From NASA JPL, signs that “the boy” isn’t leaving. Perhaps he’s receiving too warm a welcome.
El Niño 2009-2010 just keeps hanging in there. Recent sea-level height data from the NASA/European Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason-2 oceanography satellite show that a large-scale, sustained weakening of trade winds in the western and central equatorial Pacific during late-January through February has triggered yet another strong, eastward-moving wave of warm water, known as a Kelvin wave. Now in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, this warm wave appears as the large area of higher-than-normal sea surface heights (warmer-than-normal sea surface temperatures) between 150 degrees west and 100 degrees west longitude. A series of similar, weaker events that began in June 2009 initially triggered and has sustained the present El Niño condition.
JPL oceanographer Bill Patzert says it’s too soon to know for sure, but he would not be surprised if this latest and largest Kelvin wave is the “last hurrah” for this long-lasting El Niño.
Patzert explained, “Since June 2009, this El Niño has waxed and waned, impacting many global weather events. I, and many other scientists, expect the current El Niño to leave the stage sometime soon. What comes next is not yet clear, but a return to El Niño’s dry sibling, La Niña, is certainly a possibility, though by no means a certainty. We’ll be monitoring conditions closely over the coming weeks and months.”
An El Niño also causes unusual changes in atmospheric circulation and convection around the globe. JPL’s Microwave Limb Sounder instrument on NASA’s Aura spacecraft captured a large eastward shift of deep convection from the current El Niño, indicated by large amounts of cloud ice in the upper troposphere.
NASA’s Aura Sees El Niño’s Effects on the Atmosphere
An El Niño is characterized by an abnormal warming of sea surface temperatures in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean. This sea surface temperature change is accompanied by anomalous atmospheric circulation and convection changes around the globe. The 2010 El Niño reached maximum strength during January and February 2010. The Microwave Limb Sounder instrument on NASA’s Aura spacecraft observed a clear eastward shift of deep convection, indicated by large amounts of cloud ice in the upper troposphere. The enhancement of cloud ice from 13 kilometers (approximately 40,000 feet) and above is the greatest since Aura launched in July 2004.
On July 15, 2004, NASA’s Aura spacecraft launched from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on a mission to study Earth’s ozone layer, air quality and climate. Aura’s data are helping scientists address global climate change issues such as global warming; the global transport, distribution and chemistry of polluted air; and ozone depletion in the stratosphere, the layer of Earth’s atmosphere that extends from roughly 15 to 50 kilometers (10 to 30 miles) in altitude.
Aura is the third and final major Earth Observing System satellite. Aura carries four instruments: the Ozone Monitoring Instrument, built by the Netherlands and Finland in collaboration with NASA; the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder, built by the United Kingdom and the United States; and the Microwave Limb Sounder and Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer, both built by JPL. Aura is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
The Microwave Limb Sounder is a second-generation instrument that is helping scientists improve our understanding of ozone in Earth’s stratosphere, especially how it is depleted by processes of chlorine chemistry. The instrument measures naturally occurring microwave thermal emission from the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to remotely sense vertical profiles of atmospheric gases, temperature, pressure and cloud ice.
For more information on Aura on the Internet, visit http://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/.
For more information on the Microwave Limb Sounder on the Internet, visit: http://mls.jpl.nasa.gov/.
- An El Niño is characterized by an abnormal warming of sea surface temperatures in the equatorial central and eastern Pacific Ocean. This sea surface temperature change is accompanied by anomalous atmospheric circulation and convection changes around the globe. The 2010 El Niño reached maximum strength during January and February 2010. The Microwave Limb Sounder instrument on NASA’s Aura spacecraft observed a clear eastward shift of deep convection, indicated by large amounts of cloud ice in the upper troposphere. The enhancement of cloud ice from 13 kilometers (approximately 40,000 feet) and above is the greatest since Aura launched in July 2004.
On July 15, 2004, NASA’s Aura spacecraft launched from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base on a mission to study Earth’s ozone layer, air quality and climate. Aura’s data are helping scientists address global climate change issues such as global warming; the global transport, distribution and chemistry of polluted air; and ozone depletion in the stratosphere, the layer of Earth’s atmosphere that extends from roughly 15 to 50 kilometers (10 to 30 miles) in altitude.
Aura is the third and final major Earth Observing System satellite. Aura carries four instruments: the Ozone Monitoring Instrument, built by the Netherlands and Finland in collaboration with NASA; the High Resolution Dynamics Limb Sounder, built by the United Kingdom and the United States; and the Microwave Limb Sounder and Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer, both built by JPL. Aura is managed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
The Microwave Limb Sounder is a second-generation instrument that is helping scientists improve our understanding of ozone in Earth’s stratosphere, especially how it is depleted by processes of chlorine chemistry. The instrument measures naturally occurring microwave thermal emission from the edge of Earth’s atmosphere to remotely sense vertical profiles of atmospheric gases, temperature, pressure and cloud ice.
For more information on Aura on the Internet, visit http://aura.gsfc.nasa.gov/. For more information on the Microwave Limb Sounder on the Internet, visit: http://mls.jpl.nasa.gov/.
Anu said:
“If 2010 becomes the new “hottest year ever” it won’t be because of this El Nino.”
I agree 100%, and still have not heard a sastifactory answer from the AGW skeptics as to what they will attribute 2010’s “potentially” modern instrument record breaking heat to.
Can’t be the sun as we’re just coming off a prolonged and deep solar minimum…
Can’t be El Nino or the PDO or the NAO…
Oh yeah, that’s right, “Mars is warming”…maybe that’s it!
Or could it be because we’ve got even more GH gases in the troposphere now than the last strong El Nino?
Nope, probably is because “Mars is warming.”
R. Gates (10:43:33) : “what other factors (if not GH gases) would have caused 2010 to become the warmest year, especially as we have just come through such a long and deep solar minimum?
To me, this is the central question that the skeptical part of me is asking right now: If the solar cycle and the El Nino event are more important in climate forcing than any AGW, then why would 2010 become the warmest year on record as the AGW believer part of me, and the Met Office believes is likely? In other words, what factors present in 2010 would cause this year to be warmer than 1998, if not the increased GH gases?”
Could it be that the world is warming naturally? If it is, then years will become the warmest on record, year after year. There is no need to hypothesize GH gases.
R. Gates (11:09:37),
We’re not “AGW skeptics.” We are scientific skeptics.
If you can provide empirical, testable evidence that astrology is valid and can make accurate predictions, you will have elevated astrology from a conjecture to a theory. In the mean time, without testable evidence, astrology is a conjecture.
Same with AGW.
Iceman said:
“Could it be that the world is warming naturally?”
__________
“Naturally” would imply by natural causes and known cycles. Every known factor that affects the earth’s climate has been pretty thoroughly accounted for in AGWT, from solar cycles, astronomical, ocean heat, etc., and working together, these paint a pretty well understood pattern of climate variability. AGWT would posit that AGW, specifiically through the relatively rapid (geologically speaking) buildup on GH gases in the past few hundred years are now playing the role of the dominant signal in climate variability. From the long term decline in sea ice to the cooling of the stratosphere, AGWT posits very specific and observable signals that warming due to GH gases will create. These signals are now being observed (at least in the N. Hemisphere for arctic sea ice).
Again, simply saying that “natural warming” is the cause of the potentially warmest year on record is not a specfic answer to the question as to why 2010 may become the warmest year on record. AGWT would give a specific reason why…i.e. the build-up of GH gases. Skeptics must provide equally specific “natural” causes…be precise and explicit…WHAT natural causes?
Clive (19:41:21),
I just highlight the article’s address, and save it to a folder.
R. Gates (10:56:43): You asked, “What is the source of your pre-1900 data, how has it been checked and verified?” and “What is the source of your pre-1900 data that makes you so certain that the past few decades of strong El Ninos is nothing unusual?”
The NINO3.4 SST anomaly data source was listed at the bottom of the post:
SOURCE
HADISST Anomaly data is available through the KNMI Climate Explorer:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
You’d have to read the papers that accompany the HADISST dataset to determine how it was “checked and verified.”
Rayner, N. A.; Parker, D. E.; Horton, E. B.; Folland, C. K.; Alexander, L. V.; Rowell, D. P.; Kent, E. C.; Kaplan, A. (2003) Global analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice, and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century, J. Geophys. Res., Vol. 108, No. D14, 4407 10.1029/2002JD002670
http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/hadisst/HadISST_paper.pdf
You wrote, “All my reading of the research puts very little credibility in any data prior to 1900, and really, prior to about 1914.”
I would agree that equatorial Pacific SST anomaly data prior to 1914 is questionable. Before the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, there was little ship traffic in the NINO areas. However, Southern Oscillation Index data (based on sea level pressure data from Tahiti and Darwin, Australia) is available as far back as 1876 through the Australian Bureau of Meteorology:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soihtm1.shtml
I’ve inverted the BOM’s SOI data in the following graph so that El Nino events are positive:
http://i40.tinypic.com/24df191.png
There are significant El Nino events in the early decades of the SOI dataset as well. So there are two ENSO datasets based on different variables that illustrate major El Nino events in the early part of the instrument record.
Also, in paleoclimatological terms, current NINO3 SST anomalies are not unusual:
http://s5.tinypic.com/20b26p0.jpg
Now let me ask you, since you only believe data after 1914, how can you be sure that the increase in the frequency and magnitude of El Nino events is unusual?
You wrote, “Also, please address the issue of the so-called 1976/77 “climate shift” related to both ENSO and the PDO. I’d be very curious to get your current take on this event (or non-event) as the case may be….”
The phrasing of your request infers I had a prior “take” on the 1976/77 climate shift. And I’m not sure why you would imply that it was a non-event. There are numerous papers that acknowledge and illustrate its effect on the strength and evolution of ENSO events. My “take”? Personally, I believe the 1976/77 climate shift’s impact on ENSO resulted from the additional tropical Pacific Ocean Heat Content that was made available by the 1973/74/75/76 La Nina.
http://i46.tinypic.com/2vja1z5.png
I don’t pay attention to the PDO. I’ve already posted links to three papers on this thread that show the PDO is a lagged aftereffect of ENSO, so I won’t bother to comment on it.
EL NINO and the Equatorial GMF Z field now updated. Worth a close look!
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC19.htm
Anu quoting the Von Schuckmann study “During the six years of in-situ measurements [2003-2008], an oceanic warming of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2 occurred in the upper 2000m depth of the water column.”
Maybe next time a skeptic points out that the atmosphere hasn’t warmed for six years (or a similar time period), you will admit that six years is long enough to detect a trend against detractors who say that six years (or similar period) is too short. That would seem to be consistent with your position on ocean warming.
R. Gates says “relatively rapid (geologically speaking) buildup on GH gases in the past few hundred years”
Here’s the past “few hundred years” of anthrocarbon: ftp://cdiac.ornl.gov/pub/ndp030/global.1751_2006.ems Basically less than 1% of the natural flux until about 1950. The reason for most of the warming of the past few hundred years is (natural) recovery from the Little Ice Age.
Anu (08:44:04) : In response to my comment, “Also, there is nothing to indicate that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have any impact on Ocean Heat Content. Refer to…” you replied, “There is evidence that anthropogenic greenhouse gases put 94.4% of their global warming heat into the oceans:
An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950 (Murphy 2009) showed.”
The numbers 94.4 or 5.6 do not appear in Murphy et al. Please advise which paragraph or table or illustration in Murphy et al provides you with those percentages. And please don’t link ClimateProgress or SkepticalScience. Quote Murphy et al, please.
And when you’re done reading Murphy et al, please advise me how they account for ENSO, AMO, and sea level pressure in the form of NPI and NAO. The three posts I linked, which you referred to in your reply, illustrated the effects of those natural variables on individual ocean basin OHC subsets. Those posts also showed decadal to multidecadal declines in OHC for some ocean basins, and for other ocean basins there were multidecadal periods with little to no rise in OHC, followed by short-term rises that correspond to ENSO events or to shifts in the NPI or NAO. Does Murphy et al address those flat or declining multidecadal periods in ocean basin subsets or the short-term rises caused by those natural variables?
Curiously, in response to the three posts I provided, which illustrated the magnitude of the natural effects on OHC for individual ocean basins from 1955 to present, you wrote, “Earth’s Global Energy Budget (Trenberth 2009) examined satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation for the March 2000 to May 2004 period and found the planet accumulating energy at a rate of 0.9 ± 0.15 Wm−2.” Please advise how “satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation for the March 2000 to May 2004 period” contradicts what I’ve presented for OHC data from 1955 to present. You’re off by a few decades in your time span.
You wrote, “You look at only the upper 700 meters of the entire ocean.”
Of course. The only dataset that’s available to the public on an easy-to-use gridded basis is the NODC OHC data (0-700 meters) through the KNMI Climate Explorer. There’s a link to it at the bottom of each of the three posts. Do you have a link to another OHC dataset to 3000 meters from 1955 to present that KNMI could add to their Climate Explorer?
Also, Domingues et al, Levitus et al, Wijffels et al, and Ishii and Kimoto all present OHC to depths of 700 meters. So, I’ll have to ask you, if OHC to greater depths was so critical, why don’t these studies present data for the lower depths? Data availability maybe? Increased errors to depths of 3000 meters? The lack of resolution to 3000 meters? Have you noted that the 0-3000 meter data in Levitus et al (2005) ends with the 5-year period of 1994-1998 (effectively 1996), while the 0-300 meter and 0-700 meter data end in 2003? Have you noted that the 0-3000 meter data in Levitus et al (2005) is only presented in pentads while the 0-300 meter and 0-700 meter data are presented annually? The data I’ve plotted in my posts, which is associated with Levitus et al (2009) is presented in 3-month periods.
You wrote, “The deepest part of the ocean, the Marianas Trench, goes down 10,900 meters.” Thanks but I learned that in high school geography many decades ago.
You continued with link to an ARGO website and to a graph from von Schuckmann et al (2009):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ocean-heat-2000m.gif
Please advise how OHC data for the period of 2003 through 2008 or your much quoted “During the six years of in-situ measurements [2003-2008], an oceanic warming of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2 occurred in the upper 2000m depth of the water column,” contradicts the three posts I provided that covered the period of 1955 to 2009.
Last, downward longwave (infrared) radiation from greenhouse gases can only warm the upper few centimeters of the oceans. But the argument has been presented that DLR (infrared radiation), through mixing caused by waves and wind stress turbulence, would warm the mixed layer of the ocean. This in turn would impact the temperature gradient between the mixed layer and skin, dampening the outward flow of heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. The end result according to the argument: OHC would rise due to an increase in DLR (infrared radiation) caused by increases in greenhouse gas emissions.
Consider this: the majority of the OHC datasets that I presented in the three posts do not show long-term increases in OHC that one would anticipate with anthropogenic greenhouse gases. They show decadal and multidecadal periods of little to no rise or decadal and multidecadal declines in OHC, followed by short-term rises, and as discussed earlier, these short-term rises were shown to correspond to ENSO events and changes in sea level pressure. So let’s assume von Schukmann et al were correct and OHC to depths of 2000 meters continues to rise. If the top 700 meters shows no signs of anthropogenic warming, how would the longwave radiation bypass the top 700 meters to warm the ocean below? It can’t. Warm waters from the top 700 meters that show no signs of anthropogenic warming would have to be subducted to warm the depths below, so the warming of the lower depths would have to be natural as well.
In short, your reply did not address the natural variables discussed in my posts and most of your reply did not even address the period of 1955 to present discussed in my posts. To save you the time needed to scroll up, here are the links to the posts again:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/10/north-atlantic-ocean-heat-content-0-700.html
And:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/north-pacific-ocean-heat-content-shift.html
Eric (skeptic) (17:35:12) :
Anu quoting the Von Schuckmann study “During the six years of in-situ measurements [2003-2008], an oceanic warming of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2 occurred in the upper 2000m depth of the water column.”
Maybe next time a skeptic points out that the atmosphere hasn’t warmed for six years (or a similar time period), you will admit that six years is long enough to detect a trend against detractors who say that six years (or similar period) is too short. That would seem to be consistent with your position on ocean warming.
——————–
The Argo ocean sensors were only deployed in the early 2000’s, and did not reach its target number of 3000 sensors till 2006. Analyzing the data that one has is the best you can do.
If the data shows warming, it shows warming. This can be measured.
Whether the warming is “statistically significant” or implies a trend or not depends on the mathematical assumptions made about the system being measured.
The significance of this ocean warming is that it occurred during a time period that showed little warming in the upper 700m of the ocean, not that it proves a trend.
The trend is shown with >5 decades long, upper 700m data, which seems to “stall” in warming sometimes.
R Gates – have you considered that the long term temperature of the earth has been steadily increasing for centuries, with a 65 year zigzag cycle superimposed, and with the El nino / La Nina and shorter cycles on top of these again.
All three main influences pushed the temperature upwards in 1998.
In contrast, the zigzag was going down from 1943 to 1975.
If you chart these using NCDC data 1880 onwards, there’s nothing left for CO2. (Hadley-CRU can give you another ZigZag half leg upwards from the early 1850’s).
Each of the upward Zig legs are of the same order of magnitude, both as to degrees risen and time elapsed (32 or 33 years or so).
The downward zags cover similar time frames, but look more shallow than the upward zigs, because the zags oppose the long term upward trend. You can also see that enduring upward trend in the long term Central England series which covers many centuries of rising temperature.
The way to see this clearly is to detrend the NCDC data from 1880 onwards, by subtracting its linear trend, leaving the zigzag, El Nino’ La Nina and short term residuals.
The Zigzag term then stands out very clearly.
Again, there’s no space left for CO2.
AusieDan (00:02:50) :
R Gates – have you considered that the long term temperature of the earth has been steadily increasing for centuries, with a 65 year zigzag cycle superimposed, and with the El nino / La Nina and shorter cycles on top of these again.
I don’t know about R.Gates but I haven’t considered that because I don’t thinks it’s necessarily true.
The downward zags cover similar time frames, but look more shallow than the upward zigs, because the zags oppose the long term upward trend. You can also see that enduring upward trend in the long term Central England series which covers many centuries of rising temperature.
Throughout the 1800s (1800-1900) CE temperatures are pretty much flat, i.e. there is no trend though a zig-zag effect can be detected.
The way to see this clearly is to detrend the NCDC data from 1880 onwards, by subtracting its linear trend, leaving the zigzag, El Nino’ La Nina and short term residuals.
The Zigzag term then stands out very clearly.
Cycles are probably present but there is also an underlying trend (the one that you’ve subtracted). Also we should be on the downward zag now but there’s not much sign of it.
Again, there’s no space left for CO2.
Apart from the underlying trend.
Vuk etc.
You mentioned the geomagnetic effect and how the strengthening lines of magnetic force seems to mirror the rise of global temperature through quite a long time frame.
Have you any evidence that this is more than just a coincidence, like the correlation of CO2 levels with temperature?
I’m very interested, seeing how much the changing magnetic force lines are evident in the sun itself, the lines of force between earth and sun and the relationship with the cosmic ray theory of cloud formation.
Is there any established connection here or just a lot of common concepts without a causal relationship?
John Finn,
My understanding is that the earth has been mostly warming for the last 10,000 years, ever since the last ice age. In these 10k years, the sea level has gone up about 120 meters, or about 1.2 meters/century. My understanding is that the sea level went up about a foot in the last century (i.e. about 1/3 the rate over the previous 100 centuries).
Does this sound correct to you?
Eric (skeptic) said:
“The reason for most of the warming of the past few hundred years is (natural) recovery from the Little Ice Age…”
I tend to agree with this…to a point. I think it’s been a mixture up to the late 1970’s…then the I think the warming may begin to be more anthropogenic. But I’m a 25% skeptic, and I think the next few years will really tell.
If during the period 2010-2015 we don’t hit at least 1, 2 or 3 new record instrument high global temps, I will be shifting my opinion to 50/50.
Bob T,
What if there was no El Nino, how would that impact climate? What if the trade winds which push warm water west would no longer blow steadily? Alternatively, what if these same trade winds blew relentlessly?
“..Throughout the 1800s (1800-1900) CE temperatures are pretty much flat, i.e. there is no trend though a zig-zag effect can be detected.”
Mmmm… sounds rather Mannian to me (you know, flat temperatures until the late 20th Century). All things considered, the earth has been warming since the coldest decades of the LIA, and this warming began to accelerate right after the end of the Dalton Minimum. Most of the recent retreat of glaciers began in the middle of the 19th Century.
R. Gates (10:43:33) : You MUST know the following: This is not a current El Nino. The actual El Nino was named as such by the peruvian fishermen after the warm current north-south which opposing the south-north cold Humblodts’s current, appears in the El Nino 1-2 zones (along the northern coasts of Peru). This phenomena has not happened this year, and, as shown by our friend Vuk (Vuk etc. (13:12:12) 🙂
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC19.htm
it seems is migrating northwards, so whatever it is it can not be called El Nino anymore. Once more: The so called warm current IT DID NOT APPEAR along the peruvian coasts. It is ABOVE, NORTH of the equatorial line:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
We are watching how it looks like our planet during “interesting times”
This northward emigrant El Nino has crossed the SA continent and reached the atlantic and even the African coasts, as it provoked recent floods in the portuguese islad of Madeira:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/21/madeira-floods-death-toll-rises
Bob Tisdale (19:02:32) :
The numbers 94.4 or 5.6 do not appear in Murphy et al. Please advise which paragraph or table or illustration in Murphy et al provides you with those percentages. And please don’t link ClimateProgress or SkepticalScience. Quote Murphy et al, please.
——————–
I think you’re right – my notes were a bit unclear on that 94.4% figure, so I found the original papers:
Murphy 2009
http://www.knmi.nl/~laagland/KIK/Documenten_2009/murphy_jgr_2009.pdf
Murphy merely quotes Leviticus 2005:
Changes in atmospheric, land, and ice heat contents are very small compared to the oceans [Levitus et al., 2005].
Leviticus 2005 is here:
ftp://ftp.nodc.noaa.gov/pub/data.nodc/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat05.pdf
His Figure 3 shows the oceans absorbed 84% of the planet’s increase in heat content 1955-1998, not 94.4%.
Still, that’s by far most of the global warming heat.
Note that the recent warming of the lithosphere (boreholes show the rocks of the continents are warming) also soaks up some global warming heat.
———-
There is no doubt that the heat content of the world’s oceans slosh around from place to place and among its different depths. Are you implying that sometimes large amounts of heat disappears for awhile, or jumps into the atmosphere as the oceans cool ? Conservation of energy is a pretty solid expectation.
Murphy 2009 states:
In addition to heating of the top 700 m, some heat is transported to the deep ocean. The heat content to 3000 m depth has been estimated to add about 30% to 40% to recent increases above 700 m on the basis of limited deep ocean temperature data [Levitus et al., 2001]. Another estimate [Ko¨hl et al., 2007] based on an ocean model assimilation of temperature, wind stress, and other data leads to a 40% correction for heat transported deeper than 700 m, with most of this after 1990 [Ko¨hl and Stammer, 2008]. The coefficient of thermal expansion of water varies with temperature and depth, so steric sea level rise does not uniquely constrain ocean heat content. For the purposes of
this paper we estimate that from 1950 to 2003 the increase in the heat content of the ocean deeper than 700 m was 40 ±15% of the increase from 0 to 700 m. For a given year, the deep ocean heat content is scaled to the heat content above 700 m averaged over the preceding 10 years. The actual lag
may be longer but the results here are insensitive to the averaging period and longer averages require more assumptions about the heat content before 1950.
If just the top 700 meters of the ocean were all-important, why are the Argo floats designed to probe to 2000 meters ?
The OHC data from 2003 to 2008 for the upper 2000 m does not contradict your 700 m data, it just shows that ocean currents have vertical components that transfer heat below 700m, and sometimes up to 700 m layer. 25% to 55% of the heat of the ocean sloshes across that 700 m layer boundary, according to Murphy 2009.
Don’t forget the layer mixing by the vertical currents in the Southern Ocean and the North Pole – waves and wind is not the only mechanisms for transferring heat to the deep ocean layers.
Your “natural variables” are just regional sloshing of ocean heat contents. You are forgetting that a very small delta of ocean temperature represents a tremendous amount of heat: From Leviticus 2005:
Thus, a mean temperature change of 0.1C of the world ocean would correspond roughly to a mean temperature change of 100C of the global atmosphere if all the heat associated with this ocean anomaly was instantaneously transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere.
the mass of the ocean is 1.4 10^21 kg
the mass of the atmosphere is 5.3 10^18 kg
As to why the oceans do not heat uniformly as the CO2 rises uniformly, Leviticus 2005 states:
one question put to us is that since atmospheric greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, etc. are well mixed in the atmosphere, why isn’t the ocean responding uniformly? There are two reasons one does not expect uniform heating of the ocean from the observed increase in greenhouse gases. The first is that the natural and anthropogenic aerosols are not well mixed geographically and can have a substantial effect on regional warming rates. This has been documented for the northern Indian Ocean by
Ramanathan et al. [2001a, 2001b] who estimate a decrease of absorbed surface solar radiation exceeding 10 Wm2 over much of the Indian Ocean due to aerosols. Also, the Houghton et al. [2001] report documents the geographical variability of various aerosols, ozone, black carbon, etc. that
affect the amount of radiation available to enter the world ocean. The second reason is that any change in the Earth’s radiative balance may induce global and regional changes in the circulation of the atmosphere and ocean which could in turn affect the net flux of heat across the air-sea interface on
a regional basis.
When you look at the fits and starts in the longterm ocean heating in the top 700 meters,
http://i38.tinypic.com/zxjy14.png
don’t forget about the 1300 meters below that top layer. The data might not be reduced yet for easy Web access, but the Argo data has been collected – perhaps you can grab the raw data and analyze it yourself if you don’t trust Schuckmann and Murphy, but you cannot state that these deeper ocean layers are not important to ocean heat content.
Yes, too bad we didn’t have Argo like coverage of the oceans, down to 2000 meters, back to 1955:
http://www-hrx.ucsd.edu/www-argo/status.jpg
Better late than never.
Enneagram,
I do of course get the distinction, and also more, following along Trenberth’s distinction as outlined here:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ost/climate/STIP/FY09CTBSeminars/jin_020409.htm
I would also suggest everyone read this little bit about the climate shift of 1976/77, when the character of Pacific Ocean (at least in recent times) changed:
http://horizon.ucsd.edu/miller/download/climateshift/climate_shift.pdf
Could this “climate shift” be related to AGW? Yes. And it also might not be. And certainly the warming of the Pacific Ocean n 2009-2010 could be as well.
Steve Koch (07:14:36) : You asked, “What if there was no El Nino, how would that impact climate?”
Not sure of all of the impacts, but if El Nino events did not exist, there would be a larger temperature difference between the equator and the poles. The equator would be warmer and the poles would be colder.
You asked, “What if the trade winds which push warm water west would no longer blow steadily?”
They aren’t steady. At present, when they relax or reverse, there’s an El Nino. And when the trade winds increase in strength, there’s a La Nina.
You asked, “Alternatively, what if these same trade winds blew relentlessly?”
Without ever varying, just a constant velocity, year in, year out? Doesn’t happen. Would that be your no El Nino scenario?
Bob T,
Would the planet be a bit hotter without El Ninos (since heat would not be as efficiently transferred to the poles where it is more efficiently radiated to space)?
What I was getting at with the trade winds either blowing all the time or never blowing was just a mental experiment about how those (unrealistic) scenarios would affect climate (assuming everything else is equal). I’m guessing that the steady state situations (i.e. of either no wind or steady wind all the time) would produce a warmer world than the stormy weather produced by El Nino.
Is it true that stormy weather is more efficient at radiating energy to space than calm weather?
Anu (09:46:29): You wrote, “Murphy merely quotes Leviticus 2005”
You’ve added a syllable to the last name of Sydney Levitus.
You asked, “Are you implying that sometimes large amounts of heat disappears for awhile, or jumps into the atmosphere as the oceans cool ?”
No. Do you find anything in my posts or in the accompanying graphs that imply that “large amounts of heat disappears for awhile?”
And thanks for the quote from Murphy et al, which in part read, “For the purposes of this paper we estimate that from 1950 to 2003 the increase in the heat content of the ocean deeper than 700 m was 40 ±15% of the increase from 0 to 700 m. For a given year, the deep ocean heat content is scaled to the heat content above 700 m averaged over the preceding 10 years. The actual lag may be longer but the results here are insensitive to the averaging period and longer averages require more assumptions about the heat content before 1950.”
But, if we look at the comparison graph of OHC to three different depths (300, 700, 3000 meters), which is Figure 1 from Levitus et al (2005), we see there is no lag. Anu, what do you suppose adding a non-existent lag to the deeper dataset would do to their results? Since it does not appear in the studies they reference, they had to have added it for a reason. Why?
http://i40.tinypic.com/2mchst0.png
You wrote, “If just the top 700 meters of the ocean were all-important, why are the Argo floats designed to probe to 2000 meters ?”
Excuse the phrasing of my rhetorical question in my last reply. I believe I answered why 700meters was used in the questions that followed.
You wrote, “25% to 55% of the heat of the ocean sloshes across that 700 m layer boundary, according to Murphy 2009.”
Please clarify how you derived those percentages. They do not appear in Murphy et al.
You wrote, “Don’t forget the layer mixing by the vertical currents in the Southern Ocean and the North Pole – waves and wind is not the only mechanisms for transferring heat to the deep ocean layers.”
I haven’t, which is why I wrote in my 19:02:32 yesterday, If the top 700 meters shows no signs of anthropogenic warming, how would the longwave radiation bypass the top 700 meters to warm the ocean below? It can’t. Warm waters from the top 700 meters that show no signs of anthropogenic warming would have to be subducted to warm the depths below, so the warming of the lower depths would have to be natural as well.
And there is always Figure 5.1 from the IPCC AR4 to put things in perspective:
http://i43.tinypic.com/x6habk.png
You wrote, “…don’t forget about the 1300 meters below that top layer. The data might not be reduced yet for easy Web access, but the Argo data has been collected…”
My posts deal with the long-term rise. At the present time, I have little interest in the short-term data. But you have to take the ARGO data with a grain of salt. There are corrections on top of corrections on top of corrections… Here’s a gif animation that shows the January 2010 correction to the NODC (Levitus et al 2009) OHC data:
http://i48.tinypic.com/14e6wjn.gif
Does von Schuckmann (2009) include those corrections? Nope.
Regards