Over at The Conversation Andrew Glikson asks Fact check: has global warming paused? citing an old Skeptical Science favorite graph, and that’s the problem; it’s old data. He writes:
As some 90% of the global heat rise is trapped in the oceans (since 1950, more than 20×1022 joules), the ocean heat level reflects global warming more accurately than land and atmosphere warming. The heat content of the ocean has risen since about 2000 by about 4×1022 joules.
…
To summarise, claims that warming has paused over the last 16 years (1997-2012) take no account of ocean heating.
Hmmm, if “…ocean heat level reflects global warming more accurately than land and atmosphere warming…” I wonder what he and the SkS team will have to say about this graph from NOAA Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory (PMEL) using more up to date data from the ARGO buoy system?
Sure looks like a pause to me, especially after steep rises in OHC from 1997-2003. Note the highlighted period in yellow:
From PMEL at http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/
The plot shows the 18-year trend in 0-700 m Ocean Heat Content Anomaly (OHCA) estimated from in situ data according to Lyman et al. 2010. The error bars include uncertainties from baseline climatology, mapping method, sampling, and XBT bias correction.
Historical data are from XBTs, CTDs, moorings, and other sources. Additional displays of the upper OHCA are available in the Plots section.
As Dr. Sheldon Cooper would say: “Bazinga!“
h/t to Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. for the PMEL graph.
UPDATE: See the above graph converted to temperature anomaly in this post.
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And anything prior to 2003 is simply guesswork. The conflation of data sets and guesswork from the cli-sci people need to be highlighted more, IMHO. They have no idea what the OHC was in 1970.
[snip – sorry, drive by raw data claims from a table in a different depth data set aren’t useful with a visual post, graph it to show your claims and resubmit – Anthony]
Hmmm, I wonder what the second derivative of the AMO looks like?
Simply , here is where the magic ‘missing heat ‘ is so useful.
The ocean has heated , but has its not be found yet it not possible to measure it .
If the models say its so , its true no matter what reality tell us .
The graph of the 0-2000 m OHC — much more relevant than just the 0-700 m level — is, of course, here (Figure #2):
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
[Reply: Wrong graph. — mod.]
For those who can handle the raw data, the trend since 2005 is 240 trillion watts, or 0.47 Wm^-2 across the Earth’s surface:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc2000m_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv
By the way, the ten-year trend for 0-700 m OHC is still a statistically significant 45 terawatts.
REPLY: and each day around 120,000 terawatts of energy from the sun reaches the Earth, so it is a statistical sand grain on a beach in the whole Earthly energy budget – Anthony
@ur momisugly James Sexton
All too true !
For that matter, Land Surface historical data is simply guesswork as well, since we have no statistically valid or accurate estimates of any type of errors or variability with non-random, unreplicated sampling for the entire historical record.
Garbage In, Garbage out.
But this is more UNFCCC conform “science” so it’s guaranteed in the next IPCC UNFCCC based “climate report”?
Placing a thick yellow line over the top of the graph does not make it flat – it is not flat yet. It may be considered flat for last four years but that’s hardly statistically significant. On longer period It has sure slowed down, but that’s it. Plus you’re comparing apples to oranges because the skeptical science graph is a sum of three factors out of which you only show one. That does not make a good counterargument, I don’t think the graph would change drastically if four more years were added to it.
REPLY: It is a highlighter marker, used to call attention to the area, like I routinely do with text. If I wanted to make a plot trend line, I would have used a plot trend line. – Anthony
The SkepSci graph appears to go through 2008. It goes up from 2003 to 2008. The PMEL data do not. So, either their data source was bad (not ARGO) or their plot of the data was wrong. Either way, it is not just old, it is bad. And in the context of that site, new evidence that it not only is not skeptical, it isn’t even science. Double fail.
Anthony wrote: “REPLY: and each day around 120,000 terawatts of energy from the sun reaches the Earth, so it is a statistical sand grain on a beach in the whole Earthly energy budget – Anthony.”
Unfortunately not, since vast majority of the Sun’s 120,000 trillion watts comes in and then leaves, of course. The 45 trillion watts is what’s sticking around (in just the top 1/5th of the ocean).
REPLY: and again, it isn’t statistically significant in the scheme of things, much like that 0.7C in the atmosphere isn’t statistically significant against daily diurnal variation or seasons. – Anthony
This is the correct chart which takes into account how much 10^22 joules is supposed to be accumulating and the tiny 0.46 W/M2 which is accumulating in the 0-2000 metre ocean.
http://s17.postimage.org/y2qsxky8f/OHC_Missing_Energy_Dec2012.png
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:27 pm
“— much more relevant than just the 0-700 m level — “
How so? IR from CO2 backradiation does not penetrate nearly that far. How are you supposing the heat gets there, when there is no change in the waters above?
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:30 pm
“By the way, the ten-year trend for 0-700 m OHC is still a statistically significant 45 terawatts.”
Claims of statistical significance are always dicey when the underlying correlations are unknown. It is necessary to assume a model, and that assumption drives the outcome. For example, we had a round of comments on another thread in which a disputant claimed that the trend in the global temperature metric from 1970 to 2000 was statistically significant, but the lull since then was not. When a reference was requested, he directed us to a paper which assumed a one-box model for the correlations. When cyclical correlations are so readily evident in the data record, such an assumed model is hogwash.
But, in any case, even if it were statistically significant, it is not climatically so.
Sea surface temperatures are flat since March, 1997 or 15 years and 10 months.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/trend
So heat presumably got lower down without affecting the surface. Is that correct? And am I to be worried if the deeper ocean went up from 3.0 C to 3.2 C?
My previous post was too polite. I did a quick check (less than 5 minutes using multilayer google) and found another Skeptical Science posting from 2011 showing the correct ocean heat as flat after 2003 in making a different but equally illogical and unsupported argument. See:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/cooling-oceans.htm
They really cannot have it both ways on one website at the same time.
As Wolfgang Pauli said, so bad “its not even wrong”.
Glikson also asserts “At the root of the issue is the non-acceptance by some of the reality of the greenhouse effect”.
Total fail. He is unable to distinguish between not accepting the greenhouse effect and sensible skepticism about its magnitude.
“””””…….Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:30 pm
By the way, the ten-year trend for 0-700 m OHC is still a statistically significant 45 terawatts…..””””””
So which Pope granted special dispensation to state ocean heat content in Watts; or even in terraWatts; or maybe its teraWatts ?
Howcome Joules gets lost in the shuffle here ?
Trenberth in his global energy budget cartoon, insists on using 342 W/m^2 as the value for TSI, instead of the more recently approved, NASA/NOAA value of about 1362 W/m^2.
TSI is a rate of arrival of solar energy on earth, or at least at our mean orbital radius from the sun, and it arrives continuously at that rate.
You cannot simply divide by four, because the earth is rotating. Power density is power density
Stuff happens at 1362 W/m^2 that can NEVER happen at 342 W/m^2.
So if you drop a 20 kiloton bomb on San Francisco; but you only do it once every 25 or 50 years or so, on average it really won’t do very much damage.
Good heavens!!! We have people actually believing we know what the OHC was in 1960?? NEWS FLASH!!! Even the ARGO buoys don’t provide enough proper coverage. What on earth brings people to believe such nonsense?
This ocean heat content thing is a genuine non-issue. Mass of the upper 2 km of oceans is about 6.5×10^20 kg. According to NOAA NODC OCL this layer has accumulated some 20.5×10^22 J of heat in the last 50 years. Specific heat of water is about 4.2 kJ/kgK, so average temperature of the upper 2 km of oceans has increased by a stunning 0.075 K in a half century.
In other words, ocean bulk temperature is utterly flat on multidecadal scale.
(On the other hand, if it goes on like this, in a mere ten million years our oceans will be 15,000 K warmer than they are today, much hotter than the surface of the Sun. Well, no. It would not go on like this for long, see?)
I don’t even believe a warming rate of 1.5 mK/year can be measured. Not even with thousands of buoys, much less with a few ships here and there pulling mechanical bathythermographs on strings.
REPLY: It is a highlighter marker, used to call attention to the area,
______________
That does not make any of my arguments wrong.
REPLY: it doesn’t make them right either, be as upset as you wish – Anthony
The PMEL graph look a lot like the Global temp anomaly graph over the same time period … and not surprising since most of the energy of the oceanic-atmospheric system is contained in the ocean (ie the current standstill in ocean heat content is largely driving the current standstill global atmospheric temp anomaly, as was the rise in atmospheric temps in the 90s)
Understand what’s driving the ocean heat content & where it’s heading you should be able to do the same for the atmosphere.
I recommend reading the post by Glickson (Visiting Fellow, Australian National U).
(1) He runs at length through the usual explanations for the pause — for which he cites no sources (do most climate scientists agree that the low in the solar cycle has had a substantial impact?) — then declares that there has been no “pause” since there has been ocean heating (most of which is in the 700-2000 m layer). What is the time delay for CO2-related heating to warm that layer? The pause is recent phenomenon, hence should it be seen as propagating from the atmosphere into the ocean heat sinks — layer by deeper layer?
(2) He winds up with a bang, attributing this mistaken view about the pause to “non-acceptance of the greenhouse effect”. Again no supporting cites (do the scientists mentioning the pause not accept the GH effect?). No explanation why so many prominent climate scientists (& the head of the IPCC) have acknowledged the pause — or reference to the peer-reviewed literature discussing the pause (eg, causes and significance).
What is his purpose in writing this? It looks quite slipshod for one of his professional training. Any guesses if he’ll receive critical feedback from his peers?
Bart said, “How so? IR from CO2 backradiation does not penetrate nearly that far.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/
george e. smith says “So which Pope granted special dispensation to state ocean heat content in Watts; or even in terraWatts; or maybe its teraWatts ?”
A Watt is just a joule per second, and is an appropriate unit for the rate of accumulation of heat.
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Hi Phobos – Are the computer codes that perform the data processing summarized in the graphs available? I’d like to have a look at them. Thanks in advance.