One of the great things about running this blog is that people send me things to look at. Sometimes I see connections between two things that were initially unrelated by the original messages. This is one of those cases.
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. suggested back in 2003 in a peer reviewed BAMS paper, that “…it is the change in ocean heat content that provides the most effective diagnostic of global warming and cooling.” Recently at ICCC 2009, Dr. Craig Loehle did a presentation titled “1,500-Year Climate Cycles, Broken Hockey Sticks, and Ocean Cooling” (PowerPoint) which talked about the ocean heat content.
I was reminded of one of his graphs from that presentation by a recent post on Jennifer Marohasy’s blog. For your viewing pleasure, using graphic editing tools, I created a slightly larger and annotated version, shown below:
The next day, on an email list I subscribe to, Alan Siddons sent along this graph with this note:
“Thought you’d like to see the Mauna Loa rate of CO2 change up to now. Kind of odd these recent years.”
I didn’t think much of Siddons’ graph initially, but as luck would have it, I happened to have Loehle’s graph open in a desktop window from Jennifer’s blog. I noticed something interesting and unexpected looking at the two.
Here is Alan Siddons’ graph of recent MLO CO2 data that shows the changes in the rate of CO2 with their measurements. I added some annotation and a title to make it clearer as to what this graph is:
What interested me about Alan’s MLO CO2 rate of change graph was the period from 2004 to the present. There’s a noticeable downturn in the peaks. I’ve bracketed the area of interest below and added an eyeball trend line for the peaks:
When you take the bracketed period from Alan Siddon’s MLO CO2 rate of change graph, and compare it (again using graphical editing tools) to Loehle’s Ocean Heat content graph, there appears to be some correlation:
It makes sense, as the heat content of the oceans drops, CO2 solubility in seawater increases, and thus we see an absorption of CO2 and dampening of the annual peaks in the rate of change. Obviously this is just a simple visual analysis, and I don’t pretend to know everything there is to know about either of these subjects or datasets, but I thought the serendipity of these two pieces of initially independent and unrelated graphs of data was interesting and worth discussing.
Of course there will be those that argue that “the oceans have not cooled” and cite the work by Josh Willis on catching some errors in the ARGO floater data. I won’t dispute his work here since I’m not an expert on the ARGO project. I’ll leave that to Dr. Roger Pielke Sr., as he wrote in this post on his Climate Science blog:
Josh Willis is a well respected scientist and his view merit consideration. In this case, however, Climate Science concludes that he is misinterpreting the significance of his data analysis. He agrees that
“Indeed, Argo data show no warming in the upper ocean over the past four years”.
He dismisses this though by claiming that
“…but this does not contradict the climate models. In fact, many climate models simulate four to five year periods with no warming in the upper ocean from time to time. “
Where are these model results that show lack of upper ocean warming in recent years? There is an example of a model prediction of upper (3km) ocean heat content for decadal averages in Figure 1 of
Barnett, T.P., D.W. Pierce, and R. Schnur, 2001: Detection of anthropogenic climate change in the world’s oceans. Science, 292, 270-274,
but they did not present shorter time periods. Nonetheless, since Figure 1 is presumably a running 10 year average, the steady monotonic increase in the model prediction of upper ocean heat content (the grey shading) suggests that no several years (or even one year) of zero heating occurred in the model results. The layer they analyzed in the figure is also for the upper 3 km but in Figure 2 the Barnett et al study showed that most of this heating was in the uppermost levels.
Thus the lack of heating in the upper 700m over the last 4 years does conflict with at least the Barnett et al model results!
What the upper ocean data (and lack of warming) actually tells us is that if global warming occurred over the last 4 years, it was in the deeper ocean and is thus not available in the short term to the atmosphere.
Indeed, if it is in the deeper ocean, it likely more diffused and therefore could only enter the atmosphere slowly if at all. This heat could also have exited into space, although the continuation of global ocean sea level rise suggests that this is less likely unless this sea level rise can be otherwise explained.
The other heat stores in the climate system are too small (and the atmosphere has clearly not warmed over the last few years). Global sea ice cover is actually above average at present (the Antarctic sea ice is at a near record level). The continued sea level rise indicates that the heat is in the deeper ocean (which is not predicted by the models).
Finally, there is also no “unrealized” heat in the system. This is a fallacy of using temperature trends as the surrogate for heat trends as has been reported Climate Science (e.g. see, see and see).
Josh Willis too easily dismisses the significance of his research findings.
The interesting thing about what I’ve pointed out above is that we have two independently analyzed datasets (Oceanic heat content and MLO CO2 rate of change) that appear to demonstrate the same thing: the oceans appear to have cooled in the past 5 years. That is also partially consistent with a third dataset, the RSS global temperature anomaly (or fourth if you want to count UAH same data, different method) which shows there has been a flat trend in the past few years. The graph below is both for land and ocean data:
RSS Data Source is here
Even Josh Willis’ own graph of corrected -vs- uncorrected ARGO data illustrating sea level change due to thermal expansion shows a flat trend during this period:
Clearly something is happening to heat content within our oceans, whether it is a flat trend or yet unrecognized loss of heat, remains to be hashed out. The year 2008 was a cooler year globally, and there is quite a bit of measured as well as anecdotal (weather event) data to support that. Our oceans are in fact the planet’s largest heat sink, and it has been routinely demonstrated that changes in that heat sink status (AMO, PDO, El Nino and La Nina) do in fact affect our weather and climate.
So to paraphrase Josh Willis in his rebuttal of his own data: “Is it me, or did the oceans cool”?
UPDATE 4:45 PM 3/21: Allan Siddons has provided two additional graphs. The first being an overlay of MLO monthly data on MSU oceans data
The second is a 12 month average of MLO CO2 rate overlaid on my RSS MSU land and ocean graph posted originally. It seems clear that there is a CO2 rate of change response that mirrors global temperature.
Bob Tisdale has also provided some similar graphs via many links made in the comments. Be sure to have a look. – Anthony
Thank you Anthony! Very interesting. In case anyone did not notice, this is the data that Josh Willis got after correcting the biases in the ARGOS data. I get slightly different results because I think I did my annual detrending better by fitting the declining amplitude with time, as also seen in the CO2 data. This concordance with the CO2 data possibly implies a stronger role for ocean temperature on atmospheric CO2 levels than has been assumed to date. If the ocean continues to cool, CO2 could even come down.
But all that heat went into Hansen’s magical mystery “pipeline” tour, don’t ya know.
“That is also partailly consistent with a third dataset, the RSS global temperature anomaly (or fourth if you want to count UAH same data, different method) which shows there has been a flat trend in the past few years.”
But, RSS and UAH data do not show “flat trend in the past few years”, but sharp global cooling in the last 7-8 years (around 0.2 deg C per decade), and lack of statistically significant warming in the last 12 or 13 years (since 1995/96).
….same thing with sea levels. The trend broke around 2005-2006
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/current/sl_noib_global_sm.jpg
If the rate of change in atmospheric CO2 level slowed, but the CO2 level still increased, then what would cool the ocean? Wouldn’t the rising CO2 “greenhouse gas” level lead to more warming, even though the rate of the rise wasn’t as great as before?
Is Mauna Loa the only place where CO2 is measured?…There are other volcanoes which would compensate figures if CO2 keeps decreasing.
Both the CO2 and the ocean heat content graphs would appear to benefit from even a simplistic brute force removal of the seasonal effects.
It would be very interesting to see what the trends look like for the periods other than just the peaks.
Great stuff Craig and Anthony.
Effectively, there is nowhere left for the heat to be hiding or absorbed into. I don’t think the deep oceans beyond 700M can be warming while the upper levels are cooling. And the deep oceans can not be warming at a rate that would cause cooling at the surface and in the upper ocean.
The daggers will be out now since this takes away the last remaining explanation for why the models are so far off recently.
There is no rationale for Aerosols to be the cause since the areas most affected by Aerosols have been warming a faster rate than the areas less affected (are cooling that is). The decline in solar activity is apparently not enough to cause such a discrepancy. There is no volcanic forcing to fall back on right now. UHI has been resurrected by Phil Jones. The oceans explanation obviously doesn’t work.
All that is left is computer error (and I don’t see how it can be hardware-related).
So, if heat is being stored in the deep ocean, how does it get there? Is it through the Thermohaline circulation and does that carry enough heat for the observed expansion?
Perhaps I’ll just conclude that the rising sea level reported by satellite deserves more study and skepticism. Something isn’t adding up, which is fine – it just means there is more science to be done.
Yesterday, in case you missed it, I posted this comment about sea level over on the Maldives thread.
###
For those interested, I did a post on Global Sea Levels and Sea Levels for the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans back in December.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/12/sea-level-data-global-and-indian.html
Here are few updates and some additional graphs of Sea Level data from the University of Colorado.
The Global sea level rise has flattened considerably since mid-2005:
http://s5.tinypic.com/24wqyvs.jpg
The Indian Ocean sea level continues to rise:
http://s5.tinypic.com/2njlgzc.jpg
The Maldives sea level was relatively flat until 2006:
http://s5.tinypic.com/15h0pxg.jpg
But here’s a curiosity. If you enter the Maldives coordinates (3N, 73E), the smoothed curve is very similar to the Maldives data, with the exception of the peak after the 1997/98 El Nino.
http://s5.tinypic.com/259zx9t.jpg
And here’s the Indonesian Throughflow sea level, which should be representative of the Pacific Warm Pool.
http://s5.tinypic.com/28jfwvd.jpg
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And now SST.
My most recent Monthly SST anomaly update is here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/february-2009-sst-anomaly-update.html
Looking at the unfiltered data, global SST anomalies have been falling since sometime between 2003 and 2005.
http://s5.tinypic.com/jrwep1.jpg
The Northern Hemisphere peaked ~2005 and its SST anomalies have been dropping since:
http://s5.tinypic.com/5jy93r.jpg
Southern Hemisphere SST anomalies reached their peak early in 2002 and have been falling since then:
http://s5.tinypic.com/2ltn9tc.jpg
And in a recent post on the AMO, I noted that it finally decided to take a significant drop:
http://s5.tinypic.com/b88d1t.jpg
Will the AMO continue to drop?
Micajah (12:11:39) :
Yes, if CO2 were the only thing that affected the Earth’s temperature. My current understanding is that the PDO is the major driver, CO2 is a minor driver, and while I used to think that solar changes were important, Leif makes a good case here that they aren’t.
What’s cooling the ocean now? After all, the PDO “just” puts water in a different place. Needs study. Might be more clouds (higher albedo), might be more warm water radiation (an average temperature is not the best measure of what’s happening, might be heat transport to levels in the ocean below where Argos goes. Or something else.
This also follows the fall in the percentage of US voters who say the environment takes priority over the economy.
The oceans affect the atmosphere because they have a heat capacity which is 4000x the heat capacity of the air.
Anthony,
Please examine Figure 1 at
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
You will see the clear relationship between rate of change of atmospheric CO2 (dCO2/dt). and temperatures (ST – Surface) & (LT – Lower Troposphere).
CO2 lags temperature by ~ 9 months.
Would like to take a few more minutes to tie all this together, but the baby is crying… … got to run.
Best, Allan
Micajah, the oceans, as you know, cool by losing heat, accumulated during past years, that is why there is a time lag of several years after some changes in the sun-earth system, like those falls in cloud cover in 1989 and 1992 , corresponding to lows in GCR. (H.Svensmark, The Chilling Stars, p.77)
And, please, for God´s sake, a trace gas in the atmosphere, or worst the whole atmosphere can never hold any heat compared with sea water.
You know, the volumetric heat capacity of water is 3,227 (three thousand two hundred and twenty seven) times the volumetric heat capacity of the air.
Allan M R MacRae: There have been a number of posts around the blogosphere about the correlation between SST and the rate of change in CO2. My version is here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/09/atmospheric-co2-concentration-versus.html
Here’s a comparative graph of monthly change in CO2 versus NINO3.4 (scaled):
http://i33.tinypic.com/2uotpjb.jpg
If there’s a lag, it only appears to be a couple of months from the change in SST anomaly to the response of CO2.
Regards
For anyone wanting to do a site survey, the Google Earth coordinates of
Mauna Loa Obs. are: 19 32 10.09 N 155 34 33.96 W
It’s true that Willis made one of the most important discoveries in recent climate science history when he discovered the oceans were cooling.
Unfortunately, the facts did not jibe with the fad so he chucked his discovery out the window.
I saw this earlier on Jennifer Marohasy’s blog also and wondered if anyone else would pick up on it here. Great linking it with the CO2 data. So Mauna Loa CO2 is still rising, but more slowly. What would the heat trend rate of decrease need to be to completely halt the CO2 rise, or start to reverse it?
This got me thinking, but as usual questions to which I do not have an answer: – is CO2 adsorption by oceans (roughly) linear with temperature? Since CO2 could affect ocean pH, which in turn would affect CO2 solubility, my thinking is that it may not be linear, so would increased cooling result in a greater or lesser rate of CO2 absorption?
The oceans are cooing from the ice melting all over the planet. Yup, that’s it!
As I see it the cooling of the sea water is a result of what happens to the polar sea water during the cold season.
I don’t have the skills to figure out how much heat was lost because of the sea ice minimums in 2007/8 . (open sea water looses more energy than ice covered water, and thinner ice looses more energy than thicker ice.
The movement of multi-year sea ice into the North Atlantic may have been responsible for a change in the AMO to a negative number sooner than the experts have suggested. It wasn’t supposed to happen until 2012-14.
I’ve been following this subject for two years. RPS had several conversations with Josh Willis posted on his blog, and tried to pin him down to what would falsify global warming, but Willis wouldn’t bite.
With due respect to Josh Willis, he is co-author of the Hansen et al 2005 “smoking gun”. It contained some bold claims and predictions, not to mention is weighted heavily in AR4 conclusions of “unequivocal man made global warming”. Does anyone really believe these folks are going to cave?
OHC in that paper was based on 1993-2003.
Has it been falsified? Why wouldn’t it be?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2005/Imbalance_20050415.pdf
“This energy imbalance is the ‘smoking gun’ that we have been looking for”
and
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2005/2005_Hansen_etal_1.pdf
“Our climate model, driven mainly by increasing human-made greenhouse gases and aerosols among other forcings, calculates that Earth is now absorbing 0.85±0.15 W/m2 more energy from the Sun than it is emitting to space. This imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years. Implications include: (i) expectation of additional global warming of about 0.6°C without further change of atmospheric composition; (ii) confirmation of the climate system’s lag in responding to forcings, implying the need for anticipatory actions to avoid any specified level of climate change; and (iii) likelihood of acceleration of ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise.”
Confirmation? Additional warming (heat in the pipeline)? Likely acceleration?
Is it just me, or do adjustments to climate data appear to be mostly in favor of AGW?
A litmus test:
http://climatesci.org/2009/02/09/update-on-a-comparison-of-upper-ocean-heat-content-changes-with-the-giss-model-predictions/
Interesting thoughts.
1. Does anyone yet understand how PDO/AMO cycles flip yet? Since that presumably is crucial in understanding WHY oceanic heat distribution changes with the decades…….
2. Is there yet any knowledge as to the effect on carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of cold winters and hot summers? [Cold winters – more oceanic absorption? Warm summers – more photosynthesis?]
3. Do we have any data acquisition programmes yet on underwater volcanoes and their effect on oceanic heat content/
Craig,
Can you tell us why you publishing in E&E (a journal which the alarmists claim is not peer reviewed)? Did you try submitting to other journals? If so, what were the reasons given fro rejection?
What a fascinating exercise in connecting the dots from different data sets. It doesn’t prove anything but it does show an interesting correlation. The next couple of decades should prove interesting in following such interesting interrelationships such as solar activing, levels of GCR’s, air temps, and, of course, SST’s.
Is it perhaps time to give a little more credit to David Archibald.
His solar cycle observations and correlations are showing up pretty well for strong cooling in the immediate future. If interested please review his Solar cycle 24: Implications for the United States.
At the time he presented the paper all the AGW people put him down as some kind loose cannon.
Bob Tisdale (13:04:14) :
Allan M R MacRae: There have been a number of posts around the blogosphere about the correlation between SST and the rate of change in CO2. My version is here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/09/atmospheric-co2-concentration-versus.html
Here’s a comparative graph of monthly change in CO2 versus NINO3.4 (scaled):
http://i33.tinypic.com/2uotpjb.jpg
If there’s a lag, it only appears to be a couple of months from the change in SST anomaly to the response of CO2.
Regards
Allan’s response:
Thanks Bob,
Sorry but I’m rushed now or would sort this out myself. I think you are plotting dCO2/dt with SST. Is that correct? Please confirm (or other).
I said the ~9 month lag of atmospheric temp is with CO2, not dCO2/dt. CO2 is the integral of dCO2/dt – hence the lag.
My work shows dCO2/dt is ~contemporaneous with ST and LT – please see Fig. 1 in my paper.
There is also a spreadsheet on icecap which shows data sources and all calcs.
What is your data source for SST – is this the same as Craig’s?
Regards, Allan
Rhys Jaggar (13:20:51) wrote:
“Does anyone yet understand how PDO/AMO cycles flip yet? Since that presumably is crucial in understanding WHY oceanic heat distribution changes with the decades…….”
See “Trade winds Drive the ENSO,” here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/02/17/the-trade-winds-drive-the-enso/
For more, type trade winds into the search box (top right) and several threads will appear.
But but but… you haven’t been following the script.
It is recognized, always has been, by all real scientists, that unexpected natural cooling cycles will conveniently mask the global warming.
All this is well described in peer-reviewed literature.
For those who keep asking, I published in E&E because it can take 2 years to publish elsewhere. I am perfectly capable of getting something published, with 115 pub papers so far I know the ropes. But timeliness seemed pretty important in this case.
REPLY: If you want to put the entire paper here (as a PDF) you are welcome to do so. It has been pointed out to me that with the traffic WUWT has, it likely reaches more people than many of the journals. And, a lot faster too!. I went looking for it and couldn’t find it.- Anthony
One thing I haven’t seen explained is the 1998 “Super” El Nino. The temp shot up. Where did the heat come from and where did the heat go? There wasn’t a solar event or other forcing change that could account for it so aren’t we left with an oceanic heat release? The temps dropped quickly so either the heat went back into the ocean or was radiated somewhere. Stratosphere dropped almost as quickly as the lower troposphere, so it’s gone? If you plot a trend line for the data up until the event it passes through the data immediately after the event. It goes up again and then begins to decay. So are we calculating invalid trends depending on our starting point because the period from 1998 til now is anomalous?
The trend for the entire period using UAH is 0.01278 dC/year, but the trend for the time up to the El Nino is only 0.003043, a quarter of the total trend!
REPLY: My thought was that it was a dearth of cloud cover that may have triggered it. – Anthony
OK I had my fun.
I think we are beginning to see some real clues as to what’s happening. Oceanic cycles resdistributing the heat and altering the CO2 in the atmosphere. The solar input and albedo varying. All interelating and also orbital dynamics over an even greater time priod.
We simply just don’t kniow enough, don’t have enough reliable data. I suggest we put the global warming policies on hold for a thousand years, until we do.
We are looking at the end game, a few moves and it is checkmate for AGW:
It is impossible to have any credible model of global warming without the oceans demonstrably warming. It is not reasonable that the heat stored in the oceans would not show up in the upper 200 meters which should be detected by ARGOS, and so far the ARGOS data does not show warming. The silence from Willis and his ilk is deafening.
Related dataset such as the decrease in sea-level rise support the lack of warming of the oceans.
Perhaps the observed decrease in CO2 is related (as oceans cool more CO2 can be dissolved in them) but the best evidence will be direct temperature measurements.
I would like to see a guest post from the ARGOS group telling us exactly what is going on. Alternatively there clearly are people on this blog who take time to download raw data and to do their own interpretations. FIA on ARGOS would be huge. It is the one dataset that can’t be ignored or “explained” away by calibration shifts between datasets (buckets vs water intake temperatures).
My speculation is that the data is not forthcoming because it does not show any warming, and any paper that tries to use “Mannian” statistics will be shredded as fast as Steig’s Antarctic warming paper.
It is extremely difficult to do in a technological sense but we really should be measuring long-term temperature trends on the abyssal plains.
Trying to use air temperature is sort of like suspending a thermometer slightly away from someone’s forehead and attempting to determine body core temperature. To get the most accurate measurement you need to measure where the heat is. The same should be true with Earth. Something close to 100% of Earth’s climate heat is stored in the oceans, not in the atmosphere.
Also, if I were going to use the atmosphere to attempt to measure climate, I would use temperature readings from locations at least 100 miles from the nearest land and use only data taken in hours of darkness. This eliminates variations due to changes in solar radiation and should provide more consistent results over the long term in giving the actual temperature of the climate system. So … a measurement device (an anchored buoy?) on the surface above the abyssal plain with a measurement device several feet above the ocean floor and one sheltered from precipitation. One or two daily measurements from the one on the ocean floor and hourly data points from the surface device taken during the period sunset+1hr to sunrise-1hr.
That should give data needing NO adjustments that provide a very stable profile of the heat in the ocean and the atmosphere. Greenhouse warming should be readily apparent in the surface readings.
There is just too much noise in surface measurements and there is no possible way that the amount of heat in the climatic system can be measured accurately by measuring the temperature of the atmosphere over land.
Also, one should expect slow sea level rise because every rainstorm washes more of the continental land mass into the ocean. Every muddy river dumping into the sea or winds blowing dirt/sand, volcanic ash from even land-based volcanoes and the amount of lava dumped into the ocean every year will cause a very steady rise in ocean levels. As the continents erode and volcanoes erupt into the sea, sea levels will always be in a relentless rise, all other factors being equal.
Sounds reasonable, but a quick look at this paper’s conclusion doesn’t seem to confirm. Have to look at some more stuff.
cloud cover
Al (12:32:59) : Both the CO2 and the ocean heat content graphs would appear to benefit from even a simplistic brute force removal of the seasonal effects.
It would be very interesting to see what the trends look like for the periods other than just the peaks.
Interesting, yes, more useful? Maybe not. Fitting a trend line to the peaks (tops or bottoms) is a very common and very useful technique in reading a stock chart. It is a standard built in function of many stock trading stations and stock charting services; for a reason.
The first place that an effect shows up is in a “failure to advance” of the peaks (in whatever direction you have been going). All the averaging of averages of means of average or… just takes away that useful information and introduces a lag in the response of the indicator. (Stock traders care a lot more about lag time in an indicator than climate guys… but maybe not more than the weatherman who must make quick calls now and be right…)
I spend many hours each week (and sometimes each day) “eyeballing” stock charts. The first thing I do is to imagine a trend line connecting the peaks (or valleys) and looking for a breakdown of the trend. The second thing I do is to look at the moving averages for a smoothed confirmation (and usually a slightly too late to be as useful confirmation…). After that, I look at the other indictors with more complicated math and interpretation.
Those two charts with a negative slope trend line on the peaks scream “SELL” at me. It’s a clear “failure to advance” and the trend to the upside is broken.
Does this interpretation apply to 30 year weather? Maybe… The method is helpful with stocks since people have herd behaviour and prices have “momentum” in a direction once established due to this herd behaviour. Once the trend breaks, the herd stampedes the other way. This would be true of other oscillating system as well. To the extent that there are long cycles in the 30 year weather system, the method ought to have merit. (Which further implies that the MACD and Slow Stochastic would have some utility in predicting weather cycles as well…)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MACD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_oscillator
Ellie in Belfast (13:16:18) : This got me thinking, but as usual questions to which I do not have an answer: – is CO2 adsorption by oceans (roughly) linear with temperature?
I think there is another complicating factor. We have precipitation. I believe that it’s the colder rain and snow that acts as a counter current “stripper” taking CO2 from the air. Once that precipitation hits the ocean, then the question becomes does the CO2 stay or not. A colder ocean would imply:
1) It stays more than before.
2) The precipitation falling into it will be colder, so stripping more CO2.
The Siddon graph as shown with the arrow is highly misleading [the arrow is]. The arrow is above the first maximum, is below the third one, and the last maximum is incomplete [curve still going up] so the arrow should not be drawn to a point that is surely below the peak. Please, we do not combat the bad science of AGW with even worse statistics or wrong curve fitting or arrow tweaking. Any AGWr worth his alt would dismiss this nonsense out of hand, and rightly.
REPLY: Leif you are correct, thanks for pointing it out. I’d given some thought to changing the crude “eyeball line” I drew, and with your comment I have done so, replacing those areas with a dashed line and question mark. However as a forecaster, I’ll point out that persistence suggests the peak CO2 rate this year may be at or below the imagined end of that trend line. I could be wrong. But if indeed we are losing heat in the ocean system persistence forecasting would tend to bear out the trend line. – Anthony
Rhys Jaggar (13:20:51) :
1. Does anyone yet understand how PDO/AMO cycles flip yet? Since that presumably is crucial in understanding WHY oceanic heat distribution changes with the decades…….
I think this paper has clue:
http://users.beagle.com.au/geoffsharp/wilsonforum2008.pdf
and explains a fair number of the correlations for which causality is missing. A couple of us have been discussing the earthquake / spin-orbit coupling relationship here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/are-we-quaking/
and Geoff brought up that paper in the comments section (and made it available on his site).
Maybe not a smoking gun yet, but getting there…
Adolfo Giurfa:
The enthalpy of adsorption/desorption is 25 kJ per mole of CO2
desorption is an endothermic process.
adsorption is an exothermic process.
The system is not in equilibrium. I have two different kinetics.
Link; Help…
salute
First, on these time scales of 4 to 10 years I think CO2 can be dismissed. Until someone comes up with a large positive feedback for CO2, the declining (logarithmic) influence of GHGs lets all the bloat out of that balloon.
Second, there was a great loss of heat in the ocean over the last couple of years as warm currents pushed under the Arctic ice pack and melted a lot of it. That phase change takes heat.
Third, how does the deep ocean warm unless it all warms? (Dismiss the geothermal heat here.) Is warm-salty water denser than cold-salty water? Is it not the warm current flowing pole-ward that gets chilled at the surface, then sinks? It gets cold, then goes down. Not the other way around.
Fourth, seems to me changes in sea level(s) (plural) require several mechanisms. A warmer atmospheric temperature will produce more evaporation, movement, and precipitation. Note “movement.” One example, moisture from the Pacific Ocean condenses over North America and runs into the Gulf of Mexico. When this is extreme, say 1993, why not expect a rise in the Gulf waters? At the same time there is a lot of sediment being carried there – contributing to raising the bottom and pushing the surface up. There are lots of possibilities for making this a complicated issue.
Fifth, Anthony has gotten a bit gun-shy after that graph business on the Akasofu posting. I had to chuckle when I read the intro to this piece.
Here is an up-to-date graph of detrended Mauna Loa CO2:
http://www.leif.org/research/Mauna%20Loa%20CO2%20detrended%202004-2009.png
Barry W: You wrote and asked, “One thing I haven’t seen explained is the 1998 “Super” El Nino. The temp shot up. Where did the heat come from and where did the heat go?”
The quick answer to the first of your two part question is, the heat came from the Pacific Warm Pool. There was an anomalous buildup of heat there for a few years prior to the 1997/98 El Nino. It can be seen in the Sea Level data for the Indonesian Throughflow I posted above. Here’s the link again.
http://s5.tinypic.com/28jfwvd.jpg
Note also how the sea level in Indonesia dropped during the 97/98 El Nino, indicating that the heat had moved eastward into the eastern Pacific, but then rose higher immediately after the 1997/98 El Nino. Some of that is from the warm water sloshing back into the Pacific Warm Pool and some of it is caused by the significant drop in cloud cover over the Pacific Warm Pool during that El Nino. Downward shortwave radiation jumped 25 watts/meter^2 in the Pacific Warm Pool during the 97/98 El Nino. I discussed that in two posts:
“Recharging The Pacific Warm Pool Part 2”
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/02/recharging-pacific-warm-pool-part-2.html
and “What Causes Sea Surface Temperature (SST) To Rise”.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/02/what-causes-sea-surface-temperature-sst.html
There are multiple answers to the second part of your question. El Ninos function to redistribute heat from the tropics toward the poles so that the heat can be emitted into space more efficiently. So some of the heat was released that way. After the 1997/98 El Nino, much of the heat was redistributed across the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans raising the SST there in a step. Anthony was kind enough to post a two-part discussion on that a few months ago. My versions are here (I cleaned up the mislabeling problems in the graphs in my version):
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of.html
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of_11.html
And as noted above, some of the heat was simply returned to the Pacific Warm Pool. This added more fuel to the minor El Ninos that occurred in 2002/03, 2004/05, and 2006/07.
You asked, “So are we calculating invalid trends depending on our starting point because the period from 1998 til now is anomalous?”
Though the recent years may be anomalous, they exist in the data, so the trends aren’t invalid. However, attributing the warm spell after the 1997/98 El Nino to anthropogenic causes IS invalid.
BarryW (13:40:56) :
One thing I haven’t seen explained is the 1998 “Super” El Nino. The temp shot up.
Where did the heat come from and where did the heat go?
and Anthony’s reply:
My thought was that it was a dearth of cloud cover that may have triggered it. – Anthony
—————-
Much more simple:
the heat came from the oceans, primarely pacific, take that data:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/wwv/data/wwv.dat
if you add to that, MSU Satellite Lower Troposphere Temps
from here:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
.. and take the 3rd data row (global maritime)
Between 1997/11 and 1998/07, the pacific lost nearly 25% of its warm water volume. That the stored heat did appear in the atmosphere, who is surprised?
Klaus
crosspatch (14:05:50) : As the continents erode and volcanoes erupt into the sea, sea levels will always be in a relentless rise, all other factors being equal.
I agree with all the temperature gathering ideas.
The continental erosion has a problem: All other factors are not equal.
That’s why we still have land after 4.5 Billion years of erosion. We have isostatic rebound, plate subduction / uplift, vulcanism moving land to above water, etc. all moving rocks “up” off the sea bottom. Oh, and with India whacking into Asia we got sea bed lifted into some of the highest mountains on earth… Something similar happened to create the lifted land that is now surrounding the Grand Canyon (that was sea bottom…)
What the “islands sinking” folks forget is that on a geologic time scale, the ocean floor is a bucking heaving bouncing thin film and the continental margins are getting reformed by “collision damage” and ocean plates sliding their feet under the continents and lifting mountain ranges…
You can make no prediction about which way “sea level” will go in that context. Each place on the planet will be having it’s own motion and all you can say with certainty is that the water will slop around and find it’s own level. Tide gauges are great in the short run for calling, well, tides, but they are useless for geologic / climate time scale changes since on that scale the land moves more than the water.
Basically, the shape and size of the ocean basin is not a constant in geological time scales, nor is the size and shape of continental land masses.
It looks like another trend may be turning. It appears that the TOTUS is preparing to slink down the anchor chain of the good ship ALGORE. http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/03/scorpions-in-a.html
Barry has evidently decided that melting icecaps aren’t a political winner, although you don’t really need to be a genius to recognize that doubling energy costs as the winters get longer and colder is an A ticket ride to a one term presidency.
And a graph of the ‘rate of change’ :
http://www.leif.org/research/Mauna%20Loa%20CO2%20detrended%20-blue-%20and%20rate%20of%20change%20-red-%202004-2009.png
No smoothing to hide details.
BarryW (14:11:17) : The “cloud cover” article you reference uses data that ends in 2001 (1979-2001), although published in 2004. That’s mostly the reference period used by the AGW theories. I think we need cloud studies refined for periods of time that might show contrasting situations. In another post Don Easterbrook used the analogy of standing with one foot in a bucket of ice water and another in hot coals. “On average” you feel fine. So we are still looking for more stuff.
Bill Illis (12:34:48) :
All that is left is computer error
Unless all the simulations were done on a Pentium CPU with the FDIV bug, it’s can’t be computer error. The programmers or modeller may have got it wrong, however…
Roger Clague (12:48:14) sez: “The oceans affect the atmosphere because they have a heat capacity which is 4000x the heat capacity of the air.”
More like 1200x on a kJ per °K basis.
Which reminds me: the ordinate on the Siddons graph is just ppm. If it’s a derivative, the units should be stones per kilopood per fortnight or something similar.
re
Bob Tisdale (14:44:07) :
Barry W: You wrote and asked, “One thing I haven’t seen explained is the 1998 “Super” El Nino. The temp shot up. Where did the heat come from and where did the heat go?”
Oops, Bob, didn’t see, that you already responded to:
BarryW (13:40:56) :
… and mentioned the pacifc warm water pool. Seems, again, I was too slow.
Klaus
Oh, and let’s not bad mouth Josh Willis here. He’s a righteous bloke and very well thought of by many skeptics. No ad hominem or guilt-by-association, either, please. Let’s leave that to others.
One thing I have always wondered about …
Has anyone estimated what portion of available fossil hydrocarbon resources have already been burned? Shouldn’t that put some ultimate upper bound on anthropogenic CO2 emissions? I mean, if we have already burned half the world’s coal, oil, gas, etc. then we can probably only emit about as much as we already have. The only thing that could vary is the rate at which we reach exhaustion of the available fossil fuel. But once exhausted we can not emit anymore.
And the moment we stop emitting the gas, the concentration will again begin to drop through natural processes such as erosion. But ultimately, there is an upper boundary to what we are even capable of emitting. As CO2 is always being removed from the atmosphere, there should be an absolute upper limit of how much CO2 we can possibly put in the atmosphere.
I am starting to get a bit frustrated. Cooling sea water is to be expected with the PDO shift. A synchronized shift with the AMO, NAO or some soon to be discovered oscillation will intensify cooling. That is climate. It is somewhat chaotic, but I see predictability for those with an open mind.
Not totally predictable, all models are wrong but some are useful to quote Tamino. But there are some interesting things happening in climate. Do a quick review of Tsonis and open your minds.
I did not fit the trend line to the peaks for the ARGOS data–I fit a seasonal model + linear trend and the figure Anthony shows is the linear trend. It is identical to “detrending” the seasonal data and then fitting a linear model to the residuals. It did it both ways to check.
is it just me, or is comparing two graphs, one showing the actual value being measured (heat content, J) against one showing the rate of change of an actual value ( concentration, ppm CO2) not correct?
first off, it creates the impression that CO2 is not increasing when it is (the actual increase is the cumulative area below the curve and the x-axis, which shows the continued increase in CO2)
secondly, 2008 hasn’t reached it’s peak (or we don’t know that it has) and as such is a poor point to use for a trend line. and when the trend line is limited to the last four peaks (really, three), it reeks of cherry-picking when 12 years of data are shown (and more is available).
thirdly, it’s fairly obvious that the blue trend line is simply eye-balled, not accurate, or based on any actual data (please provide which months were used to provide the peak, if i’m wrong).
but this has been the trend on this site over the past several posts, no?
REPLY: If you read the post you’ll see that I did in fact mention that the blue trend line was eyeballed.
There’s nothing wrong with doing that. The idea of this post is to show that the rate of CO2 increase has been slowing as ocean heat content dwindles. No claims whatsoever were made about the overall concentration of CO2 decreasing. There’s plenty of places where that information is available such as here. – Anthony
@Bob Tisdale
Bob, re: Pacific Warm Water Volome / Warm Water Pool
There seems to be a mechanism working,
between 2.6 and 2.7 ^14, there starts a distribution of heat energy ot atmosphere,
between 2.3 and lower starts a collection of heat energy.
Huhmm, wondering what is triggering it. Or is it starting at the average and we’re recognizing the hysteresis?
Klaus
E.M.Smith (14:54:24) :
“crosspatch (14:05:50) : As the continents erode and volcanoes erupt into the sea, sea levels will always be in a relentless rise, all other factors being equal.
I agree with all the temperature gathering ideas.
The continental erosion has a problem: All other factors are not equal.
That’s why we still have land after 4.5 Billion years of erosion. We have isostatic rebound, plate subduction / uplift, vulcanism moving land to above water, etc. all moving rocks “up” off the sea bottom. Oh, and with India whacking into Asia we got sea bed lifted into some of the highest mountains on earth… Something similar happened to create the lifted land that is now surrounding the Grand Canyon (that was sea bottom…)
What the “islands sinking” folks forget is that on a geologic time scale, the ocean floor is a bucking heaving bouncing thin film and the continental margins are getting reformed by “collision damage” and ocean plates sliding their feet under the continents and lifting mountain ranges…
You can make no prediction about which way “sea level” will go in that context. Each place on the planet will be having it’s own motion and all you can say with certainty is that the water will slop around and find it’s own level. Tide gauges are great in the short run for calling, well, tides, but they are useless for geologic / climate time scale changes since on that scale the land moves more than the water.
Basically, the shape and size of the ocean basin is not a constant in geological time scales, nor is the size and shape of continental land masses.”
E.M Smith,
You are correct.
Some more factors influencing sea levels:
1. Earth receives water from space! This was a WUWT posting some time ago.
2. As the African shelf collides with the European shelf, the Mediterranean is slowly getting narrower.
3. Since the last Ice Age land masses are still rising.
The area that includes the East Sea rises 1 cm per year.
4. You already have mentioned erosion.
It would be interesting to find out how many cubic meters of material ends up in the oceans:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/category.php?cat_id=7
Anyhow, there is more to study between heaven and earth than meets the eye.
Hmmm. This makes me think. I saw an IPCC member (Isaac Held) explain the yearly up and down of CO2 as the effect of annual plant growth and decay in the northern hemisphere. Perhaps it is more well explained by the effect of winter ocean cooling in the southern hemisphere? What is the winter/summer monthly detail of the sinusoid? I would expect growth/decay to be relatively immediate and ocean absorption/outgassing to show more of a lag, speaking as an admitted numbskull… What do smarter people think?
@ crosspatch (15:19:35) :
One thing I have always wondered about …
Has anyone estimated what portion of available fossil hydrocarbon resources have already been burned?
Crosspatch, a good source for getting an answer on this, would be:
http://www.theoildrum.com/
okay, okay, there is from time to time, some AGW tendency, but not as much
as it couldn’t be easyly ignored. When it comes to critically look on available datas,
crunch ’em, question ’em, get the best out of it, they are nearly as good as people here or CA.
Klaus
klausb: You wrote, “There seems to be a mechanism working,
between 2.6 and 2.7 ^14, there starts a distribution of heat energy ot atmosphere, between 2.3 and lower starts a collection of heat energy.”
What are the units of measurement?
Bob Tisdale I’ve been swapping back and forth with your posts previously suggested.
Especially like Fig. 4 and accompanying text on this one:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/02/recharging-pacific-warm-pool-part-2.html
I now understand why there was a spike, dip, and then bouncing around in the temperature (1997-now). Shown in the previous thread here on WUWT — in the new first chart > (Akasofu thread).
You have done one heck of a lot of work pulling this together. Great information. Thanks.
ak (15:30:28) saith: “is it just me, or is comparing two graphs, one showing the actual value being measured (heat content, J) against one showing the rate of change of an actual value ( concentration, ppm CO2) not correct?”
‘Tis just thee, ak-san, because there is every reason to believe that the rate of concentration change should be highest when the temperature is highest.
“first off, it creates the impression that CO2 is not increasing when it is (the actual increase is the cumulative area below the curve and the x-axis, which shows the continued increase in CO2)”
Yes, that area is a measure of CO² increase, but no, it’s very unlikely that many here will get that impression if they actually read the text. It didn’t mislead you, did it? Right.
“secondly, 2008 hasn’t reached its peak…” etc.
Certainly, it’s not a conclusive finding. No trumpets were blown; there was no parade. It’s just something “interesting and unexpected,” as the post stated. I found it interesting. (I hope you did, too.) It’s also unexpected until after you look at it, at which point I said, “Of course!” Worth watching, in my opinion. You don’t have to watch. It’s optional. But stick around, anyway, ak-san.
Following the relation between the ocean temperature and atmosphere, if you compare their temperature trends, the ocean changes are hinting the atmospheric temperature changes by some 4-5 months ahead. It plays very well during the last 10 years, not so good before.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1999/plot/uah/from:1999
Based on this, one can predict that soon the global temperatures will start plunging down again, even probably not as deep as in early 2008.
@ crosspatch (15:19:35) :
an example: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3720#more
… and there is another source, or better two:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/supply.html
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/stats/index.asp
IMHO, we’re in at double peak, starting ’07, ending – probably – ’10.
From there on, there is less avalailable which could contribute to COO.
How about a world with decreasing temperatures and decreasing fossil fuels?
At least, we could give the proAGW guys a shovel. Somebody has to free
the entrances to our houses, in the coming winters. Personally, i’m tired already of this one.
Klaus
captdallas2 (15:22:55) wrote :
Not totally predictable, ‘all models are wrong but some are useful’ to quote Tamino.
That is probably the best know quote from George Box, a statistician. For a stastical book for beginners Box, Hunter and Hunter, “Statistics for Experimenters–An Introduction to Design, Data Analysis, and Model Building” published by Wiley & Sons in 1978 is very useful.
John F. Hultquist (14:59:27) :
The paper was just a quick survey and covers the 1997/98 El Nino. I was trying to see if Anthony’s conjecture showed up in any data.
Leif Svalgaard (14:29:25) :
“The Siddon graph as shown with the arrow is highly…” misleading REPLY: Leif you are correct, thanks for pointing it out.
I would even ‘lift’ your line up a bit because I see no reason that is should go below the third peak, especially since if you continued the plot with the most recent data http://www.leif.org/research/Mauna%20Loa%20CO2%20detrended%20-blue-%20and%20rate%20of%20change%20-red-%202004-2009.png the rate of change goes up again, i.e. the fifth peak just outside of the figure is higher that the low [and a bit strange] fourth peak and on par with the first peak…
REPLY: indeed that would be the case for your detrended data graph, but for the peaks on the Siddons graph I think this line is representative. – Anthony
Bob Tisdale (15:59:34) :
Bob,
kill me, but couldn’t find the original reference/data explanation.
I hate it, when these guys frequently change their content, and of course, their
URLs.
From rememberance, but that’s no good reference – hence, my next birthday ending
with a zero will have a nice six in front. (okay, just kiddin’), it means cubic kilometers
of water with a temperature above a threshold.
I started to collect data on that about 3 yrs ago. I do remeber, that the expanation of datas was somewhere around here:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/wwv/
‘Tis just thee, ak-san, because there is every reason to believe that the rate of concentration change should be highest when the temperature is highest.
do you believe that your acceleration, rate of change of velocity, of your auto is highest when your velocity is at it’s highest?
the connection, or correlation, casually being drawn here is that the linear decrease in one dPPM is directly connected the linear decrease of J. it doesn’t wash.
‘Yes, that area is a measure of CO² increase, but no, it’s very unlikely that many here will get that impression if they actually read the text. It didn’t mislead you, did it? Right.
if they had read the text, and had a good understanding of the math behind it, then yes, you are correct. as i alluded to earlier, there have been recent posts, here for instance, where the readership did not pick up on the obvious fact that tonga lay several hundreds of miles from, and in the opposite current direction, of the SST anamoly for which it was supposedly responsible. that i do consider “interesting” and is what keeps me sticking around these parts.
and, jorgekafkazar, what’s up with the -san thing? is this supposed to be patronizing and subtle ad-hominem? i thought that sort of thing was not tolerated here.
REPLY: “ak”, I think you are jumping to your own conclusions. The arrow pointed to a large anomaly as referenced in the text “SST maps show a warm anomaly in that region, and extending off to the east. Is that anomaly a result or coincidence?” The idea is to spur conversation by asking a question, and the question was could this anomaly be the result or is it merely coincidence. As for your claim of “it doesn’t wash” your saying so, doesn’t make it so. Its just an opinion. What will be really interesting will be if in fact the trend continues this year, and I believe it will. Then you can come back and say “it doesn’t wash” and be 100% correct. For now, your opinion is no more correct than mine. You also might want to think about a better handle than “ak” since it invites such puns as you’ve witnesses. Or better yet, come into the light and use your full name. – Anthony Watts
Craig Loehle (13:39:55) :
In http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=5416#comment-330321 you say:
Did they supply reasons for rejecting the paper? Ah well, you have some good company.
I may have embarked on writing an annual “State of the Climate” report, see http://wermenh.com/climate/climate2009.pdf . This would be a good thing to put in next year’s. I thought I saw something from you elsewhere earlier today offering to send copies of the paper to interested parties, but can’t find it now.
If you can send it out, please send a copy to “ric” at “wermenh.com”.
another refresh and i see the Siddons’ Mauna Lao dPPM chart that was present before, and which i referenced, has been changed. (and also that i forgot to properly close an i tag)
REPLY: Yes it was changed (to do a better job of the trendline) and referenced in comments. – Anthony
The oceans are said to hold 50 times as much CO2 as the atmoshere, one source says 70 times. I am suspicious of round numbers like that which suggests that not much care has gone into the calculation. The half life of CO2 in the atmosphere is 5 years, which means that there is rapid exchange with the oceans. By my calculations, the atmosphere is in equlibrium, on average, with the top 100 metres. Also by my calculations, a cooling of the world by 2 degrees over 20 years would result in a flat atmospheric CO2 trend, with the anthropogenic contribution offsetting the increased solubility. The CDIAC site has some interesting data: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/glodap/images/TOS_fig8.jpg
These are the people who resorted to poisioning their plant growth trials with ozone in order to get the right result.
crosspatch (15:19:35) :
“Has anyone estimated what portion of available fossil hydrocarbon resources have already been burned?”
It is defining ‘available’ that is the problem. Quote from BP oil reserves “Nobody knows or can know how much oil exists under the earth’s surface or how much it will be possible to produce in the future”
For oil alone (@2007):
– 985 billion barrels consumed worldwide since 1965.
– current reserves 1238 billion barrels (1390 including oil sands)
These are ‘Proved Reserves’, not all of which may be ultimately recoverable.
info here: http://www.bp.com/productlanding.do?categoryId=6929&contentId=7044622
info at bp.com – I should have said look in excel file under historical data
Anthony, thanks for the honorable mention in your update. Your reply above to BarryW, “My thought was that it was a dearth of cloud cover that may have triggered it,” prompted me to look at the ISCCP cloud amount data through the KNMI Climate Explorer website. Like SST data, cloud amount data over the equatorial Pacific is dominated by ENSO, with clouds and precipitation shifting back and forth from the PWP to the NINO regions, following the warmer water. So that data is very noisy. Instead of the equatorial Pacific, I decided to look at cloud amount data over the Northern and Southern equatorial currents (tropical Pacific), but leaving a 20 degree latitude gap (10S to 10N) in between, with the hope of minimizing the ENSO noise. Lo and behold, just as you surmised, there was a significant decrease in Total Cloud Amount over the two areas (10N-20N, 145E-90W & 20S-10S, 145E-90W) from the early 1990s to 1995-97.
http://s5.tinypic.com/1zb9q9v.jpg
(The change in the cloud amounts in these areas is significantly larger than the decrease in global cloud amount for the same period.)
It appears then that the decrease in cloud amount, led to significant increases in Downward Shortwave Radiation (Visible Light), which raised SST and OHC of the tropical Pacific. This warm water was carried by the equatorial currents to the Pacific Warm Pool, where it accumulated and provided fuel for the 1997/98 El Nino.
Too bad that dataset ends so early.
I’ve graphed the monthly cloud amount anomaly data as well. I’ll try to write the post tomorrow morning, for those who want to look at the monthly data too.
Allan M R MacRae: The SST anomaly (ERSST.v2) data source for that post was NOAA NOMADS, but it’s no longer available through NOMADS. ERSST.v2 data is, however, available through the KNMI Climate Explorer website.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
A more recent version of the NCDC SST data, the OI.v2 data, is still available though NOMADS, though.
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?lite
The KNMI website also has the HADSST data but it has an upward step change in 1997 due to the Hadley Centre’s change of data source.
Sorry about my description of the CO2 data, but I like to use the simplest description possible for the readers without technical backgrounds. It’s the CO2 value for Month N minus the CO2 value for Month N-1, also refered to as the first derivative.
Ric Werme (16:52:03) :
@Ric
re: ttp://wermenh.com/climate/climate2009.pdf
I read it, and did go conform with it.
OT here, but nevertheless, local climate here (Germany):
Feb was #59 warmest out of the last 109 years. (according to DWD)
Sun hours were about 38% lower than 1961-90 average.
Yep, felt that.
Usually, there is at least a day or two, around March 20th, where you
could go out at noon and don’t need more than a t-shirt.
I’m still needin’ the flat one this year. And that’s not related to sitting in an office
most of the day.
klausb: Was it a paper by Mehta? He did a lot of work on the PWP, though I don’t recall km^3.
Anthony,
REPLY: If you read the post you’ll see that I did in fact mention that the blue trend line was eyeballed.
“I’ve bracketed the area of interest below and added an eyeball trend line for the peaks:”
There’s nothing wrong with doing that. The idea of this post is to show that the rate of CO2 increase has been slowing as ocean heat content dwindles. No claims whatsoever were made about the overall concentration of CO2 decreasing. There’s plenty of places where that information is available such as here. – Anthony
There are 3 factors that influence the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere.
1) Human related emissions
2) Natural emissions
3) Natural absorptions
These effects occur continuously. I don’t see the justification for focusing on the peaks. The tropical oceans are continuously emitting CO2 and the polar oceans are absorbing it. On the other hand the seasonal effects are said to be due to the growth and decay of vegetation in the northern hemisphere.
The emission from the oceans is not a seasonal effect and the main short term variation is from ENSO. The emission of CO2 is an ocean surface phenomenon, as is the absorption. One would expect a long lived ocean cooling phenomenon to pull the entire curve more negative, rather than lopping off a peak.
It is more instructive to look at the annual mean growth rate.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/index.html#mlo
The data from 2000 onward :
2000 1.74
2001 1.59
2002 2.56
2003 2.29
2004 1.55
2005 2.55
2006 1.69
2007 2.17
2008 1.66
This seems to be quite noisy. I don’t think there is a real trend there.
Leif,
With regard to the graph
Here is an up-to-date graph of detrended Mauna Loa CO2:
http://www.leif.org/research/Mauna%20Loa%20CO2%20detrended%202004-2009.png
would it be useful to look at the areas above and below zero to see if a trend emerges ?. It seems to me that it is both the peak, and time spent getting there and back that matters and would be reflected in above and below area analysis.
The significance of this is that, while there is no question that human emissions of CO2 are the major driver of atmospheric CO2 levels in the short term (say less than 10 years), Ocean temperatures drive CO2 levels in the medium term and longer (more than say 10 to 20 years).
What this means is that climate predictions for a 100 years in the future have no validity, except (possibly) to the extent they are predictions of human CO2 emissions a 100 years in the future.
It also means that CO2 cannot be the primary climate temperature driver in the shorter term (less than 10 years).
So CO2 can’t be either the primary long term or primary short term climate driver.
Which is not to say CO2 doesn’t have a secondary role in the climate.
I thought CO2 lagged temperature by 800 years!
Just another thought, why is the Mauna Loa trend line so linear?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
is there anything else so linear in nature? especially as the dreaded CO2 is being generated (I imagine) exponentially?
Bob Tisdale (17:50:18) :
Bob, silly me,
usually I do at first store the description/explanation of the data.
I did go back through the CDs/DVDs of my backups back to 2004/12 now.
Didn’t find it.
At the moment, I have only one explanation. I was sloppy and didn’t do
what I should have done. I am sorry, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
I’ll try the TAO page tomorrow. Somewhere it should be.
Klaus
And a graph of the ‘rate of change’ :
Leif, maybe I’m missing something here, but detrended data (see your graph) by definition can’t have a rate of change.
Ak asks: “do you believe that your acceleration, rate of change of velocity, of your auto is highest when your velocity is at it’s [sic] highest?”
No. Why should it be? I believe my dv/dt in any gear is highest when my engine RPM’s correspond to peak torque. And seawater will evolve CO² fastest when it’s at peak temperature.
“the connection, or correlation, casually being drawn here is that the linear decrease in one dPPM is directly connected the linear decrease of J. it doesn’t wash.”
Ocean heat content has trended downwards since ~2004. There is an apparent matching downward trend in peak C☺² evolution rate. This would, if true, be perfectly consistent with physical principles. It washes fine.
[trimmed stuff]“[IF] they had read the text, and had a good understanding of the math behind it, then yes, you are correct.”
Well, ak, we do get all kinds in here. Some people leap to conclusions, just as you say. I, too, have had to put an occasional pin in a sceptic’s balloon.
“…the readership did not pick up on the obvious fact that tonga lay several hundreds of miles from, and in the opposite current direction, of the SST anamoly for which it was supposedly responsible.””
Ak, what was said regarding the hot spot was this: “…the SST maps show a warm anomaly in that region, and extending off to the east. Is that anomaly a result or coincidence?” That seems like a question regarding effect, not a supposition of cause.
“and, jorgekafkazar, what’s up with the -san thing? is this supposed to be patronizing and subtle ad-hominem? i thought that sort of thing was not tolerated here.”
I’ll withdraw the san, since it seems to have caught you off-guard. Sorry you were offended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_titles#San
Jorge
E.M.Smith wrote:
“What the “islands sinking” folks forget is that on a geologic time scale, the ocean floor is a bucking heaving bouncing thin film and the continental margins are getting reformed by “collision damage” and ocean plates sliding their feet under the continents and lifting mountain ranges…
You can make no prediction about which way “sea level” will go in that context.”
Sure, but in the context of a century or millennium wouldn’t the sea levels tend to rise steadily, AOTBE (all other things being equal)?
Incidentally, what about cosmic dust falling on the earth? I’ve read that some huge number of tons of it falls to earth (and sea) daily. What effect would that have on sea levels?
Keith Minto (18:25:36)
That’s a pretty short time span your’re looking at. I would think an exponential increase (the more there is the faster it grows, the runaway scenario) would be the least likely . There is an interesting treatment of co2 increase during the 20th century (total co2 has increased by only 23.7%) in “Cold Facts on Global Warming” Look at the Global Carbon Dioxide Level graph which compares CO2 ppm levels throughout the 20th century but, unlike most graphs of this type, starts the CO2 scale at 0.
@Ron de Haan (15:38:32) :E.M.Smith (14:54:24) :crosspatch (14:05:50) :
“…As the continents erode and volcanoes erupt into the sea, sea levels will always be in a relentless rise, all other factors being equal….
…That’s why we still have land after 4.5 Billion years of erosion. We have isostatic rebound, plate subduction / uplift, vulcanism moving land to above water, etc. all moving rocks “up” off the sea bottom. Oh, and with India whacking into Asia we got sea bed lifted into some of the highest mountains on earth… Something similar happened to create the lifted land that is now surrounding the Grand Canyon (that was sea bottom…)…”
Gentlemen, please:
We have land after 4.5×10^9 years because what’s being generated by the process of subduction is rocks that are less dense than the material that forms the ocean floor (basalt mainly, plus even more mafic (dense) rocks of the peridotite family (rich in iron, magnesium, nickel and iron).
As the subducting slab begins to hydrate, heat and melt, the stuff that comes off is more enriched in sodium, potassium, aluminum and silica. This is “partial melting” and it is extracting a magma of material that has a lower melting point than the original material. This magma, compositionally less dense that what it derived from and hot so that it is less dense than what lies above it, rises and is ejected on the earth’s surface (as rhyolite, dacite, or andesite lavas and tuffs) or solidifies before then (as granodiorite or granite plugs/batholiths). This stuff floats like a cork on the mantle and overrides oceanic crust.
When this material is eroded and carried to the sea (often in even less dense form, as many volcanic/plutonic minerals alter in contact with atmosphere/ground water and take up water: feldspar (no H20) >> clay (feldspar + H20 +/-), the mass of the continent decreases. Thus it floats even higher. The new river deltas extend the continents’ breadth.
Oceanic volcanic islands, such as the Hawaiian Islands, are being formed where an upwelling mantle current (hot spot) occurs (or else some miles beyond a subduction trench where oceanic crust is sinking back into the mantle cuz’ it’s cool and dense whereupon the crustal material goes through the partial melting process described above, forming a volcanic island arc like Japan or an intra-continental volcanic chain like the Cascades/Andes).
In the first case, the hot spot creates a volcano that’s hot and less dense than the sea floor. In some cases, the volcano finally builds to protrude above the ocean’s surface (Mauna Loa is actually about 35,000 feet tall, measured from the sea bed). When the oceanic plate is moved beyond the hot spot, the volcanism ceases, the pile of basalt cools, and the whole massive shebang begins to sink back into the mantle. Witness Hawaii>Maui>Oahu>Kauai>whatever shoal. They’ll all disappear from sight eventually, and ultimately either be subducted or obducted (thrust up onto a continental margin).
There is a small amount of matter being added to the earth’s volume from spatial detritus (small meteorites and other debris that the earth’s gravity collects). Outside a MAJOR meteorite impact, what we have in terms of planetary mass is what we had since about 3.5BY- 4.0BY ago, when these massive collisions still did occur (the earthly vacuum cleaner has swept up its path pretty efficiently – but still, a blob the size of Monaco could ruin your whole day!).
So, take a cork, pin a fishing sinker to it, put it into water, mark the level of the water on the cork and the container. Now, remove the sinker, drop it into the water, and remeasure the water mark on the cork and the container. Do you see any change? 😉 There may be water yet in the mantle to be released to the surface that could increment the hydrosphere. Otherwise, there is likely little or no material change to sea levels as a result of any geologic process, except for the melting – or formation – of massive glaciers (I claim this for geology, of which climatology is a subset, and which really is just trading hands).
schnurrp,
Yes, the scary Mauna Loa CO2 graph, which shoots up at an alarming 45° angle, deliberately misrepresents the situation.
A graph that starts at zero is more honest: click
I wrote to NOAA about a year ago regarding the relationship between dC02/dt and global temperatures, which I could see in the record. I recieved a prompt and courteous reply from Pieter Tans, from which I quote:
“The relationship with temperature and El-Nino was noted first by Robert
Bacastow of the Scripps Inst of Oceanography, in 1976 in Nature, vol.
261, p. 116-118.”
So it has been known about for a goodly length of time and was spotted when there was not a long record of CO2 data available.
On the main point:
Loehle’s analysis, if correct, is truly astonishing. Given that the ocean surface warmed between 1970 and 2000 thereby moving the ocean temperature profile away from equilibrium. Heat uptake should have continued for many decades to come with a surface temperature that has been largely constant since 2000 or even with a moderately declining surface temperature.
To put it bluntly, if the heat content of the oceans is falling whilst the ocean surface temperature is roughly constant then the “pipe line” is at best empty, at worst backing up. By which I mean that the earth is, as a whole, cooling, which implies that the current surface temperatures can not be sustained by the current levels well mixed greenhouse gases. It would imply that something quite drastic has happened to the atmosphere-ocean system whereby the ocean is now heating the atmosphere and on to outer space.
We are living in very interesting times. It is one thing for the temperature trend to go flat but for the oceanic heat content to be dropping is much more difficult to explain, the “pipeline” should almost guarantee that this cannot happen.
Alex
Alex
crosspatch (14:05:50) : 21.03.09
Deep sea temperature measurement.
Some of you guys are too young. During the cold war days there was an enormous investment in military research, some involving submarine communication and signal detection. This can be better in some sea strata that have layered temperatures. As part of the research, many many sondes were sunk to ocean bottoms to record for a while, float to the surface, tansmit by a radio burst then sink again. There is wealth of information in the records. The trick is to access it. I don’t know how to, but I guess NASA do. Why not ask them?
Justin Sane (18:20:19) :
I thought CO2 lagged temperature by 800 years!
Yes, ~600 years +/- several hundred years, according to Vostok ice cores, if my faulty memory serves me.
Also ~ 9 months, according to my paper on icecap.us
Also possibly other delays, such as ~5 years on a cycle of ~60-90 years, if Ernst Beck is correct.
The point is that each delay time is a function of its cycle length.
The 9 month delay is probably a function of ENSO cycles, for example.
Beck’s ~5 year delay, if it exists, is likely based on a PDO or Gleissberg cycle.
The 600 year delay would be based on a longer cycle of perhaps ~1500 years.
These cycles are not mutually exclusive – they can all exist at the same time.
Regards, Allan
Smokey (19:27:04)
Here’s one that starts at zero CO2 ppm for the entire 20th century.
“BarryW (13:40:56) : One thing I haven’t seen explained is the 1998 “Super” El Nino. The temp shot up. Where did the heat come from and where did the heat go?
REPLY: My thought was that it was a dearth of cloud cover that may have triggered it. – Anthony”
This would be due to activity on the sun and it’s effect on the earth, wouldn’t it?
Craig Loehle (11:39:04) :
What are your thought on Nir Shaviv’s work on energy from the sun and the possible amplifying of that energy in oceans?
ref :
http://www.co2science.org/articles/V12/N8/EDIT.php
I’ve gotta say it, being an ex trawlerman an’ all….. Ah, the sea is indeed a harsh mistress…. She has sunk the good ship AGW and all who sailed her are lost.
Weep tears of joy catastrophists…. The end has come and gone.
It was but merely the catastrophic collapse of a foolish hypothesis;-)
“REPLY: If you want to put the entire paper here (as a PDF) you are welcome to do so. It has been pointed out to me that with the traffic WUWT has, it likely reaches more people than many of the journals. And, a lot faster too!.”
I’m happy for you that you’ve reached this level Anthony Watts. Good on ya mate!
“nvw (14:05:45) : We are looking at the end game, a few moves and it is checkmate for AGW:”
Do you know how many times I’ve seen the words ‘endgame’ and ‘checkmate’ in the last two years? It was checkmate for AGW a long time ago. But there still is no end to AGW.
It seems to be like this : even though Einstein’s view of gravity is far better than Newton’s (Einstein’s view makes Newton’s look like something from the Geico cave man) Newton’s gravity is still taught in schools. Einstein’s is not.
The real science of climate may not get to the mainstream just like Einstein’s gravity has not made it to the mainstream.
But maybe I’ve become jaded.
“But all that heat went into Hansen’s magical mystery “pipeline” tour, don’t ya know.”
I think they took all that heat, created financial derivatives, and had AIG peddle them around the world in exchange for mortgage default risk insurance. So when the heat of the oceans began to fall, they were forced to pony up more capital until it eventually the entire thing collapsed. It looked like a neat thing to do at the time because according to IPCC and the general scientific consensus, it was almost a riskless transaction and the values of ocean heat were expected to go nowhere but up forever.
Leif Svalgaard (16:26:10) :
REPLY: indeed that would be the case for your detrended data graph, but for the peaks on the Siddons graph I think this line is representative. – Anthony
I don’t know how he constructed his graph. I downloaded the data from the ftp-site quoted on the Figure and differentiated the data to get the rate of change. Detrending first does not make any difference because d(b+ax+c*sin(x))/dx = a + c*cos(x).
The point is not what this or that graph shows, but what the actual data treated correctly show. By ‘correctly’ I mean in a straightforward way that can be explained and reproduced.
Philip_B (18:30:21) :
Leif, maybe I’m missing something here, but detrended data (see your graph) by definition can’t have a rate of change.
See above or consider the function sin(x) which does not have any ‘long-term’ trend [always swings between -1 and 1 not matter how far out you go]. the rate of change of sin(x) is cos(x).
Jim F
An elegant and succinct description of the creation of continents!
I’ve often wondered why the ocean floor is so mafic. Is it not so much that the felsics are excluded, but rather that the mafics are, as you say, excluded from the continental crust?
But then, wouldn’t hydration at the ocean ridges create differentiated extrusions?
Also, is a significant amount of water going missing into the magma?
Craig Loehle: Thankyou so much for this important finding.
And thanks so much for you work with temperature proxies.
This strange farce of a science story,, “Global warming” – hysteria, is actually coming to an end soon. Many people out there dont know yet, but the world is in for a surprice, a story that will last for centuries. A story that will be told again and again. And some individuals might have some explaining to do.
So Craig, thank you so much for helping ending this sad epoke in science.
K.R. Frank
Just Want Truth: “Do you know how many times I’ve seen the words ‘endgame’ and ‘checkmate’ in the last two years?”
That’s not the half of it. Try these: “beginning of the end of the ‘global warming’ nonsense…more cracks in the AGW façade…IPCC’s house of cards is crumbling…AGW mantra will die soon…Game over man! Game over!…AGW bubble bursts for good…first trickle of the turning tide…will end the AGW parade…rats are beginning to jump ship…South-Seas-are-Bubbling bubble to burst…their house of cards will collapse…a sign of the beginning of the end…another twelve months before this mess falls to pieces…the AGW balloon is about to burst…the AGW theory is about to come crashing down…this may be the tipping point to a revival of reality…we are finally witnessing the last gasps of a dying theory…is dying as a viable bogey man before our very eyes…the extremely thin veneer of science is beginning to crack, revealing the crumbling edifice of AGW.”
Anthony,
Well spotted – is there any lag between the MLO data and Craig’s? Trends are trends, but if Tom Segalstad’s estimate that CO2 residence in the atmosphere is ~ 5 years, then MLO should be about 5 years behind Craig’s, everything else being equal.
If shorter, lag-wise, then CO2 vs SST coupling has to be tighter.
Just a muse as I haven’t been paying much attention to climate stuff lately.
Frank Lansner (22:33:17) :
“Craig Loehle: Thankyou so much for this important finding.
And thanks so much for you work with temperature proxies.
This strange farce of a science story,, “Global warming” – hysteria, is actually coming to an end soon. Many people out there dont know yet, but the world is in for a surprice, a story that will last for centuries. A story that will be told again and again. And some individuals might have some explaining to do.
So Craig, thank you so much for helping ending this sad epoke in science”.
K.R. Frank
Yes, and now we have redo the big media, politics, the UN, the IPCC, all the enviro’s,
and half of the brainwashed world population.
This will take approx. twenty years, so we’re still left with a “Blue Planet in Green Shackles”
http://www.klaus.cz/klaus2/asp/clanek.asp?id=4YaljNm0KrL2
Just Want Truth… (21:18:59) :
. . . It seems to be like this : even though Einstein’s view of gravity is far better than Newton’s (Einstein’s view makes Newton’s look like something from the Geico cave man) Newton’s gravity is still taught in schools. Einstein’s is not.
The real science of climate may not get to the mainstream just like Einstein’s gravity has not made it to the mainstream.
General Relativistic gravity is only better than Newton’s take in the extremes. For anything man can survive, Newton works just fine. He got us to the moon, he gets our robots to the planets. Using GR equations for that would just get the same answers.
The schools don’t teach GR because
1. It’s useless
2. It’s incomprehensible
I think it was Einstein who said that only Arthur Eddington actually understood General Relativity. The only one of Einstein’s ten GR tensors that I understand is the metric tensor, and Pythagoras came up with that one 2500 years ago.
You’re dead on right about the facts getting to the mainstream. Most folks get their ‘facts’ from the perky Katie Couric, and if something goes against the template, well, it just doesn’t get reported. I’d bet the people per million who know that global warming topped out in the last century is lower that the CO2 ppm.
AGW is going to live as truth until the
stupidproposed government ‘cures’ start costing people their jobs.klausb: It occurred to me this morning that there’s another dataset available from the CPC that they call Ocean Heat Content of the equatorial Pacific.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/MJO/enso.shtml
Their link to the data is down toward the bottom of the page. Here’s the link, which clarifies that it’s actually the average subsurface temperature from 0 to 300 meters.
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ocean/index/heat_content_index.txt
My posts on it are here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/11/average-subsurface-temperature-of.html
and here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/11/nino34-sst-warm-water-volume-subsurface.html
Jim F
I was thinking of things like the billion metric tons of dust that blows off of Africa every year 1.4 billion tons from the Yellow River, who knows how many tons of material dropped from bergs as the glaciers forming them scraped out valleys. Yeah, I know that on the scale of millions of years all that stuff gets recycled but I would also posit that as time goes by, that process is slowing. At some point I would expect the land to be below sea level if the oceans don’t outgas into space first (which is actually the more likely scenario).
I would expect that overall across the planet, the amount of land mass above the surface of the water to be shrinking (more land eroding than rising) but the Himalayas would probably be the dominant factor in that equation and places like the St. Elias Mountains in Canada are still growing rapidly.
Water lost from the oceans into the rocks being subducted is a factor, too. Example: “Subduction of serpentinized peridotites from ophiolite slabs is here considered the most effective mechanism of bringing water to great depth within the mantle.” But there is conflicting research. Some claim that more is being subducted than returned, others claim to be able to account for that deficit. Is it all locked up in hydrous aluminum silicates or does it work its way back out somehow?
There were a few recent “scare” stories that Earth was losing ocean to subduction at an “alarming rate” but looking closer at the press release it seemed to be more a plea for justification for funding someone’s research by scaring people into giving them the cash to “study” it than anything else. (which is why I am wary of any release in the press that mentions a scary scenario followed by mention that more money is needed to study it).
Overall it won’t matter. At some point all the water will be gone anyway either locked up in the rock or lost to space.
Just Want Truth… (20:52:03) :
Craig Loehle (11:39:04) :
What are your thought on Nir Shaviv’s work on energy from the sun and the possible amplifying of that energy in oceans?
JWT: You should enjoy this – Shaviv slides from 2004 Florence conference
http://www.fi.infn.it/conferenze/ecrs2004/Pages/Presentazioni/04%20Shaviv.pdf
Thank you Bob for the data sources.
The above work on SST vs CO2 is fairly similar to my January 31, 2008 paper on icecap.us.
I used Hadcrut3 which includes air temperatures over land and HadSST2 sea surface temperatures.
I used UAH LT (Lower Troposphere temps) and both Global and later Mauna Loa CO2 concentrations.
Repeating from my previous WUWT post:
It is interesting to note that the detailed signals we derive from the data show that CO2 lags temperature at all time scales, from the 9 month delay for ~ENSO cycles to the ~600 year delay inferred in the ice core data for much longer cycles.
My paper on the 9-month delay was posted Jan.31/08 with a spreadsheet at http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/carbon_dioxide_in_not_the_primary_cause_of_global_warming_the_future_can_no/
In my Figure 1 and 2, global dCO2/dt closely coincides with global Lower Tropospheric Temperature LT and Surface Temperature ST. I believe that the temperature and CO2 datasets are collected completely independently, and yet there is this clear correlation.
After publishing this paper, I also demonstrated the same correlation with different datasets – using Mauna Loa CO2 and Hadcrut3 ST going back to 1958. More recently I examined the close correlation of LT measurements taken by satellite and those taken by radiosonde.
Further, there are papers by Kuo (1990) and Keeling (1995) that discussed the delay of CO2 after temperature, although neither appeared to notice the even closer correlation of dCO2/dt with temperature. This correlation is noted in my Figures 3 and 4.
This subject has generated discussion among serious scientists. Almost no one doubts the dCO2/dt versus LT (and ST) correlation. Some go so far as to say that humankind is not even the primary cause of the current increase in atmospheric CO2 – that it is natural. Others rely on a “material balance argument” to refute this claim – I think these would be in the majority. I am officially an agnostic on this question, to date.
The warmist side also has also noted this ~9 month delay, but try to explain it as a “feedback effect” – this argument seems more consistent with AGW religious dogma than with science (”ASSUMING AGW is true, then it MUST be feedback”). 🙂
It is interesting to note, however, that the natural seasonal variation in atmospheric CO2 ranges up to ~16ppm in the far North, whereas the annual increase in atmospheric CO2 is only ~2ppm. This reality tends to weaken the “material balance argument”. This seasonal ’sawtooth” of CO2 is primarily driven by the Northern Hemisphere landmass, which is much greater in area than that of the Southern Hemisphere. CO2 falls during the NH summer due primarily to land-based photosynthesis, and rises in the late fall, winter and early spring as biomass degrades.
There is also likely to be significant CO2 solution and exsolution from the oceans.
See the excellent animation at http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/carbonDioxideSequence2002_2008_at15fps.mp4
For more on this subject, see
Increasing Atmospheric CO2: Manmade…or Natural?
January 21st, 2009 by Roy W. Spencer
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/01/increasing-atmospheric-co2-manmade%e2%80%a6or-natural/
Also Veizer (2005) and the classic Veizer and Shaviv (2003), if you can find them online. Veizer used to be at http://www.gac.ca/publications/geoscience/TOC/GACgcV32No1Web.pdf
Many scientists who believe that the theory of catastrophic humanmade global warming is invalid still do believe that humankind is driving increased atmospheric CO2 through combustion of fossil fuels.
I used to be accept without question the role of fossil fuels in driving increased atmospheric CO2 – now I am leaning towards being an agnostic on this very interesting scientific question.
The really important question is whether the world is undergoing catastrophic global warming or NOT.
It is apparent to me that there has been no significant warming for many years, and sharp cooling since January 2007.
The shift in the PDO from warm to cool mode suggests we can expect, on average, 20-30 years of global cooling (with upward and downward natural variation).
In summary, I think the alleged catastrophic humanmade global warming crisis does not exist in reality.
Regards, Allan
crosspatch (15:19:35) : One thing I have always wondered about …
Has anyone estimated what portion of available fossil hydrocarbon resources have already been burned? Shouldn’t that put some ultimate upper bound on anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
Yes, it has been estimated. There ought to be about 5000 Gigatons of C in all the non-clathrate hydrocarbons. Clathrates are a bit less clear, but somewhere beween at most another 5000 Gt C and 500-2500 Gt C depending on who’s estimate and how old. See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
In fairness, I do cite an older llnl.gov posting that estimated 10,000 Gt C in Clathrates, but I’m pretty sure it was over the mark so I’d cut it in half as an upper bound. BTW, at present we have no way to recover and use the Clathrates. They are at the bottom of very deep oceans.
One theory of how an ice age ends is that when enough water has been lifted from the ocean as land ice, it depressurizes the clathrates that then vaporize / out gas and a methane flood of the atmosphere causes a spike in temps with a melting of glaciers et. al.
Also, FWIW, since we don’t really have any idea how much methane from clathrates enters the oceans / atmosphere each year, any imputing that CO2 comes from people based on C12 : C13 ratios is broken. We don’t know what at least one major source is doing, so the error band goes too large to make a reasonable conclusion. See:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-trouble-with-c12-c13-ratios/
Finally, it’s constantly raining here. A large storm is hitting the Left Coast and just dumping on us. TWC was talking about feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada. The cold and wet is back after a brief respite.
Here is the unfiltered ocean heat content data – http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Craig’s graph looks nothing like this data.
Why Antrophogenic CO2 does not cause warming: Shoot!
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/GW_SimplifiedNutshell.htm
Roger Knights (19:00:18) : Sure, but in the context of a century or millennium wouldn’t the sea levels tend to rise steadily, AOTBE (all other things being equal)?
What is the rate at which continental collisions are thrusting volumes of rock up into the air? Himalayas are still having some uplift. What is the rate at which subduction is dragging sediment down under the continent margin (to be melted and hydrated as described above)? What is the rate at which this process raises mountains? California coastal mountains still rise, sometimes very abruptly! What is the rate at which volcanoes reach for the sky? (Hawaii and Chaiten are still erupting along with some others). The thing you must remember is that even on a century long basis stuff is moving and you don’t know the quantities so you can’t know the net direction.
Heck, in a good jolt you can get several feet of lift over many miles all at once. The Indonesian Tsunami from a couple of years ago had a several hundred mile stretch of sea floor rise something like 9 feet in seconds to minutes! Parts of California are known to have moved up a couple of feet in seconds in a good quake.
To know the net effect you would need to “do the math” on all the numbers and you don’t have all the numbers. But we do know that the processes are still happening. (As described above with the “light rocks floating” description, the best we can do is look at the shoreline and notice if we’re floating any differently. Sometimes were are. See Scotland for example where the north edge is rising or Midway which is sinking oh so slowly). And as noted above about the Mediterranean being squashed and removed as a basin. But also notice that a rift is ripping Africa apart and some day the eastern edge will be a new Madagascar with a new sea between it and the main land.
You really must let go of the idea of using a static model to describe the land / ocean depths. It is dynamic and static analysis will fail.
Incidentally, what about cosmic dust falling on the earth? I’ve read that some huge number of tons of it falls to earth (and sea) daily. What effect would that have on sea levels?
Essentially nothing. It’s trivial compared to everything else and it will just get subducted and melted along with everything else. (Since this has been happening for a long time, we ought to be near an equilibrium, where the stuff accumulated on the ocean floor and hitting the melting part of the cycle is about the same as the in fall. Basically the millions of years of in fall has all ready happened and now sea floor spreading is feeding the ooze to the subduction zone. New dust is just preventing this from making progress in cleaning up the net dust in the ooze. So we add comet dust to the continents and comet water to the oceans. What is the net? Unknown but certainly near nothing of importance.
I know it’s hard to put these two things in the same paragraph, but it is true that we can’t know what’s happening, yet we can know that the result is “not much” by inspection of the last few thousand years of shoreline. Some ports in Italy that are now higher than the sea. Some in Greece / Turkey that are now city, built over what was the port that silted up centuries ago and is now land well above sea level. Alexandria which sunk into the Mediterranean in an earthquake in recorded history (compensating for some of the Italian uplift!)
So we know land moves up and down and we know that most ports in most places are very close to the level they were at centuries ago.
So, to summarise:
“There are two resistors affecting the flow of solar energy through the Earth’s independently variable systems of ocean and air.
They each vary in the strength of their resistance to the solar energy flow over time.
In the case of the oceans, oceanic cycles cause the flow of energy to the air to speed up and slow down over periods of 30 years or so for each negative or positive phase.
In the case of the air it is the circulation of the air that
causes the energy flow to space to speed up or slow down but in that case it varies on a daily basis.
One resistor (the oceans) is massively greater than the other (the air) due to the huge density and volume of the oceans as compared to the air.
If the oceans are in a surface cooling (negative) mode they are net absorbers of solar energy and are releasing less energy to the air than is needed to replace the energy lost by the air to space. That is an
increase in the resistor effect of the oceans and the main body of the oceans is normally warming unless solar input is so weak that it offsets the warming effect of the negative mode. The air cools.
If the oceans are in a surface warming (positive) mode they are net emitters of solar energy and are releasing more energy to the air than is needed to replace the energy lost to space by the air. That is a decrease in the resistor effect of the oceans and the main body of the oceans is normally cooling unless solar input is strong enough to offset the cooling effect of the positive mode. That may have been the case from 1975 to 2000. The air warms.
Full article here:
http://climaterealists.com/attachments/database/Balancing%20the%20Earths%20Energy%20Budget__0__0__1233774754.pdf
Our oceans are in fact the planet’s largest heat sink, and it has been routinely demonstrated that changes in that heat sink status (AMO, PDO, El Nino and La Nina) do in fact affect our weather and climate.
Actually our oceans are the planet’s largest Cold Sink. The average deep ocean temperature is about 3deg c. ARGO is starting to produce some usefull information but the ocean has limited ability to warm the planet but a much greater ability to cool it.
Craig Loehle (13:39:55) :
For those who keep asking, I published in E&E because it can take 2 years to publish elsewhere. I am perfectly capable of getting something published, with 115 pub papers so far I know the ropes. But timeliness seemed pretty important in this case.
My comment:
Makes sense to publish in E&E – McIntyre and McKitrick did so, as well as many others.
You’ll receive much tougher reviews online than the creampuff peer review process of alarmist climate papers in (Political) Science and Nature.
Craig – can you please provide your source for ARGO daa?
Thanks, Allan
I did find this – see slide 8
http://www.ioc-unesco.org/hab/components/com_oe/oe.php?task=download&id=6051&version=1.0&lang=1&format=6
E.M.Smith (14:25:36) :
“Ellie in Belfast (13:16:18) : This got me thinking, but as usual questions to which I do not have an answer: – is CO2 adsorption by oceans (roughly) linear with temperature?
I think there is another complicating factor. We have precipitation. I believe that it’s the colder rain and snow that acts as a counter current “stripper” taking CO2 from the air. Once that precipitation hits the ocean, then the question becomes does the CO2 stay or not. A colder ocean would imply:
1) It stays more than before.
2) The precipitation falling into it will be colder, so stripping more CO2.”
Good points – I would agree with both. pH of rainwater can be lower in urban areas even now that SO4 is largely controlled, which might argue for higher localised CO2 a la Beck. (sorry i missed your comment earlier)
DJ (03:12:54) :
said,
“Here is the unfiltered ocean heat content data – http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Craig’s graph looks nothing like this data.”
Thanks for looking this up on the internet. You are exactly right.
This graph is based on a recent publication, which claims to correct errors in recent data.
ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf
There are a number of different versions of this graph in the paper which compare the results for ocean heat content from 700M to the surface with previous workers.
The graph on page 32 shows a huge increase between2002 and 2005, from 4.5 to 12*10^22J which is missing from Craig’s graph, and a slower increase through 2008. There is no way one could get a decrease of 1*10^22 J from this graph, which is what Craig Loehle has gotten.
This whole learned discussion seems to be based on questionable data. The annual rate of increase of CO2 is actually quite noisy, and the ocean heat content did not actually decrease in recent years according to the latest corrected version of the data.
It seems not everyone at NOAA is convinced that CO2 will be the final destruction of all life on earth. I’m sure when management catch up with the prankster he will receive a severe rogering.
http://i599.photobucket.com/albums/tt74/MartinGAtkins/co2.jpg
Eric: You wrote, “This whole learned discussion seems to be based on questionable data.”
The data varies from month to month even from data source. Which of the datasets is most current? Also Craig Loehl noted how he detrended the data in the first comment on this thread, which may explain part of the difference.
I obtained the data from Josh Willis based on HIS corrections to the raw data, which I assumed to authoritative. It seems that the different methods do not lead to the same corrections, which is a problem, clearly.
The ocean heat content should decrease during a period of net positive global ocean cycles due to energy release to the air.
Accordingly it should increase during a period of net negative ocean cycles when energy is being denied to the air.
What really matters is the netted out effect of all the oceans simultaneously at any given moment.
However the level of solar input is also important.
At any given point during a period of positive or negative ocean cycles the rate of solar input to the oceans can be more or less than the energy passing to the air from the oceans.
From 1975 to 2000 it would appear that an active sun was adding more energy to the oceans than was being lost to the air by the positive ocean cycles so total ocean heat content was rising despite the positive cycles.
From 2000 to now it would appear that with the progressively more negative ocean cycles the reduction in loss of energy to the air is causing an increasing total ocean heat content despite the weakening solar input.
It might take some years, possibly a couple of decades, for a weaker sun to have enough of an effect on ocean heat content to offset the ocean warming effect of the negative ocean cycles fully (it may never do so) so while we still have negative ocean cycles the ocean heat content would normally continue to increase even while the climate cools.
That is a scenario that could explain a continuing rise in total heat content if that is what is actually happening.
Craig’s chart would suggest that the solar input is so weak that there is still a net reduction in ocean heat content despite the negative ocean cycles which would normally ADD to ocean heat content.
I would like to know which chart is correct but on the basis of my suggestion neither chart is inconsistent with entirely natural processes.
The fastest energy loss from the oceans would be during a positive set of ocean cycles and a weak sun even though the air would be warming. Despite warming of the climate under such a scenario we would be rushing towards a sudden temperature drop as soon as the ocean cycles went negative again.
The current negative ocean cycles may be helping to delay the full consequences of what might be an extended period of lower solar activity by helping to retain more energy in the system for the time being.
The ‘battery’ is still being charged, fortunately for us.
Even during a generally negative period of ocean cycles which can go on for 30 years or more there are still periods of positive oceanic balance. If the sun stays weak such positive spells just accelerate overall energy loss which might be masked climatically during the positive spell but which would result in a faster drop down in temperature to a lower level when the next net negative spell arrives.
Such a process applies both within a longer term warming spell AND a longer term cooling spell and gives rise to a ‘stepped’ pattern of air temperature rise or fall.
That ‘stepped’ upward rise is just what we observed during the 20th Century warming trend and as we might well now see with temperature going downward during any 21st Century cooling trend.
Everything we observe fits perfectly well with natural solar and oceanic changes and need not involve GHGs at all.
Just to be clear, this data reflects the correction to the “problem” found with the Argo data last year, right?
I still believe that the drivers of El Nino and La Nina are underwater volcanic activity. During activity periods driving the temperatures up and down when dormant or quiet. We have just received confirmation that the volcanic activity off of Tonga is increasing the the ocean water temperature further east.
From what I understand of the positions of La Nina’s and El Nino’s they are over active underground volcanic areas.
Mike McMillan (00:30:59) :
General Relativistic gravity is only better than Newton’s take in the extremes. For anything man can survive, Newton works just fine.
The Global Positioning System of satellites works because the effect of GR is taken into account. If we used Newton, the position we would get from GPS would drift 10 kilometers per day rendering the system useless. Navigation would be so bad that human lives would be lost if GR is not used.
MattN (07:21:06) :
Yes, the data was used in a paper on sea level by Willis et al in July 2008.
Bob Tisdale (06:31:11) :
“Eric: You wrote, “This whole learned discussion seems to be based on questionable data.”
The data varies from month to month even from data source. Which of the datasets is most current? ”
Bob,
It seems that the one I have linked to is the latest analysis, which is due for publicatin this year and includes data for 2008.
“Also Craig Loehl noted how he detrended the data in the first comment on this thread, which may explain part of the difference.”
I didn’t notice that. It makes the discussion even more puzzling.
Why are we discussing the trend of detrended ocean heat data, and comparing it with a trend of peaks in the CO2 data, that are a result of the decay of vegetation in the northern hemisphere? This doesn’t make any sense to me.
This is pretty much completely OT, BUT…seemed that folks that may have missed this development regarding Cap and Trade might want to take a look here at Hot Air. Apparently Cap and Trade is dead for this year, having been replaced by revamping health care:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/21/cap-and-trade-traded-away/
“George Stephanopolous reported yesterday that Senate Democrats forced Barack Obama to choose between two break-the-bank policies for this year. The White House apparently surrendered on cap-and-trade in order to get started on a massive overhaul of the nation’s health-care delivery system.”
JimB
Thanks Craig, and excellent work!!
Eric, MattN, Craig Loehle: And they’ve changed the OHC Data AGAIN. The onetime dip in 2007 is now gone, according to Levitus et al 2008 (2009).
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/03/latest-revisions-to-ocean-heat-content.html
The Ocean Heat Content data from the NOAA noted by DJ and described as “unfiltered” …
If you read their manuscript, the first 9 pages is a description of all the filtering they did to the data. It almost reads like a paper by Mann if he actually described all the changes he did to the raw data.
There were some problems with the XBT sensors and some of the Argo floats but when these are corrected for or excluded, there was no significant change in the ocean heat content from 2003 to 2005.
The corrected data was widely accepted so if Craig just extended the corrected data to 2008 … there you go.
We do not have a matched control yet for CO2 measuring stations. Nor do we have a matched set of measures that adequately covers sinks. Until we have stations placed where CO2 never rises or sinks, and stations that measure sinks, the Mauna Loa graphs are worthless as indicators of global CO2. AIMS and other satellite sources are our only near term hope for accurate global CO2, and they are none to willing to readily and in an un-massaged state, give the data to public users. I wonder why? Is it funding? Is there some sort of agreement that some parties get the data before we do? Are they having technical difficulties?
Given the above, it surprises me a bit to see CO2 graphs trotted out with the assumption (intentional or not) that this data can be compared to global temperatures. It cannot. It CAN be compared to itself and maybe correlated to its location in the Pacific Ocean around it, along with the volcano next to it.
The posters and contributors to the blog here should know that public consumption of what they read here is rife with assumptions, the ones made in articles posted here, made intentionally or not, and readers’ assumptions as they read what is written here. To ignore that is a miscarriage of unbiased writing.
All very interesting data.
.
One thing I have thought a bit about but have not heard discussed is influence of the yearly cycle in solar brightness on the ocean heat content (which is due to the earth’s orbit being an ellipse). The intensity of sunlight at the top of the atmosphere is ~6.9% higher in late January than in late July (about 94 watts per square meter), and the intensity variation follows an almost sinusoidal shape. (It is slightly non-sinusoidal because the Earth’s orbital velocity is a little faster at the closest approach to the sun… the southern summer is a little shorter than the norther summer.) Assuming that about 70% of total solar energy is absorbed by the atmosphere and the surface/ocean, we can expect an annual peak-to-trough variation in net solar forcing in the range of 16.5 watts/sq. meter (calculated for the entire earth surface on an 24 hour average basis).
.
Now this is a variation in forcing of a magnitude which swamps other commonly discussed man-made radiative effects, including “greenhouse” gases, aerosols, carbon/soot on snow, etc. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the magnitude of the oscillation in total ocean heat shown by Craig Loehle and by Willis et. al (2008) is in the range that would be expected for a 16.5 watt/sq. meter annual variation in solar forcing, and the dates for the peaks in ocean heat content fall ~45 days after the peaks in solar intensity. Willis suggested that the oscillation in ocean heat content is due to differences in land areas in the northern and southern hemispheres (with land having higher albedo than ocean), but I suspect the very high albedo of Antarctica during the southern summer compensates for much of the difference in land area. In any case, the oscillation in heat content seems a subject worthy of some more rigorous calculations.
.
There are a couple of interesting inferences we can draw. First, the plainly visible annual oscillation in ocean heat content confirms Roger Pielke Sr.’s contention that the ocean heat content is a much better metric of global heat balance than changes in surface temperature. After all, nobody can see the (very large) annual variation in solar intensity by looking at the average surface temperature records; they are far too noisy due to weather influences, sampling issues, and “adjustments”.
.
Second, at least some of the annual oscillation in CO2 concentration (Mauna Loa record and elsewhere) is likely driven by the oscillation in ocean heat content, in addition to the influence of plant growth in the northern summer.
.
Third, the claim of “30 years of future warming already in the pipeline” (Hansen et al, 2005, Science) is almost certainly wrong. Such a long lag in ocean heat implies that the ocean is far away from thermal equilibrium with the applied radiative forcing (that is, much cooler than equilibrium). With a nearly constant to slightly falling average surface surface temperature from 2003 to 2008, Hansen et. al.’s claim of “in the pipeline” warming could only be correct if the ocean heat content continued to rise significantly during the same period. Since the ocean heat content has actually fallen, it seems clear that there is no 30 year lag in the system. In fact, the recent fall in ocean heat suggests that the average surface temperature would be lower today were the oceans not currently losing heat to the atmosphere. If there is no 30-year lag in the system, then the assumed sensitivity to radiative forcing used in climate models MUST be far too high. I am quite sure that high quality ARGO ocean heat content data will ultimately force substantial downward revisions in the sensitivities used climate models. But I predict a flurry of papers will soon be published claiming huge losses heat to the deep ocean, which by coincidence, will be claimed to have started about 2002; there exists (of course) no good data to refute the claims!
.
If the climate hysteria subsides a bit as a result, then the investment in the Argo system may just turn out to be the best investment humankind has ever made. Why not extend the Argo system to include a family of deeper diving floats to remove all doubt about ocean heat content?
Global ocean heat is a lot like Arctic Ice extent and area. To truly understand how ice grows, moves, sustains, melts, and integrates into Arctic currents, you should not think of the Arctic as a single unit. It should be understood separately. So much more so, the oceans. Each area has its own oscillation and interaction with trade winds, jet streams, and cold/warm fronts that blow away or allow to stand, surface ocean waters, the only area of each ocean that can be directly heated by the Sun. Each area must be considered on its own merit, just like Arctic areas. Some Arctic areas have ready access to fresh water melt, along with salt water melt. Some have access to warm ocean currents, other areas to cold ocean currents. There is no “global” Arctic ice data point that has anything worthwhile in it that can help us understand it. So too the oceans. Take them one at a time. Understand each. Then tell me if you see a global temperature SST trend that can be understood. I think not. The risk of wrong assumptions is too high. Any conclusion based on a single global measurement is wrong at worst, and misleading at best.
I keep reading posts that clam there has been a recent fall in ocean heat.
The data does not appear to be definitive enough to make that claim, and the most recent paper says that there has not been a real fall.
There have been a lot of recent corrections to the argo buoy data, and it is not clear that we have seen the last one.
Is there someone oth there who can explain the meaning of the trend of detrended data as calculated by Craig Loehle?
Pamela Gray (09:04:05)
Whilst agreeing on the complexity issue and the general inadequacy of current data I do think that there is a way of discerning an ongoing temperature trend and any movement towards a change in trend or a change in intensity of trend.
I contend elsewhere that the latitudinal position of the mid latitude jet streams (after accounting for seasonal changes) indicates whether the globe is warming or cooling overall.
I propose that the latitudinal movement of those jets is the climate mechanism whereby the energy flow to space is accelerated or decelerated in order to maintain sea surface/air surface temperature equilibrium.
The position of the jets represents the netted out product of all the other available variables in the climate system (in my humble opinion).
I also agree that ocean temperature is likely to be a far greater contributor to CO2 variability than anything humans can achieve and if the oceans do start to cool then at some point I would expect CO2 levels in the air to begin to fall whatever mankind is able to emit.
The recent levels of CO2 have led to a matching increase in global biological activity. If CO2 levels start to drop all the extra plant life is going to have to fight for it’s requirements and will find the supply of CO2 available for the current level of biological activity to be inadequate. The reduction in CO2 in the air will accelerate from the demands of a hungry biosphere until the biological activity reduces proportionately to any reduction in oceanic CO2 emissions.
So over the course of a year, the oceans are constantly releasing 110 TW of heat through this constant cooling process? That would amount to ~30 times what the US consumes in electrical power production. Surely, this heat released from the oceans must have some effect on any atmospheric forcing. Heat is heat and this heat is much greater, and more evenly distributed about the global surface than the discrete environments of North America, Europe, pockets of Asia, etc. As well, the heat released in the creation of the ~3.3-3.5 TW of energy consumed by the US is still much smaller.
This is a pretty interesting find.
DR (13:18:57) :
Thank you for the link to RPS heat imbalance comments. Two items are highly revealing:
1) Pielke notes that Hansen’s attempt to explain the missing heat was refused publication in Science. It is a glaring discrepancy. Which calls into further question the integrity of Science and its editorial process.
2) Pielke says: “…the question should be asked as to the number of years required to reject this model as having global warming predictive skill, if this large difference between the observations and the GISS model persists.”
Indeed years 2003-2008 show zero heating in the upper 700m of ocean – six consecutive years falsifying the Hansen GISS model. But AGW alarmists, their bottleneck of “authoritative” publications and the MSM refuse to publicize non-partyline facts. The real catastrophe here is the non-recoverable damage done to science by narrow-minded scientists and handlers incapable of admitting their errors.
On the positive side is the fresh air and light brought to the matter by good people across the globe willing to publish the truth.
Everyone – this has been one of the most educational reads I have had in a long time. Your efforts are truly appreciated. After being directed to the Moana Loa data sets I did note the following. While CO2 is rising, the Methane and CFLC concentrations have nearly ceased increasing. The methane rate of growth came to a relative standstill on or around 1998. Since its a much more powerful forcing agent it begs some attention. People will save/collect methane, they can use it.
And thanks to the several of you pointing out the math abuse of plotting graphs with no zero points.
It dramatizes the heck out of the issues.
I agree about the position of the jet stream. But which area are you talking about? The jet stream is also not a single entity that consistently circles the globe in a predictable pattern. Where and when do the loops occur? How deep are they and under what conditions? Where do the breaks occur and under what conditions? I see a consistent pattern, so to speak, in where the breaks usually occur and where the loops usually occur. How do these couple with oceanic and land conditions under each of these observations of looping and breaking?
Eric (09:11:37),
Quite a few “what-ifs” packed into that short post, especially in the two middle sentences.
The other posts you ‘keep reading’ are correct, and you have shown nothing that refutes them. Believing despite the evidence that you are right and everyone else is wrong is simply cognitive dissonance.
And which ‘most recent paper’ do you feel changes that fact that the ocean is cooling? You seem to believe that the timing of a publication trumps all previous findings. If that were the case, I could refute Special Relativity.
The ocean is cooling. The Argo buoys have been corrected — but they show ocean cooling both before and after the corrections.
The AGW/CO2 hypothesis is falsified once again.
How many actually download and read the rest of Josh Willis’ text?
Pamela Gray (10:00:12)
I didn’t say it would be easy to identify the averaged out position of the mid latitude jets in both hemispheres at any particular time. I’m aware of the problems of splitting and looping.
The link with temperatures arises because when the globe is warming the equatorial air masses expand and push the jets poleward. When cooling the equatorial air masses contract and allow polar plunges to penetrate deeper towards the equator.
I provide much more detail in my articles here:
http://climaterealists.com/news.php?tid=37
Excellent work! The SO is the 800 lb. climate gorilla.
” that are a result of the decay of vegetation in the northern hemisphere?”
Huh? Have you even thought through your demonstration of this as fact? Start with the low in decay of October gaining pace through the frozen months of Jan. and Feb.
Smokey (10:01:54) :
wrote,
“Eric (09:11:37),
Quite a few “what-ifs” packed into that short post, especially in the two middle sentences.
The other posts you ‘keep reading’ are correct, and you have shown nothing that refutes them. Believing despite the evidence that you are right and everyone else is wrong is simply cognitive dissonance.
And which ‘most recent paper’ do you feel changes that fact that the ocean is cooling? You seem to believe that the timing of a publication trumps all previous findings. If that were the case, I could refute Special Relativity.”
You missed my previous post, in which I linked this paper,
ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat08.pdf
‘Global Ocean Heat Content 1955-2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems
S. Levitus, J. I. Antonov, T. P. Boyer, R. A. Locarnini, H. E. Garcia, A. V. Mishonov
National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA’.
The lead author, Levitus, has many often cited publications on ocean heat content. He is not just Joe Blogger, opinionating on a subject that he knows nothing about.
Check out the evidence that the oceans have not gotten cooler, in the graph on figure 1 on page 17 of the link.
Here is a sea level view of this whole thing.
I surf year round at the same beach in Southern California. I have been surfing this beach for 30 years. The ocean water temperature this year, at the surface, was the coldest this February that I can ever remember. There was a noticeable difference of a few degrees. Diving under waves became painful and after a couple of dives in a row it took a long time to warm the water in my wetsuit. Along with the brain freeze I had pictures of Al Gore swimming in my hypothermia riden brain. If you could actually stuff that guy in wet suit I’m sure he would have warmed it up much faster.
As far as sea level rise. Visually there is no difference in 30 years. A 5 foot high tide still reaches the same place on the same rocks.
I realize this is all unscientific but when you are out there in it you scratch head with your frozen claw like fingers wondering what all the fuss is about.
I do have a question for anyone out there with a more scientific bent than I. When we will experience the next El Nino? There is nothing more invigorating than aqaumarine colored, warm tropical water in Southern California along with the surge of tropical fish.
Eric (11:15:33)
Check out the evidence that the oceans have not gotten cooler, in the graph on figure 1 on page 17 of the link.
That is a correction for XBT instrument bias only.
XBT = Expendable Bathythermograph
Kennedy same conference
Conclusion The assumption that the errors on sea surface temperature measurements are uncorrelated is likely to be unjustified and will therefore lead to underestimates of grid-box average uncertainty.Regional average SST uncertainties will also be larger not only because individual grid box uncertainties are higher but also because the errors are correlated from one grid box to another. In order to reduce uncertainties in SST it is necessary to have a diverse and numerous measurement fleet.New techniques will need to be developed to adapt current interpolation schemes to account for these correlations. When the correlations are not taken into account, these schemes will tend to underestimate the uncertainties.
gary gulrud (11:13:53) :
Said
Eric said,
” that are a result of the decay of vegetation in the northern hemisphere?”
Huh? Have you even thought through your demonstration of this as fact? Start with the low in decay of October gaining pace through the frozen months of Jan. and Feb.”
This knowledge is old and accepted science. It is not for me to “demonstrate”, and my opinion or your opinion of my opinion doesn’t mean anything.
It is based on measurements. There is nothing that one can think through here.
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/sub_program_history/charles_david_keeling_biography.html
Charles David Keeling Biography
“…One such discovery, which was already evident within a year of the first measurements at Mauna Loa, was the existence of a regular seasonal cycle in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Keeling also showed that the cycle in CO2 concentration was accompanied by a cycle in the 13C/12C ratio, bearing the clear signature of land-plant photosynthesis and respiration he had observed earlier in forest air. This demonstrated convincingly that the cycle was mostly caused by the seasonal cycle of growth and decay of land plants. This cycle is now recorded at dozens of stations globally, and forms a valuable benchmark for testing our understanding of the response of land ecosystems to climate change. Recently, for example, Keeling and co-workers have drawn attention to the fact that the amplitude and phasing of this cycle have changed significantly over the past few decades, demonstrating that spring in the Northern Hemisphere is now arriving about one week earlier than it did back in the 1960s.
Another early discovery was that the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 varied significantly from year to year. In 1976, Bob Bacastow, working in Keeling’s group, pointed out that these small interannual variations were evidently associated closely with El Nino/Southern Oscillation phenomena. With the addition of isotopic measurements and longer records, Keeling was able to show that the El Nino related fluctuations were driven largely by interannual variations in the growth and decay of vegetation on land, with a smaller counteracting component due to the oceans. These fluctuations thereby provide a second important test, along with the seasonal cycle, of climate response of land ecosystems, and are widely used today for model validation studies. ..”
maksimovich (11:43:23) :
Eric (11:15:33)
Check out the evidence that the oceans have not gotten cooler, in the graph on figure 1 on page 17 of the link.
That is a correction for XBT instrument bias only.”
I can’t see where you get that idea. That doesn’t seem to be the case based on the lead paragraph from the Levitus et. al paper:
” We provide estimates of the warming of the world ocean for 1955-2008 based on historical data not previously available, additional modern data, correcting for instrumental biases of bathythermograph data, and correcting or excluding some Argo float data. The strong interdecadal variability of global ocean heat content reported previously by us is reduced in magnitude but the linear trend in ocean heat content remain similar to our earlier estimate.”
They are using a number of different sources for their study and the graph in Figure 1.
“Figure 1. Time series of yearly ocean heat content (1022J) for the 0-700 m layer from this study (solid) and from Levitus et al. [2005a] (dashed). Each yearly estimate is plotted at the midpoint of the year. Reference period is 1957-1990”
Eric (11:15:33) :
So you think both Willis et al (2008) and Cazenave et al (“Sea level budget over 2003–2008: A reevaluation from GRACE space gravimetry,
satellite altimetry and Argo”) are wrong about the recent trend in ocean heat content?
.
Note what Cazenave et al write in their conclusions:
The steric sea level estimated from the difference between
altimetric (total) sea level and ocean mass displays increase over
2003–2006 and decrease since 2006. On average over the 5 year
period (2003–2008), the steric contribution has been small (on the
order of 0.3+/−0.15 mm/yr), confirming recent Argo results (this study
and Willis et al., 2008).
.
Note also that Cazenave et al’s “steric contribution” includes both deep ocean heat accumulation and the 0-700 meter surface layer measured by Argo. If the deep ocean has been accumulating heat over the last 5 years, (even while the top 700 meters have not) then the amount is relatively small.
.
There remains a clear discrepancy between Hansen et al’s projected “30 years heating in the pipeline” due to ocean heat accumulation and the measured trend in ocean heat content over the past 5 years. You don’t have to be an ocean heat expert (or a climatologist for that matter) to see that recent ocean heat measurements, combined with basic thermodynamics, invalidate the model based projections of Hansen et al (2005).
Here is the updated (to January 2009) sea level data for all the ocean basins.
North Atlantic
ftp://ftp.cls.fr/pub/oceano/AVISO/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_J1_NorthAtl_NoIB_RWT_PGR_NoAdjust.png
Mediterranean
ftp://ftp.cls.fr/pub/oceano/AVISO/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_J1_Medit_NoIB_RWT_PGR_NoAdjust.png
South Atlantic
ftp://ftp.cls.fr/pub/oceano/AVISO/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_J1_SouthAtl_NoIB_RWT_PGR_NoAdjust.png
North Pacific
ftp://ftp.cls.fr/pub/oceano/AVISO/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_J1_NorthPac_NoIB_RWT_PGR_NoAdjust.png
South Pacific
ftp://ftp.cls.fr/pub/oceano/AVISO/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_J1_SouthPac_NoIB_RWT_PGR_NoAdjust.png
And finally the only one statistically increasing (but now probably declining), the Indian Ocean
ftp://ftp.cls.fr/pub/oceano/AVISO/indicators/msl/MSL_Serie_J1_Indian_NoIB_RWT_PGR_NoAdjust.png
I would see these charts as consistent with the ocean heat content not increasing in the last five years.
Anthony,
Some of the blog comments indicate an interest in the Mauna Loa CO2 data–especially its behavior after removing seasonal effects. Last September, using least-squares (LS) estimation (I couldn’t use weighted least squares estimation because measurement uncertainties were not given with the Mauna Loa CO2 data available to me) I hypothesized several mathematical models; and for each model estimated in a least-squares sense the model parameter values that best fit the measured data. For each model, I would examine the model residuals (differences between the CO2 measurements and the model predicted CO2 values. If I detected a “pattern” in those residuals, I would identify a simple mathematical function that appeared to match the residuals. I would then modify the model that produced those residuals by adding that simple mathematical function to the model. I repeated these steps until the residuals contained no discernable “pattern”–at least not discernable to me.
My first model consisted of a simple offset and slope (first derivaive with respect to time). My second model added an acceleration (second derivative with respect to time. For my third model, I added a cosinusoid term. Finally, for my fourth model, I added a second cosinusoid term. I wrote a report summarizing that work and generated a PDF version of that report. If you or your readers are interested, I would consider it an honor to post that report on this blog. If you so desire, I will send the report to you for your review before posting on this blog. However, if you decide to post my PDF file, my internet skills are minimal, so I’m not sure I know how to include a PDF file as a comment to this blog. Any advice you can give me on the mechanics of that posting would be appreciated.
The only aspects of the LS fit that struck me as unusual were the frequencies of the two cosinusoids: 1.000550 cycles per year and 2.000480 cycles per year. Both of these frequencies are to better than three decimal places almost exactly integer muliples of one cycle per year. That struck me as odd.
Reed Coray
Steve Fitzpatrick (12:36:26) :
wrote,
“Eric (11:15:33) :
So you think both Willis et al (2008) and Cazenave et al (”Sea level budget over 2003–2008: A reevaluation from GRACE space gravimetry,
satellite altimetry and Argo”) are wrong about the recent trend in ocean heat content?
.
Note what Cazenave et al write in their conclusions:
The steric sea level estimated from the difference between
altimetric (total) sea level and ocean mass displays increase over
2003–2006 and decrease since 2006. On average over the 5 year
period (2003–2008), the steric contribution has been small (on the
order of 0.3+/−0.15 mm/yr), confirming recent Argo results (this study
and Willis et al., 2008).
.
Note also that Cazenave et al’s “steric contribution” includes both deep ocean heat accumulation and the 0-700 meter surface layer measured by Argo. If the deep ocean has been accumulating heat over the last 5 years, (even while the top 700 meters have not) then the amount is relatively small.
.
There remains a clear discrepancy between Hansen et al’s projected “30 years heating in the pipeline” due to ocean heat accumulation and the measured trend in ocean heat content over the past 5 years. You don’t have to be an ocean heat expert (or a climatologist for that matter) to see that recent ocean heat measurements, combined with basic thermodynamics, invalidate the model based projections of Hansen et al (2005).”
I am not an expert on this literature. I did look at the Willis paper, which I take to be,
In Situ Data Biases and Recent Ocean Heat Content Variability
http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/hc_bias_jtech_v3.pdf
It has some graphs of ocean heat content which cover a very narrow range of time,
2003 to 2006.5, which is a much shorter interval than the Levitus paper, which goes right through 2008 starting in 1955. Willis 2008 seems to raise more questions than it answers given the discrepencies in ocean heat content between the different methods that is shows in Fig 4.
Given all of the discrepancies I have seen, there are likely to be more revisions of data on sea level and ocean heat.
The trend since 1970 based on Levitus et. al is .40X10^22 J/year since 1970 the low point on his graph, but there are some down years and flat spots along the way.
I flat spots and the down trends are not well understood, and whatever the mechanism may be, it is not going to be included in any models. It could be real or it could be some kind of data artifact.
I suppose you are referring to this paper by Hansen et. al.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2005/2005_Hansen_etal_1.pdf
Their model simulation average in figure 3 shows an overall trend matching the data of Willis et. al. 2004, (ref 20) for 1993 to 2003.
That time period also shows a larger than average rate of increase on figure 1 in the Levitus paper about .6*10^22 J/year.
Steve Fitzpatrick (08:26:55) : Very Interesting.
I’d add that the annual average temperature of the Southern Hemisphere is 5C cooler than the NH despite the much higher solar insolation received by the SH.
As you point out, the only cause can be the much greater albedo of land relative to ocean.
We know different land surfaces vary greatly in their albedo, but one of the lowest albedos is natural forest and one of the highest is tilled land without crops (bare earth), although not as high as snow/ice of course.
Which points to land use changes as the primary anthropogenic effect on climate (both globally and regionally). It’s a pity no one has tried to quantify this effect on a historical basis in say the Russian Steppe, the American Great Plains, or the Australian Wheatlands. Or more recently in the palm oil plantations of SE Asia, where I can tell you anecdotally, daytime temperatures are noticeably hotter in the palm oil plantation compared to the adjacent tropical forest .
Eric (14:02:34) :
The Willis paper is: Willis J. K., D. P. Chambers, R. S. Nerem (2008), Assessing the globally averaged sea level budget on seasonal to interannual timescales, J. Geophys. Res., 113, C06015, doi:10.1029/2007JC004517.
See also the Roger Pielke Sr. article: http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-334.pdf. where he updates Willis’s heat ocean heat content data through the end of 2008 (apparently via a personal communication with Willis). The updated ocean heat trend continues to show a slight decline for the upper 700 meters over a 5 year period.
The Hansen paper is Science, 308, 1431-1435 (2005), where Josh Willis is one of the authors.
The Levitus paper shows longer term trends in ocean heat which are for certain correct, at least within the accuracy of older instrumentation (and limited global data coverage). The issue is not if there has been accumulation of heat in the oceans over the last 50 years (clearly there has), but rather if the projections of Hansen et al 2005 (very high climate sensitivity to greenhouse forcing, “30 years warming in the pipeline”, etc.) are supported by the recent ocean heat content.
A key claim of Hansen et al is:
“The observed 1880 to 2003 global warming is 0.6 to
0.7C, which is the full response to
nearly 1 W/m2 of forcing. Of the 1.8 W/m2
forcing, 0.85 W/m2 remains, i.e., additional
global warming of 0.85 X 0.67 = 0.6C is
‘‘in the pipeline’’ and will occur in the future
even if atmospheric composition and other
climate forcings remain fixed at today’s values.”
This has not happened.
So regarding loops and breaks, I would take the historical data and do this:
Count the number of breaks. Record the latitude of loops that allow Arctic air to invade southern latitudes. See if there is a pattern. Overlay with Oceanic oscillations to see if there is correlation.
My hypothesis is this: La Nina’s cause more frequent lower latitude loops, allowing cold Arctic air to dip further south. El Nino’s cause stronger pineapple belt jet streams that do not break up as they move over land.
What would cause this to happen? Do stronger trade winds provide more energy for a more northern jet stream? Then does the Earth’s orbital spin friction cause these high energy loops to invade our more southern climates? When trade winds are slower, is the jet stream slower thus less prone to breakage? Jus thinkin out loud here.
What say you Steven. By the way, I enjoy reading your work.
Friends:
I write to address three of the issues discussed above; viz.
1.
The importance of scientific data to continuation of the anthropogenic (i.e. man-made) global warming (AGW) issue.
2.
The relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration and mean global temperature.
2.
Peer review of papers published in Energy and Environment (E&E).
Firstly, there are several assertions that AGW will soon collapse because empirical evidence disproves it. These assertions are mistaken because AGW has never been a scientific issue and, therefore, scientific evidence cannot displace it. I explain this as follows.
Early in 1980 (yes, nearly 30 years ago) the British Association of Colliery Management (BACM) commissioned me to investigate the then nascent AGW issue. The main results of my analysis are reported at
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
but with some updates I made in 1999.
I concluded that AGW was a political issue that would become the major environmental issue whether or not AGW obtained any supporting evidence.
My reason for that conclusion was that science was an adjunct to the political/economic issue of AGW; i.e. the major feedback loops in Figure 2 at the above URL would remain if all reference to science and scientists were removed.
BACM considered this conclusion to be so extreme that they rejected my analysis and its conclusions. Since then AGW has become a (perhaps the) major environmental issue despite the failure to find any empirical supporting evidence for it. And the demise of the issue has not been engendered by much significant evidence that contradicts it; e.g. the missing ‘hot spot’, see the explanation on pages 5 to 7 of the item at
http://co2sceptics.com/attachments/ftp/Heansen-Obama_letter_comments.pdf
Secondly, it was to be expected that the rate of increase to atmospheric CO2 concentration would have reduced commensurate with the recent near stasis in mean global temperature.
Several studies have shown the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration recorded at Mauna Loa varies around a base trend of 1.5 ppm/year. A decade ago Calder showed that the variations around the trend correlate to variations in mean global temperature (MGT): he called this his ‘CO2 thermometer’. Now, Ahlbeck has submitted a paper for publication that finds the same using recent data. Reasons for this ‘CO2 thermometer’ are not known but they probably result from changes to sea surface temperature.
So, there is strong evidence that MGT governs variations in the recent rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration but there is no clear evidence of the cause of the steady – and unwavering – base trend of ~1.5 ppm/year.
Thirdly, it has again been implied here that E&E does not conduct peer review. As a member of the Editorial Board of E&E I again write to refute this falsehood.
E&E reviewers are demonstrably regarded as expert in their fields on the basis of their publications and in the opinion of persons and organisations other than E&E who have asked them to conduct peer reviews.
Furthermore, papers concerning climate science in E&E are subjected to a higher standard of peer review than in some more prominent journals; e.g. see the Wegman Report, or my complaint to Nature concerning the fundamental flaw in the methodology used in the recent paper by Steig et al. that was published in Nature.
The Editor of E&E, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, does not permit a bunch of cronies to peer review the papers of each other and, therefore, disasters such as the publication in Nature of the recent flawed paper by Steig et al. could not happen to E&E.
Richard
Reed Coray (12:59:22) :
Wrote:
“…
The only aspects of the LS fit that struck me as unusual were the frequencies of the two cosinusoids: 1.000550 cycles per year and 2.000480 cycles per year. Both of these frequencies are to better than three decimal places almost exactly integer muliples of one cycle per year. That struck me as odd.”
Reed,
Not odd at all. The cyclical data is was found by Roger Revelle in the 1970’s to be a result of seasonal growth and decay of vegetation in the northern hemisphere. Check out my post with time stamp 12:03:21
“UHI has been resurrected by Phil Jones. ”
This is the first I’ve heard of this. I can’t find anything about it. What gives?
REPLY: See this, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/18/finally-an-honest-quantification-of-urban-warming-by-a-major-climate-scientist/
Anthony
Richard S. Courtney (4:12:05 – 3/23/09), thanks for your history of the beginning of AGW in the U.K. Also thanks to Anthony for collecting the work of those who help us understand that the oceans are not warming, but probably are cooling — Pielke, Sr., Loehle, Siddons, Tisdale. Is there a specific history to this aspect of climate science (oceans warming dangerously) that can be documented as well?
I am thinking towards the time when AGW/Climate Change (of course the climate changes)/GCMs/falsified temperatures/water vapor feedback to CO2 forcing, all are proven indisputably and undeniably false. At that time those who propped up the propaganda with their scientific creds should be shamed or banished in some way. This consequence is not the one Leif discussed where scientists put “everything” into one hypothesis and, when it is proven wrong, the hypothesis dies and everyone turns to solve the next scientific puzzle. There is no “recanting” here. This process has some integrity to it. Propaganda does not.
I don’t have a lot of time so I have to read fast — somewhere I read that a group of 75 (scientists?) got together to begin the AGW hog slop. Is this the beginning of the IPCC? Is this the beginning of the attempt to “sell” AGW-therefore-cap-and-trade to all developed nations? Are these the “ones” who began to populate the relevant bureaucracies, NGOs, environmental “charity” organizations, etc. (Among a long list, “my” national Audubon Society is completely taken over by these idiots — no more dues/contributions). Does anyone have any citations for this history?
“This knowledge is old and accepted science. It is not for me to “demonstrate”, ”
Sorry, arguments from authority are definitively fallacious. Keeling is just another dead guy. You are carrying his standard, live up to the pillar’s memory.
*******
BarryW (13:40:56) :
One thing I haven’t seen explained is the 1998 “Super” El Nino. The temp shot up. Where did the heat come from and where did the heat go?
*******
Parts of the globe have a natural “refrigerator” operating — upwelling of cold, deep water. If that upwelling is reduced, or even mostly stops (like 1998), then areas under the influence of the “refrigerator” see elevated temps. Other regions are unaffected, but of course the averaged “global temps” go up.
Once the upwelling returns to typical levels, temps quickly go back to the previous background, or even “overshoot” downward, like 1999.
Eric (05:06:59) wrote: “Reed, Not odd at all. The cyclical data is was found by Roger Revelle in the 1970’s to be a result of seasonal growth and decay of vegetation in the northern hemisphere. Check out my post with time stamp 12:03:21”
Eric the primary point of interest to me wasn’t that the CO2 data exhibit a yearly sinusoidal cycle, but rather that the estimated value of that frequency is within 0.00055 cyles per year of exactly one cycle per year.
The secondary point (although I didn’t mention this in my original post) was that the Mauna Loa CO2 data also exhibit cyclical (sinusoidal) behavior at 2.000480 cycles per year–again within 0.000448 cycles per year of exacly two cycles per year.
It is the accuracies of these estimates that was notable to me, not the basic fact that the data exhibit yearly cyclical behavior.
Finally, it may very well be that plant growth/decay is the major contributor to “yearly” CO2 fluctuations; but what is the source of the “twice yearly” fluctuations in CO2 level?
If cold Pacific waters push the Jet Stream further north, initially it makes no sense that we here in the 45th parallel would be colder. Plus the overall change in PDO water temperature is less than the deep cold we experience on land. Unless one were to study loops and breaks in the Jet Stream flow. If by pushing it north, deeper loops and more open breaks allow Arctic air to rush southward, instead of staying in its own territory, the mechanism for cooler temperatures and dryer air may be hypothesized. This seems an easy thing to measure. Number of breaks and depth of loops would be a start. If both numbers go up during La Nina’s (which are more frequent during cold PDO’s), while going down during El Nino’s (which are more frequent during warm PDO’s), predictability of colder dryer winters and cooler summers seems within our grasp.
The overlay of MLO monthly data on MSU oceans data isn’t perfect, but it’s darn close. It would be an odd coincidence. Frankly, I think the fit is FAR better than the CO2 vs. global temperature anomoly graphs we see ad nauseum.
“See this, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/18/finally-an-honest-quantification-of-urban-warming-by-a-major-climate-scientist/
Anthony”
Thanks, Anthony! Man, I totally missed that! ::embarrassed::
Note on 13C.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/alexander-cockburn/the-greenhousers-strike-back-and-strike-out.html
Sorry for the late reply, a few days busy and already 170 comments…
Philip_B (21-03-2009, 18:18:02) :
The significance of this is that, while there is no question that human emissions of CO2 are the major driver of atmospheric CO2 levels in the short term (say less than 10 years), Ocean temperatures drive CO2 levels in the medium term and longer (more than say 10 to 20 years).
There is no question that human emissions of CO2 are the major driver of atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 150 years. Ocean temperatures over short term give a CO2 reponse of about 3 ppmv/°C around the trend, on longer term (MWP-LIA and ice ages / interglacials) about 8 ppmv/°C. Thus the recent trend is at least for 90% caused by the emissions.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
Keith Minto (21-03-2009, 18:25:36) :
Just another thought, why is the Mauna Loa trend line so linear?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
is there anything else so linear in nature? especially as the dreaded CO2 is being generated (I imagine) exponentially?
The Mauna Loa data are not linear, but going slightly up with increasing emissions in a near perfect ratio of about 55% of the emissions.
See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/temp_co2_acc_1900_2004.jpg where the CO2 data until 1959 are from ice cores and after that from Mauna Loa.
As nature never is that perfect, that is one of the indications that the emissions are the cause.
Ellie in Belfast (22-03-2009, 04:16:43), E.M.Smith (14:25:36) :
“Ellie in Belfast (13:16:18) : This got me thinking, but as usual questions to which I do not have an answer: – is CO2 adsorption by oceans (roughly) linear with temperature?
Seems surprisingly linear over very long time spans in the Vostok ice core (420,000 years), including changes in vegetation/ice sheet area’s and changes in (deep) ocean currents. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/Vostok_trends.gif
Pamela Gray (22-03-2009, 08:22:23) :
We do not have a matched control yet for CO2 measuring stations. Nor do we have a matched set of measures that adequately covers sinks. Until we have stations placed where CO2 never rises or sinks, and stations that measure sinks, the Mauna Loa graphs are worthless as indicators of global CO2.
I can only hope that the quality control procedures for surface temperature measurements were as rigorous as for CO2 measurements. Mauna Loa and nine other baseline stations represent about 95% of the atmosphere within 2 ppmv in each hemisphere and within 5 ppmv for NH/SH yearly averages. All show the same trends within a fraction of a ppmv/year. The MLO data are controlled with 3 independent flask sample series + a flask series at sea level, by different people in different labs and with different methods. See the above link about CO2 measurements and directly for the MLO methods and controls:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
Raw, uncorrected nor filtered hourly averages can be seen of 4 baseline stations, including MLO, at: ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/
The satellite data are far less accurate, but may show where the sources and sinks are exactly located, but the global trend is known with good accuracy, as well as the main source of the increase with reasonable accuracy…
Stephen Wilde (22-03-2009, 09:30:16) :
I also agree that ocean temperature is likely to be a far greater contributor to CO2 variability than anything humans can achieve and if the oceans do start to cool then at some point I would expect CO2 levels in the air to begin to fall whatever mankind is able to emit.
The oceans and vegetation both are the main causes of the variability of CO2 uptake around the trend, but these are not the cause of the trend themselves, as the short to long term influence is too small: about 3 ppmv/°C (short term) to 8 ppmv/°C (-very- long term). One need to have a continuous cooling of about 0.5°C/year to absorb the total of the yearly emissions…
1. There are places on Earth that are not showing such CO2 increases and are in stasis. Please put your measuring devices there and post the graph along with your sources. 2. It is hypothesized that outgassing sources are more restricted then sinks, so in the former, measures will show larger increases, and in the later, smaller decreases. Why? Sinks are spread out. Sources, not so much. Please put your measuring devices where the sinks are (you will have to put a LOT of them out and about) and have them calibrated for the much more spread out way in which CO2 is absorbed out of the atmosphere.
Your contention above, without data, is talk. Show me the unmodified table of raw data with direct (not modeled or hypothesized) measures of sources, sinks, and stasis.
gary gulrud (24-03-2009, 05:14:21) :
Note on 13C.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/alexander-cockburn/the-greenhousers-strike-back-and-strike-out.html
From that source:
Alexander Cockburn is completely wrong on this item. There are only two sources of low d13C in nature: current biosphere material and ancient biosphere material (fossil fuels). All other sources (-deep- ocean water, calcite deposits, volcanic degassing/eruptions,…) are higher in d13C than the atmosphere (even with a fractionation of isotopes at the ocean surface in the two directions). Thus the oceans can’t be the origin of the decrease in d13C found in atmosphere AND upper oceans. Neither is the current biosphere, as more oxygen is produced than used, thus the uptake of (preferentially) 12CO2 increased and relatively more 13CO2 is left in the atmosphere. The only source of the d13C decrease thus is the burning of fossil fuels…
See further: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/sponges.gif
Pamela Gray (07:10:54) :
1. There are places on Earth that are not showing such CO2 increases and are in stasis. Please put your measuring devices there and post the graph along with your sources.
I am not aware that there is any place on earth that shows no CO2 increase over the past year, years or decades. Even at the largest sink area, the NE Atlantic, air measurements agree with the MLO data, with the same increase (but with a larger seasonal signal, comparable to Barrow and Alert). Probably because the refresh rate of the atmosphere is faster than the sink rate of CO2 via the THC. Any reference to such a place?
2. It is hypothesized that outgassing sources are more restricted then sinks, so in the former, measures will show larger increases, and in the later, smaller decreases. Why? Sinks are spread out. Sources, not so much. Please put your measuring devices where the sinks are (you will have to put a LOT of them out and about) and have them calibrated for the much more spread out way in which CO2 is absorbed out of the atmosphere.
Human and vegetation sources/sinks are mainly restricted to land and measurable in the lowest few hundred meters (5% of the atmosphere). Above that there is full mixing with the rest of the atmosphere. At ground level this gives a problem of a positive bias, as at night with inversion, there is an increase of CO2 from all sources (including vegetation), while during the day the warming of the surface gives more turbulence and reduction of CO2 from mixing with higher air levels + uptake by vegetation. See e.g. a few days at Linden/Giessen (Germany, semi urban and agriculture), compared to a few baseline stations (from near the north pole to the south pole, all uncorrected, raw data):
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/giessen_background.jpg
As you can see, there is little variation in the “baseline” stations (an increase of 1.5 ppmv/year is unmeasurable over a day), but there is an extreme variation over land near sources/sinks. The latter is like measuring temperature near sources/sinks of heat and has no purpose to know “global” CO2 levels.
There are 400+ stations over the world, aimed at trying to measure the fluxes in/out the lower atmosphere. For e.g. the US, one can find a lot of them at:
http://public.ornl.gov/ameriflux/available.shtml
Several places use tall towers to measure the CO2 flux over a larger area, e.g. in Europe at Cabauw (The Netherlands):
http://www.chiotto.org/cabauw.html
And over the oceans, we had several cruises and since a few years ago a lot of floating buoiys which are measuring ocean/air pCO2:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/home.html
And some interesting abstract of the oceanic findings from Feely e.a.:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
and following pages, including graphs of oceanic uptake and release of CO2.
Your contention above, without data, is talk. Show me the unmodified table of raw data with direct (not modeled or hypothesized) measures of sources, sinks, and stasis.
Work to do for you, with all these links…
Slight OT but I see on DeSmog they are mocking the Skeptics Handbook thingy by saying ‘of course the real measure of global warming is in the heating up of the oceans and this is going on as predicted’ (not exact quote…interpretation of their comment, if you don’t like my use of it go search their blog – sorry I can’t link) and they go on to explain that this heat build up in the oceans is indeed one of the main unarguable facts that indicate GW is true and happening – they say this to contradict the Skeptic Handbook which states GW seems to have stopped/therefore it can’t be Co2 driven…
Oh dear….DeSmog have set themselves up for a fall. If Josh Willis himself cannot show any warming in our seas (I appreciate he is not saying it has cooled…but he is saying it has NOT warmed, as I understand it) and other data interpretations – Loehle / ref by Pielke Sr today – could say it has cooled, then DeSmog have set up a Tenet of faith in ocean warming that looks like failing. Don’t they read the latest science? Bizarre.
Ferdinand, your links are well known. I began cruising CO2 links several years ago. What I discovered is that much of what is known about sources and sinks is extrapolated data, or worse, modeled data based on gas receipts, not directly measured data, and is time limited. I saw fairly quickly that measures were taken of atmospheric CO2 isotopes without much regard to solar input or oceanic oscillations.
CO214 as I am sure you know, is a solar controlled event. Its percent concentration is not controlled by fossil fuel emissions.
CO212 and 13 percent concentrations in air right above (and then by mixing, beyond) the oceans is a plankton controlled event, again not controlled by fossil fuel emissions. These percent concentrations are mediated in a cyclic pattern that lasts for decades. Again, I am sure you know that Plankton blooms are a La Nina event, not an El Nino event. And plankton absorbs tons and tons of CO2 both in terms of photosynthesis and in dead plankton that sinks to the ocean floor. The CO2 measures in the past that then became the basis for oceanic and pole extrapolations of CO2 were measured without regard to oceanic oscillations. The error was in thinking that plankton bloom was a seasonal event which can be averaged out. It is to a certain degree, but it also has a longer term cycle tied to oceanic oscillations. In other words, sinks come and go seasonally as well as in decadal patterns. The decadal patterns have not been averaged out. Yet.
In order to obtain trends of your human-based emissions, baseline data must take into account decades long warm and cold phases of oceanic oscillations as well as solar influences. Your baseline directly measured and extrapolated from directly measured data in your links does not do this. Therefore, you have not proven that the rise in CO2 or the changes in percent concentration of isotopes is a fuel emission sequelae. It is more likely that it is a plankton and solar cyclic sequelae until such a time as baseline measures can be taken of CO2 percent concentrations during these above mentioned oscillations. Given that these oscillations and their in and out of phase habits will mean that several more decades of full scale (IE all-isotopes, and in many more locations), CO2 measures must be obtained before your hypothesis can be proven or not.
And I agree with you that the CO2 emissions-global warming debate is another thing entirely. By the way, your website posts on CO2 are well written and worth considering. But you haven’t considered everything yet.
Ferdinand,
One need to have a continuous cooling of about 0.5°C/year to absorb the total of the yearly emissions…
The graphs show that if temperature drops to below -0.5 the CO2 increase drops to 0, so I would say if temp settled at -0.5 and the CO2 emmisions didn’t change, then concentration wouldn’t change either. Why is that wrong?
lgl (12:44:57) :
The graphs show that if temperature drops to below -0.5 the CO2 increase drops to 0, so I would say if temp settled at -0.5 and the CO2 emmisions didn’t change, then concentration wouldn’t change either. Why is that wrong?
That is a question of duration and equilibrium: the temperature drop of the first year has an effect of 3 ppmv/°C thus also 3 ppmv/°C/year, but only for the first year. The second year, the upper oceans are a little more saturated (have a higher pCO2) with the extra CO2 uptake and a little more vegetation has lost its leaves and that is rotting then, thus the net effect is less than 3 ppmv/°C, let us say 2 ppmv/°C for a steady lower temperature than the original one, and so on. After a few years the colder temperature is in equilibrium with the CO2 levels (if there were no emissions) or the increase in CO2 is again at the old rate (as there are emissions).
We only see short term variations of less than a few years (1992 Pinatubo, 1998 El Niño), which show an overall 2-4 ppmv/°C change in increase speed around the trend. Longer trends like the MWP-LIA shows 6 ppmv decrease for a 0.8°C temperature drop over a period of a few hundred years (with about 50 years lag), or about 8 ppmv/°C. The Vostok ice core also shows about 8 ppmv/°C over the thentousand year interglacial vs. a 90,000 years glacial period, with a lag of about 600 +/- 400 years during warming and several thousands of years during cooling…
I had a lot of discussion on this topic with Frank Lansner, who had the same idea about a continuous drop at steady cooler temperatures, but that doesn’t hold for periods longer than a few years:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/17/the-co2-temperature-link/
There were 250+ responses there, but the main discussion is between Frank and me, to the (not so) bitter end…
Pamela 12 06 20 said
“The error was in thinking that plankton bloom was a seasonal event which can be averaged out. It is to a certain degree, but it also has a longer term cycle tied to oceanic oscillations. In other words, sinks come and go seasonally as well as in decadal patterns. The decadal patterns have not been averaged out. Yet.”
Warmth, increased co2, more phyto plankton blooms, and oceanic oscillations can be traced through the movements and numbers of fish. I did some work on the notion of Fish as a temperature proxy over on CA.
This link (then follow the buttons at the bottom of the page)-is a good indicator of this and demonstrates the continual ebb and flow of climate, temperatures, currents, and fish.
http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y2787E/y2787e01.htm#TopOfPage
I managed to find some reports of huge plankton blooms observed in Roman times and the great fishing that accompanied it. Hope you find the link interesting
TonyB
Plankton blooms happen, it is hypothesized, when the oceanic layered water (thermocline) becomes mixed, allowing nutrients from below to rise to the surface. This happens when warm water is swept away. That would be during a La Nina. The more frequent the La Nina’s, the more frequent the bloom, the greater the CO2 absorption via photosynthesis and plankton decay. That would be the case when oscillations flip to cold. If several oceans flip to cold around the same time, and we hit a solar minimum as well, CO2 in terms of sinks, and CO2 percent concentrations would change. The natural background swings in CO2, as well as percent isotopic concentrations, have not been studied long enough to determine the human emission part of atmospheric CO2 that would stay in the air long enough to perform its job as a GHG. This hypothesis is in addition to the fact that we have not directly measured all sources, nonsources, and sinks. With 400 or so stations, some dropping out, some coming on board, uneven coverage, etc, the surface data is not, in my opinion, a very well controlled experiment.
TonyB, good find on that fisheries paper! Too bad they didn’t go into plankton bloom as part of the study of fish catch. The paper itself is a very good study on winds and oceanic oscillations. Well worth the read!
Pamela Gray (12:06:20) :
Pamela,’
Just lost a lot of comment by an error in the connection. As it is already late here, I try to resume it again…
The ten base stations + flights above 1,000 m over land represent the bulk (95%) of the atmosphere over the past 50+ years (longer if Antarctic ice cores are included). These show the average global increase of CO2 and d13C decline over 50 years. These data are sufficient if you are interested in the global CO2 increase/decrease or variability. One doesn’t need to know any individual flow in/out of the atmosphere to know the global result of all these flows: that is measured as average of 8000+ semi-continuous CO2 levels at ten more or less contamination free places over a year.
The other 400+ stations spread everywhere over land (5% of the atmosphere) are of no interest for global inventories. These are of interest for other disciplines: to know the uptake/production rate of vegetation/crops under different climatological circumstances, to know more exactly the flows of sources (volcanic degassing, emissions, oceans,…) and sinks (oceans, vegetation) for point sources and regional exchanges.
The large variability in this 5% layer spreads rapidely in the bulk of the atmosphere: days to weeks within one layer of altitude within one hemisphere, weeks to months with altitude within one hemisphere and 12 months between the hemispheres.
Thanks Heaven that we don’t need to average CO2 ground stations like temperature measurements all over the globe to see what happens in the bulk of the atmosphere…
Further:
14C levels are influenced by the use of fossil fuels: after 1870 and before the 1950 nuclear bomb tests, radio carbon dating needed corrections as fossil fuel is completely depleted of 14C.
Plankton indeed affects 13C levels, but opposite to the trend: plankton uses 12CO2 preferentially, thus causing higher d13C levels in the upper oceans (1-4 per mil) than in the deep oceans (0 per mil). Any CO2 exchange from the (deep) oceans with the atmosphere will increase the d13C level of the atmosphere (at -8 per mil), but we measure a decrease. But algal blooms (and ocean-atmosphere exchanges in general) can affect the rate of decrease in d13C…
The bulk of the seasonal CO2 and d13C variation is by land vegetation, not by the oceans. Reason why the seasonal variation is largest in the NH. But the oxygen balance shows that since about 1990, the biosphere (including ocean life) is a net sink of CO2 over the years, thus increasing d13C levels in the atmosphere, but again vegetation growth/decay can affect the rate of decrease of d13C.
At last, there is only one source (and thus one cause) of the d13C decline in atmosphere and upper oceans: fossil fuel burning…
The emissions did grow over the past 50 years from about 1 ppmv/yr to nowadays 3.5 ppmv/yr. The increase in the atmosphere was steady increasing in ratio with about 55% of the emissions.
The natural variability, including 50 years out of about 60 for a full PDO/NAO cycle, several volcanic outbursts, several ENSO events, 4 solar cycles, 50+ seasonal cycles, algal blooms, plenty hurricanes, dust storms,… results in +/- 1 ppmv (mainly a matter of -sea surface- temperature and precipitation). See: http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
The natural variability is a variability in sink capacity, as in the past 50 years the emissions were always larger than the increase in the atmosphere, thus there was zero net addition of CO2 by nature in the past 50 years.
Thus all together:
The emissions are in average twice the increase in the atmosphere and twice the natural variability, including all known and unknown natural causes, except a huge meteor impact. The d13C decrease in atmosphere and upper oceans can only be caused by the emissions. And last but not least, the increase in the atmosphere follows the accumulated emissions with an extreme linear ratio, not even imaginable for any natural process…
Thus what is the cause for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere?
Thanks for your appreciation of my page on the CO2 topic. It is the result of about two years of discussion with other skeptics on the same topic…
Using least squares estimation, I decomposed the monthly-averaged Mauna Loa CO2 data from March 1958 through April 2008 into the sum of five simple, time-dependent, mathematical functions: a time-invariant offset, a linear “slope”, a quadratic “curvature”, and two cosinusoids. My first model consisted of an offset and “slope”. I then added a “curvature” term (second model). I next added a cosinusoid term (third model). Finally, I added a second cosinusoid term (final model). For each of these “models”, I (a) estimated the parameter values that in a least squares sense best matched the measured data, and (b) I examined the residuals–i.e., the differences between the measured data and the “model” values of that data. For all models except the final model, the residuals exhibited a discernable pattern that could be represented by a simple mathematical function. Although the final model did not appear to produce random residuals (which would have been ideal), I could discern no simple r mathematical function that would reduce those residuals. The results of those models can be found at
http://s700.photobucket.com/albums/ww2/ReedCoray/
Reed Coray
“The silence from Willis and his ilk is deafening. ”
Willis and ilk are quite vocal and active, they are just ignoring you and your ilk.
Reed Coray (24-03-2009, 18:20:54) :
Reed, with some thinking (somewhat slower nowadays, the decay rate of brain cells is high…) I suppose to have found the cause of the 1/2 year cycle: the NH and SH seasonal cycles are each opposite with maxima and minima following each other with a 1/2 year lag…
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29878640/wid=18298287
Ok, this article says that gulf orcas are like teir cold water counterparts, but that they typically live in deeper water. Is this anecdotal evidence of surface water cooling off? Is there a marine biologist in the house?
I think orcas are much like dophins in that they are adaptable to whatever temperature they find themselves in, as long as there is food. You won’t find them in clear tropical waters. Unless that is where they go to give birth like the whales do. The gulf is not what I would call clear waters, especially if tuna are there. Marine mammals are very cool. As to their presence signaling cooling, I don’t think so. However, I would bet that an increase in their population depends on large oscillations that bring into play more abundant plant food that then feeds the rest of the chain, ending with these magnificent predators.
I see, I had always thought orcas lived in colder waters. This is why I ask questions instead of making deductions of my own.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (06:52:29) :
thank you for your response. Your graph shows a good correlation at low temperature, I was actually thinking about adsorption at closer to average sea surface temperatures – less CO2 will dissolve at higher temperatures – at what point will it start to level off?
However, having looked into it a bit more I now understand that more than twice as much CO2 can dissolve into cold polar waters than in warm equatorial waters. So if warmer, relatively CO2 depleted water is moving towards the poles where it can take up more CO2, we are back (again) to ocean circulation.
Ferdinand Engelbeen (08:33:53) wrote:
“Reed Coray (24-03-2009, 18:20:54) :
Reed, with some thinking (somewhat slower nowadays, the decay rate of brain cells is high…) I suppose to have found the cause of the 1/2 year cycle: the NH and SH seasonal cycles are each opposite with maxima and minima following each other with a 1/2 year lag…”
Thank you for your response. However, I don’t think what you propose is correct. The “CO2 frequencies (periods)” of the northern and southern hemispheres should both be equal to one cycle per year (a period of one year). The hemispheric CO2 levels may have different amplitudes and phases, but the frequencies (periods) should be the same. The sum of two sinusoids having different amplitudes and phases , but having a common frequency f ISN’T two sinusoids at frequencies f and 2*f, but rather IS a single sinusoid at the common frequency f.
Mathematically Let f be the common frequency of two sinusoids, A the amplitude of the first sinusoid, g the phase of the first sinusoid, B the amplitude of the second sunsoid, and h the phase of the second sinusoid, then the sum of these two sinusoids will be a sinusoid with frequency f, amplitude C, and phase i — i.e.,
A*COS(2*pi*f*t + g) + B*COS(2*pi*f*t + h) = C*COS(2*pi*f*t + i)
where C = square root of [A*A + 2*A*B*COS(g – h) + B*B]
and i is the angle (in radians) between 0 and 2*pi
whose x component is A*COS(g) + B*COS(h), and
whose y component is A*SIN(g) + B*SIN(h)
One possible source for the “twice yearly” frequency (1/2 year period) is the fact that for latitudes between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer the sun appears directly overhead TWICE each year–once when the sun is “moving north” and once when the sun is “moving south”. I don’t claim this is the source of the twice yearly frequency, but at least a “peak” solar condition occurs twice each year.
Reed Coray
I am just a layman climate hobbiest and have asked this question without a good scientific response, but have recieved many political green repremands…
Ocean levels are obviously cyclic over large periods of time and based on the glaciations that occur over large areas of land mass, thus changing the level of oceans as they melt and recover.
Based on assumed factors that the worlds mass and volume of water in liquid and solid form is roughly fixed, excluding the small fractional amount in the air, and the land mass is roughly static in form or placement for the last million years, then the largest influencing variable is heat.
Using this reference chart for the last million years then you can see that there is an approximate maximum ocean level that we are presently enjoying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sea_level_temp_140ky.gif
With the trends that are so obvious and repeatable who is willing to say that this recent event that started 18 thousand years ago is special?
This argument does not refute the imperative necessity to ensure that the resources we use are utilized efficiently, and the output of our consumption should be clean as possible or practical however..
I’ve got a simple answer to the CO2 problem and global warming. Get Al Gore to shut both ends of his out facing orifices and badabing you shut down most of the excess methane, CO2 and excessive hot air.