Our Watery Earth Responds to Warming with Increased Water Cooling -- Water is the Enemy of AGW

The claim that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to catastrophic warming is based on the UN IPCC claim that back-radiation from carbon dioxide absorption of infra-red radiation warms the Earth's surface.  This results in increased water vapor in the atmosphere and that causes an even greater increase in the temperature than did the increased carbon dioxide.  Even the gigantically exaggerated warming by the carbon dioxide back-radiation effect (see here and here) requires the proponents of this alarmist hypothesis to conjure up a much stronger positive feedback warming due to increased water vapor in order to create anything even remotely "catastrophic."

It has very long been known that higher humidity causes a reduction in the atmospheric lapse rate (the temperature gradient) and therefore a reduction in the surface temperature.  There is also a strong cooling of surfaces when water evaporates due to the very high latent heat of evaporation of water.  These are facts that have long been well-known, but which are greatly played down by the proponents of the wild and woolly scare story of catastrophic man-made global warming or AGW.  These are certainly very strong negative feedbacks to any warming of the Earth's surface due to any cause, whether increased solar radiation or a hypothetical increase in back-radiation due to increased carbon dioxide.

But what is the effect of clouds formed by increased water vapor due to a hypothetical warming of the surface due to increased carbon dioxide or due to any actual warming?  Magnus Cederlof examined the CERES satellite cloud cover data to see how it correlates with the yearly variation in global irradiance.  He also examined the separate data sets for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.  The data he presents is very informative, though he presents it in an article with a number of serious errors in it.  One of the more serious errors is his claim that his data provides strong evidence that the Svensmark theory of solar effects on the cosmic ray nucleation of clouds is correct.  These errors aside, his plots of cloud cover versus solar radiation are extremely useful.

The data generally shown on cloud cover for the entire globe seems to provide a difficult to interpret effect, but one that implies there is no simple correlation between solar radiation and cloud cover.

The data for the entire globe, with the solar insolation given in blue [the units are W/m2, not kWh/m2] and the percentage of cloud cover averaged from 2000 to 2014 given in red, is:

Note that solar irradiance is actually greatest in the winter, with January being the month of maximum irradiance.  This is because the Earth's orbit is elliptical and the Earth is closest to the sun on about 3 January (orbital perihelion) and furthest on about 4 July (orbital aphelion).  If the Earth's axis of daily rotation were parallel to the axis of its orbit about the sun, January would be summer for the entire Earth.  But in January, the axis of the daily rotation of the Earth in the Northern Hemisphere is tilted to point away from the sun.  This reduces the fraction of the total Earth-incident solar radiation which is incident on the Northern Hemisphere.  Because the tilt of the Earth's axis of daily rotation has such a large effect, it should be interesting to plot the cloud cover versus solar insolation data for each hemisphere separately.  This is just what Magnus Cederlof did.  The data for the Northern Hemisphere [correcting the radiation units to W/m2] is:

The greater the solar irradiance of the Northern Hemisphere in the plot above, the greater the cloud cover.

The data plotted by Magnus Cederlof for the Southern Hemisphere correcting the irradiance units to W/m2]:

It is now clear that as the Earth warms in either hemisphere, there is a reaction by water to that warming to cause an increase in hemispherical cloud cover.

Magnus Cederlof then correctly makes the critical point that one feedback response of water to an increase in Earth temperature is an increase in cloud cover, which cools the surface.  Thus, increased temperature is counteracted by a negative feedback by clouds and not the positive feedback proclaimed with great certainty by the falsely claimed "settled science of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming."

So there we have it.  When the Earth's surface temperature rises, water causes three powerful negative feedbacks to reduce that temperature rise.  These are:

• Cooling by the evaporation of water, which increases water vapor in the atmosphere.
• Increased water vapor reduces the lapse rate in the troposphere, dropping temperatures in the lower atmosphere.
• Cloud cover increases, preventing solar radiation from reaching the Earth's surface and warming it.

In conclusion, as I have shown over and over, the warming effects of carbon dioxide were always exaggerated hugely.  The cooling effects of carbon dioxide have been ignored, though those are now the dominant effects.  Even if one bought the argument made by the UN IPCC, the greatly exaggerated warming effect of carbon dioxide had to be supplemented by a much larger claimed warming feedback by water vapor to be even remotely scary.  Much of that claim has been well-known to be false for a long time and now we see very clearly that each of the principal effects of water in response to any surface temperature increase is a cooling effect.  Water is a powerful stabilizer for the surface temperature of the Earth.  It moderates night to day variations, seasonal variations, solar irradiance variations, and would moderate any hypothetical temperature increase caused by atmospheric CO2.

It is mind-boggling that the U.S. government has spent about $100 billion on climate and climate effect research and development in the name of such incredibly wrongheaded science.  The United Nations and most of the European nations have also acted on this "science" house of cards in a similar manner.  The cost of doing business and the cost of living for hundreds of millions have been sadly boosted in the name of this nonsense.  Millions of people have either lost their jobs or were prevented from getting the jobs that might have been created.  Terrible wrongs and harms have been perpetrated on billions of human beings both by preventing them from enjoying their individual freedoms and by decreasing their material living conditions.  The benefits to humans throughout the world that would have accrued had millions of people used their time more productively and had capital been more rationally invested have been trashed.  Instead, governments enjoyed exercising more power over individuals.  Dishonest politicians, some dishonest businessmen, and some dishonest scientists enriched themselves by taking advantage of this baseless scare.  The vast majority of mankind has nothing to show for it but losses.

The Earth Surface Temperature without Greenhouse Gases: The Shade Effect of Infra-Red Active Gases

It is commonly said that because the radiative power from the Earth system into space is the same as that of a black body with a temperature of about 255K and the observed average temperature of the Earth’s surface is about 14.5ºC or 287.65K, the surface of the Earth is nearly 33K warmer than it would be if there were no greenhouse effect.  The greenhouse effect is said to be due to infra-red active gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane gas, and nitrous oxide.

The problem with this argument is that while the Earth system is in radiative equilibrium with space, the surface of the Earth is not.  Thus, there is a complex relationship between the equilibrium temperature of the Earth’s surface and its equivalent radiative temperature as a black body radiator.  Some of the radiation into space is direct from the Earth’s surface, but most of it is from the infra-red active gases of the many layers of the atmosphere.

I have previously shown that the infra-red gases probably produce more cooling than warming.  Those arguments were not simple enough for most people to follow and they did not show what the amount of cooling of the Earth’s surface actually was.  I am going to show a surprisingly simple proof in this article that the infra-red gases, commonly called greenhouse gases, cause the surface temperature of the Earth to be much cooler than it would be if our atmosphere had no infra-red active gases in it.

Consider the following NASA energy budget of the Earth:

As I have discussed in an article called The Unsettled Earth Energy Budget, one should add a small amount of energy absorbed by the Earth’s surface due to back-radiation from the atmosphere.  My estimate for that back-radiation is about 1 to 2% of the solar insolation radiation at the top of the atmosphere.  Since other NASA Earth energy budgets put the amount of energy absorbed from the direct solar insolation at 48 or 49%, let us only add the 1% back-radiation amount to the 51% absorbed solar insolation shown above.  In 2010, the average top of the atmosphere solar insolation was 1365.8 W/m².  The average solar insolation over the day at a spot on the rotating Earth is one-quarter this amount.

At equilibrium, the power absorbed by the Earth’s surface equals the power emitted by the Earth’s surface.  If the Earth’s surface were an interface with vacuum, the total emitted power is given by the Stefan-Boltzmann Law and we have the equilibrium condition:

P_abs = ε σ T⁴,

Where ε is the Earth’s surface emissivity, σ = 5.6697 x 10^-8 W/m²K⁴, and T is the average surface temperature of the Earth.  Thus we have:

P_abs = (1365.8/4)(0.52) = ε (5.6697 x 10^-8 W/m²K⁴)(287.65K)⁴

Solving the equation for ε, we find:

ε = 0.457

This is an emissivity somewhat less than half what most commonly is claimed for the Earth’s surface.

It is common to claim that emissivity is nearly black body-like, with 0.95 < ε < 0.98.  The claim is also made that like a near black body, the Earth both absorbs and emits a continuum of infra-red radiation in the mid- and far-infra-red ranges characteristic of a black body radiator with a temperature somewhere between 220 and 360K.  It is claimed that the absorptivity and the emissivity are matched as they would be in a black body radiator.  Yet, infra-red spectroscopy in the laboratory on common laboratory FTIR spectrometers show that the absorption spectra of water, minerals, soil, and plant materials are not at all similar to that of a black body.  The very characteristic spectra of these materials are used to identify them or similar materials.  Yet, there are those who claim that the emissivity of water which covers 71% of the Earth’s surface is in this near black body range and that so are the emissivity and absorptivity of most organic materials, such as plant materials.  Such a claim is inconsistent with the NASA Earth energy budget shown in the diagram above.

Now, we will make the assumption that the Earth’s surface characteristics remain the same, so its emissivity remains 0.457, but that we eliminate all of the infra-red active gases, commonly called greenhouse gases.  Now in reality, the emissivity would change under such a condition, but that is a result that we can separate from having clouds and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.  It is the presence of clouds and greenhouse gases that are said by careless scientists to cause the greenhouse effect and make the Earth’s surface nearly 33K warmer than it would otherwise be.  What would the surface temperature of the Earth really be without these gases?

To find out, we must ask how the solar insolation and any back-radiation from the atmosphere which are absorbed by the Earth’s surface change.  The back radiation issue is clear.  There is none without the infra-red active gases called greenhouse gases.  Now we examine the solar insolation absorbed by the surface.  The 20% reflected by clouds is no longer reflected by the vanished clouds.  The 3% of solar radiation absorbed by clouds is no longer absorbed.  Of the 16% of solar insolation absorbed by the atmosphere, let us suppose that 6% was absorbed by greenhouse gases as a low-ball estimate.  Now the NASA diagram above showed that 51% of the solar insolation was absorbed by the surface and 4% was reflected.  So, without greenhouse gases, the solar insolation incident upon the surface would be about 51% + 4% + 20% +3% + 6% = 84%.  If 4% was reflected from the surface out of 55% incident, then assuming the same reflectivity the amount reflected without so-called greenhouse gases would be (4/55)(84%) = 6%.  The solar insolation power density absorbed by the surface would then be (84 - 6)% = 78%.

The surface temperature can now be calculated for the surface of the Earth under the condition of no so-called greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and with the elimination of clouds.  We now see that this temperature is given by the following equation:

P_abs = (1365.8/4) (0.78) = (0.457) (5.6697 x 10^-8 W/m²K⁴) T⁴

T = 318.41K

The effect of having no infra-red active gases in the atmosphere is then a surface temperature which is 30.76K higher than the observed average surface temperature of 287.65K!  In other words, the so-called greenhouse gases have a very strong cooling effect upon the Earth’s surface temperature, which is of nearly the same strength as the commonly claimed warming effect on the Earth system as a whole is.  Let us be clear that the claimed 33K warming is actually neither a surface warming of that amount or even an Earth system warming of that amount because the Earth system is not actually a black-body radiator.

The main part of this cooling effect is provided by clouds, but there is also some absorption of incoming solar insolation by infra-red active gases in the atmosphere.  Clouds and the infra-red active gases reduce the radiation absorbed by the surface from about 78% to about 52% and this provides a strong cooling effect.

If the Earth system as a whole has some kind of greenhouse warming based upon a posited black body radiator equivalent model that does not mean that the surface of the Earth is warmer.  In fact, I have just proven that it is actually about 31K cooler than it would be if there were no infra-red active gases in the atmosphere.  Because it is the surface temperature of the Earth that has much the greatest effect upon the fortunes of mankind, it is very deceptive to claim that the Earth is 33K warmer than it would otherwise be because of so-called greenhouse gases such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane gas, and nitrous oxide.

The reality is that the infra-red active gases act more like an umbrella providing the Earth’s surface with shade to keep it cool than like a greenhouse to keep it warmer.  It is a much more realistic description of the infra-red active gases to call them shade gases, rather than greenhouse gases.

Solar Wind Flux Is Weakest Since Accurate Measurements Started

The Sun's solar wind provides a protective shield around the Sun from the solar wind of other stars.  This million mile-per-hour solar wind is at a minimum compared to all other measurements since accurate measurements have been performed, starting with the Space Age.  This plasma of charged particles cannot sweep other charged particles in the solar winds of other stars away once it comes into equilibrium with them in the heliopause.  The boundary of the heliopause should be shrinking as the solar wind diminishes, as measured by the satellite Ulysses in its polar orbit about the Sun in 2007.  This means that cosmic rays will no longer be shielded from Earth as effectively as they have been in the recent past.

The solar wind pressure and the magnetic field embedded in the solar wind were measured to have decreased by 20%.  The field strength at the spacecraft had decreased by 36%.  These are much bigger changes than the Sun's common irradiance changes of about 0.11% in amplitude or twice that from highest to lowest intensity.  Those who like to claim that the Sun is not the big actor in climate change, seem to believe that the only source of energy deposited by the Sun on the Earth is the direct irradiance.  It has been noted recently that cosmic rays nucleate cloud formation very effectively and clouds commonly provide net cooling of the Earth.  If the solar wind has dropped by 20%, then the shielding of cosmic rays may have dropped greatly and there may be much more cooling cloud formation on Earth.  In addition, there should be some deposition of energy in the Earth's atmosphere due to the interaction of the solar wind magnetic field with the Earth's magnetic field and due to the flux of charged particles themselves.  So, the 20% drop in the solar wind may have a large impact on the Earth's climate.

Perhaps contrary to the catastrophic AGW alarmists, it is not the case that man's emissions of CO2 have caused the temperature increases of the late 20th Century, because they claim they do not see natural forces capable of providing the necessary degree of climate change.  Perhaps there are natural forces they do not yet understand very well at all.

John Holdren Claims New Ice Age Likely

John Holdren, Obama's Science Czar, believed that the earth was cooling due to urban air pollution, dust from agriculture, and volcanic ash. He said this caused a 0.2 degree C cooling over the last 25 years. He noted that this seems small, but only a 4C temperature drop is needed to start a new ice age. He said that a 1% increase in low altitude cloud cover would decrease the temperature by 0.8C. We are feeding this effect by adding man-made condensation nuclei to the atmosphere with jet contrails and by other means. Finally, we are changing the earth's reflectivity by urbanizing, deforestation, and enlarging deserts. This is what he wrote in Global Ecology: Readings Toward a Rational Strategy for Man in 1971. The sixth chapter of the book was his essay with Paul Ehrlich, called Overpopulation and the Potential for Ecocide.

You can read a bit more about it at Climate Depot. Marc Morano reminded everyone about this. John Holdren was also one of the first to become an alarmist claiming the likelihood of man-made global warming, which is why he holds his position with Obama. Marc Morano evaluates him thusly:

My personal opinion is that Holdren is a “doom peddler” who latches onto the nightmare-scenario-du-jour — overpopulation, nuclear holocaust, global cooling, global warming (all of which he’s trumpeted at various points in his career) — and then wildly exaggerates it in order to scare the public into adopting his politicized “solutions.”

Holdren does indeed seem to fit that modus operandi very well. While Chicken Little was quickly seen to be ridiculous, John Holdren always seems to escape that fate to rise Phoenix-like once again to scare the public with another doomsday scenario. Somehow the doomsday just never arrives, but meanwhile, Holdren gets lots of attention. He is clearly an effective gloom and doom con-artist, which makes him just the kind of man one would expect Obama to draw upon for advice.

Clouds, Aerosols, and Cosmic Rays

I am reading the fascinating book Heaven and Earth global warming the missing science by Ian Plimer. Here are a few fascinating statements, minus the many footnotes:

Clouds reflect 60% of the Sun's radiation. A change of just 1% in cloudiness of planet Earth could account for all of the 20th Century warming. However, IPCC computers don't do clouds. Fine particles in the atmosphere are the nuclei for condensation of water vapour into the water droplets that form low-level clouds.

It is the low-level clouds that have the greatest cooling effect.

Sulphuric acid aerosols formed from dimethyl sulphide released from micro-organisms in the oceans affect low-level cloud formation over a very large area because the oceans cover 70% of the Earth's surface. Dimethyl sulphide reacts with water and sunlight to produce sulphuric acid droplets. This reaction is accelerated by lightning in a process called ion seeding. Sea spray provides very small grains of sodium chloride from storm waves, especially in winter at latitudes 40 - 60 [degrees]. Sporadic volcanic eruptions, hot gas vents and hot springs release large amounts of sulphurous gases into the atmosphere. Various sulphur gases in the atmosphere combine with water and form sulphuric acid droplets. These droplets are also the nuclei for low-level cloud formation.

Apparently, man is not the primary source of sulfuric acid in the atmosphere! Who would have thought, given all the environmentalist noise on this subject over the years? There are good reasons for man to clean up the sulfur emissions from smokestacks and we have done a good job of that in the developed countries, by and large. But it is good to know that much of the sulfuric acid in the atmosphere has natural origins.

Not long ago, James Hanson complained on several occasions that the "one thing" that they did not really know about global warming was the effect of aerosols. This one thing is a huge thing. It seems likely to me that as the oceans warm, the micro-organisms that create dimethyl sulfide [being American, I conserve my letters and favor brevity in spelling] will fluorish and produce more of it. So, if we were to suppose that man's CO2 emissions caused warming then the warmed oceans would produce more micro-organisms and these would produce more dimethyl sulfide, resulting in more sulfuric acid droplets, and then more cloud cover. In other words, the earth's response to increased CO2 would be a negative feedback in which CO2 warming would be offset by more cloud cover. Recent studies have at least shown a negative feedback, though I do not know that it is due to the effect I am hypothesizing. The UN IPCC computer models not only do not do clouds, but they almost always assume a positive feedback to warming caused by CO2 emissions, which exaggerate the degree of warming.

The other elephant in the room that the IPCC computer models ignore is the effects of solar radiation variations and activity, which also change the flux of cosmic rays reaching the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays cause ions to form which nucleate clouds. Ian Plimer notes:

The correlation between the Earth's magnetic field and rainfall in the tropics can only be explained if cosmic rays have an influence on the formation of clouds.

The observed variation of 3 - 4% of global cloud cover during Solar Cycle 22 was strongly correlated with the cosmic ray flux. This, in turn, is related to solar activity and the Earth's magnetic field. The weaker the solar activity, the more cosmic rays strike the Earth and the more abundant is cloud cover in the lower atmosphere. The effect is greater at high latitudes because of the shielding effect on the Earth's magnetic field on high-energy charged particles. We must also be mindful of the fact that the Earth's magnetic field constantly changes.

Again, I am commenting. The Earth's magnetic field lines deflect cosmic rays better where they more nearly parallel the Earth's surface. Where they descend to intersect the Earth's surface, cosmic rays can more readily follow magnetic flux lines to enter the atmosphere. This is why higher latitudes both North and South, are more irradiated by the cosmic rays. The changes in the Earth's magnetic field will also change the boundary of those latitudes most affected by the cosmic rays.

I strongly suspect that little is known about the effect of the Earth's changing magnetic field interacting with the Sun's changing magnetic field to create major flows of energy in the Earth's core. There must be great variations in the temperatures of molten materials and the heat flow from them to the Earth's crust. Those same heat vents in the ocean floors that yield sulfur also provide some heating of the oceans. When a strong Earth magnetic field interacts with a strong Sun magnetic field, one would expect that a greater stirring of the Earth's molten core will result. This in turn should mean hotter materials coming into contact with the Earth's crust and added heat being dumped into it. Because the crust is thinnest in the oceans, the heating effect will more immediate and greatest there. Such effects may also have impact on plate tectonics and contribute to the frictional energy generated as plates grind against one another. Frankly, I would not be surprised if such unknown effects are as important as the effect of likely further additions of CO2 to the atmosphere.

In light of the known temperature history of the world, the hypothesis that man-made emissions of CO2 were causing a catastrophic rise of temperatures should have had a very high burden of proof imposed on it. When it came to be understood that the past increases in CO2 atmospheric concentrations followed the temperature rise of the oceans, that hypothesis should have been seen to be in great trouble. When it was further observed that the temperature profile with altitude in the atmosphere was terribly wrong in the IPCC computer models, the hypothesis should have been kaput. But worst of all, the critical nature of cloud cover is apparent to any Earthling. How on Earth could the UN IPCC make such a big deal of their CO2 concentration computer models and future climate scenarios, when they could not begin to understand cloud cover?

The answer is that they had an agenda more important than science. Their agenda was always to do whatever it took to gain world power as the primary world government.

Computer Model Fails to See Cosmic Ray Climate Effect

Jeffrey Pierce and Peter Adams of Carnegie Mellon University published a paper on a computer model they constructed which failed to show a cosmic ray effect strong enough to effectively produce the low altitude clouds required by the 1997 theory of physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigel Friis-Christensen of the Technical University of Denmark as a cloud nucleation response caused by cosmic ray flux. Svensmark and Friis-Christensen showed data offering an excellent correlation of this low cloud cover and the cosmic ray flux. This has come under scrutiny because it is a contender as an alternative theory to man-made CO2 in the atmosphere causing global warming. A review in Science called "Study Challenges Cosmic Ray - Climate Link" of the Pierce and Adams paper is being used to cast doubts on the cosmic ray effect on cloud cover and hence on the climate. Doug Hoffman at http://theresilientearth.com puts the computer model paper and the review in Science in context here.

A paper by Vieira and da Silva in 2006 showed that there was a similar high correlation of southern hemisphere cosmic ray flux with cloud cover.

Hoffman's comments on the SKY Experiment and the upcoming CLOUD Project to test and measure the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation using aerosol and cloud chambers are most interesting. These experiments are real attempts by physicists in CERN projects to actually study the relation of cosmic rays to cloud nucleation effects. The SKY Experiment has produced preliminary verification of the effect and the bigger CLOUD Project is now underway with widespread backing and involvement. Meanwhile, Pierce and Adams have fed numbers into a computer program where the physics is not yet known and concluded that there is no relation between low altitude clouds and cosmic rays! When the physics is understood, it will make sense to construct and use computer models to try to see what the effects on climate will be. But, how can you do this and expect meaningful results before the physics is known? Apparently in the church of radical environmentalism this can be done.

This failure to understand that getting the physics right is essential to getting meaningful computer modeling results, should cause the rational reader to hold these climate models in low esteem.