![436189main_atlantic20100325a-full[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/436189main_atlantic20100325a-full1.jpg?resize=720%2C360)
The findings are the result of a new monitoring technique, developed by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using measurements from ocean-observing satellites and profiling floats. The findings are reported in the March 25 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
The Atlantic overturning circulation is a system of currents, including the Gulf Stream, that bring warm surface waters from the tropics northward into the North Atlantic. There, in the seas surrounding Greenland, the water cools, sinks to great depths and changes direction. What was once warm surface water heading north turns into cold deep water going south. This overturning is one part of the vast conveyor belt of ocean currents that move heat around the globe.
Without the heat carried by this circulation system, the climate around the North Atlantic — in Europe, North America and North Africa — would likely be much colder. Scientists hypothesize that rapid cooling 12,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age was triggered when freshwater from melting glaciers altered the ocean’s salinity and slowed the overturning rate. That reduced the amount of heat carried northward as a result.
Until recently, the only direct measurements of the circulation’s strength have been from ship-based surveys and a set of moorings anchored to the ocean floor in the mid-latitudes. Willis’ new technique is based on data from NASA satellite altimeters, which measure changes in the height of the sea surface, as well as data from Argo profiling floats. The international Argo array, supported in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, includes approximately 3,000 robotic floats that measure temperature, salinity and velocity across the world’s ocean.
With this new technique, Willis was able to calculate changes in the northward-flowing part of the circulation at about 41 degrees latitude, roughly between New York and northern Portugal. Combining satellite and float measurements, he found no change in the strength of the circulation overturning from 2002 to 2009. Looking further back with satellite altimeter data alone before the float data were available, Willis found evidence that the circulation had sped up about 20 percent from 1993 to 2009. This is the longest direct record of variability in the Atlantic overturning to date and the only one at high latitudes.
The latest climate models predict the overturning circulation will slow down as greenhouse gases warm the planet and melting ice adds freshwater to the ocean. “Warm, freshwater is lighter and sinks less readily than cold, salty water,” Willis explained.
For now, however, there are no signs of a slowdown in the circulation. “The changes we’re seeing in overturning strength are probably part of a natural cycle,” said Willis. “The slight increase in overturning since 1993 coincides with a decades-long natural pattern of Atlantic heating and cooling.”
If or when the overturning circulation slows, the results are unlikely to be dramatic. “No one is predicting another ice age as a result of changes in the Atlantic overturning,” said Willis. “Even if the overturning was the Godzilla of climate 12,000 years ago, the climate was much colder then. Models of today’s warmer conditions suggest that a slowdown would have a much smaller impact now.
“But the Atlantic overturning circulation is still an important player in today’s climate,” Willis added. “Some have suggested cyclic changes in the overturning may be warming and cooling the whole North Atlantic over the course of several decades and affecting rainfall patterns across the United States and Africa, and even the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic.”
With their ability to observe the Atlantic overturning at high latitudes, Willis said, satellite altimeters and the Argo array are an important complement to the mooring and ship-based measurements currently being used to monitor the overturning at lower latitudes. “Nobody imagined that this large-scale circulation could be captured by these global observing systems,” said Willis. “Their amazing precision allows us to detect subtle changes in the ocean that could have big impacts on climate.”
Source: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/atlantic20100325.html
h/t to WUWT reader Scott Gates
UPDATE: This story sent to me today was dated 3/25 and I originally thought it was new today. It was coincidentally 3/25 of 2010, not 2015. The first paragraph of the story has been changed to reflect this within 5 minutes of posting. h/t to Andrew Freedman – Anthony
“This was just released today.”
It looks like this was released 5 years ago today. Note “03.25.10” and the date in the URL http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/atlantic20100325.html
Yep, coincidence that it arrived in my inbox today dated 3/25. Fixed quickly after being point out on Twtter feed by Andrew Freedman
That does make you any less incorrect about the findings in the paper you “debunked”
Someone else
Huh?
@ Chip Javert…that is the new Agenda 21 double speak. Soon many people will speak just like that all around the globe. This will be the modern version of the fall of the Tower of Babel.
Someone Else:
Less incorrect = More correct
Yes, no it does not.
Being 100% correct, or 0% incorrect, is the theoretical maximum and minimum limit of correctitude and incorrectitude, respectively.
Funny that the study you praise now is based on Argo measurements. They are pretty accurate aren’t they? The data from Argo is one of the fundamental sources in the study of climate change and effects of greenhouse gases on oceans; in many ways countering the agenda of this site.
Janne
No. Rather, numerous writers here have used the Argo buoy distributions and measurements from their almost-random population to show that the catastrophic clcimate change is falsified as theory. Rather, as theory, it is a perfect construct; but compared to the earth’s performance as time passes that “simulated theory” of CAGW fails.
Repeatedly.
Now it only takes Willis to learn the true story of climate – there is neither a climate threat nor a risk for Gulf Stream slowing down….
Btw – back in 980 AD to 1341/43 Greenland had warmer climate. Min 1 and a media of 3 degree Celsius more than today.
”Most of the Viking expansion took place during what scientist refer to as the dimatic optimum of the Medieval Warm Period dated ca, A.D. 800 to 1200 (Jones 1986: McGovern 1991); a general term for warm periods that reached chere optimum at different times across the North Atlantic (Groves and Switsur 1991). During this time the niean annual temperature for southem Greenland was 1 to 3°C higher than today.” Julie Megan Ross, Paleoethnobotanical Investigation of Garden Under Sandet, a Waterlogged Norse Farm Site. Western Settlement. Greenland (Kaiaallit Nunaata), University of Alberta, Department of Anthropology Edmonton. Alberta Fa11 1997, sid 40
My own comments in one of my blogg articles is:
One of the most common pollens found during the excavation of the Garden of Sandet was Cyperaceae, if you read Linnaeus, the virutal Flora on net, Cyperaceae isn’t supposed to have existed at all in such environment. But then neither Bilberry, Sapsella bursa pastorais nor crowberry should have been able to make it. Then birch and willow not mentioned…those trees were common in Greenland during the earliest settling years and also during the later. In between it was even warmer….
—- from Äntligen efter 671 år blir det, Norah4you 1 december 2012 At last After 671 years…….
“But then neither Bilberry, Sapsella bursa pastorais nor crowberry should have been able to make it. ”
That’s Capsella (shepherd’s purse)
should have is one thing. could have an other. and pollen found in datable layers and analyzed, is hard proof if any. More than a smoking gun … 🙂
btw. I haven’t told 1% of the now proven climate back up to 1431. Almost all to be found in still existing documents and/or books(!) written before 1450….. the oldest map(!) I know of (and have the exclusive right to use in my manuscript if I want to) goes back to a cartographer’s work in 1354-61….
I believe it is worth noting that the transit time for this global conveyor is on the order of many hundreds of years. Not something that I’d think would participate in rapid, catastrophic climate change.
Moreover, if true about the time of cycle, we will have a century or more’s warning, then.
“…many hundreds of years.” doesn’t pass the smell test. 1 km/hr travels 8760 km in only one year. That’s about the distance from the equator to the arctic.
Dan
You’ve made a very interesting observation; I hope some oceanographer-type explains what’s going on here. I’m total unqualified to express an opinion, but my presumption is surface currents move faster due to winds (or some such…).
Carl Wunsch says that the Atlantic Conveyer Belt is a fine cocktail party topic, but has little basis in observational reality.
You have something there. Just consider that it takes the heat in an El Niño only a few months to cross the Pacific. So the transit time of the global conveyor belt is more likely in years, maybe decades, than centuries.
So sorry that I did not provide a citation. I could have saved several of you from firing off commentary without taking any initiative to research:
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/currents/06conveyor2.html
In case others don’t want actually take the trouble to click on the link above:
“The conveyor belt moves at much slower speeds (a few centimeters per second) than wind-driven or tidal currents (tens to hundreds of centimeters per second). It is estimated that any given cubic meter of water takes about 1,000 years to complete the journey along the global conveyor belt.”
Note that there is no large scale surface current flowing across the equator from the southern Atlantic to the northern Atlantic, nor is there one straight up the center of either of these gyres.
Note too that the Gulf Stream does not end it’s northward journey by plunging into the abyss upon reaching the area south of Greenland.
One must presume, from these observations and Bernie’s comment below, that this is a very subtle effect, not a real current at all, as they are normally though of.
One wonders (at least this one does) how this circulation was discovered, how it is measured, and with what degree of certainty is anything “known” about it at all?
Two key items here.
The modelers/fraudsters ignore that the conveyor belt WILL SPEED UP WITH WARMING as the water becomes less viscous. That’s a no-brainer. And, being warmer, the warm water going north will evaporate more rapidly and become hyper-saline more rapidly, such that it is likely to sink before it encounters the fresh water from Greenland. They need to keep all the players in mind.
And, in reality, Greenland is gaining mass relatively rapidly, which has sped up some glaciers, but melting is not the problem. It’s too much ice that is pushing the glaciers.
How much warming, and how much viscosity ( and would it not be more convenient to use fluidity here, the reciprocal property)?
The missing energy from the pause is said to have been found hiding in the deep ocean *involuntary eyeroll*, and was reported in terms of watts, since the whole 15+ years of heating amount to one or two hundredths of a degree.
Since the difference in fluidity between water at 0 C and 100 C is about 1.5 cP, what is the practical effect of a change in temperature of a few one hundredths of a degree?
Seriously curious here, not being facetious.
“And, in reality, Greenland is gaining mass relatively rapidly, which has sped up some glaciers, but melting is not the problem. It’s too much ice that is pushing the glaciers.”
It looks like the ice mass is declining, what is your source that says it is growing:
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/greenland_ice_sheet.html
Nice source. We are all prone to exaggerations. I love it when either side includes data or links to data (observations as well as reconstructions), so we can advance our collective knowledge as opposed to our biases.
Link shows Greenland ice sheet at the high end of gain.
If you believe calving doesn’t belong in the ice mass balance equation.
More up-to-date version:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/03/24/yesterdays-big-lie/
Chris, Fig. 3.3 from your reference shows some pretty remarkable features. First, the dramatic melt seen in 2012-13 was uncharacteristic for the rest of the decade. The data shows annual decline up until 2013-14, which is also unprecedented. Is this a reversal? it will take years to know, but it is as remarkable as the loss in the year that was ballyhooed as “Greenland has Melted” in the internet story lines.
Chris, I so wanted ‘icouldnthelpit’ to make an appearance as your link would have killed his repeated posting that Greenland ice is falling catastrophically. But from your link, immediately below the chart that is ichi’s repetitive post is this gem (my bold):
I think the mods have “icouldnthelpit” in the penalty box for a short time-out.
@chris,
I remember reading that changes to GRACE in early 2012 allowed the large crater to be found in Antarctica.
That year seems to coincide with an obvious discontinuity in the death spiral trend for both the Arctic and Greenland.
http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/images-essays/fig3.3-tedesco.jpg
I wouldn’t take a page titled ‘Report Card” seriously even if it came from NASA. Actually, these days, I would more likely dismiss the findings if it came from NASA.
Have a look at the Danish Meteorological Institute’s Current Surface Mass Budget of the Greenland Ice Sheet, at http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/maalinger/greenland-ice-sheet-surface-mass-budget/
http://www.dmi.dk/uploads/tx_dmidatastore/webservice/b/m/s/y/a/todaysmb.png
Left: Map of the surface mass balance today (in mm water equivalent per day). Right: The average surface mass balance for today’s calendar date over the period 1990-2011.
[Thank you. Good find. .mod]
From linked site:
What bugs me is where is the Total Mass Balance on -200 Gt/year?
The old Tongan navigators had all of this ocean current information in very fine detail and used it along with detailed star sights to undertake epic voyages in their 30 m plus catamarans over 300 years ago.
All of this ‘ultra-modern” knowledge is a sad, limited and obscenely expensive re-run.
These brilliant old mariners would all be laughing at the palangi idiots right now
AGW THEORY -Yet another prediction turning out wrong the strength of the AMOC. This can be added to some of the bigger blunders I have listed below.
AGW SOME OF THE BIGGEST PAST BLUNDERS
1. more zonal atmospheric circulation
2. lower tropospheric hot spot
3. more el ninos
4. decrease in olr
5. Antarctic sea ice decrease
6. increase in global droughts
7. no pause in the global temp. rise
bit by bit we are building a convincing story to debunk the AGW myth. hopefully we can make it in time to prevent our current gov administration to provoke more damage than they already did.
Patrick
IMHO, government only want more taxes and control (i.e. power); they (it?) could care less about the scientific validity of so-called climate science used to justify their moves.
Example: in a few years when CAGW will be commonly understood to have been a silly academic fraud, don’t expect US DOT/EPA CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency) standards to be recinded.
Reblogged this on Norah4you's Weblog and commented:
Some information regarding Real Greenland “climate” in 1000-1250 AD.
Konungs skuggsjá (King’s Mirror) written around 1250 AD, translated into English by Laurence Marcellus 1917:
Chapter 18
….18 kapitlet som behandlar Grönlands produkter:
“Son. You stated earlier in your talk that no grain grows in that country; therefore I now want to ask you what the people who inhabit the land live on, how large the population is, what sort of food they have, and whether they have accepted Christianity.
Father. The people in that country are few, for only a small part is sufficiently free from ice to be habitable; but the people are all Christians and have churches and priests. If the land lay near to some other country it might be reckoned a third of a bishopric; but the Greenlanders now have their own bishop, as no other arrangement is possible on account of the great distance from other people. You ask what the inhabitants live on in that country since they sow no grain; but men can live on other food than bread. It is reported that the pasturage is good and that there are large and fine farms in Greenland. The farmers raise cattle and sheep in large numbers and make butter and cheese in great quantities. The people subsist chiefly on these foods and on beef; but they also eat the flesh of various kinds of game, such as reindeer, whales, seals, and bears. That is what men live on in that country.”
There are much more in prime sources (not Icelandic Annals) to be told about speed in the Gulf Stream back in older days than most knows…… but that’s an other story
“New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.”
NASA refutes Mann? So what did Mann et al say in their abstract?
“Here we present multiple lines of evidence suggesting that this cooling may be due to a reduction in the AMOC over the twentieth century and particularly after 1970. Since 1990 the AMOC seems to have partly recovered.”
Speaking of the “amazing precision” of the ARGO float array:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000mwerrpent.png
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/sl_therm2000mpentwerr.png
But such details are insignificant when the main concern is “proving” that MANN IS WRONG AGAIN.
Argo system has been operation for 15 years.
Not sure what your point is. ARGO was launched in 2000. Your graphs go back to 1967. What does that have to do with ARGO?
And how can a floating buoy (or a ship for that matter) create an historical temperature data record when it is not fixed in a location.
HUH? What does the GLOBAL HC say about the content of the RM 15 paper? About the new ( and not at all justified) Index for AMOC= SSTspg- Tnh? What deatils do you mean?
So, they’ve successfully measured a less than 35mm thermosteric change in sea level from a low in the 1960s to the current height? 35mm? Really?
BTW: Why, exactly do they use joules? Now, I live near Lake Michigan. It is by no means the largest Great Lake but it’s still fairly good sized at 4.5 quadrillion gallons of water. Heck, that’s a thousand times, give or take, the gargantuan trillion dollar size of the Federal budget; which itself is a thousand times a billion – which is no Pee Wee Herman sized number either. Now, last time I checked you could probably dump quite a few Lake Michigans into the North Atlantic. And still have room for quite a few more. Now, it would be nice to think that a joule was a thermal measurement necessary, not necessarily to raise the temperature of 4.5 quadrillion gallons of water, but, I dunno, maybe a trillion, or a billion, or a million, or maybe just a thousand gallons of water? Ok, how about just one single, solitary gallon of water? Or, maybe a measely quart? Or liter? Or pint? How about just a glass of water? Maybe a shot glass? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and no. No, it’s the ability to raise the temperature of one freaking “gram” of water. Ah, but maybe a joule is the ability to raise that puny “gram” of water to the temperature of steam? No – think again. It doesn’t even denote the ability to raise that “gram” of water even one single solitary degree. A joule represents the thermal energy necessary to raise one “gram” (sorry about the repetitious scare quotes but fair is fair: the CAGW crowd uses scare tactics all the time) of water all of 0.24 degrees Celsius. No wonder these people (admittedly a fast and loose definition) use numbers with astronomical implications. The number of joules for this exercise probably exceeds the number of stars in the Universe. Heck, it probably exceeds the human ability to count. Maybe that’s the point?
shs28078,
Yup. Rahmstorf, et al. (2015) goes back to 1925:
Reg Nelson,
Roughly this portion of those estimates are based on ARGO data:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content2000mwerr.png
http://data.remss.com/msu/graphics/TLT/plots/RSS_TS_channel_TLT_Global_Land_And_Sea_v03_3.png
Frank,
Nothing.
On one hand we have Anthony writing: From the “we told you so yesterday” and the “settled science” department. This study was released in 2010, and they used actual measurements, rather than proxy data and reconstructions like Mann did. Gee, what a concept!
And citing a statement by Josh Willis about ARGO: “Nobody imagined that this large-scale circulation could be captured by these global observing systems,” said Willis. “Their amazing precision allows us to detect subtle changes in the ocean that could have big impacts on climate.”
On the other hand we have Reg Nelson questioning ARGO’s “amazing accuracy” on the basis that the floats are not stationary.
One is left wondering whether ARGO would “refute” Rahmstorf, et al. (2015) or not even if ARGO data provided coverage over the same interval. Which it doesn’t. Quite the conundrum, no?
How does ARGO determine sea level? They have GPS receivers for lat/long, I doubt they have one that has millimeter resolution, especially on a surface that moves with waves and tides.
You didn’t answer my question. How can a float that is measuring temperatures at different locations provide any meaningful scientific temperature data.
It’s like measuring the temperature in Santa Monica one day, and Las Vegas the next, and claiming that this is proof of warming. The information is meaningless because you are comparing apples to oranges. Posting a graph of something is not proof of anything if the underlying data is rubbish, which it is.
Tom J,
My understanding is that they’ve inferred a 3.5 cm change due to thermal expansion. So it’s an estimate based on indirect measurements.
It’s difficult to get to W/m^2 without them. But if you insist, here’s the 0-2000m pentadal mean temperature anomaly, with error bars:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/meantemp_2000mpentwerr.png
3-month, yearly and pentadal averages without error bars:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/meantemp_0-2000m.png
Anyway you slice it, that’s an awful lot of energy staying in the system. For “some” reason. Who cares. Less than a tenth of a degree. Everyone knows that using the smallest scalar values imaginable will fool the planet into conforming to our wishful thinking.
Maybe such speculations are how people who lack evidence to support their unsubstantiated beliefs clutch at straws in desperation.
Reg Nelson,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA-19
Perigee 850 kilometers (530 mi)Apogee 869 kilometers (540 mi)
Period 101.99 minutes
Let’s see, the circumference of the planet at the equator is 40,075 km, so that works out to a ground speed of 23,575 km/h. Definitely NOT stationary. And not even remotely close to being inside the lower troposphere.
Or no change:
True … many have argued that TLT != the surface. Including me. Recently.
FWIW, many RSS fans here would disagree. And according to our host, this quote by Josh Willis …
“Nobody imagined that this large-scale circulation could be captured by these global observing systems,” said Willis. “Their amazing precision allows us to detect subtle changes in the ocean that could have big impacts on climate.”
… is submitted as evidence supporting his bold proclamation that:
NASA refutes Mann and Rahmstorf – Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing
From the “we told you so yesterday” and the “settled science” department. This study was released in 2010, and they used actual measurements, rather than proxy data and reconstructions like Mann did. Gee, what a concept!
NASA Study Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing
03.25.10
Houston, we may have a problem.
Ric Werme,
The key word is “thermosteric”. Temperature profiles applied to known sea water expansion parameters and then integrated into estimates. With healthy amounts of uncertainty of course. The figures I posted reference Levitus et al. (2012), which describes the gory details: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1029/2012GL051106/
Brandon Gates
‘Tom J,
So, they’ve successfully measured a less than 35mm thermosteric change in sea level from a low in the 1960s to the current height? 35mm? Really?’
‘Brandon Gates
My understanding is that they’ve inferred a 3.5 cm change due to thermal expansion. So it’s an estimate based on indirect measurements.’
That’s exactly what I thought. It’s a number that, by its very nature, cannot possibly be verified by any form of existing measurement. The accuracy to do so simply doesn’t exist. So it’s stated as if it’s a fact despite the inability to disprove it.
‘Tom Judd
BTW: Why, exactly do they use joules?’
‘Brandon Gates
It’s difficult to get to W/m^2 without them. But if you insist, here’s the 0-2000m pentadal mean temperature anomaly, with error bars:’
So this graph shows us ocean water temperatures to 0.1 degree accuracy (with essentially no error bars in the current context) down to 2,000 meters. They can really measure that, eh? Is that perhaps the reason they really use joules. Moreover, as we know a joule doesn’t represent temperature but, instead, a unit of energy. With an ocean to atmosphere density differential of about 1,000:1 would those joules (used to represent a 0.1 degree temperature anomaly) then translate into a 100 degree atmospheric temperature increase if that ever so sneaky heat, hiding out in the ocean depths, managed to re-release itself to the atmosphere? Of course not. But it sure sounds like a lot of potential energy, doesn’t it? All from an unmeasurable tenth of a degree.
Funny how when ARGO was first beginning it was showing cooling and after that was “corrected” they now show warming. SHOCKER I tell ya. 3500+/- floats attempting to cover 129 MILLION sq miles of ocean and none the polar regions. Oh and they’re not tethered. Nice sciency project but it ain’t soup yet
Tom J,
Avagadro’s number: 6.02214129 x 10^23 (molecules/mole)
Please count out exactly 1 mole of C12 atoms and verify for me that the resulting pile masses exactly 12 grams.
You’re running the same, tired and boring script that people who have an ideological conflict with evolution or the Big Bang do when they “debate” the empirical evidence supporting each theory.
Now you’re back to speculating about something which you cannot “prove”. By your own stated standards you should not be doing this.
As you say, of course not. But a warmer heat sink has less cooling potential. The oceans are not isothermal by depth:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/Glossary_Climate/images/ocean_temp_profile.gif
And not isothermal by latitude:
http://xtide.ldeo.columbia.edu/mpa/Clim-Wat/Climate/slides/surfacetemps.gif
On geologic time scales, the ratio of atmosphere to ocean temperature is more like 5:1, very close to the water/dry atmosphere (sea level) specific heat capacity ratio of 4:1. Surface temperatures would be far more seasonally volatile without their attenuating influence and zonally extreme without the transport of heat from the tropics to the poles. But they’re not unlimited reservoirs. One needs to do a lot more than toss out basic definitions of joules coupled with vague references to heat inertia to have a cogent argument here.
Having some supporting observations helps too, but … well … you’ve sort of nuked that option for yourself.
Brandon, it’s Avogadro’s number, not Avagadro’s number.
[What is the mass of 0.6023 x 10^24 avocadros? .mod]
And don’t accuse me of rejecting evolution or the Big Bang theory.
Or of believing the moon landings were actually staged in a film studio.
Tom J,
Thank you, I never could spell it correctly … memorizing the number to 6 decimal places overflowed the buffers I guess.
Touchy touchy. “Maybe” you should lay of statements like …
No wonder these people (admittedly a fast and loose definition) use numbers with astronomical implications.
… because it’s just the sort of thing people who go around asking “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” also say. By the way, how’s the mass estimate on that 1 mole of carbon-12 going? Finish that one, and you can do Millikan’s oil drop experiment for us. After that, what … ooh, how about a classic two-slit experiment? Particles which are really waves interfering with themselves? Nonsense!
For the final exam, a theme paper: How to Find the Higgs’ Boson in Your Spare Time from the Comfort of Your Own Garage.
Its the Avogadro constant that relates the amount of a substance (units mole) to the number of molecules (or atoms). It has units of per mole and was named after rather than suggest by Avogadro. I’m not nit picking, Brandon, but the reason that you remembered only to the 6th decimal place instead of 8 is because it is being more accurately measured (until they decide to define it as 6.022e23). There has been a huge improvement of the years, not to mention that the original Faraday constant was cocked up and corrected because nobody listens to what The Science says.
While you can’t pick out a mole of C12, there are many different experiments that have confirmed the value to fewer decimal places.
Robert B,
No, go ahead and nit-pick … I’m definitely not on my best behavior today. Truthfully, I actually can’t even remember to how many decimal places I knew it … that was 1987-1992 give or take a few years.
That’s more or less the light I’m attempting to share with Tom J. I brought up Millikan for a similar reason … well here, I’ll let Feynmann tell the story:
We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It’s a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It’s interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan’s, and the next one’s a little bit bigger than that, and the next one’s a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.
Why didn’t they discover the new number was higher right away? It’s a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it’s apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan’s, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan’s value they didn’t look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that…
There’s no way such things are NOT happening in ANY non-trivial bleeding-edge research right now, and that very much includes any and everything to do with climate. My point is that it’s a crappy, lazy method of attacking a scientific finding much less sweepingly condemning an entire field … and I’m of the opinion that those who engage in it frequently are saying far more about their own confirmation biases than those of the people whose research they dispute.
Brandon, you put up a plot of the heat content back until 1960 despite Argo only being deployed (fully) since 2007. The Argo data was corrected from showing an even smaller trend than 1/10th of a degree per decade for a decade. Your plot of heat content going back to 1960 hides how big a call it is to claim that the oceans are warming. If sea -level rise is then calculated from this, it is far from settled.
Now compare that to the much more obvious data such as current movements. If that were based on the Argo floats popping up only metres from their position on previous dives, you would describe any claims about the shifting of the Gulf Stream as bollocks.
Its childish to go on about how come it works for one thing and not the other.
Robert B,
The salient point about ARGO is: why is Anthony touting it as actual measurements (his emphasis) if the data are bogus? Here’s the quote in full context, again:
From the “we told you so yesterday” and the “settled science” department. This study was released in 2010, and they used actual measurements, rather than proxy data and reconstructions like Mann did. Gee, what a concept!
Did he or anyone actually bother to go read Willis (2010)?
[22] Based on coupled climate model runs, Knight et al. [2005] suggested a connection between surface temperature of the North Atlantic and AMOC strength. Despite uncertainty in the early part of the 16-year record, the increase in AMOC strength during the 1990s is consistent with decadal warming in the North Atlantic relative to the South Atlantic during the 1980s and 1990s. The decadal variations in AMOC strength may also be consistent with decadal changes in the temperature and salinity of the subpolar gyre [Sarafanov et al. 2008; Boyer et al., 2007; Curry and Mauritzen, 2005] but further work is needed to determine the dynamical link between these property changes and their relation to changes in the AMOC [Biastoch et al., 2008].
I’m thinking … probably not.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-going-on-in-the-north-atlantic/?wpmp_tp=1#sthash.h9pYiyL8.dpuf
[Response: We are talking about the AMOC here, not the western boundary current which indeed is largely wind-driven, and more specifically about the thermohaline driven part of the AMOC. Its variations are controlled by density changes in high latitudes and not from the tropics. In paleoclimate, I would say it is well established by now that things like the Younger Dryas event or the climatic response to Heinrich events are driven by high-latitude buoyancy (mainly freshwater) forcing. Fans of the tropics as climate driver have tried but in my view failed to come up with alternative explanations for these events. -stefan]
One thing I learned how to do as a child is to read: “Here we present multiple lines of evidence suggesting that this cooling may be due to a reduction in the AMOC over the twentieth century and particularly after 1970. Since 1990 the AMOC seems to have partly recovered.”
Here’s a pretty picture from Rahmstorf et al. (2015) for the reading-impaired adults in the room:
On the off chance reading skills suddenly improve: Since 1990 the AMOC seems to have partly recovered.”
Brandon Gates.
Argo position and drift is very different and very simple to ascertain compared to measuring the mass of the ocean to a T change. Argo is relatively few measurements verses the vast size of the oceans. You are aware that even without considering the error bars in the Argo measurements, the small warming is, like the atmosphere, considerably less then the climate models predicted.
Also, I would be curious if you know, but is their an adjustment made to the Argo measurements due to their shifting geographical location? Should there be?
That reminds me, did Mann when estimating past warmth from tree rings, account for the reduced CO2 during that time frame?
Brandon, did you have a bad day? No need to shout.
David A,
That’s not immediately obvious. ARGO floats spend most of their time hibernating at 1,000 m … well here, they have a pretty picture of the full cycle with all the particulars:
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/operation_park_profile.jpg
So basically they’re at 1,000 m 90% of the time. Not the best place to be getting a read on surface currents, which is what you guys thing the “falsification” is all about. It’s a moot point, becuase just above your post I requoted the falsification of the “falsification”: “Here we present multiple lines of evidence suggesting that this cooling may be due to a reduction in the AMOC over the twentieth century and particularly after 1970. Since 1990 the AMOC seems to have partly recovered.”
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/df/df9514222dd43aa54f08b37483f214921d2722d3362b3ca5be2075c726d12018.jpg
Say “what” again. Sheesh. Mention “model” or “Mann” on this blog and the collective IQ drops to the negatives, something I really would not have thought possibe.
How many floats does it take, David? Do we need to replace the entire ocean with thermometers? How much are you willing to spend to do this according to your standards?
Make up your mind already. Do you trust the data or not? How do you know that the models are wrong if there are no good data to check them? How much did they blow it by?
If it’s all fake, why don’t the models agree with the “observations”?
Oh look, a squirrel! That reminds me, did Willie “The Sun is Big” Soon choose the most up to date TSI reconstruction in his 2005 paper?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL023429/full
Or did he simply pick the one which gave him the best fit to the (obviously falsified, or is it? Will you guys EVER decide?) surface temperature record?
By the way, the lead author on the paper in question — you know, the one which talks about the AMOC from 2015, not NH temperature reconstructions 1998 — is Stefan Rahmstorf, not Michael E. Mann. Your obsessions obvoiusly wreak havoc with your literacy skills.
Well I had quite a lovely day, thank-you. How was yours?
Well Brandon, your post to me is full of straw man, attributing to me a multitude of assumptions that someone somewhere on a WUWT post said.
Did Mann use the Argo floats for his assertions? A simple question.
Did he use proxies? Another simple question.
Are Mann methods more accurate then the disparate direct methods in previous studies?
What proxies does Mann use?
Is the modeled mean of the IPCC atmospheric projections, more accurate then the observations?
When the Argo floats surface, which they do regularly, do we know their geographic location accurately. (Well yes we do)
Does this give us a fairly accurate idea of where they were between surfacing? (Why yes it does.)
Did I ever say we know exactly where the floats are all the time? (As I did not your winded assertions were not relevant. Did I assert that we know their location more accurately and with greater precision then we know the entire oceans GAT. Why yes I did, and you have provided zero evidence that this is not logically true, and so your worded response and graphics explain the obvious, is irrelevant.
Does Argo measure some areas of the ocean more accurately then others? (Why yes they do)
How are disparate geographic locations of all Argo floats considered each time, when estimating the thermostatic rise? (This is a very complicated thing to do BTW)
You ask, How do we know how close the OH model estimates are, if our observations are not accurate. (We don’t and climate skeptics have repeatedly said this, but even assuming they are, they still fall well below what the models predicted.
You ask, How do we know the models are not correct, if the observations are so poor. ( We don[t, and I never said we did. Skeptics just assert that the science does not support the CAGW concerns.)
You see Brandon, you are all mixed up. CAGW is a post normal science You have admitted to not studying the political aspect of CAGW. You have indicated you have not read “Blue Planet in Green Shackles”. or studied the political motivations of the United Nation member promoting IPCC summaries, which misrepresent what the IPCC actually says. You have admitted not studying the IPCC use of non peer reviewed literature. You admitted to me you have not read the NIPCC reports in any detail, and are not aware of much that they include, which the IPCC does not.
So Brandon, why do I think you are mixed up. Because instead of saying, “hey guys, I am a bit frustrated with all the instant criticism by many posters of some paper, before those poster have read the paper at all, what up with that?”. (BTW this frustrates me as well) you instead mock and berate the entire blog, and then you ignore the cogent points, or argue against them with broad and not relevant generalities, often missing entirely the message they were conveying.
I understand them, although I wish the comments were often separated from political to science, but hey
the CAGW crowd is what corrupted the science into the post normal mess it is today. Many of these folk have studied all the many legitimate and easily verifiable “Gates” which have plagued the CAGW post normal movement, and so such responses are often simple protests, using a disrespect that is WELL earned by the post normal science of CAGW. As such the have an understandable distrust of those who deserve to be distrusted. And once again they are correct. This paper has been legitimately criticized by many scientists for very good reasons. Mann well deserves the ridicule he receives. (No, I will not get into the hundreds f pages of legitimate criticism of his “science”) If you read them and studied them as an honest broker, you would not laments so much the ready ridicule of some posters.
You are mixed up by falling to address the many valid points made, or by addressing them in broad general terms For instance, when I criticized how the IPCC uses their modeled mean GAT forecasts as the basis for discussing future CAGW harms, instead of the VERY few models closest to the observations, you several times failed to address that, and instead went into multiple paragraph links describing how all models are wrong, something I never disputed and not at all relevant to my point.
So Brandon you misconstrue what other are saying, why they are saying it, and rarely if ever address the valid criticisms except to make non relevant generalities, and you quote sections out of context to what was written that interprets those statements. When you do give relevant and effective counterpoints, it is almost always to a point most educated skeptics would agree with, and not relevant to the valid criticisms.
BTW Brandon the RAPID study is seafloor to surface tethered buoys measuring T, salinity, and current velocity, not related to Argo, and being tethered, much better then the floating Argo “floats”.
.
You’re correct, Brandon, that I haven’t spent much time reading this but it was enough to read the heading to the paper – Exceptional twentieth century slowdown…..
Previous work, using measurements from a probe towed behind a boat, showed that the changes reported were far from exceptional. So if actual measurements show much larger changes, then the plot above from guesses based on guesses is probably wishful thinking.
Interesting. Almost objected. Well, if you define IQ as normally distributed with average 100 SD 15, you need a 7-sigma stupid to reach -5, right? And there would not be anyone in the world that stupid? I just can’t do the maths now, sorry.
It’s just that the whole test scheme (and thus definition of IQ) fails long before. There is at least one person in 1000 who is completely unable to take part in an IQ test in a meaningful way.
Mann likely needed to use proxy data for the entire length of his data set because the proxy data didn’t match the current observations and he darn’t not splice it together. Were I a fly on the wall, I bet I would have learned that he tried it that way first, the rest of the team discovered his use of “Mike’s trick”, and vetoed it.
Just sayin.
NASA can likely expect a lawsuit from Mann any day now.
Sorry Anthony – I saw it pop up in a feed today from GWPF and never thought to check the date either … SG
Chris – the evidence accumation is growing is in this chart from the orig Mann & Rahmstorf post:
?w=720&h=470
A. Scott, as AW showed yesterday, Mann/Ramstorf figure 6 is tantamount to academic misconduct. First, it blatently misrepresented what the referenced underlying source paper concluded. Second, the underlying paper was proxy based, not observation. There is no ice mass obaervation prior to 1958. Third, fairly detailed observational evidence (four different methods) suggests Greenland lost almost no ice mass in the 1990’s, then about 170-200gt/year in the first decade of this century. See Zwally, J. Glaciology 57: 88-102 (2011). It has been accumulating again for the past 3 years at a rate now exceeding 200gt/yr per http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/ .
NASA defamed Mann by publishing a rebuttal 5 years before his.
LOL!
Maybe he’ll sue Hansen? That’d be fun to watch.
I’m curious as to how ‘melting glacial water is warm’. Compared to the Gulf Stream it hardly is and the Gulf Stream continues a round trip to Europe and back. The Labrador countercurrent the last I heard was not part of the Gulf Stream Circulation. Diving in the Islands of Vanuatu, we often came across ‘blurry’ water, which of course was fresh water coming out from springs. This water was not warm.
It isn’t warm. The issue is that it is fresh. Part of what drives AMOC around Greenland is sea ice formation, which exudes salt, causing very cold surface water to become briny, so denser, so sinking, thus helping draw warm tropical water north ( as in the Gulf Stream). That part is called the thermohaline circulation.
For the record – I accept responsibility for sending Anthony this dated article, although it is still relevant to the Mann et al discussion.
It was posted by the GWPF on Facebook today – and the link leads to this story on their site. It does state in the embedded text it was a 2010 article but the GWPF article date was 3/23/15. Again, however, the ultimate responsibility is mine.
http://www.thegwpf.com/reminder-nasa-study-finds-atlantic-conveyor-belt-not-slowing-2010/
Well done both you and Anthony for spotting it and posting it.
Many moons ago, when I first became aware that there was disagreement about Global warming as it was called back then, the alternative to man’s emissions as the likely cause was changes to ocean currents. It seems that after all that time effort and expense, little has changed.
Someone should do their homework. The increase in the AMOC after 1993 is specifically discussed in the Rahmstorf, Box et. al. 2015 paper and the Josh Willis 2010 paper is specifically cited as the source.
It’s been a long time since I read the book “perfect storm”, but I seem to recall that one trick a fishing boat captain could use to escape heavy seas, was to exit the warm waters of the Gulf Stream and head into the cooler and denser waters nearby, which cut down considerably on wave heights.
I think the water temperature is immaterial. One needs to escape a region in which the wind is blowing against the current, which is what leads to large waves. A nor’easter blowing into the Gulf Stream is what one avoids.
This was in the North Atlantic, off the Grand Banks.
Not that I presume to know what that means.
Although I found this on Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Banks_of_Newfoundland
Nice depiction of the currents at that location though.
UK, I have sailed that area. In any intense storm, waves get very high (I encountered 15 feet just crossing Lake Michigan once in a 36 foot sailboat). Now that is not so much a problem if the crest/trough spacing is large. The Michigan bathtub effect makes the spacing small due to shore reflections. We were taking 3 feet of bluewater over the bow in that Michigan crossing for over 8 hours. Since the 36 foot boat was navigating basically directly across them on about a 30 foot spacing. Will always bury the bow.
In the perfect storm, what got them was two things. First, the fishing boat had been modified and was topheavy (liable to capsize). Never a good idea; sailboats have heavy keels yet can still be rolled 360 in the wrong conditions. Second, they were doing okay until back over the Grand Banks trying to get to land to save the iced catch. The GB shoals both increase the wave height, and shorten the wave pitch. Both are just simple physics of energy conservation, but very fatal. They might have survived had they tried to head east instead of west and forget saving the iced catch. (Remember, their ice machine had broken down also, and they had taken on fuel and ice from a less foolhardy skipper heading to port on the storm’s advance warning. Darwin awards.)
I think I’ll go with generations of seafarers, but that’s just me.
I’ve got no dog in the fight.
The Argo floats are measuring oceanic parameters down to a depth of 2,000m (Wikipedia). However, the average depth of oceans is around 5,000m with the greatest depths being of the order of 11,000m. There also seems to be a lack of Argo floats in the Arctic ocean which also abuts Greenland. Are these profound gaps in our knowledge being mannhandled and papered over?.
With respect to AMOC, the RAPID program strung a series of tethered buoys across the entire Atlantic at 26N (roughly mid Florida). These sample water temp, salinity, and current flow from the ocean floor to the surface, measuring both warm surface northerly flow and the cold deep southerly flow. They show the seasonal acceleration driven by sea ice formation. They also show no net slowing over the past decade despite measurable Greenland ice mass loss from roughly 2000 to 2012′ with a reversal to accumulation since.
AMO anyone?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/01/07/facts-about-the-amo/
Please correct me if I am wrong but wouldn’t Mann, if was actually doing proper research, have to reference relevant papers, and in particular this one since it is bang on subject. Back in the day, I was required to read a lot and do a good job looking into claims that refute my work. I sure there is dicression about the references at time but…this is kind of shocking.
I went to M Mann’s facebook page and his links to try and get his paper to see if he referenced the NASA work. The links are disappeared. Anyone know?
discretion… sorry
the new paper actually does specifically cite the 2010 Josh Willis paper and discuss the AMOC increase since 1993
As much as I find it creditable that Mann’s paper has been
rubbishedrefuted by so many worthies, I shall only be really happy when stories such as this in the UK’s Daily Mail are countered in equal measure by these scholarly refutations (notwithstanding what ‘ichi’ and ATTP – if he ever posts here – have to say about it).Oops, “slowing down” was wrong, so that boat doesn’t float. Its time for the alternative:
According to NASA it may even be speeding up [slightly]. OH NO! THE GULF STREAM IS SPEEDING UP, ALL DUE TO HUMAN ACTIVITY EMISSIONS OF CO2. WE MUST STOP CO2 EMISSIONS IMMEDIATELY OR IT WILL ACCELERATE EVEN FURTHER AND LIFE ON THIS PLANET AS WE KNOW IT WILL END!
I am awaiting the call for action from Holdren due to this additional calamity resulting from fossil fuels, with such alarm being supported by “97%” of climate scientists who agree with anything Holdren says [according to Holdren].
Are we that stupid that one paper says one thing…and another the total opposite?
……..yes
Seriously, that’s par for the course for alarmists.
An easy way to catch any of them out (especially when they throw the “D” word at you) is to show them two contradictory alarmist papers (or just claims) and ask which one is true. They’ll either run away or claim that they’re both true (since CAGW is unfalsifiable*) and tell you that you don’t understand.
In either case, there’s no point talking to them any more.
*Actually, just asking them what conditions would falsify the theory (or just be able tell us when we’re all “safe”) would have them scurrying under the floorboards, too.
Mann gets a lot of press, and many people are starting to understand that he slants everything in order to “alarm.” It is his shtick, and it has made him famous (and slowly infamous).
I spent much time looking into the claims of Rahmstorf and came to the conclusion long ago that he is an “alarmist.” There is no better word for it – he does everything he can to wring out the greatest dread from his data.
See, for example…
https://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/rahmstorf-2011-robust-or-just-busted-part-5-why-a-paper-about-robustness/
I hope the world is catching on.
What nobody seems to comprehend adequately is that the “overturning” component of the AMOC is orders of magnitude weaker in heat transport and slower in speed than the purely advective component, amply manifest in the wind-driven Gulf Stream. It’s a miniscule side-dish in the movable thermal feast.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/solar_variability/bard_irradiance.txt
Brandon, this is what you had sent yesterday. I have a few question on the interpolation of the data I would like to ask.
I do not understand the date -900,-901 etc and omega 27.86 for example. Thanks
I think it misconduct to not have referenced very available papers on the subject and dealt with their conclusions if one has confidence that their paper is more credible. I guess if that someone is one who has similarly examined and discarded all trees from a data base except those that support your meme, it is not surprising to see selective exclusion of directly contradictory work. This guy is finished and the next CAGW zealot for the psychiatrist’s couch.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/orbital_variations/berger_insolation/bein10.dat
Brandon I meant the data from this one. Thanks.
Let me try this. In Berger’s normal terminology the parameters mean this: Omega is solar longitude measured with respect to vernal equinox on the date pertaining to the listing The numbers, -901, for instance are years prior to 1950. The orbital parameters are based on epoch 1950. so 27.86 is a day in mid-late April of year 1049CE. Note that the listings year by year, with extremely different values of omega, do not pertain to the same day of year. I do not understand the reason for structuring the data this way. Maybe Brandon has some insight into this.
Kevin Kilty,
Close to my understanding, but with one critical exception. The years are in thousands before/after 1950, so -901 would be -901 * 1,000 + 1,950 = -899,050, or 899050 BCE. Omega in those files may now make more sense to you.
Salvatore Del Prete,
For the Holocene to 1950, the bien1.dat is sufficient as it covers the 100 kyrs prior to and including 1950. bien11.dat covers 1950 through 100 kyrs into the future. I have a master spreadsheet with a bunch of this sort of data in it, interpolated annually which you are free to use (without warranty to accuracy, of course):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1C2T0pQeiaSY0hST1pvS2RhSnM
Negative years are BCE, positive are CE. There is a year zero, which you should interpret as 1 BCE if you find it matters. Other notes:
ecc, omega, obl, prec, Ins_60N_Jun, Ins_70N_Jun, Ins_65N_Jun, Ins_50N_Jun, Ins_80N_Jun, Ins_90N_Jun are all from the Berger files listed above. All insolation figures converted to W/m^2. Ins_65N_Jun is “interpolated” as the arithmetic mean of 70N and 60N.
TSI from -7360 to 1610:
Steinhilber, F., et al. 2009.Holocene Total Solar Irradiance Reconstruction.
IGBP PAGES/World Data Center for Paleoclimatology
Data Contribution Series # 2009-133.
NOAA/NCDC Paleoclimatology Program, Boulder CO, USA.
TSI from 1610 to 2008
ANNUAL MEAN TSI: Lean (GRL 2000) with Wang Lean Sheeley (ApJ 2005) backgroundMon Apr 6 11:29:27 2009 PMOD absolute scale - multiply by 0.9965 for TIM scale
TSI [W/m2] Total Solar Irradiance
CO2 and CH4 are composites from several sources, the paleo data from Epica Dome C, Taylor Dome and Vostok. The values for each are ln(CO2/280) and sqrt(CH4) – sqrt(680). The interpolations for the gasses are linear. All other series, including TSI, used a cubic spline interpolation.
PS — the linked file is tab-delimited .txt.
Now I know you’re not a climate scientist.
You corrected yourself instead of the date(a)!
LOL!
I know that NASA’s ocean circulation map is a simplification, but that North Atlantic loop is backwards.
You are correct. The main warm northerly is the Gulf Stream, which starts with a loop through the Carribean, exiting through the Florida Straight then up hugging the Fl coast. Where I am, about 7 miles offshore and visible some days. RAPID shows that also. But AW chose an illustration acompanying the NASA paper PR featured in the post. You can check that on Google images. Good enough for government work!
I thought that too , but did not have the courage to mention it.
I took it that this diagram is very much a generalisation, i.e. that the warm water goes N on the surface of the N Atlantic and S at depth. I would think that those who know about these things would know that the Gulf Stream runs N of Cuba and up the E coast of N America and as the N Atlantic Drift goes across to the N of Norway, but that the general effect is that warm water goes N on the surface.
The whole point of the diagram surely is the surface versus depth circulation.
For what it’s worth, this is being addressed on the RC thread: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-going-on-in-the-north-atlantic/?wpmp_tp=1#sthash.h9pYiyL8.dpuf
[Response: We are talking about the AMOC here, not the western boundary current which indeed is largely wind-driven, and more specifically about the thermohaline driven part of the AMOC. Its variations are controlled by density changes in high latitudes and not from the tropics. In paleoclimate, I would say it is well established by now that things like the Younger Dryas event or the climatic response to Heinrich events are driven by high-latitude buoyancy (mainly freshwater) forcing. Fans of the tropics as climate driver have tried but in my view failed to come up with alternative explanations for these events. -stefan]
It appears there’s an annoying ambiguity as to what is meant by “Gulf Stream System”. I posted two papers on yesterday’s thread which may shed some light:
Joyce and Zhang (2010), On the Path of the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/2010JCLI3310.1
Abstract. The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) simulated in various ocean-only and coupled atmosphere–ocean numerical models often varies in time because of either forced or internal variability. The path of the Gulf Stream (GS) is one diagnostic variable that seems to be sensitive to the amplitude of the AMOC, yet previous modeling studies show a diametrically opposed relationship between the two variables. In this note this issue is revisited, bringing together ocean observations and comparisons with the GFDL Climate Model version 2.1 (CM2.1), both of which suggest a more southerly (northerly) GS path when the AMOC is relatively strong (weak). Also shown are some examples of possible diagnostics to compare various models and observations on the relationship between shifts in GS path and changes in AMOC strength in future studies.
Ezer (2015), Detecting changes in the transport of the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic overturning circulation from coastal sea level data: The extreme decline in 2009–2010 and estimated variations for 1935–2012: http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/~tezer/PAPERS/2015_GPC_AMOC_SL.pdf
Abstract. Recent studies reported weakening in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and in the Gulf Stream (GS), using records of about a decade (RAPID project) or two (altimeter data). Coastal sea level records are much longer, so the possibility of detecting climatic changes in ocean circulation from sea level data is intriguing and thus been examined here. First,it is shown that variations in the AMOC transport from the RAPID project since 2004 are consistent with the flow between Bermuda and the U. S. coast derived from the Oleander measurements and from sea level difference (SLDIF). Despite apparent disagreement between recent studies on the ability of data to detect weakening in the GS flow, estimated transport changes from 3 different independent data sources agree quite well with each other on the extreme decline in transport in 2009–2010. Due to eddies and meandering, the flow representing the GS part of the Oleander line is not correlated with AMOC or with the Florida Current, only the flow across the entire Oleander line from the U.S. coast to Bermuda is correlated with climatic transport changes. Second, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) analysis shows that SLDIF can detect (with lag)the portion of the variationsin theAMOC transport that are associated with the Florida Current and the wind-driven Ekman transport (SLDIF-transport correlations of ~0.7–0.9). The SLDIF has thus been used to estimate variations in transport since 1935 and compared with AMOC obtained from reanalysis data. The significant weakening in AMOC after ~2000 (~4.5 Sv per decade) is comparable to weakening seen in the 1960s to early 1970s. Both periods of weakening AMOC, in the 1960s and 2000s, are characterized by faster than normal sea level rise along the northeastern U.S. coast, so monitoring changes in AMOC has practical implications for coastal protection.
In sum, not nearly settled science and not being characterized as settled science in literature. Such notions are lost on people who think they have it all figured out though, so as you were I guess — it’s been one heck of a good farce so far.
Not that I agree with Manns claims, but what in the world has a 5 year old NASA study have to do with today?
One must be wrong. You choose which.
Rud, if I wanted a snarky response, I would have posted on a warmist site.
RD, was not so intended. Was intending only to point out a starker ‘science is settled’ reality. Mann’s 2015 paper say unprecedented slowing since 1975, and getting worse owing to Greenland melt from CAGW. Willis 2010 NASA paper, based on calibrating satellites to ARGO, says probably accelerating maybe 15 % since 1993. Both cannot be true. Somebody is just plain wrong.
The above example is one of hundreds where the in context climetgate emails support the assertion that CAGW research is deeply corrupt.
So Brandon, is tree ring data used as a proxy for the AMOC more accurate then direct measurements from a fixed buoy system?
.
Snarky questions get snarky responses, but you knew that, so let’s just cut to the chase.
If a 5 year old NASA study has nothing to do with today, then should we just toss all NASA data as being out of date ?
I didn’t read it as a snarky question, and Roy and Rud both made it clear that their respective comments were not to be take as snark.
I’m all to happy to snark, because once again you bozos can’t figure out when to accept data from NOAA/NASA and when to throw it under the bus.
That was a weak attempt to elicit a response…. care to try again ?
[trimmed]
[Please do not insult all the honest working Bozo’s in the world by comparing their efforts to climate scientists in that manner. .mod]
u.k.(us),
Blog policy notwithstanding, I find myself somewhat bereft of alternate superlatives. I don’t know what to tell you. How would you describe a community with such a visceral Mann-hatred that AGW evidence they’d normally reject (ARGO) every other day of the week is used to in a polemic to support of the #1 Article of Faith: The Hokey Schtick is a @#$%ing LIE?
Clowns in oversized red footware with their shoelaces tied together doing pratfalls and face-plants in a manner that makes the Keystone Cops look competent and the Three Stooges look non-violent was the first image which came to mind. Try as I might, I just can’t shake it … virtually every post is more ridiculously incoherent and dissonant than the last. I’m almost out of popcorn and cotton-candy.
Yes, Mann’s Hokey Stick is a repeatedly debunked lie.
Next question?…
Mod and Brandon Gates:
I was just trying to play nice, I knew the “bozo” was just a throwaway.
Understood ?
You’ll know when I stop playing.
u.k.(us),
I didn’t take particular umbrage either. Weird that you got clipped and I didn’t.
Penny for your thoughts on my actual point. The silence is rather deafening.
dbstealey,
None. You hit that pitch out of the park on the first swing.
Brandon you ask:
“Penny for your thoughts on my actual point. The silence is rather deafening.”
===============
A thousand pardons, but which point are you speaking of ?
u.k.(us),
lol, exactly. Any other day of the week, Josh Willis of JPL trumpeting the “amazing accuracy” of ARGO would be ruthlessly derided as a kool-aid serving AGW alarmist. Exception: when ARGO “proves” that one Michael E. Mann of Penn. State is wrong.
Actually Brandon, without proper error bars and proper accounting for the geographical location of the Argo floats, we likely know less then we think we know. (Which you admit to above in a post above, not worth searching for) Was Mann’s study primarily based on the Argo observations?
Drive by insults to the entire disparate WUWT community are a simple expression of your immaturity.
You hit that pitch out of the park on the first swing.
Thank you.
Some thoughts are simply expressed. Like E=MC^2.
David A,
Compare:
To:
[hums] “One of these things is not like the other …”
Of course not. Besides it’s so much more effective putting words in someone’s mouth when you don’t quote them directly.
You mean Stefan Rahmstorf’s study? Judge for yourself from what has already been quoted: Here we present multiple lines of evidence suggesting that this cooling may be due to a reduction in the AMOC over the twentieth century and particularly after 1970.
If that doesn’t get it, this may help:
http://www.rare-posters.com/2865a.jpg
Hand-waving insinuations of “admissions” you’re too lazy to quote directly followed up with lame taunts are a glaring indication of your lack of a leg to stand on. Your leadoff self-contradiction was a brilliant touch.
Brandon Magoo, you done it again.
David A says, ,
“
Actually Brandon, without proper error bars and proper accounting for the geographical location of the Argo floats, we likely know less then we think we know.
and david a also said,
“Argo position and drift is very different and very simple to ascertain compared to measuring the mass of the ocean to a T change.
Brandon using his great intellect,[hums] “One of these things is not like the other …”
———————————————————————————————————–
Silly Brandon there is no contradiction if read in context. We know the Argo position very well. Incorporating their ever changing position into a GAT of the entire ocean is not simple in the least. So the first statement refers to the proper method of accounting for determining a GAT with ever moving instruments. On the surface stations moves require an adjustment. So Brandon, perhaps it is not me that needs a reading primer.
————————–\
Brandon continues to bloviate, quoting my question.
Was Mann’s study primarily based on the Argo observations?
Brandon responds,
“You mean Stefan Rahmstorf’s study? Judge for yourself from what has already been quoted: Here we present multiple lines of evidence suggesting that this cooling may be due to a reduction in the AMOC over the twentieth century and particularly after 1970″
————————————————————
No Brandon misunderstandeni, I meant what I said precisely. I was making a point to your dense brain cells, that it is likely that direct observations are better then proxy based models that disagree with direct observations.
Brandon, I simply did not consider your post on this thread acknowledging the limitations of ocean flow
science in its current state would be something I needed to repeat to you as it was only a short time ago.
I think you ended with ” In sum, not nearly settled science and not being characterized as settled science in literature. Such notions are lost on people who think they have it all figured out though, so as you were I guess…”
=============================
Once again Brandon Misunderstandin,
you prove my point that you completely fail to understand the post normal nature of this,” not nearly settled science ” which is being used to justify statist goals of central power and political authority to pick the common man’s pocket.
.
Brandon for you, an example of some background on Mann and his anti science, reposted from “real Science”
Here is a graph (to year 2000 on right) that has been BURIED by the Alarmists.
….Steve McIntyre notes that one of the “screened out” datasets just happens to be the one with the best resolution and the greatest duration – the Law Dome Oxygen 18 data set (from Antarctica)….
McIntyre adds:
Oxygen isotope series are the backbone of deep-time paleoclimate. The canonical 800,000 year comparison of CO2 and temperature uses O18 values from Vostok, Antarctica to estimate temperature. In deep time, O18 values are a real success story: they clearly show changes from the LGM to the Holocene that cohere with glacial moraines.
On its face, Law Dome, which was screened out by Gergis and Karoly, is an extraordinarily important Holocene site as it is, to my knowledge, the highest-accumulation Holocene site yet known, with accumulation almost 10 times greater than the canonical Vostok site. (Accumulation is directly related to resolution: high accumulation enables high resolution.) The graphic below compares glacier thickness for some prominent sites for three periods: 1500-2000, 1000-1500 and 0-1000. its resolution in the past two millennia is nearly double the resolution of the Greenland GRIP and NGRIP sites that have been the topic of intensive study and publication.
Given the high reliance on O18 series in deep time, one would think that paleoclimatologists would be extremely interested in a publication of the Law Dome O18 data and be pressuring Tas van Ommen on this point.
…
But despite the apparent opportunity offered by Law Dome, there has been virtually no technical publication of a high-resolution O18 or delD isotope series.
…
A Climategate email shows that Phil Jones asked about the omission of the Law Dome series from the IPCC illustration in the AR4 First Draft. I asked the same question about the AR4 Second Draft. They realized that the Law Dome graphic had an elevated medieval period and thus, including it in the graphic would – to borrow a phrase from the preparation of AR3 – would “dilute the message” and perhaps provide “fodder to skeptics”.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/12/the-longest-most-high-resolution-most-inconvenient-paleoclimate-data-that-hasnt-been-published/
The above example is one of hundreds where the in context climetgate emails support the assertion that CAGW research is deeply corrupt.
So Brandon, is tree ring data used as a proxy for the AMOC more accurate then direct measurements from a fixed buoy system?
========================
duplicate post here, but now in the correct location.
.
Oh crap. Does this mean I MUST believe either NASA or M. Mann? I pass.
The thing about the 2010 paper is that NASA used actual measurements of the real world. Yes, they used what one could call data rather than computer simulations and observational bias. Astounding! I was under the impression that it was against Federal Law to use actual measurements in Climate “Science”.
This development left me gobsmacked.
Climate Audit trashes Mann’s paper:
http://climateaudit.org/2015/03/25/reductio-ad-mannium/
I think I will drop by there to see how Brandon Misunderstandin is insulting them.
SkepticGoneWild, thanks for the link. The article isn’t very long and well worth a read.
I think it’s worth mentioning that the RAPID data show no significant slowdown in the Gulf Stream component of the AMOC mass transport. This is in contrast to the climate model predictions. I quote:
“Thomas et al. (2012) looked at how the components of the
AMOC changed during a warming scenario in a model sim-
ulation and found that the reduction of the AMOC was pri-
marily a reduction in southward flow of deep water balanced
by a reduced Gulf Stream with little change in the strength
of the gyre circulation, which appeared to be determined by
Sverdrup balance. This contrasts with our observations that
show no significant change in the Gulf Stream transport over
the 2004–2012 period when the AMOC is decreasing.”
So all this talk in the media of the Gulf Stream slowing NOW is the usual alarmist rubbish. Confusion over the terms ‘Gulf Stream’/North Atlantic Drift/THC/AMOC doesn’t help either. It allows people on both sides to make misleading claims. Mann picks up on this on his FB post to claim that Tom Rossby’s study does not contradict his findings but he is curiously reticent to mention/correct the misleading alarmist claims put forward in the media about the Gulf Stream slowing/stopping based directly upon his and Rahmstorf’s study:
https://www.facebook.com/MichaelMannScientist/posts/873222562733947
I’m not sure where the NASA study fits into this and how their measurements compare to RAPID’s but it seems obvious that the demise of the North Atlantic circulation is being greatly overplayed and as usual pinned on man-made global warming.
Having now read all these papers, easy. RAPID is seafloor to surface tethered buoys measuring T, salinity, and current velocity from top to bottom, at 26N across the entire Atlantic (roughly central Fl). NASA Willis was (iIRC) 47N, roughly Long Island, looking at mainlymthe Guld Stream northerly flow. Mann says he is looking mainly off the coast of Greenland where the THS arises. Ah, but the neck bone is connected to the backbone connected to the hipbone… So, by better than 2:1, Mann is just wrong on AMOC weakening.
ALL such changes in all-things-climate-related should been seen as part of a ‘natural cycle’ unless there is extraordinary evidence to believe otherwise.
Otherwise…
The IPCC and warmists make a big mistake when they rationalize that the fresh water melt from this current warming can affect ocean currents. The volume of melt back at the break up of the ice sheets running into the lowered sea levels of that period can not be duplicated under today,s conditions.
l don’t think its the gulf stream slowing down is what put europe into the last ice age.
What l think happened was that because North America started to became much colder its that what lead to the chilling in europe. Because as the ice sheets grew in America that would caused a lot of cold air to flow over the northern Atlantic. Which would have surly caused a cooling of the northern Atlantic, so reducing the amount of warm air coming off the Atlantic to keep europe mild. This in turn with a more zonal southern tracking jet stream flowing across the Atlantic. Which would have reduced the amount of warm air coming up from the mid Atlantic and increased the amount of blocking over northern most europe. ls what l feel triggered europe into the last ice age.
I think you are right on target.
[And I think you are banned for sockpuppeting – Anthony]
This Mann character has to be seen to be believed. In order to deflect criticism of his work, he says on the one hand that the Gulf Stream is quite distinct from what his study is looking at, which is the AMOC:
“What Rossby is measuring is largely associated with the wind-driven boundary current of the subtropical horizontal ocean gyre, the warm poleward current that hugs the coastline of the southeastern U.S., the current that *physical oceanographers* refer to as the “Gulf Stream”. This is rather different from what we are looking at, which is what oceanographers instead refer to as the “AMOC” and more specifically, the “thermohaline circulation” (sometimes also called the “conveyor belt”
But then he allows himself to be quoted as saying that it may be only a matter of DECADES before a permanent shutdown of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream occurs. His recent FB timeline is crammed FULL of links to articles and interviews with himself which are predicting catastrophic slowdown/shutdown of the GULF STREAM. Here’s just one:
http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/25/global-warming-slowing-ocean-currents-michael-mann/
Jaime, your pseudonym is Perry Mason? Good job, from a (IIRC) real RAPID scientist. Bravo.
You shall inherit the climate science world despite this transitional heresey. By all means, connnect with Dr. Judith Curry now that you have been ‘outed’ as someone honest. Regards.
+2
And thanks to Rud Istvan, Brandon Gates and others for an amusing (and enlightening) thread!
“Net types like to catfight about whether blogging is the Way Forward or
utter self-indulgence. Since it is almost certainly both at once,
blogging is quite the hot topic. ” — Bruce Sterling
Haha, thanks Rud, I’ll take that as a compliment without necessarily agreeing entirely! Much respect for Judith Curry.
Is Mann correct? Is the Rossby study a different area? What part of the AMOC did Mann measure, or model?
Mann & Rahmstorf did not measure any components of the AMOC flow – even their modern instrumental data merely infers the strength of the AMOC. What did they do?
“An AMOC index based on surface temperatures
We take the results of a climate model intercomparison to identify the geographic region that is most sensitive to a reduction in the AMOC (Fig. 1), which for simplicity we henceforth refer to as `subpolar gyre’, although we use the term here merely to describe a geographic region and not an ocean circulation feature. To isolate the effect of AMOC changes from other climate change, we define an AMOC index by subtracting the Northern Hemisphere mean surface temperature from that of the subpolar gyre.”
In other words, they used a climate model to investigate what pattern of ocean temperatures would be strong ‘evidence’ of man-made global warming affecting the AMOC, then they used this to define their own unique AMOC index! Furthermore, they used decidedly iffy proxy data to ‘measure’ SST of the NH and sub-polar gyre so that they could reconstruct AMOC.
They found a good correlation of their AMOC index with a MODELED AMOC stream function so presumed it must be fairly representative of AMOC as a whole but admit that:
“Despite the good correlation with the AMOC in the model, our SST-based index only provides indirect evidence for possible AMOC changes.”
So there you go; Mannian/Rahmstorfian climate science in action!
Thank you Jamie. I guess that for someone who removed the MWP without so much as a “How do you do” to the past papers supporting it, he can revolutionize this field as well, and I think he came up with another unseen in 1000 years or so claim in this study as well.
Josh Willis? Then I’m with Mann. It’s slowing.
That’s a great ad hom attack, though pointless. You are “with” Mann, no need for embellishment.
FWIW Mike Mann is probably better at oceanography than tree stuff.
Which is not to say he is great shakes at either.
In other news-
The “No tornadoes through March” line just got busted. A small (F1?) just cut through downtown Moore, OK and is lifting as i write this. Moore, Oklahoma has gotten the worst of it with several large and powerful storms in recent years. The infamous May 3, 1999 F5 tornado wreaked havoc through Moore and South Oklahoma City with the highest wind speeds ever recorded at 300+ mph. That storm damaged or destroyed over 8,400 homes and businesses and unfortunately, killed 50 people. Had it not been for the superb weather detection and warning system in Oklahoma, several thousand may have lost their lives, as that powerful twister was taking structures down to the bare ground and moving the debris elsewhere. It was not survivable above ground.
I would have figured that Oklahoma would have blown the “no tornadoes in March” for the rest of us. Lol!
Tulsa/Sand Springs had a good sized twister out of this storm, as well.
Moore should set up horizontal wind turbines. It gets “Torn” regularly.
3, 2, 1…
And Mann replies that the NASA paper is ‘pure scientific fraud’.
I just skimmed the thread on this paper over at Climate Audit. I was astounded to learn that the proxy data used on this study is the SAME proxy data that was used in Mann’s Hockey Stick. How does one reconstruct the AMOC from tree rings and lake sediments? I just cannot be bothered to read the paper to see what mental gymnastics have to be performed to justify that connection. Not only are proxies used when actual data is available, the proxy is….tree rings? I defy anyone to come up with an explanation as to how those proxies can POSSIBLY be a measurement of the AMOC.
I hope they don’t wind up getting their paper withdrawn. Leave it up for everyone to see.
I think Mann needs to publish a paper every now and then, and only has his old data to do it with.
Mann’s typical day at the office:
North Atlantic looks like it’s getting cold…hmmm..why don’t we drag out our old tree ring and lake sediment data and see if we can come up with something?
you never heard of tele-connections? (-;
Illustration also doubles as a Character description of the Democrats and Republicans.
I’m with the Cool current, I don’t bother none with that shallow warm stuff – seems a lot comes from the West coast of the U.S.
P.S X-marks the spot where Cthulhu lays dreaming in R’lyeh.
So we could call this a ‘prebuttal’. Curiously, Rahmstorf et al cite this very article in their References:
19. Willis, J. Can in situ floats and satellite altimeters detect long-term changes in Atlantic Ocean overturning? Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L06602 (2010).
I wonder if they actually read it.
“norah4you
March 25, 2015 at 10:23 am
Now it only takes Willis to learn the true story of climate – there is neither a climate threat nor a risk for Gulf Stream slowing down….
Btw – back in 980 AD to 1341/43 Greenland had warmer climate. Min 1 and a media of 3 degree Celsius more than today.”
Greenland was warmer than today during the MWP,while concurrently Europe was also warmer than today .
Doesnt this example by itself negate R/M15?Where was the cooling of Europe?
Re ribbon of currents diagram at top.
How does the cold deep ribbon heading north to Alaska get heated for its shallower southward leg?
Seems t be a reasonable and good point.
I was wondering something else: I understood the Humboldt Current to be the largest source of deep upwelling on the planet, and as such creates the most productive fishery and marine ecosystem on Earth.
Why is this not considered part of the thermohaline circulation? Because it is not driven by variances in salinity?
Or, perhaps that ribbon diagram is not particularly accurate, nor complete?
Another thing, the current off the west coast of South Africa is ice-cold from Antarctic upwelling. That warm surface current would be pretty difficult given the direction of the prevailing winds in the Southern Oceans being West to East.
I was just doing a little thought experiment, and would like someone or someones to tell me where I have gone wrong:
Gulf Stream is moving at normal usual speed, and each parcel of water spends a certain amount of time at tropical latitudes, during which time it absorbs solar energy and becomes warmer. As it flows through the Florida Straits and begins to move northward, at some point the parcel is no longer absorbing energy, but releasing the heat it gained to the atmosphere at higher latitudes.
If for any reason the Gulf Stream slows down, each parcel will be spending a longer amount of time at low latitudes than it was when the current was faster. Consequently, the parcel absorb more solar energy, and is heated to a higher temperature as it flows through the Straits and begins to move northward.
Since the water is hotter as it moves north, and spends a longer amount of time releasing it’s heat, there is more energy being released into the air as the stream moves first northeast and then more east by northeast.
Questions:
– Does the water max out at some point before moving north, and reach an equilibrium state at which it can get no hotter? Or does the zone of heated water get wider and deeper and the stream as a whole continue to gain energy?
– Does it release more heat at lower latitudes off the southeastern US and have less heat to release upon reaching the more northern states? Or is this effect negligible, and more heat is indeed delivered to the upper latitudes by having the GS move more slowly?
Brandon Gates is in rare form on this one. Are you really just a sock puppet for Mann? Nobody can be so stupid otherwise.
Mark
It’s not fair really, is it Mark? Brandon writes well and seems very knowledgeable on the subject, in comparison to most other commenters. I have had a very entertaining morning reading this thread.
However, some people don’t see it like that. They would prefer a simple slanging match with name calling. A game where no knowledge or expertise is required and thus more like a level playing field for them.
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2014/12/2/niceness-at-home-and-abroad.html
MikeB,
That’s the expected nature of playing an away game against a hostile crowd that is loyal to a losing squad, and to a glaring fault. It really isn’t fair; I’m here by choice and feeling very much in my own element.
I appreciate your compliments on my writing and knowledge. I’m frankly not always sure the latter is justifiable; I have far more questions than answers and I know for a fact there are things I’ve gotten completely wrong. I’m glad you enjoyed reading, thank-you for saying so.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/25/nasa-refutes-mann-and-rahmstorf-finds-atlantic-conveyor-belt-not-slowing/#comment-1891627
Mike, please read my three posts in succession starting here, linked above.. BG uses advanced troll tactics very well, and has technical knowledge of some aspects of CAGW, but is very wrong, and he slings plenty of mud. Forgive the typos here, as it is very late and I did zero proofing, so please do not miss the message due to the substandard writing.
David A,
My main argument is extremely simple. Here, again, is Anthony’s headline and lead text:
NASA refutes Mann and Rahmstorf – Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing
From the “we told you so yesterday” and the “settled science” department. This study was released in 2010, and they used actual measurements, rather than proxy data and reconstructions like Mann did. Gee, what a concept! NASA Study Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing 03.25.10
The implicit accusation is that Ramstorf et al. (2015) does not use “actual measurements” and disagrees with what the “reality” of these so-called “actual measurements” tell us about what’s going with currents in the Atlantic. This implication is patently false. From the paper itself, Figure 5 and its caption:
Figure 5. A compilation of different indicators for Atlantic ocean circulation. The blue curve shows our temperature-based AMOC index also shown in b. The dark red curve shows the same index based on NASA GISS temperature data48 (scale on left). The green curve with uncertainty range shows coral proxy data25 (scale on right). The data are decadally smoothed. Orange dots show the analyses of data from hydrographic sections across the Atlantic at 25° N, where a 1 K change in the AMOC index corresponds to a 2.3 Sv change in AMOC transport, as in based on the model simulation. Other estimates from oceanographic data similarly suggest relatively strong AMOC in the 1950s and 1960s, weak AMOC in the 1970s and 1980s and stronger again in the 1990s (refs 41, 51).
The cited NASA study, written by Josh Willis of JPL mainly covers the ARGO era, though some cautious inferences are suggested back to 1992 based on satellite altimetry: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL042372/full
[21] No significant trend was detected in AMOC transport between 2002 and 2009. The altimeter record, however, suggests a slight strengthening since 1992. Although agreement with Argo-based observations during the latter years is encouraging, some care is required for interpreting the altimeter-based estimate over the entire 16-year period. Regression coefficients between altimeter observations and individual profiles are 0.5 to 0.6, while regression coefficients with subsurface displacement data are closer to 0.3 [Willis and Fu, 2008]. Nevertheless, on long enough time scales, temperature and salinity anomalies advected into the domain could introduce significant error into these coefficients. This underscores the need for ongoing hydrographic observations such as those obtained by the Argo floats as well as the more traditional ship-based surveys.
No significant trend between 2002 and 2009. Altimetry suggests a slight strengthening since 1992. Both statements agree with Ramstorf et al. (2015), Fig. 5. Both statements agree with the Abstract as quoted very early in the comment thread by Nick Stokes: Here we present multiple lines of evidence suggesting that this cooling may be due to a reduction in the AMOC over the twentieth century and particularly after 1970. Since 1990 the AMOC seems to have partly recovered.
“NASA refutes Mann and Rahmstorf” is a false statement. It is an “argument” that was dead on arrival. Any honest, rational person with basic language comprehension skills and the desire to be correct about salient details, like methods and time frames, can easily figure this out. My “advanced troll tactics” are nothing more than basic reading and critical thinking skills, otherwise known as exercising proper skepticism. You know, the opposite of ignorant Gish-galloping buffoonery.
Or perhaps you don’t, in which case I really ought to lay off mocking your “illiteracy”.
Actually Brandon it is best to quote from the post what you disagree with. (You really need to stop arguing with the entire community of WUWT, it causes you to make inevitable strawman assumptions, to miss the cogent criticisms, and apply snark when it is juvenile.) WUWT is a large community.
Now from the post…
“The latest climate models predict the overturning circulation will slow down as greenhouse gases warm the planet and melting ice adds freshwater to the ocean. “Warm, freshwater is lighter and sinks less readily than cold, salty water,” Willis explained.”
Did you disagree with that?
“Combining satellite and float measurements, he found no change in the strength of the circulation overturning from 2002 to 2009. Looking further back with satellite altimeter data alone before the float data were available, Willis found evidence that the circulation had sped up about 20 percent from 1993 to 2009”
Did you disagree with that?
Your posted a graph from the Mann & Rahmstorf paper, based on… “The blue curve shows our temperature-based AMOC index also shown in b. The dark red curve shows the same index based on NASA GISS temperature data48 (scale on left). The green curve with uncertainty range shows coral proxy data25 (scale on right)
=================================
? Where, in this graph is the data from Willis NASA study, applying apples to apples to the same section of the AMOC in Mann’s paper)
By apples to apples I mean that Mann & Rahmstorf did not measure any components of the AMOC flow, and they attempt to attribute to your SUVs emission something that the NASA paper clearly stated was natural,… “For now, however, there are no signs of a slowdown in the circulation. The changes we’re seeing in overturning strength are probably part of a natural cycle,” said Willis. “The slight increase in overturning since 1993 coincides with a decades-long natural pattern of Atlantic heating and cooling.”
So it is Mann’s postulated SLOWDOWN, which is not measured, and his empty causation link to your SUV, which is AT ODDS with the NASA study, and other studies more recent directly measuring the current and salinity.
Mann admits that he is not talking about any Gulf stream component of the AMO slowing down, as it is known not to be, and to be primarily wind driven. Yet, and here is the post normal part of CAGW science you do not face…
Jamie posted…”Mann allows himself to be quoted as saying that it may be only a matter of DECADES before a permanent shutdown of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream occurs. His recent FB timeline is crammed FULL of links to articles and interviews with himself which are predicting catastrophic slowdown/shutdown of the GULF STREAM. Here’s just one:
http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/25/global-warming-slowing-ocean-currents-michael-mann/
Where is the evidence for the big slow down from the other papers?
It is not there is it?
In fact, Mann is talking about this slow down in the thermohaline circulation of the AMOC at a time when Greenland has been accumulating ice again for the past 3 years at a rate now exceeding 200gt/yr per http://www.dmi.dk/en/groenland/.
…and Mann ignores that RAPID study, or misappropriates what it says, which is based on seafloor to surface tethered buoys measuring T, salinity, and current velocity, and does not support his study either.
BTW Brandon, I did NOT notice you mocking my literacy skills. I apologized to a poster for not proof reading, as well as for an old browser and keyboard, but please understand that my misplacing a comma, is not an excuse for your CAGW coma.
David A,
Normally I do. I had two posts to you to answer, one of which attacked my tactics, the other of which was filled with off-point irrelevancies by my judgement. So I triaged and combined here.
I don’t need to do anything. It may be advisable for me to lay down the broad brush since I recognize how odious it is to use it and that cuts against the grain of my better nature. But the plain fact of the matter is the utter lack of collective self-awareness at WUWT about juvenile behavior and unfairly sweeping condemnation when the subject is Dr. Michael E. Mann is so wildly hypocritical in my mind that the personal satisfaction which comes from venting my spleen takes precedent.
If you want to tone troll someone, I suggest that you’d be better served policing your own on this topic. You’ll get no quarter from me on this topic in this thread by suggesting what’s “best”, only leading. I ask none in return, and certainly don’t expect to get it.
Recognized and appreciated. Not every day, but frequently enough I’ve had some exchanges which I thought were rewarding.
No. It’s perfectly logical and based on basic physical principles I know firsthand.
Haven’t I quoted that bit already? I see no reason to disagree with it.
Why are you asking ONLY me? Anthony’s contention is that Willis (2010) refutes Rahmstorf (2015). Which is silly:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL042372/full
[9] Because they dive to a depth of approximately 2000 meters to obtain temperature and salinity profiles, the Argo floats do not sample the currents in shallow regions like the continental shelf or the upper part of the continental slope. Argo-based estimates of geostrophic velocity are therefore restricted to regions where the water is deeper than 2000 m (Figure 1). This precludes using Argo to estimate the AMOC at latitudes where significant meridional transport lies in shallow regions. For instance, at 33°N, much of the Gulf Stream transport sits on the continental shelf and slope (Figure 1). Because Argo cannot sample these shallow regions, the Argo-based estimate misses much of this northward transport and gives a basin-integrated transport that is much too low (Figure S1).
Not only does ARGO not “refute” Rahmstorf (2015), it looks to me like they were correct to not use Willis (2010) for the “Gulf Stream” transport at 33°N.
It’s a big ocean, David. The texts of these papers include specifics. Press releases unfortunately use ambiguous terms in ways that aren’t always obviously inappropriate to the PR flacks who write them, nor to the ones who uncritically regurgitate (and/or spin) them elsewhere. One has to read the papers to get the salient, critical details before making conclusions. Anthony was so sloppy on the year Willis (2010) was published (“This was just released today”), it was painfully obvious that he didn’t read the damn thing before declaring triumphantly:
“NASA refutes Mann and Rahmstorf – Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing”
I think you’re asking the wrong guy the wrong questions about the wrong issue.
Brandon Gates March 26, 2015 at 12:53 pm
Replace arrogance for ambition in the quote above and you might find a cautionary note regarding your
self-confessed thick skin.
On more than one occasion you have been outrageously insulting to the host of the forum in
which you so pleasurably parade your inflated ego.
You tauntingly derided Anthony’s ability to read on a previous thread and again here you colour him: stupid, illiterate, incapable of basic reading, or critical thinking, his argument dead on arrival and you accuse him of being an improper skeptic, lumped in with those you label; ‘Gish-galloping buffoons’.
However, If you read these papers with the slightest notion of what intellectual honesty is, you can only come to the same conclusion that Anthony did. And that is, that NASA refutes the claims of Mann and Rahmstorf (Albeit in the very paper they reference).
You posted the paper’s figure five and its caption in defence of your claim that Anthony’s position is “patently false”. Yet the figure only confirms Anthony’s “implication” because nothing depicted in it is real data!
It is worse than you thought, because they have only used proxies. Proxy temperature reconstructions are used as proxy data for the AMOC index (A proxy) for the current circulation. In the case of the hydrological model data, it is a proxy of a proxy of a proxy.
Here is a listing of the indictors (Indexes/proxies) depicted in figure 5, which is “A compilation of different indicators for Atlantic ocean circulation”:
1. M&R’s Temp based AMOC index
2. NASA GISS Temp based AMOC index
3. Coral proxy based AMOC index
4. Hydrographic model simulation
And further, the caption’s only overt reference to the NASA paper, is to the 1990s being “stronger again”. The comment: “other estimates from oceanographic data similarly suggest…”, is not appropriate or even relevant to the NASA paper because it goes out of its way to cast doubt on the veracity of those very claims:
As to the 1990s speeding up, the NASA paper does mention a “slight strengthening since 1992” but cautions that this “data” is from the Altimeter record only and not from Argo-based observations. The paper specifically warns against the use of this Altimeter data because of the accumulation of significant error and therefore recommends real observations! :
To summarise, NASA concluded that slowing did not occur in the seven years prior and that it is unlikely to have occurred in the previous 20 years. It also states that any slowing trend from 1957 is not verified by more recent mooring data.
Thus, Anthony is perfectly justified to state that real data isn’t used by the Mann and Rahmstorf paper and that NASA did use real observations to show that cooling and slowing had not occurred over the entire period in question.
The upshot is that the graph your exhibited as evidentiary, is not compatible with any real observation at any point over the period it “documents”.
BG, your “basic reading and critical thinking skills” have just been hit out of the park.
They must seem smaller to you now, as they recede over the outfield wall.
Scott Wilmot Bennett,
As I have already pointed out, it’s extremely unlikely Anthony read either paper prior to posting this article.
That was me giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Yes, I’ve already quoted that passage in a response to David A. You’re behind the curve here.
No, as you yourself note:
Two modern instrumental series, one proxy series, and a model. That is not “only” proxies.
Specifics. Not just when but WHERE is important here. Speaking of WHEN, 20 years is nothing when it comes to the AMOC, with transit times on the order of 1,000 years. Kinda sorta why coral proxies make sense because for darn sure corals have been around longer than buoys. They’ve even been around longer than buckets tossed over the rail of ships. Models make the utmost sense because the whole idea of this exercise is to predict what’s going to happen in the future, and that begins with doing runs over the past and present and comparing that output to the best observational data available.
Only someone completely scientifically illiterate or wholly dishonest would try to punch holes in Rahmstorf (2015) for including all 4 of those above items in their study. It’s quite possible for someone to be both of those two things at the same time. I think it’s pretty clear what my opinion is on Anthony in that respect. I don’t suffer his apologists any more gladly.
Ibid.
I think not. You are running the same idiotically obtuse game that Anthony and David A are. It’s a big ocean. Plucking statements about the Atlantic out of one paper and applying them to another paper about the Atlantic without being geographically specific is not a viable way to compare these two papers. And the a priori conclusion that Rahmstorf (2015) is wrong because Willis (2010) says so is patently illogical and almost beyond belief save for the fact that I see such sloppy thinking here day after day after day.
Mike, here I discuss some of Brandon’s methods. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/25/nasa-refutes-mann-and-rahmstorf-finds-atlantic-conveyor-belt-not-slowing/#comment-1891618
Again, please look past the non edited writing, and see the message presented.
The article says:
>>”Scientists hypothesize that rapid cooling 12,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age was triggered when freshwater from melting glaciers altered the ocean’s salinity and slowed the overturning rate. That reduced the amount of heat carried northward as a result.”
Anyone know what proxy is used to assess this? Or what method?
It seems to me there’s alternative explanations. For example Ewing and Donn (in 1958) hypothesised that *if* the arctic were open water at that period it could have had a similar effect:
1) Warm atlantic currents melt the ice cap over centuries
2) The ocean below can now radiate (& evaporate) as it is no longer shielded/insulated from the air, so the energy in the warm currents can be lost to space and atmosphere.
3) Over centuries the 14 billion sq m of arctic ocean loses heat to space
4) Which cools the planet down again. Snow builds up, ice forms until the ice-cap grows over again.
5) Once again the warm atlantic ocean builds up heat until we are back to 1)
It makes a lot of sense to me. The ice-cap acts like a thermostat in a car: it opens to allow heat to escape, and closes to retain heat. It fits the rapid change from one ice-age to another, as in this graphic:
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/raw/IA_Fig7_0_4.jpg
When the ice-cap is complete, heat builds rapidly (at 150k years and 20K years ago in the graphic). Then the ice slowly melts again as a result and heat can escape, which gives the jagged downward slope of temperature as the earth loses heat again.
It explains the inconstancies in the Milankovitch cycles theory, as orbital changes are a) gradual, b) don’t have enough energy in themselves to melt the ice (so a high CO2 sensitvity is invoked), and c) the deglaciation only happens every 5th cycle.
Oh, and I should add, it appears that there’s good evidence that man was living in the Arctic during the last ice age (see here and here. This implies that much of the Arctic region was ice free / temperate during the last ice age.
“..Willis found evidence that the circulation had sped up about 20 percent from 1993 to 2009.”
Which is what I was hinting at here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/24/michael-mann-and-stefan-rahmstorf-claim-the-gulf-stream-is-slowing-due-to-greenland-ice-melt-except-reality-says-otherwise/#comment-1890555
in my opinion the “Great Conveyor” did not even slow at the start of the Younger Dryas and I contend further as I have said in my book that the cause of the Younger Dryas was an encounter with a comet, Rod Chilton
“Achilles Heel of the North Atlantic”
“The North Atlantic is particularly important for global ocean circulation, and therefore for climate worldwide,” Reichler says. “In a region south of Greenland, which is called the downwelling region, water can get cold and salty enough – and thus dense enough – so the water starts sinking.”
http://unews.utah.edu/news_releases/stratosphere-targets-deep-sea-to-shape-climate/
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n11/full/ngeo1586.html
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC) has not slowed down in the past 8,000 years. Past perturbations of MOC were caused by drainage of Lake Agassiz, which raised sea level by 0.8 to 2.2 m.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X11003177
20th century melting of glaciers raised sea level by only 0.002 to 0.003 m per year. This melt rate has not change much in 8,000 years. See chart
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
Coming (intentionally) late into this discussion, just a short note:
Earth’s magnetosphere ‘pulsates’ with periodicity of about 60 year, while the Earth’s core at just above 65 years, together speeding or slowing down, rising, pausing or declining the events
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Ms-Ec.gif
Perhaps the slowdown in the circulation his hiding deep within the oceans with all of the accumulated warmth.
There was a warm SST pattern south and east of Greenland during the Nov 2009 to Mar 2010 low AMOC event. Here’s the mid 2012 low AMOC SST pattern, again during stronger negative NAO conditions:
http://weather.unisys.com/archive/sst/sst_anom-120715.gif
” From 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010, the annually averaged MOC strength was just 12.8 Sv, representing a 30% decline. This downturn persisted from early 2009 to mid-2010. We show that the cause of the decline was not only an anomalous wind-driven event from Dec 2009–Mar 2010 but also a strengthening of the geostrophic flow. In particular, the southward flow in the top 1100 m intensified, while the deep southward return transport—particularly in the deepest layer from 3000–5000 m—weakened. This rebalancing of the transport from the deep overturning to the upper gyre has implications for the heat transported by the Atlantic.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL052933/pdf