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To: palmer

For the whole atmosphere, if removing water vapor still traps 64% of heat and water vapor results from the heat trapping of CO2, then it's obvious that "95%" is meaningless.

What is obvious is the fact your hypothetical is in meaningless. The problem being two fold,

1) without water vapor in there is no water vapor feedback to enhance CO2 as a GHG and the earth would be an ice ball for lack of watervapor acting as the dominant greenhouse gas, and

2) you can't remove watervapor from the atmosphere without turning off the sun as the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is overwhelmingly due to near infrared and visible wavelengths of solar irradiation of ocean surfaces not back radiation of CO2 concentrations.

CO2 acting on its own limits the surface temperatures of the earth far below the deepest ice age tempertures, in the deepest glacial periods some 9oC global anomoly below the current interglacial period, CO2 was at approximately 185ppm, a doubling bring it to 370ppm and ~3.7 w/m2 forcing amounting to ~0.6oC increment at the surface in the absense of water vapor.

Fortunately for mankind and life on earth, the sun and water vapor are the controlling factors not CO2.

54 posted on 03/11/2007 12:28:36 PM PDT by ancient_geezer (Don't reform it, Replace it.)
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To: ancient_geezer
As you point out, without CO2 the water vapor condenses and freezes and earth is an ice ball. The GH component of water vapor and CO2 are seen by removing them from the model. The model is fairly easy to agree on since it does not involve changes like doubling CO2. That's where there's merit in your material from Lindzen. But not the 98% comment, nor the 95% that the authors use.

The number from the models for water vapor, clouds and ozone is 88% http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/publications/Ramanathan%20and%20Coakley%20RevGSP%201978.pdf and CO2 is the other 12%. Without water vapor CO2 traps a lot more heat, but because of the overlap and the low altitude of water vapor, the CO2 heat trapping is cut in a third. The model is tuned with parameters that match observed values for clouds, lapse rate, and surface albedo. The results match the global average temperature so the model is verified for static equilibrium.

Adding CO2 is a whole nother ballgame and I disagree with the authors that their model has any useful predictive value. That's because the weather patterns will change significantly in a warmer world altering the clouds, lapse rate, and water vapor distribution and making their parameterizations useless.

But suffice to say that the increase in GH effect from man is going to be a fraction of the 12% (not the whole 30% rise in CO2 since 1850, but perhaps 10%). Bottom line the 0.28% in the headline above should be 1.2% or more. Does that matter? Perhaps not, but it should be corrected.

55 posted on 03/11/2007 5:37:29 PM PDT by palmer (Money problems do not come from a lack of money, but from living an excessive, unrealistic lifestyle)
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