A SIMPLE, STRAIGHTFORWARD CASE STUDY:
DOES
“THE ATMOSPHERIC RADIATIVE GREENHOUSE EFFECT”
DO WHAT IT’S SUPPOSED TO DO?
First, what is the rGHE supposed to do?
It is supposed to make the surface below a radiatively active atmosphere warmer than if this particular kind of atmosphere weren’t there. By extension, one could claim – and this is after all what the ‘Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis’ is all about – that the stronger the rGHE, the stronger its warming effect.
Now, as far as I’m concerned, this is a prediction that should be possible to test. Or else, what good is it?
Again, what is the strictest definition of the rGHE? What is its ‘surface warming mechanism’ supposed to be, in the simplest of terms? We went through this in Part 1, where what was defined as the “greenhouse effect” of clouds was overwhelmed by their opposing “albedo effect”, leading to an overall – net – cooling effect.
It is found simply and solely in the reduction in outgoing radiative (LWIR) flux from the surface to the top of the atmosphere (ToA) – the surface flux minus the ToA flux. (The surface flux is calculated directly from the surface temperature (based on a blackbody assumption, through the Stefan-Boltzmann equation), while the ToA flux is rather estimated from actual measurements made by satellite-borne instruments.)
The prediction, then, would go as follows: Continue reading
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