There is a ridge in the mid Pacific that is roiling and churning with volcanic, geothermal and tectonic activity. I personally do not know if this ridge that extends for thousands of miles bellow the Pacific Ocean has any effect on the heating of the ocean and the production and loosing of huge amounts of CO2, But I have a feeling it does. In fact, Ian Plimer says that very thing on the youtube videos.
Since about 90% of anthropogenic CO2 is created in the Northern Hemisphere, it makes sense that the Mauna Loa CO2 graph would show a rise here with a lag of some time before the SH graphs show the CO2. However that is not the case. The CO2 rises are concurrent, thereby implicating a global natural source of the CO2. The Pacific is the prime candidate for that role. Along with the CO2 the ridge of course also produces heat.

Thanks for your informative article. You also have a pleasant way with the trolls.

I’ll agree with your description in part. During minor El Ninos and La Ninas, changes in trade winds and currents simply redistribute “surface” waters. The water sloshes back and forth along the equatorial Pacific. However, during more significant El Nino events, waters that were below the surface of the Pacific Warm Pool are also redistributed to the surface. So before those significant El Nino events, the water was below the surface of the Pacific Warm Pool (to depths of 300 meters or so). At that time, it’s not part of the surface temperature record. Then, during and after the El Nino, the warm water that was formerly held by the Pacific Warm Pool (that was excluded from the temperature record) is on the surface, where it is redistributed by surface currents to the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans (and now included in the surface temperature record). That’s why there are those step changes in the East Indian-West Pacific SST anomalies following the 1997/98 and the 1986/87/88 El Ninos.

I illustrated that effect in the “Can El Nino Events Explain All of the Warming…” posts here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of.html
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of_11.html

Anthony also posted those here at WUWT. You may find the comments informative:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/11/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of-the-global-warming-since-1976-%E2%80%93-part-1/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/01/12/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of-the-global-warming-since-1976-%E2%80%93-part-2/

The video “The Lingering Effects of the 1997/98 El Nino” also shows the effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uv4Xc4D0Dk

Regards

Your point is perfectly correct but envisages a stable situation.

The global air temperature is in constant change either rising or falling and often moving in different directions in different places but on average overall there is always either a warming trend or a cooling trend.

If warming is occurring it is true that more vapour enters the air and the whole hydrological process is energised but on average the increasing capacity of the air to hold water as vapour will mean that less of the new vapour than is taken up will be converted to clouds or precipitation.

That situation only applies whilst there is a continuing warming change in progress. the extra vapour being taken up lags behind the extra carrying capacity caused by the increasing warmth so there is a net drying out and reduction in overall cloud cover but only while the warming process is continuing.

The opposite occurs during a cooling trend.

“No lag in solar max? No geothermal? No geothermal affected by solar minimum?”

I agree that these are sensible suggestions, but neither of these, separate or combined, have sufficient energy to produce the global temperature rises seen.

“No changes due to cosmic rays, clouds or anything whatsoever?”

I didn’t say that – you’re jumping to conclusions. Cloud cover, particulates and atmospheric composition all will change the way heat is transferred and reflected through the atmosphere.

Climate scientists have learnt a good deal about these contributions, though their effects have certainly not been completely disentangled. But to claim we have “no idea” is to ignore the underlying physics of what might have been driving the observed rise in temperature in the last one hundred years.

“If the ocean SSts rise then the air will warm and since warmer air will hold more water as vapour then cloudiness will decrease and the warming effect will be enhanced by extra sunlight.”

Stephen, I doubt if it’s that simple. Warmer air will hold more water vapor, true. But clouds are transient and microclimatic relative to an overall heating. Generally, IMO, the hotter the oceans, the more clouds will form, and more often, too. This is a self-regulating, stable system.

Putting it another way, more water vapor at sea level means more rising currents, which means more H²O in the upper atmosphere, where it cools, forms clouds, and ultimately rains back whence it came. Not quite steady state, but close. Does that help?

No lag in solar max? No geothermal? No geothermal affected by solar minimum? No changes due to cosmic rays, clouds or anything whatsoever?

You must be correct. It could only be the tiny increase in plant food.

Please, TomP, You are not the all-knowing father. Show a little humility. You have no idea what drives earth temperatures. Just because climate science is in its infancy doesn’t mean we must display the thinking processes of infants.

That is the right question to ask.

The underlying increase in energy as seen by an increase in global temperatures must be due to recent changes in the solar power heating the Earth, not changes in the oceans. As the output of the sun is quite constant, this change in solar power must be due to a change in the the way heat is transferred and reflected through the atmosphere.

I am a frequent lurker on the site, and I have a very basic question about El Ninos and La nias. My understanding of the above phenomena is that they are caused by ocean currents distributing/tansporting seawater of different temperatures into where they have not been before. If that is the case, it seems to me to be merely a redistribution of heat. Since additional heat is not created or trapped, how does the global temperature get affected by El Ninos and La Ninas. Any clarification by anyone on this forum would be most appreciated.

Thanks
Guy

It was your post that prompted mine. Sorry that I didn’t make that clear.

Will consider your reference.

Can it be that you are discussing geothermal flux (this has been essentially ignored through virtually every thread I have read) and you wondering about its contribution without having read my post that is only 3 or 4 posts above yours! ? Check it out and the reference. It has been so ignored that I was thinking I might term it the “Pearse Theory of El Nino Generation” to get a reaction from some one. I introduced the idea at an earlier post in this thread and got no takers.

The establishment view is that overall it is too small to make much difference but I find that unconvincing.

The measurements available to us in calculating geothermal flux are woefully inadequate.

Nevertheless I have ignored it for the purpose of my climate theory because if one concentrates on the multidecadal effects of ocean cycles on the global air temperature it does not matter too much what causes the scale and timing of the various ocean cycles. The fact that they exist at all is the critical new information acquired since 1988 when the climate establishment put all it’s cards on CO2 and have since refused to consider anything else.

However there is considerable doubt about the size of solar variation being sufficient on it’s own to drive the changes in global air temperature actually observed. Personally I currently think solar changes are sufficient on century time scales i.e. across multiple individual solar cycles.

At present my published theories simply rely on an amplification effect by ocean cycles both as regards periods of cooling and periods of warming but if the geothermal effect turns out to be larger than currently thought then that could be incoporated into my scenario with no difficulty.

For anyone unfamiliar with my published work it can be found here:

http://climaterealists.com/index.php?tid=37

If electrolytic capacitors are responsible for all that power coming out of the speakers, it rather begs the question of where they are getting all this additional energy.

I think I may have a mechanism for the El Nino heat. In a post above, I suggested that geothermal flux from the interior has been essentially ignored (or dismissed as too minor). The fact there has been much made of the variations of the solar cycle heat which is only 0.2W per m2 suggests that geothermal flux deserves consideration. I won’t go far into arguments why I believe that geophysicists have underestimated the flux (major stable cratons that are centred on the Precambrian shields of the continents are comparitively cool being over the cool return cycle of the convective currents in the mantle that rise up hot under the mid ocean ridges and these are where most calculations of geothermal flux have been made. Also, the friction of the plate margins around the pacific “ring of fire” generate heat and the basaltic ocean crust is much more heat conductive than the continental granitic rocks – whew!)

Geothermal flux is generally given as 0.03W per m2 “average”. Notwithstanding my thoughts that it is an underestimate, the variation between ocean basins and continental crust is quite large. See the following and especially see where the highest flux is: 0.35W per m2 off the west coasts of South America and west of Australia.

http://geophysics.ou.edu/geomechanics/notes/heatflow/global_heat_flow.htm

Now imagine the sea water at the sea floor gathering heat at 0.35W /m2 (twenty-four hours a day not 12) until it warms, expands and wells up – also imagine the ocean currents from N and S hemispheres gathering this rising plume together and stretching it out along the equator.

Perhaps one of you is better set up to do the math to determine the time taken to heat up an adequate volume until it rises to create El Nino. Or alternatively tear the idea apart.

And we complete the circle.

But you didn’t respond to the closing question in my last reply.

You continued, “The oceans cannot be the ultimate source here, and that is why there are no publications which make such a claim.”

If and when GCMs are capable of recreating the factors that contribute to ENSO and if and when they are able to reproduce the multiyear impacts of a single event on global climate, that might change.

Only time will tell.

Regards.

If El Niños are responsible for all the global warming, it rather begs the question as to where they are getting all of this additional energy. The oceans cannot be the ultimate source here, and that is why there are no publications which make such a claim.

For my response I’ll simply cut and paste a comment I made at Accuweather a few months ago: What I’ve shown recently in my posts “Can El Nino Events Explain All of the Global Warming Since 1976?” (Parts 1 and 2 and the two supplements) is that El Nino events (El Nino events that are not suppressed by volcanic eruptions) cause step changes (increases) in the East Indian and West Pacific SST anomalies. This has never been discussed in any research paper. If it has, I could not find it. Think about this for a moment: The East Indian and West Pacific Oceans that have those step changes represent between 25 to 30% of the global ocean between 60S and 65N, yet the step changes aren’t accounted for by any climate study. Are the El Nino-induced step changes enough to explain all of the SST warming since 1910? Since GCMs have not addressed this and apparently can’t address it, I can’t answer the question…and no one else can.

Let me add to that: Until GCMs can reproduce the magnitude and frequency of ENSO events and reproduce the multitude of processes (before, during, and after) that initiate and are responses to those ENSO events on monthly, annual and decadal bases, GCMs have little predictive value. They simply answer a what-if scenario (what they were designed to do) in a fantasy world that has no basis in reality.

And you wrote, “I’m afraid no reasons for what might have caused a change in the cloud cover, but there are some other suggested reasons for a change in solar forcing that have been more fully investigated.”

And they are?