Can one tell already in what respects Sandy beat records?
Was Sandy still a hurricane when it hit the coast, and if yes, where?
What wind speeds were measured?
Comment on Hurricane Sandy: Part n by Alexej Buergin
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Comment on Hurricane Sandy: Part n by Tomcat
Although temperatures have not increased for 16 years now, lolwot still says global warming has continued. This is clearly absurd, and at very best he is playing fast and loose with words.
A more forthright and less devious claim would be that the <i>process</i> of global warming may have continued, but if so has been swamped by other factors. And that quantifying this possible effect is at present still an intractable problem.
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Comment on What’s the best climate question to debate? by Pekka Pirilä
People developing solar energy technologies need to know how much sunlight reaches the surface. It’s also important for them that people use the same data when they determine efficiencies of competing technologies. For that purpose some standard distributions have been determined:
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/spectra/am1.5/
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar_Spectrum.png
The purpose of these standards is not to tell worldwide averages for climate science but spectra relevant for solar energy applications in US, which is not the same thing. Even so the curves tell rather well what the spectrum is in space and on the surface. For the surface two curves are given, one for direct radiation only and the other including also scattered light. The data is available also as an Excel file.
From the data one can see that a lot of visible light does not reach the surface. That’s mainly due to scattering from the clouds, i.e. due to albedo. IR is absorbed totally at some wavelengths but it penetrates even trough the clouds at other wavelengths. Thus the average share of solar IR that reaches the surface is not very different from visible light. This picture from Wikipedia article on GH gases is rather informative and describes many of the influential factors.
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Comment on Hurricane Sandy: Part n by Alexej Buergin
Are there any rigs around carriing gas that could be transported to the affected places, and used directly to sell it? Could the military do that?
Are there any trucks that could be used to sell food from?
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Comment on Climate change: no consensus on consensus by Doug Cotton
By what process then do you explain the spectral lines of emission of, say, carbon dioxide at typical atmospheric temperatures? Many writers in the climate literature attribute these to changes in energy states causing production of photons, but I’m willing to learn and acknowledge that there are numerous misconceptions in such literature..
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Comment on Climate change: no consensus on consensus by Tomcat
Doug
If you want to do yourself and ideas a favor, start doing some comprehensible blogs. Handwaving and assumed authority just doesn’t cut the mustard here.
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Comment on Climate change: no consensus on consensus by Tomcat
Doug
Ok fair enough, this one was pretty clear. It’s not that radiation from a cooler source doesn’t affect a warmer source, but rather that for some reason such radiation is just immediately re-emitted and scattered.
(Which must mean all radiation carries a fingerprint of its source’s temperature).
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Comment on Hurricane Sandy: Part n by Pekka Pirilä
Warming of oceans is always by solar radiation. The atmosphere influences strongly the cooling part as only a small fraction of the heat the oceans receive from the sun stays there. It's, however, not logically necessary that the atmosphere warms first.
It must also be remembered that the warming of oceans is extremely slow when measured by average temperature of the whole water mass or all water mass at depths of less than 2000 m. If the atmosphere warms by that rate we say that its temperature is not warming at all.
My problem with the knowledge about warming of the oceans is seen when we compare <a href="http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/" rel="nofollow">NOAA data on heat accumulation at depths 0-700 m to that over 0-2000 m</a>. I cannot make myself believe that the present empirical data can show correctly that the latter is changing rapidly over the ARGO period while the former is changing very little. This appears so unlikely that I don't trust the data. It's likely that the coverage of the data is not sufficient and that there are also technical issues left. Which of the two series is wrong, I cannot tell, but the outcome is too unlikely for me to accept based on the existing evidence. (It would be natural to trust more the 0-700 m data, but what we know about earlier period fits better with 0-2000 m data. Therefore I give equal credibility to each one, but not the combination.)
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Comment on Hurricane Sandy: Part n by Latimer Alder
@lolwot
Addendum
Would you care to give us your definition of ‘warming’ that does not involve a temperature increase? And outline the experimental/observational apparatus & methods you plan to use to observe it?
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Comment on What’s the best climate question to debate? by Greybeard
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight
“Sunlight’s composition at ground level, per square meter, with the sun at the zenith, is about 527 watts of infrared radiation, 445 watts of visible light, and 32 watts of ultraviolet radiation.”
The atmosphere is presumably transparent to the latter two, but incoming IR (and nearIR) is presumably partially absorbed by GHGs in the atmosphere, and so heat it, exactly as outgoing IR heats the GHGs in the atmosphere.
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Comment on What’s the best climate question to debate? by BatedBreath
In other words, what happens to visible light* reaching the ocean, is that it is diffused into the top 10-20 meters, thereby heating it, which inter alia results in increased radiation back up again.
And I imagine a similar principle applies to visible light reaching land.
* Understood to include near-infrared
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Comment on What’s the best climate question to debate? by BatedBreath
Stefen,
That you cannot accumulate photons does not mean they do not have energy. So when photons strike an object, the associated energy does not just disappear.
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Comment on Climate change: no consensus on consensus by Max™
Dielectric heating (a near field effect such as that found in a microwave) is not the same as radiant heating (a far field effect such as that found by standing outside during the day) and should not be presented as a proof or disproof of anything regarding infrared radiation.
A microwave causes molecules with certain properties to rotate and align themselves with respect to the alternating electric field inside a microwave oven. THAT effect is responsible for heating other molecules within the substance.
There is another effect which can be found by aiming a powerful radio or microwave source at something from a distance which is more akin to the absorption of infrared radiation resulting in an increase of thermal energy in the body.
As for a molecule “knowing” what the frequency of an incident photon is and deciding to “reject” it, this is why I brought up quantum effects.
An excited state can spontaneously decay if there are no other influences (and one neglects relaxation >.>) but the only effect of a photon with less energy than one responsible for the initial transition to an excited state would be to reduce the probability of a spontaneous emission somewhat.
That could be described as reducing the rate of cooling by emission of radiation, but it is absolutely incorrect to describe it as a negative rate of cooling.
In a thermal bath both surfaces will tend towards an equilibrium according to their absorptivity and emissivity, the rate at which this process occurs may vary, but without performing work on the system it will proceed towards such an equilibrium.
If the bodies were not initially in equilibrium and the colder body emits towards the warmer body the only effect would be to increase the time it takes to reach equilibrium by reducing the rate at which the warmer body cools.
If this process led to a rise in the temperature of the warmer body there is no reason to expect a transition towards equilibrium, indeed there is no reason this process would be expected to cease, beyond I suppose the energy density increasing until an event horizon is formed.
When I turn on my lamp, the wall beside my desk heats up rapidly, which emits radiation into the room, as the returning radiation from the room does not cause the wall to implode into a black hole, I can safely conclude that back-radiation from a cool surface will not raise the temperature of the warmer surface that initially radiated into the cooler surface.
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Comment on What’s the best climate question to debate? by Tomcat
Stefan your reply is completely non-responsive; which is to say, you have not even begun to address it. So let’s try again:
1. The sun warms the earth (the wavelength is irrelevant)
2. The earth radiates all/some of this heat
3. GHGs trap some of that heat, slowing the earth’s cooling
Which if any of these s wrong, and why? Stick to the questions in as concise a way as possible. Cheers.
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Comment on What’s the best climate question to debate? by Tomcat
Stefan
So, skipping past the bulk of the answer that avoided the question, you’re saying you DO accept that GHGs absorb longwave, including longwave radiated by the earth, and that they therefore trap heat, which results in the earth being warmed ?
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Comment on Hurricane Sandy: Part n by Chief Hydrologist
So you prefer to be a dickwad than to actually reflect on the substance of the discourse. We were discussing climate models were we not. The question of model stability has been shown to be lacking over really any period of interest. I am not sure how to do it other than with reference to the literature. You really are an idiot.
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Comment on Open thread weekend. by gbaikie
“That’s the trouble – you are all talk Doug. The atmosphere influences the surface through downward radiation. From then on all we have to show for it is your pseudo-intellectualism. When all you really have to say is that the surface warms and then increased convection and evaporation kick in.”
Chief, you seems to be somewhat critical Doug.
And it seems you are of opinion that CO2 does do a bit of warming.
But I am wondering if you explain or provide what seems the best explanation given, for dividing the solar flux by 4- so in sense pretending the sunlight is shining all over the world, instead of it shining one just one hemisphere at any given point in time?
I suspect there must some rational given which could be reasonable.
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Comment on Climate change: no consensus on consensus by Max™
“Stop telling us how obvious you think it is.
Show us some actual objective evidence!
Where are your particulars?” ~citizenschallenge
My evidence that a consensus isn’t science?
Ok, a consensus can be right or wrong, yes?
In what way can you determine if something is actually right or wrong?
If there is a consensus that something is one way, can a consensus ever determine otherwise?
“Doing science is one thing, deciding what is speculative, what well established and what something in-between is another. Consensus should have no role in the former but it’s the only valid tool that we have for the latter.” ~Pekka
There is a way to test whether something is merely speculation, or if it is actually well established, we call it science.
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Comment on Sandy: a wake-up call on our satellite-based weather and climate observing capacity by manacker
David Springer
There are all sorts of shell games.
The strangest ones are also the most transparent.
The “hidden in the pipeline” premise is such a game.
Read the Hansen et al. paper closely and you will see that it is based on circular logic and flawed arithmetic.
The logic basically goes as follows:
- Our models tell us that we should have seen X warming from added GHGs since 1880.
- In actual fact we have only seen ~X/2 warming over this period.
- Therefore, the balance of ~X/2 is still “hidden in the pipeline” (NOT “let’s correct the models to agree with the observations”).
Duh!
The arithmetical errors are basically “round up” errors, all going in the same direction.
I am amazed that people who call themselves scientists would fall for something so blatantly stupid.
But that’s the beauty of simple shell games.
Max
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Comment on Sandy: a wake-up call on our satellite-based weather and climate observing capacity by manacker
lolwot
If the AMO statement is as “right” as Hansen’s failed 1988 forecast or IPCCs TAR and AR4 forecasts for 0.2C decadal warming, there is not much to worry about.
Max
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