Happer, Koonin, Lindzen
Answers
March 19, 2018
22
Longer-term ocean cycles that share some characteristics with El Ninos are the Pacific Decadal Oscillation
and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation. Like El Ninos, these longer-term oscillations episodically release
solar heat that has been stored at depth for many years, decades, or centuries.
The atmosphere, alone, is capable of internal variations on time scales of years. The Quasi-Biennial
Oscillation of the tropical stratosphere is an example, although it has almost no impact on surface
temperature. This is to be expected since the heat capacity of the stratosphere is very small compared to
that of the lower atmosphere, and heat exchange between the stratosphere and lower atmosphere is not
very efficient.
An example of a cause (2) [i.e., temperature increase due to a changing resistance to the heat flow to
space, with the same solar heating rate of the surface], is an increase in the concentration of the
greenhouse gas CO2. This greenhouse warming is such a central issue that we expand this part of the
answer to say a little more about it.
On average, the absorption rate of solar radiation by the Earth’s surface and atmosphere is equal to
emission rate of thermal infrared radiation to space. Much of the radiation to space does not come from
the surface but from greenhouse gases and clouds in the lower atmosphere, where the temperature is
usually colder than the surface temperature, as shown in the figure on the previous page. The thermal
radiation originates from an “escape altitude” where there is so little absorption from the overlying
atmosphere that most (say half) of the radiation can escape to space with no further absorption or
scattering. Adding greenhouse gases can warm the Earth’s surface by increasing the escape altitude. To
maintain the same cooling rate to space, the temperature of the entire troposphere, and the surface,
would have to increase to make the effective temperature at the new escape altitude the same as at the
original escape altitude. For greenhouse warming to occur, a temperature profile that cools with
increasing altitude is required.
The escape altitude will depend strongly on frequency, especially in
cloud-free areas, where it is dominated by the complicated absorption
bands of greenhouse-gas molecules. Some examples of cooling
infrared radiation observed by satellites over cloud-free regions are
given in the adjacent figure, which shows spectra of the thermal
radiation upwelling from the Earth to space. [“Apodized” means that
the raw data was processed to remove instrumental artifacts.] One
can see that the upwelling radiation varies greatly with location, being
most intense over the hot Sahara desert and weakest over the cold
Antarctic ice sheet. One can recognize various escape altitudes:
between about 800 cm-1 and 1200 cm-1, most of the radiation comes
from the surface since the atmosphere is largely transparent in this
“window” of frequencies. Over most of the CO2 absorption band
(between about 580 cm-1 and 750 cm-1) the escape altitude is the
nearly isothermal lower stratosphere shown in the first figure. The
narrow spike of radiation at about 667 cm-1 in the center of the CO2
band escapes from an altitude of around 40 km (upper stratosphere), where it is considerably warmer
than the lower stratosphere due heating by solar ultraviolet light which is absorbed by ozone, O3. Only at
the edges of the CO2 band (near 580 cm-1 and 750 cm-1) is the escape altitude in the troposphere where it
could have some effect on the surface temperature. Water vapor, H2O, has emission altitudes in the
troposphere over most of its absorption bands. This is mainly because water vapor, unlike CO2, is not well
mixed but mostly confined to the troposphere.