Guest posts by Willis Eschenbach
Sadly, I disagree with a very good man and a very good scientist, Dr. Roy Spencer. Dr. Roy and Dr. John Christy are the brains behind satellite measurements of the temperature of the atmosphere. Unfortunately, almost a decade ago, he accused me of plagiarism by saying:
I have previously commented on Willis’s thermoregulation hypothesis of climate system regulation, which Willis never addressed originally put forward by Ramanathan and Collins in an article in Nature. At 1991.
There’s a simple reason I didn’t mention it. R&C hypothesis as follows:
Observations made during El Nio in 1987 showed that in the upper range of sea surface temperatures, the greenhouse effect increases with surface temperature at a rate that exceeds the rate of radiation emitted from the surface. In response to this ‘super-greenhouse effect’, highly reflective cirrus clouds are created that act like a thermostat shielding the ocean from solar radiation. The moderating effect of these cirrus clouds can limit sea surface temperatures to below 305 K.
Heck, the nature of their hypothesis is clear from the title of the R&C study, which is “The thermodynamic regulation of ocean warming by cirrus clouds inferred from the 1987 El Niño observations”.
Cirrus.
The current, mine hypothesis are emerging phenomena such as thunderstorms that regulate temperature, especially through the timing of their occurrence. I haven’t said anything about the “super greenhouse effect”. I haven’t said anything about the “ti cloud”. Read the link right above. Not to mention either. The only similarity is that we both use the word “thermostat”.
In addition, the R&C hypothesis is limited to explaining the upper temperature limit of the “Pacific warm water basin” in the western Pacific Ocean, a very small part of the ocean.
On the other hand, my hypothesis linked above covers all the regions where we see heat-driven thunderstorms, which make up a large percentage of the planet. And my hypothesis does not attempt to explain, or even discuss, the temperature of the Pacific Warm Water Pool.
And because the two hypotheses are completely different, I see no reason to cite the R&C hypothesis.
Why am I bringing this up now, almost a decade later? Well, that’s because sometimes for a decade and to this day, people still say things like “Willis cannot be a real scientist. Dr. Roy Spencer accused him of plagiarism, and Dr. Roy is a real scientist.”.
The last time it happened, I lost the plot, and believe it or not, I actually said bad words. So I reopen the discussion with Dr. Roy on his blog here. I asked him to provide proof that Ramanathan discussed the timing of the thunderstorm or retracted his statement.
Sadly, Dr. Roy didn’t do either. Instead, he simply stated that my hypothesis about the occurrence of thunderstorms during the day was wrong because the heaviest rain time over the open ocean is at night. He said I was combining near-island thunderstorms with deepwater thunderstorms, meaning:
First of all, the diurnal maximum in ocean convection occurs at night, not during the day. Only near islands (or on continents) does it turn to afternoon, which is the local sea breeze effect around the islands.
I don’t know what that has to do with his claim that I did not recognize Ramanathan. Whether or not my hypothesis about the timing of appearance is correct is irrelevant to that question.
However, objections to my hypothesis are important even if they are completely unrelated to the question of false plagiarism. And unlike Dr. Roy, I’ve done a lot sailing on clear blue water in the tropicsso I have base my hypothesis on my experience rather than theory.
But as a data geek, his statement forced me to look at data on oceanic tropical precipitation. For this, I used TAO float data from buoys on the Equator. Below are the locations of the eight equatorial TAO buoys mentioned.
Figure 1. The equatorial TAO buoy used in this story, in red. Empty squares have no 10-minute precipitation data.
And here’s the average rainfall on those 8 TAO floats, over a ten-minute period.
Figure 2. Average rainfall over a ten-minute period, TAO buoy. The black/yellow line is the lowest fineness of the data.
So my memory of the tropical ocean is verified by observations of offshore precipitation. As I said in the original post linked above, the lowest point of rain is in the morning. This was followed by a sudden increase in rainfall that began just before noon, the strongest increase in a 24-hour period. This results in rainfall peaking in the afternoon, due to the warming of the surface and the late-morning formation of a cumulus field first followed by the appearance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. This is exactly as I discussed in my hypothesis.
And Dr. Roy is also right, the peak of the heaviest rainfall is in the early hours of the morning. Both are correct. Go picture.
I focused on changes of the day for one simple reason—that’s when the sun is shining, so that’s when the charge field and subsequent thunderstorms have the greatest cooling effect on the radiative balance. . Why the greatest effect? Because in addition to all the cooling effects they have day and night, during the day they reflect hundreds and hundreds of watts per square meter of solar radiation.
And because the diurnal cumulus field and thunderstorms have a large influence on surface temperatures, the timing of their appearance is critical to the size of the effect. If the surface is cool and cumulus/thunderstorms form later in the day, hundreds of watts per square meter of additional sunlight will enter to warm the ocean. And the opposite is true. As the surface gets warmer and cumulus/thunderstorms form earlier, large amounts of sunlight are blocked and oceans cooled.
On the other hand, Ramanathan and Collins, as far as I know, don’t say anything about the time of occurrence of the charge field/thunderstorm.
So that’s the situation for Dr. Roy and me. Part of the tragedy for me is that I have a lot of science heroes. And from long before I met Dr. Roy until now, he and Dr. Christy have been my heroes…and still are. Hey, whether Dr. Roy and I may disagree or not, you’ve both done a great job using the Microwave Acoustic Instrument to calculate the atmospheric temperature.
In any case, I would like to raise this issue again in the hope that Dr. Roy and I can get away with it. Please DO NOT insult or insult Dr. Roy in the comments. He’s one of the good guys, and this only comes up again because I’m so tired of people accusing me of plagiarism and invoking Dr. Roy as their authority. Not right, not fair.
Here on our hillside, rain is forecast… which of course means I have to take out my ladder and play with the roof. Ah, the joys of home ownership.
Finally, let me say that I have been suspended from Twitter for a week now. I do not know why. I believe I colored inside the lines and they didn’t give any reason. I discuss the suspension on my blog in a post called “In suspense Twitter“. And a copy of my most recent letter to the appeals board is here.
So if any of my friends are on Twitter, may I ask you to email @elonmusk to ask for my suspension to be lifted? My Twitter account is @WEschenbach.
Thank you all, including thanks to Dr. Roy for all his good work.
w.
AS FIRST: I politely ask that when you comment, you quote the exact words you are discussing. This is of great help in avoiding the kind of misunderstandings that the interwebz is famous for.
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