Climate Publications by Dr. Peter Ward

Publications About the Ozone Depletion Theory of Global Warming

I have written many papers explaining what is wrong with greenhouse-warming theory and how ozone depletion theory explains global warming since 1970 and throughout all of Earth history far more accurately and in far greater detail than greenhouse-warming theory. All these papers are described here. I have also prepared many talks and posters presented at more than 30 major national scientific meetings described here. Videos of several of these talks are described here. Plus I have written my book What Really Causes Global Warming? Greenhouse Gases or Ozone Depletion? described here.

Here are a few of the most important papers:

Ward, P. L., 2018, A Most Inconvenient Reality—Greenhouse Gases Cannot Physically Explain Observed Global Warming [PDF] Declined without review by JGR Atmospheres. [Editor’s response]

Heat is what a body of matter must absorb to warm and must emit to cool. Most scientists and engineers assume that heat is some generic thing accurately quantified by a single numeric amount of thermal energy flowing per second in units of watts per square meter. While this approximation has proven useful in many cases, it fails when comparing solar ultraviolet radiation with terrestrial infrared radiation. Planck’s law, an equation formulated empirically to fit extensive laboratory measurements, shows that heat is not generic. Heat consists of a very broad continuum of frequencies of oscillation of all the bonds holding matter together. Thermal energy increases with frequency of oscillation. Each frequency has an amplitude of oscillation that increases with increasing temperature of the radiating body. Ultraviolet solar radiation is nearly 50-times more energetic than infrared terrestrial radiation no matter the amount. Amount of heat, on the other hand, is a function of the temperature difference between the emitting and absorbing bodies. Matter can only be heated by absorbing radiation from a hotter body containing higher frequencies of oscillation, with higher amplitudes of oscillation at each and every frequency of oscillation. This is why Earth cannot be heated in any way by its own radiation. Furthermore, a molecule of carbon dioxide gas does not absorb heat; it merely absorbs some spectral lines of thermal energy that are the molecule’s resonant frequencies of oscillation, making up less than 16% of the broad continuum of frequencies constituting the heat required to warm Earth.

Ward, P. L., 2016, Ozone depletion explains global warming, Current Physical Chemistry, v. 6, no. 4, p. 275-296. [PDF]

Background: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are extremely likely to have been the dominant cause of observed global warming. Depletion of the ozone layer by manufactured chlorofluorocarbon gases and volcanic eruptions, however, provides a much more detailed and precise explanation for changes in climate observed since the industrial revolution and throughout geologic history. Climate models currently calculate that infrared thermal energy absorbed by greenhouse gases is greater than ultraviolet thermal energy reaching earth when ozone is depleted, yet we all know we get hotter standing in ultraviolet sunlight than in infrared radiation welling up from earth at night.
Objective: To understand the physics of how ozone depletion could be a better explanation for observed warming.
Method: Recognizing that thermal energy is the oscillations of all the degrees of freedom of all the bonds holding matter together, that energy of each atomic oscillator is equal to the Planck constant times the frequency of each oscillation, and that this energy is an intensive physical property that is therefore not additive, we examine from first principles how thermal energy flows via electromagnetic radiation.
Results: Radiant thermal energy is not a function of bandwidth as currently calculated. It is a function only of frequency of oscillation. The higher the frequency, the higher the temperature to which the absorbing body will be raised. Intensity and amount of radiation only determine the rate of warming.
Conclusions: Ozone depletion provides a more precise explanation for observed global warming than greenhouse-warming theory.

Ward, P. L., 2015, Chapter 54. The ozone depletion theory of global warming: International Conference on Geoscience and Environmental Engineering, Shenzhen, China, November 16-17, in Chan, K., ed., Future Communication Technology and Engineering: Proceedings of the 2014 International Conference on Future Communication Technology and Engineering (FCTE 2014), Shenzhen, China, 16-17 November 2014, CRC Press, p. 253-259. [PDF]

Mean global surface temperatures have remained essentially constant since 1998 while carbon-dioxide concentrations continue to increase. Record high temperatures and drought were common in North America during 2012-2013, while record rains flooded England. Here we show that ozone depletion caused by anthropogenic chlorofluorocarbons and small, effusive volcanic eruptions explains these and other climate anomalies clearly. The highest-energy ultraviolet-B radiation from the sun is normally absorbed by the ozone layer in the lower stratosphere. When ozone is depleted, as observed since 1970, more ultraviolet-B energy is measured reaching Earth. Greenhouse-gas theory underestimates the thermal effects of ozone depletion be-cause it assumes electromagnetic radiation propagates as waves in space. Radiation transfers thermal energy as frequency, not wavelength. The thermal energy in ultraviolet-B radiation is 48 times the thermal energy in infrared radiation absorbed by greenhouse gases. There simply is not enough thermal energy absorbed by greenhouse gases to cause observed global warming.

Ward, P. L., 2010, Understanding volcanoes may be the key to controlling global warming: Society of Vacuum Coaters Bulletin, Summer, p. 26-34. [PDF]

I was invited to give the Plenary Address on April 18, 2010, opening the 2010 Technical Conference of the Society of Vacuum Coaters with the agreement that I would provide this paper for their summer Bulletin.

Ward, P. L., 2009, Sulfur dioxide initiates global climate change in four ways: Thin Solid Films, v. 517, no. 11, p. 3188-3203, doi:10.1016/j.tsf.2009.01.005. [PDF] [Table S1 PDF] [Table S1 XLS] [References PDF]

This paper compiles a wide variety of data on volcanic activity and climate in the last 100 years, during and since the last ice age, and throughout the past 542 million years. These data are the primary contribution of this paper and are still the most detailed compilations available.Increases in sulfur dioxide and increases in warming are roughly contemporaneous in many cases. Thus I suggested a possible causal relationship. In retrospect I wish I had made this more of a question. Soon after this paper was published, as I tried to understand any causal relationship better, I realized that sulfur dioxide simply provides the footprint of volcanism, a rough measure of how much volcanism occurred per unit time. Meanwhile I began to explore in detail why the lowest levels of total column ozone ever observed occurred in 1992, the year following the major eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines and in 2011, the year following the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. It is now clear, as explained in the 2014 paper and on this web site, that ozone depletion caused especially by effusive volcanism leads to global warming, that ozone depletion due to anthropogenic chlorofluorocarbons caused recent global warming primarily between 1970 and 1998, and that the increases in anthropogenic sulfur dioxide from 1935 to 1975 occurred too early to have caused the warming.