The Impact of Sandy on Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies Along Its Track
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
We’ve established in recent posts that, based on linear trends, the sea surface temperature anomalies along Sandy’s storm track haven’t risen in 70+ years and that there was nothing unusual about the sea surface temperature anomalies there during October 2012. And we’ve established and discussed for years that there is no anthropogenic global warming component in the warming of global sea surface temperatures or ocean heat content.
Yet activist websites continue to post climate change alarmist nonsense in Sandy’s wake. See examples here, here and here. And they call themselves realists. They must think Salvador Dali’s paintings were realistic. Refer to the discussion of Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. MOMA notes that “Dalí painted this work…he said, ‘to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality.’” I read that and instantly thought of Joe Romm at ClimateProgress and John Cook at SkepticalScience.
I’m tired of responding to their drivel, so this is an informative post.
It presents the impacts of Sandy on the sea surface temperature anomalies, using the storm track data for the week centered on Wednesday October 24th, which, due to data availablity, we’ll have to consider the week during Sandy, and the week of October 31st, which will be the week after.
Like El Niño events, tropical cyclones (hurricanes) are one of Mother Nature’s ways of transporting heat from the tropical oceans toward the poles. These processes allow the heat to be radiated into space more readily at higher latitudes and they also help to reduce the temperature differences between the tropics and the poles that would exist without them. Sandy was a prime example of those processes at work. It drew enough heat from the western North Atlantic to cool the sea surface temperature anomalies about 1.0 deg C along the storm track (12N-40N, 80W-70W). See Figure 1. Sea surface temperature anomalies were near their seasonal high the week of October 24th (during the storm). A week later, the week of October 31st(after the storm) they were about 1.0 deg C cooler.
Figure 1
Keep in mind, though, that the storm track is a reasonably small portion of the global oceans. As such, weekly sea surface temperature anomalies there can be very volatile. Figure 2 illustrates the weekly change in sea surface temperature anomalies (Week “n” Minus the Week before “n”) since the start of this portion of the weekly Reynolds OI.v2 data, January 3, 1990. As shown, weekly changes of 0.4 deg C occur regularly. Even changes of near 0.6 deg C have occurred 4 times. The drop in response to Sandy, however, was freakish—the combined aftereffects of a number of factors that contributed to the storm—and obviously not part of some new normal.
Figure 2
The greatest drop in sea surface temperature anomalies occurred in the extratropics, Figure 3. This should be after Sandy merged with the cold front and became a large extratropical (baroclinic) cyclone (with a small hurricane in the center?).
Figure 3
SOURCES
The Sea Surface Temperature anomaly data used in this post is available through the NOAA NOMADS website:
http://nomad1.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh
or:
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?lite=
Nice post, Bob. I was a bit boggled by the title, thinking “well, doh, hurricanes are a heat-exchange (cooling) mechanism.” OK, we agree…
Nice. Thanks Bob.
Wow, that is such a big outlier, I would think something is wrong with the data.
Thanks, Anthony.
Like a slush ball hitting the coast, dissipating on contact. Thank you, Bob.
Nice post, Bob..
I’m somewhat disappointed not to see a composite satellite thermal image of the hurrican/storm track. Perhaps it was too cloudy.
As I understand it, a low pressure zone is one with rising air, which removes heat from the ocean by evaporation. Evaporation leads (eventually) to cloud formation whch increases albedo, reducing insolation on the ocean’s surface and its take-up of solar energy.
But I still can’t figure out (calculate) when that reduction in energy causes the “collapse” of the low pressure zone. (Ignoring landfall.)
So, to cool the oceans, we need more hurricanes?
Quite an upwelling post.
Thanks Bob!
Here’s a link that goes to SST maps before and after Sandy. Generally you can see the track of passed hurricanes as a cool streak in the warmer water, this time Sandy was so wide that it cooled a huge area:
http://deepseanews.com/2012/11/a-recap-of-hurricane-sandy-the-ocean-version/
There are also images showing how much vertical mixing there was in the water under Sandy.
Bernd Felsche says:November 11, 2012 at 5:24 pm
I’m somewhat disappointed not to see a composite satellite thermal image of the hurrican/storm track.
Look at the ocean page under Reference Pages above, second graph shows SST still very cool along the storm track.
It’s worth noting that the extra tropical area was already cooling strongly before the storm hit
http://nomad1.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?ctlfile=oiv2.ctl&ptype=ts&var=sst&level=1&op1=none&op2=none&day=03&month=oct&year=2012&fday=07&fmonth=nov&fyear=2012&lat0=25&lat1=30&lon0=-80&lon1=-70&plotsize=800×600&title=25N-30N+70W-80W&dir=
yet the tropical part was warming strongly having gained about +0.5 degrees in the previous two weeks:
http://nomad1.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?ctlfile=oiv2.ctl&ptype=ts&var=sst&level=1&op1=none&op2=none&day=03&month=oct&year=2012&fday=07&fmonth=nov&fyear=2012&lat0=10&lat1=15&lon0=-80&lon1=-70&plotsize=800×600&title=25N-30N+70W-80W&dir=
Matthew W says: So, to cool the oceans, we need more hurricanes?
Yep, that’s why there are more hurricanes during warmer periods of climate. All part of negative feedbacks that keep climate stable.
http://i49.tinypic.com/xbfqtw.png
We are at the peak of a 30 year NATURAL warming cycle, that’s why there is more cyclone energy in the system.
This is not “the new normal” it’s the OLD NORMAL, NORMAL.
this is how climate is supposed to work.
The fun is just beginning. As Obama will leverage AGWphobia any way he can to help realize his anti free enterprise agenda, look for much more of such nonsense. I forecast a whole lot more propagandizing. Proponents don’t care if they are wrong so long as the AGW narrative is promoted and there is no one with authority who care/dare to hold them accountable. What we have here is a political movement seeking legitimacy using the reputation of science via a corrupt academy.
P. Solar says:
November 11, 2012 at 6:23 pm
“ . . . , that’s why there is more cyclone energy in the system.”
It’s been a tiring weekend so maybe my synapses are not snapping rapidly enough to find the compatibility between P’s statement (above) and the downtrend of ACE as reported by Ryan Maue here . . .
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/01/dr-ryan-maue-releases-new-hurricane-frequency-data-showing-a-negative-trend-in-the-last-30-years/
On another note, a lot of cold temp records will be set in California tonight and tomorrow night. With dew points in the low 20s, a cold airmass in place, and excellent cooling conditions in place, the previous record lows in the upper 30s are sure to be broken if not shattered.
Seems the Gores, Manns, Hansens, Trenberths, Jones, and Gavin Schmidts of our reality are having a very difficult time! Their reality, i.e. inside their brains, is not the reality that we other humans perceive. When they look at the world around them they see a War Zone, a cataclysmic conflagration, destruction, wonton killing for no reason, debauchery. Yet, looking out my window I see nothing of this! Nothing at all! Could it be the drugs (?) the Gores, Manns, Hansens, Trenberths, Jones and Gavin Schmidts of our world are abusing, injecting, hour by hour, day by day, month by month?!
Such abusive behavior is very appalling, disgusting, and very telling about them!
Well, that may well be the state of the … Anthropocene Mann. A nonexistent thing I might say.
[snip]
That is the Anthropocene.
Great work Bob; and your irritation at the antics and lies of the pro-AGW spruikers is entirely justified.
Very interesting about the new low temps in California. So when a denier (warmist denying cooling) repeat the mantra that Sandy was due to warming temperatures, I can refer to new low temperatures should be an indicator of something also. they will probably say that , “yes, that due to global warming”, because they are repeat robots.
See Figure 1. Sea surface temperature anomalies were near their seasonal high the week of October 24th
There is no seasonality to anomalies. Reynolds calculates anomalies on a monthly basis. So the anomaly for a month is the difference from the average of that month over the reference period.
What Figure 1 shows is that 2012 had more summer warming than the reference period average. This has happened for the last 2 or 3 years and is also seen in the satellite temperature data. The East coast of North America and the East coast of Asia both show significant summer SST warming.
The cause is likely increased solar insolation from decreased (primarily urban) aerosols.
John F. Hultquist says:
I was wondering the same thing.
What implications will this cooling have on this season’s winter? How much heat was removed?
@ur momisugly Don: November 11, 2012 at 8:05 pm
No…….they’ll just say it’s weather…./s
@ur momisugly DR: November 11, 2012 at 8:37 pm
“What implications will this cooling have on this season’s winter? How much heat was removed?”
About this much:
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/visualizing-the-effects-of-missing-arctic-ice/
You should read those little explanatory notes next to Dali’s paintings next time you are at the museum… they can be very instructive 😉
I haven’t read all your recent posts, Bob. How is this data collected at the surface? Is it from Argo floats that were in the path of the storm, and if so is there any data on how deep the effect goes?
Thanks.
The goal or purpose of this post is unclear, because it is not stated. The author seems to know the audience here, and appears to accept as understood that his presentation of data will convince readers that AGW is false. Because the message is so unclear, what follows will refute the author’s apparent conclusion– the one that can be roughly gleaned from the article.
Mr. Tisdale here seems to gloat over some sort of (inferred) slam-dunk victory with “scientific” analyis– measured by temperature anomalies in the hurricane Sandy storm track– over established evidence that weather will be more extreme as global warming accelerates. It clearly fails that goal. (And again, if that is not the goal, the writer should write more clearly. And bring pertinent science to the argument.)
It merely shows that temperatures fell along the track. It doesn’t show any reason why, although one might infer the storm brought colder water to the surface. But to claim that an unexplained temperature anomaly invalidates AGW is a non sequitur. It makes no sense because it is not related to the premise it appears to refute.
Only true believers in the AGW denialist movement (religion) might make a contorted leap of faith to assume the data presented refutes global warming. That’s because they won’t critically examine the data vis a vis the argument to see if they match.
As evidence of the lack of critical thinking ability in some of this audience, look at Jack’s post. He assumes Obama has some kind of anti-free enterprise agenda. WTF?? This is a wacko, Tea-Partyesque, bizarre conclusion direct from alternate universe (i.e., conservative) media. Like so many posts and comments here, it has no basis in fact.
Oddly, one of the web sites posted as an “alarmist” argument for AGW was a mockup video of a monster destroying houses with wry commentary by observers. What does this have to do with global warming and climate change? What does prove? It is an inane, useless link.
Other links cited as alarmist make the connection between severe weather events and climate change. Does anyone believe this post authoritatively refutes the well-established evidence for those claims? News for you: it does not.
Furthermore, the title referring to an inverse hockey stick conflates the issue of long term planetary temperature increases (Mann’s hockey stick graph) with a short term ocean temperature anomaly in a very small region. This is not only bad science, it is poor logic. What is its purpose, if not merely to inflame the rabid support of those who do not understand the issue???
If those who post on websites like this want to refute the massive evidence for human-caused climate change, they had better come up with clear communications and viable evidence for their arguments. And the evidence had better be good enough to convince every major scientific organization on the planet. It has not so far. That can only mean a severe lack of rigor in the science and the evidence presented by climate change skeptics. This post is a sterling example of that lack of scientific rigor.
The post merely added noise to the argument. I fully expect the author to take this as a personal insult, but it is not. So will the many attack dogs here who, following their religious leaders, do not understand scientific criticisms, but will also take them as personal attacks. Go ahead–but realize science is above and apart from all that. Just go with real science, and you can’t go wrong.
It is vital to call out junk science when it purports to have bearing on a vital scientific issue like climate change. Again, if it isn’t completely clear:
Mr.Tisdale’s post offers nothing to advance any scientific debate on global warming or climate science. It is difficult to fathom the many notes of congratulations in the face of that fact.