Study: Solar activity, oceans cycles, & water vapor explain 98% of climate change since 1900 — NOT CO2

Solar activity, oceans cycles, & water vapor explain 98% of climate change since 1900, NOT CO2!

Climate Change Drivers

by Dan Pangburn, MSME

Summary

Thermalization and the complete dominance of water vapor in reverse-thermalization explain  why atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) has no significant effect on climate. Reported average global temperature (AGT) since before 1900 is accurately (98% match with measured trend) explained by a combination of ocean cycles, sunspot number anomaly time-integral and increased atmospheric water vapor.

Introduction

The only way that energy can significantly leave earth is by thermal radiation. Only solid or liquid bodies and greenhouse gases (ghg) can absorb/emit in the wavelength range of terrestrial radiation. Non-ghg gases must transfer energy to ghg gases (or liquid or solid bodies) for this energy to be radiated.

The word ‘trend’ is used here for temperatures in two different contexts. To differentiate, α-trend is an approximation of the net of ocean surface temperature oscillations after averaging-out the year-to-year fluctuations in reported average global temperatures. The term β-trend applies to the slower average energy change of the planet which is associated with change to the average temperature of the bulk volume of the material (mostly ocean water) involved.

Some ocean cycles have been named according to the particular area of the oceans where they occur. Names such as PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation), ENSO (el Nino Southern Oscillation), and AMO (Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation) might be familiar. They report the temperature of the water near the surface. The average temperature of the bulk water that is participating in these oscillations cannot significantly change so quickly because of high thermal capacitance [1].

This high thermal capacitance absolutely prohibits the rapid (year-to-year) AGT fluctuations which have been reported, from being a result of any credible forcing. According to one assessment [1], the time constant is about 5 years. A likely explanation for the reported year-to-year fluctuations is that they are stochastic phenomena in the over-all process that has been used to determine AGT. A simple calculation shows the standard deviation of the reported annual average measurements to be about ±0.09 K with respect to the trend. The temperature fluctuations of the bulk volume near the surface of the planet are more closely represented by the fluctuations in the trend. The trend is a better indicator of the change in global energy; which is the difference between energy received and energy radiated.

The kinetic theory of gases, some thermodynamics and the rudiments of quantum mechanics provide a rational explanation of what happens when ghg absorb photons of terrestrial thermal radiation.

Refutation of significant influence from CO₂

There is multiple evidence (most identified earlier [2] ) that CO₂ has no significant effect on climate:

1. In the late Ordovician Period, the planet plunged into and warmed up from the Andean/Saharan ice age, all at about 10 times the current CO₂level [3].
2. Over the Phanerozoic eon (last 542 million years) there is no correlation between CO₂leveland AGT [3, 4].
3. During the last and previous glaciations AGT trend changed directions before CO₂trend [2].
4. Since AGT has been directly and accurately measured world wide (about 1895), AGT has exhibited up and down trends while CO₂trend has been only up. [2]
5. Since about 2001, the measured atmospheric CO₂trend has continued to rise while the AGT trend has been essentially flat. [21, 13]