(01-12-2011 06:29 AM)Richard T. Fowler Wrote:  An additional source of confusion is when we speak of "radiation", it is possible to mean EITHER power OR energy, and
one has to use the context of the discussion to discern what we're talking about.


I think that those who have worked such problems in the past tend to assume that
others automatically know whether the discussion is about power or energy.
(In this case, it was about power, but even if one knew that, one could still be confused by the fact that,
since we are speaking of an *average* power for a period of time, the average power varies directly with total energy.)

Happy thinking, then! On to the next question ....

RTF

Quote:Confusion of watts, watt-hours, and watts per hourThe terms power and energy are frequently confused. Power is the rate at which energy is generated and consumed.For example, when a light bulb with a power rating of 100W is turned on for one hour, the energy used is 100 watt-hours (W•h), 0.1 kilowatt-hour, or 360 kJ. This same amount of energy would light a 40-watt bulb for 2.5 hours, or a 50-watt bulb for 2 hours. A power station would be rated in multiples of watts, but its annual energy sales would be in multiples of watt-hours. A kilowatt-hour is the amount of energy equivalent to a steady power of 1 kilowatt running for 1 hour, or 3.6 MJ.

Terms such as watts per hour are often misused.[15] Watts per hour properly refers to the change of power per hour. Watts per hour (W/h) might be useful to characterize the ramp-up behavior of power plants. For example, a power plant that reaches a power output of 1 MW from 0 MW in 15 minutes has a ramp-up rate of 4 MW/h. Hydroelectric power plants have a very high ramp-up rate, which makes them particularly useful in peak load and emergency situations.

Major energy production or consumption is often expressed as terawatt-hours for a given period that is often a calendar year or financial year. One terawatt-hour is equal to a sustained power of approximately 114 megawatts for a period of one year.

Quote:E.M.Smith says:
January 28, 2011 at 11:27 am

Dr. Lurtz says: The radical shift in temperature anomaly points to the issue of temperature measurement. It would be a violation of Physical laws for that much heat to be radiated into space that quickly without a massive change in Global temperature; therefore, either the heat must be going somewhere, or, the temperature measurements do no represent the Global temperature!!

You’ve got it! THE basic problem, one that folks on all sides regularly ignore, is that a Global Average Temperature simply does not exist. It is at best a massive confusion and at worst a deception.

The reasons for this are, unfortunately, founded in 2 rather arcane bits of understanding, so I suspect that just about everyone (including Ph.D. “Climate Scientists” at NASA) just ignore them rather than take the time to think about it.

They are:

1) You can not average an intensive property and have it mean anything. Temperature is an intensive property.

2) Temperatures are driven by processes, such as land form (mountains) that are fractal in nature. Every single ‘surface’ has it’s own temperature. I assert temperatures are fractal in that the size of a fractal varies with the size of ruler you use to measure it (and we are constantly changing our rulers / thermometers).

Because of these two things, the idea of a Global Average Temperature is simply wrong.

Note that this is different from measuring the infrared signature for an entire planet from a single view of the whole place. Then you have fixed your ‘ruler size’ at ‘one planet’ and so #2 drops out. Further, you are not averaging temperatures, you are counting total photons of IR. That count is then DEEMED to be the same as certain black body temperature, but it is not saying the surface IS that temperature (as it is not). It is a leap of assumption, then, to say that the “average of surface temperatures” would be the same as that hypothetical black body. So you can get an IR measurement from space that is useful; you just can’t say that is the average of surface temperatures (only that it is the same IR as a Black Body of a certain temp would have emitted). You can see this pretty clearly if you assume a BB of 100 pixels all at 100 K, then ask “What if I raised ONE to 200 K?”. You now get 2^4 more IR from that one pixel. But ((99*100)+(1*200))/100 will not give you the same ‘temperaure’ as that IR image… If we assume the IR count at 100 K is “1″ for our counter, then we would have 16 + 99 = 115 IR Count and map that to 115 K; where the former temp average gave 101. So which is it, 101 K (average of temperatures) or 115 K (count of increased IR photons)?

Now say only 1/2 of that pixel was actually doing the radiation. Increase the pixels count to 200. We’ve now got ((199*100)+(1*200))/200 = 100.5 for our “Average of temperatures”. Yet our IR count stays the same…

(There are two variations on that last ‘change’. One is to say that the hot pixel was made of one hot and one cold, so the x16 was really x32 from 1/2 of the pixel… that is, it was not a 200K pixel, it was one at 100k and one a bit hotter. 2^1/4 hotter, or about 238 K if I’ve done the math right. That gives ((199*100)+238)/200 = 100.69 K “average of surface temperatures”. The other variation is to say that the half pixel was in fact 200 K, and you need to redo your IR photon count. That would give (199 x 1 + 16)/2 or 107.5 K for our hypothetical ‘temperature’. In both cases (which ever set of assumptions you want to make) you get divergence between the IR Count as temperature proxy and the “average of temperatures”. 100.69 K vs 107.5 K in the last case or 101 K vs 115 K.)

And yes, I ‘left out some bits’ in this example to make it more useful for illustration. The basic point is that IR rises as a 4th power of temp. But an average of temperatures flattens everything linearly. To assume the IR count is an average linear increase in temperatures requires that the IR be evenly distributed, but we know it is not.

Back on Intensive Properties:

Here’s the wiki on intensive vs extensive properties:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_and_extensive_properties

OK, a simple example. Two pots of water, one at 10 C the other at 20 C. Mix them. What is the final temperature? You can’t know.

It depends on how big the pots were. Relative mass. We assume the masses being heated and cooled are constant and of the same average specific heat for the planet to change temperatures, but that isn’t true. Oceans overturn and different water comes to the surface. Snow falls in the mountains, now we’re not heating rocks with the sun but heating snow.

If those pots of water were 0 C and 100 C the problem is much much worse. Is that 0 C water in the form of ICE or not? Is that 100 C water vapor, or not? Heat of fusion and heat of vaporization. No temperature change, lots of heat flow.

So are we measuring, on average, the change of vaporization from the ocean? The change of condensation from the air? The rate of melting of snow and ice (that consumes heat) or the rate of snow fall (that liberates heat)? And in what masses?

As a simple example, a acre of mountain desert drops from 1 C to 0 C. In the first case, it is just bare sand. It stays that way for one week. An “average of temperatures” would say nothing happened in days 2-6. Yet cold soaked into the sand to some depth. Some heat flowed. It was, in fact, constantly cooling (heat flowed out of the sand and into the air but the air did not warm, as the heat was leaving on to space, cooling).

Now put 1 inch of snow on that ground. Still 0 C. Yet that snow has a much higher heat content than the inch of air it replaced. Have it snow each day. Now, each day, you have taken 1 inch of snow worth of ‘heat of fusion’ and dumped it to space. That is one heck of a lot more “cooling” than the dry example. Yet the thermometer says “nothing happened”… You did not account for mass and heat of fusion.

OK, that’s the ‘nickle tour’ of intensive vs extensive variables and why you can’t average them and have any meaning left.

The “fractals” one is a bit harder. (Please, don’t groan like that… I’ll try to make it easy). This is related to an interesting issue of measuring coastlines. If you measure the coastline for California from Mexico to Oregon by taking a speed boat straight up the line off shore, you get a short number. If you follow each in / out of every major bay, it’s a longer ride. Follow every little estuary in, even longer. Get down to measuring the distance around each grain of sand on the beach it becomes gigantic. About 1000 miles to 80,000 miles. Your choice. As you make the ruler shorter, you measure more curves on more things and get a longer total.

For temperatures, we know that it varies down to the size of a single pebble. An IR image shows that. We assume that a white box about 3 feet off the ground sort of averages them all out to something usable. So far so good. We are fixing our ‘ruler’ size at whatever area of scope a single Stevenson Screen averages. BUT, then we scatter them all over the place with random distances between them and change the number of them by a factor of 10 (or more) over the period of time we are measuring. We are changing the area each of these is expected to measure, changing our ruler length. We have a very dynamic “rubber ruler” measuring a fractal surface.

No wonder the numbers keep wandering around!

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/an-example-of-fractal-temperatures/

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/07/17/derivative-of-integral-chaos-is-agw/

And these properties are Not Negotiable. They are fundamental properties of nature. Yet all of “Climate Science” is predicated on strictly ignoring them and in fact on abusing them in ways that are non-physical.

So yes. “the temperature measurements do not represent the Global temperature!!”


Where could the heat be going??

Must it? Was it ever there? Since our method of measuring in broken fundamentally, we don’t really know where the heat went, or if it was there to begin with. All we have are temperatures and IR counts. Those are NOT heat.

IMHO, the heat leaves each day. We warm during the day, and cool at night. The net change in temperatures over the seasons are not “accumulating” heat, they are changes in heat applied as our axial tilt changes an wind blows in from somewhere else. There is no heat stored other than what gets trapped under a cloud layer waiting for the next cold clear night. Then it is gone.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/23/frostbite-falls/

http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/ignore-the-day-at-your-peril/

My thoughts are that the oceans can not absorb heat that fast; therefore, the sudden change in temperature anomaly is due to the inability to correctly measure the Earth’s Global Temperature.

In this sentence we can see the impact of decades of “Climate Science” at work confounding things. I’m not picking on you, Dr. Lurtz, the same sentence will be made by millions of folks for the same reasons.

First, we have “oceans absorb heat” then we have “change of temperature”. We treat these as fungible goods. They are not. Heat is a flow of energy. Temperature is a pressure to flow, but may or may not have a flow, and certainly does not have a size of flow. We can have massive heat flow with no temperature change. Happens every day and all the time in weather. Tons of snow falls, at 0 C. Then it melts and flows away as water, at 0 C. Air rises and water condenses as rain, the heat movement showing as a phase change again. Winds blow down a mountain range, getting hotter as they go, but not from the sun warming them nor from their velocity; then they blow across a valley and rise up the opposing moutains, cooling as they go. Lots of temperature changes, heat not so much…

Then we come back to “measure the Earth’s Gobal Temperature”. Yet there is no such thing to measure. It is a fantasy of arithmetic. And a broken one at that.

We can measure the total IR Emissions from a point in space. But that is NOT the “Global Average Temperature”.

We can measure a sample of temperatures on the surface, but averaging them has no meaning. None. Not a scrap.

And then we desire to mix these broken things together into a conceptual model of how the earth is changing… and where the heat is “stored” and “going”. Every day you can see this same broken parade wandering down these same streets, again and again and again….

What we ought to do? Put a single satellite in orbit with the whole disk of the planet in view and just do a gross energy out measure. IR photons and visible. Have a similar count of solar flux. Compare the two over about 120 years. THEN we would have a clue how our energy balance shifts over time.

But measuring airport tarmac today and comparing it to cow fields in 1850 with no attention to how many spots are measured, where they are, and how they changed, then averaging them; that has no relationship to heat flow at all, and precious little to reality in general.

(02-01-2011 02:39 AM)Richard111 Wrote:  

(01-17-2011 03:37 PM)Sunsettommy Wrote:  People who are truly into discussing the topic will be able to talk about what is known and what needs to be better understood.No need to prove who is more correct since the objective is to learn.To better understand what is being postulated.The presentation under discussion may be incorrect or has room for improvement.But talking about it will benefit all parties to the discussion.

Well put, SST.

Herewith my understanding of watts and joules.

I have a 1 cubic metre plastic tank filled with rainwater outside the house.
For this thought exercise assume the plastic is not there. (magic if you want) I can measure the temperature of the water by dangling a thermometer in the middle.
From this I can calculate the number of joules of energy the 1 cubic meter of water contains. I can also calculate the radiation from the six sides of the water cube in watts per square metre. THIS IS NOW. Time T1 if you like.

1 second later, now time T2, I know the water has lost that number of joules of energy equivalent to the number of WATTS radiated from all six sides for a period of just 1 second.

Remember you must use degrees Kelvin. I subtract the radiated energy in joules from the initial energy state in joules and arrive at my new current energy content from which I calculate a new temperature. From that I calculate the new radiation level in watts per square meter.

We know the precise mass of the water and we know the total radiative surface area (making the assumption it is a blackbody as well) thus we can calculate total energy loss.

But if we can only see one square metre of the surface of that water we cannot calculate the total energy lost by radiation in proportion to the mass under that one square metre. This is why I believe "energy budgets" have no real value.

I will try to do all the above calculations and post my results later.

(02-01-2011 01:33 PM)Derek Wrote:  Richard111, I will have to use your quote of Sunsettomy's comment regarding discussion above in the small explanatory piece I have yet to write.

Regarding Watts, I may well move that part of your post to the What is a Watt thread, if that is OK with you.
I will also have to add to the first post / explanation of that thread because it is now obvious to me,
because of the investigation I have been embarking upon that there are a number of questions that the thread tries to address, and
they need stating to clear up what the thread is actually about.
Firstly the thread is not actually about the interpreted (and strict) physics definition of a Watt (as most seem to understand it). But that is the correct starting point as such.
The thread is more about how the W/m2 derived unit from a Watt is used in the K&T types of plots (and climate models, and greenhouse effect "theory"),
ie, have you seen the Wiki page / article linked to and copied there yet. Talk about confusing....energy mentioned 6 times, heat flow a couple of times, power, NOT MENTIONED AT ALL.
I also will have to follow up the SI definition of a W/m2, "heat flow density" is a bit vague to me at present. Then a comma, and then "irradiance".
Not at all clear to me, what is meant by "density" in this specific use, and why two descriptions???
At present I am wondering if I will end up with 3 different definitions / actual uses of what a W/m2 is, and how it is used.

But this is all as I hope you understand for the What is a Watt thread not this one,
so I'll tidy it all up next week.
Please feel free to comment here or there, and I will tidy up as appropriate probably next week.

(05-29-2011 06:20 AM)Richard111 Wrote:  Yes! Very good point. Me, being a simple trusting soul, assume they always meant the "blackbody" equivalent of 1 square metre for each level of radiation defined in watts per square metre.

(01-13-2011 07:17 AM)Richard T. Fowler Wrote:  A FEW EQUATIONS

RTF

Richard, my genuine apologies, in that I deleted the content of this post completely unintentionally.
I hope you, or someone else has a copy of it, as I would dearly like to repost it here.
If anyone has a copy, please send it to me by PM and I will repost it ASAP.

Thanks in advance
Derek.