Carl's Climate Letters

I have gone back and reread the three study abstracts discussed in yesterday’s letter and need to revise one of my possible conclusions—these studies do not change the conventional definition of atmospheric rivers (ARs) to quite the extent that I was hoping for.  Much of what they say about the origin and distribution of the river vapor matches that of my high-altitude PW streams, but they are ambivalent about limiting the content exclusively to the upper-level wind system in the way I do, and ambivalent about how and when precipitation is released.  In my view rain-out can occur anywhere, at any time, and much of it will go straight back into the ocean.  Landfall at the end of an ocean journey may or may not make a difference in the amount of rain.  The conventional view puts most of its emphasis on what happens upon and after landfall, which is obviously of maximum importance to people living on land.  This next link, to an article published in full just two days ago by a credible author, provides a clear representation of where the conventional view of ARs stands at this time:  https://theconversation.com/atmospheric-river-storms-can-drive-costly-flooding-and-clim,ate-change-is-making-them-stronger-128902.  It’s quite good with respect to describing the current view of how ARs respond to climate change, mainly with in terms of changes at the original source of evaporation, but has little to say about the level of atmosphere where the rivers are located, or how their movement is regulated.

Also, as I’ve said many times, no conventional view, of whatever source or content, can ever be found showing any sign of interest in the possibility that ARs could generate greenhouse energy effects from whatever their location may be.  The viewers certainly do not look for unusual effects.  As for the ordinary effects that all water vapor is supposed to have, it’s not even clear that the conventional view supports a perception that the contents held by ARs generate any greenhouse effect at all, even of the ordinary type.  In other words, while recognizing that the rivers are loaded with extreme amounts of vapor, relative to relative to surrounding locations where no rivers are in place, they fail to discern any difference in how much greenhouse energy is being delivered at the surface.  It follows that in decades to come, when their models show that climate change is likely to cause more of the kind of evaporation that should produce even larger rivers than we have today, those larger rivers will remain as impotent as the current ones when it comes to generating a greenhouse impact.  We’ll see lots more flooding, but no additional temperature change as a result of this particular activity.

If you are a long-time reader of these letters you know how much I disagree with the people who hold this view, and you also know exactly why I disagree.  It’s because I have seen solid evidence to the contrary, from the very best of credible sources.  The evidence is ongoing, not just a one-time thing.  It’s right in front of our eyes, every day.  If you are a new reader, I will take you there—right now—so you can see it for yourself.  You will need to open two websites, both of which contain daily updates of specialized maps but almost no words.  The first site contains updated maps of 5-day animation of the total flow of precipitable water (PW) over Earth’s entire surface.  It comes from a group of meteorological researchers associated with the University of Wisconsin:  http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php.  Those spiky objects seen moving away from the tropical belt represent tracks that are dominated in contained volumes of total PW by concentrated streams of water vapor coursing through higher altitude parts of the atmosphere.  Atmospheric rivers, as commonly defined, create at least some of these very same tracks, if not all.  The tracks all tend to disintegrate as they progress, disappearing completely in not much more than five days, often less .There is no additional information to be found on this map.  For that we must go to another site.

The second site, called Today’s Weater Maps, is produced by a group associated with the University of Maine.  It is packed with an incredible amount of information distributed in a coordinated way via a set of many different views of a dozen different kinds of maps:  https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2.  One map gives you a snapshot view of total PW volumes across the globe virtually identical to the content of the last frame of PW on the animated site.  You can then compare images of entire individual streams with the various effects they have had on the planet for that particular day, by clicking on maps that specialize in many of the different effects.  You will need to go back and forth between any two maps, focusing your eyes on any location of choice as it appears on each map.  Start with PW plus precipitation.  You can easily spot the places where selected PW streams (or ARs) have dropped loads of rain or snow over the last 24 hours.  Another map comparison will reveal the way jetstream winds have an influence on the course taken by practically every PW or AR stream. The stronger the wind the greater the influence. A third pair of maps will let you compare the strength of vapor streams with temperature anomalies on surfaces directly below those streams on any given day.  This can get complicated.  At first, stick with land-only surfaces in the mid-to-upper latitudes and look for places where the overlapping of relative PW strength—by weight in kg—and the strongest of temperature anomalies–either warm or cold—is totally obvious.  It happens all the time.  The relationship is undeniable.  I’ve come to the belief that every double in PW weight creates a full 10C in temperature change (or the reverse) as long as it lasts and aside from other factors that may also have an impact for other reasons.

Carl

“Atmospheric rivers”are suddenly making headlines in the daily news, thanks to a particularly colossal event happening on the US west coast. We can look forward to some interesting coverage all week as reporters begin pressing top scientists for more complete explanations. I spent some time this weekend making sure I was up to date on what was being said in the latest studies published in the leading science journals. There was not one word of mention about the possibility of any linkage to water vapor’s greenhouse effect, which I fully expected, but otherwise there were some pleasant surprises, including interesting answers to a few questions I could not hope to answer with the limited kind of research capabilities I have. Today’s letter will dig into three of these studies. One thing I look for is how scientists are now defining the basic meaning of the term,” atmospheric rivers.” How does it compare with the meaning of the phrase I have always depended on, namely, “high-altitude concentrated streams of precipitable water (PW)?” Is their current focus on just the biggest events, or does it include the lesser ones as well? I think the trend now may be to include everything, which means I should be able to start using the same term in a more confident way, and will be happy to do so.

As for new information, I have always felt frustrated by having no ability to gauge the total amount of water vapor able to enter the upper level wind system of each hemisphere on any given time frame, or as a general trend.  There are a number of climate models at work looking for exactly the same information, because it would help the sponsors make estimates of how much precipitation to expect along the course of each river before it came to an end.  The models seem to support the idea that significant increases can be expected in the future, and that these increases would not necessarily be tightly regulated by the same laws or rules that govern the rates of increase of water vapor inhabiting the air closer to the surface.  That’s an unexpected surprise, if it holds up by way of further confirmation.  From my point of view, if the total weight of water vapor (or PW) in the upper level of the atmosphere increases so will its power of greenhouse energy generation, unit for unit.  And remember, once the effect is in place and working, at that high level, and the rivers are in motion, their impact on surface temperatures will tend to increase, through logarithmic leverage, if and whenever the PW material is transported closer to either pole, which means to any higher latitude.  Now I will show links to these three studies and point out some highlights, using italics and some extra commentary.

1.  From the journal of the American Meteorological Society, Sept. 2021 https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/aop/JCLI-D-20-1005.1/JCLI-D-20-1005.1.xml:  “Atmospheric rivers (ARs), narrow intense moisture transport, account for much of the poleward moisture transport in midlatitudes…..Under climate warming, the idealized model produces robust AR changes similar to CESM large ensemble simulations under RCP8.5, including AR size expansion, intensified landfall moisture transport, and an increased AR frequency…..In addition, the latitude of AR frequency maximum shifts poleward with climate warming…..AR changes in a warming climate can be understood as passive water vapor and cloud tracers regulated by large-scale atmospheric circulation….”  (Re the last point, I would have added the observation that jetstream wind strength and positioning has a significant influence on many aspects governing the pattern of circulation.)

2.  From the journal Nature, Oct. 2021, which has extremely limited access but still offers some key points https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02681-6:  “Climate change hasn’t yet had a noticeable influence on atmospheric rivers, narrow air streams that carry huge amounts of moisture towards the poles. But these ‘rivers in the sky’, which bring downpours to mid-latitude coastal regions, could become markedly more extreme if atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations continue to rise steeply.”  (Note the reference to causation, which these authors ascribe to warming created by many greenhouse gases rather than just CO2 alone.  I would call that a much-needed break from the normal orthodoxy that students have always been taught and endlessly repeat.)

3.  From the journal Nature Climate Change, Oct. 2021 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01166-8:  “Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are filamentary conduits of intense water vapour transport in the extratropics, accounting for the majority of poleward moisture transport in the mid-latitudes…..little to no change in mean AR characteristics in 1920–2005 due to opposite but equal influences from industrial aerosols, which weaken ARs, and greenhouse gases (GHGs), which strengthen them…..simulations project steep intensification of ARs in the coming decades…..as the influence of GHGs greatly outpaces that of industrial aerosols….. future AR changes are dynamically and thermodynamically driven, highlighting the need to conceptualize AR change beyond the scaling of humidity with warming.  (Again, many greenhouse gases, not just CO2, are said to warm the surfaces that provide the evaporation of water vapor specifically headed for the upper level wind system.  The last point suggests that the condensation rules employed by the Clausius/Clayperon equation perhaps do not work as well in the upper level as they do close to the surface—another highly unorthodox view that I can easily endorse.)

The unorthodox views embodied in these last two reports, both from a publisher that prefers authors having top-level credentials, are by themselves enough to effectively decouple the traditional bonding of all of the (supposed) strength of water vapor to that of CO2. The powers of CO2 should instead be treated independently, exactly like those of methane and the other well-mixed gases. They all make a contribution to the water vapor feedback due to increased evaporation. Water vapor could then be given its own rightful place in the tables of radiative forcing, with a separate set of error bars. The greenhouse effect of water vapor separated into the content of atmospheric rivers has yet to recognized. At least we know it’s up there, and we have been told here that it may be different from surface humidity in some type of scaling. How so? In my view this body of water vapor cannot avoid having a greenhouse effect, and maybe some day a few intrepid scientists will make the same discovery. Upon doing so, they will also see how unpredictable this effect is, apart from a near-certainty that it will be adding more warming to current forecasts.

Carl

For readers who are not familiar with the map-reading research I have been doing for over a year, as fully described in the last 400 letters, here is a quick summary of the principle conclusions: first, every bit of precipitable water (PW), regardless of elevation, has a greenhouse energy effect.  The impact on surface temperatures varies logarithmically by PW’s total molecular weight (all of it being H2O) within a vertical column of air from the surface to the top of the atmosphere.  (I see each double adding 10C.)  All PW, no matter the proportions of its material composition, has about the same greenhouse impact, weight for weight, as water vapor alone. This set of conclusions, as well as others that are more advanced, was mainly drawn as a result of extensive daily studies of imagery provided by Today’s Weather Maps (https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2), a veritable goldmine as a source of daily information.

A separate but closely related set of conclusions was obtained from observations of the movement of PW concentrations across the globe recorded in near-real-time animation over continuous five-day periods.  This information is available online daily at http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mtpw2/product.php.  There are small changes in activity over the course of a year, but nothing drastic.  A few minutes spent on studying the differences in total PW measurements and the way they move about on any given day will always lead to one principal conclusion:  outside of the tropical belt, every location on the surface of either hemisphere will experience considerable variation in the total amount of PW held in the atmosphere directly overhead.  The changes that take place are practically constant, and the magnitude of change is often significant.  Doubles and redoubles of PW concentration over brief periods of time cannot fail to be observed in some locations almost every day.  The tropical belt is the most conservative of regions. It reveals a combination of high average PW values in most locations and much lower rates of change in all locations.  The middle and higher latitudes are all affected by PW movement owing to the creation of concentrated streams of vapor that originate along the borders of the tropical belt and then proceed to move rapidly in a generally eastward direction plus a poleward bias in each hemisphere. Irregular movement and rapid disintegration, leading to short lifetimes, are standard features of every stream. Some quantities of streaming PW are able to survive long enough to reach and enter each polar zone, mainly in the north, but these end up with no more than relatively light amounts of weight.

These featured streams, which are the same as those identified as “atmospheric rivers” in scientific literature, can be interpreted as composed of large and relatively fast-moving content at high altitude, probably under the influence of jetstream winds, and relatively small proportions of mostly vapor-base humidity closer to the surface. The latter has no regular movement pattern and much less significant rates of daily change, by location, in total weight.  By comparing the completely disparate nature of these upper and lower bodies of PW an observer can easily come to an understanding of how the overhead total volume of  PW can undergo large-scale changes over brief time periods.  This is certainly my own interpretation, but then things get sticky.  What does this have to do with surface temperatures?  My point of view, as expressed above, is that every bit of PW generates a greenhouse effect, without exception.  You will never find one word of agreement (or specific denial) with this view in the teachings of the science community.  It is simply ignored. Members of the community do see atmospheric rivers as massively large phenomena (for a recent example, visit https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GL094883) and describe their effects, but without any mention of unusual temperature effects occurring on surfaces below.

If high-altitude PW really does have greenhouse energy powers, and they really do account for daily temperature anomalies of 20C or more—both above and below average—on surfaces below, depending on relative abundance for the day, as declared in my hypothesis, there should be some kind of ultimate effect on the progress of climate change.  There would be questions about what controls the amount of water vapor entering the high-altitude wind zones of each hemisphere, generally in the form of concentrated streams (can CO2 do this?), and what controls the behavior and lifespan of the vapor in each stream once it is up there.  Would the overall volume of H2O molecules that evaporate in the first place, and go on to inhabit all levels of the atmosphere, be any different?  Would our general understanding of how the greenhouse effect operates be deepened because of the extraordinary outcomes effected by one gas?  That’s only a bare minimum.  The biggest  question of all is this: if the outcome does change, would it make our expectations for climate’s future any better, or worse? We should want to know the answer.

Carl

I was not intending to write about water vapor today, but then had a few thoughts that made me change my mind.  This will take us back to the extensive research I did over the past year related to the greenhouse energy effect of precipitable water (PW.).  One of the main conclusions, drawn from graphic evidence provided by correlating the images in Today’s Weather Maps (https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/DailySummary/#t2), revealed the extraordinary amount of surface heating at a given location produced by an increase in current volume (in kw/m2) of PW in the atmosphere overhead when compared with the estimated average volume of PW for that day of year at that location spread out over a suitable baseline period.  The numbers that kept coming up repeatedly at any location on any given day (today is no different) told me that any there was a measured double in the usual PW weight the measured temperature would show an increase of about 10C above the usual average for that same day. 

This is a surprisingly large number. What is equally surprising about the process of observation is that PW volumes are actually able to double very quickly over a location on the spur of the moment, like just two or three days, but they in fact do so quite often. In more extreme cases they can double twice over, meaning four times normal, and on rare occasions even a third time (8X) in events lasting only a few days. Two doubles meant that temperatures at the surface, measured by local thermometers over all 24 hours of the day, rose by a full 20C (36F) above the historical average for the day. We are all familiar with days like that but have never been told that greenhouse energy being generated by overhead PW was the reason for the increase. One more feature characterizing my observations was the lack of any delay in the timing of heat buildup. When highly concentrated PW appeared overhead the surface air appeared to begin heating within no more than two or three hours, by means of image correlation. And when the PW departed so did the heat. You can find countless examples of these events, fully illustrated, in previous letters.

Lately I’ve been giving more serious attention to the question of where the heat comes from whenever a greenhouse effect is in progress. That’s not hard to figure out when the increase works out to be a small fraction of one degree on a short-term basis. Real energy comes off the surface, rises up in the air, is trapped by an array of GHG molecules sitting all through the air, which respond by sending around half the total amount of released energy back to the surface, effectively reheating it. The movement all happens at the speed of light, which is unvarying for photons. With ordinary GHG molecules also increasing in abundance by 1/2% or so over a year, we can easily picture all sorts of things happening to surface heat that will become manifest as climate change. But how are we to think about PW, which can apparently increase in volume over some spots by 100% or 200% in just days, and at the same time apparently throw off prodigious amounts of heat the way magicians do when they pull a rabbit out of a hat? It makes no sense. I can see why climate scientists are unwilling to waste their time pursuing investigation of such an absurdity.

We know that PW, like all other GHGs, cannot create energy. We also know that water vapor, the progenitor of PW, embodies considerable quantities of latent heat, acquired in the evaporation process and released at the time of condensation.  Could this somehow be the source of all that heat?  I have toyed with the idea but can find nothing in the way of evidence that may signal or even suggest the possibility.  That leaves nothing on the table except the greenhouse process, coupled with heat energy supplied by surface emissions.  One thing supporting this possibility is the fact that water vapor can absorb an extraordinary array of photon wavelengths, far beyond the power of CO2 or any other gas.  Likewise, the abundance of water vapor in the atmosphere is relatively high even when merely average in volume. I have also learned that conversion from vapor to other states common to PW’s makeup causes little change in total greenhouse powers by weight.  Doubling its abundance just might be able to clog the atmosphere with enough roadblocks to seal off practically all of the passageways required for surface emissions to make their escape to space beyond the atmosphere.  Not quite all, of course, but a lot. What really boggles the mind is how the tiny little flow of heat emitted from the icy surfaces of Antarctica during its sunless winter can regularly translate into 20C or more of genuine heat gain in this manner.  Could trapping and sealing its outward flow actually be that efficient, and on the usual short time schedule no less?  The possibility seems fantastically remote, but what alternative is available to explain what we see happening, with the best of evidence?

Carl

I have been raising the question of why and how increasing the abundance of molecules of a particular greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is sufficient cause for an increase in surface temperatures—given the apparent fact that a smaller population can trap any number of outward-bound photons of its specialty wavelength via practically unlimited numbers of trappings-plus-re-emissions. We have to always keep in mind the fact that the gas itself cannot create one bit of energy. All it can do is to transmit energy, which in this case involves altering the direction in which energy from an outside source is flowing.

The ultimate source of all this energy is delivered by the sun. A good share of incoming rays are captured at the surface, and a portion of what is captured ends up in storage at varying depths below the surface. An interesting point to keep in mind is the fact that pure water is transparent to sunlight and does virtually no capturing. Solar rays approaching an ocean surface will penetrate the surface and keep going until they run into some other kind of material. There is usually plenty of such available just below the surface in the form of biomass that welcomes the input of shortwave energy and goes on from there to facilitate the storage process. The surface itself does get warmer, but much of that heat is introduced by conduction coming up from below in a longwave format. By contrast, when energy is returned to the surface at the completion of a round trip induced by the greenhouse effect it will arrive as longwave photons that will be captured right at the surface and cause immediate warming of the topmost layers of water. This difference from solar in style of input greatly facilitates the beginning of an added round of emissions from the surface back to space. This new batch of photons will be captured by GHG molecules, again reversing the energy flow by half. This can happen repeatedly, on a steadily diminishing scale. It keeps the molecules busy, and if the proportion of greenhouse energy happens to grow, relative to more stable solar inputs, they can only get busier.

We should not forget that about 70% of Earth’s surface is covered by oceans. On land everything is different. All energy inputs tend to be captured right at the surface, and only a small amount of what is captured is stored beneath the surface, largely by conduction, with varying degrees of efficiency. On all surfaces, whenever the sun is active, which is 50% of the time over the course of a year, solar heating of the nearby subsurface will tend to increase, and then practically all of that increase will tend to drain off toward space during the other 50%. Greenhouse energy inputs and outflows are not subject to this kind of on-and-off mechanism, so they both cycle from low to high in a much more moderate way.

Now, concerning the question about why and how an increase in GHG abundance causes an increase in surface temperatures, the best answer I can think of begins with the fact that all basic energy flows originating at the surface eventually do make an escape from the atmosphere. Everything may be clogged up in the lower atmosphere, leading to shortened photon travels as flows go back and forth, and still be so in the middle, but half of all emissions at all times inevitably remain headed on an outbound path. At the top of the atmosphere, where the air is much thinner, and GHG molecules are in positions farther and farther apart, photon trips between intermediate captures will become longer and longer. At some point there just won’t be any more interference, and off they go. When a particular gas has increased in abundance, and has spread out evenly throughout the atmosphere, the molecules at the very highest level will be closer together than they were before, thus causing a further delay in the final break to freedom. That delay creates an opportunity for one more round trip of energy flow to the surface and back. The flow in this trip will not be massive relative to the others, but it will be enough to create one more increment of warming at the surface that did not happen previously. Those increments should grow in magnitude as long as the abundance of the molecules of this gas keeps growing and causing more crowding of molecules at the top of the atmosphere.

I think this description still needs some refinement, but generally makes sense as long as we are talking about the evenly-mixed GHGs that have long lifetimes and hold steady in their manner of positioning. Water vapor is a completely different kind of gas, and its greenhouse energy effect is entirely different from the others. I am sure it will require a different kind of explanation, of which I have practically nothing to say at this time, but maybe later.

Carl

Yesterday I pointed out a good reason for believing that making a change in the atmospheric concentration of a greenhouse gas, either up or down, should not have the expected effect on surface temperatures. It’s because the “work load” of individual molecules is exceedingly flexible. It can rise or fall with no apparent limit. Moreover, it seems as if there are always enough molecules of the important gases in position to handle whatever amount of traffic—in the form of photons emitted from the surface—is trying to pass through the atmosphere on its way back to space. The GHG molecules all have their own specialty for capturing photons of certain wavelengths and sending an equal amount of energy back to the surface. By doing so they reheat the surface, necessitating a partial repeat of the initial run of emissions. The GHG molecules do their job at high speed. Then they can just sit in place and wait for the next opportunity to make a catch. In that sense, adding more molecules to any individual GHG in the air above should make no difference in this mechanism, at least not in the short run. But what about the long run? I have attempted no answer, but we are all pretty sure it does make a difference. Why, and how? I have some ideas about that, and will present them later, but today is a good time to talk about the current push to quickly reduce global temperatures by cutting way back on methane emissions. Would it really work?

We’ll start with a well-written description of the newly urgent UN (or IPCC) approach to methane cuts, published in August by The Guardian:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/06/cut-methane-emissions-rapidly-fight-climate-disasters-un-report-greenhouse-gas-global-heating.  A number of prominent scientists are quoted, and every reason for making a supreme effort is clearly laid out.  Some selected notes:  ” Cutting it is the strongest action available to slow global heating in the near term…..The report found that methane emissions could be almost halved by 2030 using existing technology and at reasonable cost…..Achieving the cuts would avoid nearly 0.3C of global heating by 2045 and keep the world on track for the Paris climate agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C…..Methane is 84 times more powerful in trapping heat than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and has caused about 30% of global heating to date…..We’re seeing so many aspects of climate change manifest themselves in the real world faster than our projections…..Cutting methane is the strongest lever we have to slow climate change over the next 25 years…..Seldom in the world of climate change action is there a solution so stuffed with win-wins.”  All of the hoped-for benefits are described in the report, and they are huge. Humanity would be crazy not to go along with these recommendations, coming from the highest levels of science, no matter how many of the modest sacrifices may be required.

Personally, I am much in favor of enacting this plan as stated, despite having some doubts about whether the promised payoff would actually be delivered.  My doubts are centered on the possibility that cutting back the number of methane molecules in the atmosphere could be fully offset by an increase in the frequency of photon trapping (and followup emissions) by the molecules that remained after the cuts.  Every outgoing photon could still be captured, and the surface would be dealing with just as many returns as before, with no change in their temperature impact. I may be wrong about this, but let’s consider how things stand in today’s world.  We’ll start with radiation bands, where methane gas has a footprint that is reasonably close to that of carbon dioxide, which in turn is second only to water vapor and all its eccentricities. CO2 and methane top the list of well-mixed gases that all tend to keep the same positioning of molecules throughout the atmosphere day after day and year after year. 

Now let’s do a molecular abundance comparison. Viewing both in terms of parts per million, CO2 stand at 415, CH4 at just 1.9, or 218 times fewer. Oddly enough, it turns out that these two gases have a difference in greenhouse energy production that corresponds fairly closely with the difference in their radiation footprints and not at all with relative molecular abundance. How should one think about this huge difference in abundance—would you believe the individual molecules of one gas are simply kept more busy than the other, to an extreme, in terms of trapping outgoing photons? I think so, for lack of any reasonable alternative. I can’t see anything that would ever make individual CH4 molecules one bit stronger than CO2 molecules when it comes to trapping individual photons. They could, however, possibly trap lots and lots and lots (over 200 times) more of them over the course of a day, at very high speed per each catching event. Why should they not be able to each trap another 30% or so without much in the way of added difficulty? I still need to show how greenhouse gases, collectively, all in fact do have the ability to add more warmth to the surface as a result of adding to their abundances. I believe this is so, but by a markedly different kind of mechanism, probably having some strange features that are not yet well understood.

Carl

I have been grapling with an idea lately that is not commonly discussed but seems like it should be interesting as an important factor in the study of climate change. I am not sure about whether I am handling it properly, but see no harm in putting the details in writing so other people can play with it too, if so disposed. Anyone who is familiar with the basics of energy radiation can do this. One conclusion I have come up with, and feel fairly confident must be right, is this: anything in particular, or any event that causes surface temperatures to warm, at any location and for any reason, begets still more warming as a feedback. By surface temperatures I mean the liquid or solid surfaces of the globe itself, not the air. Surfaces are either warming or cooling all the time, slowly or rapidly, by a little or a lot. Cooling of the surface might well be seen as causing the same consequences as warming, but in the reverse direction.

The idea begins with the understanding that when a surface grows warmer for some reason, any reason at all, no matter where the warming energy comes from, (e.g., lava flows may be bringing heat up to the surface from below), the surface will quickly respond by emitting more photons into the air above than it did before the event. The ones emitted will all be headed toward space, unless interrupted. With interruption in mind, we must now introduce the reality of greenhouse gases into the picture. Most of them, with the exception of water vapor, are just sitting still in the atmosphere, permeating every bit of atmospheric residence with a relatively small but fairly constant percentage of content. All of the gases steadily trap photons of energy, with each gas specializing in those of certain wavelengths, where a large number of natural differences are noteworthy. Some inbound photons are trapped but the outbound ones are most important as markers of the greenhouse effect. Whenever a molecule of greenhouse gas traps a photon it will quickly shed one of its own making, losing the same amount of energy that was gained, headed away in no particular direction. Half will continue the journey toward space and half will be turned back toward the surface. The same molecule must be able to do this repeatedly, without going anywhere, and every molecule of every GHG is always in play. Most are positioned sort of like goaltenders who must be ready to keep on doing the same thing day after day, year after year, for a very long time

My basic idea leads to the belief that when more photons are coming off the surface, because the surface has gotten warmer, each molecule of every regular GHG is likely to become more busy, trapping and emitting, than it was before. Half of its emissions will be headed back toward the surface, and the ones that land will cause the surface to heat up even more, an immediate consequence of which will be to emit more photons of its own making. Half of these will at once be headed back toward space while the other half can burrow into the subsurface and cause it to warm up for awhile before some of their numbers reappear at the surface. The whole process means that the initial warming of the surface begets more warming because of the activity and contribution of every GHG molecule. It also means that the strength, or capability, of each of these molecules cannot be tightly limited. If the surface warming continues, and the number of molecules of any or all of the GHGs remains stationary, or possibly declines, then the molecules of some gases will be getting busier than others. This is where questions arise that are not so easy to resolve.

If this last point is really the case, then what difference does it make whether a particular kind of GHG in increasing at a fast rate, a slow rate, or not at all?  The molecules of each gas will be getting more or less busy as a way of compensating, and all of the photons emitted from the surface that can be trapped will always be trapped, no more and no less.  If the molecules of a rapidly increasing gas become less active they should not cause any more feedback at the surface than the molecules of a slowly-increasing gas that has become more active.  Everything becomes relative.  Is this really true?  Are there some limits at some point?  If it is true, then it seems that all greenhouse gases beget extra warming at the surface in proportions that remain fixed, regardless of changes in the quantity of gas outstanding.  The fixed proportions would be established by the way each gas is separately linked to the radiation bands.  Beyond that, any change in the quantity of gas outstanding would be perhaps completely offset by a change in how busy its individual molecules can and do become.  Knowing the truth could have implications for a number of aspects of climate science. I am not yet satisfied.

Carl

Re the methane study, there was in fact a press release sent out, on August 19, in German.  My daughter just found it, in English, on the search engine she uses.  I found the same release for the first time today on Google, also translated, noting the peculiarity that this identical release was issued from a different department of the Max Planck Institute.  There are still no references of any kind on these two search engines tied to reports in the media about this study, perhaps in part because there is no regular following in the media of publishings from IOPscience.  On all counts, what a shabby way to treat one of the most important research works of our time, from a group of experienced persons who certainly must rank among the best for doing this kind of special study.  Anyway, the press release is well-written and offers a worthy perspective on the information in the report.  You should read it here (in English), https://www.mpic.de/5016436/kuenftige-methankonzentration-in-klimawandel-szenarien-unterschaetzt and then I will provide some quotes and commentary, with boldfacing of key words and phrases.

From pp1:  “showed that the changes in methane concentration under future warmer climate conditions have been severely underestimated.”  Most contemporary estimates show methane and its powers in a state of decline before long.as necessary replacements for its short molecular life cycle are expected to be dropping away.

From pp2:  “How long this growth will continue, and if there is a risk of overheating our planet therefore are important questions for future climate changes.”  How indeed can any question be more important than the one in boldface?

From pp3:  “….they found that high natural methane emissions will continue for as long as the climate stays warmer than at present.”  The natural components of methane emissions are quite unlike the anthropogenic components, which are on balance likely to decline.  The stated temperature qualification for continuing these high emissions from a leading natural component, wetlands, is said to be unequivocal, applicable to all of the different trend scenarios evaluated by the researchers.

From pp4 plus Dr. Kleinen:  “In a previous study, Kleinen and Brovkin applied the same modelling system to climate states of the past, such as the last glacial maximum and the early Holocene, and found good agreement with evidence from ice core data…...which gives us confidence in our results for the future.”  The “hindcasting” test for climate models requires high quality historical data to use as testing yard-markers.  Ice core data reveal trends of methane concentrations, plus CO2 numbers and temperature swings, with great accuracy over the past 800,000 years.  You couldn’t ask for a better way to test the model.

From Prof Brovkin:  ““Methane concentrations always grew in concert with warming in the past, providing a positive feedback to climate change.”   In yesterday’s letter I described this feedback in terms overlooked by the press release. I can see how it has much in common with the well-studied water vapor feedback, giving it extraordinary strength. They both have a characteristic that is very special, and very unusual, which makes them complementary participants in highly effective mutually-reinforcing feedback processes.  As with all GHGs, they supply energy that causes surfaces that causes surfaces to warm.  The surface warming has a direct impact on natural sources of emission leading to higher concentrations of both gases, enabling immediate increases in energy output.  The feedback process then continues to add decreasing amounts of energy output in a “reverse compounding” type of succession.  All other GHGs, and a large amount of methane, do not have feedbacks of this type, because they arise from sources lacking the peculiar relationship with surface temperatures that makes it possible.

From Dr. Steil:  “Until now it has always been assumed that the anthropogenic methane emissions are much more important for future methane concentrations than the natural ones. Our results show that this assumption is wrong because wetland emissions are so strongly determined by warming.” That kind of language could not be more forceful, or more challenging.  The entire body of mainstream climate science will need to find persons willing to accept the challenge, and respond in some way. It should not procrastinate over something this important.  Their problem is, if the research holds up, all of today’s temperature projections will have to be corrected by employing considerably higher future methane levels, yielding numbers that could possibly be large enough to be disturbing.

I continue to wonder why a study of this magnitude was published in a journal like IOPscience.  Is it possible that no one could be found who had the level of competence required to perform a realistic peer review, as preferred by most journals?  If that is the case, what alternative measures are currently available that can be taken with the objective of coming to a proper conclusion?  If this is in fact the best science that can be had on the subject, why settle for anything less?  Either the mainstream majority holds a view that is more accurate or it does not, and unfortunately there is not much room (that I can see) for simply reaching a compromise in this situation.  Being held by a traditional majority is not necessarily the best reason for holding that a certain viewpoint is right.  Who will be the first person to insist on doing something meaningful to resolve this dilemma?

Carl

The methane feedback effect. When I reviewed the Kleinen study two days ago I made note (in the fourth paragraph) of a stunning implication of the research this group had done—the possible existence of a methane feedback effect that would make it comparable in a number of ways to the water vapor feedback effect that is commonly accepted as a fact. Methane feedback effects are often witnessed in particular situations, but are rarely mentioned, if ever, as an everyday possibility that can be realized on a large scale across the entire globe. If such a thing exists it could have serious implications for climate forecasting. We have no idea of what its strength would be, because there has never been an attempt to measure it, but even a low level of strength would have some kind of a rising impact on future temperatures. At the very least, a common tendency to regard methane as only a minor player, compared to CO2, in making climate changes, would need to be reviewed and probably revised.

What got my attention in the Kleinen study was the amazing similarity in the total mechanism that would enable each of these two separate feedback effects to operate. First of all, both of the gases can be said to originate as airborne particles because of their high sensitivity to the level of warming of the planetary surface. For water vapor nothing else matters. It only forms by means of evaporation from liquid water on the surface, a substance which abounds in most parts of the globe. When any of the water is warmed its rate of evaporation increases. Otherwise it just continues at the same rate. When water freezes over evaporation all but stops. In methane’s case we must first remember that a not-large majority of what is now in the air originates in a variety of ways that are not at all comparable to water vapor. We can only set them aside and focus on the remaining minority, all of which is of origins attributed to natural sources. As we learn from the study, with much support from other references, this origination occurs “with wetland emissions being by far the largest component.” Like plain water, but to a lesser extent, wetlands are found in great multiplicity, always on the surface. They get warmer or cooler in the same way that plain water does. When they get warmer they emit more methane, cooler, less, etc. There is little more than a bare minimum of contrast with the evaporation process.

Water vapor and methane are both greenhouse gases, by measurement two of the strongest three GHGs. As soon as they have been emitted to the atmosphere they start sending photons of energy back down to the surface, making the surface warmer as they do so.  Their molecules naturally spread out in the atmosphere, methane more so than water vapor, so plenty of waters and wetlands will be feeling the warming effects of this energy.  And when these surfaces have felt the effects they both respond in a regular way, by more evaporation and more emission.  But that’s only part of the story.  Each such response results in a modicum of still more warming on the surface, causing yet more evaporation and emission, creating a positive feedback loop that multiplies the effect, until sharply declining units of response cause it to fade away.

One does not often hear about of this process in methane’s case.  How big might its impact be?  From Andrew Dessler’s water vapor report in 2008 we learned that, “The water-vapor feedback is one of the most important in our climate system, with the capacity to about double the direct warming from greenhouse gas increases.”  (I think he might have added “or any other source of surface warming.”)  It doesn’t seem likely that methane’s feedback would compete at such a high level, but there is no way of knowing for sure when no data is available. We can, however, easily suppose that the two feedbacks are operational at the same time, which means each would be adding enough warmth to surface temperatures to have a magnifying effect on the ultimate performance of the other.  

The best takeaway from this study need not be dramatized in any way in order to realize its importance relative to the likelihood of significant declines that current models are predicting for future levels of methane concentrations.  The authors express a great deal of confidence in coming to this contrary conclusion: “CH4 emissions will remain larger than in the historical period for a long time, likely for as long as CO2 and temperatures remain above present levels.”  They expect this to hold true even under the most favorable scenarios for CO2 emission reduction rates, which would not by themselves enable a reduction in the established level of its atmospheric concentration, now around 417 ppm and rising.

Carl

In writing these letters I am assuming that anyone who becomes a regular reader is unusually interested in gaining a more complete understanding of the fundamental processes that cause the global temperature of our planet to change. This is what I have personally become the most interested in, after more than eight years of being fully occupied with learning all that I could about every aspect related to the broad subject of climate change. The only conclusion I can come to is that if temperatures keep going up, by continuing on the current trend, the climate will change and there will be real consequences, probably of a most undesirable type. Humans will either want to prevent this from happening, if that is possible, or otherwise figure out how best to adapt to whatever comes. Either of these courses of action presents challenges, because everything going on is so new. We have an absolute minimum of previous experience to fall back on, and worse yet, it is happening so fast.

From all the reading I’ve done these last nine years, as a self-taught student of climate change, it has become clear in my mind that our knowledge base is still woefully limited. In particular, this impression applies to the confusing tangle of the many things that cause temperatures to change. There is still much more to be learned about what caused changes in the past, and the same today. For example, why is half the globe showing rapid increases today while the other half is not? The more we can learn about the past and the present the better will be our prospects for improving future forecasts, through a better understanding of how changes are processed. Such advanced knowledge could only be of benefit to acts tied to either prevention or adaptation, or both. Gaining the right knowledge is the part that interests me the most, and is what I expect to keep on writing about. Anything I can learn that is new and helpful is in some way exciting, regardless of whichever direction it may be pointing toward, and I want to pass it on.

Yesterday’s letter was devoted to a recent study by a group of four researchers in Germany that really excited me. If you haven’t read the letter please do so, and then read as much as you can of the study itself. They have a terrific story to tell, based on research of what I believe is the highest possible quality at this time. If you can take a few minutes to do a full search on each of these authors you will be able to read about their previously published research, quite impressive in each case. One author, Victor Brovkin, has earned a coveted membership in the European National Academy of Science. I still can’t understand the utter lack of publicity given to this study and its profound implications. About 40% of methane’s effect on today’s global temperatures is entirely natural, not under human control, but created primarily as a feedback to whatever warming is already in place, from any cause, and this has very deep significance.

“We find that natural methane emissions, i.e. methane emissions from the biosphere, rise strongly as a reaction to climate warming, thus leading to atmospheric methane concentrations substantially higher than assumed in the scenarios used forCMIP6. We also find that the natural emissions become larger than the anthropogenic ones in most scenarios, showing that natural emissions cannot be neglected.”  The natural component is in fact growing today at a surprisingly rapid rate as a feedback to rising temperatures. Even if we succeed in making sharp cuts in the methane component caused by human activity, the natural component can keep right on growing, at perhaps a slightly slower rate.  The total concentration of methane in the atmosphere, which today is growing more rapidly than that of CO2, and accelerating as well, would also keep on growing, again perhaps at a slightly reduced rate because of the anthropogenic methane contraction.

Now consider this:  Unlike the water vapor feedback, growth of which is subject to and limited by the rules of condensation, no such limitations are known to exist that would inhibit increases in the methane feedback that comes from natural sources. Once methane molecules have been lofted into the atmosphere their average lifetime is relatively brief, owing to the widespread presence of OH radicals that serve as a primary “sink.”  Variations in the level of sink activity can occur, and we presently depend on it not slacking off during this era of rapid growth in the concentration level.  For much more information about methane’s basic characteristics, this heavily-authored 2020 article covering the global methane budget is an excellent up-to-date source:  https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/1561/2020/. 

Carl