The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) and Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S) both provide sets of global climate statistics to summarise the state of Earth’s climate. They are indeed valuable indicators for the global or regional mean temperature, greenhouse gas concentrations, both ice volume and area, ocean heat, acidification, and the global sea level.
Still, I find it surprising that the set does not include any statistics on the global hydrological cycle, relevant to rainfall patterns and droughts. Two obvious global hydro-climatological indicators are the total mass of water falling on Earth’s surface each day P and the fraction of Earth’s surface area on which it falls Ap.
Global surface area can now be analysed with satellite observations and global reanalyses such as the ERA5 reanalysis. Apparently, Earth’s fractional surface area receiving daily precipitation, Ap, has shrunk over time while the total mass of water falling on Earth’s surface P has increased. Furthermore, our recent analysis suggests that there is a strong correlation between the spatial scales of rainfall patterns and the global mean temperature (Benestad et al, 2022).
A reduction in Ap may in fact provide an additional explanation for both increased (more extreme) precipitation and droughts, in addition to increased evaporation connected with higher surface temperatures. Despite numerous recent headlines on extreme rainfall, flooding and mudslides, there has been little discussion about their causes beyond increased evaporation caused by higher temperatures.
I wonder if the incomplete set of global climate indicators presented by trusted bodies such as the WMO and Copernicus C3S also has an effect on the media and placed a narrow emphasis on temperature. Temperature-based statistics is of course paramount, but other relevant area-based climate indicators also include the fractional area of Earth’s surface that exceeds a threshold, such as 10 mm/day or 50 mm/day of daily precipitation. Such statistics can give a description of how extreme rainfall changes over time.
We can extend the set of essential climate statistics to the polar and mountainous regions, and the surface area with daily temperature above freezing can provide a context for the proportion of precipitation that falls as rain or snow. Such an area-based indicator is also relevant for both the snow/ice-cover extent as well as the thawing of permafrost.
The fraction of the global surface area with maximum temperature above a threshold, such as 40°C, also provides an indication of whether heatwaves are becoming more severe.
Area-based climate indicators are readily computed with the CDO climate data operators applied to netCDF files, and hence can be considered as low-hanging fruits. A sample set is available on a thredds server (easily accessible through the ‘esd’ R-package freely available from GitHub – see sample R code used to make the plots shown here).
It is possible that the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) soon may include the surface area north of 60°N with above-freezing temperature in its upcoming 2023 biennial report. I also think it’s urgent that both the WMO and Copernicus C3S add these global hydro-climatological and area-based indicators to their list of essential climate statistics.
Below are some examples of area-based climate indicators.
The figure above shows the fraction of global surface area (red) and in the 50°S-50°N latitude band (black) with 24-hr precipitation based on daily ERA5 reanalysis data. The curves present annual mean of daily fractions, and even if the drop during the 1990s may not be quite right, they represent a step towards a better understanding of either the ERA5 data or the real hydrological cycle.
References
- R.E. Benestad, C. Lussana, J. Lutz, A. Dobler, O. Landgren, J.E. Haugen, A. Mezghani, B. Casati, and K.M. Parding, "Global hydro-climatological indicators and changes in the global hydrological cycle and rainfall patterns", PLOS Climate, vol. 1, pp. e0000029, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000029
Curious that everything seems to change with the advent of satellites. Perhaps they are the problem?
No, Dr Wollard.
The problem is suggested many times. Our gas dealer suggested may years ago that “there are so many satelites swaming up there , that I am getting quite confused!”.
My old uncle Andreas C. also suggested quite much later that it might be a problem.
No, I said they will begin to collide and crash more and more into tiny splitters that will assemble as a .large saturn ring standing up in the sky as seen from here and cast shadow on the ground and forbid further human space travelling and satelites. They will rather be the solution to it all now quite soon.
You don’t seriously think I mean the satellites are affecting the rain do you???
It’s the age old problem of getting better measurements. From what I can tell there has been no attempt to correct for observational change
A very similar picture emerges if you look at NA tropical storms. We are far, far better at spotting and tracking them now than 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, or even 25 years ago. To quantify this improvement, I looked at the average lat/long of the paths for each year.. For the first century or so there was no discernible trend as almost all observations were land based with occasional observations from passing ships. Then from WWII onward planes were used, then satellites, then more satellites. There has been a significant eastward migration of the average location. There is also northerly shift but it is an order of magnitude smaller. I would be surprised if anyone thought the easterly shift is genuine, and therefore this method gives us a way of quantifying the increase in observational efficiency. It’s curious that Michael Mann believes that the record is reliable back to the nineteenth century because “without aircraft and satellites to warn them off, ships often encountered storms at sea” *** – Really?????
See here for the time series for both longitude and latitude :-
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZQiC7PADRVdubBdT9
Or as a map view :-
https://www.google.com.au/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1Z5xcYcbsPIFxeq3HkWQmDvmokls2DYU&usp=sharing
I think a n even more informative Y-axis would be “distance from land”. There are a number of early storms near Bermuda (my antipode) that tend provide anomalous nor-easterly values Unfortunately I am not clever enough to attempt this.
Likewise, I would suggest some portion of the structure in Rasmus’ plots are observational in origin
*** Eos, Vol. 87, No. 24, 13 June 2006
No, Dr Woollard
Now you are misconsceived again.,You did not quite understand my reply
I did reply to whether satelites may be the problem.
Yes they may. They give more and more rubbish in space.
I can remember once upon a time we were to write an essay on the theme , protection of environment especially pristine nature, and left behind rubbish & garbage there.
I wrote all I could think of, , and did mention also outer space, that will be more and more filled up with banana- shales, empty beercans, used condoms, chocolate papers, Gauloise- packs and emptied ashtrays, plastic waste & cetera. I had red that in Readers Digest or was it Popular Mechanics or even National geographic magazine. In original.
Out teacher said openly about me in class that this was perhaps “Far fetched”. Surely because she did not read that sort of periodicals in those days.
It has later shown to be quite a problem, human space activity rubbish and pollution in orbit or even on the moon where it does not decay…
Moral,
Become a holist, tell people also of the ugly moral and environmental consequenses of it, not just the advantages..
Yes, Hr Benestad, this is probably some of your best.
I like that of rain coming in stronger showers and no rain next by, but all in all more rain than ever due to the vapour pressure curve of water from Pluto and up to overheated steam in the boilers. Clausius Clappeyron.
There we have a universal principle that can be relied on..
There is Mari vassause and Jacob våthatt, Hundedagene. That conscept seems to have origined in old Egypt with the Nile flood at the university of Alexandria, where Sirius in the night could tell when it normally comes.
The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain, thus once again where does it rain? Can be found on youtube.
Inger Hagerup also wrote about it, I shall try and find it
Yes, I found it
https://dikt.org/regn
Dear Rasmus,
Thanks for the interesting post. I’m also wondering about the lack of homogeneity in the ERA5 assimilated data with a possible shift rather than trend in the global area with daily precipitation exceeding 1 mm/day. Did you also look at this in global climate models? I fully concur with the need to pay more attention to water cycle changes at both WMO and IPCC levels:
Douville H., R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, R.A. Betts, MA.Caretta, A. Cherchi, A. Mukherji, K. Raghavan, J. Renwick (2022) Water remains a blind spot in climate change policies. PLOS Water, 1(12), e0000058, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0000058
Douville H. and K. Willett (2023) A drier than expected future, supported by near-surface relative humidity observations. Sc. Adv., doi:10.1126/sciadv.ade6253 (under embargo until July 28th 2023)
Douville H., R. Chadwick, M. Saint-Lu, B. Medeiros (2023) Drivers of dry day sensitivity to increased CO2. Geophys. Res. Lett., https://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2023GL103200
Best regards,
Hervé Douville
@Douville Hervé says:
” Water remains a blind spot in climate change policy. ”
ms: — Not only in the climate change policy, but above all in the generally recognized climate science, there are a number of blind spots that are related to the water cycle.
This includes mainly:
– the man-made loss of evaporative landscapes
– and a relative humidity (over land & oceans) that has been falling for many decades, a paradox for which climate science (IPCC) still has no reasonable, qualitative or even quantitative explanation, although both are very obviously related.
https://climateprotectionhardware.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/a2.png
Neither the rapidly progressive loss of evaporative landscapes nor the falling RH and cloud albedo are signs of an intensified global water cycle.
There is much to suggest that decreasing global evaporation (- 0.86W/m²) and cloud albedo
(- 0.8W/m²) are the main drivers of global warming (not only) since the year 2000 (CERES with satellite-based measurements.
A combination of GEB from Trenberth & Loeb (1999-2009) and the CERES data illustrates the 20-year trend since 2000. (difference between yellow and white digits)
https://climateprotectionhardware.files.wordpress.com/2023/03/geb_2000-2020finish.png?w=1024
https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2022-10/Loeb_contributed_presentation.pdf
Macias Shurly: Jul 26: . “ the man-made loss of evaporative landscapes”
Could you show the sources? I thought I have read somewhere that anthropogenic evaporation increased due to increases in irrigation and forestation projects, but I can’t find the reference,
ms: a relative humidity (over land & oceans) that has been falling for many decades
Why would you talk about the relative and not absolute humidity? The RH signal is confounded by the increasing temperature – EVEN if there were NO changes in “evaporative landscapes” – we would have still EXPECTED the RH to “have been falling for many decades” – since 1C warming drops saturation level by 7%. Incidentally – this might explain why RH drops also over the ocean.
ms: ”@Douville Hervé says: Water remains a blind spot in climate change policy” ,
Well, that’s because, unlike GHGs, we can’t do much about it:
– what can you do to increase evaporation over 71% of Earth covered by ocean?
– on the remaining 29%, the irrigation is already probably above its sustainable max – we are evaporating more water than is re-supplied – the balance being met by emptying the ground water aquifers that take 1000 yrs to refill (if refilling is even possible – given the frequent collapses of porosity in the aquifers that have their water pumped out).
ms: “There is much to suggest that decreasing global evaporation (- 0.86W/m²) and cloud albedo (- 0.8W/m²) are the main drivers of global warming (not only) since the year 2000 (CERES with satellite-based measurements.
“Decreasing global evaporation”??? You have claimed only” reduced relative,/b> humidity”.
But the LW absorption by water vapour does not care about RH, but only absolute humidity, and that one – rather increased?
Given that – how did you arrive at cooling of “- 0.86W/m²” as result of … increased absolute humidity?
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813457
Dear Piotr,
As macias indicates in
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813375
he calculated the deficit of (or decrease in) the global average latent heat flow from the decrease in the sum of global annual precipitation, on the basis of the equivalence between these two parameters that we exhaustively discussed and (as I hope sufficiently) clarified elsewhere, see the last summary in
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813499 .
He gives the value 0.86 W/m2 of the assumed latent heat flow / evaporation deficit already in his post of March 13
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/03/unforced-variations-march-2023/#comment-810052 .
Unfortunately, I have not found the source from that macias derived this value.
In another post
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/06/unforced-variations-jun-2023/#comment-812408 ,
he mentions that annual loss of water from continents is about 100 km3 and refers to GRACE-FO measurements. Unfortunately, again without a reference to the respective publication or another source.
I think it would be very helpful for further discussion to have these information sources.
Could you, macias, provide them for all inexperienced participants in this discussion like me, even though it is well possible that you did it already (maybe even several times) in your older post(s)?
Greetings
Tomáš
P.S.
I think I understand, Piotr, why macias speaks about decreasing relative humidity.
In his analysis of the “forcings” contributing to the EEI that drives the global warming observed in the last two decades, he deals not only with the above mentioned deficit in the latent heat flow, but also with a decrease in the average Earth albedo. He ascribes this decrease to lower cloud formation, which could be indeed caused by lower relative humidity.
Personally, I could imagine that both lower aerosol formation indicated by James Hansen (in the article https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474 ) as well the lower relative humidity emphasized by macias might have contributed to the lower Earth albedo through lower cloud formation.
The lower Earth albedo itself, as an observed phenomenon, seems to be confirmed by the CERES satellite data mentioned by macias.
Tomas Kalisz Aug.8, in defense of Shurly’s 3rd line of argument:
“on the basis of the equivalence between these two parameters that we exhaustively discussed and (as I hope sufficiently) clarified elsewhere”
you mean “on the basis” of our whack-a-mole game, in which each time I whack you or Shurly on the head, by showing that your assumption and/or calculations are wrong, you guys unable to challenge this – disappear, only to reappear in another hole, as if nothing has happened?
The case in point – Shurly:
– first he tried to cloak himself into the authority of Gavin (Schmidt et al. 2010 paper) – but then I showed that he “amended” Gavin’s work with addition of LH (latent heat) from some GEB (Global Energy Budget). It was based on Shurly’s naive reading of GEB graphs – he sees an LH arrow, but doesn’t see a separate arrow drawn for the LH portion of the downwelling LW (longwave) arrow from ALL sources of heat in the atmosphere – and concludes that 0% LH is reradiated to Earth. And on that “0” assumption – he adds ENTIRE LH arrow to the Gavin numbers to triumphantly claim:
“ The Earth being a water-cooled planet – whether you like it or not“
To which I have explained to him, using the same GEB graph, that we can estimate that of all the energy put into the atmosphere ~ 2/3 is reradiated back to Earth – so assuming that the same ratio holds for LH -means that ~ 2/3 of LH is reradiated to Earth, which completely alter the Shurly’s “results – from “The Earth being a water-cooled planet” it now becomes water heated.
Unable to admit his error, Shurly …stopped implying that whoever doubts Shurly, doubts Gavin, and switched to whoever doubts Shurly, doubts … IPCC – linking to the supposedly IPCC graph.
Then again, when I checked the supposed original – the Shurly’s graph … WASN’T from IPCC, but a version of it from Wikipedia, in which its Wikipedia author changed the IPCC label critical to Shurly’s claim:
from “LAND USE REFLECTANCE and irrigation” in IPCC to “Irrigation and ALBEDO” – where the “albedo” Shurly pronounced as “additional cloud albedo produced by irrigation”. When I pointed out that “increased land use reflectance ” DOES NOT mean “additional cloud albedo” , Shurly stopped … wrapping himself in the authority of IPCC, and switched again, this time wrapping himself in the authority of … CERES.
A brief look at his latest (CERES) line of arguments suggests that he repeats … the same approach he did with the first source (Gavin’s 2010 paper): i.e. Shurly cherry-picks some data from his source, and then combines them with selected numbers from “GEB from Trenberth & Loeb”, the same GEB he DIDN’T understand, when he was using combining it with Gavin’ paper.
So there is no point for you, Tomas, asking Shurly how he came up with his precise-looking (2 decimal points!) numbers, because: garbage understanding of GEB in, garbage (=Shurly’s calculations) out.
And then was the point that would be valid EVEN IF the Shurly’s calculations were correct:
ms: ”@Douville Hervé says: Water remains a blind spot in climate change policy”
PiotrJul.30: “Well, that’s because, unlike GHGs, we can’t do much about water cycle:
– what can you do to increase evaporation over 71% of Earth covered by ocean?
– on the remaining 29%, the irrigation is already probably above its sustainable max – we are evaporating more water than is re-supplied – the balance being met by emptying the ground water aquifers that take 1000 yrs to refill (if refilling is even possible – given the frequent collapses of porosity in the aquifers that have their water pumped out).
In other words, without ability to alter the water cycle directly in any significant way –
he have to rely on the fact water cycle is a FEEDBACK, not the driver, of AGW:
we increase GHG concentration, and water cycle makes AGW worse; we decrease GHG conc. and water cycle makes the cooling larger.
Shurly’s “calculations” decouple the decrease in cloudiness
from AGW. i.e. from the Clausius-Clapeyron equation – that in the GHG-warmed air – comparable absolute humidity (AH) would produce LOWER relative humidity (RH), and therefore – lower cloudiness.
To sum it up – the only practical way to use water cycle to help us with GW, is NOT through some absurd schemes of directly altering global evaporation, because these are far too small to matter, but by reducing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, with water cycle making the GW MORE, not less, sensitive to what we do to GHGs.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813732
Dear Piotr,
Thank you very much for your comments.
1) You vs Hervé Douville / macias shurly / JCM
I see two basically different approaches to the role of global and regional water cycle and its importance for mankind:
I think that you emphasize that we influence the water cycle solely through non-condensing greenhouse gas levels, and that if we stabilize the radiative greenhouse effect on an acceptable level, everything should be OK. Do you think so, or am I wrong?
Contrary to this view, the above mentioned people express a concern that the mankind may have caused serious disruptions in regional water cycles (and, possibly, even in the global water cycle) by mechanisms that are independent from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and that these disruptions may not be fixed by greenhouse gas level stabilization.
Some of them suppose that these changes may have contributed even to the observed global warming (in other words, that human caused water cycle disruptions may have acted as true “forcings” of the global warming).
2) You and macias shurly
Although it appears that you do not like macias shurly and that he does not like you, I think that you and he in fact share the same view on the trend to lower cloudiness that may be derived from the CERES data. I think so because, in my opinion, macias linked this observation every time to a decrease in average RELATIVE humidity, exactly as you presently did in your penultimate paragraph.
I think that the decrease in average relative humidity may be a relevant cause for this effect indeed, however, James Hansen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474
ascribes the decrease in cloudiness (and Earth albedo) to another possible cause, namely to a decrease in anthropogenic sulfur dioxide emissions during the last decades. He particularly points in this respect to maritime transport emission regulations that are in force since half of the previous decade.
I think both reasonings may be plausible, therefore, I am quite curious if contributions of both possible causes (and possible synergy therebetween) will be clarified by further research soon.
3) Equivalence between global annual precipitation and mean latent heat flux in global energy balance (GEB) diagrams
Your “whack-a-mole” objection made me uncertain if we indeed clarified the issue. I do no way insist that you must read my contributions or reply thereto, however, for the sake of clarify, could you look on the following one
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813499
and confirm if we indeed share the same view (or a discrepancy between us still does persist in this aspect)?
4) Me vs macias shurly
In accordance with my point 2) above, I respectfully disagree that everything what macias shurly says is to be rejected as a garbage. I think that checking the facts might be more productive. When doing so, I arrived at a discrepancy between his assertion that there should be a decrease in latent heat flow (-0.86 W/m2) between the years 2000 and 2020, and the article
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/9/4/138
cited by MA Rodger in his reply
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/04/the-summary-for-policymakers-of-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change-sixth-assessment-reports-synthesis/#comment-810666
to my question regarding availability of data on global precipitation and regional distribution thereof.
According to this article, it appears that there is in fact some increasing trend that can be observed in total global precipitation data from the timespan 1979-2017. If we do agree to the equivalence according to point 3) above, and if there is no reason disproving the observations described in the cited article (or evaluation thereof), there must have been a certain increase in the latent heat flow instead of the decrease assumed by macias. This percepted discrepancy was the reason for my question addressed to macias, regarding the source of the values given in his GEB scheme.
5) Practical aspects
I do not disregard your doubts about feasibility of an active “evaporation management”. I fully agree that ideas in this direction should be scrutinized carefully and evaluated in as broad context as possible. I think the same should apply also for various decarbonisation schemes. A particularly interesting news article
https://www.dw.com/en/us-takes-12-billion-gamble-on-carbon-sucking-vacuums/a-66514147
was in this regard recently cited by Chuck Hughes
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/08/unforced-variations-aug-2023/#comment-813703
I am going to comment thereon later.
6) Question
I have not grasped the idea touched in your last paragraph. Could you explain in more detail what do you mean by “making the global warming more sensitive to what we do to GHGs”, and how we can exploit the water cycle therefor (or which role does the water cycle play therein)?
Greetings
Tomáš
Thomas Kalisz
I like to read your comments, but I often find it a little bit hard figuring out what you mean about things. In contrast Piotr is very clear and convincing.
“Contrary to this view, the above mentioned people express a concern that the mankind may have caused serious disruptions in regional water cycles (and, possibly, even in the global water cycle) by mechanisms that are independent from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and that these disruptions may not be fixed by greenhouse gas level stabilization.”
Yeah they do, but they are pretty vague on what they really mean. The main thing of significance I can think of is global deforestation. About half of the global deforestation was over the period 1600 – 1900, and temperatures didn’t increase over that period. In fact we had the little ice age so its hard to see much evidence that deforestation was a cause of warming over 1600 – 1900. At best it might have stopped more cooling. But as a result its hard to see why deforestation would be a large part of 20th century warming. Deforestation is obviously a factor in warming, but it just doesn’t look near the same scale as burning fossil fuels, and no precise physical and mathematical evidence has been provided that it is.
This is my understanding of the water cycle issue as a lay person, but I wasn’t born yesterday and I was very strong in science at school (and most other subjects): Evaporation absorbs heat energy and cools the surface but this is cancelled out by condensation releasing heat energy higher up. So increased evaporation has no net cooling effect on the atmosphere as a whole. Evaporation is a greenhouse gas so therefore the net effect of increasing evaporation is to warm the atmosphere as a whole so we have a net warming effect.
Now there is one caveat to this. Increased evaporation may also increase the prevalence of heat reflecting clouds, but nobody really knows by how much. Even if there was some cooling effect it looks like it would be very small but requiring massive resources. And it is really hard to see why it would cause a ‘net’ cooling effect for the atmosphere as a whole, because evaporation of the oceans has increased anyway, but it hasn’t stopped warming or disappearance of low level clouds. So I’m being asked to believe just a bit more evaporation would change all this and cause a net cooling effect, and it looks incredibly implausible.
Piotr have I got that right?
So I’m very sceptical of grandiose irrigation schemes by people like MS if the aim is a net cooling effect to the atmosphere as a whole.. I’m almost as sceptical if the aim is just a cooling effect at the surface because of all the many problems we have tried to explain to you guys,.. But smaller scale irrigation schemes than this would provide some local cooling and appear harmless enough.
Tomáš Kalisz, 15 AUG “ the above mentioned people express a concern that the mankind may have caused serious disruptions in regional water cycles (and, possibly, even in the global water cycle) by mechanisms that are independent from anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and that these disruptions may not be fixed by greenhouse gas level stabilization.”
Huh??? You are fighting with your strawman. Here – nobody claimed that reversing global warming would fix changes in the water cycle that were “independent” of the global warming. And nobody claimed that, because it would be illogical.
What I and others argued was that you can’t “fix” the global warming by modifying water cycle INSTEAD of reducing GHGs. You claimed so – and even calculated how much water you would evaporate to CANCEL the warming effect of GHGs. To which I and other people explained to you, again and again, that your calculations are off – you and your Shurly assumed that NO latent heat is reradiated back to Earth. More important, intervention on SUCH A SCALE is completely unrealistic – because the only meaningful way humans can affect the global climate by modifications of water cycle – is via global warming:
Water cycle is coupled with global temperature so – if we warm the Earth with GHGs, the resulting changes in the water cycle would amplify the warming; if we cool the Earth by reducing GHGs the resulting changes in water cycle would amplify the cooling.
What you proposed – cooling the Earth with methods OTHER than reducing GHGs, is like trying to turn the river with a stick – MUCH TOO LITTLE to have ANY NOTICEABLE effect.
On the other hand, by reversing the increase in GHGs we will reverse most(?) of the global temperature-related changes in the water cycle.
Of course this will NOT reverse the NON-temperature related local or regional changes – massive depletion of the groundwater reservoirs, drying out wetlands, increased loss of soil water by agriculture practices, destruction of soil via salination caused by irrigation in arid climates. but NOBODY promised that.
Nigel – “Piotr have I got that right?”
Mostly yes. I would not say though that “increased evaporation has no net cooling effect on the atmosphere as a whole” the latent heat moves heat in the atmosphere. The higher you can get the heat in the atmosphere, the bigger the portion of it could escape into space. That said, your implied conclusions of zero escape – is still closer to the truth than the opposite assumption by Tomas and Shurly that 100% of LH escapes the Earth atm. system.
Yes, the extra water vapour both warms (as a greenhouse gas) and cools (by increasing the shortwave albedo by the clouds) and the next outcome – positive or negative – is condition dependent – where the increase in humidity and clouds happens, how high are the clouds, are they made from liquid droplets or ice crystals, nut even it is the net cooling – it would not be as strong as considering only the cooling part would suggest.
And a good point: nigel: About half of the global deforestation was over the period 1600 – 1900, and temperatures didn’t increase over that period
and even then the effect of reduced evaporation would have to share the credit for whatever deforestation warming with the release of CO2 from deforestation into the air. So your point about limited potential of controlling AGW with increased evaporation, is well supported – again I see a bigger benefit in reforestation by the CO2 sequestration by the growing trees.
The non-reforestation scheme of enhancing water cycle – have much less if any of this “collateral benefit” of carbon sequestration. And as you imply they are unfeasible technically, economically and ecologically at the global scale – locally, where fresh water is available, there may be some local benefits.
Water cycle is coupled with global temperature so – if we warm the Earth with GHGs, the resulting changes in the water cycle would amplify the warming; if we cool the Earth by reducing GHGs the resulting changes in water cycle would amplify the cooling.
What you proposed – cooling the Earth with methods OTHER than reducing GHGs, is like trying to turn the river with a stick – MUCH TOO LITTLE to have ANY NOTICEABLE effect.
And as I said: “the only practical way to use water cycle to help us with GW, is NOT through some absurd schemes of directly altering global evaporation, because these are far too small to matter, but by reducing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, with water cycle amplifying the consequences of our actions on GHG conc. – if we cool the Earth with dropping GHGs – water cycle changes would make the cooling bigger, if we keep adding GHGs – the water cycle would amplify warming.
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813761
Dear nigelj,
Many thanks for your comments.
First of all, I think that macias shurly proposes, rather than irrigation schemes, measures for maintenance of natural evaporative land cooling by water retention (by limiting runoff).
My example of May 30
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/unforced-variations-may-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-811872
with Sahara evaporative cooling had to show that both human caused changes in water cycle intensity as well as artificial water cycle intensity management might be powerful enough to influence global mean temperature. I discussed it in a connection to solar energy exploitation, alternative technologies therefor, and possible sea water use therein. For all these reasons, I see also in this case describing this thought experiment as proposal of an “irrigation scheme” as potentially confusing.
As regards the historical development of terrestrial plant cover and human interference therewith, I agree that significant human caused deforestation may have occurred already in quite ancient eras, and that a link thereof to past climate changes may be quite unclear. I would like to note that there was not only deforestation but also significant reforestation in certain regions during 17th century, as suggest archaeological findings from Amazonia – see the literature cited in my post of July 11
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813045
It appears, however, that land deforestation between 1850 and 2000 was not negligible, too – according to Fig. 1 in
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1150191/full
the land area covered by forests decreased from about 30 % to about 20 % during this timespan.
Let me now shortly comment on your view
“Evaporation absorbs heat energy and cools the surface but this is cancelled out by condensation releasing heat energy higher up. So increased evaporation has no net cooling effect on the atmosphere as a whole. Evaporation is a greenhouse gas so therefore the net effect of increasing evaporation is to warm the atmosphere as a whole so we have a net warming effect.”
In my post of July 19
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813242 ,
I pointed to the circumstance that even the air over Sahara has a significant absolute humidity, and that a multiplication of the water cycle intensity in a such arid area does not necessarily need to be accompanied by a substantial absolute humidity increase.
Accordingly, the water cycle intensification does not necessarily need to be accompanied by any substantial increase in the greenhouse effect caused by water vapour.
Furthermore, you should take into account that in a steady state (provided that insolation and light absorption by Earth surface remain constant), Earth emission temperature (which is ca 255 K) is independent from the greenhouse gas concentration and non-radiative heat flows in the atmosphere.
Accordingly, what is commonly called “greenhouse effect” is not heating “of the atmosphere as a whole” but a difference between mean emission temperature of Earth surface and mean emission temperature of Earth observed from the space as a planet. In a steady state, concentration of greenhouse gases and non-radiative heat flows (that are mostly defined by latent heat flow which is equivalent to annual water evaporation / precipitation) determine solely the mean Earth surface emission temperature and the lapse rate.
Summary
I do not assert that human caused changes in hydrology alone caused the global warming observed during last decades.
I think, however, that it is absolutely legitimate to ask questions like
In which extent the observed warming is caused by rising concentration of non-condensing greenhouse gases? Can we identify any significant human-caused changes in other climate regulating parameters such as is the latent heat flow? If such parameters were stable during the last decades, could perhaps previous human activities, maybe even in a quite distant past, cause such undesirable changes of these parameters that made Earth climate more vulnerable to later changes in greenhouse gas concentration?
Greetings
Tom
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813762
Dear Piotr,
Many thanks to your kind feedback. It appears that we still differ in our views on the role of the latent heat flow in Earth mean surface emission temperature regulation. Please let me try to explain my view again and then ask you for the same from your side.
My view is that there is no discrepancy between the fact that a significant part of the heat absorbed in Earth atmosphere is emitted back to Earth surface, and the circumstance that thank to non-radiative heat transport (mostly in form of latent heat of water evaporation and condensation), Earth surface is significantly cooler than it would have been in case of solely radiative heat transport therefrom. You seem to think so as well, at least as I understood your post of July 29
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813454 .
As I already wrote in my reply of July 31
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813499 ,
I hope that we could resolve the remaining misunderstanding if we carefully compare our views on a practical example serving as a common benchmark.
Let us therefore look on the GEB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The-NASA-Earth%27s-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg
that I already mentioned in the above mentioned post of July 31, and compare our views practically on following two examples:
1) Let us assume that we artificially increased the latent heat flux from 86.4 W/m^2 to 87.4 W/m^2.
According to my understanding, in a newly established steady state S1, the average IR flow emitted by Earth surface would decrease from 398.2 W/m^2 to 397.2 W/m^2. The heat balance of Earth surface as well as the heat balance of the atmosphere remain unchanged, and so remain other energy flows in the GEB diagram. The average emission temperature of Earth surface computed from Stefan-Boltzmann law will decrease from T0 = 289.48 K to T1 = 289.30 K.
2) Let us assume that we artificially decreased the latent heat flux from 86.4 W/m^2 to 85.4 W/m^2.
According to my understanding, in a newly established steady state S2, the average IR flow emitted by Earth surface would increase from 398.2 W/m^2 to 399.2 W/m^2. The heat balance of Earth surface as well as the heat balance of the atmosphere remain unchanged, and so remain other energy flows in the GEB diagram. The average emission temperature of Earth surface computed from Stefan-Boltzmann law will increase from T0 = 289.48 K to T2 = 289.66 K.
Please note that (different from the ratio between the IR radiation flow escaping from the Earth to the space and the upwelling IR radiation emitted from Earth surface), the ratio between the IR radiation emitted from the atmosphere upwards and downwards remains constant in the new steady states S1 and S2, although the respective changes in mean surface emission temperature correspond to the entire latent heat flow change 1 W/m^2 and not only to a certain fraction thereof.
Please reconsider if there is indeed any discrepancy between the above presented view and your understanding to the GEB and/or to Earth surface temperature regulation by energy fluxes considered therein. If so (e.g., if you think that the contemplated artificial change in the latent heat flux shall be redistributed differently), be so kind and explain your view in detail.
Thank you in advance!
Greetings
Tomáš
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813777
Dear Piotr,
Many thanks for your reply to Nigel. I especially appreciate that you replied my question raised in point 6 of my reply
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813744
to your earlier post
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813732 .
Let me repeat your explanation first, and add a few comments.
Piotr:
I would not say though that “increased evaporation has no net cooling effect on the atmosphere as a whole” the latent heat moves heat in the atmosphere. The higher you can get the heat in the atmosphere, the bigger the portion of it could escape into space. That said, your implied conclusions of zero escape – is still closer to the truth than the opposite assumption by Tomas and Shurly that 100% of LH escapes the Earth atm. system.
Yes, the extra water vapour both warms (as a greenhouse gas) and cools (by increasing the shortwave albedo by the clouds) and the next outcome – positive or negative – is condition dependent – where the increase in humidity and clouds happens, how high are the clouds, are they made from liquid droplets or ice crystals, nut even it is the net cooling – it would not be as strong as considering only the cooling part would suggest.
Water cycle is coupled with global temperature so – if we warm the Earth with GHGs, the resulting changes in the water cycle would amplify the warming; if we cool the Earth by reducing GHGs the resulting changes in water cycle would amplify the cooling.
And as I said: “the only practical way to use water cycle to help us with GW, is NOT through some absurd schemes of directly altering global evaporation, because these are far too small to matter, but by reducing GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, with water cycle amplifying the consequences of our actions on GHG conc. – if we cool the Earth with dropping GHGs – water cycle changes would make the cooling bigger, if we keep adding GHGs – the water cycle would amplify warming.
TK:
1) Latent heat flow as regulation of Earth average surface temperature
In my recent reply
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813783
to your post
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813762 ,
I strived to review the previous discussion on this point and summarize my view. Therefore, only a small remark here. I never suggested or assumed that “all latent heat escapes in the space”, this is your interpretation of my view that is:
Although it may look paradoxical at a first glance, a change in average non-radiative heat flow from Earth surface should be equal to an opposite change in the upwelling infrared radiation from the surface – DESPITE the distribution of the energy absorbed in the atmosphere (to the outgoing infrared radiation and downwelling “backradiation”) works exactly as you repeatedly (and in my opinion correctly) note. Please look on my reasoning in the cited post and check it.
It appears, however, that we mutually agree that the latent heat flow plays a crucial role in present Earth climate at least in one point: Its present value about 80 W per square meter secures relatively comfortable mean Earth surface temperature about 15 °C, because in case of solely radiative heat transport from the surface, average Earth surface temperature would have been about 30 °C.
2) Positive (warming) feedback of water vapour to rising concentration of non-condensing GHG in Earth atmosphere, due to greenhouse effect of water vapour
I must admit that (although it is very likely that somebody already presented reference to theoretical models describing this feedback during the previous discussion about water vapour and water cycle role in Earth climate), I have not paid a due attention and cannot cite these references.
I have, however, a feeling that a contribution of enhanced water vapour greenhouse effect was either not mentioned at all in the discussion about factors contributing to the Earth energy imbalance (EEI) derived from satellite observations and its development during the last two decades, or was very small – although there perhaps is an evidence from satellite spectroscopic observations that average absolute humidity of Earth atmosphere increased during this time span, in accordance with models that predict such absolute humidity increase with increasing Earth mean surface temperature. Please correct me, if I am wrong.
3) Negative (cooling) feedback of rising water cycle intensity, due to higher cloudiness / increased Earth albedo
First of all, it appears that observations confirm a certain increase in global annual precipitation during the last two decades, what is indeed a measure of increasing water cycle intensity, in accordance with rising global mean surface temperature.
Nevertheless, I have a feeling that state-of-art models predict that although the average absolute humidity shall slightly rise with average Earth temperature, an opposite should apply to the relative humidity. If the cloudiness depends rather on the relative than on the absolute humidity (because water condensation to form clouds requires cooling the humid air below the respective dew point), one could expect rather an opposite effect of the global warming on the cloudiness and albedo than you suggest.
It appears that a DECREASE in cloudiness and a corresponding decrease in Earth albedo (thus practically enhancing the “greenhouse” global Earth warming caused directly by back-radiation enhancement due to higher GHG concentration) was indeed observed during the last two decades (macias’ references to CERES data). Nevertheless, there is another interpretation of these observations by James Hansen, who ascribes the lower Earth albedo to decreasing atmosphere pollution with sulfate aerosol.
4) Enhancement of the GHG effects by water cycle
In view of the doubts and uncertainties described above, I do not see your opinion about water cycle as an enhancing factor for effects caused by changing GHG level. Oppositely, I still see as well possible that the water cycle intensity plays rather a stabilizing role in Earth climate.
Greetings
Tomáš
P.S.
Track of the previous discussion is publicly accassible on my orgpage to this topics,
https://orgpad.com/s/7zfynb_y5o7
T. Kalisz: Aug 17: “<i?It appears that we still differ in our views on the role of the latent heat flow in Earth mean surface emission temperature regulation”
“Differ in our views” implies symmetry, that the two have a similar probability of being true. They don’t.
TK: “Earth surface is significantly cooler than it would have been in case of solely radiative heat transport therefrom”
You have proven no such thing: you presented NO NUMBERS to prove it – the only numbers you have shown were those that ASSUMED that NONE of latent heat is reradiated back to the surface.
Any this assumption is based on your inability to understand even a simple GEB diagram, as I have ALREADY explained in this thread (replace “Shurly” with “Tomas Kalisz”):
Piotr Aug14:: It was based on Shurly’s naive reading of GEB graphs – he sees an LH arrow, but doesn’t see a separate arrow drawn for the LH portion of the downwelling LW (longwave) arrow from ALL sources of heat in the atmosphere – and concludes that NONE of LH is reradiated to Earth.
TK: I hope that we could resolve the remaining misunderstanding if we carefully compare our views on a practical example serving as a common benchmark.
Since you REFUSED repeated attempt to explain to you such basic things as how a GEB works – what is here to resolve? That’s like :
-Tomas: The Moon is made of blue cheese
– Me: The Moon is made of rocky material.
– Tomas: Dear Piotr, I hope that we could resolve the remaining misunderstanding between you and me, if we only carefully compare our views on a practical example serving as a common benchmark.
Piotr, thanks for your response. I agree totally with your comments.
——————————-
Tomas Kaliz, I totally accept that at least half the deforestation was post 1850. Its still going on unfortunately.
“I pointed to the circumstance that even the air over Sahara has a significant absolute humidity, and that a multiplication of the water cycle intensity in a such arid area does not necessarily need to be accompanied by a substantial absolute humidity increase. Accordingly, the water cycle intensification does not necessarily need to be accompanied by any substantial increase in the greenhouse effect caused by water vapour.”
I struggle with your comment. It just doesnt sound right. Firstly the definition of absolute humidity is: “Absolute humidity (expressed as grams of water vapor per cubic meter volume of air) is a measure of the actual amount of water vapor (moisture) in the air, regardless of the air’s temperature.”
So why would a greater quantity of evaporation not increase absolute humidity? Where does the water vapour go if not into the atmosphere? And every bit of water vapour must cause a greenhouse effect even if its only in the atmosphere a short time before it rains out.
TK: “Earth surface is significantly cooler than it would have been in case of solely radiative heat transport therefrom”
P: You have proven no such thing: you presented NO NUMBERS to prove it – the only numbers you have shown were those that ASSUMED that NONE of latent heat is reradiated back to the surface.
BPL: Piotr, I hate to disagree with you because you almost always have all your ducks in a row, but I think you and TK may be talking past one another here. Latent heat does cool the surface at the expense of the atmosphere. The surface budget is:
Frad = Fsolar + Fgreen – Fconv
where the terms are, in order, flux density radiated by the surface, absorbed from sunlight, absorbed from atmospheric back-radiation, and lost by convection/conduction/latent heat. Some rough numbers off the top of my head are 376= 165 + 323 – 112. Clearly if Fconv is 0, the Earth would have to radiate 165 + 323 = 488 W/m^2 instead of 376 and would be much hotter. That’s why a radiative-convective column model of the climate system gives a lower surface temperature than a purely radiative model.
Of course the latent heat comes back as back-radiation, but that’s covered in the equation. With no convective transfer to the air, the same amount will have to be transferred by radiation, and Fgreen will stay the same. (In reality there are many complications and none of the numbers would stay exactly the same, but you see what I’m getting at.)
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813805
Dear Piotr,
Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, it has not convinced me that my doubts about your approach are unsubstantiated. Could you perhaps reply to my question and thus show clearly where I am mistaken?
To be honest, when I read your reply, I was not sure if you read my post to the end:
Let us therefore look on the GEB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The-NASA-Earth%27s-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg
that I already mentioned in the above mentioned post of July 31, and compare our views practically on following two examples:
1) Let us assume that we artificially increased the latent heat flux from 86.4 W/m^2 to 87.4 W/m^2.
According to my understanding, in a newly established steady state S1, the average IR flow emitted by Earth surface would decrease from 398.2 W/m^2 to 397.2 W/m^2. The heat balance of Earth surface as well as the heat balance of the atmosphere remain unchanged, and so remain other energy flows in the GEB diagram. The average emission temperature of Earth surface computed from Stefan-Boltzmann law will decrease from T0 = 289.48 K to T1 = 289.30 K.
2) Let us assume that we artificially decreased the latent heat flux from 86.4 W/m^2 to 85.4 W/m^2.
According to my understanding, in a newly established steady state S2, the average IR flow emitted by Earth surface would increase from 398.2 W/m^2 to 399.2 W/m^2. The heat balance of Earth surface as well as the heat balance of the atmosphere remain unchanged, and so remain other energy flows in the GEB diagram. The average emission temperature of Earth surface computed from Stefan-Boltzmann law will increase from T0 = 289.48 K to T2 = 289.66 K.
Please note that (different from the ratio between the IR radiation flow escaping from the Earth to the space and the upwelling IR radiation emitted from Earth surface), the ratio between the IR radiation emitted from the atmosphere upwards and downwards remains constant in the new steady states S1 and S2, although the respective changes in mean surface emission temperature correspond to the entire latent heat flow change 1 W/m^2 and not only to a certain fraction thereof.
Please reconsider if there is indeed any discrepancy between the above presented view and your understanding to the GEB and/or to Earth surface temperature regulation by energy fluxes considered therein. If so (e.g., if you think that the contemplated artificial change in the latent heat flux shall be redistributed differently), be so kind and explain your view in detail.
Thank you in advance!
Greetings
Tomáš
BPL Aug. 20 Piotr, I hate to disagree with you because you almost always have all your ducks in a row, but I think you and TK may be talking past one another here. Latent heat does cool the surface at the expense of the atmosphere.
Burton, I believe my ducks are still OK, thank you. I have never said that LH (latent heat) does not cool the surface at all – only that it does not cool it as much as TK thinks it does. Specifically, assuming that LH’s fate is comparable to that of all other sources of atm. heat => 2/3 of the LH removed from Earth’s surface would RETURN to that surface by reradiation from air toward the surface.
And no, I don’t think “ that’s covered in your equation, which covers the steady state:
Frad = Fsolar + Fgreen – Fconv
what TK proposed with his Sahara project, is to change it by increasing Fconv, but he didn’t correspondingly increase Fgreen. Which is equivalent to the assumption that NONE of the extra Fconv is reradiated back in form of Fgreen to the Earth surface. I said, it is wrong (see above) because:
Delta Fgreen is NOT =0, but more like = – 2/3 (Delta Fconv).
And if 2/3 of the EXTRA Fconv is returned back to surface via INCREASED Fgreen,
then all TK calculations are off by the factor of 3: his calculated net cooling is 3x too high, and conversely – his 13,000 km3 of extra evaporation in his Sahara scheme, in order to achieve TK’s promised cooling, would have to increase 3-fold, to ~40,000 km3, making it 3 x more harebrained than it already is.
And that’s before the warming effect of increasing the AH (absolute humidity) by all this evaporation over Sahara – where presently the low altitude air has RH (relative humidity) of 25%, thus room for 4 x more water vapour and room to increase the greenhouse effect of water vapour.
And with this extra humidity – the condensation into clouds and rain would happen at much lower altitude (you don’t have to go as high to cross 100% RH) so TK’s latent heat would be deposited at lower altitude and thus reradiated toward surface in higher than the assumed 2/3 ratio (the lower the altitude of the heat deposition the bigger % of it would be reemitted to, and absorbed by, Earth’s surface).
So methinks, my ducks are still like the N. Korean soldiers on the Beloved Leader Birthday parade.
Tomas Kalisz, Aug. 20: Dear Piotr, Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately, it has not convinced me that my doubts about your approach are unsubstantiated. Could you perhaps reply to my question and thus show clearly where I am mistaken?
You haven’t listened to my explanations MANY times before, why start now? ;-)
TK 1) Let us assume that we artificially increased the latent heat flux from 86.4 W/m^2 to 87.4 W/m^2
Here you go. Out of this extra 1W/m2 LH – at least 2/3 would be re-radiated back to, and absorbed by, the Earth surface. Thus the net heat removal is only 0.33 W/m2, NOT “1 W/m2”. And that’s neglecting the increase in relative humidity and the decrease in the altitude at which the latent heat is deposited, both of which warm the Earth (for more details see my reply to BPL).
Thus all your calculation are off by at least factor of 3. And your Sahara scheme instead of evaporating mere 13,000 km3 of water, would have to evaporate AT LEAST 40,000 km3 to get the promised cooling effect, MORE if we account for warming due to increasing humidity there from the current 25% to 100%, and the warming by lowering the condensation, and therefore reradiation, altitude.
TK: To be honest, when I read your reply, I was not sure if you read my post to the end
Since you failed to grasp the essentials in p.1, why should I waste my time reading and commenting on your subsequent points, if they build on the false premise from p.1?
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813806
Dear Nigel,
I indeed think that (at least under under certain circumstances), an intensified (or, oppositely, weakened) global water cycle does not necessarily need to be accompanied by any change in average global air humidity – although it sounds counter-intuitive.
Please note that global climate models predict a slight increase of average global air humidity with increasing temperature and that observations seem to confirm this relationship.
If we admit that an intensification (or weakening) of the water cycle can occur isothermally – e.g. if we imagine a precise adjustment of water supply for evaporation, to just compensate a changing power input to Earth surface by decrease or increase of water evaporation – then all what we change will be the pace of water vapour flow through the atmosphere; water vapour concentration should remain the same.
The average power input to the Earth surface indeed changes in time, recently e.g. due to the rising radiative greenhouse effect, therefore, I proposed to imagine a compensation of this power input increase for a certain timespan by increasing the global water cycle intensity. This idea was background of the thought experiment presented in my post
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/06/unforced-variations-jun-2023/#comment-812091 .
The result showed that the magnitude of the cooling effect might be indeed sufficient for achieving such global effect; I hope that the doubts in this respect were substantially resolved in the fierce discussion that followed.
There is, however, still a question if the average air humidity over Sahara is sufficiently high so that it indeed does not need to increase to enable the contemplated multiplication of the water cycle intensity in this area. I am looking for suggestions how it can be estimated more precisely in comparison with very rough estimation
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813242
(which suggested that a substantial increase may not be necessary).
Still another open question with respect to this thought experiment is the extent of an increase of the water vapour radiative greenhouse effect that would “cancel” part of the achieved surface cooling if a certain increase of mean absolute humidity in the “irrigated” area would have been in fact unavoidable for achieving the desired water cycle intensification in a such originally very dry region.
Greetings
Tom
BPL,
Much as I hate to agree with Piotr ;-), I think you may also be “talking past”. This is why I would like to begin with the simplest model.
From some of the standard (NASA) numbers, as I understand it, the GMST in a situation where water was constrained from evaporating would be a few degrees above 0C. That’s from their statement that WV contributes about half of the GHG effect.
So while Piotr does appear to enjoy playing whack-a-mole with these incoherent arguments about water vapor, and prolonging the issue with unnecessarily complicated calculations, his underlying thinking is correct.
If we remove the constraint on evaporation, WV acts as a GHG, increasing the energy in the climate system, resulting in an increase in GMST.
(WRT your equation, I would think that in my initial condition (no evaporation), there would still be convection, but without the LH component. Clearly, from the numbers, the BR, if there is WV, dominates the energy flow.)
Zebra, you should chill out a bit. I find the detailed comments and calculations from the likes of Piotr and BPL quite interesting. Although Im a lay person, I have always been interested in science and these detailed and maths based debates sometimes pushes me to think quite hard to make sense of it.
And I would not call these peoples calculations overly complex. They would be reasonably accessible to the general public. We are not talking stage 3 calculus.
The water cycle is multi faceted and complicated. A series of heat balance (?) equations is the only real way to describe the real world situation. Its not just a case of more water vapour equals more warming. Theres the issue of clouds and whether they are a positive or negative feedback on the processes. Theres convective processes and evaporative processes for example.
I do still always have my very specific suspicions of where the water cycle people are going wrong, but I struggle to put it on paper. It’s interesting that nine times out of ten Piotr or BPL, or sometimes you confirm my suspicions. This is valuable to me as it lets me know if Im thinking about it in the right way.
While its definitely possible to over complicate the situation, and many do on this website,, you are at risk of over simplifying the situation.
Refer the book Sapiens a Brief History of Humankind, by Noval Harari, particularly the chapter on the positive value of gossip. IMO this website comments section is partly sophisticated and gossip about the issues. Thats not a bad thing.
Nigelj
Shakespeare had intermediate clowneries in his tragedies. It seems to be the comedia del arte form.
There are scherzo- moovements also in the largo and grave- suites and symphonies.
All that is intelligent and highly professional composition. also in science.
Whereas the lack of such elements rather betrays industrialized dilettantism, ROBOTic behaviours, and artificial intelligence. “AI”
Umberto Eco wrote a great mideival criminal novel about the mystery of why Aristoteles Poetica 2 on the comedy is lost.
Sean Connery incarnated Roger Bacon, Sherlock Holmes and James Bond in person under the psevdonyme “Roger from Baskerville” in his film- role. in “the name of the rose”.
which is Connarys greatest performance to my opinion.
It culiminated in a higly learnt scolastic dispute between brother Roger and the secret backstage moderator / peer rewiewer of incoming manuscripts to be published or not, the blind editorial consultant, Who found that it is not educative litterature for the readers, because lautghter is sinful, quite ugly. and thus to be stopped among people.
Baskerville then asked whether God can laugh, which is ridiculous, but it is given logically in his allmitght.
A candle tilted over , The papers took fire, and the closed library of all the original manuscripts , burnt. SIC!
All good and poor men and women came from it alive, , all bad brothers perished in the fire and the Grand inqvisitor from the congregation of faith in Roma fell off the waggon during his flight and was stabbed on a great fork.
Rogers young novise assistant could later tell the story at an old age. .
Tomas Kalisz Aug.17 “ 6) Could you explain in more detail what do you mean by “making the global warming more sensitive to what we do to GHGs”
One of the climate change denier popular tropes say that climate is driven almost exclusively by water cycle, hence is insensitive to what we do or don’t, to the GHGs. Often the magical number of 98% dominance of water cycle appears – Linzden has been using it since 1991. The closest the RC could get to print source of the “98%” was a … letter to Wall Street Journal on 10/10/00, in which a denier, Prof. Robert H Essenhigh, specializing in mechanical engineering, brought his expertise to bear on climate issues:
“the water averages out as 97% of the thermal trapping, with a top limit of 99%, with carbon dioxide as the balance of 1 to 3%. In other words, the carbon dioxide is less than the ‘noise’ in the variations in the water.”
Since no paper using modern models of atmosphere was able to replicate anywhere close to these 97-99% and 1-3%, BPL concluded that the Good Professor must have done his class “calculations” using the knowledge of climate from … 1930s, i.e. “ concentrating on saturation at low levels and ignoring the fact that absorption also takes place in higher levels“.
And based on his confidence in findings in the field far outside of his professional expertise, the Good Professor lectured the humanity on the futility of any attempts to influence climate:
“[the warming effect of] the carbon dioxide is less than the ‘noise’ in the variations in the water [so] what is now needed is recognition of the futility of trying to control global warming by reduction of carbon dioxide (the Kyoto Protocol Objective) by fuel switching or carbon sequestration, to say nothing of the economic damage by pointless diversion of resources to those ends.”
In other words, Lindzen, Essenhigh, and other deniers, claim their 98% to 2% ratio as a proof that the climate is NOT sensitive at all to what we do to GHGs.
My point here is that to advance the “ we are not responsible for climate change and we can’t do anything about it” messaging, the denier’s overstate the role of water cycle ver the GHGs, and their lie is on several level:
level 1 lie: the 98:2 effect. Gavin proved it wrong, by calculated the role of water:CO2, not by the back-of-the envelope calculations, but by using actual climate model – first on RC,
then, after refinement, in a prime peer-review journal JGR 115, D20106 – Schmidt at al. 2010. In it, they calculated that in the present-day atmosphere the greenhouse effect (= reduction in the outgoing LW radiation at TOA) was, in W/m2
GHGs = 40
Water vapour= 53.7
Clouds = 22.4
I.e. instead denier’s “98:2”, we get 76.1:40 or instead of 49:1, LESS than 2: 1
level 2 lie: by concentrating only on the greenhouse warming, the deniers conveniently ignore the fact cooling effect of clouds via albedo of solar SW. This omission is countered by Schmidt et al. 2010 – their Table 3 showed the NET effect (LW warming – SW cooling), in W/m2:
GHGs = 34.8
Water vapour= 59.7
Clouds = – 25.5
so the NET effect is the warming by 34,2:34,8 – i.e. by 1:1. Quite a a difference from the deniers 49:1, isn’t it?
level 3 lie Since we can do very little to alter the water cycle AND if the effect is 49:1 – then any action is “futile” and “pointless”.
In reality, if the true ratio is, as in p.2: 1:1, we CAN alter the climate – since we can address the 50% of the net warming for which the GHGs are responsible.
level 4 lie But it gets even better – water in the atmosphere is positive feedback with temperature – warmer temperature means more evaporation, and in turn – more warming. So if we warm the Earth by increasing GHGs – water cycle will AMPLIFY the warming – the climate warms couple times more than expected from ONLY radiative forcing attributed to the increase in GHGs alone.
And it works in the opposite direction too – if we cool the atm. by reducing GHG emissions – the water cycle would cool it even further.
Hence the total cooling from GHG reductions is actually LARGER than the 1:1 ratio from point 2 would suggest.
So much for the Robert H Essenhigh’s:
“ is now needed is recognition of the futility of trying to control global warming by reduction of carbon dioxide (the Kyoto Protocol Objective), to say nothing of the economic damage by pointless diversion of resources to those ends ;-)
And that’s why, my dear Tomas, I have said that,
contrary to the deniers claims, the water cycle “makes the climate not less, but MORE, sensitive to what we do to GHGs”.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813846
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813833
Dear Piotr,
Thank you very much for your exhastive reply, it helped me to understand to your view better.
A small plea to you:
Could you amend your reply to Barton Paul with specific numbers indicating the respective changes for all particular energy flows in the GEB that I proposed as example?
I am still uncertain which value you expect e.g. for Frad and for further flows in the diagram if Delta Fconv = 1 W/m^2 is redistributed as you assume. In other words, I have not grasped yet how will the entire new balance look like, if calculated correctly according to your assumption.
Thank you in advance and greetings
Tomáš
Hr. Kalisz
This is what I also find by approaching the same from another side by other arguments.So you better should think it over.
I think rather in terms of autocatalytic processes and qvasi- stable, multi causal eqvilibria with Le Chateliers principle.
H2O occurs in 3 agregational states at earthly temperatures and represent first a strong positive, but then a strong negative feedback to summer warmth and sunshine.
Proof: Antonio Vivaldi il quattro stagione and Tempeste di mare. See also the raindrop prelude by Frederic Chopin. And Frühlingsrauschen by Chr. Sinding. All found on Youtube today.
Nephelai by Aristophanes, by the way.
My personal belief is that the negative feedback will take over at quite higher mean global temperatures such as 5-8 deg. and stabilize the situation. But that is way above what humanity has got biological and cultural experience for.
In that situation to fight our elementary methods of understanding and orientation is clearly politically sinful and militant, to my opinion.
I do not quite believe in James Hansens Venus Runaway perspective, but that will come in any case in about 2-4 billion years, as Elon Musk must also see to be ready with his Starship 1.
Tomas Kalisz: “Could you amend your reply to Barton Paul with specific numbers indicating the respective changes for all particular energy flows in the GEB. I am still uncertain which value you expect e.g. for Frad and for further flows in the diagram if Delta Fconv = 1 W/m^2 is redistributed as you assume
You don’t know how to multiply 1W/m2 by 2/3,
increase Fgreen by this product,
and enter this increased Fgreen into “Frad = Fsolar + Fgreen – Fconv”
all by yourself?
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813890
Dear Piotr,
Thank you for your kind reply.
First of all, let me apologize for an unpleasant omission that would complicate comparisons of our approaches to the global energy balance (GEB) using examples that I proposed on August 17 in my post
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813783 .
Specifically, I omitted the circumstance that the cited GEB diagram
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The-NASA-Earth%27s-Energy-Budget-Poster-Radiant-Energy-System-satellite-infrared-radiation-fluxes.jpg
comprises a flux assigned as “neat absorbed” and thus does represent a recent perturbed Earth climate system, wherein “neat absorbed” is another term for the Earth energy imbalance EEI and its value is 0.6 W/m^2.
The system on this diagram is thus out of the steady state, the simple equation for surface energy balance
Frad = Fsolar + Fgreen – Fconv
as proposed by Barton Paul in his comment of August 20
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813824
does not apply, and we can expect that the contemplated 1 W/m^2 decrease or increase in the latent heat flux LH would have primarily changed the EEI.
For the sake of simplicity, it seems much more practical to start with a balanced steady state system.
Let us therefore assume as a reference the above GEB, slightly corrected so that it is in balance, with all the respective energy fluxes in W/m^2 as follows:
incoming solar radiation SW = 340 W/m^2
total outgoing infrared radiation OLR = 240 W/m^2
total reflected solar radiation SWrefl = 100 W/m^2 =(7 W/m^2 reflected by clouds +23 W/m^2 reflected by surface)
solar absorbed by atmosphere SWatm = 77 W/m^2
solar absorbed by surface Fsolar = 163 W/m^2
IR emitted by surface Frad = 399 W/m^2
IR absorbed by atmosphere 399 W/m^2 (a simplification assuming that the “atmospheric window” is completely closed for longwave infrared radiation from the surface)
IR back radiation Fgreen = 341 W/m^2
non radiative heat flux from the surface Fconv = 105 W/m^2 = (18.5 W/m^2 sensible heat + 86.5 W/m^2 latent heat)
balance atmosphere:
absorbed by atmosphere SWatm + Frad + Fconv = (77 + 399 + 105) W/m^2 = 581 W/m^2
emitted by atmosphere ORL + Fgreen = (240 + 341) W/m^2 = 581 W/m^2
balance surface:
absorbed by surface Fsolar + Fgreen = (163 + 341) W/m^2 = 504 W/m^2
transported from the surface Frad + F conv = (399 + 105) W/m^2 = 504 W/m^2
I will now try to treat the energy fluxes as you recommend. As I am still quite unsure how should I apply your hints to my second example, I am going to focus on my first example now and wait for your feedback.
Let us thus start with the contemplated artificial increase of the original latent heat flux LH1 = 86.5 W/m^2 to new value LH2 = 87.5 W/m^2.
Let us then add 0.67 W/m^2 (two thirds of the contemplated 1 W/m^2 LH increase) to the back radiation, as you recommend. The back radiation Fgreen will thus increase from Fgreen1 = 341 W/m^2 to Fgreen2 = 341.67 W/m^2.
Now we enter the increased Fgreen and the increased LH in the equation for surface energy balance
Frad = Fsolar + Fgreen – Fconv
Assuming that the sensible heat flux SH = 18.5 W/m^2 remains unchanged and that the solar energy absorbed by the surface Fsolar = 163 W/m^2 also remains constant, we get
Frad2 = (163 + 341.67 – (87.5 + 18.5)) W/m^2 = 398.67 W/m^2
Thus, the Frad decreased from Frad1 = 399 W/m^2 to Frad2 = 398.67 W/m^2.
To become sure that we indeed achieved the sought new steady state, let us now check the thermal balance of the atmosphere.
Assuming that the additional 1 W/m^2 of the latent heat flux is redistributed between Fgreen and ORL in the ratio 2:1 as you recommend, the OLR should increase to OLR2 = 240.33 W/m^2. The radiation emitted by atmosphere will thus change to
Fgreen2 + OLR2 = (341.67 + 240.33) W/m^2 = 582 W/m^2
Taking into account that the Frad decreased to Frad2 = 398.67 W/m^2 and Fconv increased to Fconv2 = 106 W/m^2, the heat input into atmosphere changed to
SWatm + Frad2 + Fconv2 = (77 + 398.67 + 106) W/m^2 = 581 W/m^2 = 581.67 W/m^2.
Thus, it appears that we have in fact NOT obtained the sought new steady state, because there is suddenly an energy imbalance in the atmosphere.
It appears that we could easily correct this deficiency and restore the lost balance by cancelling the ORL increase. In this case, however, we will sacrifice the starting premise that the Fconv increment has to be distributed between the ORL and the Fgreen in the pre-set 1:2 ratio. This result looks somewhat surprising and strange – if we must finally sacrifice the assumption that was originally understood as crucial, why we shall still keep it for the initial calculation of the back radiation?
This is the inconsistency that I perceive in your approach from the very start, and still cannot find a clue that will remove this discrepancy. I will therefore highly appreciate if you now take over and clarify your view on your own. If you know the solution, please stop presenting it as obvious and reveal it.
Thank you in advance and greetings
Tomáš
Tomas Kalisz: Aug24: “For the sake of simplicity
You call several pages of your … circular calculations, based on the false assumption that no LH is reradiated back to the Earth – “simplicity”?
TK: [BPL’s equation] does not apply
Then why the hell you had plead:
TK: “A small plea to you: Could you amend your reply to Barton Paul with specific numbers”
And no – it still applies: in BPLs: “Frad = Fsolar + Fgreen – Fconv”
after your increasing Latent Heat by + 1W/m2, you have to also adjust Fgreen – based on the fate of all other energy sources delivered to the atm – 2/3 of them are reradiated back to Earth, we assume that same applies to LH:
Frad_new =Fsolar + (Fgreen +2/3 W/m2) – (Fconv + 1 W/m2) = Frad_old – 1/3 W/m2.
See? If we increased latent heat by 1W/m2 – the Frad from that decreases only by 1/3 W/m2.
So all your crazy schemes of increasing latent heat will see their effectiveness is REDUCED by 2/3, making these even more unfeasible. You can’t fix the Global Warming with increased irrigation, and pretending that you can – is one of the oldest tropes of climate change deniers:
“ if we can fix it with some other means than reducing GHGS, then we can burn as much fossil fuels as we want. And with that – the profits of the oil and gas multinationals and the stability of the autocratic regimes in Russia and Saudi Arabia and their ability to project power abroad, are defended!
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813918
Dear Piotr,
Thank you very much for your reply.
I think I fully understood your assumption that, actually, only 1/3 of the supposed 1 W/m^2 increase in the latent heat flux will cool Earth surface through a Frad decrease.
Unfortunately, it still appears that this assumption causes an imbalance of energy fluxes in atmosphere. As I have not found any clue yet how to correct this deficiency, I asked you repeatedly for an explanation how you will reestablish the steady state.
Could you reply to this specific question and explain this aspect, too?
Thank you in advance and greetings
Tom
Tomas Kalisz Aug 26: Unfortunately, it still appears that this assumption causes an imbalance of energy fluxes in atmosphere.
It was you who were talking about INCREASING latent heat by 1W/m2 – which by definition is a departure from the steady state: in BPL equation:
Frad = Fsolar + Fgreen – Fconv
you increased Fconv by 1/W/m2, I have shown you that this would have increased Fgreen by 2/3 W/m2, therefore your Frad has to drop by 1/3W/m2. It does it by a tiny cooling – by a tiny fraction of 1C. Ta-daam – steady state restored.
.
Of course, you won’t see this tiny cooling, because it would be masked by larger warming due to continuously increased conc. of GHGs. And as previously, we can’t do much about water cycle, we can reduce GHGs.
TK As I have not found any clue yet how to correct this deficiency,
If you can’t STILL understand the above, I can’t help you. Find a course or a website explaining how an energy budget works.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813965
Dear Piotr,
Thank you for your reply to my post.
I am sorry that my question regarding the balance in atmospheric heat fluxes in your scheme is not good enough to deserve your reply.
I am afraid that it may be difficult to find a reply in textbooks, too, because I am not aware of a teaching like yours.
Is perhaps someone else among readers of this website who will be so kind and explains me instead of Piotr where is the mistake in my calculations suggesting the imbalance in atmospheric fluxes resulting from his assumption that only part of non-radiative heat fluxes has to be subtracted from the upwelling surface radiation?
I would be really happy if we could close this topics.
Many thanks in advance!
Best regards
Tomáš
Dear Dr. Benestad,
Thank you very much for your article.
It seems to touch the same topics as several questions I asked several times in Unforced Variations (and have not obtained a reliable answer yet):
1) Is it possible to find any temporal trend in absolute water cycle intensity (annual sum of precipitation over the entire Earth surface)? If so, is the trend in last decades increasing or decreasing?
2) Is it possible to find any temporal trend in precipitation partitioning between land and ocean? There are claims that “continents are drying”, in other words, that evaporation and runoff exceeded precipitation over land during last decades. Can it be proven based on the available data? Or, even though no general trend can be seen, are there perhaps clear trends in this respect on some continents or in specific regions?
3) Can we infer from increasing localization of precipitations that cloud cover may become more localized as well? If so, can we infer thereform also a commensurate decrease in Earth albedo, or is it a too bold assumption that cannot find any support in available data yet?
4) Should there be some clear temporal trends in precipitation over land (or for specific continents / regions), can we find any correlation thereof with changes in vegetation cover and/or with human interference with water cycle such as irrigation?
Thank you in advance for your comments.
Best regards
TK
Kalisz
I would gladly answer to theese quite good questions but it will get too long.
I look forward to Rasmus Benestads answers indeed
I will only say here that the art of science and research is often to state the questions and riddles on solvable form else disqualify and discard the problems. When you run tight in the problems it is often because this is not done.
. We should know that from other praxis..
An amendment to questions raised in
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813306
I would like to add that my questions primarily pertained to existence / availability of relevant observational data.
Such data might enable a comparison with model predictions presented in the article of Dr. Benestad.
It appears that except in a limited area of Europe (citation 16 of the original article,
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.7269 ),
no such comparison of ERA5 results with data reflecting the real world has been made yet.
Hi. Regarding (1) and trend in the hydrological cycle, one measure may be the spatial aggregate of the standard deviations in vertical velocity, as presented in https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1732-y. The increase in the estimated statistics over the column of air – albeit from ERAINT – suggested at least an increase in the atmospheric overturning.
Dear Rasmus,
Thank you very much for the reference.
It appears that the data the cited article refers to, namely ERAINT, is a kind of simulation rather as real data from observations, or am i wrong?
What I asked for is comparison of the results derived from such models with observations.
MA Rodger pointed in his reply
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/04/the-summary-for-policymakers-of-the-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change-sixth-assessment-reports-synthesis/#comment-810666
to my question regarding availability of data on global precipitation and regional distribution thereof that such data are indeed collected and publicly available:
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4433/9/4/138.
Could you perhaps amend your article with an additional comparison of your model with this data?
Best regards
TK
with respect to #3 I’ve discovered it’s mentioned in Benestad 2018
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab375
The odd behavior is “decrease in the precipitation area”. A very interesting piece.
It has been mentioned on this very website before my time: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2018/05/climate-indicators/
I’m surprised regular commenters have not mentioned it. It’s a useful way to show what is happening.
It’s discussed without controversy that the partitioning of vertical flow of energy is about 33% moist-convection. This is equal to the power of latent flux depicted in any energy diagram.
This quantity is a feedback “where reduced energy transfer associated with increased opacity is compensated by tropospheric overturning activity.” Benestad 2016.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00704-016-1732-y
Evidently, the compensating feedback must have limits.
However, model expectation appears to show an increase of “precipitation area” in the forecast period, as indicated in Benestad 2018 Figure 4.
https://cfn-live-content-bucket-iop-org.s3.amazonaws.com/journals/1748-9326/13/4/044022/revision2/erlaab375f4_hr.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAYDKQL6LTV7YY2HIK&Expires=1692623451&Signature=FAxfXgi1f4pwsvbPnnaDTB%2FWNao%3D
No such phenomenon is observed.
As far as I can tell the discrepancy remains unexplained. Benestad 2018 mentions “The daily precipitation area AP has been little discussed in the literature despite its importance.”
It is not so much of a stretch to consider that it is humanity itself which is reducing the freedom of the hydrological response.
Thanks for your comments and your questions. I’d like to follow up from mu previous response…
(1) One indicator of the temporal trend in absolute water cycle intensity can be a measure of atmospheric overturning, for instance taking the standard deviation of the product of the density and vertical aggregated over each vertical level (a 2D plane, but used as an ordinary random sample), as suggested in https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-016-1732-y. You can also gauge it through the total rate of water falling on Earth’s surface (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000029) or a combination of both.
(2) It’s fairly straight-forward to mask land or oceans before estimating the statistics with global datasets such as ERA5 (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aab375). One question is whether this data gives a description that is close enough to the real atmospheric states (it’s the best information we have).
(3) We can estimate cloud structures from satellite observations, and there have been some attempts in connection to galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and albedo. There have also been some attempts to analyse the albedo, for instance through “Earthshine”.
(4) There is a discussion about general trends in precipitation on https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/02/future-rainfall-over-sahel-and-sahara/, and it is expected to vary geographically.
Dear Dr. Benestad,
Thank you very much for your explanations, especially for correcting my confusion with respect to ERA5. I misunderstood the statement
“The dataset combines a weather model with observational data”
provided on the website
https://climate.copernicus.eu/new-dataset-era5-provides-free-and-detailed-information-understanding-global-climate,
in the sense that the observational data served for “parametrization” of a certain climate model (misreading “climate” instead of “weather” is, of course, my fault).
Therefore, many thanks again for clarification.
Just to be sure that I understand the ERA5 correctly now:
Does the weather model basically help to “homogenize” the coverage of the entire Earth surface and of the entire timespan, by filing the gaps (areas / times wherein real observational data coverage is scarce or missing) by data derived by extrapolation from the neighbourhood?
Best regards
TK
Nice analysis, and interesting visuals. I’m trying to understand how the y-axis in the second figure can be more than 100%. Maybe a glitch in scaling there, or maybe just something I don’t understand about what is being plotted. Thanks for any clarification.
My take: Think of percent positive change in specific surface area., although the graph label of “Change” seems confusing. For example, if an original area of 1000 sq mi ,which received a certain amount of average rainfall , now measures over an area of 1800 sq mi, then that is 80% increase, or 180% of original area
.The graph indicates this change as 180%, which implies that 100% is inaccurately indicated as “Change” without the explicit notification that 100% is not change, but rather the given historic norm.
I don’t know if this will be of any interest to you, since the venue is not peer-reviewed (I was suckered into submitting to a predatory journal), but there’s some numerical data in it. The fractions I deduced are not perfectly accurate because I failed to account for the decrease in size of the grid squares with increasing latitude.
http://www.ajournal.co.uk/pdfs/BSvolume13(1)/BSVol.13%20(1)%20Article%202.pdf
“””These global hydro-climatological indicators suggest more frequent daily heavy rainfall”””
This suggestion is unclear from my pov. Is it the frequency or intensity of events which is increasing? Could it be a decreasing frequency and increasing intensity?
It is reasonable that logging a decreasing frequency of precipitation at any particular land station to be accompanied by logging relatively more intense (infrequent) events.
Once daily cleansing rains cease, expect infrequent erosive damaging deluges. Simply, the atmosphere is flushed out less often.
Instead of many small buckets coming down, few large buckets are dumped on a particular spot. Catchments absorb little of such infrequent deluges, and desertification is intensified.
Expect also higher average atmospheric opacity (especially in the evening), and higher average surface radiating temperature. Perhaps also an intensification of continental pressure ridges.
Is there such a thing as so-called climatological observations of globally averaged IDF curves? I am only aware of the intensity-duration-frequency computed at individual gauges for local storm water managers.
Thank you
JCM
Do not blame it on Benestad or demand it from Benestad, who is doing his very best. I know him and I know them. Become an amateur meteorologist and an amateur scientist yourself, not only a consumer. and an amateur politician.
We had it yesterday, not just kits and dogs as usual but bitties and barrels and really long frogs. The cellar pumps had way to low capacity we could wade in water, but I am rather to blame.
Benestad and the meteorologs have said it years ago: W W & W wetter warmer and wilder! 3 times W. That is the main formula from the state department on environment to be taken serious. And people will not believe it
So what shall they do?
Our cellar refrigerator has drowned That may be expensive. But I am partly to blame. I was asleep as my wife woke me up and warned me. I denied and said “No, this is all in order” and then it happened.
The meteorologists have done their very best and we must do the rest of it. Not ask them and blame them as if they had the blame. We must check up and see the weather also for ourselves.
Benestad & al were exhibiting their craft at the University festival. They had a slightly boiling cylindric glass of water over a gas flame and a round flask of water with a piece of ice in it 3 handwidths above, it was vapouring up, and dripping steadily down again from the outside of that flask. “Drip- drip- drip…”
“…So , is that how you make the rain?” I asked.
“….Yes! ”
If only that could be understood here.
“is that how you make the rain?””
Yes so simple conceptually to demonstrate condensation, but a phenomenon much more interesting in real atmosphere.
In reviewing my logbook and comparing also to local regional engineering IDF curves, the general trend in recent decades is a decreasing intensity of high frequency events and increasing intensity of low frequency events.
Appearing only in my logbook is that at the historically expected extreme most frequent events have practically no intensity whatsoever today.
Dividing further into duration, it is the short duration low frequency events which exhibit the increasing intensity, while longer duration low frequency events are unchanged.
It is verbose to discuss such matters here, I know.
But, these offer clues to local atmospheric phenomena for my sites of interest. I have not undertaken globally averaging of such observables, and I’m not certain what such a figure would mean.
For the rainmaking clouds the equilibrium between condensate v vapor content is dependent on temperature via the saturation vapor pressure curve.
I wonder if it is measured i.e. the relative abundance of condensate in a given cloud. It is the supersaturation which forces the equilibrium condensate i.e. saturated vapor content + residual condensate. In other words, a total abundance of water greater than saturation vapor pressure in cloud.
The difficulty is to consider that the average water content of atmosphere is less than saturation. Parcels with total water > saturation can only occupy a small part of atmosphere.
To form such areas the atmosphere must stream and mix into relatively high humidity zones at the expense of inducing quite large dry regions also. Somehow a steady state cloud fraction is achieved in dynamic motions which must also respect “maximum” atmospheric transport. A modeling nightmare?
Constraints must be imposed: average cloud fraction must relate then to relative humidity and further still to evaporative-fraction. These are measurable constraints along with albedo and LW opaque mask.
My logging of increasing low frequency intensity precip along with decreasing high frequency intensity is suggestive of more concentrated streams of H20 in atmosphere. It is perhaps necessary in order to conserve physical properties such as momentum under increasing constraint.
JCM
I think you forgot a little detail, Necessary ice on the top. Else no rain after a while.
thank you for this important addition. The terrestrial properties impact both surface hydrology (ET) and the abundance of suspended ice nucleating catalyst/inhibitor agents in atmosphere (condensation and coalescence). Together these impose constraint on the latent flux.
@ JSM
I have tried to tell people that, according to longtime climate history that includes worldwide fossile evidence from holocene and pliocene,……
…… a more rainy globe will be a quite much warmer globe also, that is showing huge lignite and kaolin sediments from a typical rainforest situation at high latitudes.
and the opposite, a clill globe with extreemly low CO2 levels namely ice- ages, is showing huge loess sediments namely desert and frequent very large and frequent dustbowls worldwide in subglacial terrains at high latitudes.
It alltogether speaks against all theese speculations of mankind having disrupted the
global waterscycle thus all that global warming, and must repair that by huge artificial water management rather than by atmosphaeric CO2- management.
Todays situation of desertification and aridifrication, that really is not worldwide and global but rather regional because it obviously rains and floods more and more elsewhere at the same time, seems more ” logical” if you can interprete it as a consequense of extreemly rapid global warming. where theese things are a bit out of balance. Sea temperature and rain is lagging behind in time because it warms up so fast.
It resembles the annual dry periods in the monsune situations worldwide because then dry land is warming up faster than the oceans. You see the same even quite locally in the timescale of day and night.
Then you neede not make new discoveries and make a new science about it and invent the wheel again against it. That will only be qvasi and parascience.
But in order to understand this, you must become a holist first and integrate the full wholeness, namely volume and space and mass also, and the whole atmosphere and understand the nature of water in all its forms first…
…….You should no more, not just look at and scratch in the the surfaces for answers, like those flat earthers, desert walkers, and blind believers in their scriptures on their way in the deserts out for paradice with waving palms and fountains of cool, holy water and half naked beach bunnies way out there in your immaginations of paradice…
Alltogether, you must see time in a larger, more universal autentic length over several more generations, than you are religiously, politically, and morally brought up to.
Then you may get it perhaps, how it works and is put together also today and at any time, thus how to behave cunningly and morally..
still you do not get it doctor.
If you can heat at the bottoms and cool on the top and avoid isolation in between that,…..
then you will have maximum latent heat flux.
And latent chill flux also if H2O is involved. On how tom chill the world, Not from the bottom but from the top and with H2O involved..
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813773
Dear Carbomontanus,
Thank you for your comments again.
For me, the question if (and if so, in which direction) human activities changed the global climate already in a distant past remains open, because it becomes more and more apparent in our discussion that it is difficult to collect reliable data proving such hypothesis.
There are, however, strong hints that at least on a regional level, human activities indeed may have switched the hydrology regime already in ancient era. I think that archaeological findings bring an evidence that forest logging indeed contributed to irreversible deforestation accompanied with a switch to drier climate in ancient Mediterranean, not oppositely.
Taking into account that JCM does propose rather AMENDING than REPLACING efforts for greenhouse gas emission curbing with measures for water cycle conservation and/or restoration in areas endangered by desertification, I would say that his view can be seen as quite holistic, don´t you think?
Greetings
Tomáš
I have heard this argument.
It’s not so straightforward to relate glacial maximum parameters and that of modern-day. A linear extrapolation only works to about 3C cooler in concept.
http://eisenman.ucsd.edu/papers/Eisenman-Armour-submitted-2023.pdf
However the subject is far outside my area of interest. My interests are in practical real climates, including factors of observed hydrological and temperature extremes. This page, however, insists on a hypothetical discussion of a globally averaged temperature situation.
Surely for an unperturbed system the natural greenhouse effect, latent flux, temperature, and cloud fraction settle on necessary compensating influence in a balanced proportion. A situation in maximum tension, operating in dynamic patterns of atmospheric flows under strict constraint. The steady radiation regime described by planetary albedo, solar irradiance, and associated OLR.
The rule of thumb natural global configuration:
warm and wet
cold and dry
At an extreme unnatural global configuration:
warm and dry
cold and wet!
I have mentioned frequently the temperature dependence of surface partitioning, and its operation at constrained maximum latent flux.
For discussion, consider a constraint 10%. Such constraint necessarily propagates across also to the greenhouse, cloud fraction, and temperature configuration.
I do not dispute that a temperature increase must coincide also with more moisture, albeit constrained.
The argument is that unnatural (increased) constraint on latent flux coincides also with increased temperature. It’s not a contradiction.
A temperature v latent flux partitioning with increasing disparity compared to an unlimited case.
Such a situation appears to manifest in a reduction of cloud fraction.
It is observed the increasing temperature and decreasing “wet-days” for the majority. It is observed even at my sites of interest. Existing natural deserts exhibit this phenomenon also.
Increasing latent flux constraint –> diminishing cloud fraction –> diminishing “wet-days” –> increasing temperature –> increasing rainfall intensity.
Natural freedom in surface partitioning relates directly to a natural equilibrium configuration.
Unnaturally diminished freedom in surface partitioning relates to an unnatural climate configuration.
The magnitude may be large or small – but it surely exists.
Increasing latent flux constraint is not suggestive of an absolute reduction in latent flux as some are suggesting. That is an error in concept. Prior to dismissal one must wrap his head around dynamic freedom and constraint.
@ Thomas Kalisz and to JCM
In relation to agriculture and soil science, I once borrowed and red Justus von Liebigs biography from the library of chemistery. It has later become the core of my learnings of it.
Liebig did comment on : “the thistle deserts” of todays mediterranean ackers and soils. with quite other explainations than your broken hydrological cycles.
Namely agricultural imperial industries and chemical industries in those days. The crops with soil nutrician mineral resources being consequently harvested and driven to town for sales. “Italias soil has run out thrugh Romas sewages , and Germanys soils are obviously on its way to become the same, poor, arid grey deserts..”
with no water cycles broken.
Urban culture and architecture with intense burning of lime , stucca, tiles and bricks, glass, copper, bronse, and irons. By firewood. Only on better enlighted locations, the ashes at least were re- cycled, mixed up with organic waste and manure.
They hardly had coal, and burning of it was partly forbidden due to ugly smoke.
And in addition acid rain from intense burning of sulphur sulphides and sulphates on large imperial scale.
No water cycle broken by humans. So that dammaged watercycle by humans seems rather to be surrealistic, qvasi and anti- – scientific propaganda rumors, not even aligned with Robert Boyles, Lavoisiers, Gay Lussacs, and J. von Liebigs faculty…
If you rather accept and set on and avoid fighting the permanence of matter, permanence of energy, and permanence of heat, then your very political budget understanding eases dramatically, and you will not have to “hide the decline…”, and ridicule Michael Mann for that,
You will not have to hide the sunsets, hide the winters, hide the autumns, hide the chills, the rains, the icy hails, and the snow that is negative latent heat flux in opposite direction to your thoughts .
With more realistic, integrated, clean and holistic thoughts you only need to conscider what shines on to the ground and what radiates out into high vacuum in immaterial form. Simply because the earth is rotating in vacuum.
And by all that Nephelai and water distilling off and falling down aqgain, allways kieep in mind that matter is not dia- lectic!
Matter is massive molecular and electromagnetic. Nothing of that and no cycle of it is broken because that is not in human warrant. But your learnings and mind may be broken having lifted off and mooved away from the faculty of science.
When will you fall down again? And into what?
Because, all that lifts off has to fall down again. (Aristoteles)
But, what is not so sure, is where you will fall down again
.
Thus think of where rather not to fall down, For instance into a quite much hotter place with a certain man and owner of you in the high armchair grinzing at you because that is where you did aspire and submit in time..
You can stear away from that especially deep fall by rather having taken to science in time. Because, afterwards it will be too late.
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813875
Dear Carbomontanus,
I do not know whether or not the water cycle on global or local scale has been broken by human activities.
I just feel that this question might be of a quite high practical importance, and would therefore prefer a reply based on the respective observations.
This is why I asked my questions if the available data enable such evaluation, and if so, how it does look like.
Greetings
Tomáš
@Tomas
If there remains any doubt about the widespread degradation of landscapes it becomes incumbent to step away from the desk and meet with rural practitioners to recalibrate perspective. Professional academics may not be communicating such matters adequately.
Here, there, or anywhere – reality will be demonstrated on the land by having participants use their senses to describe soil properties. I assure you, it beats spaceborne optical remote sensing by a wide margin for proof of concept. Participants will also be shown the wide array of man-made drainage structures.
Alternatively, one can attempt to use their hands to scrape below the surface of the campus quad greenspace. Checking there is convenient way to start because the urban transit lines tend to stop short of the boondocks. Additionally, tours of the urban stormwater system may be available.
I understand a preference for multinational governance frameworks as a reliable information source, so there is no need to take my word for it.
The UNFCCD
https://www.unccd.int/convention/overview
where it’s reported that 169 of the 196 country parties are impacted by desertification, land degradation, and drought.
It is the sole legally biding international agreement linking environment, development and the promotion of healthy soils. UNFCCD subscribes to the same integrated Shared Socioeconomic Pathways framework as other UN initiatives. The interrelated issues of environment, soils, hydrologies, and climates cannot be denied.
Hundreds of citations are available in their summary
https://www.unccd.int/resources/global-land-outlook/global-land-outlook-2nd-edition?
Of particular interest to me was Strassburg 2020
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2784-9?
It reminds me that my wife and I vacationed this summer in Innsbruck, Munich, and Salzburg — I found myself repeatedly and erroneously referring to Salzburg as Strasbourg, and she called me out each time… it got worse after visits to the beer halls!
The showpiece map in Strassburg is depicted on page 17 where all coloured areas represent degraded lands. High northern rocky locales do not exhibit soil degradation for obvious reasons. Careful to not become influenced by the colouring scheme. https://www.unccd.int/sites/default/files/2022-04/UNCCD_GLO2_low-res_2.pdf
does anyone recall desertification day?
https://www.un.org/en/observances/desertification-day/background
“The issue of desertification is not new — it played a significant role in human history, contributing to the collapse of several large empires, and the displacement of local populations. But today, the pace of land degradation is estimated at 30 to 35 times the historical rate.”
Is it of no consequence to our concept of average weather observables today? How can it possibly be so?
Incidentally, my colleague has reported that local soil restoration demonstration site has recently been defunded in favor of urban political priorities. The land will be sold the highest bidder.
While climates, biodiversity, and desertification are presented in parallel, the reciprocal nature of these processes is widely cited in the literature.
“Desertification, along with climate change and the loss of biodiversity, were identified as the greatest challenges to sustainable development during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.”
It should not be controversial that latent heating moderates the temperature drop with height and cloud formation, thus representing a negative feedback because it enables the planet to send radiation more effectively to space. Any perturbation which limits this process necessarily increases climate sensitivity compared to a counter-factual scenario.
A good discussion of direct observation of Earth’s spectral long-wave feedback parameter is found in Roemer et al 2023. There the importance of the Relative Humidity is emphasized.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-023-01175-6#Tab1
However, it is rather the short-wave impact which is of equal interest in the observational record, discussed in Raghuraman 2023 https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/36/12/JCLI-D-22-0555.1.xml
UNEP notes:
“As of today, almost a quarter of the world’s total land area has been degraded. This creates enormous problems not only for the billions of people who directly depend on agriculture, but it has far-reaching impacts affecting every single person on this planet today…If current trends continue, 95% of the Earth’s land areas could become degraded within the next 30 years.”
In the climate system, water is involved in several critical energy exchange processes, including latent heat release, the greenhouse effect, and the cloud radiative effect, which are all interconnected and play critical roles in regulating Earth’s climate system. In contemplating latent flux, the extent and duration of vaporization is only half the equation – i.e. there is no latent flux until condensation, at which point latent heating is matched by radiative cooling. Such processes are non-local in global circulation, i.e. there is a spatial separation of vaporization and condensation, allowing for nature’s optimal configuration of atmospheric energy balance.
I hope you find some of the resources and perspectives to be of value.
Kalisz
In all respect and so on….
I disqualify that broken hydrocycle for other reasons than what you are asking me to declare, and I am telling you the reasons for why I can disqualify it.
There are quite many such situations in life and in science, where you better see and reallize what it is physically and sensually about, how it is put together, how it works, thus how better to approach it and to understand it….. b3efore you start minutely measuring and mapping it further in irrelevant, misconsceived details, and make “statistics” on that.
Because your learnings and opinions about the same is wrong, , inadequate, not just in details but in the basics. Thus to be radically corrected. With no further “statistics” and explainations or “documentations”.. to only help your wrong understanding of it……
……….. that has been fooled and gone off track quite early. . And will just fool you and other innocent people further.
And to all and everyone:
I may have to brush up your grammars here, that may be confused in arbitrary, unedeucated provincial, vulgar english.
The 2 verbs to break and to brake are 2 very different technical operations, but spoken bluntly the same way. Wherefore children, and children in adult corpses may misconsceive and confuse it.
Todays waterscykles are not broken. They are also not braked. Quite on the contrary, they are speeded up to higher latent heat fluxes by catalytic action or stimulation from CO2 and other greenhouse gases and by war against the ” weeds” mosses and shrubs and “bugs” worldwide. thus to be damped and slowed down or “breaked” if possible.
Litt: German Bremsen different from Brechen. Danish Bremse or dempe different from brekke. or bryte.
If you are “broke” then you are gebrochen not just a bit gebremst.
Thus you see, denialism and Surrealism is able to teach us to hurry up the watercycle telling us that it is broken, when it is running much too fast allready and with too fast latent heat flushes also, , due to a global catalytic greenthouse gas action.
Thanks for comment. Both the frequency and the mean precipitation intensity may change independently of each other, and the mean precipitation is the product of the two (e.g. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab2bb2).
this is very smart.
Surely a trend towards rainfall excess if mean precipitation falls on an increasingly limited number of days.
Each catchment has its limits; a critical threshold when rainfall concentration is too great to absorb.
The threshold of “excess” depends on catchment characteristics.
A concreted catchment immediately initiates infiltration excess discharges.
Desertification –> increasing infiltration excess –> fewer wet days –> increasing mean rainfall intensity –> desertification … and so on until a new equilibrium.
No JCM
You are not very smart.
The world is greening today and the mean rainfall is increasing. Only locally, there is an aridification and desertification connected to this, that is not widening out but greening on its edges,… and more and more fresh and dirtwater rain and flood cathastrophies elsewhere. Alltogether a global syndrom of especially fast global warming.
The situation will change to rather Pliocene warm rainforests worldwide if or when it curves out and settles to balance again.
Moral:
There is no reason to argue for more draining of freswater from Lake Mead and the Colorado river and spraying around with that on the ground in Utah and Las Vegas, Hollywood and Southern California, to cause more chilling “evapotranspiration” there at least,… in order to resore the water cycle worldwide that is broken by humans, ….and as a positive byproduct have more green english lawns and cool swimming pools with blue water and waving palms in Hollywood and Las Vegas. where the customers have settled……….
…. so that you also can deny and rule out CO2 AGW and save big oil and even big coal …. the progressive scientific way, hum num, smile smile..!
to “””so that you can deny and rule out”””
I know this type of fixation is the essence which underpins the reactions..
However, there is no dichotomy between disturbed hydrologies and common AGW at any scale of interest. I suspect our values are aligned – does that help to feel more relaxed? The ease with which harmful rhetoric flows on these threads is revealing of a deep discomfort which should be pitied.
and please do not drain the lakes and rivers!
Benestad
You mention “Low hanging fruits” in the climate, of things that rather obviously ought to be done now.
I come to think of that when you map things and map the earth and draw graphs and maps, tradition says that you must also walk the terrain with “rubber boots” to see whether your method and theory is fully autentic or maybe you overlook and loose something along with your brand new and dramatically faster and more efficient method.
It is about allways having at least 2 other and systematically independent empirical methods to cross examine and check up whether your quite phaenomenal new measuring and mapping, even “statistic” method may lead you into systematic errors, yes or no or even perhaps..
We were snow- hiking in the mountains and suddenly heard a jet airplane. I looked up, and there, incredibly high, an especially large and broad winged, 2 engined plane was cruising. I have later come to that it was not an U2, but an allmost as fine british canberra spyplane flying over NATO territory. .
Then less than 5 minitus later, 2 common jet fighters passed very low, just above our heads and I thought “Now, we are discovered.” that the high spyplane had told the 2 others to come and look closer what they had discovered.
But we were probably not. They did calibrate by extra control what the Canberra could possibly see, and whether that brand new photorecognition from very high above was reliable, and really good enough for.
Meaning that satelites are not enough,, the same must also be further controlled, here and there at least, by conventional direct methods on the ground.
Boots, Botanics, Thermometers and Anhthills, Cloudberrypickers, are not obsolete yet.
If for instance the method seems capable of telling even wether permafrost will thaw or not, then ridiculously obsolete inspection Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha- must further go in by rubber boots for control and examine: Is there any permafrost here at all?, and does it really thaw or not?
Not everyone has learnt that.
To all and everyone
I just checked up https://Klimarealistene.no where I am thrown out, and found that story of the lapserate caused by active driven compression ( earliest source Hans Jelbring later Dipl.Ing Heinz Thieme and further Zeller- Nicolov) now also with “latent heat flux” and rumors of antropogene broken watersycle worldwide.
S0 I hereby warn Matthias Chürle, JCM, and Tomas Kalisz. who have furthered the same here.
That model theory for refuting or at least minimizing the primary importance of radiation has been examined and disqualified by Roy spencer see keyeword Giving Credit to Willis Eschenbach ,….
and by Anthony Watts at WUWT under “Slaying the slayers 1 & 2 ”
The slayers were Principa Scientific International (PSI)
================000
Discussion:
When I am telling and writing things, it is not what you may have been brought up with namely Dia- lectic materialism where matter is created mooved and anihilated again by contra- diction or simply by giving a damn to it. I am actually warned and upset when such manners seem systematically and socially even “scientifically” trained. It is red lamps and ideological alarm for me. of possible deeply trained and incureable tyrannic upbringing and eternal submission. Of individs who rather gave a damn to material and to vital learnings in order to set on the fameous “class” alternative.
If elementary basic conscepts words and definitions cannot be agreed on but allways has to be denied- contra -dicted for proof to be stated and debates to be won , then we are in Hell
Guess 3 times who is sitting in the high armchair there.
Proof was shown in the lab by WUWT on video. And I have consceived 5 further desktop experiments at least who show that the greenhouse gas radiation theory of the atmosphere is not only very well in order, but simply trivial to conscious humanity ever since the stoneage. where also convection and water is not forgotten at all..
But when you consequently want results out of other peoples experiments that are not real, and have to think out phantoms for why you still may be right and know better, then you are a problem.
rasmus,
Thank you for this essay. I think it is one of the most important posted here in the last few years.
Matthew
an amendment to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813977
Dear Barton Paul,
I would like to ask you for a favour. On your objection of August 20, 8:10 AM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813824
that Piotr may be mistaken in his understanding how the difference between purely radiative Earth energy balance model and radiative-convective one (that fits real Earth better), Piotr answered the same day, 9:52 PM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813833
that “his ducks are still OK”, pointing to his calculation of the balance in surface energy flows.
Unfortunately, I have not understood yet how Piotr will restore the balance of energy fluxes in atmosphere, and although I pleaded several times for an explanation, see e.g.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813852 ,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813897
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813948 ,
I have not obtained any conclusive answer yet.
Could you perhaps review my example offered as a “playground” on August 24, 7:01 AM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813897
and tell me where I misinterpreted the scheme assumed by Piotr the way that I still see a discrepancy therein?
Many thanks in advance and best regards
Tomáš
P.S.
All cited posts and their linkage can be found also on my public orgpage that serves for tracking the discussion on water cycle role in climate regulation since March 2023:
https://orgpad.com/s/7zfynb_y5o7
TK,
I’ll try to put a numerical example together and post it here. It may take me a while,
-BPL
BPL: I’ll try to put a numerical example together and post it here. It may take me a while,
BPL, you may be played by a climate change denier – whose shtick is to pretend to be naive,
a good-mannered fellow (see his profuse thanks even for the posts that question claims and sincerity), who earnestly looks to learn something about climate, and who is using you to advance one of the oldest climate change denier narrative: “why worry about GHGs when the effect of water cycle on climate is so big”.
To this effect TK even calculated how much water he needs to be evaporated to cancel the warming effect of the surplus GHGs – i.e. if we only evaporated this amount of water, we would not have to do a thing about GHGs.
To support his narrative, TK cherry-picks and plays people against each other, as I have already described before: he misrepresents arguments that challenge his conclusions and cherrypicks sentences and concepts from various authors (patrick, John Pollack, you) to present them as supporting his claims, The case in point:
TK to you: “ Your objection of August 20, 8:10 AM that Piotr may be mistaken in his understanding how the difference between purely radiative Earth energy balance model and radiative-convective one (that fits real Earth better) ”
Note that I have NOT discussed “the difference between purely radiative Earth energy balance model and radiative-convective“, MUCH LESS claiming that: “ the radiative-convective model fits real Earth [WORSE]“, quite the opposite – I have used YOUR radiative-convective energy balanced-budget equation :
Frad = Fsolar + Fgreen – Fconv
TK increased Fconv by 1W/m2, WITHOUT resulting increase in Fgreen (that as I argued – should be around +2/3 W/m2). After this correction – the system rebalances by reducing Frad and/or increasing [Fgreen – Fconv], In the best for TK scenario [Fgreen – Fconv] does not change,
so we get the MAXIMUM cooling effect of delta Frad = -1/3 W/m2, not -1W/m2 as TK Implied.
Meaning, that in the best for TK scenario, he would have to evaporate 3 times MORE water than he originally assumed.
I am not sure what your complicated “numerical example” could accomplish, other than muddying the waters further, and enabling TK to use your credibility to support the “water cycle is so important to the climate, so why don’t we concentrate on changing it instead of reduction GHGs” denier’s narrative.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-814070
Dear Piotr,
Although I several times pleaded for an explanation how the balance of energy fluxes in the atmosphere will look like in your scheme, you have not provided an answer yet.
This is why I asked others for an advice.
Greetings
Tomáš
TK (Sept.3) “ Although I several times pleaded for an explanation how the balance of energy fluxes in the atmosphere will look like in your scheme you have not provided an answer yet.”
It is not “my scheme ” – this how EVERY global energy budget works. in fact like ANY
natural system budget works – be it budget of energy, water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, etc. If in a reservoir in equilibrium, one increases the outflow – two things can happen, the reservoir size drops and/or other outflows are reduced or inflows increased – to COMPENSATE for the Initial change and reestablish the equilibrium. In case of energy – it’s easy – if you increased the amount of heat that escapes into space, the temperature of the Earth drops. If it drops so does Frad – and voila the equilibrium is reestablished. No mystery here .
And the fact that on budget DIAGRAM an arrow for latent heats “ends” in the atmosphere does NOT mean that this heat just accumulates there – the atmosphere has very little heat capacity – hence practically ALL the extra latent heat you put in the atm. is removed from it – either radiated into space (~1/3) or radiated and absorbed by the Earth (~ 2/3).
And it is THIS step you have refused to accept, despite now dozens(?) of my posts in which I told you this. So don’t you tell me how I ” have not provided an answer yet.”
And your insistent refusal to acknowledge my answers – is a sign of your bad faith – you don’t WANT to acknowledge it, because acknowledging it would make your absurd mass irrigation schemes – even more absurd. 3 times more absurd, to be quantitative – since you would have to evaporate 3 times more water than you claim on you implicit assumption that
NONE of the latent heat delivered to the atmosphere is reradiated back to the Earth.
And it is this bad faith, combined with your MISREPRESENTIONS of both my and Barton’s arguments – that is behind my warning about you to Barton.
Hr Kalisz
I have tried todo my best for Ceskioslovensko here or is it Moravia?
But I may do it even better having realized that you are hardly able to learn in foreighn languages and to adjust. You are getting blamed for it.
Do not ride those imperial moscovians by their grand old Party with P anymore. It is but pedantic Prussian National Socialism where the earth is flat like a military training camp within error bars and barbed wires, and they are poking and believing blindly in their unreadable, cryllic scriptures. without having to understand what it is about.
I found at Chateau Sansoussi in the livingroom a most important book.
“The Newyork Times Bestseller
VACLAV SMIL
“How
The
World
Really
Works”
A scientists guide to our Past,Present, and Futute
” Another masterpiece from one of my favourite authors” ( Bill Gates)
Comment:
It shows that Vaclav Smil has graduated at Carolinum IV uphill and downhill in Praha and in between, at the fameous river Vltava. with its fameous Carlov most.
Question: Why do you not try and aspire and submit and graduate there instead?
Why allways require your central stimulants from Thinktank, Chateau Heatland in Michigan
where the earth is flat, that is not nearly as fine and who may be cheating you? Why not from Vaclav Smil instead on how the world really works?
Because it was alol known to me allready from public school and onward, the dramatically easier way of understanding it, the only few things that I could actually grasp.
As the charles university in Praha from 1348, from which we also have our Patent to The Royal Frederiks of 1811 in Christiania, via Greifswald & Copenhagen…. is also what I am representing and furthering against the alternatives, in the climate and elsewhere.
It is for our elementary orientation in the airs and in the waters, in the clouds, in the woods and in the dirts, in the stars, in the furnaces and bunsenburners,, in the bible and in the souls and in court.
The Charles University could quite recently correct the experts supersticions even about Pluto, that is a recent US american invention.
Pluto just got even finer than before from it. The climate also will clear up and become real to you.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-814098
Dear Carbomontanus,
Many thanks for your care.
As you know, Czechoslovakia split friendly 30 years ago, to Czech and Slovak republic. Czech republic comprises two historical regions – Čechy (Bohemia) and Morava (Moravia).
The border between these two historical lands is basically identical with watershed between Vltava / Labe (Elbe) and Morava / Danube. You see – there is an interconnection between history and hydrology :-)
As I come from the eastern Moravia, I feel myself as both Czech and Moravian.
Greetings
Tom
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-814092
Dear Piotr,
Let me start with a memory from my childhood. A teacher told us in our geography class that before Fernando Magalhaes voyage, people believed that the Earth is flat. I have not questioned this information until I read the first (1979) issue of the book “Vesmír” (Universe) by Czech authors Jiří Grygar, Zdeněk Horský and Pavel Mayer, wherein science historian Zdeněk Horský explained that already ancient astronomers inferred that the Earth must be round, simply from the round shape of its shadow, as it can be observed during relatively frequent lunar eclipses. On the basis of this knowledge, unfortunately combined with a false speculation that the Universe must have a centre to that all “heavy” things fall, Aristotle inferred a conclusion that the round Earth must be in this centre. His seemingly irrefutable theory then persisted for 18 centuries.
The lesson I learned is: Seemingly logical stories may be in fact false and may deserve a check even though they came from teachers and/or other publicly respected persons like scientists, physicians, etc.
As I any time read your posts to the end, often repeatedly, and carefully consider your arguments before responding, I respectfully reject your accusations that my doubts about your reasonings express my bad will.
In fact, I strived to explain in very detail that I see an energy imbalance in the atmosphere in your scheme (I apologize, please take this term just as a shortcut for the sake of brevity) and that this deficiency cannot be easily rectified if one insists in your assumption that an increment in latent heat flux (instead of the entire energy flux into the atmosphere) should be re-distributed to the downwelling and upwelling infrared radiation in a fixed ratio:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813831
I do not see as my fault that in your reply
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813834
you expressly rejected to deal with my arguments after reading the first paragraph of my explanations, and reasoned your decision as follows:
“Since you failed to grasp the essentials in p.1, why should I waste my time reading and commenting on your subsequent points, if they build on the false premise from p.1?”
It is, of course, fully up to you whether or not you are willing to listen to your opponents. I only see blaming them for bad faith as somewhat unfair from your side, if you decided that their counter-arguments and questions do not deserve your attention anymore, because you once told something and it shall be accepted without further questions.
Greetings
Tomáš
Re TK:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-814138
So now you’re saying you’re a modern day “Fernando Magalhaes?”
I notice that you didn’t respond specifically to any of the specific points that Piotr made. Hmm, now why would that be?
Look, we’re all familiar with the history of science. We’re also familiar with denialist’s tedious rhetorical tactics, including the Galileo gambit:
https://theconversation.com/the-galileo-gambit-and-other-stories-the-three-main-tactics-of-climate-denial-63719
Worth reiterating:
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
― Carl Sagan
in Re to Radge Havers
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-814157
Dear Radge,
Thank you for your feedback.
I wrote:
“A teacher told us in our geography class that before Fernando Magalhaes voyage, people believed that the Earth is flat. I have not questioned this information until I read the first (1979) issue of the book “Vesmír” (Universe) by Czech authors Jiří Grygar, Zdeněk Horský and Pavel Mayer, wherein science historian Zdeněk Horský explained that already ancient astronomers inferred that the Earth must be round, simply from the round shape of its shadow, as it can be observed during relatively frequent lunar eclipses. On the basis of this knowledge, unfortunately combined with a false speculation that the Universe must have a centre to that all “heavy” things fall, Aristotle inferred a conclusion that the round Earth must be in this centre. His seemingly irrefutable theory then persisted for 18 centuries.
The lesson I learned is:
Seemingly logical stories may be in fact false and may deserve a check even though they came from teachers and/or other publicly respected persons like scientists, physicians, etc.”
Therefore, I think that I can answer your question with a clear consciousness:
No, I do not say that I am modern Fernando Magalhaes.
As regards your further notice, I cannot exclude that I have not responded to a specific question raised by Piotr. It is indeed possible that I missed something.
If you tell me what I missed, I will respond.
I strived to keep a track of the communication on my public orgpage
https://orgpad.com/s/7zfynb_y5o7
You can double-check therein.
Thank you in advance and greetings
Tomáš
The decreasing evaporative fraction in turbulent flux is associated with a reduction in daily precipitation area (%) and a decrease in cloud fraction.
A 1% artificial decrease in evaporative fraction in turbulent flux leads to an increase in surface net radiation and warmer temperatures.
The initial ratio of latent heat flux (LE) to sensible heat flux (H) at 80:20 changes to 80:21.
The LE deviation from free equilibrium partitioning is increased.
Reduced daily precipitation area under warmer temperatures implies more intense and less frequent rainfall events.
LE can remain constant even as its fraction is reduced, while global evaporative demand increases.
This suggests a decreasing average relative humidity and a stabilizing effect in the LW feedback parameter.
These factors, to some extent, contribute alongside greenhouse gas forcing.
It is crucial for climate commentators not to downplay the multiple co-benefits of catchment hydrological stabilization. Restoring energy balance flux partitioning is but one of many opportunities.
Tomas Kalisz: Sept 7 “I respectfully reject your accusations that my doubts about your reasonings express my bad will”
By their fruits, not their self-serving declarations, you shall know them.
To quote Zebra: zebra’s troll test: “They never answer the question.” You don’t answer, as noticed by many, with Radge being only the latest one: “I notice that you didn’t respond specifically to any of the specific points that Piotr made. Hmm, now why would that be?”
Your conceited response “It is indeed possible that I missed something. If you tell me what I missed, I will respond” is laughably dishonest – given that for half a year you have been dodging any question that challenged your understanding of global energy budgets and your crazy mass evaporation schemes you based on that. Not to look far:
To my statement of FACTS in this thread: ” the atmosphere has very little heat capacity – hence practically ALL the extra latent heat you put in the atm. is removed from it – either radiated into space (~1/3) or radiated and absorbed by the Earth (~ 2/3)”
your responded with …. calling these FACTS … my “deficient scheme” AND refusing to acknowledge what would be the result of YOUR alternative – if the latent heat flux IS NOT re-distributed to the downwelling and upwelling LWR – what happens then?
How hard could this be, if I have already shown you what would happen??? See:
===
TK I think that the latent heat flow about 80 W/m2 indeed does represent a neat [net? -Piotr ] value cooling the Earth surface, and that this value shall not be any way re-calculated or corrected
Me: “So what happens, Genius, to all this latent heat that you put into the atmosphere at the rate of 80W/m2, BUT DO NOT ALLOW it to be moved away from atmosphere?
To give you an idea: the weight of air over 1m^2 ~1o^4 kg, heat capacity of air 700 J/kg/K. At 80W/m2, this translates to warming of atmosphere at 360K/yr.
I.e. under your assumptions, in mere 16 years the temperature of Earth’s atmosphere would be equal to the temperature of the surface of the Sun. You see the problem, right?
===
You didn’t answer to my above question, instead, you …. keep repeating that … my “scheme” is “deficient”, and how you stand by your claim that NONE of the latent heat does return to the Earth’s surface in the form of LWR from atmosphere.
“They never answer the question.”, eh?
TK: “ No, I do not say that I am modern Fernando Magalhaes“.
You say tomato, I say tomato – sure, you didn’t literally say “I am modern Fernando Magalhaes”, you implied that you are like him – both bravely going against the ignorance of the time – you against the critics of your absurd Sahara irrigation schemes, just like Magellan against people who thought the Earth is flat and he will fall over the edge.
To which Radge replied with a quote from Carl Sagan. Hint – you are nothing like
Columbus, Fulton, or Wright – you are like Bozo the Clown. That is, if Bozo weren’t trying to make people laugh.
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-814217
Dear Piotr,
Many thanks for repeating the objection that you raised on July 25 in your post of 12:45 AM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813330 .
I checked my reply of July 26, 7:47 AM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813376
and realized that I indeed failed to address this objection explicitly.
Here is my answer, with apologies for this unpleasant omission:
Please note that the latent heat flux about 80 W/m^2 is well-balanced by other energy fluxes in global energy balance schemes published in the literature. There is no accumulation of this flux in any part of Earth, causing a major imbalance that you object.
As regards my examples, I have never assumed merely increasing latent heat flux from the surface without any compensation of this increase. Oppositely, I assumed that any change of the latent heat flux must be balanced by a corresponding change of other heat fluxes – just because I tried to imagine how the new steady state with balanced energy fluxes could look like.
So far, I supposed that any change in the latent heat flux is fully compensated by an opposite change in the upwelling radiation from the surface. This way, energy flow balances (both through the surface as well as through the atmosphere) remained unperturbed. You can check that this approach is consistent also in my newer examples proposed on August 17, 8:39 AM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-813783 .
Model example recently provided by Barton Paul
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814201
made me aware that in the more realistic model, wherein Earth atmosphere is not completely opaque to upwelling infrared radiation (and allows that a part of upwelling radiation escapes directly to the Universe through an “atmospheric window”), this direct 1:1 compensation does not work anymore.
Please check my reply to Barton Paul
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814251
for a more detailed discussion of this improved model.
Best regards
Tomáš
Tomas Kalisz Sep.10: “I have never assumed merely increasing latent heat flux from the surface without any compensation of this increase. Oppositely, I assumed that any change of the latent heat flux must be balanced by a corresponding change of other heat fluxes
The discussion is about you explicitly REJECTING my argument that given low heat capacity of the atmosphere, ALMOST NO no latent heat delivered into the atmosphere would stay there, but instead would be mostly re-radiated: about 2/3 back to Earth, about 1/3 into space). You rejected it by calling it: “deficient scheme ” and claiming that your calculations do not have to take into account any of re-radiation of the latent heat back to Earth. And you still … repeat it now:
“So far, I supposed that any change in the latent heat flux is fully compensated by an opposite change in the upwelling radiation from the surface“:
“Fully compensated” means NO latent heat is reradiated back to Earth.
TK: “Please check my reply to Barton Paul for a more detailed discussion of this improved model.”
I already did – it just proven what in my warning to BPL, I already anticipated what you would with his model: you will
1. IGNORE his conclusions: BPL : airborne water vapor must increase by less than 18% for the doubled evaporation to have any cooling effect at all. Of course, the doubling is itself likely to prove impossible. Thus it seems that the evaporation plan for countering global warming is highly unlikely to work in practice. C’est dommage.
2. IGNORE the parts where he supported your critic’s arguments:
– “ 61.76 % is directed back down toward the ground when the atmosphere radiates.
This is very close to the 2/3 figure Piotr often cites ” – vs. YOUR assumption that back radiation is “0”.
– that there might be some cooling “Except”: “ airborne water vapor must increase by less than 18% for the doubled evaporation to have any cooling effect at all” i.e. the argument of the increase in humidity I was making and your dismissed is irrelevant/insignificant
3. DROP IN Barton’s name (credibility by association) as if … he supported you and/or you have already addressed his concerns:
“ Please check my reply to Barton Paul for a more detailed discussion of this improved model .”
4. And USE his credibility against me (the implication of p.3 is that he supported you against me)
I.e. exactly as I warned BPL:
Piotr Sep. 2, this thread:
“ To support his narrative, TK cherry-picks and plays people against each other: he misrepresents posts that challenge his conclusions and cherrypicks sentences and concepts from various authors (patrick, John Pollack, [BPL]) to present them as supporting his claims [against me].
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-814259
Dear Piotr,
I am not going to convert RC to an arena with you, Barton Paul or anybody else fighting each other. For the same reason, I will desist from responding to questions and/or objections regarding my personality.
My response regarding the role of latent heat flux in Earth temperature regulation
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814271
is in the new thread started by recent Barton Paul analysis.
Anyway, thank you for all your questions and/or objections with technical character, you helped me to arrive at the solution that I tried to summarize in that reply.
Greetings
Tomáš
“I am not going to convert RC to an arena with you, Barton Paul or anybody else fighting each other said Tomas Kalisz (Sept. 11) … just after he cherry-picked BPL’s post to imply that he supported … him against me. As already described before, now with minor updates:
===
1 IGNORE BPL’s conclusions dismissing your doubling evaporation instead of reducing GHGs emission denialist scheme
BPL: airborne water vapor must increase by less than 18% for the doubled evaporation to have any cooling effect at all. Of course, the doubling is itself likely to prove impossible. Thus it seems that the evaporation plan for countering global warming is highly unlikely to work in practice. C’est dommage.
2. IGNORE the parts where BPL supported your critic’s arguments:
BPL “ This is very close to the 2/3 figure Piotr often cites ” for comparison – Kalisz claimed that it is NOT 2/3, but 0.
BPL, that to have any cooling at all: “the airborne water vapor must increase by less than 18% for the doubled evaporation” – compare that with my telling TK that the increase in airborne water vapor would reduce or outright cancel the effectiveness of his scheme, to which Kalisz responded having … a feeling that it would be … negligible.
3. DROP IN Barton’s name (for credibility by association) as if … he supported you.
+ drop his mane to suggest that you have already addressed all his concerns:
“ Please check my reply to Barton Paul for a more detailed discussion of this improved model .”
4. USE his credibility against your critics (the implication of p.3 is that he supported you against me) UPDATE: “… and thank BPL for “encouragement” thanks to which your
“showed that Piotr’s requirement [one I never made – P.] is hardly applicable.
============
In Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-814295
Dear Piotr,
I must respectfully disagree.
1) Going step-by-step is not the same as cherry-picking from opponents argument or ignoring it. I promised I will respond to Barton Paul’s objections raised in parts 5 and 6 of his analysis
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814205
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814206
and I am going to do so.
2) The reason why I would prefer this step-by-step approach is the circumstance that after 6 months of the discussion in style “everything at once”, we have not reached an agreement even in the very basic first point regarding the extent in which a change in latent heat flow changes the upwelling longwave infrared radiation from Earth surface (and in other energy fluxes in the global energy balance).
3) RC is not a court, there is no judge or jury here who we have to convince about our truth. I propose desisting from the “you said – I have never said” discussion style that we proved as very unproductive.
4) Could you look on the numbers calculated by Barton Paul in
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814246
and on my numbers presented in
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814251
and in
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814271
and, if you would treat the offered model examples differently, explain how your new balances resulting from the assumed latent heat flux changes will look like?
Greetings
Tom
T. Kalisz Sept. 12: “Dear Piotr, I must respectfully disagree.”
respectfully disagree all you want – by your fruits, not your declarations about youself we shall know you. As for your denial of cherry-picking – see the main thread where you disregard the conclusion of BPL that your scheme is worthless, and “prove” that
… by cherry-picking the outside literature – using the conclusions made in recognition of the LACK of significant human influence on water vapour, and apply it the scheme
that demands the OPPOSITE – requires humans to DOUBLE the global evaporation.
TK : RC is not a court, there is no judge or jury here …
nor lawyers who could spin your failure into a reasonable doubt. RC is a court of public opinion, so either you can defend your claims and address their criticisms, or you can’t,
and in that case – you burn your credibility, for everybody to see.
Dear Piotr,
Let me slightly correct your assertions:
..Using the conclusions made in view of the circumstance that average global air humidity depends on global average surface temperature, whereas annual global precipitation (water cycle intensity) depends also on the supply of water available for evaporation ..which is on the land strongly influenced by human activities such as e.g. agriculture…
..requires humans to DOUBLE the global evaporation..
Please note that
(i) it was Barton Paul Levenson, rather than me, who in his example considered doubling water cycle intensity
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814202 ,
(ii) however, this doubling occurred above land “only”,
(iii) the circumstance that he then calculated the greenhouse effect of water vapour for doubling water vapour concentration in the atmosphere globally
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814205
may be a mistake on his side, and
(iv) that I still wait for his explanation
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814397 .
Please consult also my explanations in reply to your objections in the parallel thread
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814449
Greetings
Tomáš
Tomáš Kalisz Sept.18 “ Let me slightly correct your assertions
These are not “assertions” but “falsifiable arguments”. And when you find a way to “correct”
my arguments – let me know.
Because what you have found so far is IRRELEVANT to my argument, that you can’t use conclusions based on assumption A, to the scenarios that built on VIOLATING that assumption A:
Piotr Sept 17: “ [the literature] conclusions have been made in recognition of the LACK of significant human influence on water vapour, T.Kalisz uses them to justify his scheme
that demands the OPPOSITE – that requires HUMANS [not temperature!] to DOUBLE the global evaporation.”
See? If you build your claim on a logical fallacy, doesn’t matter how you are going to calculate your results. False assumptions in, garbage out.
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/area-based-global-hydro-climatological-indicators/#comment-814469
Dear Piotr,
in my post of September 15
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814397
that you object for logical fallacy, I wrote:
–
in Re to
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814205 ,
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/09/unforced-variations-sep-2023/#comment-814206 .
Dear Barton Paul,
It appears that nobody on RC has any substantial objection with respect to the first four parts of you analysis.
I think that we can conclude that latent heat flux cools Earth surface efficiently, despite majority of the overall energy flux absorbed in Earth atmosphere is, as correctly repeated by Piotr, returned to the surface in form of downwelling infrared radiation. The reasons for this seeming paradox are
(i) the circumstance that the downwelling radiative flux is already included in the discussed energy balances, and (ii) the circumstance that the efficiency of the cooling effect is inversely proportionate to the width of the “atmospheric window” which is quite narrow on recent Earth.
Let me therefore thank you for your major contribution to this conclusion again and skip to parts 5 and 6 of your analysis.
Contrary to the parts 1-4, I would like to point to a few aspects not addressed in your analysis that in my opinion undermine your final conclusion and therefore might deserve your consideration:
1) It comes to my mind that annual average water vapour partial pressure may vary quite strongly geographically. Moreover, in the water vapour pressure interval that has to be considered, the strength of the greenhouse effect may not depend from partial water vapour pressure linearly, I am afraid.
I would therefore appreciate a specific reference to the source of your equation (9), wherein I could find an explanation of the range of its validity.
2) According to last paragraph in part 5 of your analysis, comprising the sentence “If we double pH2O to 732 Pa,” it appears that although you originally assumed water cycle intensity doubling above land only, you finally calculate with partial water vapour pressure doubling over the entire globe. Isn´t it a mistake?
3) Similarly as macias shurly, I still think that water cycle intensity may change in a quite broad range without any substantial change in average air humidity, just by changing water vapour residence time in the atmosphere while keeping constant the size of the water vapour pool in the atmosphere.
I have noted that the size of the water vapour pool in the atmosphere, which is commensurate to the average absolute air humidity, is in the literature considered as depending basically on the average global surface temperature only. Observations seem to support this assumption.
In this respect, it appears unnecessary to consider any change in average air humidity (and thus also any change in average greenhouse effect of water vapour comprised in the atmosphere) at least in case that the contemplated artificial water cycle intensity change will just compensate an opposite change in the sum of energy fluxes absorbed by Earth surface.
This was exactly the case in my thought experiment with artificial water cycle intensification above Sahara desert discussed in
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/05/unforced-variations-may-2023/comment-page-2/#comment-811872 ,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/06/unforced-variations-jun-2023/#comment-812091 ,
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/06/unforced-variations-jun-2023/#comment-812192
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/unforced-variations-july-2023/#comment-813242 .
Could you comment?
Many thanks in advance and greetings
Tomáš
–
I still assume that
(i) calculating first with latent heat flux doubling above land only and then inferring therefrom doubling of the atmospheric water pool globally was a mistake, and
(ii) arriving at a global cooling aboutt 1.5 K first and then asserting a major global atmospheric water pool increase seems to be in discrepancy with state-of-art climate models models and observations.
I think so because in my understanding, both the models as well as the available observations rather suggest that global atmospheric water pool depends on the global average surface temperature only, not on actual global water cycle intensity.
Unfortunately, there is no answer directly from Barton Paul yet, however, you could perhaps comment instead.
Thank you in advance and greetings from Dresden,
Tomáš
Kalisz
” ……..That Piotr maqy be mistaken in his understanding how the difference between purely radiative earth energy balance model and radiative – convective one ( that fits real earth better) Piotr answered the same day…. that his ducks are still in order. ”
Kalisz, I thinkyou have misunderstood the convectives most of all and first of all.
Wind and weather is commonly explained to be a thermo- dynamic machine driven by the temperature gradient between a hot and a cool reservoire. And you are supposed to know and to accept the Carnot-engine and cycle from public and highschool common pensum. The steam and the diesel engine at least..
As this engine namely wind and weathers seems to run stronger and stronger faster and faster a bit, and the extraterrestrial reserves the sun and the chill of space seem constant, and the earth and sea temperatures are rising, then what can it be?
The thermodynamic engine is a heat flux that cools the hot reserve and heats the cold reserve , that are so huge both of them however that their temperatures remain constant but an intermediate stage earth surface has a bit rising temperature and another intermediate the lower stratosphere has a bit lower temperature and the convective material engine runs stronger and stronger,… then what possibly can it be? As the “latent heat convectional flux” and all the evapotranspirations that cool the earth are driven faster and faster… stronger and stronger…. with Turbo. ,….
It is not indifferent by which theoretical conscepts and model conscepts that you try and understand the functions of an engine and of a complex device.
Your problem may be that you have been falsey told and educated about it.
I clearly do not get such problems. And I clearly do not ask your same questions finding them rather irrelevant and answered by other means..
And how possibly can that also be?
It seems that you are trying to re- design the earth the winds and the weather for us as a whole for what it is not.
How possibly can that be? Why can that possibly be?
Is it Thinktank? or the Party with P, the grand 0ld one? Or any of their deputees?
Pleace tell us. Because the nearest I have found was at https://klimarealistene.no