Tisdale on the importance of El Nino's little sister – recharging ocean heat content

The only thing missing here is how this works when the system is seeking a long-term cooler state.
Everything we have kept track of pertains to a system seeking a long-term warmer state.
We know how the latter works.
What happens in the former scenario? (i.e. – a cooling state).

Wonderful post.
So may I infer that this could be one of the natural positive energy events, that Prof. Jones has not been able to find yet?
If so, how much of the last 40 years of temperature rise would you be willing to attribute to this?
Thanx for sharing your expertise Bob!

This is a concern as it means each time we have a warming period to reach a new and probably higher level of global mean temperature, the AGW scam will get stronger and stronger. So, in time they will win and we’ll be saddled with higher taxes. There’s only one way to stop this for sure – take the leading clowns of the AGW scam to court and try and prove them guilty then dish out suitable punishment.

Enlightening. Thank you.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

You say higher Trade winds over open ocean is a warming effect. It seems sensible that for any level of insolation of the tropical sea surface that there should be a wind speed that evaporatively cools the surface at the same rate as the heating.
This hot damp air is the fuel for Willis E’s ITCZ super Cu-Nims which are certainly a cooling effect.
Just because satellites see open ocean under the Trade Winds, it does not follow that there is a net solar heating, especially during the night.

“Thumbnail (23:25:28) :
Times ONline weighs in:
WORLD MAY NOT BE WARMING, SAY SCIENTISTS
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece
”
Rich. Read Kevin Trenberth’s response in the article.

Jones finally makes admission to the BBC’s AGW fanatic Harrabin.
Instead of a long commentary, I have highlighted the most important bit with stars.
Contrast what Jones is saying with Harrabin’s insistence that AGW still exists. And this is the man who wants to interview working skeptic British scientists!
……………………………………
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html
Jonathan Petre
14th February 2010
* Data for vital ‘hockey stick graph’ has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before – but NOT due to man-made changes
The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information. Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.
Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’. The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
***************************************************************************
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
***************************************************************************
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
Professor Jones has been in the spotlight since he stepped down as director of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit after the leaking of emails that sceptics claim show scientists were manipulating data.
The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
* MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: The professor’s amazing climate change retreat
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1250813/The-professor-s-amazing-climate-change-retreat.html
Following the leak of the emails, Professor Jones has been accused of ‘scientific fraud’ for allegedly deliberately suppressing information and refusing to share vital data with critics.
Discussing the interview, the BBC’s environmental analyst Roger Harrabin said he had spoken to colleagues of Professor Jones who had told him that his strengths included integrity and doggedness but not record-keeping and office tidying. Mr Harrabin, who conducted the interview for the BBC’s website, said the professor had been collating tens of thousands of pieces of data from around the world to produce a coherent record of temperature change. That material has been used to produce the ‘hockey stick graph’ which is relatively flat for centuries before rising steeply in recent decades.
According to Mr Harrabin, colleagues of Professor Jones said ‘his office is piled high with paper, fragments from over the years, tens of thousands of pieces of paper, and they suspect what happened was he took in the raw data to a central database and then let the pieces of paper go because he never realised that 20 years later he would be held to account over them’. Asked by Mr Harrabin about these issues, Professor Jones admitted the lack of organisation in the system had contributed to his reluctance to share data with critics, which he regretted. But he denied he had cheated over the data or unfairly influenced the scientific process, and said he still believed recent temperature rises were predominantly man-made.
Asked about whether he lost track of data, Professor Jones said: ‘There is some truth in that. We do have a trail of where the weather stations have come from but it’s probably not as good as it should be. There’s a continual updating of the dataset. Keeping track of everything is difficult. Some countries will do lots of checking on their data then issue improved data, so it can be very difficult. We have improved but we have to improve more.’
He also agreed that there had been two periods which experienced similar warming, from 1910 to 1940 and from 1975 to 1998, but said these could be explained by natural phenomena whereas more recent warming could not.
He further admitted that in the last 15 years there had been no ‘statistically significant’ warming, although he argued this was a blip rather than the long-term trend. And he said that the debate over whether the world could have been even warmer than now during the medieval period, when there is evidence of high temperatures in northern countries, was far from settled.
Sceptics believe there is strong evidence that the world was warmer between about 800 and 1300 AD than now because of evidence of high temperatures in northern countries. But climate change advocates have dismissed this as false or only applying to the northern part of the world.
Professor Jones departed from this consensus when he said: ‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia. For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions. Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’
Sceptics said this was the first time a senior scientist working with the IPCC had admitted to the possibility that the Medieval Warming Period could have been global, and therefore the world could have been hotter then than now.
Professor Jones criticised those who complained he had not shared his data with them, saying they could always collate their own from publicly available material in the US. And he said the climate had not cooled ‘until recently – and then barely at all. The trend is a warming trend’.
***************************************************************************
Mr Harrabin told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite the controversies, there still appeared to be no fundamental flaws in the majority scientific view that climate change was largely man-made.
***************************************************************************
But Dr Benny Pieser, director of the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, said Professor Jones’s ‘excuses’ for his failure to share data were hollow as he had shared it with colleagues and ‘mates’. He said that until all the data was released, sceptics could not test it to see if it supported the conclusions claimed by climate change advocates. He added that the professor’s concessions over medieval warming were ‘significant’ because they were his first public admission that the science was not settled.

Wow, data overload. Maybe next time you could provide an abstract? That took me forever to read and required the consumption of two Starbucks Grande Caramel Macchiato’s, an Adderall, and one 5-hour energy drink.
Aside from that, I thought it was a very informative and compelling essay 🙂

rbateman (21:04:36): You wrote, “The only thing missing here is how this works when the system is seeking a long-term cooler state.”
During the cooling phase of the AMO, does the North Atlantic provide feedback to the tropical Pacific, suppressing the intensity and frequency of ENSO events? North Atlantic SST and OHC anomalies appear to have peaked in 2005. If that is an indication that the AMO has shifted into its cooling phase, then we’ll get to watch over the next 2.5 to 3 decades.

Geoff Sherrington (23:05:09) : You asked, “Is the El Nino/La Nina a conservative system wrt heat. That is, it it a cycle of redistributon of existing heat, or is heat taken from/added to the system?”
El Nino events discharge and redistribute heat that exists since the previous La Nina. The La Nina that follows the El Nino returns part of the leftover warm water to the Pacific Warm Pool for the next El Nino, redistributes the rest of the warm water to nearby oceans, and recharges the heat released by the El Nino through increases in downward shortwave radiation. Over the long term, though, the typical La Nina does not recharge all of the heat discharged during the previous El Nino, and tropical Pacific declines for a decade or two.
You asked, “if the latter where does the excess heting/coolong report for measurement?”
Tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2vja1z5.png
You asked, “has the mixture of observing stations in the two reference periods stayed about constant, or have we had a change like ‘the march of the thermometers’?”
Please rephrase the question. I’m not sure what you’re asking.
And with respect to your PDO/rainfall in Australia question, I’ll have to say that I can’t answer your question. I haven’t studied the relationship.

stephen richards (01:29:00) : You asked, “If the Niño/a are the major contributor to global temps, and there is no reason why they could not be, then for a cooler planet the La Niñas would need to be less cold or non existent ? Does that seem right to you.?”
The feedback from another variable such as the AMO may have an effect that is not accounted for in the discussion. Note that I research and illustrate the late 20th Century warming period for a number of reasons. It’s the warming period the AGW proponents say can only be caused by greenhouse gases, and the data shows they’re wrong. Second, before the satellite and buoys eras, a lot of the SST data is infilled, especially in the South Pacific.

Is there some way to get the ocean salinity changes and correllate with them to these Ocean temperature changes?
Thanks
Joe

“stephen richards (01:29:00) : You asked, “If the Niño/a are the major contributor to global temps, and there is no reason why they could not be, then for a cooler planet the La Niñas would need to be less cold or non existent ? Does that seem right to you.?”
That is a matter of concern for me too. It is said that during a negative PDO phase the La Nina is stronger but the El Nino is weaker.
Yet Bob is saying that the La Nina needs to be strong or lengthy to fuel a subsequent strong El Nino. There seems to be a logical inconsistency there.
The most likely implication of the unlikeliness of that proposition is that something in the oceans on a larger scale is driving the ENSO and PDO phenomena.

Joe (05:28:14) : You asked, “Is there some way to get the ocean salinity changes and correllate with them to these Ocean temperature changes?”
The Ocean Heat Content data also accounts for changes in salinity. I cannot isolate them. I also have not run into a website that offers halosteric sea level data in a user-friendly format. But there are studies that isolate the salinity (halosteric) component.

Good piece of work, Bob, which I enjoyed reading.
Some interesting ideas regarding how this could be extended to correlate to longer-term climate change based on effects of the solar cycles hypothesised in a paper by Erl Happ and Carl Wolk – “Solar warming – Solar cooling” here:-
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009ow /04/05/solar-warming-solar-cooling/
Here’s their conclusion –
“Solar activity has weakened the [polar] vortex in both hemispheres. Periodic change in 200hPa temperature in response to changing ozone content and changing short wave radiation change ice cloud density and prevalence. This drives the Southern Oscillation. By and large it is the sea that stores energy and transports it to higher latitudes producing warmer winters. Ultimately sea surface temperature depends upon the Quasi Biennial Oscillation in ultraviolet radiation and the solar wind. The change in the solar QBO is responsible for the waxing and waning of the Southern Oscillation as it changes between El Nino and La Nina dominance.”
I’d be very interested to see if others think the paper is useful?

Stephen Wilde (05:10:27) :
“such that the effect on the Pacific warm pool is a regional consequence of more subtle global changes involving all the oceans combined”
Definitely global. The anomalies reverse all over: http://www.crces.org/presentations/dmv_ipwp/images/figure7.gif
from: http://www.crces.org/presentations/dmv_ipwp/

Bob,
Ruth Curry, oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has done extensive salinity readings for a great many years.
There is a great amount of simularities when cross-referencing the different degree of changes from the north Atlantic to the Pacific.
Thanks Joe

Tenuc (07:36:00) : Regarding Erl Happ’s, “Solar warming – Solar cooling” post that you linked:
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/solar-warming-solar-cooling/
Refer to his Figure 2. I see no correlation between the solar cycles and equatorial temperatures at 20hPa and 200hPa. Based on it, the rest of the assumptions are just that, assumptions.

Tenuc (07:36:00) : From the paper you quoted:
As solar activity ramped strongly after 1978 the rate of evaporation from the tropical oceans increased. The Earth and particularly the lower troposphere emitted more long-wave radiation. This promoted marked heating at 100hPa. This period of strong heating came to an end about 2005 and 100hPa temperature has since returned to pre 1978 levels. In the absence of further solar stimulus the tropical oceans should gradually cool.
http://climatechange1.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/solar-warming-solar-cooling/#comment-272

Bob Tisdale:
I find your ideas interesting. However, in order to have an actual explanation for something we need two separate things. First, we need some plausible mechanism by which cause becomes effect, and then we need data to show that it actually occurs. Unless I am too block-headed to see this, I feel you show us the second part without having provided the first.
Someone earlier on this thread asked if this is a cyclic process? The answer is part of the first requirement. Someone else asked what is going on during the cooling phase? That’s also part of the mechanical hypothesis. I have long asked whether the attendant moistening of the atmosphere plays a significant role. That is also part of the mechanical explanation.
Please respond to my paraphrasing of your hypothesis here. ENSO is a heat engine. It absorbs heat from sunlight in the tropics, converts this to work needed to transport warm water all over the Pacific and Indian oceans, and then expels waste heat in higher latitudes. This waste heat exhibits itself as anomalously high lower tropospheric temperatures in polar and temperate regions — and this raises global mean temperature.
Now in order to explain how a cyclic engine manages to produce semi-permanent step increases and/or secular trends in temperature, something about the engine is causing it to run in a larger enclosed area in either its P-V diagram (indicator diagram in the terminology of engines) or equivalently in its T-S diagram.

Kevin Kilty (08:42:57) :
First, we need some plausible mechanism by which cause becomes effect, and then we need data to show that it actually occurs
If such a mechanism it is known then, and only then, forecasts are possible.

tallbloke (08:13:12) :
Another interesting question is why didn’t all the other La-Ninas cause steps in OHC, why only the 75 and 95 Ninas? LOD changed from increasing to decreasing around 73 and 93 so I’ll bet those changes in earth rotation are the real cause of the step ups. Then all we need to get a cooling phase is a flip back to increasing LOD.

tallbloke (08:13:12)
I’m taking Leif at his word purely as a logical exercise.
I’m not a scientist but I’m good with words and logic so I can take the science provided by others and look at it in new ways to try and formulate a coherent whole without a personal bias towards any specific outcome.
Bob’s work on ENSO is extremely fine and detailed but it’s only a small portion of the whole and I don’t think he has sorted out the ‘chicken and egg’ adequately as yet.
Erl Happ and Svensmark have some nice ideas on the response of the upper atmosphere from solar forcings which could be made to fit my proposition that the rate of energy loss to space is affected by the amount of turbulence on the solar surface which does have an effect on the thermosphere and possibly all the other portions of the atmosphere from stratosphere upwards.
Leif might well be right about the smallness of solar variation in terms of power output but his opinion that there is no other aspect of solar variation that might have a disproportionate effect on the rate of energy flow through the Earth system I find to be somewhat questionable given the variability we see in the satellite records of outward bound infra red.
AGW is now dead. There is lots of pent up science in the system that has been suppressed but which is now going to receive lots of attention.
I like the attention now being given to Dr. Miskolczi’s calculations because if correct those calculations provide a sound mathematical basis for my own propositions.
However there is lots to play for in the individual components of the climate system and for that reason I am loth to criticise the work of any other climate sceptics.
Let this site and other similar sites try to make up the scientific ground lost over the past 20 years of climatological nonsense.
Let Realclimate et al read and weep.

It seems that endless days and nights of CTD deployments,busted fingers,burned hands, 200 plus days a year seatime, busted marriages, the loss of good shipmates, melanoma, etc. provided some data afterall.
Heres to the crews of the “Oceo” and the “Disco”.
Tradewind days shipmate.
Thanks Bob

Rotational energy.
Physicist are about to hate my guts but…
You will not find this in any book as it was experimentation and theory and getting results.
Our Planets and suns rotational energy is what has been infused already into the planet and sun by density changes. The slowdown is the slow release of this energy until it is all used up. The moons small density will have an effect on the surface of the planet as water is denser than land and has elasticity to it. Slowdown the planet? Not likely as it is pulled along with it by the atmosphere and the mgnetic field and not attached to the surface of the planet.
The radius of a circle is not what it seems.
Being a ball of gases or heated materials or a mixture of both, a circle is a ball of circle is a ball of circles surrounded by a ball of circles, etc. going to the center.
When you add an axis, there is a center of balance between the center to the outer ring of a circle. When rotated, this center of balance shifts towards the outer ring. This compresses and makes dense the material or gases.
Simple experiment:
One, a door. As you try to open it towards the hinge side, you need more energy to push it.
Two, A spoked wheel with a light spring and a weight closer to the center. When this is rotated, the spring compresses changing its density and incorporating energy. When allowed to be released, the enrgy slowly is released and the spring relaxes until all the energy is gone.
Now you can see how density ccan effect the atmospheres rotational abilities.
Joe

Dear Sir;
For the first time in many efforts, I comprehended a nontrivial fraction of your post, and some others now.
The first discussion I’ve found of where the dang heat could be going while the GAT seems to be not increasing.
In a very simplistic way, the currents act somewhat like inductors, to the extent that they have reversals of flow. Equally simplistically, the water is acting capacitively, as far as soaking up the heat.
Surely much that is wrong with prior paragraph. Is there a level of model which is more simplistic than ‘zero-th’ order?
Thanks for the fine work, regardless of my blither.
RR

Richard M (12:04:09)
I agree about the importance of Bob’s work provided we can link it to the longer term climate cycles. I have often complimented Bob’s work.
As regards AGW I am already convinced that Bob’s work has helped to do the business of scotching that by helping to point out that most if not all of the 20th century temperature changes can be accounted for by oceanic and solar behaviour without invoking CO2.
That job having been done the next question is to determine how Bob’s work fits into a more general long term climate description.
The issue for me lies in deciding whether Bob’s work helps to enlighten us beyond the PDO timescale and that is where the chicken and egg problem comes in.
If it be the case that the MWP/LIA/ Modern Warm Period cycle is primarily ocean induced then it is outside Bob’s work and implies a possibility that the PDO phase shift is not merely an ENSO artifact but rather an independent feature modifying ENSO over a time scale upon which the longer term ocean cycling interacts with ENSO events.
Indeed it is plausible that longer term ocean cycles (different in each ocean) averaged out globally first affect the air circulations and then affect the Trade Winds resulting in the ENSO cycle.
Thus possibly (I’m not sure on this yet) Bob could have the causation reversed.

If not considered other acting forces we´ll remain in a flintstones´universe where everything is disconnected, made out of rounded flintstones and we can only observe if the witch sea pot it´s boiling up or it is not, we can´t go further this way.

Ref – Pascvaks (12:53:08) :
Bob Tisdale:
“Curious if these links HAVE anything to do with (or can help you with) the questions you still have:”
_____________
Here’s another version, this one’s flat
http://veimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/16527/PIA04652_lrg.jpg

Kevin Kilty: Many thanks for your insightful comment. Unfortunately, every post I write on ENSO cannot include all facets of it. You paraphrased my post and asked me to comment. You wrote, “ENSO is a heat engine. It absorbs heat from sunlight in the tropics, converts this to work needed to transport warm water all over the Pacific and Indian oceans, and then expels waste heat in higher latitudes. This waste heat exhibits itself as anomalously high lower tropospheric temperatures in polar and temperate regions — and this raises global mean temperature.”
The comparison of ENSO to a heat engine brought back memories. It reminded me of a series of posts written about a decade ago, by NASA or NOAA or a college. Wish I could find it. It was a year or so after the 1997/98 El Nino.
Regardless, a few clarifications if I may. There are numerous papers written about ENSO discharge and recharge. La Nina is the recharge phase. It allows more sunlight to warm the tropical Pacific. The increased trade winds carry that warm water to the Pacific Warm Pool and also return to the west any remaining warm water that had been released by the El Nino. Some of this warm water will be carried poleward by surface currents, or to the Indian Ocean by way of the Indonesian Throughflow. The warm water carried poleward during the La Nina will continue to release heat. During the El Nino, the discharge phase, warm water that had been stored in the Pacific Warm Pool sloshes to the east where it spreads across the surface, raising sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific. On the surface, it releases more heat than normal, which is carried poleward by normal atmospheric processes. However, since the location of the warm water has changed, so has the area with the convection. This change also shifts global atmospheric circulation patterns, causing rises in surface temperatures outside of the tropical Pacific.
You continued, “Now in order to explain how a cyclic engine manages to produce semi-permanent step increases and/or secular trends in temperature, something about the engine is causing it to run in a larger enclosed area…”
It’s really not a semi-permanent step. It appears so because of the focus on the El Nino as the discharge phase, but in reality the warm water released by the El Nino remains on the surface during the La Nina phase. This can be seen in a graph of the SST anomalies for an area in the Northwest Pacific that’s east of Japan known as the Kuroshio Extension…
http://i48.tinypic.com/2eb5log.png
Note that the lagged rise in SST anomalies is approximately 40% as high as the rise in NINO3.4 SST anomalies during the El Nino, but that the rise in the Kuroshio Extension SST anomalies occurs during the La Nina. The North Atlantic (not illustrated) also governed by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, which had caused the North Atlantic SST anomalies to rise at a rate more than 2 times faster than the global SST anomalies…until ~2005. The North Atlantic SST anomalies now appear to be dropping in response to a shift in the AMO.
And the engine, as you call it, runs in a larger enclosed area because ocean currents and atmospheric circulation carry the heat toward the poles, with the majority going to the Northern Hemisphere. Since the SST anomalies and TLT anomalies of the Northern Hemisphere rose in response to the 1997/98 El Nino and portions rose during the La Nina that followed, it gives the appearance of a permanent upward step. But with the SST anomalies of the North Atlantic now dropping in response to the AMO, will the appearance of upward steps continue? We’ll have to watch and see.
Kevin, please let me know if that answered your questions.

Caleb: You wrote, “I’d like to know more about what makes the Trade Winds stronger, and what makes them weaker, because it seems to be the difference between the Pacific ‘recharging’ or ‘discharging.'”
Have you read Bill Kessler’s FAQ web page on ENSO? It provides a not-to-technical discussion of the coupled ocean-atmopsphere processes associated with El Nino and La Nina events.
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/occasionally-asked-questions.html

Richard M (09:21:09) : You wrote, “The big question still remains. What causes ENSO in the first place. The trade winds could be an effect of ENSO with the PWP heat rising leading to the trades increasing. Also, what causes the variation in El Nino (Modoki).”
ENSO processes are well understood. Refer to Bill Kessler’s FAQ web page for an overview:
http://faculty.washington.edu/kessler/occasionally-asked-questions.html
El Nino Modoki are discussed in great detail (78 pages worth) in Ashok et al (2007) “El Nino Modoki and its Possible Teleconnection.” https://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d1/iod/publications/modoki-ashok.pdf
Regards

Bob,
Thanks for your reply. What you have described doesn’t quite get to my point. However, I may have a better picture of your hypothesis because of your discussing the connection of ENSO to the PDO in another posting on this thread. I had assumed your hypothesis is one of explaining a secular increase in global temperature, but now I realize you may be saying that varying intensity of ENSO leads to the longer cycle we call PDO, and, who knows, the PDO leads to longer cycles and so on ad nauseum. We short-lived humans look at the climatic data and think we are looking at a secular trend, but we are simply looking at a long cycle wrought by ENSO. I can accept this as a reasonable possibility.
Did I paraphrase your thinking correctly?

Pascvaks (12:53:08) : Thanks for the links. I’ll have to study it.

Erl Happ: You asked, “Have you checked the relationships between ENSO 3.4 SST anomalies, tropical Pacific SST anomalies and global tropical SST anomalies? I don’t think ENSO 3.4 anomalies are at all representative of the global tropics.”
Yup:
http://i49.tinypic.com/111utmr.png
Looks to me as though Scaled NINO3.4 SST anomalies and the Tropical SST anomalies for the Globe and Pacific all match up quite well. There’s some divergence after the 1997/98 El Nino, but nothing unexpected.

Ruhroh: You asked, “Is there a level of model which is more simplistic than ‘zero-th’ order?”
I’m in the process of writing a very detailed, very basic multi-part post on the topics discussed in this one. I don’t know your background or how well versed you are on these discussions, but I’ll let you know it is intended for those new to ENSO, AMO, etc. Even has more basic discussions such as why anomalies are used. I’ve written the first part and have managed to keep it free from acronyms (other than two uses of ENSO). But I want to release all of the posts at once, so it may take me another few months to get through it all.

Thank you Bob for your help on all of the questions here. One more from me.
-It appears this Nino is dropping quite fast temperature wise,is this an unusual
drop or just the fact that it peaked quickly?
Neutral by April, I say…

Bob, at (03:38:52), you wrote During a La Nina event, tropical Pacific trade winds rise above normal levels. The increase in trade winds reduces cloud cover. Reduced cloud cover allows more Downward Shortwave Radiation (visible light) to warm the tropical Pacific.” I should have added “…raising tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content,” to eliminate the possibility of confusion. Note in the above graph how tropical Pacific OHC rises during the La Nina events of 1995/96 and 1998/99/00/01.
The increase in Trade Wind strength reduces cloud cover and thus warms the tropical Pacific. This helps me to understand at least partly the mechanism going on here. I can imagine a circular flow chart with La Nina at the top and El Nino at the bottom as this event seems to be cyclic with amplitude variation. Does such a flow chart exist ?
Thanks for the good work.

Paul Vaughan (20:51:42) :
I haven’t seen a curve. I made it from a file named 5MCSE-Maps-10.pdf
Think it’s http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/5MCSE/5MCSE-Maps-10.pdf but can’t get there at the moment.

John McLean (23:01:53) : You wrote, “Claiming that La Nina events fuel El Nino events is exaggerating one factor at the expense of another.”
I would have to conclude from your opening sentence that you disagree with my presentation and description of the data in this post, John. The graphs present the data, so I have to conclude you disagree with my description of what the graphs show. And I note a not-too-friendly tone in your comment, so I will maintain it in my reply.
You then went on to provide an incomplete and disjointed description of ENSO, John, lasting for a number of paragraphs. Why incomplete and disjointed? Let’s look at a few sentences in your description.
You wrote, “In contrast, during an El Nino the trade winds cease and the water warms from the sun.”
You weren’t very explicit on where the sun warms the water, John. Is it central or western or eastern tropical Pacific? Nor did you describe how the water warms from the sun. Was there a decrease in cloud cover? If so, where? Cloud cover increases over the central and eastern tropical Pacific during an El Nino, and it decreases over the Pacific Warm Pool. Convection and cloud cover follow the location of the warm water. And the variations in downward shortwave radiation oppose the variations in cloud cover. That is, a decrease in cloud cover yields an increase in downward shortwave radiation. Higher trade winds yield less cloud cover over the central and eastern tropical Pacific, which in turn yields more downward shortwave radiation, which in turn yields warmer water. If you were saying that the central and eastern tropical Pacific SST anomalies warm during an El Nino event because of an increase in downward shortwave radiation, you are wrong, John. Over the central and eastern tropical Pacific, cloud cover increases and downward shortwave radiation decreases during an El Nino.
You wrote next, “This causes upwelling in the central Pacific – a lot of cloud near the dateline – and in this situation the Hadley Cell circulation distributes it into the mid latitudes and further north if the circumpolar jetstreams will allow it to (i.e. the winds aren’t extending a long way south).”
There are so many shifts in the topics being discussed in that sentence, John, it’s hard to keep track of them. That’s my example of the disjointed parts of your ESNO description.
Your use of upwelling is associated with warm water, but upwelling is normally associated with cool waters. And your description of why the water warms in the central equatorial Pacific is lacking. The trade winds cause a temperature gradient across the tropical Pacific, with the water in the west warmer than it is in the east. The trade winds also “pile” the warm water in the west so that it is higher in elevation in the west than it is in the east. When the trade winds relax, they no longer hold the warmer water that’s higher in elevation in the west and gravity causes it to slosh east. This raises the temperature of the central and eastern tropical Pacific as the warmer water travels to the east. Your description also fails to include the all-important Kelvin wave(s), but that part’s nitpicky.
I’ve written so many posts about the processes that take place during ENSO events it’s hard to pick a few. I believe if you were to read about ENSO-induced changes warm water volume…
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/11/equatorial-pacific-warm-water-volume.html
…and if you were to read about ENSO-induced changes in the Pacific Equatorial Currents and the Pacific Equatorial Countercurrent…
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/02/equatorial-currents-before-during-and.html
…and if you were to read about the variations in subsurface equatorial Pacific temperatures…
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/02/cross-sectional-views-of-three.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/02/cross-sectional-views-of-three_28.html
…and if you were to read about ENSO-induced changes in tropical Pacific sea level anomalies…
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/animations-of-aviso-tropical-pacific.html
(The above posts are descriptions of the linked animations, but I’m sure you could acquire data if you liked and study it.)
…and if you were to study ENSO-induced changes in Downward Shortwave Radiation presented in Pavlakis et al (2008) “ENSO Surface Shortwave Radiation Forcing over the Tropical Pacific” (2008)…
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/8/6697/2008/acpd-8-6697-2008-print.pdf
…and if you were to study Trenberth et al (2002) “Evolution of El Nino–Southern Oscillation and global atmospheric surface temperatures”…
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/papers/2000JD000298.pdf
…and if you were to read my series of posts on the multiyear aftereffects of ENSO events…
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-detail-on-multiyear-aftereffects.html
AND (with your attention on this one):
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-detail-on-multiyear-aftereffects_26.html
AND:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-detail-on-multiyear-aftereffects.html
…you would find that my presentation and description in this post is confirmed by the papers and by my presentations of the many coupled ocean-atmosphere processes that take place during ENSO events.
You wrote, “The period 1945-76 saw very few El Nino events and a progressive increase towards La Nina conditions. That sustain period of La Nina conditions wasn’t reflected in the very next El Nino, which according to Bob should have been huge.”
I don’t believe I wrote or implied that every strong La Nina event or a sustained period of La Nina events would generate a huge El Nino, John. And I believe I was quite clear on which specific La Nina events raised tropical Pacific OHC. In the summary, I wrote, The La Nina event of 1973/74/75/76 provided the tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content necessary for the increase in strength and frequency of El Nino events from 1976 to 1995. The 1995/96 La Nina furnished the Ocean Heat Content that served as fuel for the 1997/98 El Nino. And the 1998/99/00/01 La Nina recharged the tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content after the 1997/98 El Nino, returning it to the new higher level established by the La Nina of 1995/96.
So this part of your comment either expresses your misunderstanding of what was written or expresses your intentional misrepresentation of it.
Also, the data appears to contradict your statement, John. If you were to examine the NINO3.4 SST anomaly data I presented above in Figure 17…
http://i46.tinypic.com/29krqd2.png
…for the period of 1955 to 1975, you would find that the moderate to strong La Nina events were in fact followed by moderate to strong El Nino events, and that during a “sustained period of La Nina conditions”, such as the one from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s, the La Nina conditions (negative anomalies) were weak and so was the El Nino that followed.
You wrote, “And finally I note that Bob wrote his piece without even one mention to last year’s JGR paper that I wrote with two colleagues and in which we discussed how ENSO activity very largely drives subsequent global temperatures.”
There were hundreds of papers I could have cited, John. Also, it would have been nice if you had provided a link to the July 2009 paper you referred to: “Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature”…
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/InfluenceSoOscillation.pdf
That way those reading your comment wouldn’t have to chase it down on their own.
In short, your paper discusses using the SOI to reproduce global TLT anomalies from the 1960s to present. In your abstract, you wrote, “Change in SOI accounts for 72% of the variance
in GTTA for the 29-year-long MSU record and 68% of the variance in GTTA for the longer 50-year RATPAC record.” Where GTTA is global tropospheric temperature anomalies. I, on the other hand, have shown that global temperature anomalies using HAdCRUT data can be reproduced as a function of NINO3.4 SST anomalies for the period of the 1910s to present, if one assumes that the global oceans integrate the effects of ENSO:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/reproducing-global-temperature.html
In other words, had you used NINO3.4 SST anomalies and global surface temperatures for your study, you may have been able to extend your research back for another four decades and you may have captured more of the rise in global temperatures for the longer time period.
You concluded with, “I’m aware that Bob doesn’t seem to like the SOI calculated according to the Troup system, and I wonder why.”
Really? Have I written that I don’t “seem to like the SOI” somewhere? Please cite your source.

Paul Vaughan: Thanks for the links to the LOD data. Please feel free to post it in your comments during any subsequent threads. Note the subject matter of this post. It’s very specific. In no way have I attempted to explain every facet of ENSO. It’s impossible. Also, the LOD/ENSO relationship appears to be hotly contested, so if I were to include it in posts, it would draw from the points I try to make.
You wrote, “Strongly disagree with this portrayal Bob,” in response to my comment about the PDO being an aftereffect of ENSO.
We can disagree, Paul, I have no problem with that, but in another reply, I posted links to four papers that discussed that the PDO and the basin-wide patterns in the Pacific are aftereffects of ENSO:
Newman et al (2003):
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/Newmanetal2003.pdf
Zhang et al (1997):
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/zwb1997.pdf
Evans et al (2001):
http://iceman2.umd.edu/www/preprints/pdv.pdf
Shakun and Shaman (2009):
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL040313.pdf
I’ve also written two posts that address many of your concerns, and I believe you’ve read at least one of those already, but here they are for those who may be unfamiliar with them:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/04/misunderstandings-about-pdo-revised.html
AND:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/05/revisiting-misunderstandings-about-pdo.html
The first one was also co-posted here at WUWT, for those who want to run through the comments:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/28/misunderstandings-about-the-pacific-decadal-oscillation/
Last, you wrote regarding the effects of ENSO on local climate, “The 2004 event stands out as an example of when N3.4 does not tell the right story locally.”
Erl had probably noted that regional responses to ENSO events varied between El Nino events well before El Nino Modoki were defined and well before the regional effects of El Nino Modoki were isolated from traditional El Nino events. And as someone whose winery is strongly impacted by El Nino events, Erl could probably note differences between one traditional El Nino event and another and between one El Nino Modoki and another. But my reply was to Erl’s specific question about tropical SST anomalies and NINO3.4 SST anomalies.
Regards

Re: John McLean (23:01:53)
Thanks for dropping by and sharing valuable notes.
–
Bob, the links you need are:
1) EOP (Earth orientation parameters):
http://hpiers.obspm.fr/
2) SSD (solar system dynamics):
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons
There’s a learning curve for both.
In the past I have disagreed with you regarding your portrayal of SOI & PDO relations. I continue to do so – more strongly now since you continue to ignore EOP & SSD.
Investigations of terrestrial oscillations involving EOP & SSD are not necessarily “competing” with all of your views – one option I can suggest is regarding them as “complementary”.
When investigating multivariate phase-relations, the interesting features are the mismatches. If all the wiggles matched, we’d have nothing to learn and there would be no need for discussion – indeed we’d simply have redundant variables that could be tossed away without loss of info. From the timescale-specific phase-mismatches between LOD, QBO, GLAAM, SOI, NAM, SAM, etc. we can learn about SOI priming, triggering, etc.
Consider that the solar system is gently rocking the anomaly tendencies one way or another from the central limit (of chaotic & stochastic components) in a manner that integrates meaningfully at some timescales. The notion that the trigger (rocker) does little if the system isn’t primed (piled WPWP) is very useful. Explaining phase-contrast residuals might be easier than most have imagined.
–
tallbloke (13:44:10) “[…] Paul Vaughan warns there may be a counfounding issue with a similar length solar cycle.”
Solar system – (not solar).
–
lgl, one way or another an objective calculation of the eclipse curve is needed. I’ll keep watching in case you turn up some useful links. I want to pursue this – and efficiently. Thanks for sharing the graphs to direct our attention.

Paul Vaughan (11:28:08) :
The link I gave should be correct so maybe there’s a server problem. I saved a copy long ago I can e-mail you if you like (if my mailsystem accepts 20 MB)
Here’s another curve back to 1930, as objective as I’m able to 🙂
http://virakkraft.com/hadcrut-eclipse.png

Re: Bob Tisdale (18:18:39)
Thanks for the elaboration Bob. It helps clarify that technicalities & definitions can drive misunderstandings.
We are indeed focused on different aspects of related phenomena – not a bad thing – complementary as I see it.
Thanks to all who have participated in this thread – the various links provided by contributors have been useful.

Stephen Wilde (12:16:47): It appears I missed one of your comments in my earlier passes through the thread.
In the comment you posted at 12:16:47 on February 14, you questioned my credibility and the credibility of my post and the credibility of my reference without justification when you wrote, “I can see the points you are making about the recharge process and the way you allocate particular periods of recharge to particular periods of release but some of the examples STRAIN CREDIBILITY.” [My caps for emphasis] Then you confirm that, although you questioned the credibility of my post, you failed to research the matter on your own. You did this with your next group of statements, “In particular a period of recharge that was not particularly strong or lengthy is proposed to have recharged for two decades of El Nino events that were pretty substantial in themselves.”
The data is supported by the McPhaden (1999) reference and the data used in it.
You continued, “Can you be sure that the El Nino / La Nina processes combined are all that is involved here (apart from the sun that is) ?” and “It would explain a lot more if there were variations in the water temperatures coming from the oceanic circulations BEFORE they became involved in the ENSO process. In particular that could provide a plausible connection to the longer term climate and oceanic cycling that I have referred to.”
If there were data to support the possibility that warm waters transferred from another basin, rest assured I would have posted those graphs and illustrated that effect. But to counter your doubts, here’s a graph of the OHC for the mid-to-high latitudes of the North Pacific. No corresponding drop in OHC there in 1995/96.
http://i35.tinypic.com/s3j1h1.png
And here’s a graph of the OHC for the mid-to-high latitudes of the South Pacific. No corresponding drop in OHC there in 1995/96 either.
http://i37.tinypic.com/2vhvkwi.png
And here’s a graph of the Indian Ocean OHC. Once again, there was no corresponding drop in OHC in 1995/96, only a minor rise. The rise in tropical Pacific OHC was not caused by a transfer of warm waters from another basin, Stephen.
http://i45.tinypic.com/zl6s1t.png
But you suggested that the 1995/96 rise in Tropical Pacific OHC may have come from below the 700 meter level, when you wrote, “After all a slightly less cold upwelling entering the ENSO process from below would manifest itself in warming at the surface (and vice versa) and that would help to account for the apparent disjunction between the strengths of the La Nina and El Nino phases in your article.”
You can also rested assured that, back in September, when I first posted the NODC OHC data and noted the anomalous 1995/96 rise in Tropical Pacific OHC, I used another dataset that reaches well below the 700 meter level to verify it. The 1995/96 rise also appears in satellite altimetry-based Sea Level Anomaly data for the Tropical Pacific.
http://i45.tinypic.com/24b2sso.png
Your attempt to discredit me and my post failed, Stephen. Again, you should rely on data instead of speculation.

Bob,
One doesn’t need to postulate a transfer of warm water from another basin. Merely a discontinuity in the temperatures along the flow line of the thermohaline circulation or some other oceanic circulation.
But you don’t want to discuss it so that’s that.

Stephen Wilde (06:30:38): You wrote, “I am not trying to discredit you.”
Yet in an earlier comment on this thread you wrote, “…but some of the examples strain credibility.” In another comment you wrote, “There seems to be a logical inconsistency there.” And in another one, you wrote, “The most likely implication of the unlikeliness of that proposition…” And you continued, speculating, “Thus possibly (I’m not sure on this yet) Bob could have the causation reversed.”
And now you claim, “I have been courteous throughout but I do not feel that you have been,” and, “I think you are too sensitive.”
Here at WUWT and at other science blogs, if a courteous blogger with research-based knowledge of the subject matter disagrees with a post or part of it, they explain their disagreement and document the basis of their disagreement with data, most times in the form of graphs, and/or they document it with links to papers or blog posts. You, however, speculate, and through that speculation, you cast doubt on the work of others. On this thread and others, you present objections that have no foundation, no basis in fact. You often shift timescales outside of the one being presented (well beyond the instrument record) and present conjecture. Many times you write in such general terms that when you are confronted with instrument records that contradict your speculations, you shift to paleoclimatological timeframes, and then when confronted with paleoclimatological reconstruction data that refute your conjecture, you rely on the generality of your writings to claim it wasn’t what you meant.
In my (04:03:11) reply to you today, I responded to one of your earlier speculative objections with graphs that indicated there is no evidence that warm water transferred from another ocean basin to the tropical Pacific to cause the 1995/96 rise there. I showed that the height of the water column of the tropical Pacific reflected the same rise as the 1995/96 OHC, countering your inference that a pocket of warm water rose up from below the 700 meter depth in the tropical Pacific. As is typical, in your most recent reply, you offered conjecture with respect to the 1995/96 rise in tropical Pacific OHC when you wrote, “One doesn’t need to postulate a transfer of warm water from another basin. Merely a discontinuity in the temperatures along the flow line of the thermohaline circulation or some other oceanic circulation.”
Once again, I will ask you to document your unspecific conjecture (with data or with a reference that confirms your statement) that “a discontinuity in the temperatures along the flow line of the thermohaline circulation or some other oceanic circulation” is the cause of the 1995/96 rise in tropical Pacific OHC. If you attempt to use data, I will suggest that you center your research on the Pacific Warm Pool, because that’s where the 1995/96 rise was located, as one would expect and as documented in the reference linked to the post. And if you elect to use coordinate-based data, you must also consider that the Pacific Warm Pool varies in geographic area in addition to temperature and depth. This could add some complexity to your studies.
Will you respond by documenting your conjecture about the 1995/96 rise in tropical Pacific OHC, Stephen?

Stephen Wilde: I asked, “Will you respond by documenting your conjecture about the 1995/96 rise in tropical Pacific OHC, Stephen?”
And you did not.

Bob,
OK, I can see the confusion. I was initially talking about the 1970’s La Ninas energising the subsequent two decades but in fact you were talking about the 05/96 La Nina replacing what had been lost in the previous two decades.
However my basic point remains valid. Given that the ocean heat data are not particularly accurate I don’t see how you can jump to such a neat conclusion that La Ninas and El Ninos always and at all times integrate to provide the necessary energy swings to account for all climate variability.
It’s true that you can produce chart after chart expressing linkages but they are just part of the wider scenario and I think you need my perspective to get from ENSO to the longer term climate cycling from MWP to LIA and today.
As I said before:
“We cannot just say ENSO causes air circulation and Trade Wind changes which then cause ENSO in a never ending loop divorced from the rest of the Earth system.”
I have never wished to fall out with you but I do find your attitude to my attempts at understanding deeply frustrating. It really is not necessary to assume ill will on my part.
Perhaps you could now address my points in a way that would be enlightening for all ?

lgl, the Nasa eclipse web server is now functional:
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse.html
I’ve accessed the map file. Can you explain for us the method by which you derive the curves from the sequence of maps?

Paul Vaughan (21:41:19)
Yes that is one of the options but generally I find it implausible because of the thermal inertia of water and the need to accommodate those larger MWP to LIA to date climate swings.
Also one would need to observe the air circulation systems moving latitudinally BEFORE the ocean sea surface temperatures change and I don’t think that happens does it ?
Still, with so many now looking into it the answer should become clearer soon.

Paul Vaughan (21:16:44) :
The method I used is very simple. Using 2010-2013 as example, the eclipses in 2010 and 2013 are typical low latitude and those in 2011 typical high latitude. So I would give 2010 and 2013 a value of 1 and 2011 a 0 value. There will be a few like 2012 on mid-latitude which is hard to determine but it doesn’t matter whether you give it a 0 or a 1. On a long time span you will get the average periode of 3.6 years regardless.

Stephen Wilde: You replied, “For what it’s worth I have always considered that your work as described in your post of (03:57:45) has been entirely successful.”
Yet this post that you disgree with so heartily is simply a rewording of my past posts “as described in” my “post of (03:57:45).” The only new aspect was the illustration of the shift in the Northern Hemipshere SST anomalies for the Mid-to-High Latitudes. So your last comment disagrees with your prior comments on this thread.

Correction: 18 / 5 (i.e. the 5th harmonic of the Saros Cycle) – is that what you are thinking lgl?

Bob Tisdale (15:25:07)
That unfortunate misapprehension has been a source of discomfort for both of us.
Your work is clear and sound for the purpose of disposing of AGW but not for the purpose of a full climate description.
If one could extend your work in the way I have suggested then it would be strengthened not weakened but I accept your explanation that you did not want to introduce issues that would have given warmists sticks to beat you with.
Now that AGW is imploding perhaps you could reconsider ?
I hope we can discuss matters in the future without such a misapprehension in the background.
Believe me, I’ve had to put up with a lot worse elsewhere than you have had to put up with here.

lgl, I worked it out:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/Eclipse_Sin_LNC-3a.png
It’s the beat of LNC with 3 terrestrial years.
I will likely have more to say about this in the days/weeks/months ahead since it reinforces what I’ve already demonstrated here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/DRAFT_VaughanPL2009CO_TPM_SSD_LNC.htm
(Btw, that page needs a fairly serious round of updating.)
I’ll likely initially comment in tallbloke’s forum, which affords a less rushed pace and does not tolerate political obstruction. I hope you will join the discussions there. To find the forum, just click on tallbloke’s name above.
Best Regards,
Paul.

Bob Tisdale
You case for cyclical heat release and recharging is persuasive, it almost has an anthropomorphic ring to it – as if the ocean says “Hey what did I do with that heat, quick – I’d better get it back again”.
A question that emerges is – does the ENSO cycle actually drive long term (at least multi-decadal) change in climate, as a result of the balance of heat gain and loss, or is it a cycling superimposed on long term variation driven by other factors? I appreciate this wider question is complex and not in the scope of the present article.
Some have proposed that astronomical cycles, such as lunar cycles e.g. LNC (see comments by Paul Vaughan) might be entraining the ENSO cycle. RIchard Holle has posted previously with research showing planetary gravitational effects on the sun causing a small wobble in solar centre of gravity with a 4 year periodicity, and a possible ENSO link. These are intriguing possibilities.
One aspect of the El Nino – La Nina cycle is how it affects a historically very important fishery – The Peruvian anchovy. Anchovies prefer the La Nina since the upwelling of deep nutrient-rich water at the eastern Pacific fuels a huge plankton bloom sustaining a multi-million ton annual fishery of anchovies off Peru. However the El Nino cuts off this upwelling and decimates the anchovy shoals. In particular the 1972 and 1998 El Ninos, combined with overfishing, devastated the Peruvian anchovy.

phlogiston (23:56:11): You wrote, “You case for cyclical heat release and recharging is persuasive…”
It’s not my case or proposal. The ENSO discharge-recharge cycle has been discussed in papers as long as the Warm Water Volume data has been available from the TAO Project, possibly longer. I haven’t traced it back any further than that.
You asked, “A question that emerges is – does the ENSO cycle actually drive long term (at least multi-decadal) change in climate, as a result of the balance of heat gain and loss, or is it a cycling superimposed on long term variation driven by other factors?”
The only ocean subset where there appears to be a long-term rise is the North Atlantic. However, if you break that dataset down more, there are apparent ENSO, NAO, and possibly AMOC drivers. Refer to:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/10/north-atlantic-ocean-heat-content-0-700.html
The other ocean basins show long-term declines or little positive trend between periods of sudden rise, and for most of them, the rises are timed with the multiyear La Nina events of 1973/74/75/76 and 1998/99/00/01.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
The North Pacific also shows a long-term decline that is then offset by a sudden rise, also. And it appears to be driven by Sea Level Pressure, timed with the NPI:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/north-pacific-ocean-heat-content-shift.html
I have not studied the proposals of extraterrestrial causes, so I cannot comment.
Regarding your PS: You wrote, “I share however Stephen Wilde’s reservation on the accuracy of the heat budget data – how well do we know Pacific, let alone global, OHC?”
Stephen has reservations about many datasets since his hypotheses are many times contradicted by data. Also, if I was trying to determine the amount of energy released, recharged and redistributed during an El Nino event, I’d also be concerned about accuracy. But my posts on OHC deal with the timing of the sudden shifts and the factors that cause those shifts.
You wrote, “Also – the ocean heat constant of 5-8 yrs calculated by Scafetta and others – is this related to (or reflected in) the ENSO cycle?”
I believe they’re trying to determine the lag using SST data. And if I recall, they remove the ENSO signal from the SST data prior to their analyses, which now strikes me odd based on how quickly the Pacific recharges.
Regards

I realize that I am posting on an old post, but I wanted to ask a question of Bob.
I just noticed what has been happening to TSI. I recognize that TSI is not the only — nor perhaps the best — representation of how the sun is influencing the earth’s climate. However, it was interesting that TSI was gradually dropping from 2003 to mid 2009. Then since late 2009, TSI has been increasing rapidly. This seems to be highly correlated to sea surface temperatures. Any comments? http://www.climate4you.com/images/TSI%20LASP%20Since2003.gif
Also, there has been several claims that recent U.S. snowstorms is consistent with global warming since warmer oceans put more moisture in the air. Yet, the moisture for the U.S. snowstorms has come from Gulf of Mexico & Atlantic where temperatures are relatively cooler. Meanwhile, Idaho to Arizona which rely on Pacific for moisture have been dry even though the Pacific has been warm.