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There is no missing heat in that scenario. The only heat that needs to be accounted for is the 0.5W/m2 imbalance at TOA because if that number is accurate then the only place it can be going is in the ocean.

A two part question on Energy imbalance .

Can we have a TOA imbalance of -0.5 W/m2? If not why not.

ANSWER we are neither a heat source or a heat sink

Energy in is energy out. In other words we cannot have a TOA imbalance because the TOA is where the energy in equals the energy out.

We can have a warmer atmosphere or ocean without having to violate that principal, but only if the input of energy [Sun] varies due to distance [Summer/Winter locally] North and south hemispheres depending on the elliptical orbit of the sun. Or due to intensity [solar Cycles]
In effect the temperature we have is  balance of  the energy in the ocean, land surface and air. In a mathematical model  where the air and sea remained fixed the amount of heating up, the amount of clouds, would run like a clock  and stay the same from 1 24 hour period to the next apart from the energy input.

In our world of currents and Coriolis forces and winds, erosion volcanoes etc where the heat is varies but if one area becomes hotter SOI, PDO, El Nino etc another becomes colder.

Adding CO2  to the air does not make the total energy in or out change one iota. It does modify where the heat is found and this should be more in the atmosphere [ Gates, Droedge, Mosher etc]. The air should be warmer Gates and when it isn’t for 16 years it is indeed a travesty for your argument and the IPCC.

What it implies is that the earth’s atmosphere is a lot more resistant to intemperate changes  than most people here are prepared to realise.

Over the course of a year the average solar radiation arriving at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere at any point in time is roughly 1366 watts per square metre[3][4] (see solar constant)

The Sun’s rays are attenuated as they pass through the atmosphere, thus reducing the irradiance at the Earth’s surface to approximately 1000 W /m2 for a surface perpendicular to the Sun’s rays at sea level on a clear day.

, the sunbeam hitting the ground at a 30° angle spreads the same amount of light over twice as much area

Ignoring clouds, the daily average irradiance for the Earth is approximately 250 W/m2 (i.e., a daily irradiation of 6 kWh/m2)

The insolation of the sun can also be expressed in Suns, where one Sun equals 1000 W/m2 at the point of arrival, with kWh/m2/day expressed as hours/day

  1. Making stuff up here as I go.
    R Gates, R Pielke on ocean heat.
    No one has said what the average heat of the 700-2000 meter level is but a wild guess would say in the tropics [sea surface temp up to 25 degrees centigrade] and Arctic ocean [sea surface temp 3 degrees C] that the deeper level would be about 3-5 degrees centigrade. I.e not much difference at all at depth.
    There are no deep hot ocean currents, only cold ones and colder ones.
    If the hot currents ever come to the surface they will cool it not heat it [See D Springer earlier on heat sinks and why you cannot heat a warmer body with a colder body] as they are cooler than the surface air . The second thing is heat conducts both ways so at anyone time the hot surface water is not only heating the air above but heating the water below. Which has a lot more molecules than air for the heat to transfer to hence the heat diffusion will for most purposes be downwards by large orders of magnitude.
    That is not to say that the surface water might not heat up to 30 degrees C or more in the tropics but it cannot make the air hotter than the water and the water will almost always be colder [please leave out objections like hot air over land blowing out to sea/ night time etc which are not relevant to this argument ] than the air.

  2. Pekka Pirilä TOA can be a term for the level where radiative energy out equals radiative energy in. Whether one pumps CO2 into the air or not does not change the amount of energy in by the sun , nor the energy radiated out which is at an equilibrium.
    Yes the air at surface levels can be warmer but not because the CO2 is trapping more heat. If that were the case the earth would get warmer and warmer, The AGW argument of climate sensitivity and you might as well argue a sensitivity of 30 degrees instead of 3 degrees.
    The reflective surface of the earth is a strange combination of solid liquid and gas. At some point incident radiation is stopped then emitted back.
    It matters not whether it is a solid metal spacecraft a meteor or moon they all radiate the heat back. If an atmosphere with increasing CO2 is hotter than one without Then somewhere else in the system becomes colder. ie if the CO2 radiates more heat back to space then the oceans and land will not heat up as much.
    Hence there is no radiative imbalance just a poor understanding on our part of the actual way the energy movements occur

  3. Sea levels rising reminds me I left a tap running overnight last year?
    Surely not.
    If the ocean measurements were reliable, which they are not yet proven to be, then the ocean heat content rising would be true but it would mean CO2 was not the cause as there has been a hiatus. What a conundrum.

The mystery of the melting Antarctic

The mystery of the melting Antarctic

Actually 3 mysteries in one.

The measurement of the actual amount of ice on land or at sea is extremely difficult. While we can measure the extent of the land cover very accurately the depth of the ice is very difficult to estimate. Complicating this is the possibility of snow cover which is not as dense as ice but adds to the difficulty in measuring the actual ice thickness and the amount of unfrozen water under the ice in rivers and lakes which does the same.

More complicated is the measurement at sea due to the difficulty in assessing ice edge boundaries and even more so when there are ice floes and packs with clear water in between. In the Arctic it is possible to get measurements by submarine  and icebreakers to give some idea of depth

Conventional measurement depends on using multiple yearly measurements of extent and depth from multiple sources  and combining the best estimates into a volume if ice with quite significant margins for error. The most inputs come from arctic ice measurement,  and are represented by PIOMAS. A second measurement is done by Cryosat 2. The estimated volumes differ quite markedly at times.

In the Antarctic  it is impossible to actually measure the depth accurately, hence a different method GRACE has been developed which works on estimating the gravitational differences  detected by 2 satellites to determine the mass of ice above the land contributing to the gravitational fields. The volume of ice estimated in this way is potentially extremely inaccurate  though  not inexact as it is very dependent on the coefficient in the formula to give the volume of ice. A smidge up and there is more ice in Antarctica, a smidge down and there is less ice in Antarctica.

At different times using the gravitational measurement  there have been suggestions of increasing ice volume in Antarctica but with further interpretation the GRACE measurements state that Antarctica is losing ice volume.

Hence the mystery. Antarctic sea ice has been increasing in the main for 30 years and is well above the average for the last 30 years. Ipso facto the Antarctic itself  should have been definitely colder than normal in recent times. Hence there must be more not less ice in Antarctica.

Sea ice extent is dependent more on the coldness of the water rather than the air temperature itself, hence the second mystery. Measurements of the Antarctic water temperature claim that it has been warming over recent years. This should have resulted in less sea ice extent as predicted by IPCC models.

The third mystery is how has the Antarctic been losing ice volume. This is unexplainable by theory and fact. The Antarctic is too cold for the ice to melt and evaporate from the surface. The glaciers are not getting smaller and shrinking back in from the coast. This would involve less calving  from the glaciers which would in turn be smaller.  As demonstrated by the recent Spirit of Mawson expedition there is more not less ice along most of the coast of Antarctica.

If an adequate explanation cannot be given for how the ice is mysteriously disappearing from Antarctica then attention should be turned to the degree of accuracy of the GRACE measurements and a readjustment of the coefficient done to correct it to the reality of more ice volume in Antarctica.

 

 

The causes of heat in the atmosphere and sea.

Co2 follows warming in the atmosphere is an oft quoted message

This led me to thinking about the known causes of heating for the land sea and atmosphere . The atmosphere at both sea level and higher.

Some atmosphere of course as in mine shafts and deep earth valleys is actually below sea level and help  add some insight into heat movement in air.

Starting from the center of the  earth there are the more obvious nuclear reactions in the core and mantle. There are less obvious atomic reactions due to the vibration of atomic particles causing friction.  Then there is heat generated by the increasing pressure of gravity  as one moves towards the core. These are possibly exacerbated by the gravity changes of a rotating moon in competition with the sun and to a minute extent by the other planets and space matter including any from the sun.

An obvious cause of heating is the wave motion in the oceans especially when hitting the land and along the sea bottom.  The friction here generates a significant amount of heat every day [24 hours]. In fact one could say that if the temperature is hot enough to sustain liquid water there will always be heat generated  in excess of that needed to heat the water in the first place.

Gravity waves in land cause the same friction and may also cause the land to heat up at all levels all the way down to the core.

All this without needing any heat input from the Sun at all. When we talk about the earth being _ 30 degrees  centigrade without green  house gases are we taking all these other effects into play or are they so minuscule that they do not count at all.

with respect to the CO2 question is a warming world releasing more CO2 into the air because of the warming or taking more out because there is more biomass created to use it up.