In the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis, the solar
radiation absorbing surface area of the Earth is assumed to be the same
as the . Let us rigorously
examine this important assumption. Of course in light of the claims by
many advocates of catastrophic man-made global warming that there is a
consensus among scientists that their theory is correct and this opinion
is so justified with a thorough rational understanding of the
applicable science, an interested person should have seen many
discussions of the matters I am about to discuss in this article
already. So, keep asking yourself how often you have seen this
discussion before as you read my discussion of these supposedly settled
issues.
Most of the absorption of the solar radiation is by the surface directly illuminated in line-of-sight with the sun. In comparison to the infrared-emitting surface area, this is reasonably consistent with the general models used by the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.
The heat-emitting surface area is actually larger than is the absorbing, line-of-sight surface area. This is especially the case in land areas. A rough, rocky surface has a much higher surface area than does the surface of the perfectly smooth sphere used in the models. A vegetated area has heat emission from the ground and from every part of every plant on that surface. The stems and trunks emit heat. Both sides of every leaf emit heat. Let us say that the 71% of the Earth's surface which is water has a surface area about equal to that of the round, smooth surface as a simple base for further discussion, though even its surface area is slightly larger. This leaves 29% of the surface and those areas with vegetation may have a surface area which is 2 or 3 times the surface area of the smooth sphere in a given bordered area in 2-dimensions as viewed from space. Desert and arctic areas may only have an area 1.3 times as large. Every surface mineral particle in the desert with an air-exposed area will have a surface area much greater than the portion of the surface of a sphere covering the same periphery.
It is not at all unlikely that the average land area whose solar absorbing surface area is A, would have a heat-emitting surface area of about 1.6 A. Thus, the heat-emitting area including the 71% of the Earth's surface which is water and the nominal 29% which is land could readily be:
0.71 A + 0.29 (1.6) A = 1.17 A
Most of the absorption of the solar radiation is by the surface directly illuminated in line-of-sight with the sun. In comparison to the infrared-emitting surface area, this is reasonably consistent with the general models used by the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis.
The heat-emitting surface area is actually larger than is the absorbing, line-of-sight surface area. This is especially the case in land areas. A rough, rocky surface has a much higher surface area than does the surface of the perfectly smooth sphere used in the models. A vegetated area has heat emission from the ground and from every part of every plant on that surface. The stems and trunks emit heat. Both sides of every leaf emit heat. Let us say that the 71% of the Earth's surface which is water has a surface area about equal to that of the round, smooth surface as a simple base for further discussion, though even its surface area is slightly larger. This leaves 29% of the surface and those areas with vegetation may have a surface area which is 2 or 3 times the surface area of the smooth sphere in a given bordered area in 2-dimensions as viewed from space. Desert and arctic areas may only have an area 1.3 times as large. Every surface mineral particle in the desert with an air-exposed area will have a surface area much greater than the portion of the surface of a sphere covering the same periphery.
It is not at all unlikely that the average land area whose solar absorbing surface area is A, would have a heat-emitting surface area of about 1.6 A. Thus, the heat-emitting area including the 71% of the Earth's surface which is water and the nominal 29% which is land could readily be:
0.71 A + 0.29 (1.6) A = 1.17 A
Now, I am not claiming to know this effective emission area accurately.
I most certainly do not know it accurately. But, if the science of the
so-called greenhouse effect and its consequences for man-made global
warming is a scientific consensus, as opposed to a political consensus,
then this effective area is a well-known parameter and should be readily
available to all interested parties.
As a scientist interested in the effects of carbon dioxide and other
infrared gases upon the climate, I would have to know this effective
Earth emission surface area to be a member of any scientific consensus
of those effects on the Earth's climate. As a benevolent human being, I
would also have to be very sure of this before I would become an
advocate of killing off the many conveniences and life securing benefits
of the use of fossil fuels, not to mention the jobs of those dependent
upon the use of these forms of energy.
This issue of the effective Earth infrared emission surface area does not end here. No, it gets much more complex yet.
We have to remember, as far too few scientists seem to do, that infrared
emission occurs because electric charges are accelerated with respect
to one another, thereby creating dipole, quadrapole, and other higher
order electromagnetic fields. The dipole field created by oscillating
electric charges at the molecular level is the primary source of the
resulting electromagnetic field, so I will just refer to these
oscillating electric charge pairs henceforth in this discussion to keep
things a bit simpler. The higher the temperature, the greater the
acceleration and deceleration applied to the electric charges in each
oscillating electric dipole because the frequency of the oscillation
increases as the temperature increases. The greater these changes in
acceleration are, the greater the strength of the dipole electromagnetic
field created. The greater the strength of the electromagnetic dipole
field, the greater the photon emission. At the temperature of the
Earth's surface, the photon emission is in the mid infrared wavelength
range. At the temperature of the surface of our Sun, the photon
emission is in the higher energy and shorter wavelength range of
ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared radiation.
Now if the Earth's surface interfaced directly with space and there were
no water on the surface either evaporating or sublimating and there
were no atmospheric molecules bombarding it, all of the Earth's surface
area would emit infrared radiation in accordance with the
Stefan-Boltzmann equation which is often utilized in the semi-scientific
climate science discussions of infrared radiation from the Earth's
surface. Of course as discussed above, the Earth's real surface area
for that emission is not taken into account. No, in those discussions
the Earth is replaced by a perfect sphere.
Our Earth has a surface which is not only not a perfect sphere, but 71%
of it is liquid water and additional portions are ice. This portion of
the Earth's surface has obvious cooling mechanisms other than the
emission of infrared radiation. Most of the land surface covered by
vegetation, animals, soil, and minerals also has considerable water
present. Consequently, evaporation of water from these surfaces is a
significant cooling effect. Plants and animals are mostly water. Soil
and minerals absorb considerable water on the surfaces of the particles
of which they are composed. Many of the minerals common in the Earth's
surface have lamellar structures at the atomic level and absorb water
and carbon dioxide between the layers of atoms of which they are
composed and can be more or less hydrated depending on the humidity and
time between rains. The evaporation of water provides a powerful
cooling effect on almost every part of the Earth's surface.
Where does the energy come from that causes a water molecule to
evaporate and become water vapor in our atmosphere? It has to come from
the nearby atoms of the surface at the site of the evaporating water
molecule. This is a clear requirement of the Conservation of Energy.
In what form was that energy which has been taken up in the evaporation
of our water molecule? It was the vibrational energy in the nearby
atoms that was the same vibrational energy that caused them to create
their contribution to the dipole electromagnetic field. As that energy
is soaked up by the evaporating water molecule, the frequency of the
oscillations of the nearby dipoles is reduced and the strength of the
local electromagnetic field is decreased. The temperature of the local
atoms is effectively reduced for a brief time before energy from the
surrounding surface materials can flow into the local atomic area that
just lost energy to the evaporation process. During this time, any
infrared emissions from those lower frequency oscillating electric
dipoles are those characteristic of a material at a lower temperature.
To be sure, this time of reduced infra-red radiation energy loss is
short, but then in many cases the time to the next case of a local water
molecule evaporation may also be short. And what is very important
here, the real surface area emitting infrared radiation characteristic
of the Earth's surface temperature according to the Stefan-Boltzmann
equation is reduced on the macroscopic level.
Yes, those local atomic environments within the macroscopic area where
no water molecule has evaporated will emit radiation in accordance with
the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. But other local atomic environments
having just given up energy to the evaporation of a water molecule
cannot do so, at least not at the normal temperature of the Earth's
surface. At any given time, the fraction of the area of the Earth's
surface emitting radiation in accordance with the Stefan-Boltzmann
equation for the average Earth temperature of 288K, must be less than 1.
And of course, any scientific consensus in favor of the catastrophic
man-made global warming hypothesis would include knowledge of just what
this fraction is. At some point, this would have been a hot topic of
discussion. This issue having been resolved, every advocate of the
truth of catastrophic man-made global warming will be able to discuss
this intelligently with any inquirer.
Now this is not the end of the surface area of infrared emission story.
To this point, we have not considered the bombardment of the Earth's
surface by air molecules. According to the usual theory of the large
greenhouse gas effect on the climate, the primary reason the Earth's
surface has an average temperature of about 288K is the absorption of
radiation from the sun directly and the absorption of an even larger
amount of radiation energy from the atmosphere. See the viewpoint
expressed in the Earth energy budget below:
All of the energy that warms the surface is in the form of these two
radiation sources, with the back radiation from the atmosphere being
2.08 times the direct solar radiation absorption according to this NASA
Earth energy budget. This is entirely false, which I have explained
many times. This viewpoint is based on the wrongheaded idea that the
Earth's entire surface emits radiation as though it were in a vacuum and
absorbs massive radiant energy from a generally cooler atmosphere which
is even greater than the energy absorbed from the Sun. In reality, the
Earth's surface emission is much, much less than shown in this diagram
and the back radiation is much, much, much, much less than is shown. In
fact, back radiation is actually limited to those cases of atmospheric
temperature inversions, which do occur in a dynamic atmosphere, but have
a much smaller effect than that claimed. The principal the Earth's
surface is as warm as it is is due to being in equilibrium with the
temperature of the warm air molecules that bombard it.
Why are these air molecules warm enough to establish an equilibrium
temperature with the surface which is much higher than that of the Earth
system equilibrium temperature as seen from space? Primarily because of
the action of the Earth's gravitational field on the molecules of the
atmosphere. At the altitudes from which the Earth's atmosphere emits
infrared radiation into space from water molecules, carbon dioxide, and
other infrared-active molecules, the atmosphere is much cooler than is
the surface of the Earth. The Earth's surface also emits a large
fraction of the infrared radiation it does emit directly into space,
because much of its spectrum of radiation is not absorbed by the
infrared-active molecules of the atmosphere. The fraction of the Earth's
surface emission absorbed by the atmosphere is much smaller than is
shown in the NASA Earth energy budget above.
The temperature of the atmosphere at the altitudes from which its
infrared emission into space occurs is fixed by that process and depends
upon the concentration of the infrared-active molecules with altitude.
The energy of an air molecule at that altitude is given by E = Kinetic
Energy + mgh, where g is the gravitational constant (actually very
slightly reduced with altitude from the surface value) and h is the
altitude. The gas molecules in our atmosphere are very nearly perfect
or ideal gases in their behavior, Consequently, the temperature of those
gas molecules is proportional to the Kinetic Energy of those molecules.
This is a property of ideal or perfect gases.
Of course every good scientist knows both that the gas molecule kinetic
energy in the atmosphere varies with altitude due to the potential
energy term mgh and every one of them knows that the temperature of a
perfect or ideal gas molecule is proportional to its kinetic energy.
Consequently, any respectable scientist understands that the
temperature of an air molecule at the surface of the Earth is much
higher than its temperature at an altitude of say 7000 meters where
atmospheric radiation into space largely occurs. Do we not see this
discussed all the time in the consensus viewpoint supposed to back the
catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis?
In fact, simply due to this gravitational action on gas molecules in our
atmosphere, the temperature of gas molecules on average at the Earth's
surface and in equilibrium with the Earth's surface raises the surface
temperature more than does the directly absorbed radiation from the Sun.
It is only when the Earth's surface temperature is higher than the
temperature of gases at the bottom of the atmosphere that heat flows
from the surface to the atmosphere. This happens when the surface is
warmed by sunlight. At night, as thermal radiation from the surface
cools the surface, it is kept from cooling very much because the air
molecules bombarding it tend to maintain the temperature the
gravitational field imparts to them. These effects on the surface
temperature are not indicated in the NASA Earth energy budget. The only
role that the Earth's molecules striking the surface plays in the NASA
"consensus" viewpoint is the loss of heat by the subsequent creation of
thermals. The primary reason for the Earth's high surface temperature
is converted into a minor heat loss.
If the only effect of gas molecules bombarding the Earth's surface were a
heat loss, then each instance of a gas molecule striking the surface
would remove heat locally and act much like the evaporation of a water
molecule described above. Each such event would locally lower the
surface temperature and reduce the energy loss due to the emission of
infrared photons. This would reduce the effective area emitting
radiation in accordance with the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. And, being
conscientious scientists, those claiming they were part of the
scientific consensus on catastrophic man-made global warming would have
come to a conclusion, known to all of them and available to every
interested inquirer, about the effect on the fraction of the surface
emitting energy in accordance with the average temperature by
Stefan-Boltzmann radiation and the fraction emitting infrared radiation
characteristic of lower temperatures due to energy loss to bombarding
air molecules.
So, I ask you if those scientists who ascribe to what has been
frequently claimed to be a scientific consensus have indeed considered
the critical scientific issues I have discussed above? It is not as
though these are difficult issues to recognize as critical if one has
both some understanding of very basic principles of science and a
scientific mind. It would be a terrible travesty of science and good
government if the United States government has spent many tens of
billions of taxpayer dollars on backing catastrophic man-made global
warming and yet has not considered the basic science I have tasked them
with here.
Interestingly enough, in the the 1950s through the 1970s, the U.S.
government funded the computation of tables for the U.S. Standard
Atomsphere which did recognize the gravitational source of the
temperature of the lower layer of the Earth's atmosphere, the
troposphere. How odd that the government has forgotten that science. I
have been reminding people about this since 2010, with little effect.