From Dr. Roger Pielke Senior’s Climate Sci blog, a discussion on the “missing heat” in Earth’s climate system gives me a motivation to write some silly prose:
The heat is gone, oh where, oh where?
Maybe in the oceans?
Maybe in the air?
It’s just not there.
They could not find it any-where.
Is There “Missing” Heat In The Climate System? My Comments On This NCAR Press Release
There was a remarkable press release 0n April 15 from the NCAR/UCAR Media Relations titled
“Missing” heat may affect future climate change
The article starts with the text
BOULDER—Current observational tools cannot account for roughly half of the heat that is believed to have built up on Earth in recent years, according to a “Perspectives” article in this week’s issue of Science. Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) warn in the new study that satellite sensors, ocean floats, and other instruments are inadequate to track this “missing” heat, which may be building up in the deep oceans or elsewhere in the climate system.
“The heat will come back to haunt us sooner or later,” says NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, the lead author. “The reprieve we’ve had from warming temperatures in the last few years will not continue. It is critical to track the build-up of energy in our climate system so we can understand what is happening and predict our future climate.”
Excerpts from the press release reads
“Either the satellite observations are incorrect, says Trenberth, or, more likely, large amounts of heat are penetrating to regions that are not adequately measured, such as the deepest parts of the oceans. Compounding the problem, Earth’s surface temperatures have largely leveled off in recent years. Yet melting glaciers and Arctic sea ice, along with rising sea levels, indicate that heat is continuing to have profound effects on the planet.”
“A percentage of the missing heat could be illusory, the result of imprecise measurements by satellites and surface sensors or incorrect processing of data from those sensors, the authors say. Until 2003, the measured heat increase was consistent with computer model expectations. But a new set of ocean monitors since then has shown a steady decrease in the rate of oceanic heating, even as the satellite-measured imbalance between incoming and outgoing energy continues to grow.”
Some of the missing heat appears to be going into the observed melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, as well as Arctic sea ice, the authors say.
Much of the missing heat may be in the ocean. Some heat increase can be detected between depths of 3,000 and 6,500 feet (about 1,000 to 2,000 meters), but more heat may be deeper still beyond the reach of ocean sensors.”
Trenberth’s [and co-author, NCAR scientist John Fasullo], however, are grasping for an explanation other than the actual real world implication of the absence of this heat.
- First, if the heat was being sequestered deeper in the ocean (lower than about 700m), than we would have seen it transit through the upper ocean where the data coverage has been good since at least 2005. The other reservoirs where heat could be stored are closely monitored as well (e.g. continental ice) as well as being relatively small in comparison with the ocean.
- Second, the melting of glaciers and continental ice can be only a very small component of the heat change (e.g. see Table 1 in Levitus et al 2001 “Anthropogenic warming of Earth’s climate system”. Science).
Thus, a large amount heat (measured as Joules) does not appear to be stored anywhere; it just is not there.
There is no “heat in the pipeline” [or “unrealized heat”] as I have discussed most recently in my post
Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo are not recognizing that the diagnosis of upper ocean heat content changes (with it large mass) makes in an effective integrator of long term radiative imbalances of the climate system as I discussed in my papers
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-334.pdf
and
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335.
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-247.pdf.
The assessment of ocean heat storage changes in Joules is a much more robust methodology to assess global warming than the use of small changes in the satellite diagnosis of radiative forcing from the satellites which have uncertainties of at least the same order. Trenberth and Fasullo need to look more critically at the satellite data as well as propose how heat in Joules could be transported deep into the ocean without being seen.
I am contacting Kevin to see if he would respond to my comments on this news article (and his Science perspective) in a guest post on my weblog.
UPDATE (April 16 2010) WITH RESPONSE BY KEVIN TRENBERTH PRESENTED WITH HIS PERMISSION
Dear Roger
I do not agree with your comments. We are well aware that there are well over a dozen estimates of ocean heat content and they are all different yet based on the same data. There are clearly problems in the analysis phase and I don’t believe any are correct. There is a nice analysis of ocean heat content down to 2000 m by von Schuckmann, K., F. Gaillard, and P.-Y. Le Traon 2009: Global hydrographic variability patterns during 2003–2008, /J. Geophys. Res.,/ *114*, C09007, doi:10.1029/2008JC005237. but even those estimates are likely conservative. The deep ocean is not
well monitored and nor is the Arctic below sea ice. That said, there is a paper in press (embargoed) that performs an error analysis of ocean heat content.
Our article highlights the discrepancies that should be resolved with better data and analysis, and improved observations must play a key role.
Kevin
MY REPLY
Hi Kevin
Thank you for your response. I am aware of the debate on the quality of the ocean data, and have blogged on the von Schuckman et al paper. Since 2005, however, the data from 700m to the surface seems robust spatially (except under the arctic sea ice as you note). An example of the coming to agreement among the studies is Figure 2 in
Leuliette, E. W., and L. Miller (2009), Closing the sea level rise budget with altimetry, Argo, and GRACE, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L04608, doi:10.1029/2008GL036010.
We both agree on the need for further data and better analyses. I have posted on this issue; e.g. see
However, I do not see how such large amounts of heat could have transited to depths below 700m since 2005 without being detected.
I am very supportive, however, of your recognition that it is heat in Joules that we should be monitoring as a primary metric to monitor global warming. Our research has shown significant biases in the use of the global average surface temperature for this purpose; e.g.
Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-321.pdf
Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114,
D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/r-345.pdf
Would you permit me to post your reply below along with my response on my weblog.
Best Regards
Roger
KEVIN’S FURTHER REPLY
Roger you may post my comments. The V.s paper shows quite a lot of heat below 700 m.
Kevin
MY FURTHER RESPONSE
Hi Kevin
Thanks! On the V.s et al paper, lets assume their values since 2005 deeper than 700m are correct [which I question since I agree with you on the data quality and coverage at the deeper depths]. However, if they are correct, how much of this heat explains the “missing” heat?
It would be useful (actually quite so) if you would provide what is the missing heat in Joules.
Roger
END OF UPDATE
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Some models do.
Like I said, oversimplified explanations of the GHE do. The surface would be considerably warmer if it cooled purely by radiation.
” anna v (22:35:06) :
There is a seasonal variation. If we attribute it to the flora, growth+storing, decay=releasing energy, then in a year about 1to 0.5/watts/meter^2 *year are in the game. The trend of the plot, about 0.2 is consistent with a steady growth and increase in storage , it takes more than a year for leaf cover, grass, hay, corn, (look at ethanol) to dissolve into its component part, and the growth that went to roots and trunk stays for centuries. 20% within errors back of the envelope does not seem excessive. ”
The breakdown of lignin, the major structural compound of wood is aerobic. In anaerobic conditions it lasts for geological time spans before becoming coal. Only about 20% of the lignin that is made each year is ever broken down.
Chitin, which makes up insect and crustacean exoskeletons, is very hard to break down, and again less than half is ever broken down.
Working out the amount of organic matter that ends up on the sea floor is actually very difficult to measure. Many of the micro organisms that live there are Cu/Fe limited and so ship wrecks soon have eruptions of life.
Ships propellers are designed to be antibacterial and stop marine growth. If you know when a ship went down, and the propeller is on the sea bed, on can measure the amount of material that has fallen there.
I wouldn’t trust Kevin Trenberth to wash my fleet vehicles; he’d break the comms antennae.
Kevin Trenberth if you’re reading this i want you to know: I personally fart in your general direction.
Half truths confessed after MONTHS of trying to figure a way out… FACE the FACTS:
YOU have entered into an enormous HOAX: all because a bunch of people were angry Al Gore couldn’t be president.
Couldn’t clearly win a clean election – against of all people George Bush…
Spread ECO-TERROR and CHANGE POLICY, THAT WAY.
Nobody has any respect for you: your lies – the endless graft and corruption by you, or about 10 other people: ALL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES.
Michael Mann: GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE
Kevin Trenberth: GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE
Steven Scheider: GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE
Jim Hansen: GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE
Gavin Schmidt: GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE
The list goes on, and on, and on: and comprises nothing more than a CRIMINAL RING of GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES spreading GRAFT, CRIME and
INFLUENCING POLICY by TERRORIZING the PEOPLE
THAT is what i think of you Kevin Trenberth. That’s what I and GENERATIONS to come
are going to RECORD as your LEGACY within civilization.
A CRIME RING
Of GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES.
Led by a FAILED run at the PRESIDENCY
creating a rage fueled, HATE fueled,
TERRORIST SCHEME to CHANGE POLICY by TERRORIZING the world’s people
that the WORLD was gonna END.
Where is the heat?
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/further-feedback-from-kevin-trenberth-and-feedback-from-josh-willis-on-the-ucar-press-release/
Big CME: http://www.spaceweather.com/images2010/20apr10/cme_c3_anim.gif?PHPSESSID=e7o42ddm9sg3f96mllh8p8m475
No sunspots for five days now!
I thought we were heading to Solar Max?
The oceans have a lot of processes going on that affect the weather. One local process is upwelling which cools those local areas, for ex., the west coasts of the Americas (perhaps it slightly warms a few areas like coastal Antarctica where seas might be frozen over without it).
In fact, the amount of cooling upwelling is what El Nino/La Nina is about. Greater upwelling caused by equatorial easterly winds is La Nina, lesser upwelling (or none) caused by the relaxation of those easterly winds or reversal to westerly winds. If for some reason bottom-water temp increased, La Nina periods wouldn’t be as cool and El Ninos would be warmer (to the limit of where upwelling no longer occurred).
So I think weather-affecting “heat” can be stored or lost in lower water. How lower water temp can change is another question. The only way I see is a reduction of cold sinking water. That obviously isn’t happening now in the North Atlantic Drift (Barents Sea), or northwest Europe would see significantly lower temps than average when W/NW winds were blowing and sea-ice coverage there would significantly increase.
The missing heat has obviously leaked into those curled up extra dimensions which are used to reconcile relativity with quantum theory. It will reappear the next time our neighboring multiverse bumps into ours and creates a new big bang. Then there will be plenty of heat again.
We have a plethora of unprovable and undisprovable “theories” these days that have little to do with science. A grade school kid could sit around and come up with some of this nosense. Anyone ever heard of the scientific method?
R. de Haan (07:33:58) : “No sunspots for five days now!
I thought we were heading to Solar Max?”
Graph of sunspot number over the last few months:
http://members.westnet.com.au/jonas1/sunspotgraph20100421.jpg
It doesn’t look like it’s heading for the heights, but I have no idea what sort of pattern is normal.
Re: Mike Jonas (Apr 20 15:45),
Leif has some plots:
http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
in http://www.leif.org/research/Historical%20Solar%20Cycle%20Context.pdf
It is a talk presentation with lots of variables that have been found to define the cycles, and it sets the context for cycle 24.
R. de Haan (07:33:58) :
Big CME: http://www.spaceweather.com/images2010/20apr10/cme_c3_anim.gif?PHPSESSID=e7o42ddm9sg3f96mllh8p8m475
No sunspots for five days now!
I thought we were heading to Solar Max?
Which way to earth in April?
beng (07:59:21)
“So I think weather-affecting ‘heat’ can be stored or lost in lower water. How lower water temp can change is another question. The only way I see is a reduction of cold sinking water.”
I agree – some appear to think and suggest that warm water can somehow hide in the deep ocean ready to return a few centuries later. However downwelling by its very nature only sends down near-freezing water (plus increased-salinity from ice-formation) at specific locations like the Norwegian Sea.
Thus measurements to date find the deepest ocean water to have more or less uniform temperature near to 4C. This is partly dictated by massive gravitational pressure.
I do believe strongly that THC has a major role in climate including in medium and long term cycles. However the way that climate can interact with THC is by pattern and rate of downwelling, not the impossible feat of pushing warm water down into cold.
Its amusing that the AGW community prior to 2006 contemptuously ignored any climate factors other than CO2 – now they are casting around for fig-leaves such as solar variation and THC for the “missing heat”.
Dr. Spencer has posted some thoughts on this
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
1) THE MISSING ENERGY IS IN THE SOLAR, NOT THE INFRARED
Trenberth and Fasullo don’t highlight the fact that the “missing” energy is not in the infrared, which is where manmade global warming allegedly originates, but in the reflected solar component. The infrared component has essentially no trend between March 2000 and December 2007 (the last CERES Earth radiation budget data I have analyzed).
2) MAYBE THE DISCREPANCY WAS ACTUALLY BEFORE 2000….
3) OCEAN TEMPERATURES ARE MUCH EASIER TO MEASURE THAN THE EARTH’S RADIATION BUDGET….
I’m sorry, but at some point we need to ask whether all of this missing warming and energy are missing because they really do not exist. This is Roger Pielke, Sr.’s opinion, and at this point it is mine as well. Only time will tell.
Well worth reading it all
Re: phlogiston (Apr 21 05:53),
That should be Total Energy Content in the oceans, including the energy in convection biota chemical bindings etc into which heat can be transformed.
HEAT IS NOT A CONSERVED QUANTITY.
anna v (22:53:06)
Energy is indeed more correct to use than heat. In fact deep water gains a little heat and temperature from adaiabatic compression. (Its only a matter of time before AGWers cotton on to this and claim it as heat in the pipeline from global warming!)
Folks , there isn’t any indicator that any of these men actually understand what they are talking about. These people are all what are called sycophants: they happen to be understanding enough of power and how to get it but not that they will surely be caught.
Can you IMAGINE: if someone wrote a BOOK, and the LEAD STATISTICAL genius had all his models INSTANTLY NULLIFIED by the fact the Major Statistical Societies of the world won’t endorse they even know math?
if their ”radiation guy” claimed he made up a huge ”earth energy budget” spending goodness knows HOW much, bought him a satellite,
and what he thought were ”raging out of control warming” was the steady coast into the null between a warm and cold spell?
If their “top record keeping leader” was found to be not only not leading but plotting to HIDE what his information was and that in the process, someone working there: a TRAINED TECHNOLOGIST/THEORETIST to write the
“HarryReadMe” file? Telling how every pass through the data, they were plugging and changing and never keeping records of why, inventing stations statistically and on and on, with the author there finally saying something along the order of “doing what’s normal here, i plunge in changing things” and “this data is all a mess.. the whole place.. and i doubt it’s gonna change because. … well this is C.R.U.”
it’s paraprased there but everyone remembers that was what the guy said about how damaged the entire record keeping’s RECORD KEEPING is/was..
Jim Hansen with the guy who works for him’s inane predictions about sun spots, with EVEN AMATEURS saying in that geeky respectful way, ”whaaat is he talking about?”
Hansen with his “really really REALLY giant el nino” and the myriad end of the world predictions he’s made.. it’s the stuff of legendary humor.
Steven Schneider with that LAUGHABLE paper about “the answer blowing in the wind” when he
he actually PUT into PRINT and SAID: MAYBE now ONCE AND FOR ALL WE CAN SHUT THESE DENIERS UP”
that he MODELED the WIND SPEEDs in the TROPOSPHERE and came up with doggonit he was right – all the aircraft thermal sensors, radiosonde thermal sensors, and satellite thermal sensors, were ALLLLL BROKE and it actually WAS HOT up there in the troposphere, where we have hordes of thermal sensors traveling 24/7/365….
And now this Trenberth with this “the magic heat, just magically magic’d away, MAGICALLY and eewwwwww it could BE WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT when it comes back ewwwwwww!!
Al Gore with his “we’ll fix things financially” CARBON CREDITS SCAM that was his “vision of finance for the future” that started at 22 dollars a ton for co2 now opening daily at ZERO…
Are we REALLY supposed to have any respect for that kind of obviously out of contact with mainstream science ineptitude,
over
and over?
If Mann and his gang can’t get the Royal Statistical Society to sign on, he doesn’t HAVE any models to TEACH.
If someone WRITING a paper uses the “statistical methods employed by” … whomever and whatever specifically they said I don’t recall , but –
they don’t even have MODELS if they don’t have the endorsement of the major statistical societies of the developed world.
The Royal just told them they’re fools. Are these criminal policy shift terror – eco terror
spreading government employees going to claim after every single one of them’s been exposed as UTTERLY INCOMPETENT
they invented a new form of math?
PaLease.
Let real scientists who have real resumes get into those jobs, we aren’t entrusting the emergency forecast and management, crop, transportation, heating/cooling management for the benefit of the wider people of civilization –
we can’t continue to pretend we didn’t just see what we all know we are seeing.
we aren’t entrusting it all as i was saying
to people whose primary game, is to influence global decisionmaking in private, and also public concerns
just to be doing it.
These people are literally trying to operate as a fifth column of internationally cooperative (multiple jurisdictions) government employees, using governments’ management and forecast equipment to alter policy and money to where they want through spreading terror
It’s criminal, pure and simple
suricat (17:54:41)
“Looking for unaccounted heat in deep ocean can’t really be justified. When you think about it water begins to expand again when it’s cooled to more than ~4°C, so there’s only an ~8°C range at most that can ‘hide’ heat in great ocean depths. There’s a large volume there though.”
I made this mistake in an earlier thread. (I assume you meant when water is cooled to below 4C it expands). This is true for fresh water, but salty seawater (35 ppth salt) has its maximum density much closer to zero. However sea ice still floats since it is less salty, plus trapped air bubbles. None-the-less, very deep ocean water has stable temperature at around 0-3 C, except close to hydrothermal vents.
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/temp.html&edu=high
This may seem like a dumb-ass question – I don’t do maths and I didn’t do physics O’level – but I can’t find any reference in the NCAR or Pielke Sr scribblings where they consider the missing “heat” might be stored in kinetic energy.
They’re all in favour of us moving over to wind farms, which are energy recovery systems but they don’t seem to be considering where that energy, that’s being recovered, originates. Do they think it’s free, magic energy? How about oceanic wave (low frequency sound?) energy.. is that magic energy too?
Like I said, probably a dumb-ass question.. I’ve no idea how much solar radiation is stored in atmospheric/oceanic kinetics – it just strikes me there might be a lot of it, and it doesn’t seem to feature in this discussion. I wondered how much heat energy is being hidden “in plain sight”, while occasionally tiny bits of it are plucked out of the air by opportunistic wind turbines. Feel free to shoot my silly ideas down at your leisure.