Using Earth’s Moon as a Testbed for Quantifying the Effect of the Terrestrial Atmosphere

Abstract

In the past, the planetary radiation balance served to quantify the atmospheric greenhouse effect by the difference between the globally averaged near-surface temperature of ns T ≅ 288 K and the respective effective radiation temperature of the Earth without atmosphere of e T ≅ 255 K resulting in ns e T T − ≅ 33 K . Since such a "thought experiment" prohibits any rigorous assessment of its results, this study considered the Moon as a testbed for the Earth in the absence of its atmosphere. Since the angular velocity of Moon's rotation is 27.4 times slower than that of the Earth, the forcing method, the force-restore method, and a multilayer-force-restore method, used in climate modeling during the past four decades, were alternatively applied to address the influence of the angular velocity in determining the Moon's globally averaged skin (or slab) temperature, α . Thus, the effective radiation temperature yields flawed results when used for quantifying the atmospheric greenhouse effect.

Meridional Distributions of Historical Zonal Averages and Their Use to Quantify the Global and Spheroidal Mean Near-Surface Temperature of the Terrestrial Atmosphere

“…Already Forbes's formula (Equation 24 Q θ , and various normal temperatures related to them for the Earth in the absence of its atmosphere. In contrast to Kramm et al [44], Defant and Obst [36] used a solar constant of Replacing their too high solar constant with the current one would provide a meridional distribution of ( ) F θ that substantially agrees with that of Kramm et al [44]. Based on Equation 4 13.9 C T =  , respectively.…”

“…The average over the Earth' surface reads [42][43][44] [35] table (digitized by Google) of climatological means of solar radiation ("Sonnenstrahlung" in thermal days [9]), temperature ("Temperatur" in ˚C), air pressure ("Luftdruck" in mm Hg), precipitation ("Niederschlag" in mm), and cloudiness ("Bewölkung" in %) for numerous parallels of latitude ("Geographische Breite" in ˚).Values in parenthesis are uncertain. [10,42,44,46] ( )…”

“…With respect to geological time scales, also changes in the precession of Earth's rotation axis, and long-term variations of the eccentricity, obliquity, and precession of the Perihelion caused by the Sun, Moon and planets of our solar system must be considered [69][70][71][72][73][74][75]. Figure 21 compares the meridional distributions of the zonal temperature averages of the real climate as given by Spitaler [10] (Sp1885), Arrhenius [26] (A1896-1), von Bezold [29] (vB1906), as well as von Hann-Süring [38] (vHS1939) and the solar climate predicted by Kramm et al [44] for the year 2010. Kramm et al [44] used the following local energy budget equation for a thin slab of 2 cm thickness adjacent to the surface of either the Earth's Moon or the Earth in the absence of its atmosphere:…”

“…Figure 21 compares the meridional distributions of the zonal temperature averages of the real climate as given by Spitaler [10] (Sp1885), Arrhenius [26] (A1896-1), von Bezold [29] (vB1906), as well as von Hann-Süring [38] (vHS1939) and the solar climate predicted by Kramm et al [44] for the year 2010. Kramm et al [44] used the following local energy budget equation for a thin slab of 2 cm thickness adjacent to the surface of either the Earth's Moon or the Earth in the absence of its atmosphere:…”

“…According to the TSI reconstruction by Kopp et al [90], the TSI only changed by ±1 W•m −2 during 1850 to 2015. Thus, the solar climate derived by Kramm et al [44] may be compared with the real climates represented by the datasets Sp1885 [10], A1896-1 [26], vB1906 [29], and vHS1939 [38]. Figure 21 also shows Krümmel's [54] meridional distribution of the zonal mean sea-surface temperatures ( Figure 18 and Figure 19 may be considered to assess Krümmel's data.).…”