Part Eight Issues with Determining what the Blackbody Temperature of the Earth is.

In Part Two we discussed how the temperature of the planet was determined starting with the Blackbody temperature which is based on incoming solar radiation primarily in the visible and near visible frequencies. All the energy that is absorbed by the planet must, by the principles of science, eventually escape into space or the planet would have melted a long time ago. Therefore the energy emitted by the planet must equal the energy absorbed by the planet and we can calculate this using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law and that was also shown in Part Two. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law we determined that the planets Blackbody temperature was 254.36^O Kelvin which corresponds to -18.79^O Celsius or -1.82^O Fahrenheit. Although this is true it’s a bit misleading since the planet is a sphere, its axis is tilted, its spinning and it contains a significant amount of water on the surface.

Why this matters is the result of the thermal properties of the actual diverse surfaces of the planet which are not consistent and this creates large thermal flows in the atmosphere and the oceans as the planet tries to equalize the incoming energy in the form of heat to achieve a true uniform global temperature; which by the way is not even possible. Much of this retention and movement of heat is what we call the greenhouse effect, climate and weather. To appreciate the complexity of the thermal flows let’s look at what the energy reaching the planet looks like ignoring the atmospheric clouds, water in the oceans, and the albedo in general, a perfectly round ball of rock with a magnetic field and an atmosphere of pure nitrogen. The plots shown here are not “exact” but should be very close considering the problems with orbital variations, axial orientation changes and 365.25 days per year.

The first Chart, is of Northern Hemisphere and is a plot of the energy reaching the planet in three different areas; the equator shown in red, the Tropic of Cancer (23.4 degrees north latitude) shown in light blue, the Arctic circle (66.6 degrees north latitude shown in medium blue and the North pole shown in dark blue. Because of the tilt of the planets axis of 23.4 degrees there is a very large difference in the amount of solar flux that reaches the planet’s surface in the higher latitudes. We know that above the Arctic Circle there is total darkness for half the year, well that also means no heat energy arrives there either and this is clearly shown in these Charts.

Obviously the majority of the energy reaching the planet from the sun comes in between the equator and the Tropic of cancer; further we can see that the least energy is received in the first quarter of the year and the second least is in the four quarter. Second and third quarters have the most energy coming in. This unequal distribution of energy creates a thermal flow from the equator to the pole and because most of the land on the planet is also in the Northern hemisphere, where we are, that means that we see this energy flow and some assume that its climate change both because of the movement north of heat and also because of variations in the albedo (how much gets reflected back before reaching the surface) reaching the planet by cloud formation.

The Second Chart, is of the Southern Hemisphere and it is also a plot of the energy reaching the planet in three different areas; the equator shown in red, the Tropic of Capricorn (23.4 degrees south latitude) shown in light green, the Antarctic Circle (66.6 degrees south latitude shown in medium green and the South pole shown in dark green. This Chart is very similar to that of the north but reversed, just flipped winter and summer.

Obviously the majority of the energy reaching the planet from the sun comes in between the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn; further we can see that the least energy is received in the second and third quarters and fourth and first quarters have the most energy coming. This unequal distribution of energy also creates a thermal flow from the equator to the pole and because most of the water on the planet is in the Southern hemisphere that means that we don’t see this energy flow as much since it dampened by all the water although there still is a flow south of heat. We also have a large land mass at the South Pole with most of the planets ice stored there making this the coldest place on the planet as there is no water underneath the ice.

Putting these previous two Charts together we have the next Chart showing both the North and South Hemispheres together. Looking at this Chart one could say that it looks like the average energy input would be between 700 and 800 W/m² but this Chart is really just the side facing the Sun the other side gets nothing so half of that or ~350 W/m² would be more accurate, and the actual value is 342 W/m² so we have a confirmation of that guess.

The plots of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are interesting as there is a large difference between them because of the axial tilt of 23.44 degrees of the planet in relationship to the earth being 147,098,290 Km at Perihelion from the sun and being 152,098,232 Km from the sun at Aphelion. This effect is interesting since there is an approximate 10,000 year cycle to the orientation of the earth’s axis to the Perihelion (close) and Aphelion (far). In other words the patterns shown here will be reversed in 10,000 years and it will be hotter in the summer and colder in the winter in the northern hemisphere. I think this could explain the 1000 year warm cool cycle that we see developing around 4,000 years ago.

The next two Charts shows the differences between the Northern and Southern hemispheres in the areas where the Solar Flux is the strongest, in more detail. Because the Earth is closest to the sun in the Northern Hemispheres Winter and the North pole is pointed away from the Sun the difference between the winters and summers are small; while in the Southern Hemisphere the Earth is farther from the Sun in the Summer when the South pole is pointed toward the Sun and so the difference between Winter and summer is largest. Offsetting this is the fact that the southern hemisphere is mostly water which mitigates the differential.

The next chart two Charts are based on an average of the values shown here for the Tropic of Cancer, the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. However since the Earth is a sphere picking three lines is not the same are calculating the actual area and averaging that. So these Charts are good only to shows a relationship not an actual value. However, having said that what is shown is not all that far off since the actual area involved is close to equal.

The first Chart shows W/m² in the area around the equator and the second Chart shows the W/m² converted to degrees Celsius using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law. Looking at the scales on both charts you will find that on the first chart W/m² there is a ~4% change in solar radiation and in the second Chart degrees Celsius there is a ~16% change because the Stefan-Boltzmann Law has a 4^th power relationship from W/m² to degrees Celsius.

The current (February 2015) global temperature according to NASA is 14.79 degrees Celsius and the generally accepted value for the total greenhouse effect is 33 degrees Celsius. So that makes the blackbody temperature -18.21 degrees Celsius; which is in general agreement with the scientific literature. This simple method used above, which was not meant to calculate the blackbody temperature, isn’t all that far off from the real number being about ~8 degrees C to low.

Last month I published that January would be my last Post of this kind because the NASA data tampering was getting to bad to use to measure global temperature. A week later I realized I had used the wrong table and although the data tampering is still there it’s not as bad as I thought so I published a correction on this blog. This post resumes what I have been doing since January 2014.

The analysis and plots shown here are based on the following: first NASA-GISS temperature anomalies (converted to degrees Celsius so non-scientists will understand the plots) as shown in their table LOTI, second James E. Hansen’s Scenario B data, which is the very core of the IPCC Global Climate models (GCM’s) and which was based on a CO2 sensitivity value of 3.0^O Celsius, lastly, a plot based on an alternative climate model designated ‘PCM’ and based on a sensitively value of .65^O Celsius.

An explanation of the alternative model designated PCM is in order since many have interpreted this PCM model as a statistical least squares projection of some kind and nothing could be further from the truth. A decade ago when I started this work the first thing I did was look at geological temperature changes since it is well known that the climate is not a constant; I learned that in my undergrad climatology course in 1964. One quickly finds that there is a clear movement in global temperatures with a 1,000 some year cycle going back at least 3,000 to 4,000 years; probably because of the apsidal precession of about 21,000 years for a complete cycle. However about every 10,000 years the seasons are reversed making the winter colder and the summer warmer (northern hemisphere) 10,000 years from now. There are also 60 to 70 year cycles in the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans that are well documented. We also know that there are greenhouse gases such as Carbon Dioxide and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) estimated that Carbon Dioxide had a doubling rate of 3.0^O Celsius plus or minus 1.5^O Celsius in 1979

The IPCC still uses the NAS 3.0^O Celsius as the sensitivity value of Carbon Dioxide and a number in that range is required to make the IPCC GCM’s work. The problem with using this value is it leaves no room for other factors and hence the need of the infamous Hockey Stick plots of the IPCC from Mann, Bradley & Hughes in 1999. The PCM model is based on a much lower value for Carbon Dioxide consistent with current research which places the value between 0.65^O and 1.5^O Celsius per doubling of Carbon Dioxide. If the long and short movement in temperatures and a lower value for Carbon Dioxide are properly analyzed and combined a plot that matched historical and current NASA temperature estimates very well can be constructed. This is not curve fitting.

The PCM model is such a construct and it is not based on statistical analyses of raw data. It is based on creating curves that match observations (which is real science) and those observations appear to be related to the movement of water in the world’s oceans. The movements of ocean currents is well documented in the literature all that was done here was properly combine the separate variables into one curve which had not been previously done. Since this combined curve is an excellent predictor of global temperatures unlike the IPCC GCM’s it appears to reflect reality a bit better than the convoluted IPCC GCM’s which after the past 19 years of no statistical warming have been shown to be in error.

Now, to smooth out highly erratic monthly variations a 12 month running average is used in all the plots. This information will be shown in four tables and updated each month as the new data comes in about the middle of the month. Since no model or simulation that cannot reasonably predict that which it was design to do is worth anything the information presented here definitively proves that NASA, NOAA and the IPCC just don’t have a clue.

The first plot, UL is a plot of the NASA temperature anomaly converted to degrees Celsius and shown in red with a black trend line added. There has been a very clear reversal in the upward movement of global temperatures since about 2001 and neither the UN IPCC nor anyone else has an explanation for this 13 years later. Since CO₂ has continued to increase at what could be argued an increasing rate this raises serious doubts about the logic programmed into all the IPCC global climate models.

The next plot UR, also in red, shows the IPCC estimates of what the Global temperature should be, based on Hansen’s Scenario B, with the NASA actual temperatures’ subtracted from them. Therefore this plot represents a deviation from what the Climate “believers” KNOW what the temperature should be; with a positive value indicating the IPCC values are higher than actual and a negative value indicating the IPCC values are lower than actual, as measured by NASA. A black trend line is added and we can clearly see that the deviation from expected is increasing at an increasing rate. This makes sense since the IPCC models project increased temperatures based primarily on the increasing level of CO₂ in the earth’s atmosphere. Unfortunately, for them, the actual temperatures from NASA are trending down (even as they try to hide the down ward movement with data manipulation) since other factors are in play, therefore each year the gap between them widens. Since we have 13 years of observations’ showing this pattern it becomes hard to justify a continuing belief in the IPCC climate models, there is obviously something very wrong here.

The next plot LL shown in blue is based on the equations in the PCM climate model described in previous papers and posts here and since it is generated by “equations” a trend line is not needed. As can be seen the PCM, LL, and the NASA, UL, trend plots are very similar the reason being that in the PCM model there is a 68.2 year cycle that moves the trend line up and then down a total of .30^O Celsius (currently negative .0070^O Celsius per year); and we are now in the downward portion of that trend which will continue until around 2035. This short cycle is clearly observed in the raw NASA data in the LOTI table going back to 1868. Then there is a long trend, 1052.6 years with an up and down of 1.36^O Celsius (currently plus .0029^O Celsius per year) also observed in the NASA data. Lastly there is CO2 adding about .005^O Celsius per year so they basically wash out which matches the current holding pattern we are experiencing. However within a few years the increasing downward trend of the short cycle will overpower the other two and we will see drop of about .002^O Celsius per year and that will be increasing until till around 2025 or so. After about 2035 the short cycle will have bottomed and turn up and all three will be on the upswing again. These are all round numbers shown here as representative values.

The last plot LR in blue uses the same logic as used in the UR plot, here we use the PCM estimates of what the Global temperature should be with the NASA actual temperatures’ subtracted from them. A positive value indicates the PCM values are higher than actual and a negative value indicates the PCM values are lower than expected. A black trend line was added and it clearly shows that the PCM model is tracking the NASA actual values very closely. In, fact since 1970 the PCM model has rarely been off by more than +/- .1 degrees Celsius and has an average trend of almost zero error, while the IPCC models are erratic and are now approaching an error rate of +.5^O above expected.

In summary, the IPCC models were designed before a true picture of the world’s climate was understood. During the 1980’s and 1990’s CO₂ levels were going up and the world temperature was also going up so there appeared to be correlation and causation. The mistake that was made was looking at only a ~20 year period when the real variations in climate move in much longer cycles. Those other cycles can be observed in the NASA data but they were ignored for some reason. By ignoring those trends and focusing only on CO₂ the models will be unable to correctly plot global temperatures until they are fixed.

Lastly the next Chart shows what a plot of the PCM model would look like from the year 1000 to the year 2200. The plot matches reasonably well with history and fits the current NASA-GISS table LOTI date very closely, despite homogenization. I understand that this model is not based on physics but it is also not curve fitting. It’s based on observed reoccurring patterns in the climate. These patterns can be modeled and when they are you get a plot that works better than the IPCC’s GCM. If the conditions that create these patterns do not change and CO₂ continues to increase to 800 ppm or even 1000 ppm than this model will work into the foreseeable future. One hundred fifty years from now global temperatures will peak at around 15.5 to 15.7 degrees C and then will be on the downside of the long cycle for the next 500 years. The overall effect of CO₂ reaching levels of 1000 ppm or even higher will be between 1.0 and 1.5 degrees C which is about the same as that of the long cycle.

Carbon Dioxide is not capable of doing what Hansen and Gore claim!

The purpose of this post is to make people aware of the errors inherent in the IPCC models so that they can be corrected.

Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian and British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. He is considered one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century, and he also wrote extensively on social and political philosophy. The following quotes of his apply to this subject.

If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

… (S)cience is one of the very few human activities — perhaps the only one — in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected

Part Seven Equations that define Climate

The PCM Climate model development was based on some very basic and simple principles that I think NASA, NOAA and the IPCC has either ignored or forgotten. The reason for this is they thought they knew what was causing the apparent increase in world temperatures in the 1980’s. Therefore they didn’t try to find out why but instead looked only at what the result would be if that observed pattern was caused by CO₂ and that it continued into the future. Since CO2 was not the Ultimate cause of the increase in apparent Global temperatures the results of the work were flawed and we now have policy being built to, in essence, stop Mother Nature from doing what is natural to her. Obviously this will not work and will ultimately cause great harm!

The first is that the Earth’s temperature is very stable never deviating from a mean of about 17 degrees Celsius by more than +/- 2% over the past several hundred million years; which means there are no positive feedback mechanisms.

The second is the fact that for all practical purposes the planet’s surface temperature is determined solely by the energy arriving here from the sun and how long it stays there.

The third is that water in the oceans, lakes and rivers along with what is the atmosphere acts as a thermal buffer that holds a tremendous amount of heat.

The fourth is that the energy that makes it to the surface falls on a small circle centered on a direct line from the center of the sun to the center of the earth creating a hot spot.

The fifth is that the energy from the hot spot flows north and south to the polls through both the oceans and the atmosphere.

The sixth is that the planet rotates around the sun in an elliptical orbit and the planet spins around its axis so that hot spot moves up to the tropic of cancer and down to the tropic of Capricorn creating thermal flows that are not easy to model as the land and water portions are not the same over the entire planet.

The seventh is that changes in the intensity of the solar wind will make changes in the earth’s magnetic field and that changes how high energy particles enter the atmosphere and that increases or decreases the planets cloud cover.

The eighth is that small changes in cloud cover make changes in the planets albedo and that will make changes in the amount of energy reaching the surface of the planet.

The ninth is that small changes in the energy reaching the planet’s surface makes a large change in the temperature because of the physics involved in the Stefan-Boltzmann Law.

The tenth is that the combination of: the orbital changes of the Earth, the fact that the Earth rotates every 24 hours, and there is a variable energy input from solar radiation and the solar wind create, means that what we call climate and weather is not and has never been a constant

It is my professional opinion that the physics and chemistry interactions on the planet considering all the variables, along with the external orbital variables are not model-able with present knowledge and computer power to predict global climate with sufficient precision and accurately to justify make energy or economic policy. By this I mean we have not been measuring climate at the global level long enough to know if the logic we have developed and use is correct or not. Temperatures have gone both up and down while CO₂ was going up.

However, having said that I do think that there is enough data over the past 4000 to 5000 years to make a crude model that will explain or at least get us into a ball park understanding of the thermal energy flows that seem to us as climate change. This misunderstanding is because these changes are orders of magnitude longer than a human life. In particular there is a thousand year cycle and a seventy year cycle that is observed and we know that CO₂ will have some effect on how fast the heat in the atmosphere radiates off the planet e.g. the black body temperature and the greenhouse effect which was discussed in Part Two.

Since we know that the last cold period, the little ice age, bottomed around 1600 to 1650 and we know there is a thousand year pattern and a seventy year pattern it seemed to me that it should be possible to write simple equations that would be able to show these thermal movements. The following equations will, in fact, accurately predict Global Temperatures from January 1600 to the present; with two assumptions. One is that the Global Temperature was in the general range of 13.5 degrees Celsius in 1600. Two was that CO₂ levels were in the range of 270 ppm during that same period. The developed equations are robust enough to allow for some changes in these two key variables. A model of CO₂ was already shown in part four.

The following five equations will produce a Global Temperature from a time series starting from January 1600 to which we give the value 1 and label that number as M. Each succeeding month from that date adds 1 to that number such that January 2015 is M = 4981 and that gives a CO₂ value of 399.98 ppm verses the actual of 399.96 or an error of .02 ppm which is basically no error; and a Global Temperature of 14.57 degrees Celsius verse NASA at 14.74 degrees Celsius for an error of .17 degrees Celsius using January 2015 values published in the LOTI table.

The following are the definitions of the terms used in the five equations. GT equals Global Temperature in degrees Celsius. LT equals the Global Temperature adder from the 1000 years cycle. ST equals the Global Temperature adder from the short cycle. CO₂ equals the level of CO₂ in ppm. CT equals the Global Temperature adder from the CO₂ level. Just an aside the result from using these five equations may not be exactly what my spreadsheet calculates because it uses more places in the calculation.

GT = 13.5 + LT + ST + CT

LT = SIN (( M -3500 ) * .0004974 ) * .45

ST = SIN (( M -350 ) * .0088139 ) * .14

CO₂ = 270 + 730 / ( 1 + 8.75 * EXP ( .00173 * (4612 – M )))

CT = (( 14 / ( + EXP ( -.009 * CO2 ))) -7 ) – 5.867

These five equations were developed without the use of any statistical software and were first developed using the 2003 version of Excel; since then I have upgraded to the 2007 version so I can now use the .xlsx format. I am also sure that these equations could be improved on with the use of appropriate software which I do not have. This model was developed solely by observation of the relationships found. The serious reader, if interested, may request a copy of the spreadsheet containing this model by sending me a formal request to david.pristash@gmail.com and after reviewing the request I will send the requester a copy of the spreadsheet in xlsx format or a reason why I did not

The following three Charts were made using these five equations the large variation in the NASA data can be seen in these charts and that is why I use a 12 month running average and/or the blocks of 10 years in most of my work. These Charts are identical except for the time frames shown. The red plot is actual NOAA monthly CO₂ data in ppm. The Green plot is actual monthly NASA data converted from anomalies to degrees Celsius for Global Temperature. The blue plot is the CO₂ model in ppm. The purple plot is the PCM Climate model projection of Global temperatures cased on these five equations in degrees Celsius.

The first Chart is for a 200 year period bracketing the NASA and NOAA data. The purple PCM plot is not perfect but it is very close to the green NASA plot.

This Chart goes back to 1600 which is about the time the temperatures bottomed out during the Little Ice Age and forward to 2100.

This last Chart starts at the bottom of the last ice shows the peak of the current long cycle around 2150 at 15.1 or 15.2 degrees Celsius and then continues moving down to the next tough around 2700 and then continuing with the start of the next upswing. We can see that the 2700 bottom is only about .6 or .5 degrees Celsius higher even though CO₂ has peaked at 1000 ppm.

It is my personal belief after studying the available literature that the variations is the suns electromagnetic radiation along for the particle based solar wind has an effect on the Earth’s magnetic field; and those variations allow more or less of the cosmic rays (charged particles) to enter the Earth’s atmosphere. Those particles interact with the water in the atmosphere to create droplets which then form clouds. Clouds being the main driver of the Albedo of the Earth have a significant effect on how much and how long the thermal energy stays on the atmosphere before being re-radiated out. This is, of course, the greenhouse effect which determines the earths Global Temperature.

This is not my idea but it is the one that I think is the principle cause of the short cycle and possibly of the long cycle as well.