I utilise the Central England Temperature Record (HadCET) to investigate the progress of global boiling by month: are we about to be sautéed in unsalted butter?
Spring and autumn are lagging points following solstices, days with minimum and maximum solar hours per day. As with a capacitor modeled by a simple differential equation whose voltage lags current, one might expect temperature to lag solar input. The full effect observed on the output variable lags the input variable. So one might expect the fullest effects to be seen nearer to the lag points than the minima/maxima. This is what I’ve held as the reason the warmest ocean waters for swimming are at the end of the summer in August/Sep rather than on June 21. This possible explanation however doesn’t quite line up with October/Nov found with the minima temperature analysis. One might also expect the full effect of the minima on Dec 21 to manifest a couple months later in Feb/Mar. March does appear to be somewhat of a high point among its near neighbors for both the blue and yellow series on the chart, if my bleary eyes aren’t tricking me.
This is a cracking comment and opens up the can of worms further, for we are now talking about solar radiation which will be mediated by cloud cover, and we're talking about water vapour storing the energy in lagged fashion, which will be mediated by several other factors. We arrive at a tangle of confounding variables, all dynamic and all affecting each other in Ouroboros fashion. In essence those pretty bars are evidence that the atmospheric storage capacity is increasing over time and CMIP Earth Systems models assume this is due to increased water vapour that is responding to increased IR capture by CO2 but this is only an assumption i.e. water vapour amplifies the effect of CO2. But what if water vapour levels are not merely a response to CO2 IR capture but are driven by other factors (e.g. clouds)?
Indeed, it would seem indirect CO2 capture of IR is not required for a pond to give off more water vapor as its temperature rises from the direct effect of hot sun.
Quite! The more I wrap my head round the complexity of the dynamics the more I realise CO2 is not needed to explain long term shifts. I'm also aware that modellers have to greatly simplify the simulations and add judicious damping otherwise the models (being a big bunch of differentials) simply blow up. By way of example I gather they allow a delay of up to 3 years for ocean heat content transfer whereas empirical studies reveal this can be decades. I also gather they assume even illumination of an idealised, stable sphere and ignore the fact that only half the globe is irradiated at any one time. They also ignore Coriolis forces impacting on circulation.
I believe that the IPCC modellers, to keep things simple, use a 'dry atmosphere' (so no water vapour, not even from the Hunga-Tonga sub-sea eruption) and also assume that cloud cover (which varies from 5%-95%) remains constant (not sure at what level)!
They do indeed assume these things - a 'standard' atmosphere that doesn't exist in reality, and emasculated clouds that are pointless contrivances. One of my fave talks that touches on this is this one...
Simple models can be understood intuitively but often can’t capture the complexity of creation. Hence the need for more complex models. However that tends to beget stacks of parameters of unknown value and frequent frothing with fudge factors. Very complex models can in theory be more accurate but paradoxically become harder to validate intuitively and harder to verify in each particular internal detail against empirical reality. A model by its nature is serving as a proxy for things we often cannot directly observe in nature and is therefore not an exact replica of nature. Tough business, susceptible to the modeling choices, parameter estimations, and empirical data re-analysis used to check the model or estimate the parameters.
Being a small island I am expecting the seas and oceans to play a major role, and they will likely have a different rate of energy transfer. If we think of the atmosphere as one storage circuit at one frequency and the oceans as another then they'll induce patterns of constructive and destructive interference - hence October?
(edited again) Yes the confluence of multiple places of varying storage can cascade the lags (considered as series blocks of resistor-capacitor circuits). While the whole earth system has one heat source (sun), or two sources if magma is considered, an island may “see” a variety of local sources as you mentioned- sun, air, water (or water indirectly via air). A linear system’s response frequency is the frequency of the driven input frequency. If there is more than one input at different frequencies then the peaks and troughs vary as the frequencies reinforce or cancel each other. My first thought is we have one input from sun with daily and seasonal frequencies overlaid. Clouds will unpredictably influence the heat input introducing nonlinearity. Even in a linear system the confluences at a point reflect the neighboring influences, resulting in interferences and varying peaks and troughs across different spatial points. Now we teeter on the slippery slope high above the valley of Finite Element Analysis.
The conversation between yourself and la chevalerie vit is absolutely fascinating to the extent that I am able to understand what is said. It sems like you two should remain in dialogue.
On another note have you come across this site John:
I had to skim or scroll most of it in order to get to work on time. A tidbit caught my eye regarding a study that showed 70% of temperature effects are from solar input variation. Unfortunately I didn’t see them provide a citation or link or author or anything for that study.
That's the best piece of science journalism I have seen to date. As regards solar input variation I did a little bit of work on TSI back in 2019 and here's a link to my notes - I'll be rolling out an article series based on this...
Excellent! Printed. Looked at the first page or so. TSI, in the range around 1360s, is about 22 sixty-watt light bulbs per square meter (assuming 100% efficient)!
I presume temperatures for regions at different latitudes, such as northern Europe/Canada vs. India, will have differing amounts of solar input, which differ also by month of year. Monthly series for different latitudes, e.g. UK vs. New Zealand vs. Panama, will show different monthly patterns.
I dug out an old textbook to remind myself of irradiation - Robert W. Boyd, University of Rochester Institute of Optics, "Radiometry and the Detection of Optical Radiation", 1983, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.
This is probably minutia, out of scope or nearly so, and a fair bit of geeking out, but I'm curious to understand better how TSI accounts for the angle of incidence at different latitudes (where the angle theta is zero at the equator at the midpoint between solstices, at the Tropic of Capricorn at winter solstice, and at the Tropic of Cancer at summer solstice), as I'm sure it must. I found this quickly for later perusal https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/science/solar-irradiance.html
From the point of view of the sun, considered as a point source, a unit area on Earth's surface, e.g. a casual gardener's small, square-meter garden patch, will subtend a solid angle in units of steradians (on the sun's surface). A fraction of the sun's total output power goes through that solid angle and impinges on said patch. The quantity of power (radiant flux) is given by the source's radiant intensity, I, in units of watts per steradian, multiplied by the steradians of the solid angle of our patch.
The irradiance experienced by said patch, E, in watts per square meter, is given by E = I * cos(theta) / r^2 where r is the distance from the point source (chapter 2) to the patch, about 93 million miles. For patches of ground at higher latitudes, the angle theta approaches 90 degrees, and the irradiance goes to zero (at the Arctic circle and Antarctic circle at both solstices, and at the poles at mid-solstices). Patches of ground orthogonal to the sun, where theta is zero, get the full brunt, I / r^2.
Here, r in meters is 149600000000 m. Squaring yields r^2 = 2.238E22. This link https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/sunfact.html tells that the sun puts out 3.828E26 Watts. This is over 4pi steradians, yielding I = 3.046E25 W/sr. Hence the full-brunt irradiance on our patch is expected to be E=I/R^2 = 3.046E25/2.238E22 = 1.36115E3 W/m2. This matches the TSI range on the y-axis on the first chart. As our patch is 1 meter square, the power that is incident when theta is 0 is 1.361 kW.
Based on this review, it would appear the TSI is the full-on quantity (theta=0), and latitude can be accounted for through 'simple' application of cos(theta). Actually, not so simple, because theta is related to latitude at only certain times of year when the equator has the sun overhead (i.e. at mid solstices). The rest of the year, theta is based on calculations involving the special Iines of latitude, and said patch's relation to said lines.
I hope this wasn't too much of a distraction. But at least I have an inkling as to how to derate TSI for other geographical locations.
Hounds teeth! You are on a roll. We're talking gradients with down flow from the tropics. Have they modelled a planar irradiated rather than spherical irradiated Earth, I wonder? On top of this there is rotation affecting the distribution. And neither is rotation constant. Could length of day, as a disturbance in the 'power supply', be amplified even though fractional? I shall need a large tray of iced buns!
I'll leave those secondary effects for another time once we have a treatment of adjusted TSI. I'm letting my curiosity getting the better of me and presently searching for a dataset that can be used to calculate daily sunlight hours, by coordinate (degree latitude) and day of year, so we can estimate our garden patch's TSI, adjusted (derated) for incidence angle from the point source sun as well as daily hours of sunlight. One potential visualization would be lines of constant adjusted TSI drawn over a two-dimensional domain, with x-axis being day of year (or month), and y-axis being latitude.
It sure helps holiday sales in Autumn half-term.
Spring and autumn are lagging points following solstices, days with minimum and maximum solar hours per day. As with a capacitor modeled by a simple differential equation whose voltage lags current, one might expect temperature to lag solar input. The full effect observed on the output variable lags the input variable. So one might expect the fullest effects to be seen nearer to the lag points than the minima/maxima. This is what I’ve held as the reason the warmest ocean waters for swimming are at the end of the summer in August/Sep rather than on June 21. This possible explanation however doesn’t quite line up with October/Nov found with the minima temperature analysis. One might also expect the full effect of the minima on Dec 21 to manifest a couple months later in Feb/Mar. March does appear to be somewhat of a high point among its near neighbors for both the blue and yellow series on the chart, if my bleary eyes aren’t tricking me.
This is a cracking comment and opens up the can of worms further, for we are now talking about solar radiation which will be mediated by cloud cover, and we're talking about water vapour storing the energy in lagged fashion, which will be mediated by several other factors. We arrive at a tangle of confounding variables, all dynamic and all affecting each other in Ouroboros fashion. In essence those pretty bars are evidence that the atmospheric storage capacity is increasing over time and CMIP Earth Systems models assume this is due to increased water vapour that is responding to increased IR capture by CO2 but this is only an assumption i.e. water vapour amplifies the effect of CO2. But what if water vapour levels are not merely a response to CO2 IR capture but are driven by other factors (e.g. clouds)?
Indeed, it would seem indirect CO2 capture of IR is not required for a pond to give off more water vapor as its temperature rises from the direct effect of hot sun.
Quite! The more I wrap my head round the complexity of the dynamics the more I realise CO2 is not needed to explain long term shifts. I'm also aware that modellers have to greatly simplify the simulations and add judicious damping otherwise the models (being a big bunch of differentials) simply blow up. By way of example I gather they allow a delay of up to 3 years for ocean heat content transfer whereas empirical studies reveal this can be decades. I also gather they assume even illumination of an idealised, stable sphere and ignore the fact that only half the globe is irradiated at any one time. They also ignore Coriolis forces impacting on circulation.
I believe that the IPCC modellers, to keep things simple, use a 'dry atmosphere' (so no water vapour, not even from the Hunga-Tonga sub-sea eruption) and also assume that cloud cover (which varies from 5%-95%) remains constant (not sure at what level)!
They do indeed assume these things - a 'standard' atmosphere that doesn't exist in reality, and emasculated clouds that are pointless contrivances. One of my fave talks that touches on this is this one...
https://youtu.be/CqWv26PXqz0?si=QSSVTZJ3AnEh0xxp
Simple models can be understood intuitively but often can’t capture the complexity of creation. Hence the need for more complex models. However that tends to beget stacks of parameters of unknown value and frequent frothing with fudge factors. Very complex models can in theory be more accurate but paradoxically become harder to validate intuitively and harder to verify in each particular internal detail against empirical reality. A model by its nature is serving as a proxy for things we often cannot directly observe in nature and is therefore not an exact replica of nature. Tough business, susceptible to the modeling choices, parameter estimations, and empirical data re-analysis used to check the model or estimate the parameters.
Addenda: perhaps spring and fall lags are not symmetrical; perhaps October is a lag on a lag (Oct lags ocean peak).
Being a small island I am expecting the seas and oceans to play a major role, and they will likely have a different rate of energy transfer. If we think of the atmosphere as one storage circuit at one frequency and the oceans as another then they'll induce patterns of constructive and destructive interference - hence October?
(edited again) Yes the confluence of multiple places of varying storage can cascade the lags (considered as series blocks of resistor-capacitor circuits). While the whole earth system has one heat source (sun), or two sources if magma is considered, an island may “see” a variety of local sources as you mentioned- sun, air, water (or water indirectly via air). A linear system’s response frequency is the frequency of the driven input frequency. If there is more than one input at different frequencies then the peaks and troughs vary as the frequencies reinforce or cancel each other. My first thought is we have one input from sun with daily and seasonal frequencies overlaid. Clouds will unpredictably influence the heat input introducing nonlinearity. Even in a linear system the confluences at a point reflect the neighboring influences, resulting in interferences and varying peaks and troughs across different spatial points. Now we teeter on the slippery slope high above the valley of Finite Element Analysis.
The conversation between yourself and la chevalerie vit is absolutely fascinating to the extent that I am able to understand what is said. It sems like you two should remain in dialogue.
On another note have you come across this site John:
https://www.climate4you.com/
It looks like it has some very detailed work which you will no doubt appreciate more than I can.
There’s a heck of an article by Epoch Times. How does one send email to a substack author?
Try to access here
https://substack.com/@lachevalerievit/note/c-40067349?r=ls2s4&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
Digging in now with a big spoon...
I had to skim or scroll most of it in order to get to work on time. A tidbit caught my eye regarding a study that showed 70% of temperature effects are from solar input variation. Unfortunately I didn’t see them provide a citation or link or author or anything for that study.
That's the best piece of science journalism I have seen to date. As regards solar input variation I did a little bit of work on TSI back in 2019 and here's a link to my notes - I'll be rolling out an article series based on this...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MFCQDPfcxNs4gmS8EdfekBC9qf_Fw7vS/view?usp=drive_link
Excellent! Printed. Looked at the first page or so. TSI, in the range around 1360s, is about 22 sixty-watt light bulbs per square meter (assuming 100% efficient)!
I presume temperatures for regions at different latitudes, such as northern Europe/Canada vs. India, will have differing amounts of solar input, which differ also by month of year. Monthly series for different latitudes, e.g. UK vs. New Zealand vs. Panama, will show different monthly patterns.
I dug out an old textbook to remind myself of irradiation - Robert W. Boyd, University of Rochester Institute of Optics, "Radiometry and the Detection of Optical Radiation", 1983, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York.
This is probably minutia, out of scope or nearly so, and a fair bit of geeking out, but I'm curious to understand better how TSI accounts for the angle of incidence at different latitudes (where the angle theta is zero at the equator at the midpoint between solstices, at the Tropic of Capricorn at winter solstice, and at the Tropic of Cancer at summer solstice), as I'm sure it must. I found this quickly for later perusal https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/science/solar-irradiance.html
From the point of view of the sun, considered as a point source, a unit area on Earth's surface, e.g. a casual gardener's small, square-meter garden patch, will subtend a solid angle in units of steradians (on the sun's surface). A fraction of the sun's total output power goes through that solid angle and impinges on said patch. The quantity of power (radiant flux) is given by the source's radiant intensity, I, in units of watts per steradian, multiplied by the steradians of the solid angle of our patch.
The irradiance experienced by said patch, E, in watts per square meter, is given by E = I * cos(theta) / r^2 where r is the distance from the point source (chapter 2) to the patch, about 93 million miles. For patches of ground at higher latitudes, the angle theta approaches 90 degrees, and the irradiance goes to zero (at the Arctic circle and Antarctic circle at both solstices, and at the poles at mid-solstices). Patches of ground orthogonal to the sun, where theta is zero, get the full brunt, I / r^2.
Here, r in meters is 149600000000 m. Squaring yields r^2 = 2.238E22. This link https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/sunfact.html tells that the sun puts out 3.828E26 Watts. This is over 4pi steradians, yielding I = 3.046E25 W/sr. Hence the full-brunt irradiance on our patch is expected to be E=I/R^2 = 3.046E25/2.238E22 = 1.36115E3 W/m2. This matches the TSI range on the y-axis on the first chart. As our patch is 1 meter square, the power that is incident when theta is 0 is 1.361 kW.
Based on this review, it would appear the TSI is the full-on quantity (theta=0), and latitude can be accounted for through 'simple' application of cos(theta). Actually, not so simple, because theta is related to latitude at only certain times of year when the equator has the sun overhead (i.e. at mid solstices). The rest of the year, theta is based on calculations involving the special Iines of latitude, and said patch's relation to said lines.
I hope this wasn't too much of a distraction. But at least I have an inkling as to how to derate TSI for other geographical locations.
Hounds teeth! You are on a roll. We're talking gradients with down flow from the tropics. Have they modelled a planar irradiated rather than spherical irradiated Earth, I wonder? On top of this there is rotation affecting the distribution. And neither is rotation constant. Could length of day, as a disturbance in the 'power supply', be amplified even though fractional? I shall need a large tray of iced buns!
For some information on slight changes in orbital eccentricity, rotational axis obliquity, and axis precession see https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2948/milankovitch-orbital-cycles-and-their-role-in-earths-climate/ and https://ugc.berkeley.edu/background-content/earths-spin-tilt-orbit/. We can sleep well at night thanks to prolific warnings that there are no climate influences to be found here (at least not regarding today's global boiling).
I'll leave those secondary effects for another time once we have a treatment of adjusted TSI. I'm letting my curiosity getting the better of me and presently searching for a dataset that can be used to calculate daily sunlight hours, by coordinate (degree latitude) and day of year, so we can estimate our garden patch's TSI, adjusted (derated) for incidence angle from the point source sun as well as daily hours of sunlight. One potential visualization would be lines of constant adjusted TSI drawn over a two-dimensional domain, with x-axis being day of year (or month), and y-axis being latitude.
The first hits from duck duck go charge a non-trivial fee for CSV download - https://dev.timeanddate.com/astro/pricing and https://dev.timeanddate.com/geospatial/https://dev.timeanddate.com/geospatial/https://dev.timeanddate.com/geospatial/ . While I can program to an API, spreadsheet formulas are easier. It would be nice to get a download so that we could get adjusted TSI values for latitude by degree by day of year. The other info required of course is a computation of theta by degree latitude by day of year. Dinner calls me back to the real world.
“It is our aim to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere.”
https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1701732427897491578/mediaviewer
Seriously? That tweet has now vanished!
Indeed it has!
I was watching it again to locate a timestamp for the statement when making the above comment (but wasn’t finding timing metadata in the display).
This stack has a post with a (rather unsavory) writeup of Apple’s video https://substack.com/@wmbriggs?utm_medium=email
There may be other sources that discuss the video but I haven’t tried looking yet. (Probably won’t as I’ve now seen it).