Talk:Radiative forcing

message: Since Forcing is used as ∆F, it should be fined as earth's radiative energy loss to space in reference to some base condition.   This could be the pre-industrial CO2 levels, or present 400 ppm CO2 level, or earth's blackbody radiation at current average surface temperature, for examples.   The listing of GHG's excludes H2O vapor, which has the greatest effect on forcing.
I can demonstrate, using ModTran5, that 1.) the constant λ varies with cloud conditions and 2.) has a value of 0.7 C/watts-m^2 with 0.017 C/watts-m^2 std. dev, corresponding to climate sensitivity (400 ppm to 800 ppm) of 0.70C with 0.075 C std. dev. The effect of increased water vapor pressure adds about 0.10 C to climate sensitivity.Czorba (talk) 00:24, 27 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  On Forcing and GHG listings 

message: The IPCC definition requires behavior which is different than what is presently known.  Douglas Hoyt and Peter Dietze independently point out that a theory which considers the radiative effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide as only a reduction within carbon dioxide's absorption frequency does not include induced changes in radiation from other frequencies. Other materials will be caused to increase their radiation rate. The IPCC estimates the radiation flux decrease at 3.5, while these estimates are significantly less, with one at 1.3 watts per square meter and the other has a range of 1.4 to 1.9.  The smaller decreases indicate less warming.
(George2wiki (talk) 20:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPCC definition problems 

message: (SEWilco 08:33, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: (William M. Connolley 08:42, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  (SEWilco 09:21, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  (William M. Connolley 18:47, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  What Is Forced? 

message: I'd like more information about clouds in this article. I've read some laymen's treatments suggesting that variations in the sun's output affect cloud cover, which in turn affects how much sunlight warms the earth's surface. White stuff reflects not just visible light but infrared too. 
Where in Wikipedia is there information on factors affecting cloud formation? I'm intersted in the following:
*solar constant (see solar radiation), and minor variations in this "constant"
*solar wind
*sunspots
*solar cycle
*cosmic rays, particularly *anything the sun can throw at us which may increase or diminish the earth's absorption of cosmic rays. 
I dimly recall some papers linking variations in the solar cycle length to terrestial temperature. Did those papers mention a forcing? Dr. C., please comment. --Uncle Ed 01:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Clouds

message: The image "Radiative Forcings" is too small in the aricle to be useful.  The image expand button brings up an image maintenance page lacking a caption, and revealing a background pattern in the image having to do with maintenance.  
Wikipedia needs to change its policy of relying on the image mainenance page for the end user's expanded view.   The expanded view must be part of the article content.  It must retain the text caption from the article and allow for further caption detail, and allow for a third level of image size expansion.
The discussion on the image page is very good. --Rtdrury 21:01, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  image 

message: "the net effect of these feedback mechanisms is to amplify temperature increases CO2, roughly by a factor of two in most models."
Should this read "the net effect...is to amplify THE temperature increase DUE TO CO2, roughly by a factor of two..." Or perhaps something like "The net effect of adding these feedbacks roughly doubles the temperature increase due to atmospheric CO2." Todd Johnston 22:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If the no-feedback sensitivity is about a degree and the CIMP5 median with feedbacks is about three degrees, shouldn't this be "roughly by a factor of three"?  Vaughan Pratt (talk) 17:02, 29 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Word (or 3) missing from this sentence? 

message: I recommend changing "radiation energy" to "radiant energy," unless that would change the meaning. D021317c 05:23, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Radiant energy 

message: Rather than editing the following text, I'd like to nit-pick about it:
"In climate science, radiative forcing is (loosely) defined as the difference between the incoming radiation energy and the outgoing radiation energy in a given climate system. A positive forcing (more incoming energy) tends to warm the system, while a negative forcing (more outgoing energy) tends to cool it. Possible sources of radiative forcing are changes in insolation (incident solar radiation), or the effects of variations in the amount of radiatively active gases present."
"Loosely," assuming it belongs there, doesn't require parentheses.  The "difference" referred to might be better characterized as that between the amounts of radiant energy entering and leaving the system.  "System" ought to be given a link to the thermodynamic usage of the term ("closed system").  "Given" and "climate" are unnecessary.  "A" implies that "forcings" are countable things, an unnecessary complication.  I'd prefer "Positive forcing tends to warm the system; negative forcing tends to cool it."  The "while" is unnecessary, and may suggest, at first glance, that the two kinds of forcing must occur simultaneously, which is probably false.
Unless one is considering changes in radiative forcing (or I misunderstand the term itself), "changes" and "variations" are inappropriate.  In other words, when forcing is constant, isn't it wrong to attribute it to changes of any sort?
"Sources," it seems to me, is being wrongly used to mean "causes."  Only two are given, and I suspect that both are possible (either separately or together), so "or" should be changed to "and."  I wonder whether it is actually wrong to say that one cause may be (1) "variations in the amount of radiatively active gases present," (2) "the amount of radiatively active gases present," (3) "radiatively active gases present," or even (4) radiatively active gases," -- as opposed to the "effects" thereof, and if so, what sort of effects they might be.
Finally, "insolation" and "radiatively active," it seems to me, deserve links of their own.
D021317c 06:19, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wording 

message: Isn't radiative forcing a real phenomenon?  Assuming it is, how can one say it "is intended" somehow?  Or that it's "a useful way" to do something?  Or that it's comparable to "possible tools" which "can be constructed"?  We don't speak of gravity or clouds that way. D021317c 06:40, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Its both. The article does say that, though perhaps not too clearly William M. Connolley 09:34, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A real phenomenon 

message: Hello i have recently proposed the Wikiproject Earth. This Wikiproject`s scope includes this article. This wikiproject will overview the continents, oceans, atsmophere and global warming Please Voice your opinion by clicking anywhere on this comment except for my name. --IwilledituTalk :)Contributions  —Preceding comment was added at 15:36, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikiproject Earth 

message: The first sentence uses the term irradiance properly to describe incoming power.  The second sentence talks about (net) irradiance as energy.  This is a basic (sophmoric) misuse of terms.  I just don't understand how such blatant errors get into articles, and manage to stay in them.  Where are the critical thinkers/observers? blackcloak (talk) 06:41, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Because people prefer grandstanding to actually fixing the problems? William M. Connolley (talk) 07:20, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Having been reverted by you, and many others, with poor, little or no justification, I no longer try to fix (well, mostly) the problems others create.  I'll just point out the problems, when I have the energy, and let others decide what they'll fight for.  Frankly, I haven't learned how to deal with the frustration.  So, what you might see as grandstanding is really closer to venting.  See Giving up in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Do_not_insult_the_vandals blackcloak (talk) 05:08, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Basic problem with intro 

message: I don't think the climatologists who came up with the term "radiative forcing" were just making up a natural-language phrase to refer to sunlight.  I think they were talking about something in the math that's an instance of a more general concept of forcing in some branch of mathematics.  But I don't know whether the concept is best described as forcing (dynamical systems) or forcing (differential equations) or forcing (physics) or forcing function or something else.  Here are a couple references to the term in other mathematical contexts  .  Currently, forcing function is a disambiguation page with only one link, which is to something unrelated.
Based on those, my inclination is to create forcing function (differential equations), and have the lead in this article begin In climate science, radiative forcing is (loosely) defined as the change in net irradiance at the tropopause.  But I don't know whether making part of the main term into a link is acceptable style, and I have too many pages open already about this.  For now I'll go ahead and create forcing function (differential equations) .
--Dan Wylie-Sears 2 (talk) 20:09, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  What's just plain forcing? 

message: I added the modtran image.  Perhaps the captions should be expanded, for example to identify the Planck curves. Incredio (talk) 05:08, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Modtran image 

message: The page says "where λ is the climate sensitivity, usually with units in K/(W/m2)", surely by the definition given it always has to have these units? Ezshay (talk) 15:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPCC λ Units 

message: Someone ought to add an entry for this use of force at the disambiguation page - sorry, I have no idea of the proper format myself. (Or of the parameters in radiation physics in which the terms force or forcing are appropriately applied.)  Milkunderwood (talk) 00:53, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Force (disambiguation)]] 

message: *Small volcanoes add up to cooler climate; Airborne particles help explain why temperatures rose less last decade August 13th, 2011; Vol.180 #4 (p. 5) Science News by Alexandra Witze 
*Sulfur stalls surface temperature rise; Findings explain decade without warming July 30th, 2011; Vol.180 #3 (p. 17) Science News by Nadia Drake
99.181.130.240 (talk) 03:51, 11 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Include 

message: The answer is Geoffrey.landis, I'm sorry to say  William M. Connolley (talk) 10:11, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who writes this shit? 

message: The article starts out with "In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing, is defined as the difference of insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space."  That's a commendably clear and understandable definition.
Unfortunately it is not remotely like the definition provided by AR5, which (a) references the concept to 1750 (per p.13 of AR5 WG1's Summary for Policymakers, or see the official definition in the Glossary on p.1460) and (b) classifies forcings according to their several causes (Figure SPM.5 on p.14).
Would someone please propose either a plausible interpretation of this sentence for which 1750 would be a relevant date and that furthermore explains how "the" climate forcing thus defined can be apportioned between causes, or (better yet) a reliable source reconciling the two definitions?  Otherwise I'm going to flag the offending sentence with a cn tag. Vaughan Pratt (talk) 05:05, 15 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about first sentence 

message: The graphic labeled "Radiative Forcing Components" is incorrectly labeled. The graphic shows anomalous changes in radiative forcings--- two completely different things. Eight out of the nine anomalous changes are due to humans. The graphic needs its label changed to reflect the fact that it shows anomalous changes in radiative forcings. It correctly lists all known forcings (which is its function), but the scale is wrong: it shows anomalies, not the entire watts per square meter per forcing. The word "anomalous" needs to be added. --Desertphile (talk) 19:46, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Graphic is not labeled correctly 

message: Presently, the first sentence of the intro reads:
”In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing is defined as the difference of insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space”
However, what is described here is not the climate forcing, but the the radiative balance, which is the sum of the climate forcing and the radiative feedback 
Some days ago, I changes the sentence to:
” In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing is defined as the change in downward energy flux caused by natural or anthropogenic drivers of climate change relative to a reference state in which climate is assumed to be in radiative balance. ”
This is indeed, what is described in the presentation by Drew Shindell (sheet no. 3) referred to at the end of the sentence
I also removed the illustration, since it illustrates incoming shortwave radiation and not climate forcing.
 
For unknown reasons, my editing was reverted the following day. I would encourage argumentation for why this was done.
 
Best regards
Torben.schmith (talk) 21:42, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Introductory section 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: Can the table in the article be removed? I could improve & update the figure related to this table. I assume people have painstakingly put effort into making this table, but I don't see the added value. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:55, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, no, I found the table very useful when I read this article.Dan88888 (talk) 15:20, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Which table is this? Or has it already been removed? Pinging Dan88888. EMsmile (talk) 11:27, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh, is it the one in "Recent growth trends" which is collapsed/hidden? EMsmile (talk) 12:14, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove the table 

message: There is no text in this section, so it is a little difficult to interpret the graphs. However, it appears that the absiccias are incorrectly labeled "wavenumber (1/cm)" instead of wavelength (nm). I can't imagine the far infrared is relevant to this page. Bad-zima (talk) 21:49, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sample calculation figures 

message: Could this content about other metrics be condensed? It feels very long winded to me and I don't really see what the long quote is trying to say. It might also be outdated or no longer so important to warrant this much space here?
 +++++++
Other metrics can be constructed for the same purpose as radiative forcing.  For example Shine et al. say "... recent experiments indicate that for changes in absorbing aerosols and ozone, the predictive ability of radiative forcing is much worse ... we propose an alternative, the 'adjusted troposphere and stratosphere forcing'. We present GCM calculations showing that it is a significantly more reliable predictor of this GCM's surface temperature change than radiative forcing. It is a candidate to supplement radiative forcing as a metric for comparing different mechanisms ...". In this quote, GCM stands for "global circulation model", and the word "predictive" does not refer to the ability of GCMs to forecast climate change. Instead, it refers to the ability of the alternative tool proposed by the authors to help explain the system response.
 +++++++ 
EMsmile (talk) 20:08, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've shortened this section now but I wonder if the content there is now a bit outdated (compare with the definition of terms in the "definitions" section). EMsmile (talk) 21:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Content about other metrics 

message: I have some doubts about the "Radiation balance" section: It's not clear to me why it is at this position in the article; doesn't it just repeat a lot of content (including 3 graphs!) that are in greenhouse effect? The text has no sources, maybe it's textbook knowledge and doesn't need sources. Also, it says there "main": Earth's energy budget then why not rather use an excerpt from there? Or use an excerpt from greenhouse effect? This way we could reduce the amount of overlapping content. EMsmile (talk) 20:33, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I've now reworked that section, and moved it to "Definition and fundamentals". I also took out the 3 graphs.EMsmile (talk) 21:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questions about "Radiation balance" section 

message: It would be good if the structure of the article could be clearer, which could be achieved by using standard headings. So far, the structure (table of content) is this:
 Definition - OK for standard heading
 Radiation balance - Unclear as a heading - update: now removed EMsmile (talk) 21:17, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I feel a bit lonely here on the talk page, just talking to myself... Pinging User:Bikesrcool and User:Efbrazil in case they have time to comment here on the talk page (see also above)? EMsmile (talk) 11:29, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  I've re-arranged the structure and it looks like this now for the main headings:
 Definition and fundamentals
 Calculations and measurements
 Forcing due to changes in atmospheric gases
 Forcing due to changes in solar irradiance
 Forcing due to changes in albedo and aerosols
 Recent growth trends EMsmile (talk) 16:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

text: Nice progress.  I think this article and the "climate change feedback" article can benefit from a similar overall structure - especially when read together.  I think that because I find it hard to understand either concept very well without the other.  That is to say.. forcings and feedbacks appear as contrasting terms within the various mathematical formulations of the system's energy balance/imbalance.   If others feel the same, then perhaps replicating all or a portion of the "mathematical formulation" section from the feedback article near the end of this one might help provide further context?   Hope that suggestion doesn't veer too far off topic. Bikesrcool (talk) 16:11, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think the overall structure at climate change feedback is already fairly similar, or what would be your suggestions for a better one (let's discuss it on the talk page there)? I am all for interlinking articles well. If we need to make it clearer how feedbacks relate to forcing then let's do that (where in the article?). But I don't think that section on "mathematical formulations" should be repeated. We already have some equations in "Basic estimates". Unless you think more should be added there? Be mindful that equations can be very scary for lay persons, even if they are rather simple... EMsmile (talk) 21:55, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Can we use standard headings more? 

message: I like the generic section of "uses" but I am just wondering if there are other possible uses that we could list, or is climate sensitivity really the only one? EMsmile (talk) 21:37, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Forcing and feedbacks can also be used to estimate a change in the planetary energy imbalance EEI.  This could be presented and discussed in a way that segues into the use to estimate climate sensitivity.  Simple addition math as in the feedback article, but I'm thinking perhaps applying an up-to-date numbers example taken from the IPCC WG1 AR6 Chapter 7 report?   I'll try to put something together over the coming weeks... Bikesrcool (talk) 13:48, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! EMsmile (talk) 10:34, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Uses?