New Computer Fund

Monday, October 7, 2013

Fun with Forcing IV - Energy Instead of Temperature

As soon as I mention solar forcing eyes glaze over.  Based on dT=lambda(dF) all forcing is created equal provided "all things remain equal".  That is a huge assumption.  For the simplest example consider 390/240  390 is the old estimate of average surface effective radiant energy and 240 is the old estimate of total solar energy available.  The source of the energy is the sun and that energy is amplified by several processes to maintain 390 Wm-2.  Based on those simple numbers, solar is amplified by ~390/240=1.625 or nearly doubled.  If you consider more recent estimates, you have 398 radiant, 88 latent and 24 sensible energy transferred from the surface with 236Wm-2 of solar provided.  That is a gain of 510/236=2.16 for the total atmosphere and if you just consider the surface boundary layer, 510/135=3.77 or a gain of nearly 4 times the solar energy input.  You can marginalize that gain by claiming it is all due to the CO2 equivalent gases, but generally it is agreed that the contribution of all well mixed greenhouse gases is on the order of 16% to 30% of the total atmospheric/oceans effect. 

To illustrate I have converted the HadSST3 temperature series in to equivalent Watts per meter squared using the most recent Reynolds Oiv2 70S-70N data.  That indicates the 70S-70N SST is approximately 19 C degrees which would have an effective radiant energy of ~413 Wm-2.  Then I use the Berkeley CO2 and Volcanic data with a combined Kopp, G TSI reconstruction plus the satellite era TSI composite data with 4 different lags to try and fit the HadSST2 data.  There are enough control knobs to get a pretty good range of CO2 forcing estimates from less than the "no feedback sensitivity" to nearly two times no feedback.  If I focus on the satellite era I can get a very good fit which falls apart earlier, but the impact of combined solar remains in the 2 to 3 Wm-2 range for the entire period pretty much exactly the way the estimate gains indicates it should.  With just two lags of solar ~27 months and 94 months, the "pause" appears, everything pretty much falls into place.

This doesn't fly in Climate Science blog circles though because of the assumption that all forcings are created equal.  They are not.  The oceans can convert more energy from Joules/second to Joules/gram than the atmosphere can.  The oceans and the lower atmosphere with water vapor can convert and contain more Joules/gram than the dry atmosphere.  Clouds with a larger capacity to contain Joules/gram respond to solar, SST and surface winds to gather and distribute those Joules/gram to areas more sensitive to the addition of energy.  Solar just plain gets amplified.  Until that is understood, Climate debate is futile. 

I use OpenOffice for my spreadsheets which really does care much for internet sharing, but I am working on an Excel version to upload.  I have never really used Excel for anything complex so that may take a while.  My first attempt locked everything up :(  This should be the last of the Fun with Forcing series until I can upload something. 


No comments:

Post a Comment