Ocean Heat Content: Dropping again

Ok I’m having great problems with the oceans controlling temperature.
There are people saying that the oceans heat content is increasing at especially at 700m. At this sort of depth the temperatures are coler than the air temperatures.
To reach 700m sw sunlight will have to travel through 700m of water which will all absorb some of the UV and warm.
At 700m the water temperature is 12C approx and 4C below 900m and 22C surface. (presumably tropical seas?)
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Water/temp.html&edu=high
If the 700m water is going to warm the air then it must increase the surface temperature of water to greater than the air temp. You cannot transfer heat from cold to hot
I.E. if the 700m water gets heated to 13C the surface temp is 23C assuming thermal link. If 23C is cooler than the air temp then heat will still be flowing from air to water. This is likely the case during the day so there is a possibility of transfer from air to ocean at night perhaps?
The other possibility is for the cool waters with the additional heat content to get transported to cooler latitudes via the THC.
In both these cases the effect of heat content lowering in the oceans should be measurable at the ocean surface or at the turnover point of the THC by an increase in surface temperature.
But of course the THC takes centuries to transit from warm to cool waters so temperature increases we are seeing now are due to events occuring before industrialisation.
Stephen Wilde (10:06:09) : says
… makes no difference to the fact that the oceans create variations in energy flow to the air which causes climate variability.
But i can see no way that energy stored at low temperature can transfer to the air at a higher temp in any sort of controlled manner.
Explanations on a post card please.

tallbloke (2:33:17)
I meant to type ‘historical terms’ rather than ‘historical times’ which has caused some confusion especially to Leif.
I take Leif’s instruction on solar issues seriously but remain puzzled by the contradiction between his clearly correct comments on the smallness of solar variation over time and the contradictory but equally clearly correct historical correlation between solar activity and climate changes.
As I did say elsewhere, but perhaps it was missed, it may just be that by coincidence the solar cycle troughed at around the same time as my proposed 500/1000 year oceanic cycle troughed at around 1600 AD.
I’ve previously said that solar and oceanic influences can either supplement or offset each other so it is possible that at other times than around 1600 AD there could have been occasions when solar influences were high from an active sun but the climate was nevertheless cool due to negative oceans.
I am now reasonably sure that solar influences are weak except on long timescales and that oceanic variability is strong on shorter timescales but I remain open minded on the precise timescale at which solar influences become significant.
My doubts on the issue arise because it is quite easy to describe relatively short term multidecadal climate changes or changes in ocean heat content by juggling the solar and oceanic contributions (I have done that in my responses to Bob Tisdale) but from what Leif says that should not be possible.
It may be that there are amplification factors such as the hypotheses by Svensmark and others but whatever the reality my proposed general climate description remains unaffected. I’d like to know the answer though.

Bob Tisdale: I can see that part adjusted out making the graph look more in line with temperature trends before 2008, and I can see where the adjustment would be needed to take in the fact of the ARGO data taking more accurate measurements which then shows OHC could’ve been higher than what the older measurements were getting.
El Nino is removing OHC, the South Pacific OHC showing the El Nino, like I said if current downtrends in the other regions continue after El Nino disappears we could see enough of a drop to make the trend not seem near as significant as we see South Pacific OHC drop as the ENSO region cools.
There’s still the Southern Ocean OHC but apparently the swings mean what goes down must come back up to an extent, but here we see it going up and basing it on the up and down movement what goes up will probably have to come back down.

innocentious (11:35:45)
You have hit on the points that confused me some years ago.
However I had by then already noted the latitudinal shift in the air circulation systems that always follows changes in sea surface temperatures.
I considered the possible reasons why the air circulation systems might shift latitudinally in response to sea surface temperature changes and decided that it must be something to do with the net global energy balance.
I had previously noted the shift poleward shortly after the global temperatures started to rise in the late 1970s and was surprised that in 1988 Hansen and others announced that the whole thing was anthropogenic. I went along with that until about 2000 because I’m just an amateur and what would I know ?
Anyway around 2000 I noted the systems shifting back equatorward again (apparently before anyone else noticed) and that created a dissonance in my mind which caused me to doubt the professional diagnosis.
About two years ago it became clear to me if not to others that something was seriously awry in contemporary climatology because no one was linking the return equatorward of the air circulation systems to anything happening in the climate as a result of natural variability. As it happened that coincided with a cessation of the apparent warming trend so I was pretty sure that I had spotted something significant.
I noticed that the drift of the systems back equatorward was being ignored and the earlier poleward drift was being attributed to irreversible human influences.
So, there was a clear and obvious discrepancy between real world events and generally accepted climate theory.
Hence my entry onto the scene as a climate theorist.
I think I now have a grip on the overall scenario by creating a conceptual overview based on observations and basic physical principles.
There are two fundamental isues which remain unresolved:
1) the extent to which external forcings affect the system (mainly solar variation). I have explained previously why I think internal oceanic forcings could account for all observed climate changes in any event so I am not unduly concerned about that aspect and the current weak solar cycle should resolve the issue for us.
2) the question whether changes in the composition of the air alone are capable of changing an equilbrium temperature initially set by the sun/sea interaction.
I aver that because the air temperatures always move towards sea surface temperatures and because the effect of increased evaporation and a faster hydrological cycle always offsets the warming effect of any increased downwelling infra red radiation created by more greenhouse gases then more CO2 in the system cannot alter the equilibrium temperature set by sun and oceans. AGW theory relies on such additional downwelling IR raising the ocean temperature but I have not found corroboration of that assertion anywhere other than in sources influenced by James Hansen who started the whole AGW scare back in 1988.
If it can be shown that extra downwelling infra red radiation from human sources can affect ocean temperatures on a timescale meaningful to humanity (say less than 500 years) then I would accept that as evidence in favour of AGW theory.
However the fact is that currently the air circulation systems have moved back equatorward from the positions adopted during the recent late 20th century warming spell despite increased CO2 in the air and temperatures are no longer rising so at present AGW theory is distinctly shaky.
Furthermore our most recent and most advanced sensors show that ocean heat content is currently falling rather than rising whereas according to AGW theory the increased CO2 in the air should have caused increasing ocean heat content.
I hope that assists you.

tallbloke (23:58:58) :
“When will someone start listening?”
Is the BBC starting to listen?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm
QUOTE: “What happened to global warming?”
“This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.”
This seems to be the first almost semi-neutral article so far; is the BBC getting
ready to switch sides?
The article goes on to discuss the oceans heat storage.
“What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth’s great heat stores.
According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.”
The most funny thing in the article is,,,,,,
“The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.
It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).”
Maybe a second hand store will give them Ten Dollars for that “Super Computer”
that they just bought!

Leif Svalgaard (11:01:41) have been nearly constant since 1952, while temps have not.
Certainly you are looking through your standard “any-impact-from-outer-space-have–instant-on-earth-effect-glasses” (without any delay). We have many predominant oscillations here on our planet that has characteristic time constants in the range from a couple of years to a century. Thus I suggest that you should instead try to answer the question I asked – is the paper from CERN nonsense?