Another “observations are not models” story is emerging. For more on the status quo of thermohaline circulation, see this Wiki article – Anthony
Deep Ocean Conveyor Belt Reconsidered
Science Daily is reporting that just because they teach you something in graduate school doesn’t make it right. A 50 year old model of global thermohaline circulation that predicts a deep Atlantic counter current below the Gulf Stream is now formally called into question by an armada of subsurface RAFOS floats drifting 700 – 1500m deep. Nearly 80% of the RAFOS floats escaped the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC), drifting into the open ocean.
This confirms suspicions that have been around since the 1990’s, and likely plays havoc with global models of climate change. The findings by Drs. Amy Bower of Wood’s Hole and Susan Lozier of Duke University et al. are published in a forthcoming issue of Nature.
The implications would be for more cold, oxygenated water along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but I’m just making that last part up. Best to read for yourself. As I recall, the DWBC was notoriously slow. You have to wonder whether a big yellow float responds to these currents the same as suspended matter, like plankton and particulates. Either way, the research represents a major paradigm shift in ocean circulation theory.
Citation:
Bower, A., Lozier, M., Gary, S., & Böning, C. (2009). Interior pathways of the North Atlantic meridional overturning circulation Nature, 459 (7244), 243-247 DOI: 10.1038/nature07979
Image above from Wikimedia Commons.
oms (15:48:36) :”…By what mechanism does the salty water rise back up? That is an open question in oceanography. It seems safe to say it has to happen somehow.”
♪…Tiny bubbles in the brine,
Make me happy, make me feel fine…♫
[TINY BUBBLES © Don Ho & Jessee Jay]
Todays Climatology is number one in wrong bias science and misunderstanding of other scientific principles. A lacking of knowledge in basic science and a homogenization of their own science because of computer models. When your science conclusions are all based around 50 years of wrong theory/data, you have to start from scratch with the new data and a new theory.
If a science BLOG (including http://www.climateaudit.org/, http://www.surfacestations.org/) community can educate people, to the point of making them as informed( if not better informed) then data extrapolating Climate Technicians?
Climate science of AGW CO2 is in a tail.
One reason being operation and download of programs on a computer is basic knowledge to us now, and we have access(of course when pressured) to your methods/proxies used in warmest science.
This article is just another reason to inform people who don’t know. To check it out for themselves.
ARGO already showed us,
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=8c21e2dd-1945-43be-b04d-217c415f5a6b
The same conclusion in the years of real data, before added proxies to correct the program from a unexplained real measurements of cooling.
To make it show no change. Hmmm?
Skip to today and now “Warmers” are admitting that there’s no heat being trapped in the oceans, just all natural CO2 and man made CO2.
All life loves CO2 for growth and living in the oceans and land, which we’ve known as fact for at least a few hundred years of science.
Are there any Climatologists out there who can’t see the data showing natural cycles of climate change or believe CPU modeled predictions over lengthy observation in data?
Oh yeah I forgot, they’ve already jumped the shark tank and the truth is inconvenient.
The truth. http://publishing.royalsociety.org/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf
Stephen Wilde (16:47:31)
Effortless and fluid logic. Thanks for that post.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Pofarmer (10:46:13) : How many legs does the AGW stool have anyway?
Hot Air has no legs…
and by model-simulated ‘e-floats’ released in the subpolar DWBC
What the heck is an “e-float” and how do you simulate one?
Models are always wrong, as we’ve been taught by our leaders here at WUWT.
Therefore the conclusions of this paper are wrong.
Strange that it’s been published here.
REPLY: Sorry birdman, but that’s YOUR take away conclusion.
Cheers, Anthony
I’m with you on this. I think it is rather arrogant for those who essential overlook some rather dramatic factors that drive or hugely contribute to ocean circulations, and this does not stop at planetary rotation either. What about the pull of the moon? Tidal effects and mixing? And probably a million other things that have not been thought of. I think it is a rather interesting conundrum, whereby Climate is extremely complex and greatly affected by the world’s ocean’s, which in term are themselves extremely complex. One lends hand to the other to exponentially multiply the complexities and their relationships to one another. Face it folks, there is no way we can ever fully understand ocean circulations and in turn never full understand climate, and thus absolutely no way to predict anything.
AGW = [meaningless]
So, you’ve got this theory of how the atmosphere is supposed to be heating the oceans, and you put some buoy’s out there and it- Just. Ain’t. Happenin.
No, that’s not what they’re saying. They’re saying that the cold water flowing south is more dispersed than thought before. They’re not saying anything at all about whether or not the ocean’s cooling.
May not have been clear. What I’m saying is that the system appears to be working quite a bit differently than the theory suggested, which, is, essentially what you’re saying.
Lance (19:50:08) :
They do serious statistical inquiry over at ClimateAudit. I hope you don’t conflate their hard work with some of the idle speculation that gets posted right beside it in some of the discussions.
It really also is a bit over the top to suggest that everyone working in the climate sciences is somehow ignorant of basic science or involved in a conspiracy.
savethesharks (20:37:05) :
If only the facts supporting the effortless logic were also correct.
There is a lot wrong with the state of climate science, but IHMO pulling facts out of a hat isn’t the right way to find the flaws.
jorgekafkazar (19:23:05) :
You really think it’s the champagne, eh? 😉
George E. Smith (15:45:40) :
So taking your word for it, that the rotation of the earth is not driving anything; I take it that the gulf stream, and the Japan current could one day decide to flow the opposite direction. By inference I might also expect the trade winds and other atmospheric flows to change direction since they are unrelated to the earth’s rotation.
George, I know from your previous posts that you have a substantial amount of education and experience in science and engineering. I think you can appreciate the difference between forces which do no work on a system and forces that do. The Coriolis force is the former kind, while a “driver” usually describes the latter.
Squidly (21:36:02) :
Squidly, nobody has said that the earth’s rotation is not hugely important to ocean circulation. It is not the “driving” force, meaning it is not the energy source. It certainly shapes all fluid flow on this planet at anything larger than “sub-mesoscale.”
Yes, those are potentially very important; in another post said quite seriously that the deep water mixing problem is an open question in oceanography.
If this is truly the case, then we should give up on all science endeavors, since we have very little hope of fully understanding much of anything at all!
“If this is truly the case, then we should give up on all science endeavors, since we have very little hope of fully understanding much of anything at all!”
Well, this much is true: we understand more about the surface of Mars than we understand about the environment of 2/3 of the surface of the Earth’s crust. I have been thinking for a long time that if you want to understand what the overall climate of Earth is doing, you need to measure temperature on the abyssal plains of the oceans. Changes in those temperatures will be very slow and will probably lag surface changes by several years. It wouldn’t surprise me of the temperatures on the abyssal plains are still recovering from the LIA.
Getting that data is extremely difficult. Having temperature sensors built-in to deep transoceanic cables would be a nice first step, though.
Hilarious Lance, particularly considering:
a) this is a mainstream newspaper.
b) many think of Vancouver as an “eco-freak hot-bed”.
“Little ocean tattletales fail to find right facts”; Lorne Gunter, Canwest News Service; March 29, 2008; The Vancouver Sun
http://www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=8c21e2dd-1945-43be-b04d-217c415f5a6b
=
“So why are some scientists now beginning to question the buoys’ findings? Because in five years the little blighters have failed to detect any global warming. They are not reinforcing the scientific orthodoxy of the day, namely that man is causing the planet to warm dangerously. They are not proving the predetermined conclusions of their human masters. Therefore they, and not their masters’ hypotheses, must be wrong.” – The Vancouver Sun 2008
“A slight drop in the oceans’ temperature over a period of five or six years probably is insignificant, just as a warming over such a short period would be. Yet if there had been a rise of any kind, even of the same slightness, rest assured this would be broadcast far and wide as yet another log on the global warming fire.” – The Vancouver Sun 2008
=———————————=
Laughed-Out-Loud at this part:
“Just look how tenaciously some scientists are prepared to cling to the climate change dogma. “It may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming,” Willis told NPR.
Yeah, you know, like when you put your car into reverse you are causing it to enter a period of less rapid forward motion. Or when I gain a few pounds I am in a period of less rapid weight loss.” – The Vancouver Sun 2008
=——————————–=
“But if the oceans aren’t warming, then (please whisper) perhaps the models are wrong.
The supercomputer models also can’t explain the interaction of clouds and climate. They have no idea whether clouds warm the world more by trapping heat in or cool it by reflecting heat back into space.” – The Vancouver Sun 2008
“[…] it would be nice to hear some alternatives to the alarmist theory.” – The Vancouver Sun 2008
=
It is interesting that ideas which were a good first guess at the time when there were almost no hard data at all (the t-h circulation idea predates the space age for instance) turn out to be just that, a first guess, when real data come in.
But let’s be charitable. At least these researchers could find the funds to have go at it. In climate “research” you now have to have the “save mankind” angle built into your proposals. A colleague of mine tried to get funding for research into the interaction of the Sun’s magnetosphere and climate and, of course, he was turned down, as the science “was settled”. But now NASA is quietly starting to fund that kind of research and I expect that some quite unexpected things will come out of it.
“It really also is a bit over the top to suggest that everyone working in the climate sciences is somehow ignorant of basic science or involved in a conspiracy.”
I understand what you’re saying, but I didn’t mean a conspiracy at all.
My comment about including CA was not about climate change conspiracy, I respect that site for bringing the science of real data forth right and with real debate and data.
But since you feel it’s “over the top” to lump all modern climatologist as unknowing and speculative at the best times. WHY?
Their jobs can cost world countries billions of $$$ with the “Greed wE con-you-me” (green economy ) BS being set up by big banks and investors with truck loads of cap and trade bucks to trade. An economy based on us paying carbon taxes for just living and stimulating population growth.
Future birth restrictions could be instituted and abortions used to cull the herd so to speak.
Ok, now that’s over the top!:p lol!
oms 21:50:36
Er, which facts are wrong or, as you elegantly put it, were pulled out of a hat ?
In other words while the so called Paradigm shift occurs, it’s a very old one presented in Oceanographic litterature in 1920’s that reoccurs 🙂
Could it be that the last 30 years of global graduate studies have been taught from assumptions rather than old knowledge?
I think this is a great study, and would like to see more. Of course, the data they gathered is much more meaningful than the models they concoct.
It was exactly this sort of study that Dr. Bill Gray urged back in the 1980’s, but the politics of the time (Clinton, Gore, Hansen) refused to fund him and basically told him to mind his own business and stick with hurricanes. The funding all went to Hansen’s super-computers.
Dr. Gray had noticed correlations between what happened in the North Atlantic and what happened in the Pacific, especially in terms of the alternations between La Ninas and El Ninos. The old gentleman has been given a very hard time about “not having facts to back his ideas,” however when he tried to get to the bottom of things (pun) and gain actual data, the funding was denied. I think a reason funding was denied may have been that his ideas went against the idea that CO2 caused warming.
Jeromey (15:14:53) asks a crucial question, “By what mechanism does deep “more saline” water become less saline and thus rise to the surface in the North Pacific, and yet become more saline and thus heavier to sink in the North Atlantic?”
While both surface and deep-sea currents are rotation-driven and wind-driven, there is a third factor, the salinity and temperature of water. This is important because it allows water to be segregated into different pools and different streams.
I have all sorts of questions about these pools and streams. How do they know it takes roughly 1200 years for water that sinks off Greenland to reappear in the North Pacific? Do the water molecules that reappear in the North Pacific have long, silver beards?
Why don’t these segregated pools and streams simply get integrated (IE mix?)
There is no actual membrane between differing types of water, yet one sees the thermocline drawn on various graphs and charts, as if a membrane existed.
I imagine it is likely no clear boundary exists. When one looks at shots of the Gulf Stream from outer space, one notices the edge is not a clear line, but involves all sorts of interesting whirls and eddies. However, even though the edge isn’t a clear membrane, there is no denying the Gulf Stream exists.
One fascinating thing about the thermohaline circulation is that, both where water enters in “sinks,” and where water emerges at “upwellings,” there are pulses and surges. The simple fact water is freezing for half the year and thawing for half the year, at the poles, must make a dramatic difference in how much water descends into the thermohaline circulation. Then you have surges of the Gulf Stream’s most northern branches into the Arctic Sea during the warmest parts of the AMO, followed by times when these branches apparently dry up or wander elsewhere. If these pulses and surges of descending water survived, as bulges traveling as waves in the thermohaline circulation, (perhaps shown by lifting and subsiding of the thermocline,) then it might explain why water abruptly starts upwelling off the coast of Peru, even when it goes against wind-driven dynamics.
The water off Peru is in a state of precarious balance. The difference between that water upwelling and not-upwelling is likely quite small, but makes a huge difference to both the fishermen of Peru and the World’s Weather, for it is the difference between El Nino and La Nina.
The question then becomes, what teeters this balance one way or the other? Is it entirely wind-driven? Or might not the intuition of Dr. Gray have been correct, and thermohaline circulation is involved?
There is only one way to find out, and it sure isn’t to fund more models. We have blown more than a quarter century diddling with models. I think its high time to boot young scientists outdoors, out into the sunshine and onto the heaving decks of small vessels surging over the briny depths of the shifting sea, to get data, data, DATA.
It not only would do those young scientists good, but it also might show a bit of respect for old Dr. Gray.
By the way, Craigo (16:14:33) wondered what happened to the missing 17% of the floats. I believe the answer is that they were swallowed by endangered Right Whales.
It may that the graphic for thermohaline circulation is simplified, but why does the Atlantic gulf stream stop and descend somewhere between Iceland and Spitsbergen? In reality warm(ish) water appears to reach all the way to the Russian coast as observed with all arctic information. Is there also a correlation between the min. and max. SST at say the Bahamas and how long that takes to reach the Russian coast and could this explain why the min and max. ice extent is offset by months?
http://chamberoftenthousandflowers.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/global-warming/
RIP “Thermohaline Catastrophe”
In the movie The Day After Tomorrow global warming caused a rapid onset of glaciation because meltwater shut down the “conveyor” current and the Gulf Stream.
For 50 years it had been assumed that the northward flowing warm Gulf Stream had a southward flowing cold counterpart deeper in the ocean. This “conveyor belt” is known as Thermohaline Circulation (THC).
One of the threats of global warming was the possibility of a “Thermohaline Catastrophe”. If too much fresh water suddenly was dumped into the North Atlantic from melting ice…the “conveyor belt” would shut down. This theory has taken a beating over the past few years.
According to Wallace Broecker, the father of the THC catastrophe theory, “the threat (of an anthropogenic thermohaline catastrophe) will be far smaller than previously envisioned.” (Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change edited by Lee Gerhard). Dennis Quaid’s character in The Day After Tomorrow was very loosely based on Wallace Broecker.
The best evidence for a past THC catastrophe had always been the Younger Dryas mini-ice age early in the Holocene. For quite a long time it was believed that the failure of an ice dam holding bake glacial Lake Agassiz in Canada had dumped so much water into the North Atlantic that it shut down the “conveyor belt” and caused a THC catastrophe. But then a few years ago, it was shown that the Agassiz ice dam failed well after the Younger Dryas…Testing the Lake Agassiz Meltwater Trigger for the Younger Dryas, Lowell, EOS, October 4, 2005.
Well, recently it was also determined that Pleistocene changes in ocean circulation followed and did not lead climate changes… Ice Age Ocean Circulation Reacted To, Did Not Cause, Climate Change At Glacial Boundaries, Science Daily, May 1, 2005.
Now it appears that there is no such thing as a “conveyor belt” current…Cold Water Ocean Circulation Doesn’t Work As Expected, Science Daily, May 14, 2009.
This sentence from the Science Daily article is really funny…
”And since cold Labrador seawater is thought to influence and perhaps moderate human-caused climate change, this finding may affect the work of global warming forecasters…”
The only “evidence” for “human-caused climate change” comes from General Circulation Models. All of those models assumed that there was a “conveyor belt” current.
All of those models were already wrong…Now they are all even wronger…:))
In the meantime, the Earth continues to ignore the models and ignore the CO2…
[url]http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/UAH_vs_IPCC.jpg[/url]
RIP “Thermohaline Catastrophe”
In the movie The Day After Tomorrow global warming caused a rapid onset of glaciation because meltwater shut down the “conveyor” current and the Gulf Stream.
For 50 years it had been assumed that the northward flowing warm Gulf Stream had a southward flowing cold counterpart deeper in the ocean. This “conveyor belt” is known as Thermohaline Circulation (THC).
One of the threats of global warming was the possibility of a “Thermohaline Catastrophe”. If too much fresh water suddenly was dumped into the North Atlantic from melting ice…the “conveyor belt” would shut down. This theory has taken a beating over the past few years.
According to Wallace Broecker, the father of the THC catastrophe theory, “the threat (of an anthropogenic thermohaline catastrophe) will be far smaller than previously envisioned.” (Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change edited by Lee Gerhard). Dennis Quaid’s character in The Day After Tomorrow was very loosely based on Wallace Broecker.
The best evidence for a past THC catastrophe had always been the Younger Dryas mini-ice age early in the Holocene. For quite a long time it was believed that the failure of an ice dam holding bake glacial Lake Agassiz in Canada had dumped so much water into the North Atlantic that it shut down the “conveyor belt” and caused a THC catastrophe. But then a few years ago, it was shown that the Agassiz ice dam failed well after the Younger Dryas…Testing the Lake Agassiz Meltwater Trigger for the Younger Dryas, Lowell, EOS, October 4, 2005.
Well, recently it was also determined that Pleistocene changes in ocean circulation followed and did not lead climate changes… Ice Age Ocean Circulation Reacted To, Did Not Cause, Climate Change At Glacial Boundaries, Science Daily, May 1, 2005.
Now it appears that there is no such thing as a “conveyor belt” current…Cold Water Ocean Circulation Doesn’t Work As Expected, Science Daily, May 14, 2009.
This sentence from the Science Daily article is really funny…
”And since cold Labrador seawater is thought to influence and perhaps moderate human-caused climate change, this finding may affect the work of global warming forecasters…”
The only “evidence” for “human-caused climate change” comes from General Circulation Models. All of those models assumed that there was a “conveyor belt” current.
All of those models were already wrong…Now they are all even wronger…:))
In the meantime, the Earth continues to ignore the models and ignore the CO2…
Well had it ONLY been the graphic for thermohaline circulation that had been simplified, that would have been understandable. Some never learn.
But it’s more than that. The so called scholars pleading for Climate threat seems to have forgotten all about the water cycle and many other elementary factors learnt during school years… You can read my own comment in this question under The natural processes Al Gore forgotten about
Beware what you learned in school.
Actually, that depends on when you went to school.
Like the petals on the flower, she loves me, she loves me not.
The universe is expanding, shrinking, expanding, shrinking.
Enter the pulsating consensus theory.
A form of energy that has a wavelength measured in modelometers.
“…I think it is rather arrogant for those who essential overlook some rather dramatic factors that drive or hugely contribute to ocean circulations, and this does not stop at planetary rotation either. What about the pull of the moon? Tidal effects and mixing? And probably a million other things that have not been thought of. ”
like the effective contribution of geothermal heating on the ocean floor through the efforts of plate tectonics… Twitter gives me 2-6 earthquake (>5mag) reports every day – there’s a a lot of internal heat on the move on this rock.
rbateman (06:44:55) :
“…
Enter the pulsating consensus theory.
A form of energy that has a wavelength measured in modelometers.”
Derived from the theoretical construct known as the Pulsating Universal Kleptocratic Environment currently being promoted around the world. P.U.K.E. for short. The concept is so unique that a new mathematics had to be created to measure it, called Mannometrology. Relies heavily on AlGorithms .
My fluids background opinion is that the big yellow float will travel the same as a small particle in this case. The only way to see a difference would be in turbulent flow where different pressures are placed across different surfaces of the float. I doubt ocean currents are turbulent to the degree required to create real differences in long term paths.
I see you’ve caught Dhogitis lately. Don’t they have some kind of ointment or something for that.