W. A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer: Radiation Transport in Clouds
We briefly review the dominant role of clouds in Earth’s climate. The earliest observational studies of heat transfer through Earth’s atmosphere, for example, those of John Leslie around 1800, showed that clouds have a large effect on radiative heat transfer from Earth’s surface to space. Greenhouse gases also affect heat transfer, but much less than…
Koutsoyiannis: Relative importance of carbon dioxide and water in the greenhouse effect
Using a detailed atmospheric radiative transfer model, we derive macroscopic relationships of downwelling and outgoing longwave radiation which enable determining the partial derivatives thereof with respect to the explanatory variables that represent the greenhouse gases. We validate these macroscopic relationships using empirical formulae based on downwelling radiation data, commonly used in hydrology, and satellite data…
Ad Huijser: Greenhouse Feedbacks are Intrinsic Properties of the Planck Feedback Parameter
The idea that our climate reacts differently to anthropogenic forcings than to natural instabilities through the phenomenon of “feedbacks”, seems widespread. This paper shows that climate feedbacks are not effects induced by forcings, but in fact “constitute” our climate. Independent from the origin of a disturbance, our climate will always respond according to the Planck…
Frans J. Schrijver: Impact of global greening on the natural atmospheric CO₂ level
In this study we investigate the impact of greening on the Earth in terms of gross primary production (GPP) on the natural atmospheric CO₂ level. The total mass of CO₂ in the atmosphere is equal to the yearly amount of CO₂ that leaves the atmosphere (down flux), multiplied by the average time CO₂ remains in…
Demetris Koutsoyiannis: Relative importance of carbon dioxide and water in the greenhouse effect: Does the tail wag the dog? Supplementary Information
Using a detailed atmospheric radiative transfer model, we derive macroscopic relationships of downwelling and outgoing longwave radiation which enable determining the partial derivatives thereof with respect to the explanatory variables that represent the greenhouse gases. We validate these macroscopic relationships using empirical formulae based on downwelling radiation data, commonly used in hydrology, and satellite data…
Moritz Büsing: Systematic Error in Global Temperatures due to Weather Station Ageing
The white paint or white plastic of the housings of weather stations ages, which leads to increased absorption of solar radiation and to increased temperature measurements. This alone would be a small error. However, many different state-of-the-art homogenization algorithms repeatedly add this small value each time a weather station is renovated, renewed, or replaced, which…
