This month’s open thread on climate science topics. Things to look for – Arctic sea ice minimum, boreal wildfires and the Atlantic hurricane season – you know, the usual…
Reader Interactions
231 Responses to "Unforced variations: Sep 2020"
Western Hikersays
Global warming and the wildfire debate?
Too often it revolves around statistics, with each side finding stats to bolster their case.
The science is straightforward!
“Plants transpire more rapidly at higher temperatures because water evaporates more rapidly as the temperature rises. At 30°C, a leaf may transpire three times as fast as it does at 20°C.”
“A plant cannot continue to transpire rapidly if its water loss is not made up by replacement from the soil.”
“The volume of water lost in transpiration can be very high. It has been estimated that over the growing season, one acre of corn (maize) plants may transpire 400,000 gallons (1.5 million liters) of water. As liquid water, this would cover the field with a lake 15 inches (38 cm) deep. An acre of forest probably does even better.”
Never mind what I said about H2O opacity in the stratosphere – see looking up from tropopause in Modtran…
patrick027says
… So O3 and CO2 would together shift the color a little bit from blue to green for upward radiation, going from tropopause to TOA…
patrick027says
… in clear sky
Western Hikersays
#136 Russell
CO2 makes up a small portion of the air around us. When hot enough and more concentrated, and viewed with an IR camera, the ‘airshine’ it emits looks just like a thick fog:
I don’t know if anybody has an update on the declining bird population but where I live, this Spring I really didn’t hear any song birds like I normally do. I’m generally tuned in to the sounds of nature because it’s a good indication that a particular season is starting or ending. The song birds were noticeably absent this Spring.
jbsays
Knumbskull in America (KIA) says:
117 – JB
“Oh, here’s an idea. Read the Green New Deal Resolution that was introduced in the House of Representatives.” Why? It was VOTED ON in the Senate, and not one Senator voted for it – not even the sponsors!!
Ah, now we see more artful lying. Lies of omission – but lies nonetheless. Three dem senators voted against it – the rest voted “present” in protest of Moscow Mitch forcing the vote. Those other dem senators support the policy. So, there’s why.
I still fail to see why the mods tolerate your excrement.
Vendicar Kahnsays
Re: 159 “Airshine”
Neither of the video’s you link to show “airshine”.
“if you want to see the world with IR, chose your frequency with a little care.
I note there are IR cameras that operate at different wave bands … including … 7-12 microns… do note that I entirely ignore the presence of this IR Window in my comment @122 …Given the reasons behind my comment @122, simplification of the situation every time trumps reality in its full complexity.”
Thank you for making your position so perfectly unclear.
The 7-12 micron band is called the thermal infrared because cold and warm things at earthly temperaures — ~ 250 to ~ 350 K , radiate in that band.
Since black is not a color, and optical depth is a quantifiable thing, germanium lenses and narrow band gap imaging chips can render enough shades of grey, to produce black and white IR video displays as vivid as false color.
And considerably less confusing , when used to look for escaping plumes of IR opaque gases like methane , witness this spectacular B&W image of a gas well leak:
Kudos to John Tyndall for making all this clear back when the only available thermal IR optical material was rock salt , and doing so without recourse to naming invisible colors, which saved his readers time, as it is hard to agree on the names of things no one can see.
“Airshine” and “fog” indeed. It’s not the air that’s shining in the tailpipe videos you link.
There’s a thousand times more CO2 in auto exhaust than the atmosphere, and besides its vastly higher IR optical depth, it owes its high IR emissivity to being hundreds of K hotter than ambient.
Please read what I wrote more carefully.
Again, “CO2 makes up a small portion of the air around us. When hot enough and more concentrated, and viewed with an IR camera, the ‘airshine’ it emits looks just like a thick fog”
You: “There’s a thousand times more CO2 in auto exhaust than the atmosphere…”
Me: A thousand times more CO2 means it’s more concentrated, right?
You: “it owes its high IR emissivity to being hundreds of K hotter than ambient.”
Me: The emissivity of CO2 is independent of temperature. ‘Intensity’ is probably the word you’re looking for.
In any case, ‘hundreds of K hotter than ambient’ is ‘hot enough’, don’t you think?
Of course I’m aware that ‘airshine‘ is not a real word and sounds goofy, but if the shoe fits?
SWIR is emitted by gasses in the sun, LWIR is emitted by a variety of gasses/solids in the atmosphere.
Sunshine/Airshine.
165
WH, it’s a relief to know you’ve figured out ” that ‘airshine is not a real word and sounds goofy”, but to avoid a replay please review :
“LWIR is emitted by a variety of gasses/solids in the atmosphere.”
As the atmosphere’s principal components, N2 , O2, and Ar, are not vibrationally active, 99.97 % of the air cannot and does not emit or absorb thermal IR, which is why greenouse gases that can and do are so important.
The Accumulative Cyclone Energy for the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane season has now climbed above ACE=100 meaning that for the first time on record (since 1851-on) there have been five consecutive years with ACE>100.
Previously there had twice been four consecutive years of ACE>100, these 1891-94 and 1998-2001. As the years either side (1890 & 1895) were low on the ACE-count and also for other potential early runs of consecutive ACE>100, this is not a stat that can be influenced by the less reliable data of the early years of the record.
Russell @164,
Within the web page you link to, I wonder about your description of the denialist James Delingpole as being “a very low Whig.”
Delingpole is surely a very deep Tory (a Tory being originally a toff Irish bushwhacker) and thus also troublesome type but such Tories are usually considered to be the antithesis of any Whig.
Yet a Whig was a rebellious Scot from the Lowland wilds of the south, so perhaps “a very low Whig” would place the fractious Delingpole much further south, perhaps down in southern England which is indeed where you would find him. Mind, I would still brand the twit a posh bushwhacker being far to scatter-brained to be considered ‘rebellious’.
Western Hikersays
Russell, #166
“As the atmosphere’s principal components, N2 , O2, and Ar, are not vibrationally active, 99.97 % of the air cannot and does not emit or absorb thermal IR, which is why greenouse gases that can and do are so important.”
Right, and yet this statement is still correct, isn’t it? –
“LWIR is emitted by a variety of gasses/solids in the atmosphere.”
168 Holy Whig History, Mr. Roger, the Whiggamores of the pre-Jacobite border wars should not be confused with the Whigs of post-Enlightenment British and American politics. By the time the Reform Act came along, Charles Darwin was reckoned a very high Whig indeed.
169
“Right, and yet this statement is still correct, isn’t it? –
‘LWIR is emitted by a variety of gasses/solids in the atmosphere.'”
No: it is hazardous in the extreme to characterize as correct a statement that is zero point zero three per cent true.
Western Hikersays
#172
Bill: “There are two pennies in the jar.
Ted: “Yes, but there are 98 dimes. so your statement is only 2% correct.”
Huh?
Russellsays
170,171
Hi Naomi.
nigeljsays
This seems quite interesting on the future of the antarctic ice sheet under different warming scenarios: “The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet”
I’ve been working on some adjustments to my color guesstimates, but first… re 108 Philippe Chantreau If we could see infra-red, I imagine that the GH effect would cause an ambient “glow” of IR light, most intense close to the surface, and decreasing in intensity with altitude, until reaching a threshold altitude. With an increase in GH effect, I expect that the glow would intensify and the threshold altitude would increase. What I can’t quite put in words is what happens at the threshold altitude. …
patrick027says
… I believe what you’re refering to is the concept of an effective emitting level, which, by analogy with the Sun, is a vertical position that is representive of the Earth’s own photosphere…
patrick027says
Imagine the opacity is produced by many opaque particles; they are blackbodies, absorbing whatever light reaches them and emitting according to their temperatures. For each, you see a cross-sectional area source of radiance. You can’t see all of them because the closest ones hide some of those farther away, etc. The more densely packed or bigger they are, the less far you can see, and so the light you see matches temperatures closer to you.
Generally the size of the blackbodies depends on the material/substance they represent, frequency, and pressure and temperature (via line broadening, and the ratios of different energy states).
You need to be able to see temperature variations in order for there to be a net radiant flux of heat through where you are; it has to look brighter in one direction than it’s opposite. If it is transparent where you are, the flux passing by you depends on conditions somewhere else (and there can be no net radiant heating or cooling at your location). Adding opacity gives the material influence on the radiation, and the potential to radiantly warm or cool. At a certain point, increasing opacity hides the temperature gradient and so everything looks the same where you are; there is no net flux.
patrick027says
… That’s a partial summary of what will be parts iii, iv, and v? of a tutorial I’ve been working on…
patrick027says
… PS, more generally, there can also be ‘little mirrorballs’ (scattering cross sections) – in this case consider the reflections (and reflections of reflections…) of blackbodies. Also they may vary with direction and polarization, but that’s not of much concern here…
patrick027says
… anyway, a distribution of all the blackbody cross-section area that you can see is called an emission weighting function*, and looking down from space, that would be the Earth’s photosphere.
caveat: emission weighting function* may be defined for a single direction; for a whole hemisphere of directions up or down, you have to weight by the cosine of the angle from vertical and integrate over solid angle.
patrick027says
Anyway, due to various potential nonlinearities (Planck function not linear over temperature, temperature not linear over optical path,…?), the temperature of the centroid of the emission weighting function won’t necessarily match the brightness temperature of the radiance or irradiance – even at just one frequency.
The concept of an effective emission/radiating level most easily applies for a greybody atmosphere, where the opacity is constant over the thermal IR band…
patrick027says
The net upward LW (thermal IR) flux at any level, in the global time average for an equilibrium climate, must combine with the net upward convective flux (which is approximately 0 above the tropopause) to balance the net downward SW (solar UV, visible, solar IR) flux.
patrick027says
… and so the divergence of the net upward LW flux (increasing with height), which is LW cooling, must balance the solar heating and the convergence (decrease with height) of the upward convective flux (convective heating).
patrick027says
re 178 patrick027 – there are a few unstated caveats in all that, in case anyone wants to get nitpicky (ie. wouldn’t the closer objects look bigger? Well that matches up with contributing to a larger range of directions reaching your pupil…)
Al Bundysays
Western Hiker and Russell,
When a conversation degrades to searching through and parsing previously selected with nary a thought to parsing…
…you ain’t discussing diddly except random chance and word twisting.
Al Bundysays
BPL: Don’t just make stuff up, John. It’s too easy for people to check.
AB: Don’t be silly, BPL. It is abundantly clear that making shit up is extremely effective, especially if idiots repeat the lie in order to promote it (though the repeater is actually failing while whining about something as irrelevant as “actual” truth).
The inflection point is where “winning” becomes more “valuable” than “truth”. We passed that point a few years ago, which makes your comment just plain sad, unfortunately
Chucksays
Killian says:
20 Sep 2020 at 8:48 AM
Dear @ClimateofGavin and #DavidArcher, did I not TELL you?
>>>Yeah, I’m interested as to Gavin’s thoughts on that disturbing video. All of those abandoned fracking wells are spewing CH4 and adding to the toxic mix.
if you go to: the integrated satellite data feed global map
www earth.nullschool.net
and click on the word EARTH on screen, and switch through the Particulates channels, you can see the complicated and dynamic structure of emissivity variation in some detail
@176 patrick027 “With an increase in GH effect, I expect that the glow would intensify”. No. You have that backwards. With an increase in the IR-active “greenhouse gases (GHGs)” in Earth’s troposphere less radiation is emitted to space so you (in space) would see the glow lessen, not intensify. If you are going for detail in your cartoon (I wouldn’t) then the surface glow does not lessen (its radiation band is “atmospheric window”)). Then as surface-air warms that’s when all glows intensify but the troposphere glow doesn’t reach its original intensity because the surface glow intensity exceeds where it started before the GHGs were increased and the average glow must be 240.1 w/m**2 for Earth. If the average glow is 240.1 w/m**2 then ecosphere cools, if the average glow =240.1 w/m**2 then it’s the baby bear porridge.
——
Off topic note: Not accurate to 0.1 of course, but Karina v.S. et al claim the DIFFERENCE has that accuracy 0.12.
Barry Finchsays
I don’t know what the weird formating mess is about but anyway
If average glow less than 240.1 w/m**2 ecosphere warms
If average glow greater than 240.1 w/m**2 ecosphere cools
Average glow is now 239.23 according to Karina v.S. et al and using absorbed sunshine as 240.1
Killiansays
Re 175 nigelj: This seems quite interesting on the future of the antarctic ice sheet under different warming scenarios: “The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet”
As I’ve been saying for over a decade: Multi-meter SLR, long-tail and long-term existential risks. One choice: Rapid decarbonization via rapid, massive reductions in consumption achieved via localization and simplification.
Please tell me how you square that curve with anything but rapid simplification and Regenerative Governance. There is no currently existing economic system that can handle that.
Mr. Know It Allsays
194 – Killian
“Please tell me how you square that curve with anything but rapid simplification and Regenerative Governance. There is no currently existing economic system that can handle that.”
A hint to the answer you are looking for: we are not going to “simplify” and live like the ancients. Ain’t happening. ;)
The only economic system that can handle our needs is free market capitalism. All others that have been tried have failed, and always will.
Trump mentioned a good start in his 2020 SOTU address – the trillion tree initiative, to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and make wood. Let’s ramp it up. Everybody plant some trees soon.
In your linked twitter, Bill Gates tweeted that we need innovation across all sectors to get on a path to net-zero emissions.
Free market capitalism has always produced the best and fastest innovation. Now if we could just get Bill to apply some innovation to stop Windows 10 from spying on us, and perhaps if Google had the innovation needed to make the most recent email appear at the top of the list instead of the bottom (what idiot thought that up?), then we’d be on the way to making some progress. ;)
mkia
Mr. Know It Allsays
194 – Killian
“Please tell me how you square that curve with anything but rapid simplification and Regenerative Governance. There is no currently existing economic system that can handle that.”
A hint to the answer you are looking for: we are not going to “simplify” and live like the ancients. Ain’t happening. Can you imagine young people today who run to a safe space to cry when they hear an opinion they don’t like, out working the soil to grow their own food? Laughable. ;)
The only economic system that can handle our needs is free market capitalism. All others that have been tried have failed, and always will.
Trump mentioned a good starting point in his 2020 SOTU address – the trillion tree initiative, to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and make wood. Let’s ramp it up. Everybody plant some trees soon in honor of our greatest President.
In your linked twitter thread, Bill Gates tweeted that we need innovation across all sectors to get on a path to net-zero emissions.
Free market capitalism has always produced the best and fastest innovation. Now if we could just get Bill to apply some innovation to stop Windows 10 from spying on us, and perhaps if Google had the innovation needed to make the most recent email appear at the top of the list instead of the bottom (what idiot thought that up?), then we’d be on the way to making some progress. ;)
mkia
I see HadCRUT has posted for August 2020 with an anomaly of +0.74ºC, a little up on the anomaly of the previous three months May-July (which spanned +0.68ºC to +0.71ºC) but below the Jan-Apr anomalies (which spanned +0.80ºC to +1.01ºC).
August 2020 is the 2nd warmest August on the HadCRUT record, sitting below August 2016 (+0.79ºC) and above August 2015 (+0.74ºC), 2015 (+0.72ºC), 2017 (+0.71ºC), 2014 (+0.68ºC), 1998 (+0.60ºC) & 2018 (+0.59ºC).
August 2020 has the =22nd highest anomaly in the all-month HadCRUT record.
The 2020 year-to-date average anomaly sits 2nd in the ranking tabled behind 2016. To gain the “warmest year” accolade from 2016 would require the Sept-Dec average to top +0.735ºC, so a little higher than the average over then last four months May-Aug which averaged +0.71ºC. And to slip to 3rd below 2015 would require Sept-Dec to average below a rather chilly +0.63ºC.
“Trump mentioned a good starting point in his 2020 SOTU address – the trillion tree initiative, to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and make wood. Let’s ramp it up. Everybody plant some trees soon in honor of our greatest President.”
Was this wishful thinking or is the federal government actually going to provide some funds? Either way, planting trees will only ever be a small part of the solution because theres just not enough spare land. Check the maths. Its another Trump delusion like all the others.
Thinking of trees, when is you federal governmnet going to clear all the dead wood out of the huge federally owned forests in California where most of these forest fires are located? That dead wood makes the fires worse (along with climate change). :-)
See how much I know? Its because I dont waste my time reading crap like Breitbart.
Mister KIA: “The only economic system that can handle our needs is free market capitalism. All others that have been tried have failed, and always will.”
The free market system also failed, in case you didn’t notice. What remains of it is being propped up by a set of humongous loans that will never be repaid — unless “extend and pretend” can be sustained indefinitely.
Your notion of socialism is a caricature, based on right-wing dogma. Socialist governments in China and Vietnam are succeeding. Venezuela was a huge success until their oil revenues dried up, an unexpected development that had nothing to do with socialism. Maduro continues to have widespread support because the principal concern of his socialist government is the welfare of the people, including those on the lowest economic rung. Venezuelans and Cubans are suffering due to the huge pressures placed on them for years by the US government. I lived for months in “communist” Yugoslavia, under Tito and found it to be the best country I’d ever lived in: no beggars, no slums, no fear of reprisals for speaking freely.
Socialism is about placing the needs of the majority above the ambitions of the wealthy few. Capitalism is about the opposite. I’d rather live in a country where the great majority are well paid, well fed and healthy than a country riddled with beggars and homeless people. Wouldn’t you?
Adam Leasays
167: I’m not convinced that statistic means anything in the context of a changing climate. The 1998-2001 period was adjacent on both sides to significant El Nino years which suppressed Atlantic hurricane activity. There has been no comparable El Nino event from 2016-2020, the last big one was in 2015. We are about due an El Nino, so if one develops over the next few months, expect next year’s hurricane season to be quiet.
nigeljsays
In relation to my previous comment on californias wildfires: “(Reuters) – While more than half of California’s forests fall under federal management, the U.S. Forest Service consistently spends fewer dollars than the state in managing those lands to reduce wildfire risks, a Reuters data analysis reveals.”
Global warming and the wildfire debate?
Too often it revolves around statistics, with each side finding stats to bolster their case.
The science is straightforward!
“Plants transpire more rapidly at higher temperatures because water evaporates more rapidly as the temperature rises. At 30°C, a leaf may transpire three times as fast as it does at 20°C.”
“A plant cannot continue to transpire rapidly if its water loss is not made up by replacement from the soil.”
“The volume of water lost in transpiration can be very high. It has been estimated that over the growing season, one acre of corn (maize) plants may transpire 400,000 gallons (1.5 million liters) of water. As liquid water, this would cover the field with a lake 15 inches (38 cm) deep. An acre of forest probably does even better.”
https://tinyurl.com/y6nvt8x7
California, August, 1950 – 2020:
PDSI: – 0.36 /decade
Precipitation: – 0.02” /decade
———
How could such an insignificant trend in precipitation account for such a decisively negative PDSI trend?
The answer is clear:
Temperature: + 0.4F /decade
https://tinyurl.com/y3zry56c
https://tinyurl.com/yyk5uqtp
https://tinyurl.com/yxebol6s
Whoops. Here is the link to the PDSI trend:
https://tinyurl.com/y5w5k4kz
Never mind what I said about H2O opacity in the stratosphere – see looking up from tropopause in Modtran…
… So O3 and CO2 would together shift the color a little bit from blue to green for upward radiation, going from tropopause to TOA…
… in clear sky
#136 Russell
CO2 makes up a small portion of the air around us. When hot enough and more concentrated, and viewed with an IR camera, the ‘airshine’ it emits looks just like a thick fog:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ehk6_Wl3S2Q
Another look at ‘airshine’
https://tinyurl.com/y5qdr2wv
dhogaza says:
18 Sep 2020 at 11:12 PM
KIA lies again …
…and again, and again, and again.
I’m sure the fires out West are having a devastating effect on an already dire situation:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nature-up-close-the-massive-decline-of-bird-populations/
I don’t know if anybody has an update on the declining bird population but where I live, this Spring I really didn’t hear any song birds like I normally do. I’m generally tuned in to the sounds of nature because it’s a good indication that a particular season is starting or ending. The song birds were noticeably absent this Spring.
Knumbskull in America (KIA) says:
117 – JB
“Oh, here’s an idea. Read the Green New Deal Resolution that was introduced in the House of Representatives.” Why? It was VOTED ON in the Senate, and not one Senator voted for it – not even the sponsors!!
Ah, now we see more artful lying. Lies of omission – but lies nonetheless. Three dem senators voted against it – the rest voted “present” in protest of Moscow Mitch forcing the vote. Those other dem senators support the policy. So, there’s why.
I still fail to see why the mods tolerate your excrement.
Re: 159 “Airshine”
Neither of the video’s you link to show “airshine”.
If you can find one, that may be useful.
149 :
“if you want to see the world with IR, chose your frequency with a little care.
I note there are IR cameras that operate at different wave bands … including … 7-12 microns… do note that I entirely ignore the presence of this IR Window in my comment @122 …Given the reasons behind my comment @122, simplification of the situation every time trumps reality in its full complexity.”
Thank you for making your position so perfectly unclear.
The 7-12 micron band is called the thermal infrared because cold and warm things at earthly temperaures — ~ 250 to ~ 350 K , radiate in that band.
Since black is not a color, and optical depth is a quantifiable thing, germanium lenses and narrow band gap imaging chips can render enough shades of grey, to produce black and white IR video displays as vivid as false color.
And considerably less confusing , when used to look for escaping plumes of IR opaque gases like methane , witness this spectacular B&W image of a gas well leak:
Kudos to John Tyndall for making all this clear back when the only available thermal IR optical material was rock salt , and doing so without recourse to naming invisible colors, which saved his readers time, as it is hard to agree on the names of things no one can see.
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2015/12/infrared-ink.html
158
“Airshine” and “fog” indeed. It’s not the air that’s shining in the tailpipe videos you link.
There’s a thousand times more CO2 in auto exhaust than the atmosphere, and besides its vastly higher IR optical depth, it owes its high IR emissivity to being hundreds of K hotter than ambient.
Here’s a brief steampunk tutorial :
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2014/10/climate-wars-salt-talks.html
Russell, #164
Please read what I wrote more carefully.
Again, “CO2 makes up a small portion of the air around us. When hot enough and more concentrated, and viewed with an IR camera, the ‘airshine’ it emits looks just like a thick fog”
You: “There’s a thousand times more CO2 in auto exhaust than the atmosphere…”
Me: A thousand times more CO2 means it’s more concentrated, right?
You: “it owes its high IR emissivity to being hundreds of K hotter than ambient.”
Me: The emissivity of CO2 is independent of temperature. ‘Intensity’ is probably the word you’re looking for.
In any case, ‘hundreds of K hotter than ambient’ is ‘hot enough’, don’t you think?
Of course I’m aware that ‘airshine‘ is not a real word and sounds goofy, but if the shoe fits?
SWIR is emitted by gasses in the sun, LWIR is emitted by a variety of gasses/solids in the atmosphere.
Sunshine/Airshine.
165
WH, it’s a relief to know you’ve figured out ” that ‘airshine is not a real word and sounds goofy”, but to avoid a replay please review :
“LWIR is emitted by a variety of gasses/solids in the atmosphere.”
As the atmosphere’s principal components, N2 , O2, and Ar, are not vibrationally active, 99.97 % of the air cannot and does not emit or absorb thermal IR, which is why greenouse gases that can and do are so important.
The Accumulative Cyclone Energy for the 2020 Atlantic Hurricane season has now climbed above ACE=100 meaning that for the first time on record (since 1851-on) there have been five consecutive years with ACE>100.
Previously there had twice been four consecutive years of ACE>100, these 1891-94 and 1998-2001. As the years either side (1890 & 1895) were low on the ACE-count and also for other potential early runs of consecutive ACE>100, this is not a stat that can be influenced by the less reliable data of the early years of the record.
Russell @164,
Within the web page you link to, I wonder about your description of the denialist James Delingpole as being “a very low Whig.”
Delingpole is surely a very deep Tory (a Tory being originally a toff Irish bushwhacker) and thus also troublesome type but such Tories are usually considered to be the antithesis of any Whig.
Yet a Whig was a rebellious Scot from the Lowland wilds of the south, so perhaps “a very low Whig” would place the fractious Delingpole much further south, perhaps down in southern England which is indeed where you would find him. Mind, I would still brand the twit a posh bushwhacker being far to scatter-brained to be considered ‘rebellious’.
Russell, #166
“As the atmosphere’s principal components, N2 , O2, and Ar, are not vibrationally active, 99.97 % of the air cannot and does not emit or absorb thermal IR, which is why greenouse gases that can and do are so important.”
Right, and yet this statement is still correct, isn’t it? –
“LWIR is emitted by a variety of gasses/solids in the atmosphere.”
* (Other than I forgot to include liquid water)
2020 hurricane season exhausts regular list of names
https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/2020-hurricane-season-exhausts-regular-list-of-names
How the oil industry made us doubt climate change
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382
And a podcast:
How They Made Us Doubt Everything
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q1/episodes/player
168 Holy Whig History, Mr. Roger, the Whiggamores of the pre-Jacobite border wars should not be confused with the Whigs of post-Enlightenment British and American politics. By the time the Reform Act came along, Charles Darwin was reckoned a very high Whig indeed.
169
“Right, and yet this statement is still correct, isn’t it? –
‘LWIR is emitted by a variety of gasses/solids in the atmosphere.'”
No: it is hazardous in the extreme to characterize as correct a statement that is zero point zero three per cent true.
#172
Bill: “There are two pennies in the jar.
Ted: “Yes, but there are 98 dimes. so your statement is only 2% correct.”
Huh?
170,171
Hi Naomi.
This seems quite interesting on the future of the antarctic ice sheet under different warming scenarios: “The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2727-5
I’ve been working on some adjustments to my color guesstimates, but first… re 108 Philippe Chantreau
If we could see infra-red, I imagine that the GH effect would cause an ambient “glow” of IR light, most intense close to the surface, and decreasing in intensity with altitude, until reaching a threshold altitude. With an increase in GH effect, I expect that the glow would intensify and the threshold altitude would increase. What I can’t quite put in words is what happens at the threshold altitude. …
… I believe what you’re refering to is the concept of an effective emitting level, which, by analogy with the Sun, is a vertical position that is representive of the Earth’s own photosphere…
Imagine the opacity is produced by many opaque particles; they are blackbodies, absorbing whatever light reaches them and emitting according to their temperatures. For each, you see a cross-sectional area source of radiance. You can’t see all of them because the closest ones hide some of those farther away, etc. The more densely packed or bigger they are, the less far you can see, and so the light you see matches temperatures closer to you.
Generally the size of the blackbodies depends on the material/substance they represent, frequency, and pressure and temperature (via line broadening, and the ratios of different energy states).
You need to be able to see temperature variations in order for there to be a net radiant flux of heat through where you are; it has to look brighter in one direction than it’s opposite. If it is transparent where you are, the flux passing by you depends on conditions somewhere else (and there can be no net radiant heating or cooling at your location). Adding opacity gives the material influence on the radiation, and the potential to radiantly warm or cool. At a certain point, increasing opacity hides the temperature gradient and so everything looks the same where you are; there is no net flux.
… That’s a partial summary of what will be parts iii, iv, and v? of a tutorial I’ve been working on…
… PS, more generally, there can also be ‘little mirrorballs’ (scattering cross sections) – in this case consider the reflections (and reflections of reflections…) of blackbodies. Also they may vary with direction and polarization, but that’s not of much concern here…
… anyway, a distribution of all the blackbody cross-section area that you can see is called an emission weighting function*, and looking down from space, that would be the Earth’s photosphere.
caveat: emission weighting function* may be defined for a single direction; for a whole hemisphere of directions up or down, you have to weight by the cosine of the angle from vertical and integrate over solid angle.
Anyway, due to various potential nonlinearities (Planck function not linear over temperature, temperature not linear over optical path,…?), the temperature of the centroid of the emission weighting function won’t necessarily match the brightness temperature of the radiance or irradiance – even at just one frequency.
The concept of an effective emission/radiating level most easily applies for a greybody atmosphere, where the opacity is constant over the thermal IR band…
The net upward LW (thermal IR) flux at any level, in the global time average for an equilibrium climate, must combine with the net upward convective flux (which is approximately 0 above the tropopause) to balance the net downward SW (solar UV, visible, solar IR) flux.
… and so the divergence of the net upward LW flux (increasing with height), which is LW cooling, must balance the solar heating and the convergence (decrease with height) of the upward convective flux (convective heating).
re 178 patrick027 – there are a few unstated caveats in all that, in case anyone wants to get nitpicky (ie. wouldn’t the closer objects look bigger? Well that matches up with contributing to a larger range of directions reaching your pupil…)
Western Hiker and Russell,
When a conversation degrades to searching through and parsing previously selected with nary a thought to parsing…
…you ain’t discussing diddly except random chance and word twisting.
BPL: Don’t just make stuff up, John. It’s too easy for people to check.
AB: Don’t be silly, BPL. It is abundantly clear that making shit up is extremely effective, especially if idiots repeat the lie in order to promote it (though the repeater is actually failing while whining about something as irrelevant as “actual” truth).
The inflection point is where “winning” becomes more “valuable” than “truth”. We passed that point a few years ago, which makes your comment just plain sad, unfortunately
Killian says:
20 Sep 2020 at 8:48 AM
Dear @ClimateofGavin and #DavidArcher, did I not TELL you?
>>>Yeah, I’m interested as to Gavin’s thoughts on that disturbing video. All of those abandoned fracking wells are spewing CH4 and adding to the toxic mix.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-09-17/abandoned-gas-wells-are-left-to-spew-methane-for-eternity
I guess you could call this “Armageddon Warp Speed” in honor of Donald Trump. Does anybody have any cheerful scenarios they want to throw out there?
182
if you go to: the integrated satellite data feed global map
www earth.nullschool.net
and click on the word EARTH on screen, and switch through the Particulates channels, you can see the complicated and dynamic structure of emissivity variation in some detail
Climate Disruption Is Now Locked In. The Next Moves Will Be Crucial
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/climate/climate-change-future.html
@176 patrick027 “With an increase in GH effect, I expect that the glow would intensify”. No. You have that backwards. With an increase in the IR-active “greenhouse gases (GHGs)” in Earth’s troposphere less radiation is emitted to space so you (in space) would see the glow lessen, not intensify. If you are going for detail in your cartoon (I wouldn’t) then the surface glow does not lessen (its radiation band is “atmospheric window”)). Then as surface-air warms that’s when all glows intensify but the troposphere glow doesn’t reach its original intensity because the surface glow intensity exceeds where it started before the GHGs were increased and the average glow must be 240.1 w/m**2 for Earth. If the average glow is 240.1 w/m**2 then ecosphere cools, if the average glow =240.1 w/m**2 then it’s the baby bear porridge.
——
Off topic note: Not accurate to 0.1 of course, but Karina v.S. et al claim the DIFFERENCE has that accuracy 0.12.
I don’t know what the weird formating mess is about but anyway
If average glow less than 240.1 w/m**2 ecosphere warms
If average glow greater than 240.1 w/m**2 ecosphere cools
Average glow is now 239.23 according to Karina v.S. et al and using absorbed sunshine as 240.1
Re 175 nigelj: This seems quite interesting on the future of the antarctic ice sheet under different warming scenarios: “The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2727-5
As I’ve been saying for over a decade: Multi-meter SLR, long-tail and long-term existential risks. One choice: Rapid decarbonization via rapid, massive reductions in consumption achieved via localization and simplification.
Regenerative Governance and Regenerative Design.
Here’s something actually worth discussion:
https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1309206537999585280?s=20
Please tell me how you square that curve with anything but rapid simplification and Regenerative Governance. There is no currently existing economic system that can handle that.
194 – Killian
“Please tell me how you square that curve with anything but rapid simplification and Regenerative Governance. There is no currently existing economic system that can handle that.”
A hint to the answer you are looking for: we are not going to “simplify” and live like the ancients. Ain’t happening. ;)
The only economic system that can handle our needs is free market capitalism. All others that have been tried have failed, and always will.
Trump mentioned a good start in his 2020 SOTU address – the trillion tree initiative, to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and make wood. Let’s ramp it up. Everybody plant some trees soon.
In your linked twitter, Bill Gates tweeted that we need innovation across all sectors to get on a path to net-zero emissions.
https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1309147157040111616
Free market capitalism has always produced the best and fastest innovation. Now if we could just get Bill to apply some innovation to stop Windows 10 from spying on us, and perhaps if Google had the innovation needed to make the most recent email appear at the top of the list instead of the bottom (what idiot thought that up?), then we’d be on the way to making some progress. ;)
mkia
194 – Killian
“Please tell me how you square that curve with anything but rapid simplification and Regenerative Governance. There is no currently existing economic system that can handle that.”
A hint to the answer you are looking for: we are not going to “simplify” and live like the ancients. Ain’t happening. Can you imagine young people today who run to a safe space to cry when they hear an opinion they don’t like, out working the soil to grow their own food? Laughable. ;)
The only economic system that can handle our needs is free market capitalism. All others that have been tried have failed, and always will.
Trump mentioned a good starting point in his 2020 SOTU address – the trillion tree initiative, to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and make wood. Let’s ramp it up. Everybody plant some trees soon in honor of our greatest President.
In your linked twitter thread, Bill Gates tweeted that we need innovation across all sectors to get on a path to net-zero emissions.
https://twitter.com/BillGates/status/1309147157040111616
Free market capitalism has always produced the best and fastest innovation. Now if we could just get Bill to apply some innovation to stop Windows 10 from spying on us, and perhaps if Google had the innovation needed to make the most recent email appear at the top of the list instead of the bottom (what idiot thought that up?), then we’d be on the way to making some progress. ;)
mkia
I see HadCRUT has posted for August 2020 with an anomaly of +0.74ºC, a little up on the anomaly of the previous three months May-July (which spanned +0.68ºC to +0.71ºC) but below the Jan-Apr anomalies (which spanned +0.80ºC to +1.01ºC).
August 2020 is the 2nd warmest August on the HadCRUT record, sitting below August 2016 (+0.79ºC) and above August 2015 (+0.74ºC), 2015 (+0.72ºC), 2017 (+0.71ºC), 2014 (+0.68ºC), 1998 (+0.60ºC) & 2018 (+0.59ºC).
August 2020 has the =22nd highest anomaly in the all-month HadCRUT record.
The 2020 year-to-date average anomaly sits 2nd in the ranking tabled behind 2016. To gain the “warmest year” accolade from 2016 would require the Sept-Dec average to top +0.735ºC, so a little higher than the average over then last four months May-Aug which averaged +0.71ºC. And to slip to 3rd below 2015 would require Sept-Dec to average below a rather chilly +0.63ºC.
…….. Jan-August Ave … Annual Ave ..Annual ranking
2016 .. +0.88ºC … … … +0.80ºC … … … 1st
2020 .. +0.83ºC
2017 .. +0.73ºC … … … +0.68ºC … … … 4th
2019 .. +0.72ºC … … … +0.74ºC … … … 3rd
2015 .. +0.71ºC … … … +0.76ºC … … … 2nd
1998 .. +0.61ºC … … … +0.54ºC … … … 9th
2010 .. +0.61ºC … … … +0.56ºC … … … 7th
2018 .. +0.58ºC … … … +0.60ºC … … … 5th
2014 .. +0.57ºC … … … +0.58ºC … … … 6th
2002 .. +0.55ºC … … … +0.50ºC … … … 14th
2005 .. +0.53ºC … … … +0.53ºC … … … 8th
A graphic showing monthly ‘global’ anomalies over the last decade for HadCRUT, GISS, NOAA, BEST SAT and UAH & RSS TLT is here (usually 2 clicks to ‘download your attachment’).
Mr KIA @196
“Trump mentioned a good starting point in his 2020 SOTU address – the trillion tree initiative, to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and make wood. Let’s ramp it up. Everybody plant some trees soon in honor of our greatest President.”
Was this wishful thinking or is the federal government actually going to provide some funds? Either way, planting trees will only ever be a small part of the solution because theres just not enough spare land. Check the maths. Its another Trump delusion like all the others.
Thinking of trees, when is you federal governmnet going to clear all the dead wood out of the huge federally owned forests in California where most of these forest fires are located? That dead wood makes the fires worse (along with climate change). :-)
See how much I know? Its because I dont waste my time reading crap like Breitbart.
Mister KIA: “The only economic system that can handle our needs is free market capitalism. All others that have been tried have failed, and always will.”
The free market system also failed, in case you didn’t notice. What remains of it is being propped up by a set of humongous loans that will never be repaid — unless “extend and pretend” can be sustained indefinitely.
Your notion of socialism is a caricature, based on right-wing dogma. Socialist governments in China and Vietnam are succeeding. Venezuela was a huge success until their oil revenues dried up, an unexpected development that had nothing to do with socialism. Maduro continues to have widespread support because the principal concern of his socialist government is the welfare of the people, including those on the lowest economic rung. Venezuelans and Cubans are suffering due to the huge pressures placed on them for years by the US government. I lived for months in “communist” Yugoslavia, under Tito and found it to be the best country I’d ever lived in: no beggars, no slums, no fear of reprisals for speaking freely.
Socialism is about placing the needs of the majority above the ambitions of the wealthy few. Capitalism is about the opposite. I’d rather live in a country where the great majority are well paid, well fed and healthy than a country riddled with beggars and homeless people. Wouldn’t you?
167: I’m not convinced that statistic means anything in the context of a changing climate. The 1998-2001 period was adjacent on both sides to significant El Nino years which suppressed Atlantic hurricane activity. There has been no comparable El Nino event from 2016-2020, the last big one was in 2015. We are about due an El Nino, so if one develops over the next few months, expect next year’s hurricane season to be quiet.
In relation to my previous comment on californias wildfires: “(Reuters) – While more than half of California’s forests fall under federal management, the U.S. Forest Service consistently spends fewer dollars than the state in managing those lands to reduce wildfire risks, a Reuters data analysis reveals.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-wildfires-forests-insight/california-outpaced-trumps-forest-service-in-wildfire-prevention-work-data-idINKCN26E2UQ