the atmosphere, the equating of total internal energy of atmosphere with a flux (he can't even deal with units). As BPL suggests, the real question is when wingnut internet users will at least be honest enough to let this paper go and try something else. We have already given real-world examples which are inconsistent with his theory being right. Your claims a positive feedback can't exist are clearly wrong for instance. It seems you guys have set up a theory which is impossible to prove wrong, and any errors pointed out are simply "new physics."

Regarding your answert to BPL's observation of a flawed equation, as another thought experiment Jan, please show me what is wrong with the following statement:

Hypothesis:

d/dx x^n = nx^n-1

Proof

d/dx x^3 = 3x^2

Another undergraduate exercise in "spot the problem"

.......

If you guys want to move on to another denialist fad, I have some suggestions, which are no less nutty, but I'm sure can keep you guys busy for a while? After all, the conclusions are that AGW is all a farce. Interested?

BPL #2

I knew you didn’t believe Kirchhoff’s Law

You know something I didn't know so are AGE missionaries also seers?

Could you please educate us what Kirchoff's law is then and then tell us how this equilibrium equation

~1368 W/m^2 * (1-0.3)*pi r^2 = 4 pi r^2 sig T^4

that has a term for absorptivity [the (1 - .306) albedo term] on the LHS does not have an equal absorptivity (.694) term on RHS?

then you have this:

Certainly! I’ll show you why Miskolczi’s equation (4) is wrong. His equation (4) is:

AA = SU A = SU(1-TA) = ED

It's empirical result from actual data from the TIGR profiles while K&T worked with data from the synthetic USST76 profile. If it comes to choosing between a synthetic profile and a profile developed from radiosonde data used to calibrate satellite data I'll take the radiosonde.

If you think you have a very good scientific reason to reject the actual measured profile in favour of a synthetic one I'd like to see it.

The beauty of M's paper is that he supports his equations with empirical data. The radiation cartoons appear to simply back-calculate what the energy down from the atmosphere has to be to provide the necessary surface temperature. This results in a discontinuity at the surface, which cannot exist, especially over water. They also allow for a very minor amount of convection (about 24 watts), which is plainly absurd to anybody who steps outside.

BPL # 2:

I see you've put a lot of effort into that, having now posted the same nonsense verbatim three times on different blogs.

If you have nothing more to offer, why continue to discuss this? What are YOU trying to get out of this? Are you trying to bore us all into submission?

Right, you have pulled the numbers from K&T's energy budget. It is, thus, a completely circular, childish, silly argument.

Allow me to break this down.

Your objective is to show that K&T's energy budget is true.

So, you begin by assuming that K&T's energy budget is true (woohoo!).

Next, you pass without comment over the fact that Miskolczi's measurements show that K&T's energy budget cannot be true.

Having thusly proven that K&T's energy budget is true, you conclude that AA is not equal to ED.

In the beginning was the Word, but it was NOT with Barton Paul Levenson; it was not with any of the other High Priests of RealClimate, okay? Here, we need an argument.

If you want to refute this theory, let us see your data. An analysis of the NOAA data, using your own LBL code & transparent calculations. Show us what Miskolczi has done wrong, please.

Momentum has gathered; you cannot terminate this discussion any other way.

BPL #4

The planetary atmospheres do what they do following the laws of physics better than we can understand them. If you or anyone else thinks they aught to be doing something different perhaps you aught to be looking where your theory is going wrong.

Miskolczi's paper is empirical i.e. actual observed behaviour with a bit of theoretical background. It's not relevant to Venus for which the same observations are not available and certainly does not have 2/3 of the surface covered with oceans like earth.

Jan Pompe doesn't understand Chris Colose's point about Venus.

Jan, it's very simple. If Miskolczi's theory is correct, Venus should not be very hot. There's no way you can take his equations and explain the surface temperature of Venus. Therefore, Venus is a counterexample. Ditto Chris's comments on the ice ages -- if Miskolczi's theory is true, we should not have had ice ages, let alone the Huronian and Vendian "snowball Earth" glaciations. That's another counterexample. I can think of a third -- the early atmosphere of Mars. Mars had to be warm enough to let water flow early in its history, because we can see the dried-up riverbeds and flood plains. So Mars can't have a fixed atmospheric gray infrared optical depth (τ). And if it had a greater τ back then because it had more atmosphere, then differing amounts of atmospheric greenhouse gases lead to different values of τ and Miskolczi is wrong again.

His theory is wrong, Jan. No matter how clever your rhetoric, he is just plain wrong.

Note, also, that Miskolczi's equation (4) requires the atmosphere to be able to differentiate where its heating sources are coming from. AA = ED means that only the longwave absorption gets emitted down. K + F = EU means only the nonradiative and sunlight absorption gets emitted up. For this to work, the atmosphere must be self-aware and have magical powers of distinguishing among heating sources.

How silly does a theory have to be before people on the internet are no longer willing to defend it?

Jan Pompe writes:

Chris #412

~1368 W/m^2 * (1-0.3)*pi r^2 = 4 pi r^2 sig T^4 (the pi terms due to the area of the disk facing the sun and the outward radiation in all directions). The pi r^2 terms cancel and you have T= [1368(0.7) /4sig]^.25 = 255 K.

What universe do you live in?

Your numbers assume the earth is a poor absorber but a perfect emitter that just does not happen in this universe.

Jan, Earth IS a poor absorber. It has a nonzero albedo. The albedo of the Earth, according to satellite observations, is about 0.306. That means the Earth only absorbs 69.4% of the sunlight that falls on it.

I knew you didn't believe Kirchhoff's Law, and apparently you agree with jae that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist. Apparently you have also now decided that reflection doesn't exist. Are there any other solidly established points about the real world that you don't accept?

jae writes:

Chris: If you have some knowledge in this area, please just pick one of Ferenc’s equations and explain in detail why it is wrong. That’s what an expert should be doing here, not armwaving about the whole theory. You are being instructed in armwaving, it seems to me.

Certainly! I'll show you why Miskolczi's equation (4) is wrong. His equation (4) is:

AA = SU A = SU(1-TA) = ED

where

AA = Amount of flux Absorbed by the Atmosphere
SU = Upward blackbody longwave flux = sigma Ts^4
A = “flux absorptance”
TA = atmospheric flux transmittance
ED = longwave flux downward

Note that he says the downward flux from the atmosphere (ED) must be the same as the total amount of longwave absorbed by the atmosphere (AA).

The total inputs to Miskolczi’s atmosphere are AA, K, P and F, which respectively stand for the longwave input from the ground, the nonradiative input (latent and sensible heat) from the ground, the geothermal input from the ground, and the solar input. P is negligible and I don’t know why he even puts it in here unless he’s just trying to be complete. He’s saying, therefore, if you stay with conservation of energy, that

AA + K + F = EU + ED

Now, from Kiehl and Trenberth’s 1997 atmospheric energy balance, the values of AA, K, and F would be about 350, 102, and 67 watts per square meter, respectively, for a total of 519 watts per square meter. EU and ED would be 195 and 324, total 519, so the equation balances.

But for Miskolczi’s equation (4) to be true, since AA = ED, we have

K + F = EU

That is, the sum of the nonradiative fluxes and the absorbed sunlight should equal the atmospheric longwave emitted upward. For K&T97, we have 102 + 67 = 195, or 169 = 195, which is an equation that will get you a big red X from the teacher.

There is no reason K + F should equal EU, therefore Miskolczi’s equation (4) is wrong. Q.E.D.

Chris

What do you want me to get out of this?

that statemetents like this

Apparently the planet Venus doesn’t exist because it contradicts physics.

are nonsense that contribute nothing.

It's left as an exercise for you to figure out why.

Before you claim for yourself the high status of grade school student you need to explain how the claims of positive feedback in those papers that that you cited is even possible for a passive system.

On the other hand you can show that earths climate system is not passive by identifying an internal energy source.