New Paper: Ground Thermometers Prove H2O, N2 and O2 control Climate – NOT CO2

The theory of dangerous anthropogenic (man-made) global warming was invented in the early 1980s and describes Earth as some virtual planet where temperatures have oscillated +/- 0.6C around the mean of 14.0C since the 1880s. thermometer All temperatures below 14.0C (13.4C to 14.0C) were declared ‘normal’ by a clique of climate scientists, while temperatures between 14.0C to 14.6C were deemed ‘abnormal’.

In effect, all life on this virtual planet exists at a total range of 1.2C. However, all the ‘evidence’ for global warming is based on a purely theoretical number called ‘global average temperature,’ which is yet another proxy thermometer used by all climate scientists and related papers published since 1980.

However, the temperatures of air actually measured by real thermometers vary between -70.0C and +50.0C, with a total range of 120.0C! The travesty of it all is that the notion of a global average temperature has been used by the climate community in the last 30 years without showing any scepticism in the validity of its use, and despite the fact all other sciences and the general public use thermometers as a measure of temperature.

In my first paper on the subject of air temperature, Butina 2012, I showed that it is impossible to differentiate annual temperature patterns of the 1800s from those in the 1900s and 2000s. Furthermore, it was clearly shown that the ‘hockey stick’ graph scenario published by Mann et al., in 1998, cannot be found in daily tmax/tmin data and that the ‘hockey stick’ scenario is a simple artefact of this non-existent global average temperature applied as if it was a ‘thermometer’. It must follow that any model that per se uses global average temperature as an input has to be wrong.

My second and latest paper entitled “Quantifying the effect that N2, O2 and H2O have on night-to-day warming trends at ground level” is demonstrating the power of instrumental-based data, specifically calibrated thermometers, and the importance of knowing and understanding the functioning of the thermometer and the physicochemical properties of molecules.

So let us first go back to basics and start with the thermometer and the information that is embedded in the thermometer’s readings. The operation of a calibrated thermometer is based on the thermal equilibrium between two sets of molecules – the molecules inside the thermometer, mercury (Hg) for example, and the molecules surrounding the thermometer (air or water):

Butina fig 1

The fact that thermometers detect the kinetic energy of the molecules surrounding it means that the thermometer data is always local. It follows that to understand global temperature patterns, one has to understand the local temperature patterns in the first place; and only if ALL the local patterns are moving in the same direction can one declare those patterns as global, i.e. either all count or none do.

Let us now address the issue of how much heat energy from the sun actually reaches the ground level.

If one records the minimum temperature during the night, i.e. when the molecules of air are not heated by the sun, and the maximum temperature reached during the day, i.e. when the molecules of air are heated by the Sun, the difference between the two readings will be equivalent to the heat energy available to the molecules surrounding the thermometer.  If that thermometer is placed in a rural environment, away from any additional heat energy that might have been generated by human activities, this night-to-day warming reflects the available heat energy (AHE) from a single source – the sun.  It follows that Tmax/Tmin thermometer-based data gives direct access to the amount of our sun’s heat energy that is able to reach ground level thermometers:

Butina fig 2

Figure 2. Difference between the two energy states, T1 and TO is equivalent to the amount of heat energy absorbed by the system needed to bring TO to T1

Every molecule has the ability to absorb heat energy. This property, known as heat capacity, Cp, is defined as ‘the amount of heat energy in kilo joules, kJ, needed to warm 1 kilogram, 1 kg, of the molecules by 1 degree Celsius, 1OC’.  Air has Cp = 1.0 (kJ/kg per 1OC) and it follows that if the observed night-to-day warming (Tmax-Tmin) was say 10OC, the AHE from the Sun would be 10 kJ per 1 kilogram of air.  In other words, the difference between Tmax and Tmin in degrees Celsius is the equivalent to the AHE in kJ, i.e. 1OC = 1kJ.

The figure below depicts the variations in the AHE for January 1 between 1844 and 2004:

Butina fig 3

The first thing to notice is the large variation in the AHE space, from a minimum of 0.8 kJ (in 1917, 1963 and 1984) to a maximum of 14.1 kJ in 1982.  Note also that in 1982 the largest amount of the AHE observed at Armagh on January 1 was 14.1 kJ/kg, while 2 years later only 0.8 kJ/kg of the AHE was available on the same day and in the same place (as indicated by the green arrow in Figure 3).

The analysis of the daily Tmax/Tmin/AHE observations so far was based on a simple statistical interpretation of the numbers without taking into account the physical meaning of those numbers and without asking the key question – is it possible to explain those huge natural variations in the AHE at ground level using our knowledge of the physicochemical properties of the molecules that make up our atmosphere?

The first step in this process is to identify all the major parameters that can influence the amount of the AHE that is warming the molecules surrounding the thermometer every day, and the second step is to define each of those parameters as a ‘constant’ or a ‘variable’.  A simplistic starting scheme can be best explained by the figure below:

Butina fig 9

Figure 9. The loss of the Sun’s heat energy caused by the warming of huge amount of molecules that absorb that heat between the TOA at Z=+100km and the ground thermometer at Z=0.

The mass of our atmosphere is estimated to be 5.0×1028 kg [6 and 7]; Cp for air is 1kJ/kg and therefore 1028 kJ of heat energy from the Sun will be needed to warm the atmosphere by just 1OC; when the remaining heat energy from the Sun reaches the surface at ground levels, an estimated hydromass (the oceans, lakes and rivers) of 1021 kg of water will further absorb the Sun’s heat energy at the rate of 4.2 kJ per kilogram of water; the water temperatures at the oceans’ floor is just above water’s freezing point of 0OC, while the hottest ocean  surface temperatures are around 30OC indicating the oceans’ huge capacity to store heat energy.

The constant parameters that have pre-defined the statistical analysis of the Armagh dataset so far are:  thermometers fixed at the same grid point; the heat output from the Sun; the constant amount of N2 and O2 molecules in our atmosphere.

Since all those parameters are approximately constant we should be observing approximately the same amount of the heat energy being available to the air molecules surrounding the thermometer – but we don’t.  Therefore, it must follow that there is another molecule causing such large variations in the observed AHE and that the answer has to lie in the physicochemical properties of that other molecule: water. Water molecules cover over 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the Earth’s surface; it has a heat capacity, Cp, of 4.2 kJ/kg (that is a capacity to absorb heat 4.2 times greater than that of air which has Cp=1.0 kJ/kg); it is present in the air in all three states, gaseous state (humidity), liquid state (rain, clouds) and solid state (snow, clouds). Furthermore the clouds can cover up to 80{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the surface and by its reflection and high density (liquid-ice), water will have a major influence on the amount of the Sun’s heat energy that is able to reach ground level thermometers.

One way to quantify the effect of the H2O molecules on the variance in the AHE is to find the weather stations that range from the ones completely surrounded by water, like very small islands in the middle of oceans, to the ones completely surrounded by continental land mass.

 Total of 40 weather stations across the globe were analysed and the AHE mean was plotted on a single graph:

Butina fig 13

Let us look at Figure 11 in more details. The vertical line (in red) separates the weather stations labelled as ‘land’ from those labelled as ‘water’, while the horizontal (red) line separates the weather stations with the AHE > 10 kJ (upper left quadrant) from the weather stations with the AHE < 10 kJ (lower right quadrant).  The two horizontal (yellow) lines are the means of the mean readings in the respective occupied quadrants, with the land weather stations’ mean around 14 kJ while the water weather stations are grouped around the 6 kJ mean. 

The minimum AHE mean for January was 4.2 kJ at Midway Island in North Pacific (28N, 177W), while the maximum AHE for the same month was 20.5 kJ at El Fasher desert in Sudan (14N, 25E). Those two weather stations were screen-captured from Google Earth to highlight the differences in their respective surroundings:

Butina fig 14

 Since those two datapoints represent extreme AHE mean values, one could use them as two extreme thermodynamics systems that define the global boundaries of available heat energy from the Sun:

Thermodynamic System Water: TS-Water, where the ground thermometer is based on a very small island and surrounded by water for over 1000 km in any direction.

Thermodynamic System Land: TS-Land, where the ground thermometer is surrounded by the land mass for over 1000 km in any direction.

Butina table 9

For the weather stations on land, Table 9, the AHE means are between 11.1 and 11.9 kJ range and based on latitudes between 61N (Russia) to 20S (Australia) with Sudan near the Equator (4N) in between. While the AHE is very similar, their night-time temperatures vary from -37.5OC in Russia to +25.0OC in Australia.

So, the weather station based in the tundra region of Russia at the latitude of 61N which has an average Tmin mean at -37.5OC will warm up to -26.0OC during the day-time after receiving 11.5 kJ of heat energy from the Sun, while the weather station in the Australian desert at the latitude of 20S with the average Tmin of +25.0OC will warm up to +36.4OC after receiving almost an identical amount of the heat energy from the Sun, 11.4 kJ.

In terms of Tmax temperatures, those two weather stations are a huge 62.4OC apart and yet the overall distribution of N2, O2 and H2O molecules is making them virtually identical in terms of AHE.

What the thermometer data is telling us is that to understand the trends in Tmax temperature patterns, we must first try to understand the trends and patterns of the heat energy available locally at ground levels; and that to understand the AHE trends and patterns we must have good quality daily Tmax/Tmin data from which to extract the AHE. 

In conclusion:  In terms of the importance of the three molecules, N2, O2 and H2O this paper has simply quantified the physical connection and interplay between those three molecules. If it was not for the heat capacity of N2 and O2, water molecules would evaporate completely from our planet and there would be no life.  However, H2O in tandem with N2 and O2 is controlling the amount of the heat energy received from the sun ensuring that the Earth does not overheat during the day and does not overcool overnight, a fact known to physical sciences long before the ‘invention’ of man-made global warming.

Read more by Dr Darko Butina at: www.l4patterns.com

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