From Roger Pielke Sr’s Climate Science Website
Is There Climate Heating In “The Pipeline”?
A new paper has appeared (thanks to Timo Hämeranta for alerting us to it!)
Urban, Nathan M., and Klaus Keller, 2009. Complementary observational constraints on climate sensitivity. Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L04708, doi:10.1029/2008GL036457, February 25, 2009. in press,
which provides further discussion of this question.
The abstract of this paper reads
“A persistent feature of empirical climate sensitivity estimates is their heavy tailed probability distribution indicating a sizeable probability of high sensitivities. Previous studies make general claims that this upper heavy tail is an unavoidable feature of (i) the Earth system, or of (ii) limitations in our observational capabilities. Here we show that reducing the uncertainty about (i) oceanic heat uptake and (ii) aerosol climate forcing can — in principle — cut off this heavy upper tail of climate sensitivity estimates. Observations of oceanic heat uptake result in a negatively correlated joint likelihood function of climate sensitivity and ocean vertical diffusivity. This correlation is opposite to the positive correlation resulting from observations of surface air temperatures. As a result, the two observational constraints can rule out complementary regions in the climate sensitivity-vertical diffusivity space, and cut off the heavy upper tail of the marginal climate sensitivity estimate”.
A key statement in the text of their paper reads
“Surface temperature observations permit high climate sensitivities if there is substantial unrealized “warming in the pipeline” from the oceans. However, complementary ocean heat observations can be used to test this and can potentially rule out large ocean warming. Ocean heat observations are compatible with high sensitivities if there is substantial surface warming which is penetrating poorly into the oceans. Again, complementary surface temperature observations can test this, and can potentially rule out large surface warming.”
By “unrealized warming in the pipeline”, they mean heat that is being stored within the ocean, which can subsequently be released into the ocean atmosphere. It is erroneous to consider this heat as ”unrealized warming”, if the Joules of heat are actually being stored in the ocean. The heat is “realized”; it would just not be entering the atmosphere yet.
As discussed in the Physics Today paper
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55,
there has been no heating of the upper ocean since mid-2003. Moreover, there has been no heating within the troposphere (e.g. see Figure 7 of the RSS MSU data).
Thus, there is no “warming in the pipeline” using the author’s terminology, nor any heating within the atmosphere! Perhaps the heating that was observed prior to 2003 will begin again, however, it is scientifically incorrect to report that there is any heat that has not yet been realized within the climate system.
The answer to the question posted in this weblog “Is There Climate Heating In “The Pipeline”? is NO.
ARGO data is available free – just need to register and requested data is extracted to FTP site you can access. Hope you can decode the data ’cause I cannot!
Anna,
The basalt at the bottom of the Ocean is denser than the continental crust. I am not sure (have not checked, but should be easy to do) what is the thermal conductivity for it, but considering that it conducts heat from Earth’s mantle to the bottom of the Ocean (which, I assume, removes it quickly) a gradient of temperature should appear on it so that the closer to the Ocean (going up from Earth’s mantle) the lower the temperature of the rock.
IOW, If the thermal conductivity is low enough, heath will be removed from the bottom of the Ocean and the temperature at the bottom will the same as the Ocean’s bottom, i.e., 2-4 C and not 55 C.
Mary Hinge , Ron de Haan etc.
To the comment that the ice-melting contribution just shows warming.. and thus sea levels make clear sence in global warming debate.
Besides the problem that a large volume of te ocean is below 4 degrees and therefore behaves opposite to temperature changes, there is also the differences in geological/vulcanic activity at the see floor.
Across the world there is millions of seafloor vulcanoes and a huge network of sub seafloor water chanel where water is heated up. Therefore, any differnce in geological activity will affect sea floor water temperatures at million spots over the globe. This is likely to affect sealevels by warming, but not warming relevant for the global warming debate. natural fluctuations that even more makes sea level use in global warming debate complex.
Another convenient lie exposed.
Lemme guess the reaction: “We’ve never said there was heat still in the pipeline…”
foinavon – regarding your comments, you have misunderstood the relationship between ocean heat storage change and the radiative imbalance of the climate system; e.g. see your comment below:
“So Pielke’s notion of heat stored in the ocean and “subsequently released into the atmosphere” isn’t a very helpful one….The essential question is the rate at which the oceans come towards equilibrium with forcings.”
However, the relationship is the following:
the radiative imbalance = the radiative forcings plus the radiative feedbacks.
The radiative imbalance is diagnosed by the ocean heat content changes, since this reservoir dominates. If it is near zero averaged over a year (which it has been since mid 2003), there is an equilibrium at least until the imbalance again becomes non-zero.
Please read my paper with respect to this issue.
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335.
http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-247.pdf
I’ve looked at a lot of station data on “Sea Levels Online” (NOAA Tides and Currents). Almost all data show a linear trend with no apparent expansion effect from “stored heat”. If anything, a majority of stations show no appreciable (relative) sea level rise in the last 30 years.
Why pick 2005? Why pick one data set? I will repeat one of the comments, it seems very appropriate: “I’ll just add the comment that I find it strange how contrarians readily accept a plot such as the one shown here with hardly any details of the original reference, the actual data points, the analysis technique or the estimated uncertainty, while at the same time putting the “hockeystick” of Mann et al. under such heavy scrutiny!”
Also don’t forget on a local level there will always be fluctuations in sea level due to wind, currents etc and land based measurements measure their relative heights, not much good if land is rising (for example Scotland) or falling (for example southern England).
I’d be careful about the religious connection if I were you, the sceptic community, whether on this subject or evolution or even as was the case not that long ago, plate tectonics, are firmly wedded to the religious right. The belief being that God created man to basically do what he wanted to the Earth and only God can change the Earth etc. It would be more accurate to describe the contrarians of AGW, using your particular context as a cult, that is of being very much in the minority and oblivious to accepted scientific thinking.
Wasn’t Denmark submerged under ice sheets and is still rising? Why don’t you discuss the original point, that is of a GLOBAL mean? Is it because it is easier to cherry pick than to discuss the big picture?
Atolls provide good evidence of either a substantially rising sea or a sinking mountain. One of the argument for AGW is that islands are being inundated with a rising sea. Let’s look at the evidence. Certain kinds of corals only grow if sunlight can reach them. Remains of this same kind of coral will occur if it becomes too deep and sunlight no longer graces it’s branches. Drill into any atoll and you find 100’s and 1000’s of feet of coral fossil. Since sea level rise or fall can be easily determined by many pieces of evidence, the prevailing theory of atoll formation is that land sinks, regardless of what the sea level does. This then becomes a very good “tree ring” proxy of both sea level rise and fall and plate tectonics. The overwhelming evidence is that even taking into consideration ice ages, islands sink on their own, paying no attention what soever to sea level. I just thought I would mention this in case we get a post that says that volcanic islands are being devastated by rising sea levels. It was Darwin who first posited this theory. He wasn’t deemed correct until the 1950’s. The consensus was the other way around, that coral reefs and atolls formed around stable underwater mountain tops and that sea level changes caused coral to die or build. Good theory till the shear amount of the depth of coral fossil was discovered with drill cores.
foinavon wrote: Nothing in S-K (or Pielke’s) analysis indicates that there isn’t warming “in the pipeline”.
As I read it, Pielke’s point is that there is no ‘pipeline’ to store the heat. The joules are either in the earth’s system or they’re not.
The main place for the heat to be is, of course, the ocean. Since the ocean’s heat content hasn’t changed over the last 5-6 years neither has the earth’s temperature.
When at some point in the future the earth’s radiative balance changes and there is more heat coming in than going out the ocean’s temperature will begin to rise. The rate of that increase will be determined by the radiative imbalance at that time and not heat stored in a non-existent ‘pipeline.’
Why are “rising” sea levels proof of “rising” temperatures? All that is proof of is that current temperatures are warm enough to melt glaciers. They don’t have to be warmer, and if they were would that affect the rate of melting considering the diminishing amount of glacial ice?
You’ve got it all wrong! There is shed loads of heat in the pipeline to come. I have just heard this morning of yet another news storey saying something about drought in the Amazon rainforests that is a potential climate change disaster all over. Can’t remember the exact details as my mind went blank for the rest of it & my will to live rapidly diminished until the news was over. This was about the 4th or 5th AGW/CC storey pumped out by the Beeb either on web, on tv, or on radio in as many days. I am expecting many, many more of them over the coming weeks & months to keep the momentum going, “very likely” reaching a screaming crescendo in December curiously enough. The anti Third Runway at Heathrow brigade have just thrown green custard over Lord Mandelson (Environment Minister & it couldn’t have happened to a nicer chap – ha!) in protest. This is interesting, they’re only one more step away from physically assaulting somebody causing actual bodily harm ( & I feel for that poor person – really do) & then the world will finally see the type of people these guys realy are. Thanks to Dr Hansen they probably won’t even get to court over it.
O/T. Gosh we had a real blinder of a snow storm. Just got back from seeing a client about a job & he was telling me he finished a meeting in Exeter on Wednesday evening at around 8pm, & didn’t get hone to Bideford until nearly midnight the snow was so bad, (a journey normally taking only about an hour or so). We had a liberal sprinkling ourselves too but much is still lying around up country. Again this wasn’t predicted by the Met Office until last the minute, but it does seem to tie into Piers Corbyn’s prediction!
Mary, the rise is sea level (after adjustment for changes in the land) has two component, an increase in volume from melting glaciers and an increase in volume from heat expansion. Since the Argo system has been deployed to measure the top 3000 meters of ocean, there has been no heat expansion (the steric component).
The Mystery of Global Warming’s Missing Heat
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren’t quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans. “There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant,” Willis says.
Combine this with the negative feedback the Paltridge paper supports, and it’s been a bad week for the warmers…
“That is a lot of heat, much more than the atmosphere heating the water on top ( it is seldom 45C). And hot water rises. Just curious if anybody knows.”- Anna V
“I think there is more deep water heating from the mid-ocean ridges. Question is, how much?”- Richard111
NOAA UNDERSTANDS and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the DEPTHS OF THE OCEAN to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
Just ask NOAA. Didn’t you know the science is settled?
Mary [snip],
The Colorado graph shows the 60 day smoothing sea level peaked in 2006 and has been dropping since then.
Baby its cold outside!
OT, but there are a couple of tiny spotlets on the sun, slightly left of, and above dead center. Cycle 23 spots?
REPLY: At that latitude, cycle 23 for sure. – Anthony
NPR seems worried Americans might balk at the idea of directing economic stimulus money to NASA and NOAA; explains why it is so very important:
Aging Satellites Threaten Climate Research Future
The U.S. satellites that monitor climate change are aging, and replacements are years away, thanks to more than a decade of budget cuts and squabbling about which federal agency should run the climate satellite program.
Scientists say this means the United States will probably have to get along without some critical eyes in the sky at precisely the time it’s making multibillion-dollar decisions about how to respond to climate change
…
“So you end up with two agencies, who are the primary climate agencies, having climate as the third priority,” Wielicki says. “So how are you going to get climate done? And the answer is, you’re not.”
To address the organizational problem, Jane Lubchenco — President Obama’s pick to run NOAA — plans to create a National Climate Service.
And to help with the money problem, the president’s stimulus package includes hundreds of millions of dollars for climate research, including new satellites.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101336630
Isn’t it amazing that they have been able to accurately model the future climate of the world without all the necessary tools?
This whole ‘hidden heat in the pipeline’ thing is a particular black beast of mine. So much so that I was visited, not so long ageo, by the, (fortunately rare), urge to wax poetical.
I submitted the poem as a comment to one of Lucia’s haiku posts so apologies for resubmitting it here.
The Significance of Signatures
by Kevin B
The hidden heat is hiding in the oceans so they say,
Deep amongst pelagic seas it bides its time away,
Waiting to return in its full power come the day,
Of reckoning.
Masked by unknown mysteries of currents warm and cold,
The cycles of the children shroud its power, strong and bold,
To devastate the cities of the people, so we’re told,
By the prophets.
“But how can we unveil these mysteries!” the people cry,
“Where can we perceive the hidden secrets by and by,
“Of floods and droughts and storms and devastation ‘fore we die,
“In ignorance.”
“There is a Sign, a Signature, a Portent in the air!
“A Big Red Spot, that’s fearsome hot in tropic troposphere!
“The Runes predict! Entrails descry! Seek and find it there!”
Say the prophets.
So they searched amongst the heavens looking for a Big Red Spot,
With satelites and radiosondes and everything they’d got,
High and low they searched and searched but they could find it not.
It isn’t there!
“Of course it’s there, you nincompoops! The sign is heaven sent!
“Your satelites are useless and your radiosondes are bent!
“And anyway, it matters not! That isn’t what we meant!
“By signature!”
And Ra looked on, his features bland, his countenance quite clear,
And meditated to himself, “Another quiet year?
“For I decide by fire or ice what people have to fear!
“My Majesty.”
DB2 (06:45:55) :
I don’t disagree with you DB2. It’s the age-old problem of addressing an analogy too literally, and then getting mired in non-arguments over semantics! The warming “in the pipeline” that results from a response to an external forcing (solar/greenhouse) is not a consequence of heat stored in a “pipeline”, since as you say, there isn’t really a “pipeline” at all.
The warming “in the pipeline” relates to the fact that an enhanced forcing produces a response that takes some time to achieve equilibrium. In this case the slow equilibration time relates to the massive ocean sink, and the fact that the full response of an enhanced forcing will only be realized once the oceans themselves come towards equilibrium with the forcing. It would be more precise to replace “in the pipeline” with “still to come due to the slow equilibration times of various elements of the climate system”.
That issue is what the Urban-Keller modeling paper addresses.
The fact/observation that the ocean heat content hasn’t changed over the last 5-6 years is a different issue altogether, and somewhat of a red-herring in consideration of the transient/equilibrium responses to enhanced forcing.
“I have just heard this morning of yet another news storey saying something about drought in the Amazon rainforests that is a potential climate change disaster all over.”
Here’s the link: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=aKeY2zQNK1tc&refer=home
Snippets:
“Hurricane Katrina, Amazonian Rain Forest Drought Caused by Warmer Atlantic”
“The milder waters in the second-biggest ocean caused such arid conditions in the western and southern parts of the Amazon that younger trees died and growth in older ones slowed. That then turned a rain forest that normally absorbs 500 million tons of carbon dioxide a year into a net emitter of the greenhouse gas blamed for global warming, scientists said.”
“The results … appeared in the latest edition of Science.”
““Now the study reveals that increasing drought due to global climate change can cause potentially irreparable damage to the Amazon jungle and its ability to function as a carbon ‘sink.””
On a much less technical note RE: oceans …
For every person on earth there are 230,000,000 tonnes of ocean water. A family of four “owns” almost one billion tonnes of ocean water. No matter how much humans are accused of affecting climate, I simply cannot accept that a family with two cars, a bungalow (etc etc) can have any affect whatsoever on “their allotment” of ocean water compared to the sun. That’s a lot of water.
It is arrogant of us (the warmers) to think we are more influential than the sun and the masses of oceans. Utter nonsense.
(One day I am going to write an essay about a hypothetical family on an island in a salt lake that measures 10 km by 10 km by 10 m deep … one day. ☺)
Clive
From the frozen Great Plains of Canada
(Where is will be 10C° colder than average for the next few days…bah )
Mary Hinge & Crosspatch:
I would appreciate your insight.
Willis and other scientists have used in their papers altimetry data as a proxy for heat in the upper ocean (up to 750m). Dr. Pielke Sr. on the other hand has recently written that there has been little or no heat accumulation in the upper ocean for the last four years. I understood he has for some time also suggested that such heat may be stored in the ocean deep.
Given the potential for thermal expansion of the ocean deep with such expansion having an impact on sea level, is reliance upon altimetry data as a proxy for heat misplaced?
Spots are more visible in the magnetograms
Anthony. I think a lot can be learned by observing the “tenor” of comments. IMHO, people that are confident of their analysis, remain calm, confident that their conclusions will be born out in subsequent observations of real data. Conversely, see “Mary Hinge”, when the debate seems to be going badly, personal attacks, and adherence to ” the models show”, does more harm to their cause than they realize. In this debate, the ” undecided “, will undoubtedly come down on the side of polite, rational discourse.