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.
To be clear, there are two types of ocean current. The top layer currents, well known and studied as a result of ship jetsam and flotsam always ending up in the same dumpsite/beach coupling, and the deep ocean current, assumed to be true based on top layer conveyor belt circulation. The floats in this study were not surface floats but deep ocean floats that were sent down to measure temperature, salinity, and movement along the assumed deep ocean current. Since 80% escaped into open ocean (IE same depth but where the deep ocean current is assumed not to be), there are several questions to ask:
1. the deep ocean bottom current isn’t very strong?
2. isn’t strong enough to move the suspended float from point A to point B?
3. is somewhere other than where the floats were initially placed?
4. isn’t very active right now?
5. doesn’t exist?
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. This is a hot button issue and should be investigated further before #5 can be answered. That said, I don’t think it matters in relation to decadal weather pattern variation. I think the goodies are at the surface layers, surface currents, and surface winds.
Dave Middleton: The paper doesn’t say that THC doesn’t exist. It says the deep ocean portion is not where they expected to find it. That’s all.
Jeff Id (07:45:52) :
I see you’ve caught Dhogitis lately. Don’t they have some kind of ointment or something for that.
Cream of ideologue.
Mark
Well said, FatBigot.
“Bob Tisdale (09:35:54) :
Dave Middleton: The paper doesn’t say that THC doesn’t exist. It says the deep ocean portion is not where they expected to find it. That’s all.”
I agree, that’s all it says. And nowhere do the authors suggest that their findings invalidate the GCMs or AGW theory. Indeed, the abstract to their study suggests that they are Believers. As usual, many WUWT readers are jumping to conclusions based on an article about an article about a study. Here’s an idea: Why doesn’t somebody read and critique the actual study? You can purchase it here for $32: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7244/full/nature07979.html.
The difference is simply that the cold water, instead of returning in a fat pipe, is returning in a wide but shallow ditch (figuratively speaking).
Not at all. It’s going to be harder to find any warmer signal in the return current because rather than being (relatively) localized, its widespread.
The paper is not saying that the Thermohaline Circulation does not exist.
Only that the part deep in the ocean – the path that the cold water follows south – has a different topography than assumed before (and that *assumption* has always been, explicitly, an *assumption*, which is why this experiment was designed, funded, and run).
Assuming that the computer models upon which this paper depends are correct, of course.
oms (21:50:36) :
jorgekafkazar (19:23:05) :
♪…Tiny bubbles in the brine,
Make me happy, make me feel fine…♫
“You really think it’s the champagne, eh? ;)”
What happens when you mix warmish, high saline solution with deep, cold, CO²-saturated seawater? Hint: It’s wunna-ful, wunna-ful, but you can’t drink it. ☺
“The only “evidence” for “human-caused climate change” comes from General Circulation Models”
Laughable nonsense. Understanding of greenhouse effect + observations of rising CO2 = evidence for human caused climate change. General circulation models are not in any way evidence for human caused climate change.
Replying to…
Bob Tisdale (09:35:54) :
Dave Middleton: The paper doesn’t say that THC doesn’t exist. It says the deep ocean portion is not where they expected to find it. That’s all.
You are correct. This paper does not say that THC does not exist.
But…
Broecker did write that Bond’s discovery that the Dansgaard-Oeschger and Heinrich-type events continued on past the Holocene…Right up until the Little Ice Age…And this led him to back off on his “THC Catastrophe” theory.
Lowell’s work (to which Broecker contributed) showed that the Younger Dryas occurred after the Agassiz flood. Kind of knicking one of the assumed proofs of THC-driven climate change.
The 2005 paper on Pleistocene oceanic circulation showed that the climate changes were probably not caused by changes in oceanic circulation…The circulation problems were cause by climate change.
kind of reminiscent of the ice core CO2 changes following temperature changes in the Pleistocene.
So…Most of the evidence for a THC-driven climate model has actually turned out to more likely be symptoms of climate change and not a cause of climate change.
Now, the basic THC model turns out to be wrong.
So…Yes I am jumping to conclusions. I’ll stop jumping to conclusions when the climate modelers and AGW’ers get <something right.
BTW…Sorry about the double post. I thought the Spam filter had reacted to my links.
Replying to…
RW (14:29:07) :
“The only “evidence” for “human-caused climate change” comes from General Circulation Models”
Laughable nonsense. Understanding of greenhouse effect + observations of rising CO2 = evidence for human caused climate change. General circulation models are not in any way evidence for human caused climate change.
If you understood the atmospheric greenhous effect, you would know that CO2 is a very minor greenhouse gas. And that it is only capable of trapping outgoing IR radiation within very limited bandwidths (most of which overlap water vapor’s bandwidths). This means that CO2 follows a logarithmic function…Each additional unti of CO2 provides less warming effect than the previous unit. If CO2 drove climate change…CO2 and temperature would have a strong correlation in the giologic record. It does not.
The only signifcant correlation occured during the Pleistocene…But the temperature changes always preceded the CO2 changes…On average by 800 years. So the CO2 could not have been driving the climate changes; but the climate changes could have been causing the CO2 changes.
If the ice cores are right (they probably aren’t)…During the last interglacial, the Sangamon (~130,000 years ago), Earth was about 3C-4C warmer, sea level was ~15m higher, and CO2 was ~100ppm lower than it is now.
As far as, “observations of rising CO2″…Fossil plant stomata data (as opposed to ice cores) show that atmospheric CO2 routinely was in the 330ppm-360ppm range during the early Holocene (~12,000 years ago). So, modern CO2 levels are not anomalous…Even by recent geological standards.
Mankind’s carbon emissions account for less than 3% of the Earth’s carbon budget…Possibly less than 1%. The Earth was not in some pristine carbon source-sink balance prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine…The Earth’ climate has never been in such a pristine balance.
Apart from models, there is ZERO evidence that changes of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 on a scale of a few hundred ppm has ever driven climate change. There is scant evidence (outside of models) that CO2 changes on the order of 2,000ppm has ever driven climate change.
“E.M.Smith (21:02:34) :
What the heck is an “e-float” and how do you simulate one?”
It’s the same thing as e-temperatures, e-sealevels, e-seaice and e-climate. I wonder if it’s really e-climatologists coming up with all this nonsense. The robots are taking over as soon as the get all our e-money.
Laughable nonsense.
rbateman (06:44:55) “Enter the pulsating consensus theory. A form of energy that has a wavelength measured in modelometers.”
Effective – particularly this notion of “pulsating consensus theory”.
– –
dhogaza (12:28:06) “[…] and that *assumption* has always been, explicitly, an *assumption*, which is why this experiment was designed, funded, and run […]”
Glad to hear of such sensible actions.
Replying to…
Jeff Alberts (18:08:06) :
Understanding of greenhouse effect + observations of rising CO2 = evidence for human caused climate change.
Laughable nonsense.
It would be “laughable” if it wasn’t for the fact that so many people – particularly our political leadership – believe in the “nonsense”.
Even if the “logical equation” was factually accurate, it isn’t mathematically sound.
Caleb (02:58:16) “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.”
Bravo, bravo, BRAVO. This needs to be shouted from the housetops.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
“If you understood the atmospheric greenhous effect, you would know that CO2 is a very minor greenhouse gas”
If you understood the greenhouse effect, you would know that H2O is the most important greenhouse gas and that CO2 is the second most important. But you think it’s ‘very minor’, and therefore you don’t understand the greenhouse effect.
“And that it is only capable of trapping outgoing IR radiation within very limited bandwidths (most of which overlap water vapor’s bandwidths)”
And?
“This means that CO2 follows a logarithmic function…Each additional unti of CO2 provides less warming effect than the previous unit”
Yes, and?
“If CO2 drove climate change…CO2 and temperature would have a strong correlation in the giologic record. It does not.”
It does.
Ed Zuiderwijk (01:00:48) :
Real hydrographic data were being collected quite a long time before the space age — not only for science, but for ship navigation.
Meanwhile, even spaceships don’t help us much with the interior of the ocean.
Caleb (02:58:16) :
Those ventilation times come from studies of tracers carried by the water, such as temperature, salinity, gas content and isotope mixes, solid particulates, etc. The water you find at some depths and places in the ocean can look much different from water elsewhere, suggesting that it isn’t all that well-mixed.
The boundaries occur because the diffusion of heat and salt are orders of magnitude slower than turbulent mixing. You really do get sharp divisions (on oceanic scales).
Of course, it should go without saying that thick black lines and big red arrows drawn on ocean-scale maps are meant as simplifications.
There are young scientists doing just that. It would be great if there were more, but ship time is hard to come by. For starters it’s expensive. Very expensive.
Why “small” vessels?
RW (20:48:38) : , replying to anonymous’ statement
“If CO2 drove climate change…CO2 and temperature would have a strong correlation in the giologic record. It does not.”
It does.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KfE5s-4q1s4/ScLVic4P0hI/AAAAAAAAAB0/IWBy3fClff8/s1600-h/fig4.jpg
And that is a geological record for you? As in ‘for God one second is like a million years”?
No wonder.
You could get the same plot using temperature and the DowJones
“Understanding of greenhouse effect + observations of rising CO2 = evidence for human caused climate change.”
Laughable nonsense: click
Understanding of greenhouse effect + observations of rising CO2 = evidence for human caused climate change.”
Laughable nonsense: click
But, the answer is in that link! It’s this: if you leave the tap trickling you can fill a bath in a surprisingly short length of time.
re
Peter Hearnden (01:51:11) :
if you leave the tap trickling you can fill a bath in a surprisingly short length of time.
——————-
And by the same token, if the drain is periodically opened and closed, the level goes up and down in the ‘tub’ over time.
If the ‘trickling tap’ is energy stored in the oceans from the sun, the various ocean circulations move that energy to other latitudes. The atmosphere is driven by the oceans overall, not the other way around. We are seeing the affects of that heat distribution as ENSO, AMO, PDO, etc switch between their positive and negative phases.
Replying to…
RW (20:48:38) :
“If you understood the atmospheric greenhouse effect, you would know that CO2 is a very minor greenhouse gas”
If you understood the greenhouse effect, you would know that H2O is the most important greenhouse gas and that CO2 is the second most important. But you think it’s ‘very minor’, and therefore you don’t understand the greenhouse effect.
It’s the second most important greenhouse gas…But it’s still an extremely minor greenhouse gas that follows a logarithmic function of diminishing returns.
“And that it is only capable of trapping outgoing IR radiation within very limited bandwidths (most of which overlap water vapor’s bandwidths)”
And?
And…Once those bandwidths are being trapped, additional CO2 provides very little additional trapping on the side lobes.
“This means that CO2 follows a logarithmic function…Each additional unit of CO2 provides less warming effect than the previous unit”
Yes, and?
And that’s why CO2 and temperature have no long-term correlation in the geologic record. If it was a linear function, they would have such a correlation
“If CO2 drove climate change…CO2 and temperature would have a strong correlation in the geologic record. It does not.”
It does.
A plot of the geologic record would normally entail at least one axis being plotted in something called “time”. Your chart lacks such a novel feature. Over what time period did you plot CO2 vs. Temperature?
Over the Phanerozoic Eon (~600 million years), there is ZERO correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/CO_vs_Temp.jpg
There was a correlation during the Pleistocene; however the CO2 changes lagged behind the temperature changes. If the ice core CO2 data used in the Pleistocene reconstruction are quantitatively correct or indicative of a causal relationship, the Earth would be about 4C-8C warmer now that it actually is…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/IPCCchart.jpg
Either the ice cores’ quantitative record of CO2 is wrong; or there is no quantitative correlation.
CO2 and temperature correlated for about 25 years in the late 20th Century because both happened to be moving up at the same time…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/UAH_LowerTrop_12_78to11_08_CO2.jpg
Over the satellite record, there is almost no correlation between CO2 and temperature…
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k247/dhm1353/UAH_Lean_Keeling.jpg
TSI has a far better graphical correlation over the satellite era than CO2…And the TSI correlation is very poor.
A post I just made appears to have been grabbed by the Spam filter. I assume it’s because of the four Photo-bucket links I included. So here’s the post without links. My apologies if the original shows back up and this results in a duplicate post…
Replying to…
RW (20:48:38) :
“If you understood the atmospheric greenhouse effect, you would know that CO2 is a very minor greenhouse gas”
If you understood the greenhouse effect, you would know that H2O is the most important greenhouse gas and that CO2 is the second most important. But you think it’s ‘very minor’, and therefore you don’t understand the greenhouse effect.
It’s the second most important greenhouse gas…But it’s still an extremely minor greenhouse gas that follows a logarithmic function of diminishing returns.
“And that it is only capable of trapping outgoing IR radiation within very limited bandwidths (most of which overlap water vapor’s bandwidths)”
And?
And…Once those bandwidths are being trapped, additional CO2 provides very little additional trapping on the side lobes.
“This means that CO2 follows a logarithmic function…Each additional unit of CO2 provides less warming effect than the previous unit”
Yes, and?
And that’s why CO2 and temperature have no long-term correlation in the geologic record. If it was a linear function, they would have such a correlation
“If CO2 drove climate change…CO2 and temperature would have a strong correlation in the geologic record. It does not.”
It does.
A plot of the geologic record would normally entail at least one axis being plotted in something called “time”. Your chart lacks such a novel feature. Over what time period did you plot CO2 vs. Temperature?
Over the Phanerozoic Eon (~600 million years), there is ZERO correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature.
There was a correlation during the Pleistocene; however the CO2 changes lagged behind the temperature changes. If the ice core CO2 data used in the Pleistocene reconstruction are quantitatively correct or indicative of a causal relationship, the Earth would be about 4C-8C warmer now that it actually is.
Either the ice cores’ quantitative record of CO2 is wrong; or there is no quantitative correlation.
CO2 and temperature correlated for about 25 years in the late 20th Century because both happened to be moving up at the same time.
Over the satellite record, there is almost no correlation between CO2 and temperature.
I’m in total agreement with Bill Illis and Caleb – not too much should be made of this paper, and a shift in emphasis to real measurement as compared with computer simulation using old data and concepts is long overdue.
But the majority of posts disturb me – its like a feeding frenzy, as if the AGWs soft underbelly is open to attack, with little regard to the meaning of the paper and in particular how it relates to global warming computer models such as coupled-GCMs.
How many commentators have any idea just how GCMs model the thermo-haline circulation, over what timescales, and how much it impinges on a) the replication of the past 150 year patter, and b) the projection of the next 100 years? The THC circulation from area of downwelling to area of upwelling is of the order of 1000 years because bottom ‘currents’ (which are actually ebbs and flows) are very slow. There has not been enough time for a significant effect over the past 150 years, nor will there be much over the next 100 years.
No serious modellers reckon that the warming observed in the oceans from 1800 to 1950 had much to do with carbon dioxide – and many would accept that it was a long term recovery from the Little Ice Age. The modellers case hinges on the period 1950-2000 when both CO2 and global temperatures took off.
The IPCC’s main argument rests on the modellers inability to replicate this rise other than by incorporating the CO2 equations – if they just leave the simulator on natural, it generates a flatline or slight fall.
The fact that temperatures actually fell into a trough from 1950-1978 was explained by the apparent effect of sulphur emissions rising rapidly with accelerating industrialisation – and this effect then ceased when emissions of SO2 were controlled.
The models are flawed – but the THC is not a big deal compared to the other major flaws which the modellers are seldom brought to task on:
1. the replication of the trough was false – as shown by a flurry of papers in Science in 2005 and since accepted by IPCC (2007) without indicating its importance! The SO2 effect was localised and not global. Almost everyone now understands that this period of global cooling was brought about by the PDO and AMO in joint negative mode and then switching to positive (with amplified ENSO effects) – but when the GCMs were first used, nobody knew the PDO existed (first identified fully post 1995).
2. the really big effect on the next 100 years according to the IPCC models is the projected effect of stored heat in the upper 200m of the oceans – where 84% of the past warming is stored (difference between heat and temperature!) – BUT the estimated heat content used as late as 2005 (and in the IPCC 2007 report) has since been revised – not just that the oceans have not stored any extra heat since 2002, but that what they stored before that was over-estimated by 200%!
Thus, the projected future component of warming that uses this heat store is seriously overplayed. This is far more a potent point that the THC data. However, extactly how much of the projected 2.5-4.5C warming by 2050 is down to the stored heat component is not transparent.
Further – there were comments in this thread that the models do not accurately simulate cloud. This the modellers freely admit – with top NASA scientists writing such in NASA’s recent newsletters that summarise the satellite data. It is clear that the 1980-2000 warming was entirely due to extra Short Wave radiation being absorbed by the ocean surface waters (and redistribute to land) – the signal is very clear in the radiation fluxes. There is no equivalent clear signal of the Infra Red downwelling expected from CO2 because it is so small compared to the downward IR from clouds.
As NASA experts discuss – the models cannot tell you whether the thinner clouds drive the ocean warming, or the ocean warming drives the thinner clouds (and hence amplifies the simulated GHG effect) – but in their hearts, the real experts know that the sheer size of the SW (6 watts/sq metre) signal and thinning cloud over this period (4% drop) militates against the GHG theory.
And of course the fact that the signal changed radically in 2001 – with increased cloud cover, increased albedo, increased SW reflection at the top of the atmosphere and lower SW at the ocean surface – all explaining the oceans either cooling slightly or simply failing to warm, meaning that the natural cycle shifted and is quite capable of dominating the presumed GHG effect.
One could just about argue for a 20% GHG effect from the flux data – not exactly proven, but within the parameters. If 3/4 of that is CO2 and 3/4 of CO2 is from human industry and consumption – then Mr Obama’s trillion dollar intervention in the markets will deal with just 8% of the driving force. THIS is what WWUT bloggers should be telling him!
And actually, I would still argue for a massive intervention in the markets funded by taxation – because a Maunder type minimum will stress both food and water supplies for 3/4 of humanity (the rest will buy their way through). That money is needed to create a fairer system of adaptive responses to climate change. And it is money that would be well spent out of self-interest too – because there are going to be a lot of desperate people.
Taxation to mitigate a cold snap? No. No. No. It will weaken the economic system, not strengthen it. Taxation (a false capitalization system) creates a false bottom line that cannot withstand market forces (a true capitalization system). Long haul stress is best weathered with need-based entrepreneurial business responses, which begin locally. Once local need is met, these same businesses than naturally look for ways to expand. Taxation does not work locally thus creates a weakened baseline, not a stronger one.