First presentation at ICCC7 in Chicago, May 2012
On Monday evening, after a long day of lectures, I was given a chance to introduce the Fireworks concept to a few highly respected climate sientists, four of which were conference speakers.

Attendees: Prof. Dr Tom Segalstad (Univ. of Oslo), Prof. Dr Larry Gould (Univ. of Hartford), Prof Dr Fred Singer (NIPCC), Prof. Dr Sebastian Lüning ( co-author of  Die Kalte Sonne, geologist),  Dr Thomas P. Sheahen (Western Technology) and Prof. Dr Jeffrey Foss (Univ. of Victoria BC)
Not on the picture: John Kehr (author of  The Inconvenient Sceptic)

Because it had been a very tiring day, I tried to be brief and to the point, concentrating on the Fireworks simulation. But the calculation of the emission of latent heat of the Hadley Cell to space, based on the simulation, certainly met with a lot of interest too.

Most of the attendants did not see the radiation theory as their core competence and were careful in formulating their reaction, but in general my feeling was that the theory was considered to be promising.                              (more…)

1. The Fireworks Theory for greenhouse gases
Explains how it is possible to describe the atmosphere by layers, defined by the average optical free path of greenhouse sensitive IR wavelengths.
This takes temperature and pressure out of the equations and enables very accurate but simple radiation calculations.

2. The Fireworks atmospheric simulation
Describes a simulation spreadsheet that calculates all radiation transfer through the atmosphere.
Demo included!

3. The Fireworks simulation: Layer determination
Explains the way the layer thickness and the number of layers have been calculated so far.

4. The Fireworks simulation: Climate sensitivity
Full shape present-best simulation, in an attempt to quantify the radiative aspect of a CO2 doubling.
Full size demo included for the die-hards!

5. The Fireworks balance sheet: Climate sensitivity of CO2, including clouds
Energy balance sheet, implementing the radiative data from the Fireworks simulation, and including all other climate variables. The outcome is interesting, but for now quantitatively very questionable.

6. Convection and the thermohaline circulation
Some finger exercises for chapter 7: convection in fluids, i.c. the ocean conveyor belt

7. Convection: the cooling feed back of CO2
Shows how a CO2 increase must have a cooling effect through driving convection and latent heat, apart from the radiative heating effect that was quantified in the Fireworks theory, and the cooling feed back as a result of increased evaporation.

8. CO2 does not – directly – heat up the atmosphere
Describes how greenhouse gases can warm the earth’s surface, but do not directly heat up the atmosphere.

9. The standard greenhouse theory reconsidered – radiation
Discusses the simplified standard representation of the greenhouse effect

10. Analysing the Hadley Cell
Quantifies the emission to space during the Hadley Cycle and the influence of a CO2 doubling.
Studies the powering of the Hadley Cell

11. Analysing The (Missing?) Tropical Hot Spot
Explains why there is no need for a tropical hotspot to exist, despite the adiabatic lapse rate. The analysis is based on the calculations of chapter 10 and denies the statements made by the mainstream scientists defending the physical necessity of the hot spot.

IR radiation behaviour
I started with imagining how IR radiation would behave when radiated from the earth’s surface.
Of course some wavelengths will radiate directly into space through the IR window.
All the rest would at a certain point be absorbed by a greenhouse gas (GHG) molecule.
Once absorbed, in an equilibrium situation, the same amount of energy would be re-radiated
evenly in all directions by the molecule.

Note: in the equilibrium situation, the frequency of the absorbed IR energy is “lost”, since
we assume all GHG molecules in a certain volume to have the same temperature, and they all
will radiate out energy in their own spectrum. So the spectrum of the re-radiation is only
related to the concentration of the different GHG at that particular place, not related to the
absorbed wavelength.

Since we are only interested in the vertical energy transport by radiation, we assume that only
the vertical component of all that radiation is effective, so effectively 50% of the energy radiated
from that molecule ends up going upwards, and 50% going downwards.

Note: since the earth is a sphere, some radiation that is downwards but very close to
horizontal, will still escape into space. This effect should be calculated to increase the accuracy
of the model.

This radiation in its turn will be absorbed by other GHG molecules, which in their turn will reradiate
into all directions. The graphic representation of that mechanism looks like fireworks, thus providing a
suitable name for my theory.

Impression of IR radiation and greenhouse gas molecules

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