Spencer: Something’s Fishy With Global Ocean Temperature Measurements

http://www.ssmi.com/amsr/amsre_sst_validation_statistics.html#amsre_sst_compared_to_in_situ_sst
Look at the first chart comparing drifting bouys and moored ones. The drifing bouys throughout most of July show a consistantly higher reading. I am sure our more technical writers can determine if there is anything to this.

Tom in Florida (11:49:17) :
http://www.ssmi.com/amsr/amsre_sst_validation_statistics.html#amsre_sst_compared_to_in_situ_sst
Look at the first chart comparing drifting bouys and moored ones. The drifing bouys throughout most of July show a consistantly higher reading. I am sure our more technical writers can determine if there is anything to this.
Is this trend only for July? what about the previous months?
Speculation: warm currents drag the drifting ones, which never sample the colder upwelling that the moored ones must at times by construction.

We’ve had some changes in ocean circulation SST effects, e.g., PDO, AMO, AO, could this imply lack of appropriate coverage and overreliance on interpolation?
SSTs this extreme should be having an effect on weather not observed this summer, e.g., Canada and corn belt US are well below norm indicating Arctic/Temperate interface is south of normal, the obverse of that expected.

Dr Spencer
What’s fishy?
1) First the concept of a global sea temperature is even more flawed than that of a global surface temperature.
2) From buoys it is derived from an absurdly small number of data points-satellites have their own inherent problems.
3) The sea continually mixes-a patch of warm water can shift from one hour to the next and either be read or drift away.
4) Seven years is an absurdly short period from which to read any meaningful data
Below is the executive explanation of changes and reconstruction of existing figures from 2008- which now excludes satellite data.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/papers/merged-product-v3.pdf
This is the detailed document from which the executive statement comes.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/papers/SEA.temps08.pdf
It must be remembered that Historic global SST data is even more sparse than surface global temperatures. Both have their genesis in James Hansens’ 1986 document which seems to have aquired a factual scientific basis from which fractions of a degree are calculated.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1987/1987_Hansen_Lebedeff.pdf
We may know SST from extremely localised locations for a few decades-for example Plymouth UK- but it is surely not wise for us all to pretend this is a finely tuned science, and we know all the answerrs. Heck, we dont even know the right questions!
In short, parsing nonsensical figures will result in nonsensical answers.
Keep up the good work-I find your information very interesting.
tonyb

Dr Spencer
Sorry, the above comments were phrased for the general audience we get here, obviously you already know all this stuff and much much more!
Tonyb

Orwell – “”He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” ”
Climate Science — he who controls the “adjustments” controls the “data”.

Looking higher in the directory of…
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
… I find a read-me file…
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/README
…that states only:
“In July 2009, NCDC transitioned to the use of an improved Global Land and Ocean data set (Smith et al., 2008) which allows better analysis of temperatures throughout the record, with the greatest improvements in the late nineteenth century and since 1985. Improvements in the late nineteenth century are due to improved tuning of the analysis methods.”
That’s a fairly recent change (last month).

The trend differential between AMSE-R minus the CRU SST in-situ data as well according to the RSS validation data.
The average is +0.035C per decade but there is wide dispersion amongst the different methods of in-situ measurement:
+0.066C per decade for ship engine intake
-0.104C per decade for moored bouys
-0.027C per decade for drifting bouys
+0.077C per decade for ship bucket
+0.165C per decade for ship hulls
So, perhaps there is more warming in the Ocean SSTs but the ship-based measurements are adding in a cooling trend to the in-situ CRU SSTs.

Look at 2003. CRUT was much Higher than you. Sometimes you pick up something they don’t. Sometimes, they smear the red crayon out a little too far from one of their sensors.
It’s just an example of using old, inefficient tools, vs using new, modern efficient ones.

Dr. Roy and Anthony:
The NCDC SST Anomaly data…
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
…is the NCDC’s ERSST.v3b data…
ftp://eclipse.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ersstv3b/pdo/aravg.mon.ocean.90S.90N.asc
…except it has the years 1901 to 2000 as its base years, instead of the “normal” NCDC SST climatology.
The ERSST.v3 data was released last year with much fanfare, trumpets blowing, a paper to describe the how the new dataset incorporates satellite data. A few months later they stopped updating it. Then back in November, I think, they re-released it with the satellite data removed as ERSST.v3b. The satellite data was causing a downward bias that some users didn’t like. In other words they bent under peer pressure. I’ve done a couple of posts on this dataset.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/search?q=ersst.v3b
Give me a few minutes to finish the graphs.

Ships and buoys obtain thermometric readings from different layers of near-surface water. Microwave measurements are a totally different animal, which I suspect more closely follows surface skin temperature, rather than layer temperature. Since the skin is evaporating rapidly (~100skins/day*), one should not expect high coherence. The skin is absorbing all the LW backradiation; the subsurface layers are essentailly insulated from it, with only minor conductive transfer downward. It might prove as basic as that.
*That’s better than Lee Trevino ever did!

Dear Dr. Spencer,
could you kindly sketch, how the AMSR-E instrument works. Is it scanning microwaves emitted from the sea surface, probably at 89 GHz, which would be the tale of the Planck spectrum? The tale intensity would contain the temperature T of the emitter.
In wikipedia it is stated that the atmosphere gets opaque for microwaves above 300 GHz (1 mm wavelength). Is there atmospheric absorption below 300 GHz, and if so, how do you correct for it?
Do you know, what is the atmospheric absorption mechanism above 300 GHz?
Do you measure during the day, or only at night?

Anthony and Dr. Spencer:
As discussed in my 13:00:38 comment above, the NCDC’s SST data…
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat
…is the NCDC’s ERSST.v3b data…
ftp://eclipse.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ersstv3b/pdo/aravg.mon.ocean.90S.90N.asc
…with different base years. Here are the two plotted together:
http://i27.tinypic.com/2mrrv4i.png
Here’s a graph of the NCDC SST anomalies MINUS the ERSST.v3b SST anomalies over the term of the data:
http://i29.tinypic.com/339kchz.png
And a short-term (5-year) version of NCDC SST anomalies MINUS the ERSST.v3b SST anomalies graph:
http://i28.tinypic.com/2hnns0k.png
A few days ago, Lucia @ TheBlackboard posted that NCDC had announced the update of their global temperature product:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/noaa-new-and-improved/
The NCDC Announcement:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/README
And my comment at Lucia’s read:
############
Lucia: The new NCDC dataset should be based on the ERSST.v3 data they released last year [It is as confirmed above], then updated this year (ERSST.v3b) due to complaints about the downward satellite bias. Refer to the following link. Although the dataset is ERSST.v3b, they also discuss in the links the changes they made to their calculations of land surface temperatures.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/ersstv3.php
I’ve discussed the new dataset in a number of posts:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/search?q=ersst.v3b
Steve McIntyre also had a few:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6038
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6100
My favorite ERSST.v3b dataset is the Southern Ocean SST anomalies:
http://i41.tinypic.com/29zxus7.jpg
It gets even funkier when you compare the Southern Ocean South of the Southeast Pacific with the remainder of the Southern Ocean:
http://i41.tinypic.com/qsjwwp.jpg
Note how the “Remainder of Southern Ocean” appears to have what could be a 100-year cycle, but that portion South of the Southeast Pacific has all of the unusual variation. Curious.
##############
And I can assure you that the new NCDC dataset is not based on and Hadley Centre dataset. The Hadley Centre SST data has a step change in 1998 that results from the merger of two incompatible datasets:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/12/step-change-in-hadsst-data-after-199798.html
The Hadley Centre step change does not appear in NCDC Minus ERSST.v3b graph above.
Regards.

just some thought as I was reading that news:
could it be simply due to some difference in adjustment due to “time of reading”?
DTR is said to decrease with a larger up trend in minima and a weak up trend in maxima.
I remember reading taht CRU was adjusting the data to homogenize the time of reading. I think for middle of afternoon (not sure…)
I expect satellite to adjust for middle of the day, that is solar noon (1pm or 2 pm depending your part of the world).
That is CRU has reading temperature at a later time in the day than satellites. So satellites should have a larger up trend than CRU.
Of course from back of the envelop calculation, the trend Dr Spencer observes is 30 to 1000 times larger than what I expect from this effect as I present it here (depending more exact time of reading). So it cannot be the entire story (I just spent 5 min on this, not a thorough thinking at all). Perhaps a start though, time of reading and method for homogenization.

GLOBAL COOLING HAS ARRIVED. GLOBAL WARMING IS DEAD
By Terri Jackson
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/environment/pouring-cold-water-on-global-warming-14299972.html
“The Russian physicists have analysed sun spot activity from 1882 to 2000 and have noted that the minimum of the cycle of solar activity will occur around 2021 to 2026 and that we will be facing not global warming but global cooling leading to a deep freeze around 2050.”
I would agree, there is a possibility of a prolong minimum 2021-2026, as this graph predicts:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PolarField1Cr.gif
I am rather sceptical about ‘deep freeze’. If the Sun is driver of the temperature anomaly, activity is predicted to increase post 2025. If there is a strong influence of some other factors (e.g. possible link to the geomagnetic activity) than temperatures may decline but not at a rapid rate.
http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/40/88/86/PDF/NATA.pdf

Bob Tisdale (14:01:59) :
“My favorite ERSST.v3b dataset is the Southern Ocean SST anomalies:”
The absence of Volcanic “forcing” in the 19th century eg Krakatoa 1883 and Tarawera 1888 seems to be absent in this dataset,is this a mix of hadcru ? Problematic issue due to inhomogeneous sampling. eg Stenchilov 2006
“The observed value no doubt has substantial temporal sampling errors, and the observations for the earliest eruptions considered may suffer from inadequate
geographical sampling or other data quality issues. It is noteworthy in this respect that the global-mean surface temperature record used in this study surprisingly shows no global cooling following the very large 1883 Krakatau eruption [Jones et al., 2003]. However, the surface air temperature reconstructed by Hansen and Lebedeff [1988] shows a more sizable cooling effect of Krakatau, which
indicates the level of uncertainty in the observations themselves, especially for earlier volcanic events.”

maksimovich (15:43:16) :
Tarawera should read 1886

Leif Svalgaard (14:37:50) :
“Since your graph is just curve fitting it has no predictive power. It already fails to post-dict the polar fields before 1967.”
I am well aware that such an interpretation may be entertained by some. The fact that more and more serious scientists, after much effort and studious work, are reaching same conclusion is a delight to the formula’s author.
Although most of predictions are mater of opinion, and often just a guess work, my prediction is a mathematical operation on the past, with set of constants sufficiently robust to outlast most of the current crop of predictors.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/PolarField1Cr.gif

In my last post I mentioned the paucity of genuine SST’s for all but a very limited number of places for a very limited timescale and yet that global sea temperatures-despite this lack of data-were being constructed and used as factual ‘proof’ of warming.
I also mentioned Plymouth so I have retrieved this from another thread as it shows the data in a historic context and illustrates that-like global surface temperatures-if you wait long enough temperatures will go down as well as up.
“As with surface temperatures we need to step back and
a) wonder at the practicality of a global temperature
b) Look back in time to ascertain how temperatures respond over a long period.
Last year I wrote a series of short pieces on ‘Fish as a temperature proxy’ which traced back the change from warm, to mid, to cold water fish around the south west coast of Britain. We can trace these from actual records of catches back to around the 13th Century and which also live on locally in place names such as the Pilchard Inn.
This extract from the University of Plymouth gives us some idea that -like surface temperatures- sea temperatures are constantly fluctuating (Also note that historic records are being constantly ‘adjusted.’ See the CA debate on ‘buckets.’)
“Detection of environmental change in a marine ecosystem—evidence from the western English Channel
References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.
Stephen J. Hawkins, , Alan J. Southward and Martin J. Genner
Marine Biological Association of the UK, The Laboratory, Citadel Hill, Plymouth PL1 2PB, UK
Received 28 January 2002; revised 1 November 2002; accepted 25 November 2002. ; Available online 4 February 2003.
Abstract
To separate human-induced changes from natural fluctuations in marine life requires long-term research. The western English Channel has been investigated from Plymouth for over 100 years. The abundance of marine life has been recorded and related to physical changes in the environment. By comparing different parts of the ecosystem we can demonstrate historic natural fluctuations, allowing prediction of effects of future global change. From the 1920s to the 1950s there was a period of warming of the sea, with increases in abundance of species of fish, plankton and intertidal organisms that are typically common in warmer waters to the south of Britain. After 1962 the sea cooled down and northern cold-water species became more abundant. Since the 1980s regional sea surface temperature has increased again and warm-water species are once more becoming abundant.”
This is part of an aeons old natural cycle-unless someone can demonstrate that Man has interfered with that cycle?
Tonyb

What about the possibility of air currents over the oceans world wide having calmed down a bit so that there is less evaporation of the the ocean skin? Could the late start to the hurricane season this year be related? Are there regions of the oceans with unusual or extended doldrums, like the old-time sailors got stuck in from time to time? I guess that buoys would sample deeper than the skin.

Question: if the oceans were losing heat into space more rapidly than before, what would be the impact of temperatures at the water/air phase boundry? Would they not increase with the increased transfer rate?
The main effect of heat transfer from the oceans to the atmosphere would be increased humidity (water vapour content) near the surface. The heat would then be transported to where ever rain droplets form, warming the atmosphere at that location. Typically higher up in the atmosphere and to a significant extent over land.
Warming of the near surface atmosphere over warmer SSTs would occur primarily from an increased greenhouse effect from higher water vapour content.

This part I feel difficult to believe. Aside from ’spreading ridges’ which are constantly exuding basaltic lavas, there would be big undersea volcanoes that could erupt cataclysmically like Pinabuto.
Conventional wisdom, which is probably right, says volcanoes along the mid-ocean ridges don’t erupt cataclysmically. Cataclysmic eruptions only occur with volcanoes on or along the continental plates. Incidentally there is a Phillipines continental plate.
Although, the statement this phenomenon has been fairly stable over the last say 100 million years refers to geological timescales and does not preclude significant variation over shorter timescales (say less than a 1,000 years). Which is not to say there is significant variation over shorter timescales.

Bob Tisdale (18:08:15) : That’s the RSS Lower troposphere data. We’re talking SST here. RSS does that to:
http://ssmi.com/sst/microwave_oi_sst_browse.html
That the two are different isn’t surprising. What is surprising is the differential’s sign…

Dr Spencer, thank you for explaining how the sensor works.I can now see how alarming this divergence is!!

So much for the unfounded criticisms that WUWT never has any “warming” stories.
My contention a few threads ago should have been clearer – that warming stories come with doubts about it virtually every time. Cooling stories generally don’t. There are exceptions. This is the first post I’ve read that suggested the formal recoords may be understanding the warming trend consonant with global warming. Not having read every single post here, I allow that my generalisation may be off-base. But perhaps someone would like to stand up and say there is a roughly even balance here.

Bob Tisdale (19:40:32) :
Can you separate signals by say firstly nh/sh ratios.
Then say SH by 30/45/ 60 latitudes (so as to ascertain zonal climatology) hence we can differentiate with model (ensemble sampling ) error,and causative mechanisms.
eg http://www.temis.nl/protocols/o3field/data/forecast/today_sp_sm.gif

Mark (15:48:10) :
I can’t believe all those temperature sensors in the oceans are wrong.
And I can’t believe, after all the satellite problems of late, that this isn’t just another one going haywire with all the changes in the Solar System Environment.

I’m sorry to interrupt, but this has to be one of the most interesting comment threads I have ever read! (Sorry to have to relegate you to second place Dr. Svalgaard)
Truly marvellous to behold…

Adam Grey (19:48:13) : “My contention a few threads ago should have been clearer – that warming stories come with doubts about it virtually every time. Cooling stories generally don’t. There are exceptions. This is the first post I’ve read that suggested the formal recoords may be understanding the warming trend consonant with global warming. Not having read every single post here, I allow that my generalisation may be off-base.”
Good of you to admit the off-base thing. Because there is as much friction here [airing dirty laundry over domestic disputes] as there is fighting with third parties.
So I have to correct this: no “there are exceptions.”
Reality: There are “normal, ordinary disputes”. But these are commonplace and not “exceptions” to the rule as you describe it.
Capice??
The main goal here is THE TRUTH whatever that may be.
CHRIS
Norfolk, VA, USA

RayB (12:30:44) :
My first reaction is to question Jim Hansen’s NASA. You know… Normal Anthropogenic Supplemental Adjustment, Normally Adjusted Somewhat Above.. yeah, that NASA. The same guys looking for a roughly +2.4º El Nino SST anomaly based on AGW forcing.
I’d like to see some -RAW- ARGO data to put next to this, not the filtered by warmers stuff.
——-
Also, NASA – Numerous Adjustments Significantly Above
Agree on the need for access to raw data, since overly aggressive manipulations may result in inappropriate reports.

“Jimmy Haigh (15:05:46)
Can I add that it still measures freezing water at 0C (32F) and boiling water at 100C (212F)?”
So you live at sea level ?

Might be timely to refresh our ideas of temperature.
Temperature is an intensive variable which is applied to a volume of matter to derive a computationally useful number, “stored heat”.
In itself temperature is no different to a telephone number, and when averaged, is as nonsensical as an averaged telephone number. But when applied to a volume of matter, it then serves a useful metric as a measure of heat.
I’ll leave it here for further comment.

Manfred: You asked, “do they simply mean, the (high precision) satellite data was just lower ?”
By removing the satellite data, SST anomalies rose a few hundredths of a deg C from the late 80s to present.
http://i30.tinypic.com/8yw4gh.png
Most of that, though, was in the high latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere.

Tom in Texas: You asked, “Have you added 2.4°C to the AVHRR data and plotted?
“Graph from here: http://i30.tinypic.com/23ws5tv.png”
To what end?

UAH-Ocean trend:
http://www.klimadebat.dk/forum/vedhaeftninger/uahoceantemp.gif
It appears that the 1998 peak (+0,77K) is more than twice the 2009 peak (+0,38K)
It appears that ALL years with El Nino since 1997 has had bigger peak in UAH ocean than 2009.
It appears that the UAH OCEAN has a colder trend since 1997 than UAH global. The july2009 uah ocean peak is perhaps higher compared to UAH global than normal trend would suggest? If so indicating special winds etc?

Syl (04:13:15) :
—-
In that PDF figure 7, which shows world 6.9GHz hotspots, speaks to me, I’ve uploaded it here:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/6pt9ghz_world_rfi.png
—–
Very interesting. Given that the resolution is a bit poor, I’d still like to know what big population centers exist along the Pak/Afghan border. 🙂 And why the Middle East has more interference than all of Europe.
Syl, just a few thoughts about your questions.
For the Pak/Afghan border, think of military sources. This is the region where the remote controlled drones fly and a lot of military communication takes place.
There is a huge difference between Europe and the Middle East:
Vegetation versus sand deserts, moist lands versus very dry environments and cloudy air versus dry air.
The difference in these conditions could enhance the Middle East signal.

Syl said
“Very interesting. Given that the resolution is a bit poor, I’d still like to know what big population centers exist along the Pak/Afghan border. 🙂 And why the Middle East has more interference than all of Europe.”
Along the border it could be refugees-mobile phones are widespread throughout the area, as are satellite phones.
tonyb

As one of a team who performed insight/oversight to the AMSR-E thermal design for the Aqua program, I can relate that the warm calibration target design was suspect, with a gradient issue. As a foreign “gift” instrument, our influence in getting the design issue addressed was inadequate. Not sure if this has anything to do with the observed trend, but just another tidbit to consider.

I have a great deal of trouble concluding anything with 7 years of data that is used to describe thousands of years of activity. Moreover, the data itself needs to be questioned since we don’t understand everything we know about it(similar to the ground-based data that is flawed by changing sites and site conditions). Gathering data from satellites sounds great but what are the potential errors? As noted by a previous poster, the floating sites may constitute a significant source of error and finally the fact that we are seeing interference suggests we don’t know all that we need to know before we attempt to draw conclusions.
REPLY: satellite data goes back to 1978, this is just one platform, AQUA. Dr. Spencer is looking into the RFI issue now and will have a spatial pattern analysis later this week. – A

I have a hunch that the TLT data is more sensitive to volcanism than the SST data.

Anthony, Roy, someone: can I access some type of “guide to calibration” for the satelliet measurements?

I think there is more to this than just ships, satellites, and adjustments. The infrared budget is a key component. Sensors in/on the ocean measure temperature directly at a deeper depth. Satellites measure heat based on the infrared budget at the outer edge of the atmosphere. What, if any, differences do we see there during this discrepant period?

wattsupwiththat (21:49:01) : 6.9GHz hotspots… “The problem seems to be mainly a Northern Hemisphere warm season phenomenon”
So there’s a possible contamination from ‘6.9GHz hotspots’. A frequency interference on satellites recordings working a same effect as an UHI on surface stations? Will there be a volunteer photo crew on this one too?
6.9GHzHotSpots.org ? 😉

If I understand this and the data sets are correct then over the last seven years something has been warming the skin of the oceans exclusively. Is there anything that can do that? I can’t imagine there are a lot of things, maybe a component of solar radiation or ocean water, maybe the atmosphere. If those things can’t explain it then one of the data sets is wrong. How likely is it that the direct physical measurements of buoys and ships are systematically wrong? Wouldn’t their errors more likely be random? How likely is it that the satellite measurements are systematically wrong?

Gary (05:30:47) “[…] the warm calibration target design was suspect, with a gradient issue.”
Can you elaborate (in layman’s terms)?

tallbloke (09:26:38) “Bob Tisdales graph of southern ocean […] is very interesting. […] The big swings in the high latitude southern ocean at the end of the C19th seem to coincide with the big el nino events […]”
I noticed that – and it’s also late C20th:
http://i41.tinypic.com/2q20f88.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/a331xv.jpg
– –
tallbloke (09:26:38) “[…] the changing depth of sub crustal currents evidenced by changes in the earth’s length of day […]”
Can you provide references &/or links to materials that are influencing your thinking here tallbloke?

John S. (11:32:46) “[…] nonunique mathematical inversion process that relies upon judicious choice of frequencies, polarizations and incidence angles […] distinctly different measurands (and geographic coverage) […] the short time interval of seven years cannot provide an adequate basis […] “trend” should be quite volatile.”
As often, thanks for the valuable notes.
–
Bob, the KNMI Climate Explorer site is great. Thanks.
–
Basil, your graphs are instructive. Comparing the amplitude-variation & phase-relation patterns in your plots suggests further lines of questioning…

Paul Vaughan (12:15:33) :
Vukcevic, how exactly are you calculating your anomalies?
Temperature data is readily available. Magnetic data is normalised to the same scale for the period (1900-2005, variations are wide) and an average (negative) gradient calculated; the result is then normalised to the temperature scale. In the absolute terms, obviously temperature (deg.K) varies less than +-0.2%, while magnetic field variations are much greater but far less erratic.

Bill Illis (12:43:45) :
The trend differential between AMSE-R minus the CRU SST in-situ data as well according to the RSS validation data. The average is +0.035C per decade but there is wide dispersion amongst the different methods of in-situ measurement:
+0.066C per decade for ship engine intake
-0.104C per decade for moored bouys
-0.027C per decade for drifting bouys
+0.077C per decade for ship bucket
+0.165C per decade for ship hulls
Possibilities
(1) too little data for these differences to be significant
(2) they are a product of different (and somewhat arbitrary) corrective factors
(3) they point to real differences eg Are moored buoys nearer land than drifting buoys? Do buoys generally cool more due to wind evaporating spray, a factor missing from ship hulls? Have wind effects (not just hurricanes) subsided? Above all, are land, sea-above-surface, and sea-below-surface affected differently by a changing Sun? Does land cool with quiet sun while oceans warm? The hemispheric difference is surely a big clue.

OT perhaps, but here’s a quote from a news article that concerns me:
“[…] the new, denser, shrubbier tundra could speed up global warming even further simply because that vegetation is darker and absorbs more solar energy. Previous studies have suggested that a global spread of thicker plant growth on the tundra could have the same effect as doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090823/climate_tundra_090823/20090823?hub=SciTech
As an ecologist I find the spin on this story truly irksome. I appreciate that a good funding-hook is part of survival for a researcher and I also love any excuse to be around fiords, but the polished & sophisticated storyline does not tell the whole truth, so deception needs to be called.
I note that the article points out that, “other researchers […] soon start reporting results from similar experiments in other parts of the world.”
Anthony, I know you have a few contacts – maybe you know someone scientifically qualified to put the significance of insolation at that latitude into perspective (relative to, say, the role of convection from the south) and provide commentary moving forward as these “other” studies come out “soon”. I’ve got all the background I need to assess the claims about the plant ecology & range shifts, but I would certainly appreciate a (concise) relative/comparative look at the elements of the physical energetics.
– –
Re: vukcevic (13:54:50)
My question is about how you calculate your “magnetic anomalies”. Are you using aa index? Are you calculating a “climatology” and then subtracting it? If so, based on annual cycles? – other cycles? Are you differencing? (If so, at what step-size?) Are you smoothing? (If so, what bandwidth?) In order to judge your work, I need to be able to reproduce it. Perhaps semantics are getting in the way, but that should be easy enough to overcome. Your graph is interesting. Maybe you can provide a ‘Vukcevic’s-magnetic-anomaly-calculation step-by-step-for-idiots’ cookbook recipe?
[ :

Leif Svalgaard (11:34:17) :
If you tell us which station(s) are used for the graph then we can accurately calculate the component for any time half of the last 1000 years, so can extend the graph that far.
Yes, thanks. I will take up your offer. Here is the location: nearest to 60 S, 60 W, half way between Ushuaia and Larsen Ice shelf.

Tom in Texas: You wrote with regards to the correction by Aaron Wells, “Yes, sorry. My point was that its easier to compare the wiggles when the trends originate at the same point (much the same thing as using anomalies).”
But the intent of the graph wasn’t wiggle matching. It was intended to show that the trends were fundamentally the same, that the TLT anomaly trend wasn’t elevated like the AMSR-E data. But this ONCE I will respond to your curiosity:
http://i31.tinypic.com/8y5dvl.png

Bob Tisdale (03:27:12) :
“maksimovich: You asked, “Can you separate signals by say firstly nh/sh ratios…”
And create maps? No.”
No problem I have what I need for an example.
This example separates the signals,interanually and geographically well (and imparts a substantial amount of information)
Southern ocean
http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh133/mataraka/sstspectraltopography.jpg

Leif Svalgaard (18:04:05) :
———
It was not necessarily meant to. 60S 60W is an area well known for the high speed currents, where warm water currents of Pacific and (cold saline) Circumpolar current squeeze trough into South Atlantic.
Recent study suggests that oceans’ currents may have an effect on geomagnetic intensity. Chart from NOAA (Dec 2005) shows mag S pole drift for period 1590-2005. Comparing two, it might give an indication if there is an effect.

To square the circle one really needs to propose independent variability within the oceans i.e. independent of direct forcing from either sun or air.
I say that because there are no cycles in air or sun to explain 25 to 30 year oceanic phase shifts and often oceanic cycles either oppose or supplement solar cycles so I’m a little doubtful about the suggestion that El Ninos dominate when the sun is at solar minimum.
On the other hand tallbloke has said he has noted that the phase shifts occur around minimum on every third cycle and someone else suggested a mechanism but I’ve no idea whether that stacks up.
What does seem clear is that if the oceans are releasing energy faster as during an El Nino event then unless the solar input is more than compensating for the energy lost then the ocean energy content falls even as the air warms.

“We are witnessing heat energy leaving the oceans.
But surely it’s been leaving the oceans since 1997/98 at least. Why are the high SSTs still at the same level as they were then. This ocean cooling stuff just doesn’t stack up.”
The only way for it to stack up is to set the rate of solar energy going into the oceans against the rate of (former) solar energy leaving the oceans for the air.
Thus throughout the 30 years up to 2000 there was a predominance of El Ninos releasing high levels of energy to the air but the ocean energy content nevertheless rose most likely because the solar cycles 21, 22 and 23 were all at historically high levels of activity.
I know that is at odds with what Leif Svalgaard tells us about the smallness of solar variability from cycle to cycle but it’s all we have to go on unless one accepts the CO2 forcing scenario. To my mind the CO2 scenario cannot be right because the flexibility and speed of the hydrological cycle always deals effectively with any attempted deviation of the air temperature above or below ocean SST temperatures globally.
The period 1945 to 1975 is instructive because then we had a very active solar period during cycles 18 and 19 ( at peak, even higher than during 21,22 and 23) but there was a some of cooling of the air globally because of a negative oceanic phase.
Then solar cycle 20 was a bit weaker and the oceans remained negative and the combination gave a more significant downward trend in temperatures during the early 70s.
Now all that suggests a pretty high responsiveness of the global air temperatures to combined solar and oceanic trends but that remains at odds with what we think we know about the energy quantities involved.
I have suggested that the answer is that there is a very fine balance between energy entering the oceans and energy leaving it and additionally the oceans themselves have their own internal characteristics independent of sun and air which periodically accelerate and decelerate the speed of the flow of energy through the Earth system. In the process of accelerating and decelerating the flow of energy the oceans themselves generate a variation in the amount of heat energy produced within the system which is independent of the solar contribution.
When the oceans slow down the rate of energy flow more energy is converted to heat and when the oceans speed up the rate of energy flow then less energy is converted to heat. Just like a resistor in an electric circuit.
I don’t expect that description to be readily accepted by many at this point but I am hopeful for the future.

El Nino releases energy to the air which then warms but ocean heat content declines unless the sun is strong enough to counter the energy loss as seems to have been the case from 1975 to 2000.
La Nina holds energy back from the air which then cools but ocean heat content increases unless the sun is putting less into the oceans thus offsetting the gain from La Nina. That seems to have happened in 2006/7
The current situation is that since 2003 the oceans have been losing energy slowly even though there was a recent powerful La Nina. That would be because of the weak sun.
Now there is a mild El Nino releasing energy to the air faster but the sun remains weak. Despite that increase in energy supply to the air the northern continents continue to cool and Arctic Ice is recovering. I would have expected a bigger uptick in tropospheric air temperatures from current ocean conditions if there were 10 years of CO2 forcing in the background but it seems not to be there.
The test of my suggestion would be whether we will shortly find that the decline in ocean energy content has accelerated following the current El Nino conditions.
At least there is a means of testing my description.

Stephen, by what mechanism are you supposing the Sun is being so variable in its ability to heat the ocean? Are you supposing that the Sun is creating or removing clouds that are reflecting shortwave infrared away or allowing it through thus changing solar insolence? Or are you saying that the Sun is changing the strength of its infrared radiation at its solar source?

David L. Hagen (10:00:11) :
Gary (05:30:47) :
On heat gradient, for calibration, can you point us to any papers to read how that is done?
No studies with engineer’s design but recently reread Feynman’s “QED”, Princeton, ca. 1985. Lights interaction with matter is probabilistic, the “reflection” at a surface is illusory, in fact an electromagnetic interaction with the intervening layer’s electrons. The resulting percentage reflection changes with the layer’s depth, oscillating between extremes, e.g., for glass, 4% to 16%.
The reflection is occuring everywhere but the infinity of resultant paths cancel except for those at the near and far margins.
In this case, engineers would have calibrated the AMSR-E recieved energy levels with actual temperatures measured by other means. Presumably this was done over a time period wherein atmospheric depth changed diurnally over some range that is now not representative.

“Pamela Gray (09:47:49) :
Stephen, by what mechanism are you supposing the Sun is being so variable in its ability to heat the ocean? Are you supposing that the Sun is creating or removing clouds that are reflecting shortwave infrared away or allowing it through thus changing solar insolence? Or are you saying that the Sun is changing the strength of its infrared radiation at its solar source ?”
Hi Pamela,
I’m not actually supposing that the sun is particularly variable.
I am suggesting that the oceans themselves appear to alter the rate of energy emission to the air on various timescales due to internal behaviour of the oceans. Sometimes creating a net release to the air and sometimes a net absorption from the sun. Ocean energy content duly follows.
The Enso cycle is quite short and largely self cancelling but behind that we have 25 to 30 year phase changes which make noticeable differences to the global air temperature trends and shift all the air circulation systems latitudinally in the process.
For all I know there could be even longer term ocean cycles as well but our period of observation of ocean behaviour is not yet long enough.
For the 20th Century the ocean phase changes describe everything we have seen save for a small background warming trend but that could be explained either by multi century scale small solar changes since the bottom of the LIA or possibly by longer ocean cycles as yet undiscovered.
I think that internal oceanic variability is the best way of narrowing the current gap between the energy value of solar variations and the energy value of observed climate changes.

E.M.Smith: You wrote, “The idea being that years of lower hurricane activity (for example) would show higher SST while those with lots of storms would show lower SST.”
Other than the Gulf of Mexico and a small part of the Caribbean, the areas with elevated SST anomalies are outside of the tropical Atlantic.
http://i32.tinypic.com/ilanx5.png