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.
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natural:
Q = m.c.(T2-T1)
(T2-T1) = 0
Q = m.c.0
Q = 0
George E. Smith, Mary Hinge and Frank.
I think the whole discussion is still a bit off on issue of salinity and temperature and density of the ocean. Frank is wrong about 4 deg C. However, there is no deep ocean thermal expansion either.
perhaps this web site would help:
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Water/deep_ocean.html&edu=high
Warm ocean water stays on top, cold ocean water on the bottom. The bulk of the cold water is salty water that sinks in the arctic region. It goes down to the bottom of the ocean where it is as cold as 0 deg C or 32 deg F.
There is only mixing in the top 100-400 meters. So, If there is going to be any thermal expansion it happens here. If there is going to be any hidden heat stored in the ocean, it will be here too. So, the Argos measurements going down to 2000 meters is probably sufficient. Everything below that is in layers according to temperature or salinity. Warmer waters will not penetrate down there, only cold saltier water will. Hence there is little or no hidden heat in the pipeline. Argos is measuring a no heat increase in the top part of the layer, it means there is none worth talking about below.
FInally the only water that does pennetrate this layer comes from the Arctic. So George, we get very cold (28 deg F perhaps?) and salty water sinking down. It goes to the bottom and back fills the whole ocean. There is no hidden heat down there. It simply will not sink.
P.S. Mary, keep the God comments out of this. I have no religion, not even atheist. I was born and raised to choose my own beliefs, and I have chosen none. I do take offense to your comment about religion and skeptics, and it reflects negatively on your arguments. In addition I find most religious people being very concerned with the environment. They are the ones that do irritating things like invite me to a park to pick up garbage…
Niels A Nielsen (13:43:49) :
Yes O.K., but we don’t expect monotonous, progressive measurements of increasing temperature or heat content or whatever, and especially shouldn’t overinterpret data over very short periods (like 4 years). The sea level data indicates that sea levels were rising at least through 2007. The heat content indicates a relatively small steric (warming) contribution to sea level rise in this period and indicates a larger mass (land ice melt) contribution. We’ve had a significant La Nina in 2008 which brought unhanced upwelling of cold waters to the eastern equatrorial Pacific. We’re smack at the bottom of the solar cycle….
…a lot of disparate things happen in the very short term that tend to be averaged out in the longer term. It’s not worth making major interpretations of long term phenomena based on very short time periods.
foinavon:
You’re kidding, right? If not, you need to get out more often. If so, it’s not that funny calling Lucia ‘he’. [Her interesting site, “The Blackboard,” is listed in WUWT’s short blog roll.]
Lucia Liljegren falsified the UN/IPCC’s AR-4 predictions with this simple and elegant chart: click
Others have also falsified the IPCC [and once is all it takes], but Lucia’s chart does it in one easy to understand page view.
tallbloke
I love your bet. I have been searching high and low for the right structure for such a bet, and yours is the best (read: most straightforward) I’ve seen/
Issues:
(a) I suspect that multiple wagers at smaller amounts would be more collectible on average (that is, spread the collection risk). Be sure to write ti down, with provisions for collecting from the estate and/or heirs.
(b) with the AGW frenzy reaching a fevered pitch, you should be getting VERY long odds; at least say 5:1. If AGW folks are only willing to go even odds, how “settled” could the “science” really be??
(c) unfortunately, many many AGW proponents are not. how to put this politely?, er, “liquid” or even er, “solvent”. Suggest skipping the bicycle commuters and starting with overpaying Prius owners (admittedly a redundant tautology) and working backwards through Saab and Volvo owners.
Before anybody gets PC-HUFFY about such a gross generalization, (a) we own a volvo (b) I used to own a Saab 900 turbo convert AND a 1968 Saab 95 2-stroke wagon ringa a ding ding (c) R&T reported on a study a number of years back that found that the only folks more liberal than Saab owners were people who didn’t have a driver’s license (Manhattanites, I suspect).
I myself am going to try to get 10:1 odds PLUS make exactly the same bet you did (that is, 2005 to 2020). AGW folks are so sure of themselves that they likely won’t even look at the current data. so I’ll be starting way ahead.
My experience with ocean tehrmodynamics is limited to the deep shelf, down to about 8000 feet, where my company’s drilling rigs operate. But FWIW:
Water temps at the depths where we operate (about 300 to 6500 feet usually) is consistently just below 0 degrees C (about 31 deg F) worldwide, and I mean worldwide (North Sea, GOM, Brazil, West Africa, Australia, etc.)
Remember that the hydrostatic pressure is around 0.4 pounds for every FOOT of water depth, so pressures are pretty high.
There ARE currents (sometimes several knots) at depth, but apparently very little vertical mixing, at least on the shelf where we operate.
My (limited) understanding is that the thermal statification below a couple hundred feet water depth is very severe, so that it takes a VERY long time for significant heat exchange to take place from surface to depths. That, coupled with the large thermal mass of seawater (btu/deg/lb, or if you like kcal/deg/kg) is what MAKES the deep ocean a highly effective “sink”
FWIW.
“The sea level data indicates that sea levels were rising at least through 2007.”
Yup, at a nice steady even rate that has basically unchanged for at least half a century. No increase in rate of change. If anything the recent rate of change has decreased, not increased.
And the fact that automated weather stations in Antarctica must be raised a tower section every few years should give evidence that the snow pack there is accumulating significantly.
Pearland Aggie (16:43:21) :
“algore says to debate the science of AGW is silly….”
He also refused to debate skeptic Bjorn Lomborg saying:
No. “The scientific community has gone through this chapter and verse. We have long since passed the time when we should pretend this is a ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ issue,” he said. “It’s not a matter of theory or conjecture, for goodness sake,” he added.
As an example, he pointed to a new addition to the budget for the island nation of the Maldives: “Funds to buy a new nation.”
Jeepers! Where do you shop? And finally, since earth’s ice cap melt is due to AGW, and we know the ice on mars is melting… Wouldn’t that be proof of life on mars?
David L. Hagen (10:17:59) :
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/RSS-MSU-TMT.jpg
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/RSS-MSU-TMT-1.jpg
Lower Stratosphere TLS 1979 to 2009-01 -0.335 K/decade
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/RSS-MSU-TLS.jpg
anna v (03:43:52) :
That is what I have been saying all along!
What would snap us out of a Ice cover?
Sun? no it is reflected. CO2? no it does not generate heat.
Geothermal? yes it come from underneath , it is steady and works globally!
err uhm…… well duh!
model any one?
All I can say with relation to the original story is, oh well. I was rather hoping that the cold snap was over and warming would again commence as promised. My primroses had the nerve to poke their heads out over the past 2 weeks, even with the consistent sub zero overnight temps. (We have had exactly 3 over night lows in positive territory since November. Tough plants) Now it appears that in my neck of the woods, we are about to have a March Blizzard! Haven’t had one of those since I left Thunder Bay in ’69. Next time I write from here I should be under a foot of warming! I was a bit worried that I had missed the optimum pruning window for the fruit trees. Silver lining?
Notes on climate/weather
Leif asserts that the heat from the sun has (and always has been the same) little variation.
So why does the climate change? In fact how do we have weather? How do we have climate?
When I was a kid, in the 50s, we used to burn paper (and our skin) with a magnifying glass. This was in Scotland where the temperatures are not that exciting (the record temp apparently in the SW Dumfries area is about 31.8C – nice summer’s day down under) and clouds are the most prominent features in the sky. We still managed to burn paper with the glass! Why?
My theory is that the light from the sun, through the glass, pinpoints/focuses at an optimum distance from the subject eg paper, skin etc. and creates heat. It doesn’t matter what the ambient temperature is at this subject point because the glass requires sunlight to cause the heat. It was rarely a success (if at all) when the clouds were between the glass and the sun.
The Earth spins on its axis and travels around the sun. The sun is overhead between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn depending on the time of year. Spill light reaches to the poles, either one depends on the time of the year.
It is not the fact that the sun is overhead in the tropics that causes the heat it is because there is more sunlight and the focus is stronger in these areas.
The upper atmosphere is like a magnifying glass, without it we would freeze!
The height and thickness of the upper atmosphere determines the focus of the sunlight. Where it hits ocean there is an increase in humidity, when it hits land the surface heat increases.
The spin of the Earth moves the air currents that then pick up their influence from the land or sea conditions causing weather. If there are fluctuations with the height and depth of the upper atmosphere and the focus of sunlight is increased or decreased then weather changes. If the height and depth do not vary then the climate becomes stable.
I sometimes think that we know too much and understand so little. My theory is simple, simplistic maybe, but I can understand it and see what is happening around us.
Maybe others can see my POV?
If the mods allow this to get through then please be gentle with me 😉
Mike Ryan:
I just wonder why, in blogs to do with science, some people feel the need to refer to religion so much. Ladies and gentleman: please keep to the science!
I know what you mean, Mike, but it wasn’t me who brought up this whole line of argument, back when the AGW apostles apparently thought it was cute to call me a “denier”. It really did seem pretty stupid on their part and not “keeping to the science”, which in a way actually tells you what is being done in “Climate Science”.
And then the AGW’s kept right on doing it, so I just decided to ask, well, what is the opposite of a “denier”, and, yes, it can turn out to be a “believer”. I didn’t think they’d like that at all, but they started it and were making a lot of propagandistic hay by this “denier” name calling, again which I think tells everyone a lot about them.
Mike, if you start to look at the ipcc’s Climate Science as more of a massive propaganda operation, things will start to make a whole lot more sense. For example, what kind of scientist studying atmospheric temperatures never checks their thermometers?
As to Mary H. trying to tie me and everyone who does not toe her line to the “religious right”, I’m also pretty sick of being called a “theocon” and a “racist”. I say that people who use these kind of name-calling terms and tactics simply because of a disagreement are projecting, just as the “believers” were doing in calling me a “denier”. It’s funny how that works.
David L. Hagen (10:17:59) :
Ooops should be.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/RSS-MSU-TLT.jpg
My understanding of why we even have weather is that the atmosphere is the mechanism to transport heat from the tropics to the poles. When you have a solar minimum then you get changes to this mechanism which opens up holes in the thermal blanket at the poles and reflects via low-lying clouds to reject more incoming. The upper atmosphere shrinks, and we just found that out. The sun’s TSI does not have to change, just the lack of solar wind to keep out the cosmic rays seems enough to get the job done: release stored heat & reject a portion of the incoming heat.
So, the Earth cools.
What’s the big deal?
Does it really matter right now how it’s doing it, just as long as we understand what it doing (a la cooling)???
Norm, I don’t think your “upper atmosphere/lens” theory is going to get a whole lot of traction.
Was that gentle ??
I did enjoy reading the post though. Perhaps if you can find evidence that anthropogenic GHGs enhance the lens effect, THEN you might be up for a nice 3 or 4 year grant.
100% bologna
Well. I come here and lurk, or I go to CA and lurk, and I understand enough to get the big picture. This is an enormously complicated system with a lot of moving parts, isn’t it? You guys talk about the sun and cosmic rays and solar winds; you talk about PDO and El Ninos and La Ninas. You got humidity in the stratosphere and deep sea temperatures. I can’t keep track of all the variables you all talk about. Anyone who thinks he can simplify this system down to a single variable (CO2) is reasoning like a child, a very young one, who thinks food comes from the refrigerator, end of story. “Temperature comes from CO2, the way Mommy opens the fridge and brings me a cup of yogurt.”
My husband and argued today about whether the “Climate Change” PR train has left the station. I told him, not as long as Anthony, Steve McIntyre and their friends are busy. Keep up the good work, guys.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/06/nasa.fund.indictment/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A former high-ranking NASA official was indicted Friday for allegedly guiding more than $9.6 million in agency funds to one of his consulting clients.
According to the indictment, in 2005, Stadd helped steer NASA funds from an earth science appropriation to his client.
If convicted on all charges, Stadd faces up to 15 years in prison.
I’m quite sure that we’ll be hearing more about this, because where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
@jorge (14:31:00) :
“Ron de Haan (12:15:55) : “…The hockey stick of Mann is a proven fraud….”
I beg to differ. Fraud has not yet been proven. Mann’s science is misleading, his methodology inexplicable, his programming byzantine, his statistics abysmal, and his conclusions totally erroneous, but aside from that, his paper was fine.”
Accurate, sir.
foinavan, did I read you right? You seem to suggest that weather variation in the short term could be related to the Sun’s effects. Or that we could consider some sort of Sun connection. Could you expand on your thinking? How big do you think it might be?
realitycheck (05:24:53) :
Thank you for the details and the link.
To all who have responded to the question of heating from below: I am not doubting that the water is cold at the bottom, and convection will efficiently keep this. I am asking about the effect of having a low grade heater underneath on the temperature, how much “hotter” it is because of this gradient. This will have an effect on the volume of water. As this heating might be time dependent ( tides in the magma?, normal tides, chaotic beats in the magma?) it would affect the rise / fall of oceans.
Though it seems, like the tide energy, that it is too small with respect to sun input.
foinavon (15:52:27) :
You cannot dismiss the current flat/down trend by merely passing it off as la nina noise plus a dash of solar then walk away as if that means nothing to the overall sensitivity of the climate to CO2. Attributions matter.
How much of the 20th century rise in temps is attributable to ENSO events and the ocean oscillations?
What? they cancel out? Nope, no they did not. There were two warm PDO’s (more and stronger el nino’s, weaker la nina’s) and one cool one (stronger la nina’s, weaker el nino’s) last century. That does not equal zero.
And here we are in the next century without a volcano affecting the stratosphere and no major change in magic aerosols. Just a flipped PDO to the cool side giving us a nice la nina. Add in a pinch of solar. And we’ve overcome the heating of the still rising CO2 in the atmosphere!
The models have to rethink their attributions for the 20th century if a PDO flip and a la nina can have such a strong effect. How much any given model credited aerosols for cooling mid-century directly affected the climate sensitivity they calculated but since ENSO effects were merely considered noise they were missed. The ocean oscillations weren’t ignored because they were considered noise, they were ignored because they occur on a sub-century timescale. Actually they were ignored because we didn’t really know much of anything about them.
What I’m saying is that the amount of temp rise attributed to CO2 is a bigger share of the pie than deserved. What do you think the adjustment should be?
Or do you think you can dance around the issue for another twenty years?
As for the IPPC projections which effectively started in 2001, they sure looked monotonous to their intended audience. Were they merely propaganda? Are you saying the IPPC deals in strawmen? Lucia ( http://rankexploits.com/musings/ ) has demonstrated that so far our planet is falsifying these IPPC projections.
philincalifornia (19:30:27) :
Norm, I don’t think your “upper atmosphere/lens” theory is going to get a whole lot of traction.
Was that gentle ??
I did enjoy reading the post though. Perhaps if you can find evidence that anthropogenic GHGs enhance the lens effect, THEN you might be up for a nice 3 or 4 year grant.
Thanks Phil, gracious of you.
I don’t think there are such things as anthropogenic GHGs! I think it is a natural phenomena that nobody that I can see has looked at.