Update: It seems that the UNFCCC background page referred to below has changed and the link no longer works – see table of contents.

A response from Justin Wood, writing to me from Australia after my previous post (cited with permission below), has prompted me to write a follow-up on the story of the greenhouse effect (GHE).

I wonder if you’ve seen this terrible description of the greenhouse effect on a UNFCCC background page? http://unfccc.int/essential_background/feeling_the_heat/items/2903.php

It actually says that incoming solar energy is ‘reflected’ by the planet’s surface ‘in the form of a calmer, more slow-moving type of energy called infrared radiation. … Infrared radiation is carried slowly aloft by air currents, and its eventual escape into space is delayed by greenhouse gases’ (emphasis added). Given your recent excellent explanation of the real physics on RC, I thought you might be interested! It’s downright disturbing that this silliness comes from such an important source; and I’ve found it repeated all over the place. (On that RC post, I would humbly suggest that the section on stratospheric cooling could helpfully be expanded to make that clearer?)

I won’t discuss the stratospheric cooling now, but rather try to place recent events (including floods in Niger), which involve the hydrological cycle and atmospheric circulation, into the framework from my previous post ‘A simple recipe for GHE‘.

Again, it can be useful to stop and contemplate whether a simple conceptual framework can provide greater understanding of climate model predictions and the observations we make on the climate system. I think that there are not too many simple descriptions, as Wood pointed out, that are convincing in terms of physics.

Can we use such simple conceptual explanations for events such as the recent spate of extreme rainfall and heat waves then? I want to stress, as we did when discussing tropical cyclones, that single events do not constitute evidence of a climate change. Since climate can be defined as ‘typical weather pattern’ (or weather statistics), then climate change can be that extremes become more or less typical, and such change must start with a few events. This touches the difference between weather and climate, and each of these events can be considered as weather. But there is a connection between these weather events and results obtained from climate models.

There are fascinating as well as disconcerting sides to the fact that global climate models reported in the IPCC AR4 suggest warming in the upper troposphere in the tropics (Figure 1 below). I regard these traits as important clues that may help unveil the secrets of the troposphere; The key into this mystery involves energy conservation, planetary energy balance, and the planetary energy input taking place at its surface while its heat loss mainly occurs at higher levels, as discussed in ‘A simple recipe for GHE‘.

This story is about surface fluxes, a fuzzy connection between energy flow and circulation of water, and physical constraints pin-pointing the solutions. In other words, the hydrological cycle associated with moisture transport is tied to the energy flow associated with moist convection.

Another simple mental picture

I will yet again try to present a simplified physical picture: Our climate includes energy transport both from the equatorial region to the poles as well as a vertical flow from the surface to the height from which it can escape freely into outer space. The story behind mid-to-upper tropospheric warming strongly involves the vertical energy flow, which will be the focus of the discussion. In very simple terms, the laws of physics say there has to be a flow of energy from the planet’s surface, where energy is deposited, to the heights from where the heat loss takes place (see schematic below).

The vertical energy flow can take several forms: radiative, latent, and sensible heat. The radiative energy transfer has a character of diffusion (photon diffusion), and the more opaque the atmosphere, due to increased GHG concentrations, the slower the effective radiative energy transfer. A similar situation is believed to take place in the outer layer of the Sun, in the opaque convective zone, where convection is the main mode of energy transfer (which by the way subsequently play a role in solar activity).

If this were the whole story, then an increase in GHG concentrations would imply a deficit between the rate of energy gained at the surface and heat loss from the upper atmosphere due to hypothetically lowered energy transfer between the two levels: The emission temperature would decline as a result of net heat loss high up, and surface temperature would increase as a result of net gain in energy on the ground.

One consequence of a deficit in the vertical energy flow would be different heating and cooling rates at different heights that subsequently would alter the atmosphere’s vertical structure (lapse rate). The planetary heat loss would drop if the emission temperature were to drop, and the planet would no longer be in energy balance, resulting in energy accumulation. However, planets will eventually reach new equilibrium states where the heat-loss balances the energy input.

Other forms for heat flow between the two levels are expected to compensate for the reduction in radiative energy transfer (despite greater temperature differences) if the planetary energy input and heat loss are to balance. One such candidate is convection, carrying both latent and sensible heat and where the energy transfer takes place in form of heat-carrying vertical motion. Indeed, warming below and cooling aloft give rise to more unstable conditions that favours convection.

Higher temperatures near the surface also cause increased evaporation according to a physical law known as ‘the Clapeyron-Clausius equation‘. Evaporation requires energy so that heat, which otherwise would go to increase temperatures, is instead used to transform water to water vapour (phase change). Differences in the molecular weights of N 2 and H 2 O means that moist air is lighter than dry air. Thus, increased evaporation favours convection, which transports both energy – as sensible (higher temperature) and latent (vapour) heat – and moisture. This is seen occurring naturally, especially in association with warm ocean surface in connection with the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Convection can therefore compensate for reduced radiative transfer if its mean vertical extent reaches the height of the planetary heat loss. Convection also is one of the factors that determines the thickness of the tropopause (Wikipedia on Troposphere: “The word troposphere derives from the Greek: tropos for “turning” or “mixing,” reflecting the fact that turbulent mixing plays an important role in the troposphere’s structure and behavior.”).

Moist convection results in cloud formation: water vapour condenses and form cloud drops. The condensation releases heat and hence increase the temperatures, which subsequently has an effect on the black body radiation. Hence, cloud formation plays a crucial role for the planetary heat loss – in addition to affecting the planetary albedo.

The reason why Figure 9.1 in IPCC AR4 is disconcerting is that the temperature anomaly in the upper tropical atmosphere bears the signature of increased moist convective activity, which means that the hydrological cycle probably gets perturbed by increased GHG forcings, hence affecting rainfall patterns.

There have been some misunderstanding regarding the enhanced warming in the upper troposphere – mistakenly taken as being inconsistent with the climate models, or taken as the “finger print” of GHE, rather than as a plausible consequence predicted for an enhanced GHE due to the perturbation of the hydrological cycle (the “finger print”-misconception assumes that the models are perfect).

Changes in the convective activity also have other repercussions. Air just doesn’t pile up, but if is rises in some places, it means that there is sinking air elsewhere. A typical example of this is the Hadley cell, where the circulation involves rising air near equator associated with low sea level pressure and downward motion poleward of this region – an arid region known as the subtropics with high sea level pressure. A change in convection on a planetary scale, due to compensating a reduction in the vertical radiative energy transport, hence may have a bearing on drought and flooding events – and this is what the global climate models seem to suggest. If a shift in the hydrological cycle were to lower the response in the global mean temperature, there may be a poisonous sting in such a negative feedback: changes in the precipitation patterns.

When GHG concentrations change, there is also a disruption in the vertical energy flow so that the planetary energy balance is perturbed. This is the frequently cited extra forcing estimated at the top of the atmosphere (TOA), and this is where some of the assumptions made above don’t quite hold (the picture is correct for a planet in equilibrium, but during a transition the planet is no longer in an equilibrium) and extra energy is taken up by warming of the oceans and surface.

As a physicist, the key to understanding the relationship between GHE and the hydrological cycle – and indeed the troposphere – is in embedded in the question of what happens with the energy flow between the two levels where the planet receives its energy and where it leaves the planet. For more numbers and details, I’d recommend a number of posts previously published here on RC (here, here, here, here, and here).