"I M @ good guy" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:40:05 -0800, "Eric Gisin"
wrote:

How about that, skeptics at NASA?

http://www.ecofactory.com/news/noaa-...warming-012910
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories...atervapor.html


I can't help being concerned about the second url
article, did the water vapor change and it took 10 years
to figure it out, or did it take that long to figure out
how to explain it in terms of Al Gore physics of AGW?

Unfortunately it is totally clueless, it still seems to
assume that the temperature of the atmosphere 2 meters
above the ground is due to "back radiation" from the
high troposphere and stratosphere.

More water vapor way up there before 1999, and
10 percent less since, causing a "reduction in rate of
warming" seems to suggest the official story is going
to be a fairy tale about warming.




An increase in atmospheric water vapor is responsible for at least a third
of the average
temperature increase since the early 1990s, say scientists at the US
National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Susan Soloman, the respected climate
scientist who lead the
research, says that this finding does not undermine man-made global
warming theories. "Not to my
mind it doesn't," she said. Soloman did point out that the research does
allude to human emissions
having a much smaller role in climate change than previously thought, and
serves as a warning to
climate modelers who "over-interpret the results from a few years one way
or another." Despite
Soloman's personally held belief, the NOAA study is expected to give
further ammunition to climate
skeptics working to draw public attention to perceived flaws in man-made
global warming theories.

Soloman, in interviews with both the Associated Press and The Guardian,
declined to comment on the
negative publicity climate science has received recently due to the IPCC
Himalaya error and
Climategate, and to what the NOAA water vapor report could mean to
skeptics and climate scientists
alike. Soloman did mention that many scientists are now accepting,
testing, and sometimes embracing
skeptic research, and that the NOAA report is proof of that. "What I will
say, is that this shows
there are climate scientists round the world who are trying very hard to
understand and to explain
to people openly and honestly what has happened over the last decade."
Soloman co-chaired the last
climate change assessment report prepared by the United Nations IPCC, but
did not personally
oversee the controversial Himalayan section.

Soloman said it was not clear if the drier atmosphere, which the NOAA
report says is the reason
global warming fell flat over the last decade, is a natural process or
came to be due to human
emissions. If the latter is true, carbon dioxide emissions would actually
be responsible for a
negative feedback that cancels at least some of the warming it causes by
pushing water vapor back
to the surface of the earth and out of the stratosphere, where it acts as
a potent greenhouse gas.
According to the report, a 10% decrease in atmospheric water vapor alone
was responsible for a 25%
drop in predicted temperature increase.

NASA Confirms Water Vapor Study

NASA researchers and climate scientists around the world have reviewed the
NOAA water vapor
research in advance to its recent publication in the journal Science, one
of the most respected in
the world. Describing the effect of water vapor on atmospheric temperature
as "enormous,"
researcher Andrew Dessler said that "everyone agrees that if you add
carbon dioxide to the
atmosphere, then warming will result. The real question is how much
warming?" A Texas A&M
researcher working in conjunction with NASA, Dessler pointed out that
warmer air can contain
contain higher amounts of water vapor, which could create a runaway
positive feedback cycle.

The research, facilitated by a state-of-the-art NASA satellite codenamed
AIRS, suggests that water
vapor is responsible for twice the global warming effect of carbon
dioxide, both man-made and
naturally occurring. While this theory was has been carried by climate
change skeptics for some
time, global warming advocates dismissed them, saying that water vapor in
the atmosphere was only a
feedback effect caused by human emissions. NASA scientist Eric Fetzer say
that the new study
created models much more accurate to past events than those previously
used by climate change
advocates, and proves that "water vapor is the big player in the
atmosphere as far as climate is
concerned."


"Water vapor TWICE that of carbon dioxide"?

That would not even be correct if the delusional AGW
scope of back radiation from high up all the way to the
ground was correct, simply because water vapor exists in
so many times the amount of CO2.


And again, the official story gives LWIR more credit
for the temperature regime, GreenHouse Theory must
account for the entire difference of an Earth with an
atmosphere than with NO atmosphere at all, treating
just the GreenHouse Gas part ignores most of the physics.

The surface can get very hot in direct sun depending
on color and texture and air movement, and that process
needs to be examined with a separate look at convection
and contact "conduction" of the molecular collisions, which
provide a rapid thermal energy transfer from the surface
to the air.

Convection usually means the total process, but
does not include the rapid short range sharing of the
thermal energy at short range with a large enough
volume of air by both molecular collisions and LWIR.

There may not be any immediate long range
thermal energy transfer at all as described in the
"energy budget" descriptions, water vapor in the
lower hundred meters above the surface may
completely absorb all the LWIR radiation of the
solar heating of the surface, with the thermal
convection of much greater than molecular
volumes of air taking some time to rise and
take part in the local lapse rate.


And the same is true of solar energy that
is absorbed by O2 and O3 in the upper atmosphere,
most of it is radiated to space, the downward
components being quickly absorbed in a lower
level and half re-radiated upward, with both
Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium and LWIR
being involved, but not at all like the upward-
downward interactions described in the usual
energy budget fairy tale of hundreds of watts
per square meter thermal transfer.


The dominating factor in the rather stable
and moderated temperature regime provided
by the atmosphere is the absorption of thermal
energy by the atmosphere, according to the
mass quantity and specific heat of the major
constituents.

This view gives N2 the correct large role
in moderating both the daytime heating, and
the nighttime cooling.

And O2 is likely the next biggest factor,
because of the mass proportion, with some,
perhaps small, greater absorption attributes
than N2.

Water vapor obviously is third, and it is
obvious the moderation effects of water vapor
are great, higher humidity prevents higher
air temperatures, contrary to the impression
that water vapor causes "warming".

Also, water vapor has multiple cooling
process attributes, evaporative cooling,
low density convection to higher altitudes
with adiabatic cooling, carriage of latent
heat to high altitude where release allows
faster radiation to space.

The condensation to water droplets
forming clouds provides an umbrella that
not only prevents solar energy from reaching
the ground, but also reflects it to space.

And those clouds provide a double
process, broadband LWIR to space, and
also blocking (absorption and re-radiation
downward) the usual nighttime radiational
cooling of the surface.


CO2 plays such a small role in the
overall physics of thermal moderation by
the atmosphere, only considering the LWIR
aspect of GreenHouse Gases with emphasis
is really delusional, with no rational basis
in atmospheric physics.

Preventing the extreme temperatures
that the solar flux can cause on dark colored
surfaces is of more importance even than
the prevention of radiation cooling, and
all the mass of all the gases in the atmosphere
is responsible for absorbing and retaining
that solar energy, both moderating the
temperatures and storing the thermal
energy for the short rotation period of
the Earth.

LWIR is but a small part of the process,
and CO2 is a minor player in the total
process.


You can call it water vapour if you like, I'm still going to
call it cloud, fog, mist, rain, snow, sleet and hail, and
any dumb bozos that disagree can kiss my arse.