9 responses to “Campion’s primer on atmospheric physics”

1. 

   mem

   Oct 27, 2021 11:38 AM

   Indeed. And the sun is a star composed of volatile gases that build up and burn emitting energy unpredictably, but all the climate models hold the sun at a constant (agreed by consensus as it is impossible to measure or predict its volatile energy output) which is a nonsense. Garbage in garbage out.

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2. 

   Wally Dali

   Oct 27, 2021 12:41 PM

   Boom!
   with a tip o’ the hat to Bruce in Newcastle

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3. 

   Kneel

   Oct 27, 2021 12:53 PM

   Sorry Rafe, but you will get nowhere claiming the physics is wrong.

   It is not.

   But it is not significant in this case – convection, latent heat transport and albedo rule as far as surface temps go, as they are all somewhere around an order of magnitude or more greater in effect than radiative transfer is in the troposphere.

   As several (eg Christy) have pointed out, a 1% change in cloud cover would be sufficient to explain all observed warming over the 20th C, and we simply do not have the cloud observations at sufficient accuracy to confirm or deny this is what happened.

   In terms of latent heat transport (evaporation from the surface and condensation at cloud height of water), this is self-evidently highly significant by the simple observation that the moist lapse rate is lower than the dry lapse rate – 10C/km “dry”, 6.5C/km “moist” is the usual claim. Of course, that is an “average”, but even a 3.5C change is 3 times the observed warming, and again we do not have sufficiently accurate and widespread (well sampled) values for water vapour to decide if any changes have even happened, let alone how much any such changes may have affected the surface temperature.

   As Pielke Snr has researched and noted, the boundary layer (which is where almost all our surface temperature measuring equipment is located) is almost never even near the “bulk” atmosphere – IIRC, there was several degrees difference between the temps at 2m vs those at 50m, and these differences were both positive as well as negative, depending on the time of day of the observation.

   In short and as above, their physics is not wrong, just overwhelmed by other factors – they are making important what they can measure (and affect), instead of measuring what is important (which humans may not be able to affect).

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4. 

   Tom

   Oct 27, 2021 2:33 PM

   Many thanks, Cardimona: filed for future reference.
5. 

   bemused

   Oct 27, 2021 3:16 PM

   It’s a pity more of these videos aren’t watched by the masses:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P19ywkobLX8
6. 

   Tony Cooke

   Oct 27, 2021 8:46 PM

   Unfortunately you assumption about the physics is wrong. The main problem with all of the climate models is that they ignore the effect of solar radiation. Phillipe de Laminat in his book “Climate Change: Identification and Projections” determines the sensitivity of the global temperature to doubling of CO2 to be around 1.3oC which is equivalent to a sensitivity to a radiation sensitivity of 1.6 oC/w/m2 while the sensitivity to solar radiation however is 17.7 oC/W/m2. Ignoring solar radiation therefore means that the current models are totally inadequate to make any predictions. Any review of the predictions of the last 30 years or so amply demonstrates that the models are completely unable to make an y useful predictions. It is also clear that now we are in a solar minimum we can expect the lower global temperatures that are now in evidence.
7. 

   Kneel

   Oct 28, 2021 1:31 PM

   “The main problem with all of the climate models is that they ignore the effect of solar radiation.”

   They say that TSI (Total Solar Irradiance) is what matters, and they ignore the spectrum of that irradiance, which is also highly significant – there may indeed only be a 0.1% TSI change, but the spectrum change is much, much greater – more than 30% change in UV, eg.
   They also ignore GCR levels, which are affected by solar wind and inter-planetary and solar magnetic fields, and which real physics experiments show do create cloud nucleation, thereby changing albedo, in position if not overall value.

   But none of that matters – when your model is fed a “driver” that is lower than your projections (so we should have expected more change if the model was correct), yet the “result” is less than your projections from the model, then your model is wrong and needs to be changed. But CliSci is intent on changing actual measurements to align with theory, rather than changing theory to align with reality.
8. 

   Rod Stuart

   Oct 28, 2021 1:32 PM

   Just as the Covid lie is constructed on a foundation of faulty and inadequate measurement (the RT-PCR test produces total nonsense, making all the fancy graphs and tables invalid) so too does the AGW lie rests on a foundation of invalid measurement. The “average global temperature” so broadly used to determine “warming” is impossible to compute, from both a mthematical and Thermodynamic perspective. It is as meaningful as the average of all the telephone numbers in teh Sydney directdory.
9. 

   Rod Stuart

   Oct 28, 2021 1:39 PM

   The other Big Lie that eneter s the fray from time to time is that methane affects the weather.
   Methane, regardless of its source, is so insignificant in volume that it woudl be impossibl efor it to influence anything. In addition, methan in air oxidises to water and CO2 in a few hours.