Record Temperature Result of Cloud (revised, updated)
SURFRAD data indicates that thin cloud does not hinder the cooling of earth’s surface in any way.
Abstract: In this essay temperatures (air, earth surface, and soil temperatures at the depths of 5 and 10cm) and the incident solar radiation, having been measured by the NOAA USCRN project at Mercury NV during the same 5 consecutive days in June during two consecutive years (2012 and 2013), are reviewed and compared.
The solar and infrared radiation data measured at the same times at the nearby NOAA SURFRAD site are reviewed to clearly establish the presence of cloud during the 2013 for which there is no evidence during 2012. The clear results of these comparisons are that the temperatures (whichever specific one) of 2013 is significantly greater than the same during 2012.
After establishing this novel (unexpected) result, a simple mechanism is proposed for the greater incident solar radiation observed due to the clouds of 2013. However, a more important novel result seen from the data was that the cooling by radiation was not diminished by the cloud of 2013.
Preface: To understand the consequence of this data which is reviewed one must be aware that Svante Arrhenius in his 1896 essay titled On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground proposed (predicted) that the influence of carbonic acid (another named for carbon dioxide at that time) upon the temperature of the ground was that the temperature of the ground would be about 33oC less (using currently accepted values in his radiation balance calculation if not for the carbon dioxide and other atmospheric gases (‘greenhouse gases’) which were capable of absorbing a portion of the longwave infrared radiation being emitted by the ground according to its temperature.
This proposed mechanism has become the theory known as the greenhouse effect of the atmospheric which is composed of trace amounts of these ‘greenhouse’ gases. Except, the title does not accurately describe the essay.
There were two serious misstatements. One was the temperature was not the actual temperature of the ground but it was an average temperature of the entire earth. The second was that when he calculated the average temperature of the earth, it was not the temperature of the ground which he averaged. It was the temperature of the air measured about 1.5 meter above the ground.
A practical fact is these greenhouse gases cannot be removed from the atmosphere to test if the temperature of the ground would be about 33oC less. Now I ask a question which you the reader must answer (preferably before you read this essay): If the average value of a set of numbers needs to be 33 units less, doesn’t each number of the set need to be 33 units less?
For more than a century there had been no concerted effort to actually measure the temperature of the ground. In 2001 NOAA began a project to actually measure the temperature of the ground (surface). In about 2010 the project was expanded to measure the temperature of the air, the temperature of the surface, and the temperature of the soil at the depths of 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100cm as well as the moisture content of the soil at these same 5 depths. The present name of this project is the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) and the network has sites at more than 100 locations. And if one reads about this project one will find that great effort has been made to make the measurements of highest possible quality.
The final question which you the reader must answer is: After you have studied the USCRN measurements which are reviewed in this essay, do you consider that each of the temperatures measured could be 33oC less?
Figure 1 Comparison of the Average Temperatures of the Air and the Earth Surface Relative to the Soil Temperatures at Depths of 5 and 10cm at the USCRN* site at Mercury NV on the Same Days of the Consecutive Years 2012 and 2013.
Which difference is explained by the following comparison of the average, maximum, and minimum measurements of the incident solar radiation.
Figure 2 Comparison of the Average, Maximum, and Minimum Incident Solar Radiations for the Previous Hour Measured at the USCRN site at Mercury NV on the Same Days of the Consecutive Years 2012 and 2013. (Note the optical distortion produced by the different vertical scales which could not be avoided.)
One might ask: What is the evidence that there is cloud during 2013 and not the reverse? If one inspects the maximum radiation for 6/28/2013 one can see some subtle evidence of cloud. But better to compare the radiations that were measured on this same day of 2012 and 2013 at NOAA’s nearby SURFRAD (Surface Radiation) sites at Desert Rock NV.
Figure 3 Comparison of the Radiations Measured at the SURFRAD Site at Mercury NV for the 24hr Period of June 28 for the Consecutive Years 2012 and 2013.
I am aware the maximum Downwelling Solar Radiation (DWS) at the SURFRAD site does not match up with the maximum incident Solar at the nearby USCRN site. This is something which NOAA would need to explain but the primary purpose of this comparison is to establish that cloud is present in 2013 and not in 2012. This is established by the differences of the Diffuse Solar (DS) and the Direct-Normal Solar (DNS) values between the two years.
Several years ago, by studying this radiation data of these 5 days during these two years along with the air temperatures which are also measured at SURFRAD sites, I had concluded that thin, high altitude, clouds had to be the cause of the greater values of the DS in 2013 along with the greater air temperature values. But, as reviewed in the preface, the temperature essential to the theory of the GHE is the ground (surface) temperature and not the air temperature. And at that time I was totally unaware of the USCRN project which I considered essential to developing a better understanding of the earth-atmosphere radiation balance system.
Without the measured data of Figures 1 and 2, it would be quite difficult to convince anyone, including myself, that cloud could cause the greater values of the midday incident solar radiation which in turn could ever cause the significant greater midday surface temperatures of 2013, which are supported by the greater soil temperatures at the 5 and 10 cm depths of 2013.
This support of the measured soil temperatures is critically important as there are many who question the validity of the measured surface temperature because it is measured by an instrument that detects the infrared radiation being emitted by the surface and converts it into temperature. So when the temperature at the depth of 5cm is measured, which measurement cannot be questioned, to be about 50oC during 2013, the measurement of surface temperatures of about 50oC during 2012 becomes more plausible. For it is apparent that the energy must be conducted from the surface through the soil to 5cm. So there needs to be a significant temperature gradient between the surface and 5cm to move this energy.
An obvious question is: How is it that thin, high altitude, clouds cause the greater measured value of the incident solar radiation? Relative to a recent posting (https://principia-scientific.com/summary-of-some-physics-errors-in-the-nasa-earth-energy-budget/) I had made a comment which I now summarize.
Newton wrote four rules of reasoning in [Natural] Philosophy. Rule #2 was (as translated by Andrew Motte):
“Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.” He illustrated that to which he was referring by these comments: “As to respiration in a man and in a beast; the descent of stones in Europe and in America; the light of our culinary fire and of the sun; the reflection of light in the earth, and in the planets.”
Arrhenius in his simple radiation balance calculation used the albedo of clouds, as a portion of the earth-atmosphere average albedo to reduce solar radiation incident upon the earth’s surface. In this calculation he did not consider that cloud had any influence upon the radiation being emitted toward space by the earth surface. Hence, violating Newton’s second rule.
At the time of Newton the phenomenon of light (radiation) scattering by tiny particles, like atoms, small molecules, and cloud droplets had not yet been discovered. Because I claim cloud is the cause of the higher temperatures of 2013, I fast forward what Richard Feynman taught his students about scattering by cloud droplets. It seems no physics professor, except Feynman, has asked his students: “Why do we ever see clouds?” (The Feynman Lecture On Physics, pp 32-8) If some professor other than Feynman has asked this, I have not read it.
He continued:
“We have just explained that every atom scatters light, and of course the water vapor will scatter light, too. The mystery is why, when the water is condensed into clouds, does it scatter such a tremendously greater amount of light?”
This scattering by cloud explained by Feynman has been observed for more than a century as the Tyndall Effect (colloidal scattering). The critically important result of Feynman’s explanation of this scattering phenomenon was that the intensity of the scattering increased tremendously as the size of the scattering particle increased. This was (is); as long as the scattering particle had a diameter the same as, or greater, than the wavelength of the radiation being scattered. Since I read that a common cloud droplet had a diameter of about 20µ, it seems that a cloud of droplets must scatter the long-wave infrared radiation being emitted by the earth surface much, much more strongly (intensely) than it does the light of the visible spectrum.
First we must consider the fact that only a small portion of direct-normal solar (DNS) is scattered by a thin cloud and thereby converted into diffuse radiation (DS). Next we need to acknowledge that there a portion of this DS is transmitted to space and a portion is transmitted to the surface. So the incident solar on the earth’s surface is the DNS, which has been slightly reduced in its intensity, plus a portion of the DS from the entire atmosphere. Which portion of the DS I do not attempt to quantify because it would be very difficult to do if it is even possible.
But according to Feynman, the longwave IR being emitted from the high temperature surface is going to be scattered much, much more intensely by the thin clouds than the solar radiation was.
This is supported by a comment of R.C. Sutcliffe who was the Chief Meteorological Officer for the British Forces in Europe at the end if WWII. In his book, Weather and Climate, he wrote:
“Long-wave radiation from the earth, the invisible heat rays, is by contrast totally absorbed by quite a thin layer of clouds and, by the same token, the clouds themselves emit heat continuously according to their temperatures as though they were black bodies.”
It seems Sutcliffe was unaware of what Feynman had taught his students when he wrote that the long-wave radiation was totally absorbed instead of concluding that this radiation was totally scattered back toward the earth’s surface.
Hence, the mechanism by which these thin clouds cause the greater temperatures of 2013 is the same proposed by the theory of the ‘greenhouse effect’ of greenhouse gases except for the fact clouds are not a permanent feature of the atmosphere as all the ‘greenhouse gases’, except water vapor, are proposed and observed to be. And in this case of scattering by these thin clouds we can observe (have observed) what is seen when they appear to be absent (2012).
In conclusion: When I began to compose this essay of figures and words, which I know anyone could have done after 2013, I considered I had seen what others had not seen. And when I began to seen a draft of this essay with which I was satisfied I began to receive a few critical comments about why they did not see what I had written about. I could see the justification of these comments and I began to correct my mistakes by first adding the abstract and then the preface. But at the point of completing the previous paragraph, I finally saw the most important observed fact of Figure 1.
I use Sutcliffe’s book as a reference time after time because on page 33 he wrote:
“Clouds which do not give rain, which never even threaten to give rain but which dissolve again into vapour before the precipitation stage is ever reached, have a profound effect on our climate. This is obvious enough if we only think of the difference between a cloudy and sunny day in summer or between an overcast and a clear frosty night in winter. “
We have just reviewed data which refutes what I have just reviewed that which Sutcliffe implied with which I totally agreed. But the data tells us that thin cloud increase the maximum daytime temperature instead of decreasing it.
What I hadn’t seen before writing that previous paragraph was that this thin cloud does not hinder the cooling of the surface in any way. For what I had not noticed and compared (in my ponderings) was the ranges of the diurnal surface temperature oscillation. The range of the diurnal surface temperature oscillation for 3 of the 5 days in 2013 was nearly 40oC. Whereas the range of this oscillation in 2012 was about 35oC. Clearly the influence of the thin cloud, which must be a portion of the Downwelling Infrared radiation (DWIR) observed at the SURFRAD site (Fig. 3), does not decrease the capability of the surface to cool via the radiation mechanism. Which is the observed consequence of the cloud; to which Sutcliffe directed a reader’s attention, during a winter night.
Clearly we must ponder the difference between a thin cloud and one which can be described as a thick cloud. But this is a topic for a future essay.
*Diamond, H. J., T. R. Karl, M. A. Palecki, C. B. Baker, J. E. Bell, R. D. Leeper, D. R. Easterling, J. H. Lawrimore, T. P. Meyers, M. R. Helfert, G. Goodge, and P. W. Thorne, 2013: U.S. Climate Reference Network after one decade of operations: status and assessment. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 94, 489-498.
doi: 10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00170.1
*Bell, J. E., M. A. Palecki, C. B. Baker, W. G. Collins, J. H. Lawrimore, R. D. Leeper, M. E. Hall, J. Kochendorfer, T. P. Meyers, T. Wilson, and H. J. Diamond. 2013: U.S. Climate Reference Network soil moisture and temperature observations. J. Hydrometeorol., 14, 977-988.
doi: 10.1175/JHM-D-12-0146.1
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