Reblogged from Watts Up With That:
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I took another ramble through the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) satellite-measured rainfall data. Figure 1 shows a Pacific-centered and an Atlantic-centered view of the average rainfall from the end of 1997 to the start of 2015 as measured by the TRMM satellite.
There’s lots of interesting stuff in those two graphs. I was surprised by how much of the planet in general, and the ocean in particular, are bright red, meaning they get less than half a meter (20″) of rain per year.
I was also intrigued by how narrowly the rainfall is concentrated at the average Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ). The ITCZ is where the two great global hemispheres of the atmospheric circulation meet near the Equator. In the Pacific and Atlantic on average the ITCZ is just above the Equator, and in the Indian Ocean, it’s just below the Equator. However, that’s just on average. Sometimes in the Pacific, the ITCZ is below the Equator. You can see kind of a mirror image as a light orange horizontal area just below the Equator.
Here’s an idealized view of the global circulation. On the left-hand edge of the globe, I’ve drawn a cross section through the atmosphere, showing the circulation of the great atmospheric cells.
The ITCZ is shown in cross-section at the left edge of the globe in Figure 2. You can see the general tropical circulation. Surface air in both hemispheres moves towards the Equator. It is warmed there and rises. This thermal circulation is greatly sped up by air driven vertically at high rates of speed through the tall thunderstorm towers. These thunderstorms form all along the ITCZ. These thunderstorms provide much of the mechanical energy that drives the atmospheric circulation of the Hadley cells.
With all of that as prologue, here’s what I looked at. I got to thinking, was there a trend in the rainfall? Is it getting wetter or drier? So I looked at that using the TRMM data. Figure 3 shows the annual change in rainfall, in millimeters per year, on a 1° latitude by 1° longitude basis.
I note that the increase in rain is greater on the ocean vs land, is greatest at the ITCZ, and is generally greater in the tropics.
Why is this overall trend in rainfall of interest? It gives us a way to calculate how much this cools the surface. Remember the old saying, what comes down must go up … or perhaps it’s the other way around, same thing. If it rains an extra millimeter of water, somewhere it must have evaporated an extra millimeter of water.
And in the same way that our bodies are cooled by evaporation, the surface of the planet is also cooled by evaporation.
Now, we note above that on average, the increase is 1.33 millimeters of water per year. Metric is nice because volume and size are related. Here’s a great example.
One millimeter of rain falling on one square meter of the surface is one liter of water which is one kilo of water. Nice, huh?
So the extra 1.33 millimeters of rain per year is equal to 1.33 extra liters of water evaporated per square meter of surface area.
Next, how much energy does it take to evaporate that extra 1.33 liters of water per square meter so it can come down as rain? The calculations are in the endnotes. It turns out that this 1.33 extra liters per year represents an additional cooling of a tenth of a watt per square meter (0.10 W/m2).
And how does this compare to the warming from increased longwave radiation due to the additional CO2? Well, again, the calculations are in the endnotes. The answer is, per the IPCC calculations, CO2 alone over the period gave a yearly increase in downwelling radiation of ~ 0.03 W/m2. Generally, they double that number to allow for other greenhouse gases (GHGs), so for purposes of discussion, we’ll call it 0.06 W/m2 per year.
So over the period of this record, we have increased evaporative cooling of 0.10 W/m2 per year, and we have increased radiative warming from GHGs of 0.06 W/m2 per year.
Which means that over that period and that area at least, the calculated increase in warming radiation from GHGs was more than counterbalanced by the observed increase in surface cooling from increased evaporation.
Regards to all,
w.
As usual: please quote the exact words you are discussing so we can all understand exactly what and who you are replying to.
Additional Cooling
Finally, note that this calculation is only evaporative cooling. There are other cooling mechanisms at work that are related to rainstorms. These include:
• Increased cloud albedo reflecting hundreds of watts/square meter of sunshine back to space
• Moving surface air to the upper troposphere where it is above most GHGs and freer to cool to space.
• Increased ocean surface albedo from whitecaps, foam, and spume.
• Cold rain falling from a layer of the troposphere that is much cooler than the surface.
• Rain re-evaporating as it falls to cool the atmosphere
• Cold wind entrained by the rain blowing outwards at surface level to cool surrounding areas
• Dry descending air between rain cells and thunderstorms allowing increased longwave radiation to space.
Between all of these, they form a very strong temperature regulating mechanism that prevents overheating of the planet.
Calculation of energy required to evaporate 1.33 liters of water.
#latent heat evaporation joules/kg @ salinity 35 psu, temperature 24°C
> latevap = gsw_latentheat_evap_t( 35, 24 ) ; latevap
[1] 2441369
# joules/yr/m2 required to evaporate 1.33 liters/yr/m2
> evapj = latevap * 1.33 ; evapj
[1] 3247021
# convert joules/yr/m2 to W/m2
> evapwm2 = evapj / secsperyear ; evapwm2
[1] 0.1028941
Note: the exact answer varies dependent on seawater temperature, salinity, and density. These only make a difference of a couple percent (say 0.1043 vs 0.1028941). I’ve used average values.
Calculation of downwelling radiation change from CO2 increase.
#starting CO2 ppmv Dec 1997
> thestart = as.double( coshort[1] ) ; thestart
[1] 364.38
#ending CO2 ppmv Mar 2015
> theend = as.double( last( coshort )) ; theend
[1] 401.54
# longwave increase, W/m2 per year over 17 years 4 months
> 3.7 * log( theend / thestart, 2)/17.33
[1] 0.0299117
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