Sunday, October 9, 2011

IPCC Down Welling Radiation Violates the Law!

Update: Explaining why Einstein, Angstrom, Plank, Poisson, Stefan-Boltzman and Arrhenus were right and Trenberth wrong is a lot harder than it should be.

Update: In Thermodynamics 101 you are taught the three real laws of thermo, KISS, FRAME of REFERENCE and ASSUME You need to wrap your minds around the simple stuff before you can understand the, a little more complicated. Why I have to explain the basics of thermodynamics is beyond me.

The Greenhouse triangles show simple how choice of frame of reference results in different temperatures relative to the surface temperature.

Update: The tropopause without the radiative effect of greenhouse gases.

The law of conservation of energy that is :) Down Welling Long Wave Radiation cannot be greater than the combined sources of the radiation. Based on their own estimates, the Earth without Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would emitted only 240 Wm-2 of energy. That value, the initial energy, is the peak sustained value that could be converted into down welling radiation.

Down welling radiation is created by the resistance of heat flux through the atmosphere, i.e. is waste heat, the result of inefficient heat transfer.

Maybe that is a big enough shocker to get people to visualize the problem from the proper frame of reference and then begin to honestly appreciate the most elegant mathematical relationship in nature.

9 comments:

Willy Mills said...

Down welling radiation can exceed solar input without violating conservation of energy.

Conservation of energy only says that the energy entering the system must either be stored in the system or leave the system.

The down welling radiation is not energy leaving the system. It is energy stored in the system.

Since the sun is continually delivering new energy into the system there is no particular bounds on how much energy is stored in the system.

An analogy from another system would be the phenomena of places like the Bay of Fundy which has huge tides even though the tidal signal is small. But the dimensions of the bay resonate nicely with the signal so a lot of energy is stored there without violating conservation of energy. In the Bay of Fundy the power of the flowing water exceeds the power of the lunar pull. But it represents a flow of energy that is not leaving the system (bay) but is simply sloshing around within it.

In the atmosphere the down welling radiation is again energy sloshing around within the system (atmosphere).

(In 1978 I got a $5 "conservation of energy" ticket for travelling over 55mph in Montana. But I don't think any laws are being violated in this instance.)

Recovering in the Florida Keys said...

It can exceed it, for a brief period, it can't maintain it in steady state, thermal runaway.

Richard said...

At Fundy there is no net increase over time, no energy budget carry over if you will, day to day or year to year. There is no threat of run away global tide-ing/flooding. The same holds true for the passive net earth energy budget.
Plants are able to store energy on a layaway plan using active carbon savings accounts.

Recovering in the Florida Keys said...

Richard, good example, 3.7Wm-2 would cause warming. 100Wm-2 would cause a lot of warming. Don't think we are seeing a lot of warming. Don't think plants are going nuts except for the weeds in my yard. Also this guy name Angstrom measured DWLR nearly a hundred years ago. He said it was nearly equal to the sun's energy. Then what would he know? He didn't have computer to generate a million errors a second, to get twice his estimate.

Willy Mills said...

As I see it Dallas is applying conservation of energy to a situation involving power (energy per unit time) and getting a wrong conclusion.

Suppose I have a battery connected to a 100 turn coil of wire. The wire coil is situated below the battery. The axis of the coil is horizontal. The battery feeds one amp of current into it. I would then have 100 amps of "down welling" current! Balanced of course by 100 amps of up welling current. But the total down welling current is two orders of magnitude larger than the "forcing" current from the battery. This is all achieved without violating conservation of energy.

In what way does conservation of energy preclude the atmosphere from behaving in a similar manner? With a given quanta of entering energy making several up/down trips before exitting? (Thus showing up more than once in a POWER equation).

Recovering in the Florida Keys said...

But Willis, Energy is conserved and work is performed. The inverted pyramid is the potential energy if the atmosphere and the up pyramid the olr becoming the potential energy of the atmosphere. That is the conservation of energy. It can be estimated at points in space, but in two dimensions that is how it would look.

Recovering in the Florida Keys said...

Willis, Think If I changed my frame of reference from the surface to top of the point in the pyramid, the the numbers would be reversed. Energy never gets a free ride.

Richard said...

Willy
When the battery is switched off the coil is de-energised. There is no stored energy. Switch on, elevated energy state. Switch off, no more energy. It dissipates. The battery is the functional equivalent of the sun to our earth energy budget. At night there is no input and the energy level dissipates. The only energy storage is chemical, i.e. carbohydrate from photosynthesis. You are confusing energy storage with equilibration.

Recovering in the Florida Keys said...

Out standing Richard! Equilibrium is a tool for only a moment in time. It really is a probability cloud, from my perspective.

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