Climate Letter #2009

Carl’s theory of precipitable water’s (PW’s) greenhouse energy effects includes several claims that I want to highlight in today’s letter.  1. The effect is relatively strong.  Outside of the tropical belt, any doubling of the total amount of PW in a column of the overhead atmosphere, in terms of weight, emits enough power to cause an increase of about 10C in surface temperatures below.  2. Relatively high concentrations of PW, formed into constantly moving streams, are regularly detected entering and flowing through the high-altitude regions of each hemisphere where jetstream winds are active.  These streams are widely recognized as a major source of the planet’s precipitation. 3. Jetstream wind activity has a strong influence over the movement of PW streams, all of which have a natural proclivity for migrating in a poleward direction.  When wind activity weakens, PW movement of this kind is enhanced, effectively redistributing and possibly prolonging its greenhouse effect at the surface below.  The mainstream climate and meteorological sciences are fully cognizant of the second point, but show little awareness of the greenhouse effects as claimed by the theory in the other two points.

Carl’s theory, fully spelled out, provides a detailed means of explaining the causation of extreme temperature anomalies and heatwaves that have recently been occurring with unusual frequency throughout the mid to upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Meteorologists have their own way of explaining these events, without ever making mention of the possibility that immediate and extraordinary inputs of greenhouse energy may be involved. I believe they have the backing of climate scientists who teach that the greenhouse effect of most sources, like CO2 or methane, is steadily growing in a slow and regular way while the one important source of a highly irregular type, water vapor, is tightly controlled by natural constraints that prevent any deviation from a linear course of growth. Its growth rate is regarded as tied that of temperature increases established by the greenhouse effects of CO2 increases. The morphing of water vapor into PW, as observed, does not alter this relationship by giving formal recognition to PW an independent producer of greenhouse effects under certain unusual circumstances.

With that, let’s see how a Canadian meteorologist explains this summer’s heat extremes in British Columbia under the “heat dome” concept, as reported in an interview with The Narwhal newsletter: https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-heat-climate-adaptation/.  We can compare his views with those in my theory.  “As the Arctic warms in the late spring and summer the temperature difference between the equator and the north pole shrinks…”Complete agreement.  “When that happens the jet stream, a band of strong wind in the upper atmosphere, gets weaker and slower and wavier.”  Agreed, with an exception.  Two separate jet stream bands are actually involved, the inner one of which has disappeared at this time.  “In late June, the peak, or ridge, of one of those waves stalled over British Columbia — in the shape of the Greek letter omega — creating a high-pressure dome that trapped hot air beneath it and blocked the oncoming jet stream from pushing the weather system on.”  As he says, I think the ridge stalled, and held back normal air movement in the upper-level wind system, but what exactly is this “high pressure dome” that can trap the air beneath it?  It’s obviously not like surface air pressure, which has nothing at all underneath, so it must be suspended in the air higher up.  Does it contain the weight of more than half an atmosphere?  All of the meteorologists who like this theory should tell us how what the pressure is made of and how it comes into being and exerts a special kind of force.

If there is hot air below the “dome,” which is certainly true, the thermal expansion of that air will create its own high pressure, directed upward, with a pushback effect on the atmosphere above. If it all balances out in a normal way it will indeed cause changes in the regular 500hPa air pressure configuration that we keep a close eye on every day, which in turn governs the positioning and strength of associated jetstream pathways. Weakening of jetstream winds is a very likely result in this situation, and probably also some resistance to the usual eastward movement of this wind system as a whole.

Under Carl’s theory air at the surface is sure to become hotter when overhead PW is magnified, unless offset by something else that has cooling power.  Rain clouds do have that power in northern summers, but only on occasion of first being formed.  The temperature extremes that we do see only occur when skies are clear.  What about air temperatures in the upper part of the atmosphere?  Using only my imagination, I can suppose that a concentration of radiation-trapping molecules at an altitude several miles high would cause a nearby sensor to register warming from the energy that is re-emitted by those molecules, but to an uncertain extent.  The air is always very cold and thin to begin with, much like that near the top of Mount Everest, so it would still be quite cold when heated this way.  I also do not think that greenhouse energy from any source somehow holds, or “traps”hot air in place for any length of time.  Instead, I can see how it continuously creates an effect of hot air stability as it continuously traps and re-emits energy drawn from the flux of radiation that continuously rises upward from the surface.  The flux moves at the speed of light, because photons are in fact a form of light.  Slowing the flux down by a tiny bit does not allow much room for the storage (or holding) of heat within its dynamic boundaries, as compared with storing heat in a solid or liquid type of structure.

Carl