You can’t make up junk science like this
Scientists Find Direct Evidence That Atmospheric CO2 Heats Earth’s Crust
Heats flows up through the Earth’s crust, not down. Nobel Laureate Al Gore says the Earth’s crust is “millions of degrees.”
March 1, 2015 | by Lisa Winter
The study, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, utilized data from the NOAA CarbonTracker between 2000 and 2010. Measurements from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility in Oklahoma were taken almost every day, with 8,300 readings altogether. A second research facility in Alaska provided 3,300 measurements during this time span. Despite the sites being very different in terms of climate and industrial development, they both confirmed that CO2 levels are increasing due to human activity, and that it’s heating up the Earth’s crust.
They started during the cold 2000 La Nina, and ended during the warm El Nino in 2010. Troposphere temperatures were 0.5C higher in 2010, than 2000 – so of course there was more emissions from CO2. The air temperature was higher, which means more heat is emitted.
“We see, for the first time in the field, the amplification of the greenhouse effect because there’s more CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb what the Earth emits in response to incoming solar radiation,” lead author Daniel Feldman of University of California, Berkeley said in a press release. “Numerous studies show rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but our study provides the critical link between those concentrations and the addition of energy to the system, or the greenhouse effect.”
It has nothing to do with absorption. There was more CO2 in the atmosphere in 2010 than in 2000, and the air temperature was higher – so of course there were more emissions in CO2 spectral bands. The authors are jumping to conclusions based on what they want to find, rather than any rational thought process.
The researchers measured the crust’s radiative force, which is the ratio of infrared energy released by the crust as thermal radiation compared to how much energy it receives from the sun. After correcting for potential confounders such as cloud cover and humidity, they discovered that the radiative force had indeed increased during that decade-long observation period by 0.2 Watts per square meter per decade. Though that number might sound small, it’s actually a 10% increase. The researchers were able to connect this to the 22 parts per million increase of atmospheric carbon that occurred during the same time span.
Scientists Find Direct Evidence That Atmospheric CO2 Heats Earth’s Crust | IFLScience
The first sentence sounds like mindless gibberish from a confused journalist, so I will ignore that. More CO2 at a higher temperature will emit more IR. Every scientist working with radiative transfer models has known this for decades. The authors’ assumption that it is due to increased absorption of LW radiation by CO2 molecules doesn’t have any basis other than conformation bias. Even it is was pitch black (i.e. no greenhouse effect) more CO2 at higher temperatures will emit more LW.
The authors are conflating emission and absorption. Junk science at its worst.
CO2 failed to heat Earth’s atmosphere, so they claim it is heating Earth’s crust instead?
The fact that they use the term “greenhouse effect” shows that they have no understanding of the physics involved.
An actual greenhouse works because the movement of air molecules is blocked. No free flowing gas blocks the movement of any other free flowing gas. Therefore puting the term “greenhouse” with “gas” is fundamentally wrong regardless of any radiative properties that may or may not be relevant.
By using the word “greenhouse” in this context is pure sophistry and deliberately misleading.
More interesting is that they call a 0.2W/m2 a ten percent increase, implying the greenhouse effect is only 2W/m2.
Lol.
Let’s take this at face value.
In Hansen et. al. they claimed ~0.6 w/m^2 from 2005-2010, 5 years.
This observation claims 0.2w/m^2 over 12 years.
Climate Sensitivity is thus, proven, to be less than 1/6th of what they claim it is.
Sadly, IFL Science isn’t concerned with science at all; just whether something makes them look “cool” for mentioning it.
Didn’t Marty Feldman have any data after 2010.
Or was that data just too darn “inconvenient”? 😉
Still looking for the Error Bars in that paper. I could use a drink…
The heated crust measurements appear to be from their messy and somewhat soiled shorts, seeing how they’re simply FOS 😉
If they took sixteen trillion crust measurements every 30 hours (covering every square cm of the globe), then we might realize a correlation, not to mention there is no baseline data from -100m up to the surface…
There is cause and there is effect. Most climate scientists don’t know which is which. That has become plainly obvious to anyone with half a brain.
Speaking of the MEI (Multivariate ENSO Index), the criminals have some good news for the masses:
http://www.microcapobserver.com/a-halt-in-global-warming-worldwide-due-to-the-cool-pacific-ocean-scientists-concerned/236684/
“Pacific Ocean water is warmed by the El Niño cycles and the last time this occurred was a -sometime in between 1997-1998”
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Do they look at their own maps? 21014 was mild el Nino, and we have been essentially La Nada, not La Nina for some time. SST were however very high this last year, and likely not sustainable.
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/teleconnections/eln-5-pg.gif
The Eq anomalies to 400 M is where the cooling is at. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/sub_surf_mon.gif
Even as a chemist I learned eons ago that a gray/black body at a higher temperature is going to emit more radiation than a a gray/black body at a lower temperature.
Also there is nothing that says CO2 is the culprit.
Here is something else that has had a major increase over the same time period — ‘Magnetic poles’ drift acceleration
http://www.glcoherence.org/templates/gcp/images/monitoring_system/commentaries/graph_velocity.jpg
Figure 1. Velocity of North Geomagnetic Pole movement (from N. Olsen and M. Mandea, 2007). Courtesy Prof Dr. Elchin Khalilov, World Forum, GEOCATACLYSM held in 2011.
Paper: http://www.geo.mtu.edu/~jdiehl/Homework/North Magnetic Dip Pole.pdf
They call us flat earthers?!? —
I stumbled across these sites while I was looking for something entirely different. I found that graph at a really wacky site, Global Coherence Initiative who grabbed the article from an even wackier site, Galactic Connections. which leads to the World Forum, GEOCATACLYSM held in 2011.
Results of the World Forum on natural disasters “Prof Dr. Elchin Khalilov, World Forum, GEOCATACLYSM held in 2011.” link
That site has a photo of the “earthquake prediction ATROPATENA CRYSTAL”
These are the same kind of zealots that believe “orbs” prove the existence of ghosts.
8300 readings altogether? Over 10 years.
These radiation monitoring stations make about 5,000,000 readings every single year.
I used over 8,000 measurements to cover just 1 day from the Table Mountain radiation centre here. Note that down-welling long-wave (which is where the CO2 measurements come from) are averaging 350 W/m2 on this day and it varies by 100 W/m2 throughout a single day and throughout the year. How do you tease a 0.2 W/m2 signal out of that? Data selection? Measure CO2 spectrum only and forget about all the rest?
http://s18.postimg.org/s66p367ft/Table_Mountain_All.png
“8300 readings altogether? Over 10 years.”
Good point! 830 readings per year, call it a little over 2 readings per day, all from a single location. Additionally, “A second research facility in Alaska provided 3,300 measurements during this time span.” so we have a second location with something less than one reading per day. And they throw in, they say, adjustments for cloud cover and humidity. And from that they find a 0.2 watt/meter^2 signal in a several hundred watt/meter^2 flux? And then posit that as a global phenomenon?
Any bets on whether their adjustments are at least an order of magnitude greater than the signal? Any bets on whether those adjustments are based on “best opinions” rather than fundamental physical processes?
Beautiful chart. It shows how clouds decrease incoming SW by ~300W/m2, but only increase downwelling LW by ~50W/m2, if that. Of course all those drown out the effects of CO2.
“And they throw in, they say, adjustments for cloud cover and humidity”
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I do not think it matters what they base them on. I do not think they could possibly be out side of any reasonable statistically insignificant error bars. Every atmosphere affects the TSI differently, with non linear affects for specific spectrum, and additionally TOA spectrum changes as well.
This paper claims to prove rising CO2 in the atmosphere increases downwelling infra-red radiation (DWIR), thereby warming the earth’s surface. The claim is based on observations from 2 sites, in Alaska and Oklahoma. Let’s examine the case made.
Observation: In Alaska and Oklahoma CO2 and DWIR are both increasing.
Claim: Additional CO2 is due to fossil fuel emissions.
Claim: Higher DWIR is due to higher CO2 levels.
Claim: Global DWIR is rising.
Claim: Global surface temperatures are rising.
LL Conclusion: Fossil fuel emissions are causing Global surface temperatures to rise
Issue: What is the source of rising CO2?
Response: Natural sources of CO2 overwhelm human sources.
The sawtooth pattern of seasonal CO2 concentrations is consistent with release of CO2 from the oceans. Peaks are in March when SH oceans are warmest (60% of world oceans), and valleys are in September when NH oceans are warmest. In contrast biosphere activities peak in January in SH and July in NH.
CO2 content of the oceans is 10 times that of the atmosphere, resulting in the sawtooth extremes. Human emissions are ~5 to 7 Gigatons compared to ~150 Gigatons from natural sources.
Issue: What is the effect of H2O and CO2 on DWIR?
Response: H2O provides 90% of IR activity in the atmosphere.
The long term increase in DWIR can be explained by increasing cloudiness, deriving from evaporation when the sunlight heats the oceans. A slight change in H2O vapor overwhelms the effect of CO2 activity, and H2O varies greatly from place to place, while the global average is fairly constant.
Issue: What is the global trend of DWIR?
Response: According CERES satellites, DWIR has decreased globally since 2000, resulting in an increasing net IR loss upward from the surface.
Globally, Earth’s surface has strongly strengthened its ability to cool radiatively from 2000 to 2014 (by about 1.5 W/m2 or ~1 W/m2 per decade) according to CERES. The increased upward heat loss from the surface is matched by decreasing trend of DWIR globally. And this is in spite of significantly increasing atmospheric content of both CO2 and H2O (WV & clouds) + allegedly rising temps since 2000.
Conclusion:
The rise in CO2 is almost all from natural sources, not fossil fuel emissions.
IR activity is almost all from H2O, not from CO2.
Global DWIR is lower this century, and the surface heat loss is less impeded than before.
Global surface temperatures are not rising with rising fossil fuel emissions.
Its the termites!
Interesting on many fronts…http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
This whole “study” is suspect as usual. Since it’s paywalled (even though my taxes helped pay for it) we’ve got to do a bit of detective work. The AERI instrument they are using is NOT capable of the resolution they are claiming in this paper. The simplest description of the instrument is here and UW’s SSEC folks are the ones who invented/built the AERI spectrometer. From the UW site:
At least this is a real, cryogenically cooled spectrometer capable of “seeing” CO2’s wavelength and not the wanna be’s installed in the SURFRAD system sites. Lets look at the Oklahoma site. Giving them a massive benefit of the doubt and acceding to their homogenization meme that temp’s within 500km are all the same BS, the coldest day on record in Oklahoma was on Feb. 10, 2011 and was -31°F or 238.15°K. A black body at that temperature radiates 182.23 W/m² according to Stefan’s Law. That makes the ultimate system accuracy for the OK site 1.8 W/m² or almost a full order of magnitude higher than their supposed increase for a DECADE. Just for fun, the hottest day on record in OK was 120°F/322.04°K in Alva, Poteau, Altus(2x) all in the summer of 1936. That would be 609.24 W/m² or an accuracy range of 6 W/m² per reading or 30 times higher than their purported 0.2 W/m²/decade. Using peer reviewed internationally renowned best practice homogenization and pasteurization I then arbitrarily average those two temperature extremes I get an instrument accuracy of 3.9 W/m².
Let’s get really crazy and say we give them a few orders of magnitude, just to be “fair.” Let’s say they can have a resolution in milliWatts/m²… 3 orders of magnitude for free. Readings per day for a rate of change of 0.2 W/m²/decade are on the order 5.4×10^-5 W/m²/day… and I’m ignoring leap years. So we’re still missing two whole orders of magnitude… hmmmm. Another meaningless number in the noise. It’s even worse when you look at the “massive warming” this will cause… in the hundredths of a degree per decade for pure black bodies… insane.
All you really need to know about this study, is that they used modeled data.
When I read an abstract, and it has the words ‘model’, ‘models’, or ‘modeled’, I typically do not waste much more time on it.
Tony, can you fix the typo in the last sentence of your next-to-last paragraph?
It’s important to deconstruct this study because it is touted in the press as silencing “Climate Deniers” and as giving scientific proof of the greenhouse gas effect, once and for all.
In fact, you need only apply a little critical intelligence to this paper, and it falls like a house of cards. Are there no journalists with thinking caps allowed to write about this stuff?