Do you think it correct to think of evapotranspiration as "escorting" heat past the CO2? The water vapor, by holding what would otherwise be long wave radiation and carrying it up out of the CO2 rich zone to the CO2 thin zone seems to be a critical part of the process. Do models recognize this at all? It doesn't sound like it.
The other thing that puzzles me, is how physicists hold this assumption that latent heat returns 100% to the Earth. If it's released where space is closer, the air is colder, and greenhouse gasses are thinner, then common sense says some heat will escape before following atmospheric currents back into the system. How can something so obvious get missed, or am I missing something.
Have you ever thought about writing an editorial about this for a scientific magazine?
Yes that is the way to think about it. The evapotranspiration is escorting the heat past the CO2 at lower levels. ... Models do recognize the water transports heat upwards, some of it going above the CO2. Manabe's model I think doesnt deposit the latent heat enough at higher latitudes because he treats the model hydrostatically, when a sudden burst of convection upwards I think transports a lot more latent heat. Lindzens 1982 paper I think does a better job of modelling this, more latent heat gets deposited at higher levels. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/39/6/1520-0469_1982_039_1189_trocmc_2_0_co_2.xml .....
Water also will heat up the earth too, because it is a greenhouse gas. So when water evapotranspires it is both heating up the earth and also cooling it. Its a competition. So we have to do the calculations to see which wins out, to see if the water greenhouse warms more or the latent heat infrared radiation cools more. My guess is that when they take the nonlinear dynamics of convection more into account, they will find the latent heat infrared radiation wins out. The biotic effect may also come into play here, as it can cause more convection upwards.
What climate models also miss is that when you have more forests and more evapotranspiration, that convection should flow upwards even easier (because when when latent heat warms the air, it should rise even more, and then bring the air underneath it upwards too). Technically this means the models kept the critical lapse rate constant, when really they should have let it vary as the amount of forests change....... Maybe Erica Gies, author of Water always Wins, could write an editorial for a scientific magazine, shes a writer for scientific american....
Thanks, Alpha. I noticed the last IPCC report had only 4 pages devoted to land change, as far as I could tell, which really surprised me given all the research on the matter.
By the way, in your interview What if Water is More Important than Carbon, you mention that the soils of biodiverse forests have 30% more soil organic matter than plantations. I'm I correct in hearing that, and do you have a cite?
Hmm, so the IPCC only had 4 pages, not so good....
I tried to find reference again about the biodiverse forests and soil but couldn't . I vaguely remember I might have seen it on the phys.org website. I also thought I included that information in one of my drawings or text on my instagram.com/climatewaterproject account
Dear Alpha: Thank you for this and all your thought and communication on this. It is of huge value and urgently needed to reach collective intelligence and collective intention globally. Hope you are well and happy. Let's catch up and talk soon.
Thanks so much for putting all of this together so cogently. One thing to add here is that in a diversely vegetated landscape (that is giving off lots of condensation nuclei like plant VOCs) the water vapor from evapotranspiration will recondense and reevaporate many times before it becomes a cloud up in the sky. We see it in the morning mists, and the oddly changing low clouds that then disappear and reappear in other forms. This means that the heat is also shifting from latent to sensible to latent again, but presumably still rising. Yet another complexity that is truly impossible to model because each water molecule is doing its own dance.
Yes good point, the water vapor may take many micro cycles (the dew cycle) before it makes a small water cycle (where it goes higher into atmosphere to make higher up clouds)
Thank you for this. This is the best explanation of Anastassia's work that I have seen, the warm water-vapor elevator through the CO2 greenhouse-gas layer, which transmits heat to space. Ugo Bardi referred to this link from his Holobionts site.
Alpha, this post is probably the best I’ve seen on climate change! I’m a chemical engineer, so understand the argument. Pretty shocking that that parameter is left as a constant. Weather is well known for being non-linear!! What’s needed is experimental evidence for the cooling effect in quantitative terms. Can’t you just rig up a semi-closed small system and run it for a time to verify the new models? Intuitively, forest cover cools the area under it.
Also intuitively, an increase in CO2 emissions coupled with a decrease in forest cover (or evapotranspiration) should really affect surface temperature. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but latent heat is at least an order of magnitude greater than sensible heat. I guess the folks that say that clouds are the big missing part of the climate models we use may be right.
Thanks for posting your experiment. I think thats how science progresses by posing possible experiments, and then thinking about what it shows. Even if experiment may not work or has problems it helps clarify what is going on.
The problem with setting up an semi-closed system experiment, is that even if it cools in that area, we dont know where the heat that it loses ends up. It makes a difference if that heat is redistributed around the globe, or if it ends up going into outer space. Only the later will cool the earth. Surface cooling does not necessarily imply global cooling.
What an experiment could do is to show how high the water vapor from the forest ends up going and what phase it turns into. If it doesnt go up very high (less than cloud height), that water vapor can act as a greenhouse gas and warm up the planet. If it does go high enough, then when it condenses it can radiate more of its energy into space.
Alpha, hi. I think you wrote me something in a previous message, but I can't find it anymore. It must be because I am not yet so familiar with substack. Could you send me that message(s) again? Ugo
Everything is written very interesting and useful, but I want to give a small clarification. Forests and wetlands are indicated among the sources of evaporation. With regard to forests, everything is certainly true. however, there are differences among wetlands. Wetlands whose vegetation is represented by vascular plants (bushes, reeds, sedges, etc.) behave in the same way as forests. But there are wetlands covered with Sphagnum mosses – Sphagnum bogs. In wet weather, the surface of Sphagnum bogs evaporates water in the same way as forests and other wetlands, but in hot dry weather (extreme droughts), the surface of the Sphagnum cover dries up, a dense layer of dry moss several centimeters thick which isolates the underlying wet layers and completely blocks evaporation. Thus, Sphagnum bogs keep themselves from drying out. When drying, the surface of the Sphagnum bogs turns white, which leads to an increase in the ability to reflect the sun's rays and heat up less. Of course, greenhouse gases reduce the sunlight amount going back into space, but the bogs surface heats up less by itself and does not heat the atmosphere directly above it.
Glad to see an article bringing one more piece to the gigantic climate puzzle in my head.
I always thought that forests were essential to the carbon fixation and its effect on cooling due to their contribution in regional water cycle (keeping more in sub surface water tables and evapotranspiration/rainfall).
Forests help cloud formation due to release of aerosols (I saw an interview with Antonio Nobre telling just that). There are some scientists reckoning with lack of knowledge on cloud formation that is not well modelled in climate simulations.
Great work, Alpha!
Do you think it correct to think of evapotranspiration as "escorting" heat past the CO2? The water vapor, by holding what would otherwise be long wave radiation and carrying it up out of the CO2 rich zone to the CO2 thin zone seems to be a critical part of the process. Do models recognize this at all? It doesn't sound like it.
The other thing that puzzles me, is how physicists hold this assumption that latent heat returns 100% to the Earth. If it's released where space is closer, the air is colder, and greenhouse gasses are thinner, then common sense says some heat will escape before following atmospheric currents back into the system. How can something so obvious get missed, or am I missing something.
Have you ever thought about writing an editorial about this for a scientific magazine?
Yes that is the way to think about it. The evapotranspiration is escorting the heat past the CO2 at lower levels. ... Models do recognize the water transports heat upwards, some of it going above the CO2. Manabe's model I think doesnt deposit the latent heat enough at higher latitudes because he treats the model hydrostatically, when a sudden burst of convection upwards I think transports a lot more latent heat. Lindzens 1982 paper I think does a better job of modelling this, more latent heat gets deposited at higher levels. https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/atsc/39/6/1520-0469_1982_039_1189_trocmc_2_0_co_2.xml .....
Water also will heat up the earth too, because it is a greenhouse gas. So when water evapotranspires it is both heating up the earth and also cooling it. Its a competition. So we have to do the calculations to see which wins out, to see if the water greenhouse warms more or the latent heat infrared radiation cools more. My guess is that when they take the nonlinear dynamics of convection more into account, they will find the latent heat infrared radiation wins out. The biotic effect may also come into play here, as it can cause more convection upwards.
What climate models also miss is that when you have more forests and more evapotranspiration, that convection should flow upwards even easier (because when when latent heat warms the air, it should rise even more, and then bring the air underneath it upwards too). Technically this means the models kept the critical lapse rate constant, when really they should have let it vary as the amount of forests change....... Maybe Erica Gies, author of Water always Wins, could write an editorial for a scientific magazine, shes a writer for scientific american....
Thanks, Alpha. I noticed the last IPCC report had only 4 pages devoted to land change, as far as I could tell, which really surprised me given all the research on the matter.
By the way, in your interview What if Water is More Important than Carbon, you mention that the soils of biodiverse forests have 30% more soil organic matter than plantations. I'm I correct in hearing that, and do you have a cite?
Best, Rob
Hmm, so the IPCC only had 4 pages, not so good....
I tried to find reference again about the biodiverse forests and soil but couldn't . I vaguely remember I might have seen it on the phys.org website. I also thought I included that information in one of my drawings or text on my instagram.com/climatewaterproject account
Thanks!
Dear Alpha: Thank you for this and all your thought and communication on this. It is of huge value and urgently needed to reach collective intelligence and collective intention globally. Hope you are well and happy. Let's catch up and talk soon.
Hi John, thanks for your appreciation. And yes lets catch up and talk.
Thanks so much for putting all of this together so cogently. One thing to add here is that in a diversely vegetated landscape (that is giving off lots of condensation nuclei like plant VOCs) the water vapor from evapotranspiration will recondense and reevaporate many times before it becomes a cloud up in the sky. We see it in the morning mists, and the oddly changing low clouds that then disappear and reappear in other forms. This means that the heat is also shifting from latent to sensible to latent again, but presumably still rising. Yet another complexity that is truly impossible to model because each water molecule is doing its own dance.
Yes good point, the water vapor may take many micro cycles (the dew cycle) before it makes a small water cycle (where it goes higher into atmosphere to make higher up clouds)
Thank you for this. This is the best explanation of Anastassia's work that I have seen, the warm water-vapor elevator through the CO2 greenhouse-gas layer, which transmits heat to space. Ugo Bardi referred to this link from his Holobionts site.
(As an aside, are you any relation to Alpha Stone? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhJuExax3EY )
Thanks. And thanks for the reference to Holobionts site, I hadnt known about it..... No hadnt heard of Alpha Stone before.
https://theproudholobionts.substack.com/p/the-role-of-forests-in-the-ecosystem
Alpha, this post is probably the best I’ve seen on climate change! I’m a chemical engineer, so understand the argument. Pretty shocking that that parameter is left as a constant. Weather is well known for being non-linear!! What’s needed is experimental evidence for the cooling effect in quantitative terms. Can’t you just rig up a semi-closed small system and run it for a time to verify the new models? Intuitively, forest cover cools the area under it.
Also intuitively, an increase in CO2 emissions coupled with a decrease in forest cover (or evapotranspiration) should really affect surface temperature. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but latent heat is at least an order of magnitude greater than sensible heat. I guess the folks that say that clouds are the big missing part of the climate models we use may be right.
Amazing post!!!
Thanks glad you like it!
Thanks for posting your experiment. I think thats how science progresses by posing possible experiments, and then thinking about what it shows. Even if experiment may not work or has problems it helps clarify what is going on.
The problem with setting up an semi-closed system experiment, is that even if it cools in that area, we dont know where the heat that it loses ends up. It makes a difference if that heat is redistributed around the globe, or if it ends up going into outer space. Only the later will cool the earth. Surface cooling does not necessarily imply global cooling.
What an experiment could do is to show how high the water vapor from the forest ends up going and what phase it turns into. If it doesnt go up very high (less than cloud height), that water vapor can act as a greenhouse gas and warm up the planet. If it does go high enough, then when it condenses it can radiate more of its energy into space.
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere, water vapor, 30% albedo not warmer.
Ubiquitous GHE heat balance graphics use bad math& badder physics.
The kinetic heat transfer modes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules render the “extra” GHE LWIR energy of a BB surface impossible.
Consensus science has a well documented history of being wrong & abusing those who dared to challenge it.
GHE & CAGW are wrong so alarmists resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship & violence.
Alpha, hi. I think you wrote me something in a previous message, but I can't find it anymore. It must be because I am not yet so familiar with substack. Could you send me that message(s) again? Ugo
Everything is written very interesting and useful, but I want to give a small clarification. Forests and wetlands are indicated among the sources of evaporation. With regard to forests, everything is certainly true. however, there are differences among wetlands. Wetlands whose vegetation is represented by vascular plants (bushes, reeds, sedges, etc.) behave in the same way as forests. But there are wetlands covered with Sphagnum mosses – Sphagnum bogs. In wet weather, the surface of Sphagnum bogs evaporates water in the same way as forests and other wetlands, but in hot dry weather (extreme droughts), the surface of the Sphagnum cover dries up, a dense layer of dry moss several centimeters thick which isolates the underlying wet layers and completely blocks evaporation. Thus, Sphagnum bogs keep themselves from drying out. When drying, the surface of the Sphagnum bogs turns white, which leads to an increase in the ability to reflect the sun's rays and heat up less. Of course, greenhouse gases reduce the sunlight amount going back into space, but the bogs surface heats up less by itself and does not heat the atmosphere directly above it.
Glad to see an article bringing one more piece to the gigantic climate puzzle in my head.
I always thought that forests were essential to the carbon fixation and its effect on cooling due to their contribution in regional water cycle (keeping more in sub surface water tables and evapotranspiration/rainfall).
Forests help cloud formation due to release of aerosols (I saw an interview with Antonio Nobre telling just that). There are some scientists reckoning with lack of knowledge on cloud formation that is not well modelled in climate simulations.
And BillG is a dick!
https://www.fastcompany.com/90957447/bill-gates-says-complete-nonsense-planting-trees-solve-climate-change-why-we-should-do-it-anyway
Yes clouds add a bit of uncertainty, maybe plus or minus 2 degrees celsius to global warming models https://e360.yale.edu/features/why-clouds-are-the-key-to-new-troubling-projections-on-warming