UK Ocean Scientists: We're going to Investigate the Pause

Gary Pearse,

I have no trouble with the idea of the ocean taking up sun’s heat, even into the depths, if there is a rational scientific explanation or demonstration (empirical measure) of the phenomenon.

Start with: short wave solar energy penetrates to tens of meters, long wave “thermal” radiation only a few microns. So energy from the main source gets in radiatively with relative ease, getting out by the same mechanism not so much.

But how would this be due to CO2.

Increased downward energy flux at the surface. Net of cooling upward fluxes (sensible, latent and radiative) and assuming constant solar input, the logical result is energy retention below the surface until a new (pseudo-)equilibrium is established.

It would be hard to claim that it wasn’t a natural phenomenon.

That just happens to coincide with increased atmospheric CO2 levels coincident with human emissions? Natural phenomena are not magic. They can be, in principle, identified and quantified.

If the crux of the idea is that it is due to human caused emissions, then I would suspect even you would surely be a sceptic on this (you are aware that this “s” word is not a pejorative term and is therefore not an ad hominem as it appears to be among the consensus).

I’m plenty skeptical. That I believe the consensus explanation doesn’t mean I don’t critically examine claims or have ceased questioning my own biases or (lack of) understanding of the rather large body of theory and observation supporting them.

With the volume and temperature of the deeps, tens of decades of this wouldn’t make much of a change in the water temperature.

Surely correct on physical principles alone. Also consistent with observation:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itemp2000_global.png
Regressing that against HADCRUT4 over the same interval puts the ratio of change at 7.60:1, R^2 = 0.76. Going to full depth, that ratio is likely higher.

Indeed, if this water then came to the surface, it would further cool, not warm, the atmosphere.

I assume you mean by way of evaporative cooling from the surface, with convection carrying away the latent heat. My first immediate question: what happens when the surface layer of the atmosphere is already saturated, or nearly so?

If this mechanism operates for many decades then we will have a sustained decline in temperature caused by a natural phenomenon while CO2 continues to mount.

The cold reservoir of the atmospheric heat engine is near the tropopause, not the surface. The process you’re describing here doesn’t make any physical sense to me. Additional heat into the oceans from whatever source coming out at the surface needs to go through the atmosphere to get out. How it can do that without bumping surface temperature in the process simply doesn’t add up for me.

So many other negative feedbacks also operate on any significant heating that might be caused by CO2 – , speed up of evaporation/convection, clouds/albedo, etc.

There’s nothing particularly special about CO2 relative to, say, increased solar output. Main difference is that increasing any well-mixed GHG will tend to enhance radiative cooling in the stratosphere whereas increased solar flux would not be expected to do the same. Otherwise, I don’t see why any of your other proposed negative feedbacks would not expected to be operative.
Point being, if climate is so self-stablilizing as you propose, it makes it difficult to explain the 4-8 K global temperature cycles of the past million+ years of ice age cycles. In short, I rather think they’re not so negative as you apparently wish to believe.

Even delta T caused by a bolide collision with earth would result in restorative feedbacks to the temperature band that the earth has been in for at least a billion years, although it might not be as benign to us and other species as CO2 seems to be demonstrating (the greening of the planet, of course is an inconvenient negative feedback, too).

Well sure, a perturbed equilibrium system is going to tend to return to its original state once the causal mechanism has faded. CO2 doesn’t settle out like impact dust and aerosols do.
That the stuff is plant food isn’t lost on me, but unless I come to find out the cost side of the ledger is less than the benefit side, I’m not going to be in any rush to advocate pumping more of it into our atmosphere.

belousov,

I guess global heat budget is a kind of bolt hole or life boat to escape to when telling people that climate (which used to mean something connected with weather) is endlessly warming when it is not, starts to lose its credibility.

Global heat budgets are arguments firmly rooted in the law of conservation of energy.

Who cares about heat budget in the end?

People who are interested in determining whether the system is gaining or losing energy over time, why, and by how much.

It is climate experienced on the earth’s surface that matters to the biosphere and us.

Sure, and to the extent that tallying up the number of Hiroshima bomb equivalents accumulate in the ocean over time tells us something about how surface conditions are expected to respond, it seems a worthy, more comprehensive approach to determining what’s happening than simply calculating surface and bulk upper air temperature anomalies — which only tell us something on the order of 7% of net energy change in the system.

For instance, there is evidence that during ice ages, deep ocean water is warmer.

Citation? In the meantime, I offer Bintanja (2008), which is a model study (constrained to observation) whose output suggests a 5:1 surface to deep ocean temperature ratio over complete cycles going back 3 million years, with ocean temps lagging the surface on the order of 5,000 years.
Since the Holocene Optimum was warmer than the pre-industrial LIA (and MWP) it has been argued that some residual heat from those warming episodes at depth have potential to throw of energy budget calculations attempting to use temperature profiles obtained from extreme depths. Other than that wrinkle, I know of no literature suggesting an inverse relationship between Tsurf and Tdo except, maybe, as a transient condition due to lag when long-term warming flips to long-term cooling and vice versa.

So according to a global heat budget, the earth could be as warm or warmer during glaciation than during interglacials.

Yes, that is a rather silly-sounding argument, which is why I’ve asked you for a literature citation.

Does this mean that even if the earth started to cool toward glacial inception, you and your crowd would blithely continue to preach endless warming on the basis of some rabbit-out-of-a computer-model gain in budget heat?

I’m not in a position to speak for everyone who more or less shares my views on AGW, but for myself: if Trenberth, Kiehl, Fasullo, Stephens, etc., et al. published a revised energy budget showing a negative (outbound) net flux imbalance and from that claimed more warming was still in “the pipeline”, I’d take exception to it.
Nobody I consider credible is talking about “endless warming” either. I claim we know exactly what would eventually stop it, the real debate as I see it is how to do it and how long it would take for surface temperatures to stabilize.

Why?

Good question.

Just to see, out of contemptuous curiosity, how long the general population would be stupid enough to go on believing it?

Don’t be ridiculous.

Or because you actually believe it yourselves?

I certainly don’t. Come back with a reference substantiating your claim of surface/deep ocean temperature inversion and maybe we can have a more sensible and factual discussion about what theory and evidence actually say instead of what looks to me to be a distorted view of what you’d like them to say so that you can “refute” them.