A paper published August 20th in Geophysical Research Letters finds from newly deployed observation systems that the Southern Oceans show an annual net heat loss of -10 Wm-2.
Key Points
- Southern Ocean air-sea fluxes are under-observed, leading to large uncertainty
- The first year-long air-sea flux observations quantify an annual cycle
- Shows seasonal cycle, small annual net ocean heat loss and extreme events
Due to a previous “paucity of reference observations”, this paper is the first to study annual heat flux between the atmosphere and the Southern Oceans, a “key component of the global climate system: insulating the Antarctic polar region from the subtropics, transferring climate signals throughout the world’s oceans and forming the southern component of the global overturning circulation.”
That finding contradicts claims that the oceans are gaining ‘missing heat’ due to an increase in greenhouse gases. For example, The figure below from Bob Tisdale compares the ARGO-era Ocean Heat Content observations to the model projection, which is an extension of the linear trend determined by Hansen et al (2005), for the period of 1993 to 2003. Over that period, the modeled OHC rose at 0.6 watt-years per year. With the recent seasonal declines in Global Ocean Heat Content anomalies, the model projection is rising at a rate that’s more than 10 times higher than the observations since 2003. 10 times higher. Yet the southern ocean has just been demonstrated to be losing heat.
Here is the paper:
First air-sea flux mooring measurements in the Southern Ocean
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L16606, 8 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2012GL052290 E. W. Schulz, S. A. Josey, and R. Verein
The Southern Ocean is a key component of the global climate system: insulating the Antarctic polar region from the subtropics, transferring climate signals throughout the world’s oceans and forming the southern component of the global overturning circulation. However, the air-sea fluxes that drive these processes are severely under-observed due to the harsh and remote location. This paucity of reference observations has resulted in large uncertainties in ship-based, numerical weather prediction, satellite and derived flux products. Here, we report observations from the Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS); the first successful air-sea flux mooring deployment in this ocean. The mooring was deployed at 47°S, 142°E for March 2010 to March 2011 and returned measurements of near surface meteorological variables and radiative components of the heat exchange. These observations enable the first accurate quantification of the annual cycle of net air-sea heat exchange and wind stress from a Southern Ocean location. They reveal a high degree of variability in the net heat flux with extreme turbulent heat loss events, reaching −470 Wm−2 in the daily mean, associated with cold air flowing from higher southern latitudes. The observed annual mean net air-sea heat flux is a small net ocean heat loss of −10 Wm−2, with seasonal extrema of 139 Wm−2 in January and −79 Wm−2 in July. The novel observations made with the SOFS mooring provide a key point of reference for addressing the high level of uncertainty that currently exists in Southern Ocean air-sea flux datasets.
Here are two additional figures from the paper: wind speed
Surface variables and heat flux:
h/t to The Hockey Schtick
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We all know that the heat accumulates in the Hadley Heat Hidey Hole which was discovered by Al Gore while snorkeling off the coast of Cabo San Lucas. After an earthquake in that region earlier this year, hot water was reportedly seen bubbling out of the area. Each winter the climate scientists from around the globe converge on Cabo to study the heat and maybe after decades of study we will learn the cause of the phenomenon.
To which the AGW people will say, see it proves that AGW exists since CO2 a trace gas modulates water vapor…and therefore temperature. Remember, these people already claim via circular reasoning to discount the lack of warming in the SH due to the dominance of ocean area versus land mass.
I notice the steep drop in specific humidity in chart #2.
Why not just point out the fundamental truth here? Warming is not global if 50% of the globe is not warming. If the SH being ocean dominated doesn’t show any signal of warming due to CO2, then CO2 is not a driver of climate change, water vapor is. The heat sink of the atmosphere is water vapor not CO2.
“The mooring was deployed at 47°S, 142°E for March 2010 to March 2011 ”
Am I understanding this correctly? A single location for one year? If so, this says something about the weather over that period of time, not climate.
The missing heat may have been found. The hunt for Trenberth’s brain continues.
Here is a pic of the SOFS mooring being deployed November 2011 from the RV Southern Surveyor
[ http://csirofrvblog.com/author/csirosarahschofield/#jp-carousel-1254 ]
From April 2010
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126312539
Note the NPR objective interviewer invokes climategate emails to let Trenberth off the hook by because his email was “misinterpreted”, and cherry picks only one email. Also note NPR refers to those who disagree with the “consensus” as “climate skeptics”, obviously there are no real scientists outside of the “consensus” and it is only bloggers that deny “science”, so they couldn’t find one single scientist to offer counter points, such as maybe clouds are not well understood and could account for virtually all warming and cooling changes.
And this was the interview that started it all, the ubiquitous “missing heat”.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
When the first ARGO data were reported, they showed a cooling trend, until the data was adjusted and corrected. Are they still being adjusted as diligently as the surface station data? Are they not warming, despite the adjustments?
I’m sorry, but it’s difficult to trust the data managed by any of these agencies, whose biggest funding dries up when climate change is no longer alarming.
crosspatch says:
August 21, 2012 at 8:49 am
I understood that local observers on a nearby boat saw some pastyfish like thing near where Big Al was snorkelling, they said the bubbles appeared to errupt from the creature’s posterior, & as they bubbled to the surface in abundance, the sound of the words “the Earth has a fever” were heard! So, now we know from which end Al Gore addresses his fan base & the rest of the public at large! Sarc off 🙂
At the risk of spoiling a good joke, surely Trenberth’s missing heat requires a positive heat flux?
Alan the Brit says:
August 21, 2012 at 9:51 am
Those bubbles were caused when Al popped a chakra.
2017 — Thousands of IPCC researchers are shocked to discover the entire global warming signal is caused by the hot air generated at IPCC conferences, and demand funding be tripled in order to investigate this phenomenon.
Ah, ocean heat content. Another of my favourite topics along with cloudiness data, jetstream behaviour and solar variability.
So the southern oceans are losing energy are they ?
Not recharging as they ‘should’.during La Nina events ?
Quelle surprise with higher global albedo resulting from more clouds and meridional / equatorward jets.
All those surges of cold air from the south pole to Australia, South America and South Africa creating more clouds and cutting off insolation.
Meanwhile the Arctic has pretty much lost its ‘hat’ and is pumping the remaining warmth in the north Atlantic out to space at a high rate.
In due course the bleed of energy to space from the Arctic is going to meet the reduced warmth from the southern oceans.
Not many warm seasons left, methinks.
“with extreme turbulent heat loss events, reaching −470 Wm−2 in the daily mean, associated with cold air flowing from higher southern latitudes. ”
Didn’t Marcel Leroux propose just such events sucking energy out from the oceans when his mobile polar highs moved equatorward into the mid latitudes ?
This paper suggests that such events can make the difference between net energy gain and net energy loss.
And such events happen more often and for longer when solar activity is low.
davidmhoffer
You are aware that a good proportion of the historic SST readings from Hadley are taken from a single reading in a year in a grid? These are then extrapolated to adjoiing grids some of which may have no readings at all. Argo seems to be carryng on the tradition.
tonyb
One station/location shows an annual heat loss of -10 W/m², and not the “the Southern Oceans show an annual net heat loss of -10 W/m²”.
I’m reading a book on another topic, Economics (2011), and the authors were reading a book on another topic, Anthropology (1937) and I was so struck by the somethings-never-changeness of their quote. that I’m quoting it: (Just substitute ‘Azande’ with ‘climate experts’)
“In his 1937 account of how the Azande soothsayers dealt with significant events they had failed to predict, Evans-Pritchard might as well have been writing about contemporary commentators of the Crash of 2008 (just substitute ‘ Azande’ with ‘economic experts’):”
“Azande see as well as we that the failure of their oracle to prophesy truly calls for explanation, but so entangled are they in mystical notions that they must make use of them to account for the failure. The contradiction between experience and one mystical notion is explained by reference to other mystical notions.”
(Evans-Pritchard in his Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande,1937 , p. 339)
Funny how Warmistas become sticklers for data completeness and geographical coverage at high lats and long term observations when a previous playground for AGW fantasies is probed sharply.
Chilly indeed!
We’ve had temperatures drop below freezing every month this year here in the Copper River Basin.
The Wrangell mountains have not seen snow levels so low in June, July & August since 2002.
Its a tad chilly down south. http://www.wunderground.com/global/AA.html
Wait till next February! The Indian dipole, Antarctic stream, NAO, PDO and AO may provide a great belly laugh for those of us with an open mind, quite soon.
So, we can now rid the planet of the word “Inter-Glacial”, since there can no longer be another glaciation advance? Do tell…
“A paper published August 20th in Geophysical Research Letters finds from newly deployed observation systems that the Southern Oceans show an annual net heat loss of -10 Wm-2.”
No. Wrong.
The paper says there is an average heat loss FROM THE OCEAN TO THE AIR of -10 W/m^2 (for one particular part of the ocean as someone else pointed out recently). In other words, the oceans tend to warm the air in this location (not a big surprise). During the summer (Jan) the air warms the water. In the winter, the water warms the air.
This does not say anything specifically about the net heat loss/gain for the oceans. The ocean could have some OTHER source of heat to balance the air-ocean loss. indeed, the oceans carry considerable energy from the equator toward the poles via the thermohaline circulation.
To claim a net heat loss for the oceans, you would need to compare the air-ocean loss with other gains. If the thermohaline circulation was bringing in 11 W/m^2, then there would be a net GAIN in the ocean even while there was a net loss to the atmosphere.
“That finding contradicts claims that the oceans are gaining ‘missing heat’ due to an increase in greenhouse gases. ”
No. You are comparing apples to oranges. To make this claim, you would want to compare the ocean-air balance now with the values 10 or 100 years ago.
No, no, the missing heat has come over for a holiday around the UK. There was a programme on the august, authoritative BBC (/sarc) only this afternoon about the terrifying effects of a half degree or so temperature rise over the last few decades on the infinitely fragile ecosystems around our coasts. (“Costing the Earth”, part 2, on the iplayer now for those with strong stomachs.) And the BBC wouldn’t lie, would they? (/sarc)
The significance of these measurements at a single location is that heat fluxes over short timescales are orders of magnitude greater than the claimed heat gain from GHG increases.
Any GHG warming is no more than a rounding error.
tonyb says: “You are aware that a good proportion of the historic SST readings from Hadley are taken from a single reading in a year in a grid? These are then extrapolated to adjoiing grids some of which may have no readings at all.”
Please provide a link to the HADSST paper that confirms this.
My last comment seems to have disappeared, so let’s try again. (If is re-appears, then you might get this idea twice …)
No. That is NOT what they found. The found that the net transfer of heat from the ocean to the air is 10 W/m^2. This is the exchange between these two systems, NOT the net transfer to/from the ocean itself.
As an analogy, suppose a doctor pays his lawyer each month for legal services, and the lawyer pays the doctor each month for medical services. At the end of the year, they find that the doctor has paid a net average of $10 per month to the lawyer. This by itself does not tell us whether either of these people individually is getting richer or poorer, because either or both of them could have other income.
For the oceans, one major “other income” is the thermohaline cycle. Considerable energy is deposited into the oceans in some areas (often near the equator), transported around the world, and then released (often near the poles). Depending on the size of this transfer to the specific location of this station, the ocean there could be gaining energy, losing energy, or staying the same.
In truth, the 10 W/m^2 value found here is a SMALL value — rather closer to equilibrium than is found in many areas. Check figure 11.4 at http://paoc.mit.edu/labweb/images/net_heat_flux.htm and you will see that values for this air-sea heat flux can be +/- 100 W/m^2 or more. All this paper is doing is experimentally confirming one point on this map (south of Australia) for one year.
No. That is NOT a logical conclusion. There is no contradiction. Using the analogy above, “gaining heat due to an increase in GHGs” would be akin to “the lawyer starting to pay more to the doctor”. To contradict the “gaining heat due to an increase in GHGs” idea, they would want to collect data (presumably for several years), and look at the trends in the downward heat flux. (And even then we would only have data showing warming, but it would be tough to work backwards simply from that data to assign a CAUSE to the change.)
The original paper is about transfers between ocean and air, about the net effect of global ocean and air currents south of Australia. It is NOT about GHG; not about heat content in the oceans in any specific area. The original paper focuses on the SAME phenomenon that keeps Europe warm (the Gulf Stream) or keeps the west coast of South America cool (the Humboldt Current). If, as Anthony supposes, this finding “contradicts claims that the oceans are gaining ‘missing heat’ due to an increase in greenhouse gases”, then the mere existence of the Gulf Stream ALSO contradicts that claim and in a much more dramatic way.
davidmhoffer said (August 21, 2012 at 9:14 am)
“…Am I understanding this correctly? A single location for one year? If so, this says something about the weather over that period of time, not climate…”
Just as a single tree (remember Yamal?) was the basis for global proxies, right?
Besides, if a single site wasn’t enough, we can always follow the example of Hansen et.al., and simply use this as the center of a 1200km radius circle. The resulting extrapolated area should carry a lot more weight.
Seriously, I’m looking forward to this group taking all available data from the ARGO buoys and running it through their process. Perhaps the owners of the buoys can adapt them to get the type of data they need.
@tjfolkerts
When the oceans release heat, it is not simply an exchange from one system to another because air’s heat capacity is very small. The heat is LOST to space. It doesn’t magically find it’s way back to the ocean.