APL.

You said:

quote:

So you are saying if you have two bodies at temperatures 90degC and 10degC and you put them together the net effect is 100degC?

Obviously I am not saying that because I used the word "factor", and did not say "T = Tm + Fn".

The factor at issue being radiative flux of IR and Visible/UV. Radiative flux not being the same as sensible temperature, or for that matter the emission temperature.

This discussion serves no useful purpose, you can't even read English or infer from algebraic notation, let alone grasp the issues involved.

Bye bye....

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
APL.

You said:

quote:

So you are saying if you have two bodies at temperatures 90degC and 10degC and you put them together the net effect is 100degC?

Obviously I am not saying that because I used the word "factor", and did not say "T = Tm + Fn".

The factor at issue being radiative flux of IR and Visible/UV. Radiative flux not being the same as sensible temperature, or for that matter the emission temperature.

This discussion serves no useful purpose, you can't even read English or infer from algebraic notation, let alone grasp the issues involved.

Bye bye....

Well done APL that's one alarmist crawling back under her stone with her tail between her legs.

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
This discussion serves no useful purpose, you can't even read English or infer from algebraic notation, let alone grasp the issues involved.

I serves a very important purpose in that it shows that for the pro-AGW point of view to work you have to rely on the selective used of fact and ignore fundamental principles.

quote:

Originally posted by suricat:
The 'top end' of near UV interacts with O2, but below this (the wavelengths that O3 and O4 usually interact with), I believe, there is nothing other than 'particulates' and 'diffusing mechanisms' (reflection and refraction by cloud). Perhaps someone can correct me if I am wrong.

Right had a look at the links - none of them answer the fundamental question as to how UV converts to IR in the thermal range to effect global temperature. I appreciate that the 'how' is very likely to be dependant on the material the UV comes into contact with.

I came across this site that shows the The Electromagnetic Spectrum

As a sideline having come across this link:
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/U/UV_origin_of_life.html

Makes me suspicious that UV is being given the same alarmist treatment as CO2.

quote:

Originally posted by APL:

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
This discussion serves no useful purpose, you can't even read English or infer from algebraic notation, let alone grasp the issues involved.

I serves a very important purpose in that it shows that for the pro-AGW point of view to work you have to rely on the selective used of fact and ignore fundamental principles.

OK then APL, as it seems you don't even know enough to understand you're wrong. Please tell me whether you have:

a) deliberately distorted my point.

or

b) simply not had your brain in gear once more and failed to understand what I am saying.

Because it obviously must be one or another as I never stated T = Tm + Tn, I clearly referred to "factors".


So which is it old bean: Deliberate distortion or not just plain not thinking?


[/QUOTE]none of them answer the fundamental question as to how UV converts to IR in the thermal range to effect global temperature.[/QUOTE]

Gosh it's so hard to figure isn't it. I mean trying to understand how upon absorption the UV makes things warmer.


Billy Bumbly, you drew me back with your own inability to comprehend as made obvious by your last post. Do you have any scientific comments? i.e. do you want to expose your total lack of understanding too?

John_M

quote:

Unsurprisingly, the Swiss keep careful records of their glaciers, and they have a really nice website:
http://glaciology.ethz.ch/messnetz/,

It has:
-maps,
- summary lists that can be sorted different ways,
- a picture of each glacier,
- graphs of the advance/retreat since 1893, showing both yearly changes and accumulated change
-the raw data.
They also summarize, for a selected year, advanced & retreats for the glaciers they measured that year:

2006: 84 retreats, 1 advance

Now you're doing what you accused me of. If you look at 1947 71 retreats + 1 advance or 1932 65 retreats and 0 advances.

Interestingly if you graph the number of advances, retreats and stationarys as percentage of the total each year you get a very interesting symetrical chart that has
equalish advancing and retreats around 1920 and 1983 and between a rising advance to almost 100 % by 1947ish then back down again to 1983ish. It then starts all over again peaking at present. The shape is similar prior to 1920 as well. So how does that fit with AGW?

quote:

1983 and between a rising advance to almost 100 % by 1947ish then back down again to 1983ish

I should have said rising retreat not rising advance. The overall shape is like a christmas cracker containing a rugby ball.

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
OK then APL, as it seems you don't even know enough to understand you're wrong. Please tell me whether you have:

a) deliberately distorted my point.

or

b) simply not had your brain in gear once more and failed to understand what I am saying.

Because it obviously must be one or another as I never stated T = Tm + Tn, I clearly referred to "factors".

It's fundamental thermodynamics - I've not distorted anything.

Maybe you should be more explicit in what you mean by '2 factors add to create the temperature of an object (or region)'? And explain how this supports you previous point...

"A is cooler than B" is not the same as "A's temperature has reduced whereas B's has increased."

... if we are not discussing temperature.

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
Gosh it's so hard to figure isn't it. I mean trying to understand how upon absorption the UV makes things warmer.

Good then please explain if you know.

APL,

quote:

It's fundamental thermodynamics - I've not distorted anything.

You clearly have either misrepresented/misunderstood. Which is it?

My original post is here. I make the point that "A is cooler than B" is not the same as "A's temperature has reduced whereas B's has increased." Because this seems to be one basic failing of your comprehension.

Then I demark that with a 2 line gap before going on to address the point that cooling can occur if one dominant factor remains the same whilst a secondary factor changes. I make clear that these are factors by not using notation Tm or Tn, rather using the term "factor". So your later claim that I am mixing temperatures in the incorrect manner you claim is clearly flawed.

So once again you either disingenuously conflate these points or your comprehension is lacking.


You ask "Good then please explain if you know." Had you read my comment you would already have the answer from within my earlier comment. i.e.

quote:

...upon absorption the UV makes things warmer.

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
Then I demark that with a 2 line gap before going on to address the point that cooling can occur if one dominant factor remains the same whilst a secondary factor changes. I make clear that these are factors by not using notation Tm or Tn, rather using the term "factor". So your later claim that I am mixing temperatures in the incorrect manner you claim is clearly flawed.

OK in less weasel words simply describe a 'factor' to me - what does it consist of? What does it represent? Give an example.

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
You ask "Good then please explain if you know." Had you read my comment you would already have the answer from within my earlier comment. i.e.

quote:

...upon absorption the UV makes things warmer.

By how much? 10,20,30 degC or 0.000002 degC per x UV radiation. How is UV to IR quantified?

Saying 'upon absorption the UV makes things warmer' is not enough.

quote:

Originally posted by Son of Mulder:
John_M

quote:

Unsurprisingly, the Swiss keep careful records of their glaciers, and they have a really nice website:
http://glaciology.ethz.ch/messnetz/,

It has:
-maps,
- summary lists that can be sorted different ways,
- a picture of each glacier,
- graphs of the advance/retreat since 1893, showing both yearly changes and accumulated change
-the raw data.
They also summarize, for a selected year, advanced & retreats for the glaciers they measured that year:

2006: 84 retreats, 1 advance

Now you're doing what you accused me of. If you look at 1947 71 retreats + 1 advance or 1932 65 retreats and 0 advances.

Interestingly if you graph the number of advances, retreats and stationarys as percentage of the total each year you get a very interesting symetrical chart that has
equalish advancing and retreats around 1920 and 1983 and between a rising advance to almost 100 % by 1947ish then back down again to 1983ish. It then starts all over again peaking at present. The shape is similar prior to 1920 as well. So how does that fit with AGW?

SoM: I've reread my post several times and I'm hard-pressed to find an accusation of anything. Maybe you have me confused with somebody else. I salute you for graphing all the back history, when I did it I'd only checked every 10 years, so I went back and filled in the spreadsheet. The Swiss Glacier people are receptive to comments, so I'll suggest the advance/retreat statistics might make a useful graph ... although I suspect the next years are going to be pretty boring [90-100% retreats].

Does it fit with AGW?

It fits quite well. I did graphs (including a 5-year averaged version) and they are what I'd expect. There was a good thread on www.realclimate.org a few months ago, and the following is a nice paper:

Glacier and lake-level variations in west-central Europe over the last 3500 years
http://www.unige.ch/forel/PapersQG06/Holzhauser2005.pdf

and for temperature, I'll use GISTEMP's Northern hemisphere from:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.B.lrg.gif, although a Swiss chart would be even more specific, but I don't have one handy.

Of course, glacier lengths depend on precipitation, sunlight, and physical features, but if you look at the Swiss glacier site, and sort the glaciers from large to small, and then look at individual graphs, you will notice that the longer glaciers tend to have smooth curves than the shorter ones: in some sense, they're doing time-averaging. Also, each glacier has a *response time*, ranging from several years to ~24 (for the Grosser Aletsch).

Roughly: if you have rapid jiggles in temperature, you might see oscillations in the short glaciers a few years later, but the longer ones will show little effect for a while longer. If a long glacier is at equilibrium, and the temperature goes down and stays there, a few decades later the glacier will start advancing. There are all sorts of reasons for various jiggles, which is why one shouldn't get too hung up on any one chart.

I graphed (# retreats/ (# retreats + # advances)), to get a graph with the same orientation as temperature, and it matches pretty well, given that:
a) There is some distribution of response times.
b) Of course, the % is bounded by 100%, so the chart flattens out, as from 1991 onward, only 1995 was less than 90% retreating,

Anyway, the glacier record is consistent with the temperature record. Using 5-year averages:

Moderate rise from 44% retreats (1918), to 87% (1929), i.e., 11 years, and then stays in the 85-92% range through 1963. Then, more glaciers start noticing the temperature drop, and the % goes back d down, as low as 41% in 1979, which is a 5-10-year lag from the temperature lows of the early 1970s. Now, effects of Clean Air Acts are cutting in, with some jiggles [which I guess relate to the sulfate jiggles of chart I discussed way earlier], the sulfate-masking effects lessen, and the glaciers head up the mountain.

Now, they are almost all retreating, and of course, the longer ones haven't even noticed the last 10-years yet. If temperature flattened, the ones that were left would get back in equilibrium.

SUMMARY
Anyway, the website is a nice job by the Swiss and the paper I mentioned has some much longer-term info. There are numerous jiggles, but the overall pattern is quite consistent with the NH temperature records, including the sulfate global dimming period. The Swiss have good reason to worry about their lower ski resorts, their banks have stopped lending money to the lower ones for ski development. They have enough high ones to be better off than most of their neighbors.

John_M

quote:

SoM: I've reread my post several times and I'm hard-pressed to find an accusation of anything.

It related to your post which was deleted by the hidden powers. I'd been picking specific years and making comparisons which you quite rightly said needed context. The you went and quoted just 1 year of glacier data.

Anyway an interesting post - thanks for the references - much study to be done before I stand a chance of finding anything in the Swiss glacier record that's not compatible with warming given the context you have provided (on the face of it).

The IPCC are now being attacked on their ability to provide scientific forecasts.

http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2007/07/06/1183351452273.html http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1807

An interesting article on the CO2 atmospheric lifetime - apparently 5 - 10 years and not the several hundred years often quoted by the IPCC and pro-AGW is more realistic.

Models trump measurements

quote:

Originally posted by APL:

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
Then I demark that with a 2 line gap before going on to address the point that cooling can occur if one dominant factor remains the same whilst a secondary factor changes. I make clear that these are factors by not using notation Tm or Tn, rather using the term "factor". So your later claim that I am mixing temperatures in the incorrect manner you claim is clearly flawed.

OK in less weasel words simply describe a 'factor' to me - what does it consist of? What does it represent? Give an example.

Obfuscation.

I have already told you the factor I had in mind, radiative flux. See here.

Now please answer the question at hand, were you misrepresenting me or do you simply not comprehend?

quote:

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
You ask "Good then please explain if you know." Had you read my comment you would already have the answer from within my earlier comment. i.e.

quote:

...upon absorption the UV makes things warmer.

By how much? 10,20,30 degC or 0.000002 degC per x UV radiation. How is UV to IR quantified?

Saying 'upon absorption the UV makes things warmer' is not enough.

You actually wrote "none of them answer the fundamental question as to how UV converts to IR in the thermal range to effect global temperature." I have told you how, the UV is absorbed and that warms things up. If you want more detail go do your own research. I am not your fact-gopher.


Your claim of a 5 year residence time of CO2 is wrong because it does not take into account the 2 way flow of CO2 between ocean and atmosphere. The issue of model accuracy and future projections is of interest, but you can hardly pursue it until you have attended to the unfinished business of telling me whether you were engaging in misrepresentation or whether you simply do not understand.

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
APL, you have not got your brain in gear.

"A is cooler than B" is not the same as "A's temperature has reduced whereas B's has increased."

I am not saying that the Stratosphere is cooler than the troposphere, nor am I saying the effect of GHGs overwhelms the solar effect.


Say 2 factors add to create the temperature of an object (or region).

T = Fm + Fn

with numbers...

100 = 90 + 10.

if Fn goes down...

99 = 90 + 9.

So even though Fm has stayed the same when you reduce Fn you reduce T.

Ok let's go back a step.

Fm and Fn are factors of radiative flux can I assume T is temperature?

Taking on board your other points please explain how and why whether through radiative flux or temperature the transfer of IR radiation is no longer subject to fundamental thermodynamics?

In any case in your example it does not matter what Fm + Fn is because there is no direct relationship to T (assuming T is temperature) other than Fm + Fn will influence T in some way. There are too many missing variables such as the substances being exposed to UV and reflectivity etc.

So yes I still cannot see how your explanation explains the cooling of the stratosphere is a result of the warming of the troposphere, your explanation is (deliberately so I believe) very vague just like many other pro-AGW explanations are.

OK APL,

The point is this.

Leaving out radiative fluxes you're right, temperatures will seek to equalise. So 90+10 in equal volumes will give an overall about 50degC, the average. A figure lower than the greatest, thus ignoring radiative flux you do get a temperature drop.

But if you take a pocket of air in the troposphere or stratosphere. It's temperature depends not only on it's surroundings but on the radiation (IR Visible UV) going through it. It also depends on which gases are present.

So down at ground level where the typical maximum path for IR is about 10-15metres, it's only local flux that is key for IR.

But up in the less dense troposphere and stratosphere IR travels much greater distances, that and the decrease of density with height allow IR to have an impact over distances. It's not rapidly absorbed like at sea level because there's a lower density of air.


It's not just the energy implied by air at a certain temperature, energy that can be released to warm an intermixing cooler pocket of air. It's also the flux of Visible, UV and Infra-Red radiation. By concentrating on temperature alone you're missing a part of the puzzle.

Thermodynamic constraints apply - if they didn't it wouldn't be physics.

quote:

Originally posted by Son of Mulder:
John_M

quote:

SoM: I've reread my post several times and I'm hard-pressed to find an accusation of anything.

It related to your post which was deleted by the hidden powers. I'd been picking specific years and making comparisons which you quite rightly said needed context. The you went and quoted just 1 year of glacier data.

...

Sorry for the ambiguity: there are two different axes of discussion that come up all the time about glaciers, and my comments were more directed to the general discussion, not to any particular comment.

1) "Aha, glacier X is advancing, so there can't be warming." OR "Glacier Y is retreating, so global warming is happening."

Either of these can be cherry-picking, although right now, the first is *serious* cherry-picking, because most glaciers are retreating, although sometimes for different reasons, since changes in precipitation matter as well.

Quoting 2996 was simply to show the current state, with the largest # of glaciers in one website in a long-term coherent form, i.e., that there was no 2006 cherry-pick of one Swiss glacier. Needless to say, cherry-pickers rarely point at easily-accessible databases.

2) The second, orthogonal axis is the historical record, which needed a much longer and more complex discussion that I had time for at that point. I wasn't making an assertion that 2006 was representative, although it happens to be typical of the last few years.

APL

quote:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1807

Thanks for this one APL - I love it. I shall be following the paper's progress with great interest as the pro AGW lobby attack it and what sort of arguments are used against it. I suddenly don't feel so alone.

However I'm not so impressed with this one http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/commen...42-970b-bdef8947fa4e

as what he is saying is true in equilibrium but CO2 can still build up in the atmosphere because it may not be able to enter the water quickly enough. The AGW argument hinges on the level of CO2 in the atmosphere rising, which it is at 3% per year. Also warming of the oceans would increase the rate of CO2 leaving the ocean because again the equilibrium has been broken ie instead of holding 50 times what the atmosphere can hold it may reduce to say 49.5 times due to temperature rise.

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
Leaving out radiative fluxes you're right, temperatures will seek to equalise. So 90+10 in equal volumes will give an overall about 50degC, the average. A figure lower than the greatest, thus ignoring radiative flux you do get a temperature drop.

Which (I am assuming you are talking about the stratosphere) would also lead to a temperature drop in the troposphere.

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
But if you take a pocket of air in the troposphere or stratosphere. It's temperature depends not only on it's surroundings but on the radiation (IR Visible UV) going through it. It also depends on which gases are present.

So could not the depleted ozone be the culprit for cooling (or lack of heating) in the stratosphere and not the CO2 in the troposphere?

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
So down at ground level where the typical maximum path for IR is about 10-15metres, it's only local flux that is key for IR.

But up in the less dense troposphere and stratosphere IR travels much greater distances, that and the decrease of density with height allow IR to have an impact over distances. It's not rapidly absorbed like at sea level because there's a lower density of air.

Where does this 'typical maximum path for IR is about 10-15metres' come from? What does this mean? Are you trying to say that thermodynamics changes, or doesn't work at 15 meters and a above?

I appreciate that the actual densities of gases varies in the atmosphere at the differing altitudes but since the density of a substance is dependent on both temperature and pressure it is difficult to say what actually happens to heat in the atmosphere since these two variables are changing all the time - however it is reasonable to assume that overall the temperature leaves the troposphere quickly as we observe this on a daily basis - if the atmosphere were to hold heat as the pro-AGW arguments like to imply then the heat transfer rate in the troposphere, certainly as you describe it, would be slow and this is simply not the case.

quote:

Originally posted by CobblyWorlds:
It's not just the energy implied by air at a certain temperature, energy that can be released to warm an intermixing cooler pocket of air. It's also the flux of Visible, UV and Infra-Red radiation. By concentrating on temperature alone you're missing a part of the puzzle.

Thermodynamic constraints apply - if they didn't it wouldn't be physics.

But, and this was my original point, whatever missing parts of the puzzle are (and there are a lot) they have to work within the fundamental principles of thermodynamics. Therefore, saying a warmer troposphere causes a cooler stratosphere does not work.