flacaltenn
Diamond Member
for FCT: that the field of climate science is immature bears no relation whatsoever to the technical qualifications of those who study it.
W/m^2 is a proper unit to describe incident or transient energy. If you'd care to show us the specific Trenberth text (ie, a quotation) where, as you claim, he uses the term incorrectly, I might change my mind. But for now I suspect he knows basic material like this at least as well as do you and his coworkers, reviewers and referees would not have allowed him to publish the sort of silly mistake you claim he has (and, of course, with malevolently conspiratorial incompetence)
You trying to redefine BASIC SCIENCE terms?? Watts or W/m2 IS NEVER "an energy" measurement. It's a Forcing Function, a POTENTIAL to do work, or the analogy to Voltage in a circuit.
Go retrieve the famous Trenberth ENERGY BUDGET and look for yourself..
To understand the "energy imbalance" of radiative heating of the Earth -- YOU DO need an energy budget.. TrenBerth didn't produce it. BECAUSE you need to account for ENERGY STORED in the oceans, and ENERGY inputs that are temporally variant over the seasons and sections of the earth..
Those massive numbers of JOULES "hiding somewhere in the ocean" ??? They are just Watt-seconds. Each of them represents 1 second of exposure to 1 Watt of incident POWER. When you deal with ENERGY UNITS -- it becomes important to consider and treat and TIME EXPOSURE to power fluxes.. A lot more difficult than a stupid Power budget..
By loosely interchanging these units --- a POOR scientist or scientist or engineer can miss a lot of truth..
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