The Climatically Saturated Greenhouse Effect: A Note from Christopher Game
Posted by jennifer, May 7th, 2009 - under Opinion.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
IN recent years, a major advance in our understanding of the physical dynamics of the climate process has come from the work of Ferenc Miskolczi. For the present note I am calling his discovery the ‘climatically saturated greenhouse effect’. I use these words to mean that the ‘saturation’ of which I speak is not the classical static saturation of an isolated system, but is ‘saturation’ in a specially extended sense for an open system in a thermodynamically-non-equilibrium dynamic steady state.
Dr Miskolczi’s discovery arose from his regular work for NASA, examining the data measured by radiosonde balloons. Studied and analyzed under the microscope of the radiative transfer computer program that he had written, the large data set turned out to be a previously only partly tapped reservoir of a wealth of physical facts. From the reservoir of numerical data, Dr Miskolczi abstracted mathematical formulae that expressed new physical understanding.
Dr Miskolczi showed that the true physical dynamics of the climate process is that the present rate of change of amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is dynamically determined, amongst other factors, largely by the present amount of greenhouse gas. A second dynamical factor is the fluctuating temperature of the atmosphere. There are also other dynamical factors that are mostly ignored in this present note.
On the other hand, for its doctrine that man-made CO2-emissions cause harmful global warming, the IPCC speaks in terms of its mathematical formalism of “radiative forcing” and “positive feedback by water vapour”. But, sad to say, this formalism is fatally flawed and cannot describe the true dynamical structure of the climate response to CO2.
The IPCC’s mathematical formalism admits just one dynamical internal state variable, the climate temperature. That formalism expresses the climate temperature as a static mathematical function (or sometimes as a dynamical effect) of the “radiative forcing”. The formalism mathematically partitions that mathematical function (or dynamical effect) into components that it calls “feedbacks”. But these “feedbacks” are not dynamically distinct from the climate temperature. The formalism expresses them simply as static mathematical functions of the climate temperature. Consequently, the dynamical factors that govern the real climate system cannot be expressed in the IPCC’s formalism because of its mathematical inappropriateness for the problem.
Miskolczi did not set out to make his discovery of the climatically saturated greenhouse effect, but it turned up as something that he accidentally noticed in the course of his regular work for NASA. In this respect his discovery is like the fundamental discovery made by Australian Garth Paltridge, who ‘accidentally’ noticed in his examination of climate data that the facts are described by a principle of maximum rate of entropy production. Along with the earlier work of plastics technologist Hans Ziegler, Professor Paltridge’s discovery was a stepping stone on the path to understanding how the second law of thermodynamics is naturally extended, from its classical form for isolated systems in thermodynamic equilibrium, to deal with thermodynamically-non-equilibrium dynamic steady states in diabatic systems. This was a radical advance at the deepest level of scientific understanding. Its present relevance has been mentioned above. (A helpful review article is listed below.)
This kind of fortuitous observation of empirical fact is at the heart of many of the historical radical advances in natural science. It is a kind of ‘accident’ that happens only to the prepared mind. Like Professor Paltridge, Dr Miskolczi had a prepared mind.
The Miskolczi discovery of the climatically saturated greenhouse effect describes a climate process that is dynamically pinned at a thermodynamically-non-equilibrium phase transition. This means that the climate is in a stable stationary dynamical régime.
The overall effect is to keep a constant ratio of solar energetic driving to long term climate temperature. We might call this the climatic response ratio, but let us here refer to it just as ‘the ratio’. The ratio is independent of CO2 emissions, which therefore cannot increase the long term climate temperature. Only increased solar energetic driving can increase the long term climate temperature. Changes in solar energetic driving can be caused only by changes in the heat radiated from the sun and by changes in the earth’s distance from the sun. Other extraterrestrial solar system external drivers of the climate process can perturb it, but not alter the long term climate temperature. Such perturbations include many various and diverse mechanisms, such as increased admission of galactic cosmic rays, and the deterministic chaotic tidal effects of gravity of the sun, the moon, and the planets.
A main dynamical effect in maintaining climate stability is non-linear cooling through the atmospheric window discovered by George Simpson in 1928. After heat has been absorbed from the sun by the earth, the infrared radiative waveband carries the heat back out to space. Water vapour is the earth’s main greenhouse gas. Its wide and strong infra-red absorption spectrum has a fair number of deep gaps. Radiation from the surface of the land and the sea escapes readily to space through these gaps, collectively called the atmospheric window. The escape is governed non-linearly by the Planck radiation law. The non-linearity means that the hotter the earth gets, the more efficient is the window at cooling the earth. Simpson also discovered another potent climate stabilizing property of water. Water can form clouds, which Simpson noted potently tend to cool the earth by reflecting some of the incoming sunlight, so that it is not even absorbed by the earth. This is called increase in albedo.
Why is the climatic response ratio constant?
It is because water dominates the climate dynamics.
Perhaps a homely analogy may help. The climate process is like a saucepan of saturated salt solution boiling on a stove. Turn up the gas on the stove and the boiling point is not affected. Add more salt and the boiling-point is not affected, because the salt solution is already saturated.
One of the greenhouse gases (water vapour) can alter its own concentration in the troposphere, so that it acts as a climatically saturated solute in the atmosphere. Amongst the many atmospheric analogues of the bubbles in the boiling saucepan, perhaps the most dramatic and vivid are the protected towers of deep tropical convection described by Professors Riehl and Malkus in 1958, that you can see anywhere near the equator. They are the pacemaker of the tropical rains. Add some CO2 and they bubble a little faster, and make it rain a little more, but as long as the sun’s activity does not change, and water vapour remains the dominant earthly greenhouse gas, the climate temperature is not affected. The bubbles occur at a dynamical threshold, which means that like the non-linear window cooling mentioned above, the greater a warming perturbation, the more efficient the cooling response. This is the interpretation of the climatic saturation of the greenhouse effect as a process pinned at a stable thermodynamically-non-equilibrium phase transition.
The climate process is different from a boiling saucepan in one important respect. Non-equilibrium phase transitions are a little conceptually different from equilibrium ones. The phase transition at which the climate process is pinned is dynamical in character, in contrast with the phase transition of boiling water which has a static character. Consequently the physical quantity that is pinned is not the climate temperature; it is the climatic response ratio.
The ratio is stable and constant because it is governed by the principle of maximum rate of entropy production, as determined by the presence of the watery ocean and the sun’s heat radiation. At the simplest level, the general principle is that the higher the temperature, the more dynamical fluctuations are possible for the climate process. The most effective ones will, as it were, seize their opportunities to act by mere chance, and their chances are increased by temperature increase. An increase in atmospheric temperature will enable additional mechanisms of heat dissipation to space because there is nothing in space to counteract them. Miskolczi has given us more detail about how this happens.
In the context of the stabilizing properties of water through the clouds and the atmospheric window, Dr Miskolczi discovered another potent climate stabilizing property of water. It is a greenhouse gas that can alter its own concentration in the clear-sky troposphere, and it does so in a stabilizing way. It is this property that in principle cannot be represented in the IPCC’s flawed formalism. But together the cloud property and the clear-sky greenhouse gas concentration altering property stabilize the climate process. This is the reason why CO2 emissions cannot alter the long term climate temperature.
On a clear night you will see shooting stars in the sky. Many of them are meteors of frozen water that is vapourized as they enter the atmosphere. They constitute a natural external driving function that adds a greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. But they do not drive the troposphere to static saturation. This is our sign that the troposphere for billions of years has been marginally drying its clear-sky water vapour content by forming low clouds and raining so as to compensate fully and completely for natural greenhouse gas addition.
The climate system has historically maintained the maximum dynamically stable amount of water vapour in the clear-sky troposphere. The reason is simple. Convective circulation inevitably moves bulk parts of the atmosphere up and down, so as to partly dry the troposphere and keep the clear-sky water vapour content much less than the classically statically defined saturation level.
How does the climatic response ratio stay constant when there is CO2 emission into the atmosphere? By increased bubbling, increased rain, increased low cloud formation, and increased upper tropospheric production of dried air.
Addition of CO2 to the system simply displaces a small amount of water vapour without altering the total effective amount of greenhouse gas present in the clear-sky troposphere, so as to very closely nullify the temperature effect of the addition. In this restricted context, one might say that one greenhouse gas is as good as another, but really some greenhouse gases (e.g. water) have additional properties that others (e.g. CO2) do not.
When CO2 is added to the air, its first effects are radiative. There is some blocking of window infra-red radiation to space, with consequent warming of the lower and middle troposphere. And there is an elevation of the altitude of the upper optical boundary layer of the troposphere; the altitude of the tropopause is elevated. Because the temperature is lower there, the infra-red radiative emission from the upper optical boundary layer of the troposphere is reduced until the lower temperature is compensated.
Then warmer wetter less dense air in the lowest troposphere is convected to the tropical ‘bubble’ zone. It ‘bubbles’ faster, with the production of more tropical low cloud and rain, increased transport aloft of the latent heat of water vapour, and the delivery of more air up to the higher altitude tropoause, where it becomes drier because of the lower temperature. These factors compensate for some of the radiative effect of the added CO2.
The circulatory cycle is completed when the greater amount of drier air is convected towards the poles and downward back to the land-sea surface, and on the way it nullifies the rest of the radiative effect of the added CO2.
Such cycles of convection of atmospheric gases are known to be universally typical of the kind of dynamic organization that develops under the governance of the principle of maximum entropy production.
The IPCC’s argumentative mathematical formalism relies on the mistaken idea that a greenhouse gas can act as a virtual pure radiative driver, but because of Miskolczi’s discovery we now understand that addition of a greenhouse gas must be treated in its own right as a greenhouse gas driver.
The above account is a mere qualitative sketch, but Dr Miskolczi’s work itself is a quantitative analysis of empirical measurements on the atmosphere.
Dr Miskolczi has thus shown us why at present a runaway greenhouse effect is physically impossible. One could add that there might have been something like a runaway greenhouse event at the time of the origins of the oceans, billions of years ago, but that it ran its course and brought us to where we are now, and has nowhere further to take us.
We have been fortunate in Australia in the past few weeks to have had a visit by Dr Miklos Zagoni, an expert on Miskolczi’s discovery, and this has been a valuable educational opportunity for us.
Even the grand master of maximum entropy theory, the mighty Edwin Thompson Jaynes himself, did not reach the principle of maximum rate of entropy production. Professor Paltridge did not quite hit the nail on the head first time. His 1975 paper did not even suggest maximum rate of entropy production. Indeed even in 2001 he doubted it. The principle of maximum rate of entropy production is still only on the path to textbook status; it is a new principle. The path is made of stepping stones.
Dr Miskolczi presented his studies of the climatically saturated greenhouse effect as an empirical analysis with theoretical consequences that he demonstrated, but his publications include also various loose analogies, and his studies need theoretical development. At present Dr Miskolczi is working further on his discovery, and we may look forward to more publications from him. I see the way forward not as hammering and cracking the stepping stones on the path, but as constructing the road itself. To predict the climate, we need to improve our understanding of physics. There is plenty more there to understand.
Christopher Game lives in Melbourne, Australia.
References
L.M. Martyushev, V.D. Seleznev (2006) Maximum entropy production principle in physics, chemistry and biology, Physics Reports 426: 1-45.
F.M. Miskolczi (2007) Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent atmospheres, Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Society 111(1): 1-40.
F.M. Miskolczi, M.G. Mlynczak (2004) The greenhouse effect and the spectral decomposition of the clear-sky terrestrial radiation, Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Society 108(4): 209-251.
G.W. Paltridge (1975) Global dynamics and climate − a system of minimum entropy exchange, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 101: 475-484.
G.W. Paltridge (1978) The steady-state format of global climate, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 104: 927-945.
G.W. Paltridge (2001) A physical basis for a maximum of thermodynamic dissipation of the climate system, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 127: 305-313.
H. Riehl, J.S. Malkus (1958) On the heat balance in the equatorial zone, Geophysica 6:503-538.
G.C. Simpson (1928) Further studies in terrestrial radiation, Memoirs of the Royal Meteorological Society, 3(21): 1-26.
H. Ziegler (1961) Zwei Extremalprinzipien der irreversiblen Thermodynamik, Ingenieur-Archiv 30: 410-416.
This is part 2 of ‘The Work of Ference Miskolczi’, Part 1 of this series is here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/the-work-of-ferenc-miskolczi-part-1/
Eli “As for Eli, he thinks that if you eat carrots you will live forever. Everyone should now eat only carrots. . .”
Actually Eli this is untrue, I know you are jesting but someone might think it a good idea to up their carrot intake, but bronze or haemolytic anaemia, resulting from overdosing, on vitamin A can be fatal
Interesting point suricat; as Christopher has kindly noted I am struggling with MEP and whether M theory is a form of MEP or not or vice-versa; CoE considerations mean that incoming energy, if retained in the system [and this has been the focus of the discussion; whether AGW successfuly traps the F component or whether extra OLR occurs by whatever method to adjust the system back to original equilibrium] cannot be destroyed; but as you say MEP means that extra energy in retained/delayed radiation may be ‘locked down’ by MEP processes; enthalpy is an obvious candidate; extra heat from extra radiation ‘trapped’ by extra CO2 and water vapor causes an increase in evaporation and storage of latent heat in clouds; in this way a temperature equivalence between 2 areas may not be a true reflection of the energy locked away in the greater amount of humidity in one of the areas.
MEP may work in other ways; the lag between extra energy [assuming one accepts this essential aspect of AGW] and its expression may decline; for instance the pipeline effect of heat stored in the ocean and the time for its effect on temperature to occur may decline; there may be more rain, or a slight decline in the energy/temperature gradient vertically and horizontally as this paper suggests;
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2003GL018363.shtml
The point is, even if an adjustment to the maximum greenhouse equilibrium doesn’t occur as M theory supposes and that extra radiative based energy stays in the system, it doesn’t mean that MEP processes don’t make that extra energy entropically benign through work dissipation.
Hi Anthony
You are mistaken – the global average cloud cover is around 60% not 30%. I think you may be thinking of the global albedo which is close to 0.3 (30%). With respect to cloud cover please remember that at any one time large areas of the globe are covered with 100% cloud cover and large areas are clear sky. The purpose of adjusting parameters as a function of cloud cover is simply because it is so important regionally – it is not to imply that the whole globe ranges fully between these extremes. But locally it does and that is the point.
For any other queries about my little spreadsheet model please (anyone) email me directly off-blog (mail@ecoengineers.com) and I’m happy to reply as workload allows.
I have modified the little spreadsheet slightly again to ensure all core parameters at 60% cloud cover fit exactly with the F,T&K09 cartoon values. Here it is. Please note again I don’t resile from its crude assumptions.
%Cloud,Tau,S_T,ET,ET_U,DT rE_U,A_A,E_D,oE_U,S_U/oE_U,A_A/E_D,S_U,OLR,F,(ET+DT)/S_U
100,2.72,26,133,50,7,169,370,371,219,1.81,1.00,396,245,78,0.354
80,2.48,33,107,40,12,169,363,353,209,1.89,1.03,396,242,78,0.300
60,2.29,40,80,30,17,169,356,335,199,1.99,1.06,396,239,78,0.245
40,2.13,47,53,20,23,169,349,317,189,2.10,1.10,396,236,78,193
20,1.99,54,27,10,29,169,342,300,179,2.21,1.14,396,233,78,0.141
0,1.87,61,0,0,34,169,335,281,169,2.34,1.19,396,230,78,0.086
Hmmm, interesting, suggests a 6 W/m^2 increase in OLR going to 100% cloud cover, a 9 W/m^2 decrease in OLR going to zero cloud cover.
This shows a key issue to resolve is whether with increasing cloud cover the release in latent heat (in all directions) rises proportionately. Intuitively one would think so.
After all, over large areas of cloud there is (presumably) always about (a) the same probability that about (b) the same proportion is condensing into rain?
Remember:
After Ozawa &Ohmura 1996 and Pauluis & Held 2002a,b this also suggests that entropy production (EP) is a function of cloud cover due to the fact that, as P&H02 suggest, moist convection accounts for an ~40 – 52%% of EP, viz:
Pauluis, OM and Held IM (2002a) Entropy budget of an atmosphere in radiative-convective equilibrium. Part I: maximum work and frictional dissipation. J. Atmos. Sci. 59: 125-139
Concludes that moist convection (ET) behaves more as an atmospheric dehumidifier than as a heat engine.
Pauluis OM, Held IM (2002b) Entropy budget of an a atmosphere in radiative-convective equilibrium. Part II: Latent heat transport and moist processes. J. Atmos. Sci. 59: 140-149
Concludes frictional dissipation of atmospheric motions accounts for ~30% of total entropy production, frictional dissipation of failing rain ~12%, phase changes and diffusion of water vapor ~40% and remaining ~20% uncertainties in the above.
Thanks Steve; you’re absolutely correct; I did mistake cloud cover for albedo; happens when amateurs are let into the rose garden. I think you’ve also answered my comment to suricat about how [M]EP can ‘hide’ or ‘lock down’ any supposed increase in radiative energy due to AGW ‘trapping’. Keep up the good work.
Well worth it:
http://www.bgc-jena.mpg.de/bgc-theory/index.php/Pubs/2009-NaWi-AK
I mentioned above, caveat my poor memory, that I could not recall Dr Miskolczi’s explicit citation of the principle of maximum entropy production. I can now point to page 19 of the reprint of Miskolczi 2007 (F.M. Miskolczi: Greenhouse effect in semi-transparent planetary atmospheres. Idojaras – Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service, Vol. 111. No. 1. 2007.) : “We believe that the β parameter is governed by the maximum entropy principle, …” Christopher
Dear suricat,
You write: “This makes a solely radiative model incomplete and blind to an MEP relationship.”
Certainly a solely radiative model will be unsatisfactory. But I am asking not about the climate model, but about the method of calculating the entropy production. Can the export-import method yield the entropy production?
You write: “MEP theory requires that all avenues of MEP positive forcing are used (it also means that all avenues of MEP negative forcing are also used).” I am distressed to see the phrase “MEP forcing”. I am much happier with the wording “don’t leave any stone unturned!”
Yours sincerely,
Christopher
Yeah – there is a real lot of hand-waving in Miskolczi – not to mention skeletons of revered old scientists rotating at high angular velocities in their graves.
It also takes all sorts:
Some really walk the walk and are too shy to talk the talk.
Some walk the walk and thus can really talk the talk.
Some talk the talk but wouldn’t have a clue on how to walk the walk.
Some talk the talk and talk the talk and talk…
Dear Steve Short,
Thank you for writing this:
“Pauluis, OM and Held IM (2002a) Entropy budget of an atmosphere in radiative-convective equilibrium. Part I: maximum work and frictional dissipation. J. Atmos. Sci. 59: 125-139
Concludes that moist convection (ET) behaves more as an atmospheric dehumidifier than as a heat engine.”
Yours sincerely,
Christopher
Following Steve’s lead I found the Chapter 9 in ‘the Red Book’ (’Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the Production of Entropy’, ed. A. Kleidon, R.D Lorenz, Springer, Berlin 2005) that he cited.
On page 118, Olivier M. Pauluis writes: “When considering the atmosphere as a whole, the hydrological cycle is directly responsible for roughly half the entropy production by the atmospheric circulation.” Thank you, Steve. Christopher
I should have posted http://miskolczi.webs.com/2007.pdf to find the reprint of Miskolczi 2007. Christopher
“Joking aside, I admire the way you’ve coped with some of the diatribe that has been posted here, and you’re still ‘plugging away’.”
I am still “Plugging away” too, but I wouldn’t presume to start a topic that I then admit I don’t really understand.
Following a little further on Steve’s lead, I find on page 116 that Pauluis thinks that one of the conditions for a climatically saturated greenhouse effect is the presence of a large atmospheric non-greenhouse gas component. Nitrogen and oxygen realize that on earth. In addition to listing the presence of an ocean as the prerequisite for a climatically saturated greenhouse effect, I now see that obviously I ought to have listed also the presence of an atmosphere mostly of non-greenhouse gases (oxygen and nitrogen). Thank you Steve for improving my understanding there. Christopher
I spent a whole day studying Miskolczi, Zagoni, and Noor van Andel. I now think I DO have some feeling for that pesky Equation 7. It’s reminding me of a tug-of-war: Eq. 6 describes two quantities that have to balance each other; Eq. 7 uses the same quantities to describe total energy. I think there are potential answers to everything Nick and Steve have said here. The equations fit too well to the data to be ignored. The discontinuity issue is apparent in the stock illustration of K&T eg http://www.optocleaner.com/images/Solar-Radiation-Budget-650.jpg – Surface Rad 350; Back Rad 324 W/m^2. This is what M says has to be identical; this is one of the things that fits both maths and measurements eg http://www.landshape.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=introduction#the_cabauw_measurements.
Drat! I shall end up writing a piece myself at this rate.
Lucy
“The equations fit too well to the data to be ignored. ”
This is nonsense. Look really, really closely (and very, very carefully) and you’ll find its mostly actually all clear sky data (or very close to it) which Miskolczi has used.
I suggest you carefully read F,T^K09 which is a review paper summarizing all the energy balance studies of the last decade or more. NOTE WELL has been way more work on the global energy balance since K&T97 e.g. the CERES and ERBE projects for a start.
Miskolczi’s ‘magic tau’ of 1.87 is actually only the true value at and close to the zero cloud cover. For every situation with some cloud his so-called S_T is actually a mixture of true LW IR transmission to TOA and the LW IR emitted off the tops of clouds through release of latent heat (water lines) which escape through TOA. Thus his tau is, for most sky situation not even a real tau (in the accepted meaning of the term).
Miskolczi Theory is a logical mess and and a mish mash of hand waving nods to inapplicable principles. I am surprised you are not actually reading anything I’m posting or in the other more hard core sceptical blogs and going away and actually checking it for yourself.
Otherwise you wouldn’t keep making these nonsense statements.
A lot of sceptics have been looking hard at Miskolczi Theory since 2007. Most, especially those with a background in hard science as a career have concluded it doesn’t get up. There are just a very few old diehards who still think its goer. Their capacity for self delusion, bad math and mental acrobatics simply reminds me how perverse the human species can be.
Look, Miskolczi didn’t even get invited back to the 2nd Heartland Conference in February because most sceptics with a brain and a good math training have realised it is a crock of s**t even just since the 1st conference.
I have lost count of the 100s of sceptical newbies who have passed through the sceptical blogs who thought they were going to rejuvenate this corpse, Frankenstein-like. You are just another in a very long line and also not going to achieve this, Lucy. I guarantee it.
The truly scientific sceptical viewpoint is sound and the AGW hysteria bandwagon will go the way of all historically doomed movements. We simply don’t need the snake oil of Miskolczi.
Dear Christopher,
Thank you for your comment.
I’ll be the first to admit that my terminology relative to a debate on climate leaves something to be desired. This is probably because I’ve had an interest in climate for only a couple of years or so and my main discipline is engineering based (so don’t ask me to post any math to a science thread as engineering derivations differ, my word processor doesn’t support math functions and it’s mostly macro anyhow).
However, engineers recognise a division within entropy per se. This division is placed at the point where energy is unusable for harness to do useful work. Where energy has the ability to do useful work (whether useful or not depends on the definition of “the work expected”) this is labelled “enthalpy”. All else is entropy.
As an example for climate purposes, take a parcel of air that is warmed relative to its surrounding parcels of air, for the purpose of convection.
Our parcel of air is warmed (enthalpy; the energy received does the work of expansion and causes a greater volume of occupation by the same mass, thus, reduced density).
More macro to our parcel of air; Archimedes principle steps up to the plate and our parcel of air begins to rise due to its lower density compared to surrounding parcels of air. The motive force here is gravity and this may be interpreted as either enthalpy (a “gravity pump”, or “thermosyphon” system is often incorporated within engineered devices), or entropy (where the effect remains unharnessed and is lost to fluid friction as heat). It should be appreciated that this causes no energy loss to our “parcel of air”, as the motive force is provided by gravity per se.
Back to our parcel of air. Our parcel of air is constantly being robed of thermal energy, both radiatively and by way of mixing with surrounding air parcels as it rises. Thus, convection, eventually, is halted because “local thermal equilibrium” is achieved with surrounding parcels of air.
You write: “Can the export-import method yield the entropy production?”
I’m unfamiliar with this. Can you elucidate?
I hope this better explains my point of view and may help some.
Best regards, suricat.
Dear suricat,
You write: “You write: “Can the export-import method yield the entropy production?” I’m unfamiliar with this. Can you elucidate?”
I mean, as noted in various previous posts here, that there are several ways in which one might plan to calculate the rate of entropy production. You can find them above if you are interested.
By the export-import method I mean to calculate the entropy production by calculating the rate of entropy import and the rate of entropy export, and subtracting them, and calling the difference the rate of entropy production.
The model you describe can lead to calculations of entropy production by what I call methods of internal process. There are many such calculations in the literature.
But I should note that the hydrodynamic mechanics that you describe in your post is not right, because it does not attend to stability questions. You may want to brush up on such details.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher
It amazes me how people get an urge to read Miskolczi and Zagoni etc like ONLY yesterday (a whole day too – oh wow!) and then get a rush of blood to the head requiring them to post their newly found revelations on a blog the very next day, without ever having the patience or the wisdom to think more deeply about what is a highly complex field founded on years of hard graft and study.
I notice we are being flooded with ‘newly born again sceptics’ at the moment right across the climate blogs and it took me a while to figure out why. I reckon it is probably due to Zagoni and that damn video clip he posted on YouTube.
I call it ‘The Patent Medicine Man Effect’. In the 18th and 19 Centuries there were roving patent medicine salesmen taking their carts and wagons through every dirt poor village across Europe, Russia and North America.
The local yokels would listen to these glib and plausible well-practised ’snake oil salesmen’ and then quickly cough up all their pennies, groats, cents, centimes, etc for the bottles of miraculous dirty water laced with alcohol on sale.
While the magic of his words lasted (and the alcohol eased the condition requiring a ‘cure’) the salesman was (of course) virtually a messiah. When it all wore off the peasants were even more dirt poor than they had been before and life went back to the normal state of a glazed-eyeball daily grind.
Very few were any the wiser.
An example cross-posted from Niche Modeling (where this particular newly born again sceptic is rather more cluey than most of the new crop):
“By the way: reading through the books, I found the following quote about Kirchhoff’s law in Goody and Yung’s Atmospheric Radiation, Theoretical Basis 2nd edition on page 3:
“Since clouds, ground, and atmosphere do not differ greatly in temperature, it follows from Kirchhoff’s law that emission and absorption are approximately equal to each other.”
I thought I cite that, since there are sites on the Internet and contributions that like to discredit Dr. Miskolczi and his paper on a similar quote. But this seems to me typical for the AGW discussion, always looking for small splinters in the others eye.”
I liked the phrase: “…always looking for small splinters in the others eye.” This one has some civilized eloquence (just like Christopher). This one however, probably read Goody and Yung (the ‘Bible’ of atmospheric radiation) only yesterday as well.
The great flaw in this argument of course is that, of the fraction of LW IR leaving at TOA which Miskolczi ‘lumps’ into his S_T which is comprised of LW IR emitted from the tops of clouds (due to release of latent heat during condensation), that fraction was never ‘absorbed’ by the clouds in the first place. That fraction came from Evapotranspiration (ET) from the surface i.e. its origin is purely non-radiative.
The fact that Miskolczi ‘chooses’ to add that fraction of ET which is radiated upwards to TOA from the tops of the clouds to the true S_T which is transmitted from BOA to TOA (escaping absorption along the way) is purely an idiosyncrasy of Miskolczi. Presumably y’all noticed by now that Miskolczi is incapable of thinking ‘non-radiatively’?
Whether one considers the creation of S_T as a 2-component ‘lumped parameter’ to be justified or not, the fact remains that depending upon the %cloud present a significant fraction of Miskolczi’s S_T has a a non-radiative i.e. convective origin.
Thus ‘Kirchoff’ (or whatever)-type arguments are irrelevant to it.
In my little spreadsheet model I (initially at least) set the fraction of A_A returning to BOA which contributes to E_D, and the fraction of DT returning to BOA which contributes to E_D to be 0.625 (62.5%) by analogy with the fraction of ET for a 1st pass estimate of E_D.
If one fits the (60% cloud cover case) for A_A and E_D as per T,F&K09 then the fraction actually works out to be 0.66 (66%) for A_A if the fraction of DT (a minor component anyway) stays at 0.625 (62.5%). To me this suggests slightly more of A_A returns to contribute to E_D than of ET but it is close. This is as to be expected because most LW IR from BOA is absorbed below the mean cloud layer level.
What I find intriguing about this crude spreadsheet approach is that it is very hard to see how a reduction in OLR (positive forcing) can arise from the situation where %cloud is greater than the global average of ~60%.
In this sense I see where Cohenite is coming from and tend to agree with him.
The only possible conclusion if the recent T&F09 paper is correct is that as %cloud cover rises above ~60% the fraction of latent heat which is radiated through TOA falls off dramatically in a non-linear way.
I haven’t got T&F09 yet but if they can’t prove that specific point then their contention won’t get up with me.
If we stop and think about where high %cloud cover commonly exists it is in the equatorial band, over the gyres and over places like the Amazon and Congo. These are all places where highly energetic cu-nim storm lift cloud right up to the tropopause and are characterized by high precipitation rates. I have spent a fair bit of time in the Torres, PNG, New Caledonia etc and seen these storms for myself both from the surface and from the air numerous times.
To assert that the fraction of ET which departs TOA at ET_U under such circumstances is proportionately lower than for the average cloud cover situation (temperate latitudes) is implausible to me. They are called ‘temperate’ for that very reason.
So far, I’m with Lindzen and Spencer/Braswell/Cristy etc (and Cohenite) on this.
All those with me so far, please step up to the plate to receive their Tenderfoot badges. All others, thank you for coming along, there is complimentary Coke and bikkies for you beside the door as you leave.
Steve
Thanks for taking the trouble to reply so carefully. I’ve taken on board everything you’ve said – not to believe or disbelieve, but to study and ponder. Thanks. But I can only take in one step at a time.
I still think it would be really helpful if you would present your work in a way that is accessible to the likes of WUWT readers – with the science and maths and without losing quality.
Dear Steve,
You write: “Look really, really closely (and very, very carefully) and you’ll find its mostly actually all clear sky data (or very close to it) which Miskolczi has used.”
Forgive my inferior intellect when I admit I don’t see how you reach that conclusion. I am not doubting you, just asking, please explain, in more detail in simple terms for the less intelligent like me, how you reach that conclusion.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher
Christopher.
Presumably you have read M&M04, M07, K&T97 and F,T&K09 and the two Zagoni presentations (the old one and the more recent one). All this stuff is freely available via the Internet. I also suggest you look at some of the key papers covered in the F,T&K09 REVIEW.
You can verify for yourself that as I said a true global all sky S_T (mean cloud cover ~60%) from the body of all mainstream literature of the last 20 years (!!!!) only fits into a band of about 31±10 W/m^2 (at say the one standard deviation level). There is no way that it has a mean value around 60 – 65 W/m^2 as Miskolczi/Zagoni tediously assert (for the gullible). Indeed the slides in Zagoni’s latest presentation ‘mess around’ with S_T values as high as 92 W/m^2. Those can only be an absolutely clear sky S_T (although Zagoni never explicitly says so of course).
No-one argues about the magnitude of S_U much – it has always been around 390 W/m^2. So now work out the range of real taus for yourself (presuming you can – so far I’ve never even seen a skerrick of basic real math from you).
If you don’t like this reply I suggest you go across to some more technically rigorous blogs such as CA and NM and (whether you check their archives or not), see how you fare there doing the ‘Duh’ finger on the bottom lip stuff. This issue and many others associated with Miskolczi Theory have been thrashed to death in other forums for two years now.
Beyond the above honest comments Christopher, at age 60 and after 30+ years of a hard (and still ongoing) science career I’m not going to play silly blog games with you. Too old, too busy. In fact I’d even rather be down the beach with my fishing rod and my foxy.
You have to take personal responsibility for getting on top of the known body of climate science.
Regards
Steve
Dear Steve,
Thank you for your reply.
Sometimes you seem to say that Dr Miskolczi gets his values about St = 62 W m^-2 by doing bad things to cloudy-sky data, and sometimes you seem to say he does it by using only clear-sky data. My question was because it seemed that you meant one could tell which by looking carefully at Figure 2 of M2007 to which I imagined Lucy Skywalker was referring, and that the answer was by using only clear-sky data. But then I wondered why you at other times seemed to think the answer is by doing bad things to cloudy-sky data.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher
To repeat:
Miskolczi’s ‘magic tau’ of 1.87 is actually only the true value at, and close to, zero cloud cover.
For every situation with some cloud his so-called S_T is actually a mixture of true LW IR transmission to TOA PLUS the LW IR emitted off the tops of clouds through release of latent heat (water lines) which escape through TOA.
Thus his (magic) tau is, for most sky situations, not even a real tau (in the accepted meaning of the term).
Christopher, I agree with SJT – nice fellow as you seem to be, you should have never written that article. Jennifer is too kind (to some people).
Definitely my very last post on this thread.
M007 says on p13 that ” the OLR is dependent on the surface temperature.” For a clear-sky situation [which was the intent of M007] this gives a non-variant Tau; effects of increases in CO2 are re-equilibrised by declines in RH and SH. The situation is different for clouds; on P 19 M007 says the effective cloud layer is about 2.05km with an OD of 1.47; these clouds,
“have minimal effect on the LW energy balance, and they seem to regulate the SW absorption of the system by adjusting the effective cloud cover ,B.”
This seems to be only 1/2 right; low clouds do reflect more SW but arguably they also have profound effect on LW energy balance. The clouds are themselves a substantial barrier to upward LW, S_U, and arguably A_A does = E_D underneath these clouds; the ’stalemate is broken by what Steve calls real E_U and M K; the transfer of latent heat to the clouds from the surface via evapo-transpiration, ET/K, reduces the surface temperature and decreases the S_U/A_A/E_D process under the clouds [and also F reaching the surface]; the transferred real E_U consists of LW emitted from the top of the clouds plus the atmospheric emissions in the water wave-lengths above the clouds. Because the low clouds have utilised more of the vapor in the atmosphere there is less ‘interference’ to the cloud emissions and the atmospheric emissions [real E_U] above the clouds; because there is more ‘interference’ below the clouds S_T declines but is compensated for by the extra real E_U above.
A couple of points; Tau would have to be greater than 1.87 below the clouds; logically, it would have to be less above; I assume Steve’s new figures for cloud dependent Tau reflect that. Secondly, what Steve has described is an Iris effect incorporating Spencer and Braswell’s hypothesis about low clouds being a cause of temperature moderation; they are not a [+ve] feedback. Essential empirical confirmations of this would include;
1 A decline in high water vapor and cloud
2 A correlating increase in low cloud
3 An increase in OLR at TOA. In respect of this final point I note the recent gerfuffle with Lindzen and the readjusted figures for OLR. Which begs the question; how do we get reliable empirical evidence?
Christopher Games says
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/the-work-of-ferenc-miskolczi-part-1/?cp=8#comment-100760
“The window [K&T1997] estimate 40 W m^-2 is however physically wrong because it is calculated for an unphysical bureaucratically asserted atmosphere the USST-76, and because even then it is not calculated correctly: they say “The amount leaving the atmosphere via the atmospheric window is somewhat ad hoc.” They can say that again.”
Ferenc Miskolczi says “When arguing about important global warming issues, nobody should use ad-hoc estimates. Accurate LBL codes are widely available for flux density computations.”
The Kiehl and Trenberth 1997 (K&T97) energy budget appears to be a total farce due to its use of the USST-76. They also incorrectly assume the atmospheric window to be the wavelengths 8–12 μm. This is also wrong because there is significant transmitted flux density in the far infrared and medium infrared spectral regions.
Ferenc Miskolczi has plotted the water vapour versus altitude profiles of the global average TIGR (GAT), the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory (NOAA) and the USST-76 here:
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/Ken/Water_Altitude.jpg
The horizontal axis of this chart is Log10, so the “4″ represents 10,000 ppmv water vapour content.
Note that the GAT profile almost overlays the NOAA profiles up to 300 mb altitude. These are independent determinations of the global average water vapour profiles. This should give us high confidence that these represent good estimates of water vapour content, and can be used in energy budget calculations.
The USST-76 profile is very different, and wrong. It should not be used for an energy budget.
Using the (wrong) USST-76 profile, the clear sky full spectrum transmitted flux St is 90.7 W/m2.
Using the accurate GAT or NOAA profiles, the clear sky full spectrum St is 58.7 W/m2 and 60.9 W/m2, respectively.
The USST-76 profile contains 1.26 prcm of water vapour. The GAT and NOAA profiles contains 2.61 prcm and 2.618 prcm, respectively. No wonder K&T gets too high an St when they leave out 52% of the most important greenhouse gas!
Ken,
It looks like there is a choice of problems here. You can calculate an accurate clear-sky figure, but we don’t have a clear sky (globally). Or you can do something “ad hoc” like K&T did – choose a window, and figure what goes through it, then make an allowance for clouds, which will always be approximate.
Re K&T, I think they did not really give it a lot of attention, because it is not properly part of their budget. True, they have shown it as a separate stream, but the budget item is the total flux. If some outgoing IR outside the window has escaped unabsorbed, that doesn’t change the energy flux balance.
When you cite St figures, what exactly are they? Does it aggregate the proportion of all photons at all IR frequencies that pass through with no absorption? I think that in this discussion generally there is a lot of comparing of figures that don’t represent the same thing.
Dear Nick Stokes,
Thank you for your valuable reply post on Niche Modeling. My post had suffered massive top-and-tail truncation by technical problems. I will reply there soon, with the benefit of your reply.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher
Nick, don’t you have any doubts at all? Ken has given you the heads up that K&T don’t rate with M for clear-sky figures; K&T have admitted they’re winging it for all-sky and Steve has dressed up M’s issues with clouds. Come on, admit it, you’ve backed the wrong horse:-)
“Nick, don’t you have any doubts at all? Ken has given you the heads up that K&T don’t rate with M for clear-sky figures; K&T have admitted they’re winging it for all-sky and Steve has dressed up M’s issues with clouds. Come on, admit it, you’ve backed the wrong horse:-)”
How do you get that? K&T tell you where they have to make approximations, based on the best science, M goes off into the realms of sheer imagination, such as his declaration that Mars proves his theory, when there is no proof at all, he has manufactured that data for that planet. There is no comparison.
I have been hitting the literature hard on cloud effects. This is where I have got my little spreadsheet model to (see below).
I have partly stuck with Miskolczi parameter terminology only because these are all very, very familiar to most of us here who have battled through Miskolczi Theory in recent years (possibly not Christopher though, haha ;-). The remaining terminology I’ve explained before and/or is self explanatory.
Each (%cloud cover) row energy balances (I hope) and all parameters are interlinked by relatively simple and empirically justifiable algorithms.
Most major parameter values (on at least 100%, 60% and zero cloud cover rows please note) can be found somewhere (or a value very close) within the mainstream literature – going all the way back to the mid-90s (e.g. Hartmann, 1994).
The ‘Virial Rule ‘ does reasonably well but Kirchoff falls over.
S_U/OLR ranges from about 1.5 (3/2; clear sky) to about 1.75 (7/4; 100% cloud) but seems to be close to 1.66 (5/3) around 60% cloud cover.
Interestingly, the Miskolczi so-called ‘tau’ actually decreases marginally with increasing cloud! Miskolczi’s ‘tau’ (= -ln(ET_U+S_T)/S_U) has the supposedly ‘magic’ value of 1.87 only somewhere around 10±10% cloud cover i.e. it approximates clear sky (as has seemed obvious in retrospect for quite some time now) but is a useless parameter in every respect (other than the curious fact (!) it does surreptitiously include a truly non-radiative parameter: ET_U).
I think a little spreadsheet like this has considerable value for getting our heads clear on what affects what, why and roughly by how much – particularly in respect of the all-important clouds.
%Cloud,Albedo(A),Fo,Fo(1-A),F,rTau,S_T,ET,ET_U,DT,rE_U,A_A,E_D,oE_U,S_U/oE_U,A_A/E_D,S_U,OLR,S_U/OLR,M-Tau
100,0.40,341,205,67,2.70,26,133,50,1,145,360,353,195,1.98,1.02,386,221,1.75,1.63
80,0.35,341,222,72,2.47,33,107,40,9,157,358,343,197,1.98,1.04,391,230,1.70,1.68
60,0.30,341,239,78,2.29,40,80,30,17,169,356,333,199,1.99,1.07,396,239,1.66,1.73
40,0.25,341,255,83,2.14,47,53,20,24,181,354,322,201,2.00,1.10,401,248,1.62,1.79
20,0.20,341,272,89,2.02,54,27,10,33,193,352,312,203,2.00,1.13,406,257,1.58,1.85
0,0.15,341,288,94,1.91,61,0,0,41,205,349,301,205,2.00,1.16,410,266,1.91
Last row should be:
0,0.15,341,288,94,1.91,61,0,0,41,205,349,301,205,2.00,1.16,410,266,1.54,1.91
Minor meaning clarification: ET_U is radiative (LW IR from tops of clouds escaping through TOA but its ORIGIN is purely non-radiative i.e. moist convection transferring latent heat from ground to (precipitating) clouds. As previously noted about 37.5% of ET (=ET_U) ends up being radiated through TOA (the remainder radiating in to the atmosphere including <50% back towards the surface to contribute to E_D).
It only takes a teeny, tiny bit of ‘Rithmetic’ to scare the ‘philosophers’ off…..(;-)
Dear Steve Short,
I am sorry you feel so bitter about this.
The reason as a natural philosopher I do not follow up on your spread-sheet arithmetic is that, although it seems to be very interesting to you, it does not address matters of interest to me, because it seems to me to be based on pseudo-data, not real factual data. Your general approach seems also to refer to authority rather than yourself explicitly state your case to us.
You boss us to read the literature about things we have already read, and in some cases commented on, you flood us with arithmetic and sarcasm, but you do not give us the explicit detailed information that we ask of you, that you say you know, although you have plenty of time to write to us extensively about things that you observe triumphantly do not interest us.
We have read and commented on some of your references, and we find them gravely lacking in relevant explicitness and gravely lacking in convincing detail.
We ask for all your explicit details in your own words of how your sources calculated St. I mean the details of the arithmetical methods of the sources of your “data” for St. How precisely do you, in your own words, define window radiation, both in general ordinary language and physical terms and in arithmetical method? Until you answer this, we will, I think, not be interested in your spread-sheet arithmetic.
It is admirable to see how interested you are in this important matter, and we look forward to your answers to our questions. It seems that you know far better than I do the area of literature that interests you, but I see more likely areas to read in and think about than the ones you boss me to search, about which you seem thoroughly expert, and could very easily and in explicit detail tell us all, perhaps just off the top of your head, if you chose, information that we repeatedly ask for from you in your own words. If you gave the explicit information I would check it.
Again I admire your knowledge and expertise, but I urge you to take positive account of the interest of your readers, instead of crowing with glee when you find they are not interested in what you write to them.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher Game
Oh phooey Chris. Why don’t you just read something truly meaningful like e.g. Lindzens 1990 (!) paper: ” Some uncertainities with respect to water vapor’s role in climate sensitivity” and work your way (up) from there. As I said before, the responsibility for your basic education in climate science resides with you – it is not up to other bloggers to patiently deal it out to you bit by bit
All this energy spent on waffle…..
Be a man, walk the walk.
Dear Steve Short,
Your response is entirely ad hominem.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher Game
Steve Short.
This isn’t a “forum”, it’s more like a Q&A thread that answers questions posed to the “original poster’s post”!
The “original poster” doesn’t seem to read our posts in the way that we originally intended them to be understood. Perhaps your points would be better understood in other fora (that’s where I’ve decided to go).
Best regards, suricat.
[...] http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/05/the-climatically-saturated-greenhouse-effect/ [...]
Interesting forum, though spreadsheets tend only to work in the world of academia where there are clear skies and cloudy skies irrespective of whether those skies are over ocean, desert, or rainforest. Clear skies over rainforest for example do not produce the same extremes of temperature as clear skies over desert. (Indeed, rainforests do have dry seasons, for example the dry season in what remains of the West African rainforest lasts from November to March).