From an Oregon State University Media Release (h/t to Leif Svalgaard)
Long debate ended over cause, demise of ice ages – may also help predict future
)
The above image shows how much the Earth’s orbit can vary in shape.
This process in a slow one, taking roughly 100,000 to cycle.
(Credit: Texas A&M University note: illustration is not to scale)
CORVALLIS, Ore. – A team of researchers says it has largely put to rest a long debate on the underlying mechanism that has caused periodic ice ages on Earth for the past 2.5 million years – they are ultimately linked to slight shifts in solar radiation caused by predictable changes in Earth’s rotation and axis.
In a publication to be released Friday in the journal Science, researchers from Oregon State University and other institutions conclude that the known wobbles in Earth’s rotation caused global ice levels to reach their peak about 26,000 years ago, stabilize for 7,000 years and then begin melting 19,000 years ago, eventually bringing to an end the last ice age.
The melting was first caused by more solar radiation, not changes in carbon dioxide levels or ocean temperatures, as some scientists have suggested in recent years.
“Solar radiation was the trigger that started the ice melting, that’s now pretty certain,” said Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at OSU. “There were also changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and ocean circulation, but those happened later and amplified a process that had already begun.”
The findings are important, the scientists said, because they will give researchers a more precise understanding of how ice sheets melt in response to radiative forcing mechanisms. And even though the changes that occurred 19,000 years ago were due to increased solar radiation, that amount of heating can be translated into what is expected from current increases in greenhouse gas levels, and help scientists more accurately project how Earth’s existing ice sheets will react in the future.
“We now know with much more certainty how ancient ice sheets responded to solar radiation, and that will be very useful in better understanding what the future holds,” Clark said. “It’s good to get this pinned down.”
The researchers used an analysis of 6,000 dates and locations of ice sheets to define, with a high level of accuracy, when they started to melt. In doing this, they confirmed a theory that was first developed more than 50 years ago that pointed to small but definable changes in Earth’s rotation as the trigger for ice ages.
“We can calculate changes in the Earth’s axis and rotation that go back 50 million years,” Clark said. “These are caused primarily by the gravitational influences of the larger planets, such as Jupiter and Saturn, which pull and tug on the Earth in slightly different ways over periods of thousands of years.”
That, in turn, can change the Earth’s axis – the way it tilts towards the sun – about two degrees over long periods of time, which changes the way sunlight strikes the planet. And those small shifts in solar radiation were all it took to cause multiple ice ages during about the past 2.5 million years on Earth, which reach their extremes every 100,000 years or so.
Sometime around now, scientists say, the Earth should be changing from a long interglacial period that has lasted the past 10,000 years and shifting back towards conditions that will ultimately lead to another ice age – unless some other forces stop or slow it. But these are processes that literally move with glacial slowness, and due to greenhouse gas emissions the Earth has already warmed as much in about the past 200 years as it ordinarily might in several thousand years, Clark said.
“One of the biggest concerns right now is how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will respond to global warming and contribute to sea level rise,” Clark said. “This study will help us better understand that process, and improve the validity of our models.”
The research was done in collaboration with scientists from the Geological Survey of Canada, University of Wisconsin, Stockholm University, Harvard University, the U.S. Geological Survey and University of Ulster. It was supported by the National Science Foundation and other agencies.
UPDATE: Science now has the paper online, which is behind a paywall. The abstract is open though and can be read below:
| Science 7 August 2009:
Vol. 325. no. 5941, pp. 710 – 714 DOI: 10.1126/science.1172873 |
Research Articles
The Last Glacial Maximum
Peter U. Clark,1,* Arthur S. Dyke,2 Jeremy D. Shakun,1 Anders E. Carlson,3 Jorie Clark,1 Barbara Wohlfarth,4 Jerry X. Mitrovica,5 Steven W. Hostetler,6 A. Marshall McCabe7
1 Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
2 Geological Survey of Canada, 601 Booth Street, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0E8, Canada.
3 Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
4 Department of Geology and Geochemistry, Stockholm University, SE-10691, Stockholm, Sweden.
5 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
6 U.S. Geological Survey, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA.
7 School of Environmental Science, University of Ulster, Coleraine, County Londonderry, BT52 1SA, UK.
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Leif Svalgaard (07:20:12) :
Nasif Nahle (07:04:07) :
From your Units Bible, PAGE 118:
Energy, work, amount of heat, joule: J–Nm–m^2 kg s^−2
power, radiant flux; Watt W–J/s–m^2 kg s^−3
You have put ‘amount of heat’ in the wrong box, probably because:
“Es ist leichter, ein Atom zu zertrümmern, als ein Vorurteil.”
Nope, It was not “Es ist leichter, ein Atom zu zertrümmern, als ein Vorurteil” the cause… Copied and pasted:
energy, work, joule J–N m–m^2 kg s^−2
amount of heat
power, radiant flux: watt W–J/s m^2–kg s^−3
Corrected! That doesn’t change anything. Heat is energy in transit and its units are Watts = J/s. Energy units are Joules.
How much energy in transit is in a radiant flux on 10 J/s? 10 Joules. Heh! 🙂
By the way, 10 J = 10 W*s; just to avoid another one of your confusions.
” Nasif Nahle (07:06:33) :
Alexej Buergin (03:47:05) :
Einstein said that the photon has no rest mass Mo, but inertial mass M:
M = Mo / SQR(1-v^2/c^2)
For v=c one gets 0/0, so use hf=Mc^2
That’s precisely the novelty I was referring to. Momentum is not mass.”
I did not mention momentum, but Einstein did by calling M “Impulsmasse”: M = p/v
Fortunately it seems there is a tendency to name it “relativistic mass”. (“Impuls” is a bad choice of a name for momentum, too, because it normally means something of short duration.)
Alexej Buergin (09:57:42) :
I did not mention momentum, but Einstein did by calling M “Impulsmasse”: M = p/v
Fortunately it seems there is a tendency to name it “relativistic mass”. (”Impuls” is a bad choice of a name for momentum, too, because it normally means something of short duration.)
Yes, it was A. Einstein who did it. The problem is that some people use it as if it was part of the “rest mass” of an object by adding it to the mass described by Newtonian mechanics. Relativistic mass would be, in any case, the total energy of a system.
Hi Vincent:
Being a propagandist generally implies getting paid. Sad to say, I’m not.
Volcanism generally happens fairly slowly, compared to our geologically instantaneous release of CO2 over the last couple of hundred years. Your statement also neglects the danger from a massive release of methane from the methane hydrates. There appear to be at least three examples of a massive negative C13 ratio shift in the fossil record, fully consistent with the release of massive amounts of methane from the methane hydrates. Ominously, these events are associated with mass extinctions: the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, the Permian-Triassic mass extinction (which killed about 95% of marine species and maybe 80% of land based species), and a really huge event back in the Precambrian that apparently deglaciated the “snowball earth” state of the earth’s climate.
The Deccan Traps may have released a huge amount of CO2, but did it really release this CO2 in less than a couple of hundred years? I frankly doubt it. Wikipedia says that the entire Deccan Traps volcanism occurred over a period of 6 million years, and says that the main part of it may have occurred over 30,000 years. Thirty thousand years is 150 times as long as two centuries, and gives the climate system 150 times as much time to adapt to the change.
Changes in CO2 in the past have occurred generally slowly, giving the self-regulating climate system time to adjust. Higher levels have existed, but the system had time to adjust to those levels. Methane had time to oxidize into CO2, new species of diatoms had time to evolve or adapt, forests had time to advance or recede, rather than burning in huge firestorms. The methane evolving from the melting permafrost had time to oxidize into CO2, and that CO2 had at least some time to end up sequestered as carbonates, and so cushion the blow.
For a worst case scenario, visit http://www.killerinourmidst.com, to see a well thought out scenario detailing what I belive is our most probable future.
So somewhere in this “heat” donnybrook, I believe it was Nasif who defined what heat was by saying that one calorie of “heat” will raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree C. This would imply that “heat” and temperature are certainly not the same thing; but they are inextricably linked, since absent real atmic/molecular materials, Temperature has no meaning whatsoever. In fact Temperature is measured in terms of the mechanical vibrational energy of atomic or molecular materials. Photons, which are the carriers of electromagnet radiation “energy” are also not “heat” and specifically, photons do not have a temperature; they are quite independent of temperature.
The microwave background radiation; the remnant of the big bang is often describes as the 3 Kelvin backgound radiation; but this is not the temperature of those microwave photons. The only way that the background radiation photons are linked to that 3 Kelvin temperature is that the observed spectrum of that microwave radiation fits a black body spectrum for the temperature of 3 Kelvins. So any single photon of that microwave radiation carries no other information than its own frequency; and by inference its energy via the Einstein equation; E= h(nu).
So photons are most certainly “energy in transit” as Nasif and his mentor put it; but having no temperature they certainly are not “heat”.
Ergo photon energy in transit is certainly not heat.
It is self evident that photons can travel anywhere they darn well please from the coldest points of the universe to the cores of the hottest stars; and with no second law violation.
Heat on the other hand cannot do that unassisted; at least not in a reversible system.
Anyway, CO2 is not doing any damage to nature. It’s not the cause of climate changes, but just the opposite: Higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere obey to climate changes.
George E. Smith (13:12:33) :
So somewhere in this “heat” donnybrook, I believe it was Nasif who defined what heat was by saying that one calorie of “heat” will raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree C.
It was Leif [Leif Svalgaard (18:15:04)] who did it, although defining specific heat capacity.
This would imply that “heat” and temperature are certainly not the same thing; but they are inextricably linked, since absent real atmic/molecular materials, Temperature has no meaning whatsoever. In fact Temperature is measured in terms of the mechanical vibrational energy of atomic or molecular materials. Photons, which are the carriers of electromagnet radiation “energy” are also not “heat” and specifically, photons do not have a temperature; they are quite independent of temperature.
The microwave background radiation; the remnant of the big bang is often describes as the 3 Kelvin backgound radiation; but this is not the temperature of those microwave photons. The only way that the background radiation photons are linked to that 3 Kelvin temperature is that the observed spectrum of that microwave radiation fits a black body spectrum for the temperature of 3 Kelvins. So any single photon of that microwave radiation carries no other information than its own frequency; and by inference its energy via the Einstein equation; E= h(nu).
So photons are most certainly “energy in transit” as Nasif and his mentor put it; but having no temperature they certainly are not “heat”.
Ergo photon energy in transit is certainly not heat.
It is self evident that photons can travel anywhere they darn well please from the coldest points of the universe to the cores of the hottest stars; and with no second law violation.
Heat on the other hand cannot do that unassisted; at least not in a reversible system.
George E. Smith (13:12:33) :
So somewhere in this “heat” donnybrook, I believe it was Nasif who defined what heat was by saying that one calorie of “heat” will raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree C.
It was Leif [Leif Svalgaard (18:15:04)] who did it, although defining specific heat capacity.
This would imply that “heat” and temperature are certainly not the same thing; but they are inextricably linked, since absent real atmic/molecular materials, Temperature has no meaning whatsoever. In fact Temperature is measured in terms of the mechanical vibrational energy of atomic or molecular materials.
Exactly.
Photons, which are the carriers of electromagnet radiation “energy” are also not “heat” and specifically, photons do not have a temperature; they are quite independent of temperature.
Indeed, photons are not heat, but heat is photons.
The microwave background radiation; the remnant of the big bang is often describes as the 3 Kelvin backgound radiation; but this is not the temperature of those microwave photons. The only way that the background radiation photons are linked to that 3 Kelvin temperature is that the observed spectrum of that microwave radiation fits a black body spectrum for the temperature of 3 Kelvins. So any single photon of that microwave radiation carries no other information than its own frequency; and by inference its energy via the Einstein equation; E= h(nu).
Agreed, except for your odd phrase “the remnant of the big bang…”
So photons are most certainly “energy in transit” as Nasif and his mentor put it; but having no temperature they certainly are not “heat”.
Ergo photon energy in transit is certainly not heat.
Check! Photons are not heat, but heat is photons.
It is self evident that photons can travel anywhere they darn well please from the coldest points of the universe to the cores of the hottest stars; and with no second law violation.
If and only if those photons are traveling from a higher density state to a lower density state. The opposite way is not possible.
Heat on the other hand cannot do that unassisted; at least not in a reversible system.
Indeed, it’s the second law of thermodynamics, heat must be emitted from the source system; otherwise, it is not heat, but internal energy. For being heat, the energy must to cross the boundary out of the system with a higher energy density.
“”” “Remember that Q is a term which is included to account for energy changes in the surroundings. However, we call it heat because it is energy transferred across the boundary of the system as a result of a temperature difference.” “””
Read that statement from your Van Ness Mentor carefully Nasif.
Note the restriction of his definition of “heat” to only that form of energy that is transported across a bounday “as a result of a temperature difference”
Radiation which is a form of energy transport (via photons; or electromagnetic (Maxwell) waves; your choice) is transported even where there is no temperature difference; even in the vaccuum of empty space.
So what is your definition of the temperature of a photon; for example what would be the temperature of a 2.0 eV photon which has a vaccuum wavelength of a bit more than 0.6 microns, as emitted from an ordinary common garden variety red LED; what is the photon temperature Nasif ?
And you can give me any answer you like, because I am one of those people who believe that nonsense about temperature applying only to matter.
My Standard Physics Handbook contains zero information about any of the properties of temperature that are unrelated to any real form of matter. In particular it mentions NO thermometric methods of temperature determination that do not require real materials, whether it be the volume of an ideal gas; or the anisotropy of Gamma ray emission from Cobalt 60 monocrystal, due to alignment of nuclear spins. All of them properties of real materials; no thermometers at all for determining the temperature of photons, or electromagnetic waves.
Quite so.
Which is why after discovering the first and second laws of thermodynamics it was necessary to posit that ‘Temperature Exists.’
Kindest Regards.
This is surely a distracting argument over semantics.
As I recall from my O & A level physics, heat is energy in transit.
Energy in the oceans is forever in transit as in any non-enclosed system so both Leif & Nasif are right.
Now get back on topic.
DaveE.
Hm,
Like others, I really don’t like the graph at the top of this article. Not that the ellipse is exagerated, but since when does a body orbit around the center point of the ellipse and not one of the focal points?
And Keplers law says that during an elliptical orbit the orbiting body spends more time farther away from the central body than during close approach.
Would be interresting to calculate how much that changes the solar insolation averaged over a year.
George E. Smith (13:42:09) :
“”” “Remember that Q is a term which is included to account for energy changes in the surroundings. However, we call it heat because it is energy transferred across the boundary of the system as a result of a temperature difference.” “””
Read that statement from your Van Ness Mentor carefully Nasif.
Note the restriction of his definition of “heat” to only that form of energy that is transported across a bounday “as a result of a temperature difference”
Radiation which is a form of energy transport (via photons; or electromagnetic (Maxwell) waves; your choice) is transported even where there is no temperature difference; even in the vaccuum of empty space.
From such assertions like yours, I am obligued to ask you, what the outer space is from physics standpoint?
Energy is always dispersed from high energy density states towards available or possible low energy density states, even in the cold, 3D, unbounded, infinite space; remember that the Universe is oscillating or sliding over Higgs’ fields.
So what is your definition of the temperature of a photon; for example what would be the temperature of a 2.0 eV photon which has a vaccuum wavelength of a bit more than 0.6 microns, as emitted from an ordinary common garden variety red LED; what is the photon temperature Nasif?
And you can give me any answer you like, because I am one of those people who believe that nonsense about temperature applying only to matter.
I will properly answer your question with another question… What’s the topology of a photon? If you answer my question, you will obtain automatically the benefit of an answer to your question.
My Standard Physics Handbook contains zero information about any of the properties of temperature that are unrelated to any real form of matter. In particular it mentions NO thermometric methods of temperature determination that do not require real materials, whether it be the volume of an ideal gas; or the anisotropy of Gamma ray emission from Cobalt 60 monocrystal, due to alignment of nuclear spins. All of them properties of real materials; no thermometers at all for determining the temperature of photons, or electromagnetic waves.
Our thermometers work thanks to photons colliding with the material inside the bulb. I have to tell you that I do prefer to use radiometers and IR thermometers instead standard (conventional) thermometers.
Nasif Nahle (09:46:56) :
Box 1: [energy, work, joule J–N m–m^2 kg s^−2
amount of heat]
Box 2: [power, radiant flux: watt W–J/s m^2–kg s^−3]
The scientific world has moved from the old restrictive and useless definition to the modern one, where heat can be stored and contained [because it is an amount, not a flux]. I have given you enough examples of that. Instead of sounding like a broken record make it easy on yourself and go with the flow.
Leif Svalgaard (18:42:50) :
The scientific world has moved from the old restrictive and useless definition to the modern one, where heat can be stored and contained [because it is an amount, not a flux]. I have given you enough examples of that. Instead of sounding like a broken record make it easy on yourself and go with the flow.
You think so?
Physicists, old and modern, have writen on this issue, and they say just the opposite than you. How many times I have to quote them or 20 or more of them for you understand that heat is not kinetic energy or temperature, and that it is the energy what it is stored and not the energy in transit?
I don’t need bogus examples trying to demonstrate that science has changed to a more relaxed solipsist version. Science is what it is and heat is the transition between equilibrium states and that is what it is, no matter how hard you work for twisting the concept. Your definition of heat is wrong. Point.
@Leif…
1. Internal energy is a state function.
2. Internal energy is stored energy by a system.
3. You say that the heat is stored by thermodynamic systems.
4. Consequently, you are saying that the heat is a state function
Sorry, but this is absolutely wrong. Heat is not a state function.
Heat is a process quantity, so it cannot be stored
Can you store a process quantity? Not even relativistically, Leif.
Nasif Nahle (19:27:55) :
Your definition of heat is wrong.
It is not my definition. It is what is used in most modern [and many not so modern] papers [and I think that the authors of those would object to have their papers called ‘bogus’] on climate, geophysics, and astrophysics, like it or not. Personally I find it sensible and useful and have no problem with it.
Nasif Nahle (19:39:08) :
Can you store a process quantity?
The oceans store a large amount of heat, namely XXXX joules [don’t remember what XXXX is, you probably know that, so can tell us the amount of heat stored in the oceans].
Leif Svalgaard (19:46:25) :
It is not my definition. It is what is used in most modern [and many not so modern] papers [and I think that the authors of those would object to have their papers called ‘bogus’] on climate, geophysics, and astrophysics, like it or not. Personally I find it sensible and useful and have no problem with it.
Show me one from serious physics. I have shown you many authors supporting the real definition of heat.
Leif Svalgaard (19:51:27) :
Nasif Nahle (19:39:08) :
Can you store a process quantity?
“The oceans store a large amount of heat, namely XXXX joules [don’t remember what XXXX is, you probably know that, so can tell us the amount of heat stored in the oceans]”.
Leif, Leif… Are you saying that you can store a process quantity into the oceans???? You’re joking, Aha?
Leland Palmer (13:11:50),
Yo, Leland. I actually read your link, all of it. I read it with a mixture of astonishment and hilarity. The whole thing could have been written: “BUT WHAT IF________?!?” [Fill in the blank with the alarmist story du jour.]
You can’t actually buy into that scare story, can you? It’s like “When Worlds Collide,” or “Chariots Of The Gods.” Or maybe even “An Inconvenient Truth.” Conjecture based on alarmist opinion.
It’s hard to find one paragraph that is more “what if” silly than the next, but here’s a representative one I picked at random:
In three sentences your guy gets everything wrong.
First, the planet has warmed naturally over the past half century, and the amount of warming is entirely within the parameters of natural historical climate fluctuations. According to Occam’s Razor, it is wrong to add an extraneous entity such as CO2 to the natural global warming question:
“Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.”
— William of Ockham (1285-1349)
The biggest mistake the warmist crowd made was to hang their hat on CO2 as the culprit, when there is scant evidence that the existence of a very minor trace gas is necessary to explain natural climate variability. Adding CO2 to the explanation goes well beyond what is necessary. You might as well add the declining number of pirates to explain natural climate variability.
Next, your “But what if ________!?!” guy states that the oceans have warmed. Wrong. The ARGO buoy system shows gradual deep ocean cooling.
And his last sentence can be juxtaposed to say that all of the energy produced by 200,000 Californias went into the ocean in a single year. But see, Leland, the oceans are cooling, not warming. Wherever your guy gets his figures, they’re flat wrong.
So relax, Leland, methane calthates aren’t gonna getcha. I recall when Howard Hughes built the Glomar Explorer to ostensibly mine the methane hydrate ices that were said to litter the ocean floor. There were stories in the media explaining to the ignorant hoi polloi how the methane would be sucked up and turned into natural gas, and how Howard Hughes was the world leader in undersea methane extraction.
But the truth was more interesting: Hughes had actually been working for the U.S. government. The ship he built had a huge claw, big enough to grab a Russian nuclear sub that had sunk with all aboard. The U.S. military had located the sub, and Hughes’ crash shipbuilding program resulted in the U.S. picking up the Russian sub [IIRC, they got only a part of the sub, possibly including the code books].
The ruse worked, and the media [and the Russians] only found out the real story well after the fact. Methane extraction was simply a plausible sounding cover story.
So here’s my point: if methane is all over the ocean floor like your guy claims, that immense load of energy would have been exploited by a lot of countries. The technology isn’t that advanced; we’ve had pretty good vacuum cleaners for a long time now.
That tells us that methane littering the sea floor is a pipe dream. Why would energy companies go to the immense trouble and expense of locating and extracting natural gas [methane] from deep underground, or from under the continental shelf, when the methane is supposedly there on the sea floor for the taking?
Hughes picked up the Russian sub a long time ago [late ’60’s or early ’70’s, IIRC]. If that methane were really there, a methane calthate industry would have sprung up to convert the methane ice into cash. But nobody is hoovering methane ice off the sea floor. My guess is because the methane isn’t there, or is there in such minute quantities that it debunks your author’s wacky conjecture.
Nasif Nahle (19:57:28) :
Leif, Leif… Are you saying that you can store a process quantity into the oceans???? You’re joking, Aha?
I’m not saying that, but very paper in the last few years I have read on that subject say that, so I’ve adopted what seems to be the going definition of this [and, as I’ve said, it seems to be a sensible, reasonable, and eminently useful definition]. The idea of heat being something in transit implies to me something moved from location A to location B during the time T. That something was clearly present at A before and is now present at B, and was at all times present along the path from A to B. To abstract that into state functions and the like obscures the fundamental physics. The outmoded thermodynamic definition that keeps stressing that ‘heat is not a substance’ was probably in reaction to the old phlogiston theory.
Nasif Nahle (19:55:16) :
Show me one from serious physics. I have shown you many authors supporting the real definition of heat.
I have already [e.g. Levitus, S., J.I. Anthony, T.P. Boyer, et al. 2009: Global ocean heat content 1955-2008 in light of recently revealed instrumentation problems. Geophysical Res. Letters, Vol. 36, L07608], here are some more:
Di Iorio, D. and C. Sloan, 2009: Upper ocean heat content in the Nordic seas. Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 114.
Johnson, G.C., J.M. Lyman, and J.K. Willis. 2008. Global Oceans: Heat Content. In State of the Climate in 2007, D. H. Levinson and J. H. Lawrimore, Eds., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 89, 7, S39-S41.
Lyman, J.M. and G.C. Johnson, 2008: Estimating global upper-ocean heat content despite irregular sampling. Journal of Climate, 21 (21), 5629-5641 doi:10.1175/2008JCLI2259.
Baringer, M.O., S.L. Garzoli, 2007: Meridional heat transport determined with expendable bathythermographs – Part 1: Error estimates from model and hydrographic data. Deep-Sea Research Part I – Oceanographic Research Papers 54(8): 1390-1401.
Hadfield, RE, NC Wells, SA Josey & JJM Hirschi, 2007: On the accuracy of North Atlantic temperature and heat storage fields from Argo. Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans 112 (C1)
Johnson, G.C., J.M. Lyman and J.K. Willis, 2007: Global Oceans: Heat Content. In State of the Climate in 2006, A. Arguez, Ed., Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 88, 6, S31-S33.
Ivchenko, V. O.; Wells, N. C. and D. L. Aleynik,2006: Anomaly of heat content in the northern Atlantic in the last 7 years: Is the ocean warming or cooling? Geophys. Res. Lett., Vol. 33(22), L22606, 10.1029/2006GL027691, 25 November 2006.
Yoshida, T. and M. Hoshimoto, 2006: Heat content change in the surface isothermal layer of a warm core ring in the sea east of Japan. JOURNAL OF OCEANOGRAPHY, 62(3), 283-287
Willis, J.K., Roemmich, D. and B. Cornuelle, 2004: Interannual variability in upper ocean heat content, temperature, and thermosteric expansion on global scales. Journal of Geophysical Research, 109 (C12): Art. No. C12036 DEC 30 2004
Willis, J.K., Roemmich, D., Cornuelle, B., 2003: Combining altimetric height with broadscale profile data to estimate steric height, heat storage, subsurface temperature, and sea-surface temperature variability. Journal of Geophysical Research, 108(C9), 3292, doi:10.1029/2002JC001755.
etc.
I see that the title in the top post doesn’t reflect the title of the press release, which goes:
The amendment here is what caused my confusion.
‘Driver’ is defined:
Any natural or human-induced factor that directly or indirectly
causes a change in an ecosystem.
http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.776.aspx.pdf
There are a number of drivers forcing climate change during glacial terminations. The mid-range estimate for GHG contribution in the overall warming period (~5k yrs) is 50%. CO2 is reckoned at ~33%, albedo at ~30%, and insolation forcing at about 1% – although I did read one paper that postulated insolation contribution could be as high as 20% – definitely an outlier.
The midrange estimates put CO2 as the main, but not the initial driver.
Leif Svalgaard (20:47:18) :
Part 1:
Nasif Nahle (19:57:28) :
Leif, Leif… Are you saying that you can store a process quantity into the oceans???? You’re joking, Aha?
I’m not saying that, but very paper in the last few years I have read on that subject say that, so I’ve adopted what seems to be the going definition of this [and, as I’ve said, it seems to be a sensible, reasonable, and eminently useful definition]. The idea of heat being something in transit implies to me something moved from location A to location B during the time T. That something was clearly present at A before and is now present at B, and was at all times present along the path from A to B. To abstract that into state functions and the like obscures the fundamental physics. The outmoded thermodynamic definition that keeps stressing that ‘heat is not a substance’ was probably in reaction to the old phlogiston theory.
That is what the definition you adopted says, what it is pure nonsense. A trajectory (path) quantity or process quantity cannot be stored. Heat is a process quantity, so those sources from which you took the definition of heat that you adopted are wrong.
On the first sentence from your last argument: “To abstract that into state functions and the like obscures the fundamental physics“, I have to tell you that the concepts “state function”, “process quantity”, “trajectory”, and the like, pertain to basic and fundamental physics.
On the last sentence from your last argument: “The outmoded thermodynamic definition that keeps stressing that ‘heat is not a substance’ was probably in reaction to the old phlogiston theory.” Are you suggesting that heat, a trajectory quantity between an internal energy state and a second internal energy state is a substance or something of the kind?