Angry in the Great White North

Before we get into the details, I want to share one of those "What the.?" moments.  When I was reading this essay, I was surprised when I read about how current atmospheric models work.  Infinitely thick atmosphere?  Are they kidding?

Let me explain.  In modelling a physical system, edges like the upper limit of the atmosphere are called "boundaries".  An equation has to change at the boundary, and we often don't know how that change happens.  The mathematics become all screwed up.   Here's an example from my days in university.  How many square chips can you cut from a circular disc of silicon wafer?  Well, the approximation is to divide the area of the wafer by the size of the chip you want.  But that approximation is wrong, because at the edges, the circular boundary means the squares are malformed and so useless.  The real formula is far more complex to deal with the boundary.

And yet we make approximations that ignore the boundaries.  That can be justified if the effect we're studying isn't affected by the boundary.  For instance, if I'm studying the effect of carbon dioxide on optical clarity between two points on the surface, the boundary 150 miles up isn't relevant at sea level.  On the other hand, if I'm worried about the capacity of the atmosphere to hold heat, then it bloody well matters if the atmosphere fades away at 150 miles or 300 miles or never.  The thicker the atmosphere, the more heat it can hold.

Duh.

Some years ago this Hungarian physicist, then working for NASA, discovered a flaw in an equation used in the current climate models discovered a flaw in how those constructing the IPCC climate models deal with the issue of the atmosphere's boundary conditions.  In order to progress this research Dr Miskolczi eventually resigned from NASA claiming his supervisors at NASA tried to suppress discussion and publication of his findings which have since been published in IDOJARAS, The Quarterly Journal of the Hungarian Meteorological Service.

In essence Dr Miskolczi showed that the solution to a differential equation for the greenhouse effect developed in 1922 by Arthur Milne, and central to the current paradigm, wrongly assumed an infinitely thick atmosphere.  In re-solving this equation a new term and also a new law of physics have been proposed setting an upper limit to the greenhouse effect.   Dr Miskolczi's theory indicates that any warming from elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide will eventually be offset by a change in atmospheric moisture content.

Wow.   So Miskolczi is trying to improve the science by removing a gross simplification, and accidently discovers that the new math removes not only the boundary, but global warming altogether.

OK, so this is interesting, but who's to say Miskolczi isn't a crack?  I mean, maybe the math is wrong.

Well, in what can only be bad news for the global warming alarmists, Miskolczi's model correctly predicts observed behaviour!

As it happens, these new relations supply a profound new understanding of the old, well-known set of energy balance conditions. Substituting them into the old equations, Miskolczi recognized that a new overall global energetic constraint applies to the atmosphere. This was a principled understanding of why the normalized clear-sky greenhouse factor of the Earth takes the remarkably neat value of g = 1/3 precisely. The Miskolczi relations provided an explanation of how this value represents a critical natural balance. The Earth's greenhouse effect works dynamically to maintain the value g = 1/3 precisely. Miskolczi recognized that his relations occur in nature on any planet that has an ample ocean of water and a solar heating anywhere near that of the Earth. And, looking to the greenhouse literature, for example to the 2006 Cambridge University Press book Frontiers of Climate Modeling by Kiehl and Ramanathan, we can see that according to those authors, the earth's clear sky normalized greenhouse factor as a strictly empirical fact is 0.334, or 1/3.

So now this normalized greenhouse factor of 1/3 is not some random setting, but a consequence of the way the Earth is constructed, and Miskolczi's math predicts that value.  And yes, the key is water:

That is to say, the Earth's atmosphere dynamically keeps its greenhouse effect right at its critical value, regardless of our continuing CO2 emissions, regardless of any change in atmospheric CO2 concentration in the past ten thousand years. Miskolczi's dynamic constraint keeps the greenhouse effect "climatically saturated": emitting CO2 into the air cannot increase the normalized greenhouse factor g because any impact of human addition of CO2  is dynamically countered by about 1% decrease of the main greenhouse gas, water vapor (moisture) in the atmosphere. This effect is shown in Miskolczi's recent presentation based on the NOAA 61 year global atmospheric database.

And finally, putting together his new findings, one can have an ultimate theoretical equation for tau, (the global average infrared optical depth) value and the  numerical solution is 1.86756093941252 . .

Now recall: in 2004, by his computer calculations on the TIGR radiosonde empirical measurements, Miskolczi found an observed estimate of 1.87. In 2007, theoretically he derived 1.8676. . And in 2009, on the NOAA 61 year global average database, he found another empirical estimate   = 1.86875. According to this database, the atmosphere's moisture content during 61 years from 1948 to 2008 in global average decreased by about 1%. This amount was the climate process's automatic dynamic response and was enough to counter the impact of any CO2 and methane increase.

The global average optical depth is estimated to be 1.87 and he derived it to be 1.8676.

What the hell?  Why don't we know more about this guy?

His models predict increasing carbon dioxide and methane is precisely balanced with decreases in water vapour, something NASA has only just grudgingly admitted to having observed:

Why the Earth's surface temperature hasn't warmed as expected over the past decade continues to be a puzzle for scientists. One study out earlier this month theorized that the Earth's climate may be less sensitive to greenhouse gases than currently assumed.

Another surprising factor could be the amount of water vapor way up in the stratosphere, according to a new study out Thursday in the journal Science.

The decline in water vapor in the stratosphere slowed the rate of surface warming by about 25%, compared to that which would have occurred due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, notes the study. Specifically, the planet should have warmed 0.25 degree F during the 2000s, but because of the influence of the water vapor, it rose just 0.18 degree F.

Why did the water vapor decrease? "We really don't know," says Solomon, "We don't have enough information yet."

The findings are "surprising," says Bill Randel, an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who was not part of the study. He said it was surprising how big an effect such a very little change in stratospheric water vapor has had on the surface climate.

These fluctuations in water vapor could be part of a feedback loop. Although it's known that water vapor in the troposphere increases as the climate warms - and is a major climate feedback that is well simulated in global climate models - in sharp contrast, models do a poor job of simulating water vapor in the stratosphere, according to the paper.

Miskolczi's work predicted this feedback loop, despite the "surprise" of these scientists.

In fact, by Miskolczi's model, the only driver for global temperature change is the Sun (or more generally stated, incoming energies):

But, remarkably and surprisingly, these results say that the ratio of the surface temperature to the sum of the incoming energies is fixed at a critical value; the ratio cannot be altered by adding a greenhouse gas such as CO2. The climate temperature is fully sensitive to real changes in the external drivers that increase the energy input. But it is not at all sensitive to addition of greenhouse gases such as CO2 to the atmosphere.

Just remember that Miskolczi did not seek out to disprove the global warmists.  He was working diligently for NASA.   When NASA refused to publish his work, he resigned in protest.

And now NASA scientists are feigning surprise that water vapour concentrations might be adjusted through some sort of feedback loop to compensate for the carbon dioxide concentration.

Read these essays (here and here) and then do your own research.   Maybe someone has found something fundamentally wrong with his work, but I haven't found any reference to a problem yet.

Really, it just seems like he's being ignored.

Arthur Milne?  Not Edward Arthur Milne, surely.  Milne's formulas had nothing to do with greenhouse gases inside of an "infinite atmosphere" around a planet.  Milne was developing a cosmological model of the universe, so his "infinite atmosphere" was the homogenous distribution of matter throughout the universe.  He also dealt with solar physics.  He was not a climatologist, nor were his equations designed to model planetary atmospheres.