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.
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Re: Peter Taylor (09:08:33)
Thanks for the valuable notes on climate modeling deficiencies.
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Re: Pamela Gray (13:34:58)
Makes no sense – it’s like an alien culture. I respect differences of opinion, but don’t expect a friendly welcome if you’re aim is to force that (vile) stuff on folks from other cultures.
This is why government funded alternative fuel businesses will fail. It is a false capitalization of a business start up that is nor sourced from local customers. When the need for alt fuel goes away, there is no local buyers market when times are tough. That is why government funded subsidies funded through taxes for expansion of established business, or restructuring into another business, etc, will fail. It is a false start without a real market base. Any business that uses subsidies or bail-out funds will likely eventually fail. It’s like putting a bandaid over an already deeply infected wound.
@ur momisugly Peter Taylor
May I have links to points #1 and 2 that you raised, please? Your post was really informative and I’m hoping for more backing when and if I employ those findings. Many thanks.
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Dave Middleton (05:16:22) :
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.
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Dave, there’s more & more evidence that the Younger Dryas was caused not by the Agassiz Lake ice dam failure, but by some sort of extraterrestrial event, like a comet/meteor impact. Extraterrestrial-source metals like iridium & iron grains have been found in sediments all over N Amer at the time of this event, which also coincides w/NA mammal extinctions. What exactly happened isn’t clear because there’s no apparent impact crater, but some suggest an object struck the N Amer ice-sheet near the Great Lakes.
Googling brings up alot of stuff on this.
@ur momisugly beng (08:59:42)…
Yeah, I’ve read about that theory. There’s certainly a fair amount of evidence that something like an impact could have resulted in Canadian-sourced placer-like deposits of gold, silver, diamonds and other odd minerals in places like Ohio. The problem is a lack of a crater or astrobleme.
I personally think that Younger Dryas was somehow related to solar variations. In Geological Perspectives of Global Climate Change edited by Lee Gerhard (AAPG publication, #47 in their “Studies in Geology Series”) Broecker authored Chapter 4, “Are We Headed for a Thermohaline Catastrophe.”. Dr. Broecker makes the case that the Younger Dryas was caused by a shut-down of the Atlantic Ocean’s thermohaline circulation due to a massive influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic, probably caused by the sudden release of glacial lake waters trapped during the retreat of the Laurentian ice sheet.
The key evidence that Dr. Broecker cites in connecting the Younger Dryas to a THC shut down is changes in the Carbon-14 ratio in deep sea sediment cores and its coincidence with the Younger Dryas cool down and subsequent warm up. The14-C/C ratio rose 5% in the Cariaco Trench in the first 200 years of the Younger Dryas. Over the last 1,000 years of the Y.D., the 14-C/C ratio returned to pre-Y.D. levels. Dr. Broecker refers to this as a “smoking gun.”
Well what other process could lead to a simultaneous jump in 14-C and a sudden cooling of Earth’s climate? The answer is the Sun. A decline in the Solar Wind coupled with an increase in the Cosmic Ray Flux, resulting in an increase in low cloud cover and the Earth’s albedo could also have caused the Younger-Dryas cold spell. Braun et. al. (2005) linked the Dansgaard–Oeschger events to a convolution of the 87-year and 210-year solar cycle in their 2005 paper published in Nature (Possible solar origin of the 1,470-year glacial climate cycle demonstrated in a coupled model). Dr. Broecker’s “smoking gun” is further weakened by Goslar et. al. (1999) point our that the same variations in 14-C ratios occurred in lake sediments in Poland during the Younger Dryas as Broecker found in the Caribbean in their 199 paper published in Nature (Variations of Younger Dryas atmospheric radiocarbon explicable without ocean circulation changes). Since the lake sediments would not have bee influenced by oceanic circulation changes, they suggest that the Younger Dryas “might have been caused by variations in solar activity. If so, there is no indication that the deep ocean ventilation in the Younger Dryas was significantly different from today’s.”
I know that Svensmark’s “Chilling Stars” theory brings hoots and hollers from some of the solar science community…But…If the Younger Dryas wasn’t due to changes in “deep ocean ventilation”…And it certainly wasn’t anthropogenic – Unless campfires have REALLY BIG carbon footprints…And it doesn’t appear to have a volcanic origin…That kind of elevates “Chilling Stars” and impact events on the list of possible causes.
>> “Are We Headed for a Thermohaline Catastrophe.”. Dr. Broecker makes the case that the Younger Dryas was caused by a shut-down of the Atlantic Ocean’s thermohaline circulation due to a massive influx of fresh water into the North Atlantic, probably caused by the sudden release of glacial lake waters trapped during the retreat of the Laurentian ice sheet.
— I read somewhere that one line of evidence against the THC shutdown is that the Southern Hemisphere cooled before the Northern, when the reversed should have occurred in a shutdown. Is there any credence to this, or is our knowledge of the THC still insufficient?
@ur momisugly VinceW (23:01:11) :
According to what Broeceker wrote in Geological Perspectives of Climate Change…The weakness of his theory is that a disruption of the THC should only have affected the climate in the area north of Gibraltar, from the western Atlantic margin to the Eurasian boundary…While the Younger Dryas appears to have been a “global” event.
Oms,
Thanks for the information. I really enjoy learning about this stuff.
You asked, “Why small boats?”
I suppose I could get off the hook by saying, “Funding is scarce, and small boats would be cheaper,” but that wouldn’t be entirely honest.
At the risk of drifting off topic, let me say this:
Having been far out to sea on both liners and small boats, I find liners allow people to avoid something striking about the sea, (for they can just go indoors,) while small boats make what is so striking unavoidable. I fear I’ll sound a bit sadistic stating this, but I feel young scientists need a salty wave to slap them in the face.
I run a day-care with my wife on a small farm. Originally I thought it would just be fun to share elements of the country life with children, but it became more than that.
I was amazed to meet kids who quite literally never have been outside, even though their parents moved out to the country for the “country life.” They instead play indoors on computers, and view the world through computers, and it creates a hard-to-describe myopia, as if everything is viewed through a port hole, and they are never out on deck with the wind in their hair. A connection to reality is missing, and various problems develop.
Quite accidentally my wife and I started solving these problems, simply by letting kids run about and get muddy and fall down and scrape their knees. Of course, some parents backed out. Too risky. However we got a truly strange amount of praise from teachers, and others who care for kids. Apparently we were part of some sort of movement, which I’d never heard about. To me, the sight of muddy kids with scraped knees is perfectly natural, but I now understand it isn’t so normal, any more.
(There’s a book called “The Last Child In The Woods,” which describes the social dynamic, and my wife and I have just started a blog to describe our own ups and downs at http://ebenezer-farm.blogspot.com/ , if you’re interested.)
However, to get back on topic, I think there is a big difference between reality and virtual-reality. Perhaps we are seeing the social failure to make a clear distinction between the two realities manifest, when we see young scientists utterly engrossed in models, even to the point where they spend very little time gathering actual data.
In terms of gathering the raw data, a big boat is just as good as a small boat. It might even be better. However in terms of making the distinction between reality and virtual-reality, a small boat wins every time.
So THC is dead? or we are just learning the finer details with new experimentation and observation?
I’d say the latter, but reading some of the comments here it seems the former!
I think folks are making more of this than they should.
Anything to “stick it” to those agenda driven, conspiracy AGW CMers!
Caleb (06:38:06) “Perhaps we are seeing the social failure to make a clear distinction between the two realities manifest, when we see young scientists utterly engrossed in models, even to the point where they spend very little time gathering actual data.”
In the abstract sciences the competition is so phenomenally intense and the literature so phenomenally deep & expansive that those frequently pausing to consider reality (carefully) risk rapidly falling very far behind their (more “pure”) peers.
Like many others who have spent a number of years doing a variety of ecological field work, I concluded that statistical skills were a limiting factor in ecological research. I decided to take a number of statistics graduate courses. Disappointingly, almost every lecture started with “Assume …” and carried on with “further assume …”. All of the logic rests on assumptions.
The nature I know from field work & other pursuits categorically does NOT obey the standard assumptions.
The most useful stats course I ever took was one on data analysis. It asked simply: What are the data saying? (without ever leaning on hypothesis testing underpinned by untenable assumptions) The methodology was complicated – but practical.
When modeling assumptions fail, stick to descriptive statistics – and gather more data. A fashionable alternative is to abandon reality. (Fiction is marketable – easy to supply; easy to stimulate demand…)
Really? They never went to school? Never went to the mall with their parents? never went grocery shopping, never went to a friend’s house? Or perhaps “quite literally” doesn’t really mean “quite literally”.
Caleb (06:38:06) :
Well, I have been slapped in the face by a salty wave more than once, thanks. 😉
My idea of a big boat and yours might be a little different. To me, a 40′ sailboat on the open ocean is a “small” boat. A 277′ oceanographic vessel is a “big” boat. It’s certainly no luxury liner, and it doesn’t seem all that “big” when it’s out in the southern atlantic for a month or more at a time.
What you seem to be saying is that scientists (who haven’t done so) need to go out and get some respect for nature. On that, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
One thing you ought to know though… a full-ocean-depth mooring chain ain’t small, and it ain’t light. Deploying one (or several) in seas takes a “big” boat (see disclaimer above)!
oms
Jeff Alberts (13:03:30) :
OK. You got me. By “quite literally” I referenced a definition of “outside” which probably is incorrect. My definition of “outside” isn’t a mall, however I doubt Webster’s agrees with me.
oms (14:22:24) :
If you’ve been slapped in the face by salty waves, you know what I’m talking about.
Good point about the size of the scientific buoys. Plop one of those babies on a small boat, and the small boat promptly sinks at the wharf (or marina.)
Paul Vaughan (12:24:37) :
Wow. I had no idea the competition was so intense. However it reminds me a bit of that part of “Alice In Wonderland” where everyone has to run as fast as they can to stay in the same place.
I really like your observation: “The nature I know from field work & other pursuits categorically does NOT obey the standard assumptions.”
I agree. Of course, we all have to base life on a set of assumptions, but one assumption I make is that Mother Nature will make me look like a chump on a regular basis.
For example, I might assume my goats will only leap a fence and sample my blazing hot chili peppers once, and swiftly learn their lesson. For most goats this is a safe assumption. But then you get one goat who actually, upon consideration, decides he or she enjoys scalded lips, and that one bleeping goat demolishes the entire patch of blazing hot chili peppers.
This reality is quite different from a virtual reality, where after playing a game a few thousand times, (and consulting the “cheat sheet,”) one can safely assume certain things about the Donkey Kong (or whatever,) and never run into a case where the assumption is challenged.
I once generated a tremendous uproar (at another site) by suggesting a person (who was far more knowledgeable about computers than I am) was guilty of “digital thought.” I suggested reality simply isn’t digital, and that for computers to understand chaos and “strange attractors” we needed to somehow develop better analog computers.
I had to beat a hasty retreat from that discussion, because, if even the experts must work full time simply to stay “up-to-date,” a non-expert like myself will never “catch up,” and my ignorance swiftly becomes apparent in any sort of debate.
However I highly recommend accusing people of “digital thought,” if you are ever in the mood to see the fur fly.
Mr. Watts, Thank You for your efforts and Keep up the great work.