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A REVIEW OF THE 1967 PAPER BY MANABE AND WETHERALD

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Abstract

The modern climate modeling fraud started with four papers, two by Manabe and Wetherald (M&W) in 1967 (MW67) and 1975 (MW75) and two by Hansen et al in 1976 (H76) and 1981 (H81). MW67 described a one dimensional radiative convective (1-D RC) model that provided the basic foundation for the climate modeling fraud. This model used the climate equilibrium assumption to oversimplify the climate energy transfer processes that determine the surface temperature. It was assumed that the time dependent flux terms could be replaced by average values. A 9 or 18 level radiative transfer model was used to calculate the rates of heating and cooling in the atmosphere. These were then used to derive the changes in temperature at each atmospheric level and recalculated at each step in an iterative process until the temperatures stabilized. The requirement for an exact energy balance at the top of the atmosphere between the absorbed solar flux and the long wave IR (LWIR) flux was then used to determine the steady state temperatures. When the CO2 concentration was increased in this model, an increase in surface temperature was produced as a mathematical artifact of the calculation. In the real atmosphere, the change in the rates of tropospheric cooling produced by the change in CO2 concentration are too small to detect in the normal day to day variation of the tropospheric temperatures. This was ignored by M&W. They allowed themselves to be trapped in the equilibrium climate ‘box’ and never validated their model. Furthermore, the initial temperature artifact was also amplified by a ‘water vapor feedback’ because of the fixed relative humidity distribution used in the model. M&W went on to incorporate their 1967 model artifacts into each unit cell of a ‘highly simplified’ global circulation model that was described in MW75. In H76 Hansen’s group extended the mathematical artifacts created by CO2 in MW67 to another 10 minor species N2O, CH4, NH3, HNO3, C2H4, SO2, CH3Cl, CCl4, CF2Cl2 and CFCl3. Then in H81 they added a 2 layer slab ocean and the step doubling CO2 ritual and went on to use a contrived set of radiative forcings to simulate the global temperature record. This provided the pseudoscientific foundation for the radiative forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity still used by the climate modelers today. The main focus of this article is a detailed review of the MW67 paper. However, the equilibrium assumption was introduced in the nineteenth century and important information is provided in earlier papers by Manabe’s group. Also, in order to understand the errors in MW67, further explanation of the climate energy transfer processes and radiative transfer calculations is needed. Additional background information in these areas is provided as necessary.
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