Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
A short post. I came into my obsession with the climate by a side door. Back around the turn of the century, I read that the global average surface temperature was in danger of going through the roof because of increasing CO2.
But when I got to thinking about it, that seemed unlikely. What made it seem unlikely were the estimates at the time, which were that the global average surface temperature over the entire 20th century had increased by 0.6°C, which is the same as 0.6 kelvins (K).
Now, I’ve done a reasonable amount of work with heat engines. So I knew that if you want to analyze a heat engine, you need to do your calculations in the Kelvin temperature scale. You can’t use either Celsius or Fahrenheit. All of the thermal equations require that you use Kelvin (abbreviated “K”).
So I got to thinking … the earth is at an average temperature of something like 288K.
… so a change of 0.6K over a century is a 0.2% change in temperature.
The earth’s global average temperature has only undergone two tenths of one percent change in a hundred years. I had to scratch my head about that one.
So I first ventured into the climate science arena, not following mainstream scientists looking to find out why the temperature was changing so much, but instead looking to find out why it was changing so little.
I first thought it might be a result of the thermal mass … but then I realized that both the ocean and the land undergo far larger temperature swings on an hourly, daily, monthly, and annual basis. In addition, the temperature is not set by thermal mass, as the temperature is far above the temperature that would be expected purely on the basis of the earth’s thermal mass and distance from the sun.
The unavoidable conclusion for me was that some natural thermoregulatory processes were going on that kept the average temperature within that narrow range, a 0.2% change over a century.
So I was looking for some long-term, slow processes that kept the planetary temperature so stable over a century or more. I wasn’t interested in quick-acting processes. I wanted something that worked over long time spans. I followed lots of wrong trails until one day when I was sitting on the beach. I was living in Fiji at the time (hey, the waves won’t surf themselves), and each day there is much the same.
In the morning, it’s usually cooler and clear. As the day warms up, at some point usually around 11 AM an entire field of cumulus clouds quickly covers the entire sky. This cools the day by reflecting the solar energy back into space. And if the day continues to warm, some of the cumulus turn into cumulonimbus, aka thunderstorms. These further cool the day in a variety of ways, from an increased reflection of solar energy to increased evaporation, cold rain and wind, and other cooling mechanisms including a natural refrigeration cycle.
And what I saw sitting on the beach was that these phenomena are what keep the tropics from overheating every day … and more to the point, because they thermoregulate the temperature daily, they also regulate it weekly, annually, centennially, and millennially.
So I wrote up my hypothesis and got it published in Energy and Environment under the title “THE THUNDERSTORM THERMOSTAT HYPOTHESIS: HOW CLOUDS AND THUNDERSTORMS CONTROL THE EARTH’S TEMPERATURE“, and kept studying the climate.
Since then I’ve uncovered and published a variety of evidence that clouds, thunderstorms, and other emergent climate phenomena keep the temperature from getting too warm or too cold. I’ve also shown that these phenomena mostly occur at sub-model-grid scales, so they are not included in the climate models.
Which brings me to today. I had the honor of being included in an email discussion of some climate issues with some very smart folks with far more education and publications than I have, and some comments got me to thinking about how much solar energy is absorbed at the earth’s surface. This absorbed solar energy is the source of all of the heating of the planet (except for a few tenths of a watt per square meter of geothermal energy). So I dug into the numbers a bit, and this is what I discovered.
Figure 1 (And Only). Percentage of top-of-atmosphere (TOA) incoming solar radiation that is absorbed by the surface, divided by hemisphere and by winter and summer.
The interesting part is that in both hemispheres, as a percentage of the available solar energy at the TOA, in the summer when it is warmer, the surface absorbs less solar energy … and in the winter when it is colder, the surface absorbs more solar energy.
And this is exactly what we’d expect in a thermoregulated system that is generally in a steady-state condition (remember, 0.2% change per century). The system responds to changing conditions by opposing the change and acting to restore the status quo ante. Le Chatelier had something to say on the subject, as I recall …
Told you it was a short post.
And here in our home in the redwood forest, with a tiny triangle of the Pacific Ocean visible through a gap in the far hills, we were blessed by first one bobcat, and then a couple of days later a couple of bobcats wandering through our forest clearing. On the first visit, I captured a passable shot using my iPhone shooting through one side of my binoculars.
By the second visit I had gotten my real camera’s battery charged, and captured this photo …
The raw strength in their walk, the intensity in their gaze … what an inspiration! And the best part?
They remind me that at the end of the day, world politics or online disputes or campus protests or even this post, while important in one sense, also don’t matter that much because the earth abides.
And that, dear friends, is why I live in the forest and not in the city …
My best to everyone,
w.
PS: As usual, when you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. And if you want to prove me wrong, here’s exactly how to do it.
Iowa Climate Science Education 