Comments On The Current Record Global Average Lower TroposphereTemperatures
In the last couple of weeks, the onset of the El Niño, that was discussed on in my weblog on July 11 2009 would appear to be a possible explanation for the sudden increase in lower tropospheric temperatures to a record level (e.g. see the latest tropospheric temperature data at Daily Earth Temperatures from Satellite). This sudden warming is also discussed on other websites (see and see).
The current and recent anomalies at 500 mb (as representative of the tropospheric temperatures) are provided by the excellent NOAA analyses at
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/z500_nh_anim.shtml
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/intraseasonal/z500_sh_anim.shtml
The location for the sudden warming (in the global average tropospheric temperatures as reported from the AMSU data) at 500 mb in the Northern Hemisphere is not obvious, however, except perhaps for a large area with weak positive anomalies in the lower latitudes. There is some warming in the El Niño area, but it is relatively small. In the lower latitude eastern hemisphere In the southern hemisphere, there is a strong warm anomaly near Antarctica. Maybe that is part of the reason for major region for the large positive AMSU temperature value.
This record event is an effective test of two hypotheses.
Hypothesis #1: Roy Spencer’s hypothesis on the role of circulation patterns in global warming (e.g. see) might explain most or all of the current anomaly since it clearly is spatially very variable, and its onset was so sudden. If the lower atmosphere cools again to its long term average or lower, this would support Roy’s viewpoint.
Hypothesis #2: Alternatively, if the large anomaly persists, it will support the claims by the IPCC and others (e.g. see Cool Spells Normal in Warming World) that well-mixed greenhouse gas warming is the dominate climate forcing in the coming decades and is again causing global warming after the interruption of the last few years.
Only time will tell which is correct, however, we now have short term information to test the two hypotheses. The results of this real world test will certainly influence my viewpoint on climate science.
Phil. (15:41:25) :
tallbloke (12:12:32) :
How much IR does -70C ice emit?
~90W/m^2
Thanks.
It looks like the peak has been reached on UAH, the mean temp on ch.5 dropping a bit between the 15th and 16th.
Hopefully we see it decline back to average or below as fast as it rose above it.
Meanwhile, the sun remains quie again. Nearly a week of blank days and counting.
Bill Illis (17:49:17) :
It is too early for the El Nino to be affecting the troposphere. In fact, the outgoing long-wave radiation data is showing that the Pacific ocean is absorbing heat energy out of the atmosphere right now rather than adding to it.
Hi Bill,
How does the atmosphere radiate heat into the ocean? I thought longwave radiation didn’t penetrate the surface. George E Smith has written extensively on this.
Are you downloading and plotting data or are there some online graphs to illustrate what you are saying?
David Smith (16:32:24) :
Re tallbloke, yes that’s a global plot.
http://davidsmith1.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/0718091.jpg
I’m intrigued by the oscillatory behavior and by the swift increases and decreases and the apparent baseline stability. Perhaps the oscillations are thunderstorm-related, with the heat spreading out across the troposphere and dissipating.
If it is real and not some measurement artifact then understanding the physical behavior behind the plot would be valuable.
Too regular in amplitude over the year for thunderstorms I’d have thought. Do you know where the plot came from? Is it raw data? Can’t see any orbital adjustments applying to a month long signal though.
Leif?
tallbloke (21:45:13) :
I’m intrigued by the oscillatory behavior and by the swift increases and decreases and the apparent baseline stability.
Where does the data come from?
tallbloke,
I’m thinking that IR doesn’t penetrate far into water, not because it gets reflected but because it’s strongly absorbed. The water below is then thermalized through collisions. Presumably, heat is also returned to the atmosphere by increased evaporation, with convection determining net transfer.
Presumably, heat is also returned to the atmosphere by increased evaporation, with convection determining net transfer.
For most of the oceans for most of the time the oceans heat the atmosphere. If this wasn’t true, one consequence would be it wouldn’t rain much anywhere. Rain results from evaporative cooling of the oceans.
In the cloudy tropics, ocean regions may gain net heat from the atmosphere as clouds block sunlight and the water vapour greenhouse effect is high producing large amounts of return IR.
Outside the tropic, my understanding is the atmosphere never heats the oceans. Except perhaps locally for short periods. It is always the other way around.
The solar wind was much greater than it has been for a while over this period, in terms of velocity and density.
If the atmosphere cools, its volume will contract, and, in fact, the ionosphere is apparently low these days.
If the atmosphere were compressed, by, say, solar wind bursts, it would heat up. Is there any data on the effect of the solar wind on the height of the atmosphere?
Manfred: and if you look at the May data, they were largely above average for 90% of the time, nevertheless the anomaly was +0.04 C, with the graph showing most of the time +0.1 to +0.2 C.
Burke: probably because “record colds all over the world” are strongly biased informations. There were also a lot of heat waves in June (India, China: hundreds of deaths because of sizzling weather, heat waves in Texas, etc.), you only need to pay attention to them.
Oliver Ramsay (22:30:15) :
tallbloke,
I’m thinking that IR doesn’t penetrate far into water, not because it gets reflected but because it’s strongly absorbed. The water below is then thermalized through collisions.
Hmmm, it’d be good to know the proportion of the heat which is thermalized into the water, as against the heat going into the latent heat of evaporation and transported upwards. I suspect it’s the latter by a long way.
Leif Svalgaard (22:28:58) :
tallbloke (21:45:13) :
I’m intrigued by the oscillatory behavior and by the swift increases and decreases and the apparent baseline stability.
Where does the data come from?
Dunno, that’s why I asked David.
I do not know about cools, but it has started on the down slope
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
Sorry, the link needs a feed and does not work above.
choose ch5 in
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
Phil,
“What is your opinion of RSS?
Probably more reliable for anomalies because of the UAH flaw mentioned above.”
But, RSS data since 1998 show somewhat larger cooling than UAH data. See http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/to/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/to/trend
or http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2001/to/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/to/trend,
or http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2002/to/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to/trend
I think you have little logical problem here. If you think that RSS data are more reliable than UAH, that only could mean UAH has some “cooling bias” in their data.
OK, go to the http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ , channel 5 and check all available years. The spaghetti graph that results is a superposition of the plot shown by
David Smith (16:32:24) :
in
http://davidsmith1.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/0718091.jpg
One sees the undulations, and the present one is not unusual. David’s plot is interesting because it unravels the spaghetti. There are about 16 to twenty dips and troughs a year, so yearly superposition obscures the order in the disorder.
John Finn
There is more detailed information, the this is the crux of the matter when attempting to use the AMSU-E graph for daily temps:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/07/june-2009-global-temperature-anomaly-update-000-deg-c/
“The progress of daily temperatures (the current month versus the same calendar month from one year ago) should only be used as a rough guide for how the current month is shaping up because they come from the AMSU instrument on the NOAA-15 satellite, which has a substantial diurnal drift in the local time of the orbit. Our ‘official’ results presented above, in contrast, are from AMSU on NASA’s Aqua satellite, which carries extra fuel to keep it in a stable orbit. Therefore, there is no diurnal drift adjustment needed in our official product.”
This is why many are so off the mark when attempting to calculate monthly anomalies using daily data without benefit of knowing the diurnal drift adjustments (which vary constantly) necessary to calculating the actual. Sure it would be nice to have daily AQUA data, and maybe at some point it will be available, but as it is now, we live with what it is.
tallbloke said: “Hmmm, it’d be good to know the proportion of the heat which is thermalized into the water, as against the heat going into the latent heat of evaporation and transported upwards. I suspect it’s the latter by a long way.”
In our hypothetical example the air is warmer than the water, so, following the 2nd law, net heat transfer would tend from the warmer to the cooler. Advection of latent heat in water vapor out of the system must be the dominant influence. As I understand it, radiative energy transfer at these densities of matter (including 1 bar atmoshere) is insignificant next to conduction and, in fluids, subsequent convection.
As we know, the heat in the air got there in the first place from the surface, which is, on the whole, warmer than the atmosphere.
Lee Kington
“You feel that Roger Pielke Jr advocates the IPCC / AGW position?
To that I say ridicules.”
If somebody says, as Pielke did, that couple of days or maybe a week or very warm temperatures could be a test for AGW hypothesis while 10 or 12 YEARS are not good enough test – I think that you would agree this is quite ridiculous. And specially when he himself easily do what I did – check that in last 7-8 years you had at least 50-60 days with higher anomalies than 14 or 15 July.
And if someone says “July 14th may or may not have been the warmest day ever, however it does portend an end to the debate over global “cooling.”” I also hope you would agree that this sentence looks pretty stupid (if 10 years of cooling are “weather” how than 5 days of warming can be a “climate”? i.e. “portend end of debate of global cooling”).
Since it is obvious he is very smart man, only thing I can conclude is that he is trying to keep his credibility in the “community” for his policy views, by balancing them with castigating “extreme denialism” in climate science itself. I cannot believe that intelligent man can seriously think, without some agenda in mind, that couple of very warm days can prove anything concerning climate change, nothing more than couple of cold days (specially when those couple of warm days are by no means “unprecedented”).
P.S. for Phil
I should say UAH has “warming bias” in previous comment.
Ivan (07:00:39) :
Phil,
“What is your opinion of RSS?
Probably more reliable for anomalies because of the UAH flaw mentioned above.”
But, RSS data since 1998 show somewhat larger cooling than UAH data. See http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:1998/to/trend/plot/rss/from:1998/to/trend
or http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2001/to/trend/plot/rss/from:2001/to/trend,
or http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/from:2002/to/trend/plot/rss/from:2002/to/trend
I think you have little logical problem here. If you think that RSS data are more reliable than UAH, that only could mean UAH has some “cooling bias” in their data.
I don’t have any problem, since UAH started using AQUA in 2003 they have shown a strong pattern in the anomaly, in particular the May/June minimum. To me that indicates that the mean developed using the previous satellite isn’t consistent with AQUA, what effect that has on the trends really doesn’t concern me, if the data’s bad who cares.
REPLY: There also appears in RSS a signal. RSS has a stronger annual cycle in the differences than UAH – so it looks like RSS could also have an issue with a spurious mean annual cycle in the latter period. More on this later. – Anthony
If the ocean surface does not absorb infrared radiation, then all of the warming of the ocean surface over the last 100 years (0.5C or so) would be due to an increase in solar short-wave radiation or through collision exchange between atmospherice and ocean molecules. So, either the ocean does absorb infrared or it doesn’t matter anyway.
In addition, it doesn’t seem reasonable that water vapour in the atmosphere would absorb infrared but liquid water would not.
Does a glass of cold water in a dark room eventually warm to the ambient temperature of the room. Does it take a long time for that to occur.
REPLY: There also appears in RSS a signal. RSS has a stronger annual cycle in the differences than UAH – so it looks like RSS could also have an issue with a spurious mean annual cycle in the latter period. More on this later. – Anthony
Not since the advent of AQUA, in that period the annual cycle is much greater, which was the point I was making.
Bill Illis (08:20:02) :
Hi Bill, looking at Nicola Scafetta’s recent presentation and the Hoo Flung Dung over the adjustments to TSI satellite data by the PMOD team, it does seem possible that all the extra heating since the end of the little ice age is solar in origin, yes.
The 10 micron IR radiation is absorbed in the first 10 microns of the ocean surface at a rate of over 300 watts/m^2. It promptly evaporates molecules of water on the surface which then head upwards. That’s why the atmosphere can’t warm the ocean to any significant degree.
The glass of water warms through conduction via the vessel it’s in.