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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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.