CO2 is well mixed in the troposhere. It is about 400ppm at all altitudes, with notable exceptions. One is a slight gradient of some 2-3ppm between northern and southern hemisphere, die to the fact that CO2 is consistently being pumped more from locations (i.e., power plants) in the north of the planet. The second is that there may be huge daily and seasonal variations due to photosynthetic uptake and release of CO2...but this is limited perhaps to the first few 100 m form the surface and has not impact on temperatures.

As you know, the effective radiative temperature of the planet (about 15C) never changes, because it is fixed by the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere. What changes is the effective height of where that temperature is. The higher it is in the troposphere, to keep the microwave radiation out to space constant, the warmer the surface temperature.

Best,

Francesco

CO2 is well mixed in the troposhere. It is about 400ppm at all altitudes, with notable exceptions. One is a slight gradient of some 2-3ppm between northern and southern hemisphere, die to the fact that CO2 is consistently being pumped more from locations (i.e., power plants) in the north of the planet. The second is that there may be huge daily and seasonal variations due to photosynthetic uptake and release of CO2...but this is limited perhaps to the first few 100 m form the surface and has not impact on temperatures.

As you know, the effective radiative temperature of the planet (about 15C) never changes, because it is fixed by the energy balance at the top of the atmosphere. What changes is the effective height of where that temperature is. The higher it is in the troposphere, to keep the microwave radiation out to space constant, the warmer the surface temperature.

Best,

Francesco

Yes Dr. Francesco Sir is Right, there is a regular flow of CO2 from troposhere to biotic system and back to troposphere through natural and antropogenic activities.

Thanks Francesco Sir.

Ken

Increasing CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere means increased surface temperature

Skeptical meteorologist agree to that too. So why would you be skeptical about that? The actual question is the feed-back of the climate system with respect to the extta water in a warmer climate.

This climate sensitivity is the key factor where opinions differ between meteorologists

The question is about a much too simplistic idea of the greenhouse effect of CO2

In real models a complex radiative transfer model is used that takes into account the vertical structure of CO2 and the other GHCs as a function of wavelength

I refer to the site of

scienceofdoom

clivebest

skeptical science

By the way, sites recommended by the best-known skepticist Judith Curry in her blog

Ken

Temperatures went UP. One cannot take one single year as the reference year for a trend in temperature. I repeat 1998 was an exceptional year because of one of the strongest el Nino's. The real fat is that the recent decade is again warmer than the decade before and so on so why are you repeating that global temperature decreased?

As for models: yes often simple models do as well a job as much more complex models. Models are there for GUIDANCE. similar to the scientific forecast that can be found on Weatherunderground where the meteorologist makes a best estimate forecast based on projections from models that often have different outcomes. and the forecast is improving year by year, still the real weather may strongly deviate from the projection by a different turn in events.

Climate models should not be confused with models in basic physics that often consist of one or a couple of equations with exact outcome.

Ken

I know the anecdote about the airplanes and Kelvin

but not the one on the Earth's age

"Guidance" is a standard idea in meteorology and I am sure they do not use it to date the Earth or the impossibility of flying

So then how would you like the weather / climate to be projected: by consulting an almanac?

Ken I checked it too and he missed out radioactivity in the heating according to what I read

BTW the blizzard in NE is quite a nice example of weather forecast.

The European model already on Friday got this blizzard developing off the coast (where you live?) when the system above was still at the Rockies. They got it almost right be it that the brunt of the storm appears to be some hundred miles east of NYC instead of smack there.

Still, good that there was early warning for eastern Long Island at an early time. fifty years ago this would have hit without any warning

Ken

I fully agree with you that the science is as good as the current ideas are.

However, in case of projections likelihoods will do for me. Climate science is applied science in that must project climate in the real world not in a laboratory experiment.

And yes there might be some surprises not identified yet. But I do not see a better approach to make an estimate of the climate to come that on the basis of very basic physics must change: more greenhouse gases means indeed more of a greenhouse effect; question is how much warmer will it get and what are the consequences and what the countermeasures and adaptations

As for the 1938 storm: yes that one existed days before it had landfall. however, the present one "suffered" from cyclogenesis just a day before it struck land. But this sudden appearance had been rightly forecast 3-4 days in advance! The history of the storm shows an extreme pressure drop over 12 hours.

Hi,

though the discussion has dissolved by far from the question posed, I'm inclined to add a remark in this direction (which I have delivered in other discussions on RG before). In contrast to followers of belief systems, we have to be skeptical as scientists. Skeptical not only with respect to models, data and conclusions drawn, but also - and perhaps even above all - to conceptual views and/or approaches in the back of our science. The "primitive" transport equations used in General Circulation Models are nonlinear, nothing to say about parameterizations of subgrid scale processes and feedbacks (or feedback chains) - why should we assume thus that the climate system obediently follows any forcing? Is there anyone who poses nonlinearity of these equations (etc.) in question? A strict forcing-response conception basically bears linear thinking, I mean, i.e. the system appears to be viewed as one that rests in a sort of (quasi-)equilibrium which gradually changes with the degree of forcing. Alternative views hold that the system might be in a dynamic state apart from equilibrium. This means, there are topologic and geometric features emergent which one can hardly infer from the equations of motion etc. but which nevertheless guide the system's motion. As I have learned from in-depth analyses of the instrumental climate record, there are signatures of nonlinear behaviour galore in the leading modes of customary climate time series (SAT, SST, dynamic indices, precipitation etc.).

... sorry, I pushed the wrong butten :-(

Driven by its forcings, the observed climate system appears to run through different dynamic regimes, and at present (maybe even since the early 1990s) it has reached a more or less stagnant one as far as global (or hemispheric) surface air temperatures are concerned. Have a look at the book "Dynamics. The geometry of behaviour" by R.H. Abraham and C.D. Shaw (Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, 1992) to grasp the possible effect of states apart from equilibrium on a system's dynamics. Don't believe, the graphs they show do not conceptually apply to systems that are more complex and of higher dimension. I have no conceptual problem with the present stagnation period (and with the cooling period of the mid-20th-century regime not as well) which should lead me to the conclusion that we have overlooked important processes in the GCMs. What appears to have been avoided too often, however, is a skeptical view on the scientific concept in the back which 'filters' the observational facts that are visible to everyone. With the models, there is another problem it seems, namely the dynamical regime they have reached. Does it qualitatively correspond to the one the real system exhibits? Obviously not, otherwise some signs of the present stagnation period should have been visible in climate projection - though correct dynamics is not necessarily achieved in a projection even if both topology (type of the attracting manifold) and geometry (branchings etc.) are represented qualitatively correct. There may be phase effects etc. which lead to an incorrect timing of dynamic features, for example. Ignorance, if I should coin it by this word, appears to be widely spread across the climate community if acceptance of fundamental consequences of the system's nonlinear nature is concerned.

Regards, Peter

Ken

The blizzard: a pity that meteorologists did not emphasise that its path is always uncertain within a given margin. On the other hand had it hit NYC without a firm warning politicians would have been blamed like Cuomo was for the November lake-snow in November that was not foreseen.

As for adapations: they need a long time to be implied and they likely involve the poor low-lying countries like Bangladesh, with some hundred million people involved.

Coming back to the blizzard. I in awe that such a rapid formation of a storm can be foreseen so long beforehand. I remember blizzards, so-called polar lows in out country fully halting traffic that came fully unforeseen; as there were no satellites to track these at the time

A very interesting discussion on the forecast can be found at the site of the renown (or should I say notorious) Judith Curry. She has a company doing commercial weather modeling. She for instance mentions missing a tropical storm for a client with an oil platform hit by the unforeseen small storm

http://judithcurry.com

My point is that at the mentioned site there is a nice discussion on weather models

Yes climate guidance has improved because get better computers and better data by the year. For climate change as caused by GHGs we only need the last 60 years and then the anomalies with reference to a base period. Or should a climate model provide absolute temperatures/

Ken

My remark was that climate models do not and cannot model absolute temperatures. Weather models start with the current data. Climate  models have a starting point which in case of climate models need a long period of "spin-up" before the actual start

Ken

I do not get your point. Why December 2014? and what about 1998? That is 17 years ago and science has progressed.

Climate Change is about change and as such does not depend on absolute readings but on relative data that are much more certain

KNMI for instance did not provide Deacember data for Europe yet, but the various met offices already gave their averag values at press conferences.

Actually I personally do not care whether 2014 was a record year for climate it is more important that the average in the years of this century are higher than the temps inm earlier period of the same lengths

Ken

What do you mean with THE temeprature went up 3 months before 1998? 1998 as a whole was en exceptional year standing out in between the neighbouring years

Ken

I appreciate your detailed answer: however this event started in April 1997?

And to repeat my question: what temperature are you referring to? global, NH, SH or USA

Hi George and Francesco,

From the aircraft measurements by Steven Wofsy group at Harvard University, I would say the CO2 concentration in the troposphere is layered. About 5-10 PPM difference in CO2 concentration between atmospheric boundary layer and free troposphere during daytime and 20-30 PPM is common in daytime (see the figures 2 in Yi et al. (2004)).

http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~cyi/jump.pdf

Yi, C., K. J. Davis, P. S. Bakwin, A.S. Denning, N. Zhang, A. Desai, J. C. Lin, and C. Gerbig, The observed covariance between ecosystem carbon exchange and atmospheric boundary layer dynamics at a site in northern Wisconsin, Journal of Geophysical Research, 109, D08302, doi:10.1029/2003JD004164, 2004.

During the nighttime, about 80 ppm in CO2 difference is normal in stable boundary condition (See Figure 1 in Yi et al., 2000).

http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~cyi/jgr-advection.pdf

 Yi, C., K. J. Davis, P. S. Bakwin, B. W. Berger, and L. Marr,  The influence of advection on measurements of the net ecosystem-atmosphere exchange of   CO2 from a very tall tower, Journal of Geophysical Research , 105, 9991-9999, 2000. [PDF]

All the best,

Tree

Thanx for returning to the question posed :-)

Peter

I found typos in my previous comments. The corrected one should be:

From the aircraft measurements by Steven Wofsy group at Harvard University, I would say the CO2 concentration in the troposphere is layered. About 5-10 PPM difference in CO2 concentration between atmospheric boundary layer and free troposphere during daytime is common in daytime (see the figures 2 in Yi et al. (2004)).

http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~cyi/jump.pdf

Yi, C., K. J. Davis, P. S. Bakwin, A.S. Denning, N. Zhang, A. Desai, J. C. Lin, and C. Gerbig, The observed covariance between ecosystem carbon exchange and atmospheric boundary layer dynamics at a site in northern Wisconsin, Journal of Geophysical Research, 109, D08302, doi:10.1029/2003JD004164, 2004.

During the nighttime, about 80 ppm in CO2 difference is normal in stable boundary condition (See Figure 1 in Yi et al., 2000).

http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~cyi/jgr-advection.pdf

 Yi, C., K. J. Davis, P. S. Bakwin, B. W. Berger, and L. Marr,  The influence of advection on measurements of the net ecosystem-atmosphere exchange of   CO2 from a very tall tower, Journal of Geophysical Research , 105, 9991-9999, 2000. [PDF]

Apologize for the error,,

Tree

Thank you for the interesting answers.

Nevertheless, in which way is the global warming influenced by the different temperature of CO2 layers? E.g. in case CO2 concentration increases in the future mainly at altitudes over 500m or 1000m due to turbulent mixing changes, the lower temperature of these upper CO2 layers will impact the radiation budget.

George

Radiative models in combination with convective models of the atmosphere take care of all your concerns.

See for insgtance the sites of Clivebest or scienceofdoom for "simple" models

google those in combination with greenhouse model