By Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
Additional Information On The “Ocean’s Missing Heat” By Katsman and van Oldenborgh 2011
I discussed the papers
C. A. Katsman and G. J. van Oldenborgh, 2011: Tracing the upper ocean’s ‘missing heat’. Geophysical Research Letters (in press).
Palmer, M. D., D. J. McNeall, and N. J. Dunstone (2011), Importance of the deep ocean for estimating decadal changes in Earth’s radiation balance, Geophys. Res. Lett., 38, L13707, doi:10.1029/2011GL047835.
in my posts
2011 Update Of The Comparison Of Upper Ocean Heat Content Changes With The GISS Model Predictions
I have been sent a summary article from Klimaat wereld on this subject that was published on July 28 2011 [h/t/ Erik].
This Klimaat wereld summary article is titled
Tracing the upper ocean’s ‘missing heat’
by Caroline Katsman and Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, KNMI. Although, as discussed below, I have several issues with their interpretations and conclusions, the authors should be commended for publishing a significant new contribution to our understanding of the climate system. This is an effective paper which can be built on to improve our knowledge of the science of climate.
The abstract reads
“Against expectations, the upper ocean (from 0 to 700 meter depth) has not warmed since 2003. A recent KNMI study shows that an eight-year interruption of the rise expected from global warming is not exceptional. It can be explained by natural variability of the climate, in particular the climate oscillation El Niño in the Pacific Ocean and changes in ocean currents in the North Atlantic Ocean. Recent observations point to an upcoming resumption of the heating of the upper ocean.”
I have extracted several parts of the text of this article [and highlighted text] and comment on them.
First
“Observations of the sea water temperature show that the upper ocean has not warmed since 2003. This is remarkable as it is expected the ocean would store that the lion’s share of the extra heat retained by the Earth due to the increased concentrations of greenhouse gases. The observation that the upper 700 meter of the world ocean have not warmed for the last eight years gives rise to two fundamental questions:
- What is the probability that the upper ocean does not warm for eight years as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise?
- As the heat has not been not stored in the upper ocean over the last eight years, where did it go instead?
These question cannot be answered using observations alone, as the available time series are too short and the data not accurate enough. We therefore used climate model output generated in the ESSENCE project, a collaboration of KNMI and Utrecht University that generated 17 simulations of the climate with the ECHAM5/MPI-OM model to sample the natural variability of the climate system. When compared to the available observations, the model describes the ocean temperature rise and variability well.”
My Comment: If the “question cannot be answered using observations alone“, how can it be stated that “When compared to the available observations, the model describes the ocean temperature rise and variability well“? This is a circular argument. Models themselves are hypotheses, and the more accurate statement by the authors would be that the available observations do not falsify the model as replicating reality.
The next extract reads
“Observations of the temperature of the upper few hundred meters of the ocean go back to the 1960s. Up to ten years ago most measurements were taken by simple thermometers that were thrown overboard and sent back the temperature as they fell down through a wire (expandable bathythermographs, XBTs). Since about ten years these have been superseded by fully automatised ARGO floats that measure temperature down to 2000 m depth and send the data home every ten days. Starting from these raw observations the global temperature distribution down to 700 meter is reconstructed, filling in the gaps in the coverage. Using the heat capacity of water this enables the estimation of the amount of heat stored in the world ocean.”
My Comment: This is a succinct summary of why we need to focus on the observations and model comparisons over the last ten years. Prior to this time period, the values of the ocean heat content are much less certain.
They further write
“In the model, the fraction of negative eight-year trends decrease as the warming trend accelerates, but between 1990 and 2020 (31 years around 2005) 3% of the trends still is negative. This implies a one in three chance of at least one eight-year period with a negative trend in these 31 years. An eight-year pause in the rise of the upper ocean heat content is therefore not at all rare, even in a warming climate.”
My Comment: If the ocean heat warming pauses, this part of the climate system is not warming.
Next, they provide an effective summary of the importance of the ocean as the reservoir for heating and cooling of the climate system.
“Where does the heat go?
The amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are steadily increasing. The increased absorption of thermal radiation by these gases causes the radiation to space to emanate from higher in the atmosphere on average, where it is colder. The colder air emits less thermal radiation, so that the incoming solar energy is no longer balanced by outgoing radiation. The excess heat is absorbed by the ocean, slowly warming the water from the top down.
If the upper ocean does not warm for a few years the excess heat from the imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation has to go elsewhere. The ocean temperature has only risen 0.02 ºC less than expected, but due to the size of the ocean and the large heat capacity of water this represents a huge amount of heat. If this heat would have been used to heat the atmosphere, the air temperature would have increased by 5 ºC. This obviously did not happen, so the heat was not stored in the atmosphere. The ground has a larger heat capacity, but heat penetrates only slowly down. Storing the heat missing from the upper ocean in the ground would have raised its temperature by about 1.5 ºC. This also was not observed, so we can conclude that the bulk of the heat did not go into the ground. If the heat would have been absorbed by land or sea ice it would also have had large consequences that have not been detected, for example a sea level rise of 20 cm if the heat would have been used to melt land ice.
By elimination, only two possibilities remain. Either the Earth radiates more energy to space during these periods of no increase in upper ocean heat content or the heat content of the deep ocean (below 700 meter) increases temporarily. Both possibilities were found to play a role in the climate model.”
My Comment: The authors use the “climate model” to explain where the heat goes. However, in the real world, heat that is transported to deeper levels should be seen in the ARGO observations. A further comparison of this tranport, as predicted in the models, with the observations is needed. Moreover, even if there is heat transported to deeper ocean depths, this would mute subsequent atmospheric heating (and, therefore, effects of weather), as the disperion of this heat at depth would be expected to result at most in only a slow transfer back to the surface. The resulting heating of the atmosphere would be muted.
They next write
“The model shows that during periods that the upper layers of the ocean do not heat, the deeper layers show a stronger increase in temperature. This vertical seesaw is strongest in the North Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland. In this area the surface waters cool each winter due to cold winds from Canada. As it gets heavier than the slightly warmer but more salty water at depth the surface water sinks and the warmer water rises. This exchange therefore cools the deeper ocean. In winters with little mixing the upper ocean stays colder and the deeper layers stay warmer.”
My Comment: There is a problem with their statement that “The model shows that during periods that the upper layers of the ocean do not heat, the deeper layers show a stronger increase in temperature”. If the upper layers do not show heating, how does heat transfer (even in the model) to deeper layers? The Joules of heat cannot just appear below the upper 700m if the reason for the assumed heating is from added greenhouse gas forcing in the atmosphere.
They next provide (to their credit) a forecast
“Outlook for the coming years
Since two years ago El Niño has been replaced by a series of La Niña events that should cause a heating trend in the upper ocean. The heat exchange between the upper and deep ocean in the Labrador Sea has also started again recentIy. We therefore expect that the upper ocean heat content will soon resume its upward trend.”
My Comment: First, what is the observational basis to conclude that the “The heat exchange between the upper and deep ocean in the Labrador Sea has also started again recentIy”. Nonetheless, their expectation (forecast) that the upper ocean heat content will resume its upward trend is a hypothesis that can be tested over the next few years [unlike the IPCC type forecasts of weather patterns decades from now!]. As of the most recent upper ocean data analysis, however, the heating has not yet restarted; i.e. see from NODC
It is also important to realize in interpreting this data that for the period before the establishement of the Argo network, the quantitative accuracy of the analyses is less. The data are actually constructed by merging two distinct methods to observe the ocean heat content. The jump seen in the data in the first years after 2000 might have occured due to the temporal inhomogenity of the data analysis.
Finally, they write at the end of their article
“Because of these natural fluctuations a short trend in the upper ocean heat content is not a good indicator of enhanced greenhouse warming, only the long-term trend is.”
My Comment: This is a recognition of the increasingly better recognized importance of “natural climate variations”. However, the authors did not include in their original paper, nor in their Klimaat wereld article how many years of a lack of warming would have to occur before they would reject their models as being skillful replicators of the climate system’s changes in upper ocean heat content.
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…or the warmer something gets, the more energy/heat it takes to keep warming it
The money quote:
“By elimination, only two possibilities remain. Either the Earth radiates more energy to space during these periods of no increase in upper ocean heat content or the heat content of the deep ocean (below 700 meter) increases temporarily. Both possibilities were found to play a role in the climate model.”
Hasn’t Roy Spencer just shown that the Earth DOES radiate more energy? No need to find ways in which the deep ocean can warm without the upper layers warming.
“By elimination, only two possibilities remain. Either the Earth radiates more energy to space during these periods of no increase in upper ocean heat content or the heat content of the deep ocean (below 700 meter) increases temporarily. Both possibilities were found to play a role in the climate model.”
There is another possibility which in my view is far more likely.
An increase in global cloudiness with a higher global albedo is reducing the amount of solar shortwave entering the oceans.
I have set out the precise mechanism in some detail elsewhere. In summary, solar and oceanic variability each change the surface air pressure distribution to move all the climate zones latitudinally. A poleward shift reduces global cloudiness by moving the mid latitude jets poleward to widen the subtropical high pressure cells allowing more sunlight into the oceans.An equatorward shift does the opposite.
During the late 20th century warming spell more sunlight entered the oceans. Since 2000 less sunlight has been entering the oceans.
“In the model, the fraction of negative eight-year trends decrease as the warming trend accelerates, but between 1990 and 2020 (31 years around 2005) 3% of the trends still is negative. This implies a one in three chance of at least one eight-year period with a negative trend in these 31 years. An eight-year pause in the rise of the upper ocean heat content is therefore not at all rare, even in a warming climate.”
How does a 3% chance that the trend will be negative in one or more years translate to a 33% chance that there will be a negative trend lasting eight years during the 31 year interval? I think his probability calculations need to be shown.
The declines in the OHC of the North Atlantic and South Pacific are responsible for the flattening of the Global OHC since 2003, though there really haven’t been any significant increases in the North Pacific or Southern Ocean OHC either:
http://i51.tinypic.com/21crset.jpg
The graph is from the ARGO-era OHC post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/argo-era-nodc-ocean-heat-content-data-0-700-meters-through-december-2010/
Stephen Wilde says: “There is another possibility which in my view is far more likely…”
And there’s another one as well, and that is that downward longwave radiation from Anthropogeanic Greenhouse Gases has little impact on OHC.
In court cases the benefit of the doubt goes towards that side most injured by an error in judgement. In scientific debates the benefit of doubt goes towards whatever the researcher believes to be truth, as the “most injured” status is the scientist’s conception of the world. Invoking a ghost mechanism for heat transfer from the atmosphere to > 700m subsea – somewhere in the world not observed, by the way – without an intermediary is these scientists’ “benefit of the doubt”. The note that the Labrador Sea is now warming at surface again uses another ghost mechanism – the heat coming from an unknown place rising to the shallow depths without, again, passing through the intermediate depths first.
The scientific method should be about preserving the “old” view until new knowledge overwhelms and replaces the old. Age is, of course, relative. Perhaps “old” knowledge now is anything we thought five years ago; anything prior to your current driver’s licence is wrong by definition.
It takes decades of life and experience to accept within your outlook that popular understanding, that authority figures, that specialists studying narrowly are not just often wrong but ALWAYS wrong to some extent. And humans have a perception bias towards that what we seek: you think about extreme weather and discover it everywhere, just as you think about buying a new Jeep and see them being driven everywhere.
Climate change arguments position warmists on one side who use conditional, subjective and speculative worlds like “could”, “may”, “might”, “should” and “possibly”, against skeptics who use words like “doesn’t”, “won’t” and “no indication”. In your earlier years the future is open with many possibilities of change; in your later years you realise, through reflection, that the future is pretty much an extension of the recent past. If there is a train about to run you down you can be very assured you’ll see it coming. In youth we feel we live in ‘special’ times (thus making us ‘special’, also). In maturity we see we just living in different times.
Ten years from now a lot of climate change researchers will be looking uneasily back to their earlier work with its alarm, failed predictions and exaggerated self-importance. Those on the podium gain distinction (careers and large sums of cash by the Hansen/Gore examples) for being the whistleblowing Cassandras of their times. We herald the lone rider who races in to the fort warning of a buildup of Sioux warriors nearby, and distrust the recon team who say that the Indians are moving their village. One invites action and excitement, the other change without significance. We want to be excited and significant.
None of the alarmist rhetoric will become tamped down until somehow the warmists are forced to say not “may” happen but what “will” happen, with a date for the happening and a time for reconciling what did and did not happen. As with the case of Himalaya-gate, attempts to bring reality into focus will be difficult; one’s personal worldview is highly prized (and supported by the benefit-of-doubt bias noted earlier). Our social lives, freedoms and economics depend on the skeptic maintaining a firm and continual resistance to the warmists desire to live loud, lively and with their hearts on their sleeves.
On mature reflection a few years from now many climate change students and researchers will cringe at the fullness of their cries. They might even think that some mistook the smell of backyard BBQ on the clothes of their neighbours for smoke in the crowded theatre. There is only so long that you can worry someone with the fearful shape on the horizon that you say is drawing closer. It it doesn’t actually arrive or at least be noticeably bigger, he is going to suspect that that evil presence is actually just the shape of clouds …. weather, not climate.
I was just getting ready to post about this as a funny realization I had on he way in to work this morning.
Trenberth could never find the missing heat because it was literally light years away from where he was looking.
The question needs to be rephrased. “Where’s the phantom heat?”
I’ve seen witch doctors with more rigorus scientific method than these clowns …
magically the heat energy at the surface manages to reach (modeled not observed) the deep ocean but manages to miss the water in between the surface and the deep ocean …
What are we talking about here … some sort of quantum physics teleportation ?
Bob Tisdale says:
July 29, 2011 at 9:13 am
“downward longwave radiation from Anthropogeanic Greenhouse Gases has little impact on OHC”
Quite right but I took that as read.
There is minor proviso though. In so far as downward radiation from human emissions has an effect it does contribute to the total energy content of the air and thus contributes to a redistribution of surface air pressure systems. However the contribution is miniscule compared to what the solar and oceanic variations are doing all the time.
And, of course, another way of rationalizing the “missing heat” (and the greater radiation to space shown by Spencer) is the absence of an “atmospheric greenhouse effect.”
Latitude,
“…or the warmer something gets, the more energy/heat it takes to keep warming it”
I am assuming from this quote that you are saying that it takes more units of energy to increase the temperature of a given volume when the temperature of the volume is higher than when the temperature is lower. This is incorrect. It takes the same amount of heat to raise a volume of water one degree C whether the water is initially at 10C or 20C.
Something else to point out, I think, regarding the desperate hunt for the missing heat, is the simple fact that as you go deeper into the oceans you are actually talking about far less water mass the lower you set the bar. So in assuming that this missing heat could be stored at depths under 700m is actually an assumption that this missing heat is actually stored in far less water than previously assumed, and a higher concentration of heat. This is counter intuitive.
Granted, you also have to assume the heat teleported there as well… so you are already making some rather irrational assumptions.
jae says:
July 29, 2011 at 10:30 am
“And, of course, another way of rationalizing the “missing heat” (and the greater radiation to space shown by Spencer) is the absence of an “atmospheric greenhouse effect.”
Unfortunately I think that is a step too far. However one can defuse it as suggested here:
http://www.irishweatheronline.com/news/climate-news/greenhouse-confusion-resolved/28837.html
“The atmospheric Greenhouse Effect is continually overridden as a result of the size of the constant interlinked changes in both the solar energy input to the oceans and the oceanic heat inputs to the atmosphere. It is wholly swamped by those far more powerful influences acting via a variable speed for the water cycle which acts via changes in the surface pressure distribution and subtle shifting to and fro of the climate zones.
The atmospheric Greenhouse Effect is a flea on the back of an oceanic elephant and the influence of CO2 but a microbe on the back of the flea and the influence of anthropogenic CO2 but a molecule on the back of the microbe.”
Hasn’t Trenberth’s missing heat just been found, speeding away from Earth towards distant stars, by NASA’s Terra satellite?
Nah. Imaginary or phantom heat can do that, easy!
Great prose, Doug Proctor. Thanks for the time taken.
With respect to the august institutions, but this model is preposterous as are the modellers.
The physics of this is clearly impossible. A warmer body of water cannot be overlaid by a colder one, because warmer water is more buoyant. The only way to get a warm water to sink into a colder one is to apply a force to the warm water – or perhaps the Arctic Ocean sucks?
This is the sort of crap that Kevin Trenberth comes out with – its simply unphysical nonsense.
Katsman and van Oldenborgh 2011 is a nice effort, far above average for this area. It will be interesting to see if answers become available for the questions raised here.
So in models the heat goes into the deep ocean, and some out to space, when there is little upper ocean warming…in reality, however, it is likely that the bulk of the heat is being lost to space.
Dr. Pielke does it again. Thank you for understanding raw physics.
John A says:
July 29, 2011 at 11:18 am
The physics of this is clearly impossible. A warmer body of water cannot be overlaid by a colder one, because warmer water is more buoyant.
You forget about salinity affecting density. Melt waters, both from land and sea ice, significantly cool and reduce the density of polar seas, which then do float over the denser warm oceanic water.
The corrollary is that when sea freezes, salt is poorly incorporated into sea ice and a cold dense brine is formed which then sinks.
If you were to ask me about the balance of these two effects, spatially and temporally, I’d have to go and look it up (again). The old brain only partially retains information these days.
Assuming the object in question is not losing heat to anything, of course you’re correct. It’s a good thing that objects in the real world never gain nor lose heat to anything except the immediate input you’re modelling.
Great, looking for heat that never was there.