If global warming is caused by the Sun, then why is the upper atmosphere cooling?

Question

We know that the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere (troposphere) are warming:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Satellite_Temperatures.png

But at the same time, the upper atmosphere (stratosphere, mesosphere, and ionosphere) are cooling:

http://www.wund.com/education/strato_cooling.asp

Now it seems to me (and climate scientists - see 6 minutes into the video below)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5gUd6y3zKU&mode=related&search=

that if solar activity is responsible for global warming, then the layers of the atmosphere closest to the Sun should be warming.

This link illustrates how climate scientists explain the upper atmospheric cooling though global warming theory:

http://www.wund.com/education/strato_cooling.asp

Can those who believe the Sun is responsible explain why the lower atmosphere and surface are warming, while the upper atmosphere is cooling?

Anders - actually I both included the AGW explanation of the upper atmospheric cooling while also asking if the "SGW" theory can explain it.

Of course when you can't explain something scientifically, an obvious tactic is to try and change the subject. Mr. Jello says 'um...um......look, a shiny quarter!'.

Whoops, re-reading Anders' answer more carefully, that's exactly what he said I was saying. Anders, you are correct!

Tomcat - you skirted the question quite nicely. 'It's not cooling (except when it's cooling)', you say.

Very well, then I'll reword the question. Why isn't the stratosphere warming? Even after the volcanic eruptions, the temperature remains fairly constant at a lower temperature. Why isn't the Sun warming the stratosphere? Does the solar radiation magically slip through the stratosphere to the troposphere and surface?

Tomcat again - you claim that the stratosphere is warming for 55% of the time, but that warming is so extremely minute, especially when considering both the obvious overall cooling trend and the much more significant warming trend of the stratosphere and surface.

Again I repeat, if global warming were due to the Sun, then why isn't the stratosphere warming at least as much as the lower atmosphere, if not more?

Tomcat - I think you're proving my point. No there hasn't been much of a TSI increase, which is why the stratosphere hasn't warmed significantly. However, the troposphere and surface HAVE warmed considerably over that period. How can you possibly argue that this warming is due to the Sun while both the TSI variation and stratosphere warming have been negligible?

I agree the stratosphere cooling is not the smoking gun, it's simply the final nail in the SGW gun. There's also the fact that TSI decreased while global warming accelerated, the fact that global warming effects are greater in the winter and at night, and the various other solar factors studied by Lockwood et al.

make that final nail in the coffin, not gun.

Answer 1

Compensatory cooling, ozone interaction, formation processes and depletion, decline in solar irradiance.

In short, it's happening and is what we would expect to happen at this point in time.

"Can those who believe the Sun is responsible explain why the lower atmosphere and surface are warming, while the upper atmosphere is cooling?" - no they can't, as is testified to from the answer you've already recieved from a certain person who makes this claim and has failed to address your question.

Answer 2

Because it's not Dana, if you find the right graph you can convince people that it's cooling. Since 1971 the only time the stratosphere shows any significant cooling is because of ozone depletion from SO2 emissions from El-Chichon and Mt. Pinatubo, within 2-4 years after those events the stratosphere began warming again. Bar graphs are for financial forecast not scientific interpretation, I bet I have interpreted just a little more data than you have.


http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadat/images/update_images/global_upper_air.png
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EDIT:

Ok Dana you have to look at my graph of the stratosphere because your's does not match.

The stratosphere:

1971-1981 warming;
1985-1991 warming;
1995-2007 warming;

The stratosphere has been warming for 27 years of the 49 that equates to 55%

If the stratosphere cools because it is capturing less UV energy, that energy goes were? The surface, it is not magic.

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EDIT2:

Patrick

My point about all of this is that after the SO2 from El-chichon and Pinatubo caused the stratosphere to cool to a lower level than before, that obviously is not CO2, it is Ozone depletion. I am intersted in the truth. You are right about the warming though, the SO2 gets converted into Sulfuric acid which reflects solar radiation and cools the planet briefy, while the Sulfuric Acid is in the stratosphere it combines with chlorine atoms from our flourocarbon emmissions and destroy's large amounts of Ozone. When the Sulfuric Acid depletes a couple of years later there is much less Ozone, so the stratosphere drops to a cooler state, because Ozone scatters UV energy.

EDIT3:

Dana, we are not talking about much of a TSI increase from 2003 back, the stratosphere does not have much heat retention capability, I am sure you are aware 90% of the atmosphere is contained in the troposphere, so I would not expect the stratosphere to have heated much, especially with anthropogenic Ozone depletion occuring along with natural. The point is, the cooling is not an indicator of AGW, it is ozone depletion, the warming that I am pointing out may not be the sun, it could easily be natural ozone regeneration.

EDIT4

Dear Dana,

I don't have all the answers, but the stratosphere is not a smoking gun for AGW either. If you believe in the ACRIM composite the SUN has maintained 1366 watts per square meter or greater from 1988 - 2003. In 1986 it was 1365.5, almost half a watt lower. If the sun shines more intensely on the oceans for 15 years than it has the prior fifteen years, the oceans will store more heat. Since the oceans have began cooling since 2003 and CO2 levels have not dropped, only logic would suggest that the Sun must be the cause, since solar maximum was in 2003. Throw in about four or five years of negative volcanic forcing in the first half of that period, and you got yourself a real mess that we can debate for the next decade, until I will concede or you might concede.

None of your rhetoric applies to the continent of Antarctica, it still keeps growing colder. Save your nails, your going to need them.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/images/content/93617main_sun4m.jpg
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And Trevor, you stand corrected.

Answer 3

Wow,, all those links, well you must be right. Let me see if I got this right, the sun warms the earth and man expels C02 and it gets trapped by the ozone and heats the crust which cools the stratosphere and thereby causing radiation to get trapped between the mesosphere, and ionosphere, causing a change in the lower atmosphere and surface temperature which is raising the ocean levels and lowering the ultra violet waves and warming the global.

Yeah that makes way more sense then the sun, (being 1 million times the size of the earth) having anything at all to do with global warming.

Answer 4

This is a great question. The thermodynamic properties of gases do not follow reason. In a cool inactive state gases settle and separate. In active heating state gases in the atmosphere behave erratically, mixing, moving and rising. It is so complex I can’t describe it. The question generalizes about the entire atmosphere. The information may be in error also. Definitely we are trying to make sense of the changes related to our role in the warming. It is important to know the changes in gas composition before we can get a grip on human influence on the atmosphere.

Humans are certainly mucking up the planet and atmosphere on a grand scale. Think of the out-gassing of human products such as solvents, unburned fuel and toxic chemicals. We are also intruding with our rockets and airlines in the upper atmosphere. CO2 isn't the only greenhouse gas. Methane from human activity and methane locked in the permafrost layers of the artic region is releasing with the warming.

If you put an ice cube on the table it changes state from solid to a liquid. It pulls calories in from the surrounding air. I think the changing composition of the lower layers of the atmosphere change their potential to hold heat, like the ice cube these layers are pulling calories from the surrounding layers. This might explain the cooling. It isn't that straight forward. The side of earth facing the sun has a much different dynamic than the dark side. As the earth turns the atmosphere is pushed like a pump. The heating and cooling of the air masses follow general patterns, but then things reach a threshold creating weather systems and anomalies.

I suggest a study geography and meteorology. You’ll find it is a very complex subject.
Questions like this tend to put us in a position of self-righteousness and polarization. Scientist sit on every side of the issue of global warming. I think it’s an excuse for them to deny responsibility for changing the biosphere.

Nature is giving us a warning sign. We need to act in a big way. Don’t give up and keep asking questions.

Answer 5

The VERY core of the Greenhouse effect is that the warming of the atmosphere is absorption and re-radiation of infrared radiation from...drumroll please...the surface of the Earth, NOT the Sun as you say. To say that the layers of the atmosphere closest to the Sun should be warming is RIDICULOUS. As almost every scientist I have read explaining the Greenhouse effect - ESPECIALLY those who subscribe to the theory of AGW - the atmosphere is virtually transparent to the bulk of the Sun's radiation, and it is only AFTER that energy is absorbed by the liquid and solid components of the Earth's surface and then radiated in longer wave IR to be absorbed by GHGs (H2O, CO2, CH4, etc) it is then transferred to the rest of the atmosphere.

The same is true of UV. The atmosphere is mostly transparent to UV - otherwise, why would we even need ozone? We could count on the atmosphere to stop almost all of the harmful UV before reaching us at the surface - but this is obviously not the case. The ozone absorbs the UV and then transfers the heat to the stratosphere. Ozone also absorbs and re-radiates IR.

The overall effect: less ozone = less heat in the stratosphere.

Answer 6

Funny, but, the USA uses some 35% of the energy consumed, with only 5% of the world population, but, there is no huge hole over the NA continent in the OZONE layer, nor is heat centered here...

Fact is this: Everything up to now has been theory.
Even the most competent minds and the biggest computer for emulation of Earth under many conditions, can't track down the real specific causitive factors in detail, and so, there is no comprehensive analysis available to point to any one source for "Global Warming".

Hey, we are now in the high point of the 1500 year weather cycle, says some new theorists. But, they do have ice and tree rings to quote.

Funny there was no mention of the 350 million new computers turned on each year in the USA, nor of the reflective white plastic monitor cases and steel CPU cases, in corresponding numbers, dumped each year, that could be reflecting the sun!

Plus, the largest source of methane gas, ant colonies, then volcanoes, followed by cow flatulence, leaving human farts way down on the totem pole!

Answer 7

those are interesting graphs tomcat

but (this is just speculation, don't attack me) from the graph it looks as if those volcanos caused the stratosphere to warm. Perhaps by reflecting incoming sunlight back through the stratosphere before it was absorbed by the troposphere and ground.

edit
ok

http://www.iitap.iastate.edu/gcp/studentpapers/1996/atmoschem/huff.html

Answer 8

It`s the greenhouse gases that we`ve been producing.It`s acting like a energy efficient window,It lets the heat from the sun in but does not allow heat to escape.Another thing the sun does not heat the air, it only heats objects that light can not pass through.Dark objects create the most heat.Every body that has a black roof has a big solar heater.I bet you didn`t know even are houses are causing global warming.

Answer 9

I heard global warming was caused by using toasters and driving SUVs and by eating red meat and by using our grills.

I'm wondering if people can't come up with a definite cause for global warming so they're just grasping at straws??
Don't get me wrong, I'm a very resource conscious person... I recycle, I use fluorescent lightbulbs, I replaced carpet with bamboo, I do a lot of research and I do my part to be responsible. I just think people MIGHT be blowing things out of proportion. Trying to make me feel like the world is going to end just because I grilled steaks for dinner last night - well, that's not going to get me to jump into action. That's going to cause me to grill something for dinner EVERY night just because I don't want ANYONE to tell me what I can and can't do. Just some thoughts...

Answer 10

Interesting. If one theory is false, this proves that a competing theory must be true?

What ever happened to objective science?

Added - Anders, these links aren't isolated to just one area. These are taken from all over the world. Ask yourself this: If these graphs all showed rising trends, would you accept this as proof that the world was warming? Why is your mind already made up when there evidence that refutes your beliefs? Is "global warming" an emotional issue for you? Are you cheering "global warming" on because that's what you believe?

There is a link on the home page that will get you to the English version. Left side of the page.