Alan Siddons on the negative-feedback cooling effect of clouds

[Sunsettommy]

The Hockey Schtick

September 21,2011

EXCERPT:

email from Alan Siddons:

Someone asked me today to comment on the recent Richard P Allan paper, which is discussed on WUWT [and originally posted on The Hockey Schtick]. Allan’s finding is that clouds have a negative influence on the earth’s temperature (duh). But here is what wrote back. Hope you like it.

Alan
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Anthony Watts offers an important statement about the Allan paper:

While Dessler and Trenberth (among others) claim clouds have an overall positive feedback warming effect upon climate due to the long-wave back-radiation, this new paper shows that clouds have a large net cooling effect by blocking incoming solar radiation and increasing radiative cooling outside the tropics.

Now, I always focus on the basic claim that back-radiating greenhouse gases make the earth’s surface warmer. The earth’s SURFACE. Liquid clouds are often included as greenhouse agents because at nighttime they’re thought to reflect heat rays back to the earth and at least retard surface cooling if not actually raise the temperature.

LINK WITH NICE CHARTS

[Richard111]

The warmists are going to jump on this with glee - it is what they have always been saying! More CO2 = more clouds = more warming.

Ever since I became aware of this AGW debacle I have kept an eye on my local temperaure at night. My personal observations show that temperture on a clear night is invariably lower than the temperature on a cloudy night. Is this warming? NO!

Why? Because the temperature of the cloud base MUST EXCEED the surface temperature for the surface to warm.

The best you can get is thermal equilibrium between the surface and the cloud base. ABOVE THE CLOUD BASE (within the cloud) THE ATMOSPHERE IS COOLING AND TRANSPORTING HEAT UPWARDS.

This is not a warming, it is a REDUCTION IN NET RADIATION!

So now the argument is is surface didn't cool as much as it should have done! Well, gee! So clouds only happen at night?!?!? When the sun shines on clouds the REDUCTION of incoming heat far exceeds the night effect.

We wouldn't be living if this wasn't so. Anyway, 0.6C degrees per decade global temperature rise is simply not measurable! It is so far below the noise level that that figure is a figment of computer models programmed by people who have no understanding of the world climate system. THEY DON'T FACTOR IN THE COOLING EFFECT OF WIND ON WATER! Sheeeesh!!!!

[Derek]

Heat is a process (one of many) by which energy is moved about.

Therefore, remembering "chaos" there is ONLY ONE WAY IT CAN GO.
From hot to cold, period.

Now, when will "we" remember to consider energy as (relatively) both positive and negative?
It's, obviously, a relative world we live in, in spite of what you might think of Einstein.