This paper is to be published on-line on Friday in Physics Letters A Dr. Douglas graciously sent me an advance copy, of which I’m printing some excerpts. Douglas and Knox show some correlations between Top-of-atmosphere radiation imbalance and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The authors credit Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. with reviving interest on the subject due to his discussions on using ocean heat content as a metric for climate change.
Abstract
Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance
D.H. Douglass and R, S, Knox
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, PO Box 270171, Rochester, NY 14627-0171, USA
Earth’s radiation imbalance is determined from ocean heat content data and compared with results of direct measurements. Distinct time intervals of alternating positive and negative values are found: 1960–mid-1970s (−0.15), mid-1970s–2000 (+0.15), 2001–present (−0.2 W/m2), and are consistent with prior reports. These climate shifts limit climate predictability.
Introduction:
A strong connection between Earth’s radiative imbalance and the heat content of the oceans has been known for some time (see, e.g., Peixoto and Oort [1]). The heat content has played an important role in recent discussions of climate change, and Pielke [2] has revived interest in its relationship with radiation. Many previous papers have emphasized the importance of heat content of the ocean, particularly the upper ocean, as a diagnostic for changes in the climate system [3–7]. In this work we analyze recent heat content data sets, compare them with corresponding data on radiative imbalance, and point out certain irregularities that can be associated with climate shifts. In Section 2 the conservation of energy is applied to the climate system and the approximations involved in making the radiationheat content connection are discussed. In Section 3 data sources are enumerated. Section 4 gives the radiation imbalance for the Earth’s climate system. In Section 5, climate shifts, radiative imbalances and other climate parameters are discussed. A summary is in Section 6.
Discussion:
…
What is the cause of these climate shifts? We suggest that the low frequency component of the Pacific Decade Oscillation (PDO) may be involved. The PDO index changes from positive to negative near 1960; it remains negative until the mid-1970s where it
becomes positive; then it becomes negative again at about 2000. This mimics the FTOA data. The PDO index is one of the inputs in the synchronization analysis of Swanson and Tsonis [43]. One would like to be able to predict future climate. Such predictions are based upon the present initial conditions and some expectation that changes in the climate state are continuous. However, if there are abrupt changes such as reported by Swanson and Tsonis then this is not possible. These abrupt changes presumably
occur because the existing state is no longer stable and there is a transition to a new stable state.
Summary:
We determine Earth’s radiation imbalance by analyzing three recent independent observational ocean heat content determinations for the period 1950 to 2008 and compare the results with direct measurements by satellites. A large annual term is found in both the implied radiation imbalance and the direct measurements. Its magnitude and phase confirm earlier observations that delivery of the energy to the ocean is rapid, thus eliminating the possibility of long time constants associated with the bulk of the heat transferred. Longer-term averages of the observed imbalance are not only many-fold smaller than theoretically derived values, but also oscillate in sign. These facts are not found among the theoretical
predictions.
Three distinct time intervals of alternating positive and negative imbalance are found: 1960 to the mid 1970s, the mid 1970s to
2000 and 2001 to present. The respective mean values of radiation imbalance are −0.15, +0.15, and −0.2 to −0.3. These observations are consistent with the occurrence of climate shifts at 1960, the mid-1970s, and early 2001 identified by Swanson and Tsonis. Knowledge of the complex atmospheric-ocean physical processes is not involved or required in making these findings. Global surface temperatures as a function of time are also not required to be known.
Jacob Mack (20:41:55) :
Nasif,
thank you for your thorough response…much appreciated.
And you are welcome, Jacob. 🙂
Heat capacity is an extensive property and dependent upon mass; specific heat is intensive. The mass of the water; approxmately 71-74% of the Earth’s surface is alot of mass, but in addition water has an immensely high specific heat as well.
Just because bodies of water cool or rise in temperature at a slower rate, this does nothing to discredit heat transfer leading to higher global temps.
Leif Svalgaard (19:54:58) :
You can only have an amount or a quantity of something that is or exists.
Immaterial. I was specifically referring to George’s comment which was in response to the Wikipedia quote where Wikipedia = “they” in my comment.
Mark
[snip]
Reply: Smokey please refrain from badgering/personal attacks. ~ ctm
Leif Svalgaard (21:09:58) :
Nasif Nahle (20:59:26) :
The kinetic energy of the oceans is very small in comparison with the total available energy content in the oceans.
The ocean heat content is the kinetic energy of the random, chaotic movements of the molecules. Now, heat is the ultimate sink of available energy, and is not available to do work.
Oooh! I spoke too soon. Well, let’s start again with your lessons:
Kinetic energy is a state function, that is, a property of a thermodynamic system that depends on the current equilibrium state of that thermodynamic system, not the process by which that thermodynamic system acquired its current state .
On the other hand, heat and work are not state functions, but process quantities, i.e. physical quantities which describe the transition between an equilibrium state and another equilibrium state of a thermodynamic system. Got it? Two different things that must not be confused, correct?
Nasif Nahle (20:59:26) :
Leif Svalgaard (20:32:56) :
“They calculate the ocean heat content from the measured temperature profile.”
If they are calculating the ocean heat content, they are calculating nothing; consequently, they are disregarding the important portion of the total available energy into the system “oceans”. The kinetic energy of the oceans is very small in comparison with the total available energy content in the oceans.
What do you mean by this greater? The tidal kinetic energy? wind induced? the motion of the earth around the sun? the motion of the sun through the galaxy? The gravitational potential energy? The nuclear bound energy that could be released in a fission or fusion?
What is the total available energy content in the oceans according to you?
If you mean the kinetic energy in the degrees of freedom of the molecules in the ocean there is a direct formula connecting the temperature to the average kinetic energy.
I learned the definition of heat 40 years ago as a sophomore in college. My Classical Thermodynamics text (Fundamentals of Classical Thermodynamics, by Van Wylen and Sonntag who are still publishing thermo texts) defines heat on page 73, section 4.7 (Definition of Heat). I quote:
“Heat is defined as the form of energy that is transferred across the boundary of a system at a given temperature to another system (or the surroundings) at a lower temperature by virtue of the temperature difference between the two systems. That is, heat is transferred from the system at the higher temperature to the system at the lower temperature, and the heat transfer occurs solely because of the temperature difference between the two systems. Another aspect of this definition of heat is that a body never contains heat. Rather heat can be identified only as it crosses the boundary. Thus heat is a transient phenomenon.”
The authors then discuss dropping a hot block of copper into a cold beaker of water. Later on we are given the units:
“We define as our unit of heat the quantity of heat transferred from the copper to the water, and call the unit of heat the British thermal unit, which is abbreviated Btu. More specifically, this is called the 60-degree Btu, which may be defined as the quantity of heat required to raise 1 lbm of water from 59.5 F to 60.5F.
“Similarly, a calorie can be identified as the amount of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water from 14.5 C to 15.5 C.
“Further, heat transferred to a system is considered to be positive, and heat transferred from a system, negative. . . . The symbol Q is used to represent heat.”
The last time I looked, there are simple conversions between Btu, calorie, and joule as they are all units of energy.
Jim
Nasif Nahle (21:16:47) :
I have to tell you, if you don’t know it, that heat capacity is not the same than specific heat capacity, OK?
Heat capacity is the capacity of a body to store heat. It is typically measured in units of J/°C or J/K (which are equivalent) and is an extensive property for the body. The numbers you give as heat capacity are not heat capacity but specific heat capacity, intrinsic properties of the material. Good ole Wikipedia can even tell you more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_mass
I knew I shouldn’t have posted that when ctm was on duty!
Nasif Nahle (21:42:43) :
On the other hand, heat and work are not state functions
In the clause ‘ocean heat content’, ‘heat’ is clearly a state function, because of the word ‘content’. That is all. You may not like this meaning of heat, but it is the accepted usage in climate studies and astrophysics, and I have no problems with it. The heat content can be calculated from the temperature profile as the ARGO team does. I have no problems with that either. A very sensible and useful approach.
But to get you out of the broken record mode, how would you describe the coronal heating I referred to?
Ninderthana (07:03:08) : One factor none of you are seeming to consider is the up welling deep cool ocean water.
There is no upwelling of warmth (heat, energy, thermal whatever) because all upwelling of ocean water is cold. I will just say ‘warmth’ to avoid another argument. Warmth does not transfer from the sea floor to the surface, nor does it transfer from the surface to the sea floor. I never dived the Great Lakes, so I have no experience or personal observations of descending thermoclines or layers- but then this post is about the oceans. If you dive into the deep oceans, the surface may be warm, but immediately gets cold within the first few feet. There is no warmth coming from below- it only gets colder.
anna v (21:48:37) :
[Nasif Nahle (20:59:26) :
If they are calculating the ocean heat content, they are calculating nothing; consequently, they are disregarding the important portion of the total available energy into the system “oceans”. The kinetic energy of the oceans is very small in comparison with the total available energy content in the oceans.]
What do you mean by this greater? The tidal kinetic energy? wind induced? the motion of the earth around the sun? the motion of the sun through the galaxy? The gravitational potential energy? The nuclear bound energy that could be released in a fission or fusion?
No; the total availabe energy comprehends only the gravitational potential energy, the internal energy and the kinetic energy; all of them. Nevertheless, kinetic energy of oceans is very small compared with the total available content of energy in the oceans.
What is the total available energy content in the oceans according to you?
According to me? Too much… According to climatologists, the global mean of available gravitational potential energy is 4.4 x 10^5 J/m^2 (energy per unit area), and the global mean kinetic energy is 0.006 x 10^5 J/m^2.
If you mean the kinetic energy in the degrees of freedom of the molecules in the ocean there is a direct formula connecting the temperature to the average kinetic energy.
Yes, temperature is proportional to the average kinetic energy of a thermodynamic system:
T = 1/[ΔS/ΔU] at constant volume (V) and number of particles (N), or:
[1/2 mv^2] = 3/2 kT
Leif Svalgaard (22:08:28) :
Nasif Nahle (21:16:47) :
I have to tell you, if you don’t know it, that heat capacity is not the same than specific heat capacity, OK?
Heat capacity is the capacity of a body to store heat. It is typically measured in units of J/°C or J/K (which are equivalent) and is an extensive property for the body. The numbers you give as heat capacity are not heat capacity but specific heat capacity, intrinsic properties of the material. Good ole Wikipedia can even tell you more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_mass
The units of specific heat capacity are J/Kg K.
I gave the units J/m^3 K, which are for volumetric heat capacity. It is the product of density by specific heat capacity.
{J/m^3 K} = {(Kg/m^3) (J/Kg K)}
I don’t need Wikipedia, but it’s good in some things.
Leif Svalgaard (22:19:54) :
In the clause ‘ocean heat content’, ‘heat’ is clearly a state function, because of the word ‘content’. That is all. You may not like this meaning of heat, but it is the accepted usage in climate studies and astrophysics, and I have no problems with it. The heat content can be calculated from the temperature profile as the ARGO team does. I have no problems with that either. A very sensible and useful approach.
But to get you out of the broken record mode, how would you describe the coronal heating I referred to?
Sorry for them (the authors of the paper); they should have writen “total content of available energy in the oceans”, unless they were referring to the energy transferred from the oceans to the atmosphere or to other systems. 🙂
How would I describe the coronal heating you referred to? There are two possible ways of explaining it. Of course those are speculations:
1. The Sun is not so gaseous as solar physicists think, or…
2. Quantum tunneling; although we should look for a quantum barrier, possibly the Helmet Streamers; excess of protons and electrons over there due to trapped plasma.
Nasif Nahle (23:12:35) :
The units of specific heat capacity are J/Kg K.
No, all that is required is a way of removing the reference to the ‘size’ of the body, be it measured in kg or m^3 or moles or whatever. To make the difference between an extensive and an intrinsic property.
The heat content has nothing to do with ‘available’ energy [it is in fact not available once it is heat – entropy never decreases] and has nothing to do with gravitational potential energy. And the oceans have a certain heat capacity [ability to store heat], determined by their volume [or at least the volume considered].
There is really no need to bring in all these straw men [like ‘heat is photons’ and the unit of heat [dQ] is Watt while that of Q is Joule, etc]. It is very simple: in climate studies [page 2, line 4 of the paper] “one generally finds the total ocean heat content expressed in units of 10^22 J”
In http://www.climatesci.org/publications/pdf/R-247.pdf you can find an authoritative [you like authorities] discussion of the issues of heat storage, H, in the oceans. The quantity dH/dt is a measure of ‘Global Warming’, which makes H(t), the heat stored in the system at any given time, t, a very interesting and important number.
Nasif Nahle (23:28:37) :
How would I describe the coronal heating you referred to? There are two possible ways of explaining it. Of course those are speculations:
1. The Sun is not so gaseous as solar physicists think, or…
2. Quantum tunneling; although we should look for a quantum barrier, possibly the Helmet Streamers; excess of protons and electrons over there due to trapped plasma.
Where is the warmer body from which heat is transiting to the colder corona in order to heat it?
steve (14:50:58) :
Tallbloke, it is not a matter of selecting a study of new dam construction affects on sea level to believe. If it is perhaps you know which study the IPCC relied upon to leave this factor or any of the other factors I mentioned out of the attribution tables.
Steve, I apologize if the difficulty I’m having understanding the grammar of these two sentences leads me to incorrectly interpret them, but if I get your meaning, what I’m trying to say is that the IPCC say they did include land based factors in their estimates. Clearly this conflicts with your scientists paper if they say all the sea level change can be accounted for by land use change. I don’t have any resolution to this inconsistency, nor the time to hunt for one at the moment. However, the uncertainty it throws up is duly noted.
Cheers
Wake up folks!
Stop arguing about the definition of heat and look at the graph!
It shows the Earth is loosing more heat as it warms up, thus disproving AGW.
It proves negative feedback!
It proves a shortwave forcing is responsible for the warming, since a system cant heat up and loose more energy without increasing the input energy (which is strangely enough due to the observed 5% decrease in low cloud, duh!)
Repeat, This one graph is all the evidence you need to disprove AGW!
Did anyone mention the massive amount of stored latent heat energy that the liquid ocean represents? How much energy would be released from the ocean if you froze it, an awful lot!
cba (17:32:12) :
“” tallbloke (05:12:16)
… stored down to 700m…
“”
I have some basic problems with that.
Rather than an a priori rejection based on a misunderstanding between the density curves of fresh and salt water, I came at it from the other direction. I did the calcs on how much heat must be stored to account for the estimated thermal expansion, and the depth to which it is stored implied by the gradient of temperature from the base of the surface mixed zone to the thermocline, which is pretty linear. All my calcs worked out quite neatly, so I then looked at the how.
I had difficulty understanding it too. So I went and asked an oceanologist how the received energy is propogated downwards. He told me that below the depth waves mix the water to (50 metres in the tropics, deeper in the southern ocean where the rollers are really big), tidal action and current subduction does the job.
Now I’ve read elsewhere that you need to be careful about which oceanologist you talk to, because there are as many theories of oceanology as there are oceanologists. I find the uncertainty this implies faintly unsurprising. However, either the energy gets down there somehow, or the satellite altimetry and it’s interpretation is all to cock, ARGO buoys tell complete porkies, Phil Jones is lying his head off about SST’s, and we may as well all pack up and head to speculation city.
Leif Svalgaard (16:22:36) :
tallbloke (13:58:06) :
The long term changes in LOD (multi-decadal) affect long term changes in SST (multi-decadal).
‘affect’ is a weasel word. By what mechanism? Does Gross claim this too? Why not?
Not so far as I’m aware. I don’t know what his personal ideas are, because he hasn’t told me, or you. Perhaps in his position, he has chosen to hold his peace. Speculations on a postcard.
I have several ideas about mechanism. I’m already well acquainted with your objections to them, which are duly noted and not ignored. For now I’ve chosen to discuss them elsewhere. This is partly in deference to Anthony’s wishes, and partly because we tend to focus too narrowly on these issues and miss the other interesting stuff happening on these threads.
Nasif Nahle (23:28:37) :
Sorry for them (the authors of the paper);
You can feel sorry for The National Research Council too: http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11175&page=21
and for every other climatologist out there.
This is accepted usage and is therefore correct, the way language evolves. This is really my only point.
Nasif Nahle (23:00:16) :
Yes, temperature is proportional to the average kinetic energy of a thermodynamic system:
T = 1/[ΔS/ΔU] at constant volume (V) and number of particles (N), or:
[1/2 mv^2] = 3/2 kT
Nasif, I’m not trained in particle physics, so I wonder of you could help me. I’ve been trying to follow your discussion (!) with Leif and wondered if your position has any bearing on the conundrum I’m tackling with respect to the way solar energy entering the oceans must be propogated downwards to account for observed ocean ‘heat content’. You seem to be saying that once the solar energy is absorbed into the ocean, it is no longer ‘heat’ but part of the overall ocean energy, and must be accounted for in either the gravitational potential, the internal energy, or the kinetic energy.
Can you see a way any of those three might be able to transfer energy downwards to depths of 700m or more, well beyond the 70m or so that is the limit of where the transfer of energy from incoming solar radiation to the water molecules and metallic ions and chloride ions takes place? For example, could gravity differentiate those molecules or ions which have absorbed solar energy from those which haven’t?
Thanks for your help.
Leif, I think you are both right. But as an example of the way such idiomatic use as you propose can lead to incorrect thinking which can pervade an entire branch of science I offer this:
A warmist said the air heated the ocean.
I pointed out that the air doesn’t heat the ocean, but it might slow it’s rate of cooling.
He claimed that this amounted to the same thing because the air heated the ocean by slowing down the rate it cools at.
“!!!!!!!!!!!!!” I replied.
I’d like your view on the question I posed for Nasif above if you have time.
Open question:
Could the changing shape of water molecule affect it’s buoyancy?
http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/molecule.html
The experimental values for gaseous water molecule are O-H length 0.95718 Å, H-O-H angle 104.474° [64].e. These values are not maintained in liquid water, where ab initio (O-H length 0.991 Å, H-O-H angle 105.5° [90]) and diffraction studies (O-H length 1.01 Å, O-D length 0.98 Å [1485]; O-D length 0.970 Å, D-O-D angle 106° [91])f suggest slightly greater values, which are caused by the hydrogen bonding weakening the covalent bonding and reducing the repulsion between the electron orbitals. These bond lengths and angles are likely to change, due to polarization shifts, in different hydrogen-bonded environments and when the water molecules are bound to solutes and ions. Commonly used molecular models use O-H lengths of between 0.957 Å and 1.00 Å and H-O-H angles of 104.52° to 109.5°.