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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Climate change is the long term trend in weather patterns, often determined over 30 years. However, the focus on long term averages obscures those underlying causes of climate change that reside in the short term diurnal and seasonal variations in the surface energy transfer. With this book, we seek simplicity in the form of well-defined control mechanisms in the complexity of the energy transfer processes that determine the surface temperature. We propose that there is a strong regulatory mechanism built into the diurnal cycle that limits the change of the surface temperature over a single day. We focus on the time dependent energy transfer processes at the land-air and ocean-air interfaces and emphasize the interactive nature of the four main flux terms that determine the surface temperature. This approach is based on concepts derived from complexity (or chaos) theory to describe the dynamic equilibrium state. We demonstrate that such a control mechanism exists for both the land and ocean temperatures through the analysis of selected data sets that illustrate different aspects of the surface energy transfer. We also demonstrate the role of the ocean in climate change through the coupling of the ocean oscillations to the land surface temperatures and show that the observed increase of approximately 140 parts per million in the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration since the start of the Industrial Revolution cannot cause climate change.
We describe the historical evolution of the conceptualization, formulation, quantification, application, and utilization of “radiative forcing” (RF) of Earth’s climate. Basic theories of shortwave and longwave radiation were developed through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and established the analytical framework for defining and quantifying the perturbations to Earth’s radiative energy balance by natural and anthropogenic influences. The insight that Earth’s climate could be radiatively forced by changes in carbon dioxide, first introduced in the nineteenth century, gained empirical support with sustained observations of the atmospheric concentrations of the gas beginning in 1957. Advances in laboratory and field measurements, theory, instrumentation, computational technology, data, and analysis of well-mixed greenhouse gases and the global climate system through the twentieth century enabled the development and formalism of RF; this allowed RF to be related to changes in global-mean surface temperature with the aid of increasingly sophisticated models. This in turn led to RF becoming firmly established as a principal concept in climate science by 1990. The linkage with surface temperature has proven to be the most important application of the RF concept, enabling a simple metric to evaluate the relative climate impacts of different agents. The late 1970s and 1980s saw accelerated developments in quantification, including the first assessment of the effect of the forcing due to the doubling of carbon dioxide on climate (the “Charney” report). The concept was subsequently extended to a wide variety of agents beyond well-mixed greenhouse gases (WMGHGs; carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and halocarbons) to short-lived species such as ozone. The WMO and IPCC international assessments began the important sequence of periodic evaluations and quantifications of the forcings by natural (solar irradiance changes and stratospheric aerosols resulting from volcanic eruptions) and a growing set of anthropogenic agents (WMGHGs, ozone, aerosols, land surface changes, contrails). From the 1990s to the present, knowledge and scientific confidence in the radiative agents acting on the climate system have proliferated. The conceptual basis of RF has also evolved as both our understanding of the way radiative forcing drives climate change and the diversity of the forcing mechanisms have grown. This has led to the current situation where “effective radiative forcing” (ERF) is regarded as the preferred practical definition of radiative forcing in order to better capture the link between forcing and global-mean surface temperature change. The use of ERF, however, comes with its own attendant issues, including challenges in its diagnosis from climate models, its applications to small forcings, and blurring of the distinction between rapid climate adjustments (fast responses) and climate feedbacks; this will necessitate further elaboration of its utility in the future. Global climate model simulations of radiative perturbations by various agents have established how the forcings affect other climate variables besides temperature (e.g., precipitation). The forcing–response linkage as simulated by models, including the diversity in the spatial distribution of forcings by the different agents, has provided a practical demonstration of the effectiveness of agents in perturbing the radiative energy balance and causing climate changes. The significant advances over the past half century have established, with very high confidence, that the global-mean ERF due to human activity since preindustrial times is positive (the 2013 IPCC assessment gives a best estimate of 2.3 W m ⁻² , with a range from 1.1 to 3.3 W m ⁻² ; 90% confidence interval). Further, except in the immediate aftermath of climatically significant volcanic eruptions, the net anthropogenic forcing dominates over natural radiative forcing mechanisms. Nevertheless, the substantial remaining uncertainty in the net anthropogenic ERF leads to large uncertainties in estimates of climate sensitivity from observations and in predicting future climate impacts. The uncertainty in the ERF arises principally from the incorporation of the rapid climate adjustments in the formulation, the well-recognized difficulties in characterizing the preindustrial state of the atmosphere, and the incomplete knowledge of the interactions of aerosols with clouds. This uncertainty impairs the quantitative evaluation of climate adaptation and mitigation pathways in the future. A grand challenge in Earth system science lies in continuing to sustain the relatively simple essence of the radiative forcing concept in a form similar to that originally devised, and at the same time improving the quantification of the forcing. This, in turn, demands an accurate, yet increasingly complex and comprehensive, accounting of the relevant processes in the climate system.
We present detailed line-by-line radiation transfer calculations, which were performed under different atmospheric conditions for the most important greenhouse gases water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and ozone. Particularly cloud effects, surface temperature variations, and humidity changes as well as molecular lineshape effects are investigated to examine their specific influence on some basic climatologic parameters like the radiative forcing, the long wave absorptivity, and back-radiation as a function of an increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. These calculations are used to assess the CO2 global warming by means of an advanced two-layer climate model and to disclose some larger discrepancies in calculating the climate sensitivity. Including solar and cloud effects as well as all relevant feedback processes our simulations give an equilibrium climate sensitivity of Cs = 0.7°C (temperature increase at doubled CO2) and a solar sensitivity of Ss = 0.17°C (at 0.1% increase of the total solar irradiance). Then CO2 contributes 40% and the Sun 60% to global warming over the last century.
The Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has been acquiring solar reflectance and mid-infrared radiance measurements nearly continuously since July of 2009. Diviner is providing the most comprehensive view of how regoliths on airless bodies store and exchange thermal energy with the space environment. Approximately a quarter trillion calibrated radiance measurements of the Moon, acquired over 5.5 years by Diviner, have been compiled into a 0.5° resolution global dataset with a 0.25-hour local time resolution. Maps generated with this dataset provide a global perspective of the surface energy balance of the Moon and reveal the complex and extreme nature of the lunar surface thermal environment. Our achievable map resolution, both spatially and temporally, will continue to improve with further data acquisition.
A dynamic, coupled thermal reservoir description of the Earth's atmospheric energy transfer processes is presented. Solar heat is stored and released by four coupled reservoirs, the land, the oceans and the upper and lower troposphere. In addition to the temperature, there are three other important parameters need to be considered. The first is the thermal gradient, the second is the interaction length and the third is the time delay or phase shift between the incident flux and reservoir thermal response. The Earth's climate is stabilized by the heat stored in these thermal reservoirs, particularly the oceans and the lower troposphere up to 2 km. Almost all of the downward long wave infrared (LWIR) flux reaching the surface originates in the lower troposphere. The dominant energy transfer process within the troposphere is moist convection. At night, the lower troposphere acts as a thermal blanket that slows the surface cooling. The upper troposphere cools continuously by LWIR emission to space. A change in temperature requires a change in the heat stored in the reservoir that has to be calculated using the heat capacity and the time dependent flux balance. The LWIR flux cannot be separated and used to define a change in 'average surface temperature' using blackbody theory.