Our lives, like the seasons, tend to be affected by an annual cycle dictated by the revolution of the Earth about the Sun that takes one year. We are inclined to celebrate events on this time scale, events like Christmas, which occurs each year towards the end of this cycle measured by the calendar year.
Where my daughter is now living, in Seattle, it is cold at this time of the year not because the Sun has moved away but because the Earth’s spin axis is titled with respect to its orbital plane. This is what causes the seasons. Seattle, at latitude 47°39′00.00″ North, reliably receives much less insolation – much less sunlight at this time of year because the North hemisphere of the Earth is tilted away from the Sun.
The Sun warms the Earth and can warm us, but it doesn’t much warm the atmosphere. Income solar radiation passes through the atmosphere without warming it.
When a cloud passes over head on a warm day, if we are paying attention, we will notice that it is immediately cooler. We will tend to feel immediately cooler because we are warmed directly by the Sun, it is not the case that the Sun first warms the atmosphere.
The Sun warms the Earth and some of this energy is radiated back towards space as long wave radiation which is a weaker form of radiation. Carbon dioxide will emit long wave radiation, first emitted from the Earth that was warmed by the Sun, which begs the question how carbon dioxide is going to warm the Earth?
The climate system is complex not just because many processes and exchanges occur, but because different components act on widely different timescales and interact in highly non-linear ways.
I will miss my daughter this Christmas, but I am grateful to have visited with her in November albeit for just a few days.
She took me to her new (new to us) local bookshop, Magus Books. I am always happy in a bookshop.
I hope you manage to do something that you enjoy this end of year; that you can take some time to read a book, or plant a flower, or enjoy a meal with friends and family.
Happy Christmas and best wishes for 2024 – the year ahead!
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The feature image shows me with Caroline and the Sun’s rays shining through, creating light and shadows in Seattle in November.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
All the best for you Jen. I reckon you’ve had an amazingly productive year in 2023, even jaded me learned some new old things about our politicians. Keep it up mate and thanks for your determination.
Lovely Christmas message Jennifer. Every best wish for 2024 Anne
Thanks Jen and for that matter all of the IPA team you keep me sane in a world full of Ideologues and Idiots. Keep up the good work.
Jennifer
All the very best for Christmas and into the New Year for yourself and family.
You are doing amazing things.
* Up against powerful forces who use other people’s money. Continue to do what you do, is the best response.
* Up against keyboard warriors,
such as ‘FriendlyJordies’ whose objective is to cause trouble, for the purpose of generating ‘clicks’. Continue to ignore people like him, is the best response.
Truth will eventually shine through.
FriendlyJordies creates his own trouble. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-21/nsw-friendlyjordies-youtube-alameddine-crime-firebombing-charge/103253550
Thank you for your newsletter as I celbrate the birth of a Jewish man actually born in late September was births was preceeded by Planitary or Solar events.
Ahh, merry Christmas to all.
How many Day/Night Intervals are there in One Earth/Solar Orbital Year?
The Earth always travels through 360 Degrees of Solar Orbit each Earth/Solar Orbital Year.
This equates to the Earth travelling through One Degree of Solar Longitude each Day/Night Interval. Thus, there are 12 equal ‘months’ of thirty Day/Night Intervals each.
There cannot be equal 7 Day/Night Interval ‘weeks’.
The Judeo-Christian/Gregorian Calendar of 1582,(which most of the planet practices to the present,) is a lie and a fabrication of the priests.
Best wishes Jennifer
Seattle? Somehow my daughters have wound up there and my sister&husband a little further north. I’ll probably be out there in May when the days are a lot longer!
Jennifer, you have spread light amongst the darkness
You seem to be at ‘cross-purposes’ with your understanding of ‘insolation’.
Clouds and water vapour are an atmospheric phenomenon.
Albedo (Reflectivity) is both atmospheric and terrestrial.
I draw your attention to the references to ‘insolation’, ‘albedo’ – and the Earth’s ‘Heat Budget’ in ‘Tomorrow’s Weather – 30 years on’….(p54)
It is of interest to note the effect of naturally occurring radioactivity on the ‘heat budget’.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TFFDXyhe5b0ZfLCiFt23W4PbubQaQfQo/view?usp=sharing
Thanks Don. I wrote: ‘he Sun warms the Earth and some of this energy is radiated back towards space as long wave radiation which is a weaker form of radiation. Carbon dioxide will emit long wave radiation, first emitted from the Earth that was warmed by the Sun, which begs the question how carbon dioxide is going to warm the Earth?’ And the answer is 🤷🏼♀️
The Earth radiates “black body” radiation which is has a broad spectrum, e.g. an incandescent lamp or our sun, only at much longer wavelengths. CO2, H2O, and other greenhouse gasses absorb some of the emitted wavelengths and either reemit them at the same wavelength in a random direction or transfer the energy by colliding with another molecule.
So that retards the escape of those wavelengths away from the Earth and also warms the atmosphere a little, those photons that make back to the surface are absorbed and that energy eventually reradiates anywhere in the black body spectrum.
That’s one reason why deserts cool off so quickly at night – little H2O leaves its wavelengths open and neither CO2 or H2O block all the radiation from the surface.
Thanks Ric.
You’ve told me of an environment that cools at night, deserts. Which environments are warmed by the atmosphere at night, and where?
I was going to say none, but there are a couple exceptions. However, losing the sun’s energy input at any time of day means you need some big sources to replace it.
One instance is a warm front comes through. This brings in a whole new air mass, but while warmer, it’s been cooling during the night, so it doesn’t really count.
Another is that clouds move in. They cover that wonderfully cold 3K background better than the greenhouse gases did. The water droplets and ice particles will radiate LWIR, but they should be colder than the ground surface, so instead of heating, they reduce the energy loss and things still chill, but slower than before, so they don’t really count either. Clouds also reflect light from the ground, but the energy balance will still be negative and the surface cools.
Basically, turn off the sun and it gets colder.
If we had a really, really, really long night, things get really weird when the nitrogen and oxygen starts condensing. That decreases the air pressure and wind will blow from the sunny side off the planet to temporarily bring the temperature up. We don’t have to worry about that! 🙂
Oh – a fun thing to play with (and do science!) is to aim a good infrared thermometer at the open sky – day or night – to get a sense of the amount of greenhouse gas (i.e. water vapor) in above you. “Good” is one with a low minimum temperature it can display.
Check out https://pages.mtu.edu/~scarn/teaching/GE4250/mims_BAMS11_PrecipWaterVaporIR.pdf
The “apparent temperature” the meters give of the open sky is a decent metric of how much heat is coming to Earth. If you prefer, how much warmth the cold sky is sucking out of the Earth. 🙂 You won’t see the 3K background temperature, but don’t be surprised to see -40°C on a clear night – or day. If it’s cloudy, you might get a decent measure of the cloud’s temperature. Warmer than -40°C, but cooler than the ground temperature.
BTW, I have a Kintrex meter, I think they’re out of business now.
Ric,
So, if the atmosphere can’t warm the earth, how can carbon dioxide cause global warming?
By impeding the flow of heat away from the Earth.
Nighttime low temperatures wind up being a bit higher than they would be otherwise. They stand out because the nighttime temperature inversion is very thin and involves little thermal mass. High temperatures could be also be warmer, but daytime convection and other processes mix the entire atmosphere. And of course, oceans have much more thermal mass. Tiny signal, lost in a sea of noise.
Another effect can be due to increased humidity. I think we can see this in the US’s corn growing region and areas brought into production by using irrigation. (Corn transpires a lot of water, increasing humidity.) Downwind regions cool down at night at one exponential rate until the it reaches the dew point. Then cooling has to overcome the “latent heat” released as dew or frost forms and further cooling continues at a slower rate. This effect does not depend on CO2 levels!
Another source of nighttime warming appears to be wind turbines. Their downstream turbulence prevents the nighttime inversion from forming so temperature can’t fall as as quickly. Also, the calm wind associated with the inversion doesn’t happen, so the wind blows all night long, drying out the ground and increasing the humidity.
Hence some people look to daytime high temperatures for a sign of warming. It would be better to use multiple temperatures throughout the day, but with the invention of max/min thermometers there’s very little historic data to employ.
A couple links:
https://wermenh.com/wind/images/vattenfall-image_300.jpg
I think this is the most important photo of a wind farm ever taken. It says more about turbulence than words can say.
https://wermenh.com/1816/1816-Weather.html
In 1815, the explosion of Mt. Tambora triggered global(?) cooling the next year. Most impacted were high temperate latitudes, apparently because arctic air masses brought chilly air. In New England they brought two freezes that left an indelible mark on the region. I found a temperature record based on readings at “6:00 AM, 1:00 PM, and 9:00 PM” and was used for an average temperature with counting the 9:00 PM temperature twice. We don’t measure temperature like we used to!
http://… not yet
I have some cute temperature traces showing the two rates of cooling on clear summer nights. I also have some winter ones in really dry air where so little frost forms that it doesn’t noticeably impede further cooling. I ought to get those on the web somewhere.
Hi Ric,
In Flanders we have a nice expression – English translation: “drowning the fish” – I guess it originally is a French expression which means (my adapted translation)
“The expression “noyer le poisson” refers to the fact of not addressing the central topic of a conversation, not getting to the point right away, but instead swerving around the topic by mentioning a multitude of superfluous details.”
So, please stay on topic and answer Jennifer’s original question “how carbon dioxide is going to warm the Earth?” without considering 2nd (or even higher) order effects and by only considering the main contributors cover at least 90% of what is really happening.
Thanks.
Enjoy the titled season.
Ric Werne.
“… deserts cool off quickly at night”.
The average maximum and minimum temperatures for Furnace Creek USA for:
June – max. 35.1C, min. 28.8C
July – max. 38.2C, min. 32.3C
Aug. – max. 36.9C, min. 30.8C
Not much cooling a night during summer at Death Valley!
Interesting that commenters overwhelmingly support Jenn and the IPA noting they are all about “truth”. Especially given that the IPA’s position is strongly suppported by the fossil fuel industry while ignoring 97 percent of trained, actual, climate scientists.
Ross, I would have expected a bigger range at Death Valley. There’s a decent chance the soil keeps the temperature higher and perhaps radiation from the mountains keeps things warm too – on a long bicycle tour mostly in Oregon, I could feel the heat from columnar basalt above the valley we were in one night.
July ranges for other places I’ve been to (temps in Fahrenheit, range in Celsius):
https://weatherspark.com/y/2636/Average-Weather-in-Flagstaff-Arizona-United-States-Year-Round
Flagstaff AZ: 80/53°F: 15C° – High desert, cryptobiotic soil outside of town. That’s an insulating layer that Death Valley may not have.
https://weatherspark.com/y/150296/Average-Weather-in-Grand-Canyon-National-Park-Arizona-United-States-Year-Round
Grand Canyon National Park: 84/50°F: 19C° – A ways north of Flagstaff. Either near the rim or at a small airport nearby. Minor urban heat island effect.
https://weatherspark.com/y/1775/Average-Weather-in-John-Day-Oregon-United-States-Year-Round
John Day OR: 87/56°F: 17C° – High desert in Oregon. Passed through on the bicycle tour. Oh, it’s a bigger town than I was thinking of https://wermenh.com/biketour/restof_or.html
https://weatherspark.com/y/26388/Average-Weather-in-Concord-New-Hampshire-United-States-Year-Round
Concord NH: 81/61°F: 11C° – Not desert – but it’s home. Fairly humid and cloudy. This is nearly twice the swing at Death Valley!
I’ll ask my brother if he knows what gives with Death Valley, he got a geology degree in Flagstaff, but I doubt he’s spent much time, if any, at Death Valley.
My brother has little to add:
“I would guess altitude is the main factor. Most of the western deserts with big swings are also pretty high. Death Valley also has more vertical relief than anywhere – 14000 ft range to the west 11000 ft range to the east radiating heat into the crucible.”
Oh yeah, getting back to CO2. Death Valley is some 180 feet (60 meters) below sea level. The high desert places we referred to are at 1,000 – 1,500 meters elevation. That puts them above 10% or so of the atmosphere, and 10% of the CO2, and the thinner air has a lower specific heat! However, Concord NH is around 100m, insignificant compared to Death Valley.
I for one congratulate Jennifer on all she has done this past year and many more before that and look forward to continued gems from her in the New Year. Having eyes and ears on the ground (or rather in the water) to make informed observations is invaluable. I have no doubt we will continue to be pestered by nincompoops whose knowledge of science or indeed much else is clearly minimal and the intention is to be disruptive but, judging from recent fruitless attempts by others to engage them in more sensible dialogue, it is probably best just to ignore them.
In answer to Jenny’s question, “Life on Earth depends on energy coming from the Sun. About half the light energy reaching Earth’s atmosphere passes through the air and clouds to the surface, where it is absorbed and radiated in the form of infrared heat. About 90% of this heat is then absorbed by greenhouse gases and re-radiated, slowing heat loss to space.”
https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
Blep,
The 97% agreement fib was outed a long, long time ago. Please do try and keep up. For those impugning IPA, and our host, it was the NGO/Government funded academics who deceitfully ignored the data and pushed the untruth that the GBR is dying.
Jennifer, spending time with family is marvelous, no mstter the celebrstion. Congratulations for your daughter finding a home in Seattle. Next visit, please consider an excursion to experience Texas hospitality.
Merry Christmas belated), and Happy New Year. May 2024 be filled with wonder, health and happiness.
“It’s important to remember that scientists always focus on the evidence, not on opinions. Scientific evidence continues to show that human activities (primarily the human burning of fossil fuels) have warmed Earth’s surface and its ocean basins, which in turn have continued to impact Earth’s climate. This is based on over a century of scientific evidence forming the structural backbone of today’s civilization.
NASA Global Climate Change presents the state of scientific knowledge about climate change while highlighting the role NASA plays in better understanding our home planet. This effort includes citing multiple peer-reviewed studies from research groups across the world,1 illustrating the accuracy and consensus of research results (in this case, the scientific consensus on climate change) consistent with NASA’s scientific research portfolio.
With that said, multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals1 show that climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.”
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
Holding out for immaculate science is quaint. And anti-factual. Requoting motivated sources does not make them less wrong. Declining to quantify “effect” implies less than good faith. Dismissing the many scientists, including the host of this blog, who have well documented the problems of the consensus indicates a rather reactionary anti-scientific perspective.