Do Global Energy budgets make sense. ???

[Derek]

I decided to ask Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD his opinion on the subject.
He has very kindly, and completely replied at,
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2010/03/sgw.html
THE FINGERPRINT OF THE SUN IS
ON EARTH'S 160 YEAR TEMPERATURE RECORD,
CONTRADICTING IPCC CONCLUSIONS, FINGERPRINTING, & AGW

THE CAUSE OF EARTH'S CLIMATE CHANGE IS
THE SUN

by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD
3/27/10. Cor. 4/17/10.
(downloadable pdf version titled SOLAR GLOBAL WARMING
is attached to the bottom of this post. It is a,
I MUST PRINT OFF AND DIGEST)

I will repeat my question and his reply in total below.

Derek wrote:
1003291346

Hello Dr. Glassman,

Can I first say yet another piece up to your usual very high standard.

Question - Is it possible to have a downloadable pdf version please.

[RSJ: {Rev. 4/25/10. A downloadable pdf is now available as a feature article in the CrossFit Journal in the category, Rest Day/Theory:

http://journal.crossfit.com/2010/04/glas...ticleTitle

[{End rev 4/25/10}]

Also you might like to visit / consider the main points of this post / thread concerning the K/T Global energy budgets.

http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/fo...d-609.html

I would very much value your opinions regarding the heat flow / radiation intensity possible (I think actual) confusion, misrepresentation.

[RSJ: My reaction to your symbols K/T and K-T was to try to distinguish them. I decided both mean Kiehl & Trenberth. That's OK, but they look very much like Boltzmann constant, K, and absolute Temperature, T, found together as in the dimensionless quantity hν/KT.

[I would rely on the K&T original paper to criticize their work. They present a model for the "Earth's annual global mean energy budget" based on a balance of radiation transfer. It was the latest in a century of effort in climatology, and perhaps the first to incorporate satellite data. It comprises three nodes, extraterrestrial, atmosphere, and Earth's surface, and two heat paths, long wave and short wave. The atmosphere is interesting because it is the domain of climatology. IPCC's manufactured crisis is unlimited in its ecological consequences, but all derived from the single climate parameter of surface temperature. From that standpoint, the atmosphere is a complex, superfluous node. The atmosphere is necessary to express the outgoing longwave radiation from the surface by blackbody radiation, and because radiation measured by satellites originates at the top of the atmosphere and clouds, and not just the surface.

[K&T balanced each node. To do so, radiation alone was insufficient. They were obliged to add thermals and evapotranspiration fluxes between Earth's surface and the atmosphere. You criticize their model for being a hybrid of heat and radiation, but that doesn't bother me. K&T's diagram is not a climate model, only a radiation budget that could inform any type of climate model. Also, I would include radiation as a normal form of heat in any thermodynamic model.

[I don't like the back radiation model at all in this application. It is a mesoparameter concept out of place in a macroparameter (thermodynamic) problem (reserving the microparameter view for condensation, and molecular vibrations and quantum dynamics.) Thermodynamics is a statistical science, about bulk forms, closed systems, and the limiting state of equilibrium. The macroparameters of thermodynamics are generally not even observable, such as the concept of global averages for surface temperature and albedo, parameters expressed directly or indirectly in the K&T diagram.

[The Second Law is about averages, or net fluxes. It says the net flux is from the warmer body to the colder, and neither that there is no back radiation, nor that the back radiation might not be the larger flux for a brief time. If you break a flux into its upstream and downstream components, or measure the flux in too short a time period, you move outside the field of thermodynamics and its laws, which may be the reason quantum dynamics is not thermodynamic. In K&T, the outgoing longwave radiation and the incoming back radiation form an internal loop that could be replaced by the net, long wave radiation flux at the surface, a thermodynamic parameter, with no effect on the budget but for the need or desire to show the blackbody radiation effect intact.

[In K&T, back radiation is highly idealized, treating the atmosphere as a lumped parameter, when back radiation is distributed throughout the atmosphere. K&T show an atmospheric window, which is a composite region in the absorption spectrum for the atmosphere. Absorption spectra are end-to-end models, whether for the entire atmosphere or convenient layers of it. The total absorption can be treated as an end-to-end impedance to heat, supporting a temperature drop from the surface to deep space according to Fourier's principles, the heat analog of Ohm's Law. These considerations tend to transmute K&T's radiation budgeting into climate modeling.

[K&T's model is solid science, as far as it has gone, and hard to avoid in climate modeling. Even for SGW, in which short and long term climate is governed by the Sun, the K&T model requires modification to account for the climate's amplifying effect. Figure 13, above. K&T also has no place for the tapped delay line effect because it does not model the ocean as a separate process. K&T's budget is a mean, static boundary condition, not a dynamic model with feedback. It does not represent the carbon or hydrological cycle, including the decomposition of the greenhouse gases.

[These considerations are at the core of the art of modeling, where simplicity or Occam's Razor rules. The global average surface temperature can be any specific value for an infinity of atmospheric parameter states, those of temperature lapse rate, gas concentrations, or cloud cover. By not adhering to the minimum necessary elements, the modeling problem explodes. For example, trying to get the lapse rate right in the troposphere and stratosphere is an exercise in futility because there is no unique lapse rate for surface temperature. Lapse rate is an irrelevant parameter. So, too, are the parameters you add in your fourth figure. This is far too much detail for a thermodynamic problem.

[K&T's budget is an annual average, covering seasonal and diurnal variations. They encompass the latter by the factor of 4, the ratio of Earth's intercepting disk to its total surface area, applied between TSI and insolation at the top of the atmosphere. Your point with your day night figure was to conclude, "A massive transport of heat must be happening from the day side to the night side of the constantly rotating water planet Earth." I would observe that the heat released is longwave radiation, and operates day and night at different rates, which you might want to compute. I would argue that you need to compute the heat flux, and not just rely on surface temperature differences, on Earth or the Moon, for your conclusions. Divide Earth's surface into its parts by mass and heat capacity, and you should find that the diurnal variability in surface air temperature or dry surfraces is relatively unimportant on climate scales.

[The ocean rules. The atmosphere is a thin byproduct of the ocean. As you say, "water planet Earth".]

Furthermore in regard to the K/T budgets, do you have an opinion regarding the

1) possible massive under representation / missing latent heat movements by water vapourisation, and

2) cold movements downward in the atmosphere by rain / hail / snow, etc.

[RSJ: No, I don't. The reason is I've concentrated on the thermodynamic problem of global warming and not the regional, mesoparameter problems that lead to locally induced space and time variability. I knew immediately on reading the IPCC Reports that unavoidable principles of science laid untouched, so I took the problem on top-down.]

Later edit - Dr. Glassman replies in one of the comments to Steve Short,
" [RSJ: Your observations and best fit models tend to support studies that say surface reflectivity is around 25% of Bond albedo. There is an eclipsing effect, too, and I assume this is appropriately taken into account in these models. However, these are warm state effects, where the greenhouse effect is in operation, but regulated by cloud albedo. Now let surface albedo range above 0.9 or so and you have a recipe for the glacial state. The climate will be dry and cloudless, and Earth will be locked into its cold state with no significant greenhouse effect. These observations account for the brief stability and maximum temperature in the warm state, and the profound stability in the cold state.] "

WOW, just wow, that makes so much sense.