The Corvallis OR, USCRN Site: A Natural Laboratory, Part Three

Written by Dr Jerry L Krause (Chemistry) on November 28, 2018. Posted in Current News

I had planned to review the history of the scientific idea termed the atmospheric greenhouse effect, but quickly discovered a need to better and more accurately define this natural laboratory (system) and the phenomena which is involved.

James Gleick in his book, Genius, about the life and science of Richard Feynman wrote:  “But a part of him still preferred to give fundamental a different definition.  “What we are talking about is real and at hand:  Nature,” he wrote to a correspondent in India, who had, he thought, spent too much time reading about esoteric phenomena.

“Learn by trying to understand simple things in terms of other ideas—always honestly and directly.  What keeps the clouds up, why can’t I see stars in the daytime, why do colors appear on oily water, what makes the lines on the surface of water being poured from a picture, why does a hanging lamp swing back and forth—and all the innumerable little things you see all around you.  Then when you have learned what an explanation is, you can go on to more subtle questions.”

In the preface to the reader of Galileo’s book, Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, the publisher, Elzevir, wrote (as translated by Crew and de Salvio):  “intuitive knowledge keeps pace with accurate definition.”  I first read this at the age of 50 or more (I do not know the actual date).  And since that time I have been struggling to better understand the wisdom of what the publisher considered to be a common saying of that time long ago.

Now, with the wisdom of a few more quotes and the data of the natural laboratory at William L Finley National Wildlife Reserve I believe to be getting closer to a better understanding of this quote as it applies to SCIENCE.

In parts One and Two we reviewed the many different temperatures which have been measured by various instruments.  But, as yet, we have not explained what has been seen (measured).  However, the common saying implies that once we have accurately defined this system by these measurements; we should be able to intuitively (without thinking or reasoning) know the explanations for these measurements.

So, what are these other quotes?

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence, it biases the judgment.”

“The temptation to form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.”

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”

Who wrote these quotes?  The man who successfully taught forensic scientists how to practice their SCIENCE.  Which for several decades has been demonstrated (modeled) on numerous primetime television shows.  Of course, many know that this man is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Much of what I claim to know (understand) has been learned from others who have accomplished far more than I.  So I continue to quote these others.

The next is from The Feynman Lectures On Physics:

“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?  I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.  In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.”

Can we agree that the measurement of the magnitude of this perpetual motion is temperature?

Next we go to R.C. Sutcliffe’s book, Weather and Climate, where he wrote (https://principia-scientific.com/bbc-finally-admits-ocean-warming-study-had-huge-error/#comment-21875) and here about visible cloud:

“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 a sunny day in summer or between an overcast and a clear frosty night in winter.”  Or between Figures 1&2; 3&4; and 5&6 of Part One (https://principia-scientific.com/the-corvallis-or-uscrn-site-a-natural-laboratory/)

Sutcliffe continued:

“The climatic importance of clouds lies in their effectiveness in reflecting, absorbing, transmitting, and emitting radiation. … The effects are complicated because clouds are neither ‘black’ nor grey’ but react to different parts of the spectrum quite differently.  To the sun’s visible radiation they are efficient reflectors, throwing up as much as 80 per cent back toward space, and so shining white in the eyes of the space traveler.  What is not reflected mostly penetrates and is absorbed in clouds of sufficient vertical depth so that the amount of light reaching the earth is then quite small, as every photographer knows.  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, almost as though they were black bodies.  In this way clouds by day keep much of the sun’s heat away, but at the same time and in the nighttime too they return to the earth much of the heat that would have been lost.  A completely cloudy day may be close and humid but never exceptionally hot, whereas during a cloudy night the temperature may hardly fall from its day-time value.”

Next, in his lectures, Feynman had asked (1962) the question:

“why do we ever see the clouds?”

I skip over his theoretical reasoning (which I do not pretend to understand) to his explanation of its simple results (which I found easy to understand):

“So as the water agglomerates the scattering increases.  Does it increase ad infinitum?  No!  When does this analysis begin to fail?  Answer:  If the water drop gets so big that from one end to the other is a wavelength or so, then the atoms are no longer in phase because they are too far apart.  So as we keep increasing the size of the droplets we get more and more scattering, until such a time that a drop gets about the size of a wavelength, and then the scattering does not increase anywhere nearly as rapidly as the drop gets bigger.”

I interrupt Feynman here to focus on the fact that he did not state that the scattering by this drop would cease or even decrease as the size of the drop became bigger than the wavelength of light (radiation) as it (the larger drop) continued to scatter this radiation.

I interrupt Feynman because he began to focus solely upon the visible portion of the solar spectrum whereas Sutcliffe had informed us that a ‘small droplet’ had a diameter of 1µ (micron).  And he (Sutcliffe), a little later, had reviewed a table of cloud water drops’ fall-speeds where a possible cloud drop’s diameter increased up to 40µ.

Feynman continued:

“Furthermore, the blue disappears, because for long wavelengths the drops can be bigger, before this limit [for rapid increase of scattering intensity] is reached, than they [the limits] can be for short wavelengths.  Although the short waves scatter more per atom than the long waves, there is a bigger enhancement for the red end of the spectrum than for the blue end when all the drops are bigger than the wavelength, so the color is shifted from the blue toward the red.

“Now we can make an experiment that demonstrates this.  We can make particles that are very small at first, and then gradually grow in size.  We use a solution of sodium thiosulfate (hypo) with sulfuric acid, which precipitates fine grains of sulfur.  As the sulphur precipitates, the grains first start very small, and the scattering is a little bluish.  As it precipitates more it get more intense, and they it will get whitish as the particles get bigger.  In addition, the light which goes through will have the blue taken out.”

Photo 2 [Photo by JLK]  Sun rising through wildfire smoke particles whose diameters are significantly smaller than the wavelength of red light.  The sun, as it rose, was not pink but fire-engine red.  The problem was its direct intensity created a significant over-exposure relative to the rest of the image.

I conclude that the red sky, not overexposed, above the blue smoke bank was probably due to condensation nuclei whose diameters may have agglomerated to a diameter near the wavelength of red light.  For a product of a wood wildfire is significant amounts of water vapor as well as smoke particles.

Accurate definition requires the certain details of radiation scattering need to be more directly addressed than Feynman’s explanation had.  In Meteorology Today 9^th Ed. (2009) C.

Donald Ahrens wrote:

“When sunlight bounces off a surface at the same angle at which it strikes the surface, we say that the light is reflected and call this phenomenon reflection.  There are various constituents of the atmosphere, however, that tend to deflect solar radiation from its path and send it out in all directions.  We know from Chapter 2 that radiation reflected in this way is said to be scattered.”  Here I must focus on the confusion which must be created by “radiation reflected in this way is said to be scattered.”

Ahrens had just stated how the phenomenon of reflection was different from the phenomenon of scattering.

However, Ahrens, to his credit, continued:

“During the scattering process, no energy is gained or lost and, therefore, no temperature changes occur.”

This is a critical detail about the radiation scattering phenomenon.  For what Ahrens wrote about these details of scattering were known (understood) about this phenomenon before 1962.

Before I compare the differences between what Sutcliffe wrote about the influence of cloud upon radiation and what we presently understand about this influence we need to consider the wisdom of Isaac Newton.  Who in 1687 began Book III of The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy with 4 rules of reasoning.

The second of which (as translated by Andrew Motte in 1848) was:

“Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.  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.”

Relative to the review of radiation scattering, Newton was not yet aware of the phenomenon of scattering.  That radiation must be reflected from any atomistic smooth surface such as that of a liquid (water) or polished solid surfaces should be obvious; for otherwise the phenomenon of reflection could never be observed.

However, it is accepted that in both reflection and scattering there is no exchange of energy between the radiation and solid or liquid macroscopic matter upon which any incident radiation whose path has been deflected from that previous.

As I write this I am reminded there is another natural phenomenon termed refraction, which changes the path of radiation at the interface of two different two different transparent phases which have different refractive indexes.  But for a first approximation in this review we review nothing more than the existence of the phenomenon of refraction.

Hence, I consider that Feynman’s scattering theory applies to the sun’s visible light, to its invisible ultraviolet light, to its invisible infrared (IR) light (radiation), and to the longer wavelength, invisible, IR radiation being emitted from solid, liquid, and gaseous matter according to the matter’s temperature.  But having stated this I note the extreme density difference between gaseous matter and the condensed matter of liquids and solid.

From which I conclude that any emission by gaseous matter (atoms and small molecules) is minor relative to the magnitude of the emission by the much, much more dense solid or liquid matter according to their temperatures.

Relative to this conclusion, we must not overlook, as commonly seems to be done, the liquid (or solid) atmospheric condensation nuclei; for the apparent cloudless atmosphere does contain solid or liquid particles.  Hence, my comment (Photo 2) about the red sky just above the blue (scattered light) smoke bank.

My planned comparison of Sutcliffe’s description of cloud’s interaction with radiations of various wavelengths relative to the result of Feynman’s radiation scattering theory (idea) will have to be moved to Part Four.

For this seems plenty for anyone interested in learning to chew upon. For, one thing a learner must first learn is that even simple things need the investment of much time.

My wife likes to ask students, who have trouble getting started on their assignments:  “How would you eat an elephant?”  Her answer:  “One bite at a time.”

PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX. Telephone: Calls from within the UK: 020 7419 5027. International dialling: (44) 20 7419 5027. 

Please DONATE TODAY To Help Our Non-Profit Mission To Defend The Scientific Method.

Trackback from your site.