Downwelling Longwave Radiation DLR or backradiation from the atmosphere to the Earth surface, is a fundamental pillar of CO2 alarmism.
Does DLR represent (i) physical reality or (ii) man-made invention?
Here are some sources of evidence: Crawford and Duchon, Brunt, IPCC AR4, Kiehl and Trenberth, Trenberth, Fasullo and Kiehl.
It appears that DLR/backradiation is not described in standard physics literature, and thus seems to be either a new discovery or new invention.
To find out which let us take a look at in particular POSTEL:
- The Down-welling Long-wave Radiation (DLR) flux (W.m-2) is defined as the thermal irradiance reaching the surface in the thermal infrared spectrum (4 - 100 µm). It is determined by the radiation that originates from a shallow layer close to the surface, about one third being emitted by the lowest 10 meters and 80% by the 500-meter layer.
- The DLR is derived from several sensors (METEOSAT, MSG) using various approaches, in the framework of the project
- Down-welling Longwave Radiation (DLR) Flux is one of the most important components of the surface energy balance over land and may be defined as the thermal irradiance reaching the surface in the thermal infrared spectrum (4-100μm).
- DLR is directly related to the greenhouse effect and its monitoring has an important role in climate change studies (Philipona et al., 2001). Other applications include meteorology (land applications) and oceanography (air-sea-ice interaction studies).
- DLR is a particularly difficult parameter to retrieve since satellites cannot directly measure it.
- However Radiative Transfer Models (RTM) may be used to estimate DLR from atmospheric profiles (temperature and humidity).
We read that DLR cannot be measured directly, only through models with temperature and humidity as input, while it is directly related to the greenhouse effect. We are also invited to watch movies of DLR hitting West Africa in the AMMA project.
We find support to our claim that DLR and backradiation is fictional without physical reality, and thus that an essential component of the greenhouse effect is fiction and not physics.
DLR thus appears to be a recent man-made invention, and so the greenhouse effect of CO2 alarmism.
It is remarkable that several governmental agencies base their whole existence on measuring DLR/backradiation, which may not exist. This shows the strength of tax-financed science
which can freely invent to measure anything, fiction or reality does not matter as long as numbers, tables and movies are produced according to the principle:
- the more fictional
- the more difficult to measure
- the bigger institute.
Inlägg
Nice piece of investigation, congrats. So they retrieve DLR indirectly from their "sophisticated" RTMs. Why am I not surprised..
SvaraRaderaTime to have a closer look at the RTMs then.
Claes, everything "measured" from a satellite has to be filtered through some model. Once again you are cherry-picking a measurement approach for your own purposes. Estimates from satellite measurements are far from the only way to measure DLR - the spectrum can be measured directly from the ground simply by pointing an infrared spectrometer up at the sky. And this can be compared directly to the radiative transfer models in question, and one sees that the numbers agree to very high precision.
SvaraRaderaThat is, the RTM's have been tested in detail against actual measurements, and found very good.
This is described in excruciating detail here:
http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/07/24/the-amazing-case-of-back-radiation-part-two/
under "Measured Spectra of Downward Longwave Radiation"
RTMs and measurements are calibratted to each other so it is no wonder they show the same.
SvaraRaderaHow are they calibrated to one another? Take one of the observation/calculation pairs on the ScienceOfDoom page, for instance the figure from Walden (1998) of measurements of the downwelling spectrum taken in Antarctica in 1992. Here you have quantitative radiance measurements in mW/sq m/sr/(cm^-1) from wavelengths of about 5 micron to about 20 micron - it looks like at least several hundred distinct numbers are measured there, with many peaks and valleys shown.
SvaraRaderaAnd then you have calculations based on the concentration of CO2, CH4, O3 and N2O for that location at that time. Those concentrations are constrained by completely separate observations; also they are very few numbers in themselves even if they were fitted in some way. The calculations are also based on completely independent knowledge of the spectra of these molecules, which have been exhaustively measured in the lab.
So we have a comparison of measurement with calculation of hundreds of quantitative numbers with very likely no (possibly as many as 4) fitted parameters, and the differences between calculation and observation are tiny. This is not "calibration" - this is validation of the RTM. To high precision.
I will look more closely into this.
SvaraRaderaOf course it's real. Point an IR Thermometer at clear sky and you get temperatures of the order of -40 -50 degC at this time of year. Under clear skies it's more like -10 -20 or so.
SvaraRaderaWhat a stupid post.
Yes, you can measure temperature by an IR Thermometer, but this does not mean that DLR is real as transfer of heat energy from cold to warm.
SvaraRaderawell, satellites do not messure DLR, what a suprise.
SvaraRaderaBut Pyrgeomter do it quite well, so there is no fiction in DLR as many people know:-)
Johnson:
SvaraRadera"but this does not mean that DLR is real as transfer of heat energy from cold to warm.
""
the nett flux of radiation ist important and this is always in the direction from warm to cold, but it decreases, if the cold body is going about 0K...
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14240.html
SvaraRaderaClaes Johnson, what do you think of terrestrial infrared spectrometers that detect the existence of back-radiation and the contribution of greenhouse gases to this radiation? (see https://www.ssec.wisc.edu/aeri/ and https://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm).
SvaraRadera