Spencer: Global Average Sea Surface Temperatures Poised for a Plunge

So, what do we need to hit on the anomaly, and when, to avoid “2010 hottest year” headlines? April already showed some decrease, presumably May and June will as well, and then by July what Roy is talking about here should be kicking in.

OT
Anthony,
I live in Rocklin, ca. It seems to me that the weather (at least in Nor Cal) the last 3 years or so has been cooler…..fall, spring and summer…..can’t tell with winter.
Maybe around when the PDO changed……?? Of course this is anecdotal.
Any evidence of this?
Thanks JOhn

Those seas are gonna chill up,
Put on a happy face!
Warmers will then go dry up,
Put on a happy face!

As Dr. Spencer acknowledges, there is nothing at all unusual in this kind of natural cycle (i.e. drop) after an El Nino, and exactly the same kind of fall was seen after the 1998 El Nino. The more interesting question is how low will the ocean temps go and how much will the tropo temps be affected. I doubt we’ll see the La Nina low temps we saw in 2008, though temps may fall somewhere to the 2009 low.

Trenberth’s missing heat went into hiding in the ocean, where it was subsequently presumed to be murdered. Forensic evidence from the alleged crime scene to be processed and analyzed by Dr. Spencer. From the initial statement to the press by investigators: “Knowledgeable people assured us it was hiding deep in there, but so far we have found no credible evidence to that effect. At this point we will have to verify first that it even existed at all, and we may soon be bringing those people in for questioning.”

And I’m wondering why the AGW skeptical group is not talking about this major study on the overall warming trend of the oceans (not the cyclical rise and fall of temps based on the cycle of El Nino/La Nina):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/pdf/nature09043.pdf
So while it is interesting to note the ENSO cycles, PDO, etc., more important for the long term climate are the longer term trends.

R. Gates says:
May 20, 2010 at 3:31 pm
And I’m wondering why the AGW skeptical group is not talking about this major study on the overall warming trend of the oceans (not the cyclical rise and fall of temps based on the cycle of El Nino/La Nina):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/pdf/nature09043.pdf
So while it is interesting to note the ENSO cycles, PDO, etc., more important for the long term climate are the longer term trends.
+++
Because it is uncontroversial to either side to note that 1993 was significantly cooler than 2008? Lovely Mt. Pinatubo cherry-pick there tho.

Doug says:
May 20, 2010 at 3:24 pm
“Uh, why not just change the scale instead of multiplying the data by 10? Makes no sense to me.”
There are two lines, global oceans and equatorial(5 degrees north to south).
Dr Spencer multiplied the swing in the global oceans by 10 so one could see the global ocean temps track with the equatorial temps with a time small lag.

We are cooling, folks; for how long even kim doesn’t know.
===============

Hi Kim,
FYI http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps
Select ‘near surface layer’. Check as many boxes as you like and then ‘Redraw’
Arguably more blogworthy than what Dr Spencer chose to post about …..

Apologies, messed up the URL- try here: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/

R. Gates says:
May 20, 2010 at 3:31 pm
And I’m wondering why you directed to a pay-per-view magazine study.
Are you a Nature fan?

I noticed that there seems to be a correlation between El Nino / La Nina events and global temperatures. More El Nino events than La Nina events give a warmer average temperature on the planet, and the temperature increases stagnate when there are approximately equal La Ninas and El Ninos. Greater La Ninas than El Ninos give a decline in planetary temperatures. However, the El Nino/La Nina data record extends only to the 1950s, so I can’t really claim it’s an historic phenomenon.

@R. Gates
“And I’m wondering why the AGW skeptical group is not talking about this major study on the overall warming trend of the oceans (not the cyclical rise and fall of temps based on the cycle of El Nino/La Nina)”
Would be more interesting if it didnt stop at 2008. All that paper proves is that oceans warmed somewhat between 93-2008, which proves nothing when it comes to climate.

“Poised for a plunge”.
I like that phrase:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png

The greatest source and cause of weather climate variability and long term oscillation is in the oceans and trade winds. Understand those, and you understand warming and cooling trends upon the land. C02 is a sliver in your finger compared to the forest of oceans.

Pamela Gray says:
May 20, 2010 at 6:18 pm
The greatest source and cause of weather climate variability and long term oscillation is in the oceans and trade winds. Understand those, and you understand warming and cooling trends upon the land. C02 is a sliver in your finger compared to the forest of oceans.
Exactly Pamela, and I would add an explanation point on the wind.
A calm windless stagnated ocean cannot evaporate to any appreciable amount little matter of what is the temperature, some don’t really understand the evaporation/condensation surface interface. Now add wind, linear or from convection, and then you have something happening, once again, little matter of the temperature even though it does affect the rate of course but the wind speed easily trumps it!

Pamela, I should have added that when the wind gets high enough to break the wave tops the surface area shoots up a hugely, now with wind to carry away the moisture and a huge surface area exposed a serious amount of water vapor can be stripped away from the surface in no time, but surely everyone understands that, I realize you do. Well, maybe someone not savvy on science might read this and say, “Gee, I didn’t quite realize that!”.

I assume Trenbarth’s statement that 50 % of the heat is missing is based on the .52 w/m2 radiative imbalance inferred from the ocean heat content accumulation curve from 1993 to 2008 as discussed in the Nature paper when compared to the 1 w/M2 radiative imbalance estimated from the Ceres Satellite data. However from 2002 to 2008 the Argo data shows no accumulation. Since 2008 the arctic ice cap has rapidly grown and is probably releasing heat at .2 w/m2 which would then need to be subtracted from any heat accumulation since 2008 gained from the current El Nino. With the impending drop in SST I bet Argo will ultimatly reveal heat loss since 2002.

Crashex says:
May 20, 2010 at 3:55 pm
R. Gates,
That paper addresses a 1993 to 2008 thermal trend analysis. Not a long term climate trend and much less than the estimated 30 to 60 year ENSO cycles.
The theory that stronger La Nina cycles will dominate for the next decade or two has interested people watching the shorter term swings. Are you betting for or against a long and strong La Nina?
______________
I never bet on the weather, but I don’t see the La Nina hitting the low ocean temps we saw in the dip in late 2007/early 2008 of -2.5, more like the range we saw in late 2008/early 2009 of -1.5, and I think the odds are good for us to see a stronger El Nino in 2012/13 than we just had
__________
JimF says:
May 20, 2010 at 5:26 pm
So, R. Gates:
What do you make of (And I’m wondering why the AGW skeptical group is not talking about) this major study? Just wondering.
____________________
This study is confirmation of predicitons made by AGWT about the warming of the oceans using multiple data sets. It is not a landmark study, but for those, like me, who remain 25% skeptical about AGW, it begins to nudge me further down the road.
____________
Ivan says:
May 20, 2010 at 4:10 pm
R Gates,
I am not really sure what you mean by “temps may fall somewhere to the 2009 low”? 2009 was a relatively warm, El Nino year. What is the basis to believe that strong La Nina would bring about equally high temperature as those produced by a moderate El Nino in 2009?
_________
Ivan, I really should have said “late 2008/early 2009. There was a second downturn in the La Nina temps, that didn’t go as far down at the late 2007/early 2008 low. (only -1.5 versus -2.5) I think the next La Nina will see this range (-1.5)

Dr. says:
The anomalous step change from 2002-2003 is a step change (3.5 deg) during the transition from XBT to ARGO, something which Josh Willis has acknowledged in exchanges with RPS, yet mysteriously is not mentioned in the Nature article.
——————————————————————————
If you took out the step change I bet the calculated radiative imbalance calculation would drop to something like .3W/m2 – even more missing heat.

I would like to clarify my statement about the effect of growing ice.
Hansen claimed that .2 w/m2 of the missing heat from 1993 to 2008 likely went to melting the arctic ice cap. The ice cap has grown at a much faster rate than the decline from 1993 to 2008, thefore based on Hansen’s analysis at least .2/W/M2 must have been released by the growing ice. Therefore if the radiative imbalance since 2008 is calculated to be say be .1 w/m2 from a gain in ocean heat content, it must be corrected by .2W/M2 to an actual .-1W/M2 or a cooling planet.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/05/flashback-to-2007-sst-to-plunge-again/

What’s the correlation between global sst and global air temperature? This is key IMHO. Everything else is secondary (feedbacks, adjustments, perception, hysteria, indifference).

The first Argo floats were deployed in late 1999.
The Argo array did not reach its full planned coverage of at least 3000 floats until late 2006. Not all the floats are equal – about 66% dive to at least 1500 meters, and 46% to 2000 meters.
The new Argo data looking at the upper 2000m gives a possible explanation for the wide swings in 700m data – heat is being moved vertically, in upwellings and downwellings, that hadn’t been seen before in the instrument data.
700m data:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Look at the Argo data for the upper 2000m of the world’s oceans:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/ocean-heat-2000m.gif
This graph is from Figure 11a:
http://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/49437/368494/file/VonSchukmann_et_al_2009_inpress.pdf
From beginning 2003 to the end of 2008, the oceans warmed at a rate of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2
Note that the upper 200m of the oceans continued to warm while the upper 700m cooled slightly.
Offhand, I don’t know of any papers analyzing Argo data for the full 2000m in 2009.
http://w3.jcommops.org/FTPRoot/Argo/Doc/Argo_new_brochure.pdf
Also note that Argo floats cannot go under the sea ice, or operate over the steep continental slope, nor can the array adequately measure the oceans’ narrow and swift western boundary currents. Here autonomous gliders integrated with Argo will help to link the deep ocean to the boundary currents and continental shelves. The Argo data system can handle this data from gliders.
I’d like to see something like a vertical wall of Argo floats measuring how much heat moves from the North Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean each year:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Arctic_circle.svg/1000px-Arctic_circle.svg.png
I think this is the main cause of the vanishing Arctic sea ice:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrent.png
Note that there is already less sea ice than in summer 2007.

richcar said:
May 20, 2010 at 8:01 pm
I would like to clarify my statement about the effect of growing ice.
Hansen claimed that .2 w/m2 of the missing heat from 1993 to 2008 likely went to melting the arctic ice cap. The ice cap has grown at a much faster rate than the decline from 1993 to 2008, thefore based on Hansen’s analysis at least .2/W/M2 must have been released by the growing ice. Therefore if the radiative imbalance since 2008 is calculated to be say be .1 w/m2 from a gain in ocean heat content, it must be corrected by .2W/M2 to an actual .-1W/M2 or a cooling planet.
________________
This part of your post is especially erroneous: The ice cap has grown at a much faster rate than the decline from 1993 to 2008…
All I can say is what in the world are you talking about???

FWC News – Record cold leads to record number of manatee deaths
http://myfwc.com/NEWSROOM/10/statewide/News_10_X_ManateeRecordDeaths.htm
As of March 19, biologists with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s (FWC) Fish and Wildlife Research Institute (FWRI) have documented 431 manatee carcasses in state waters so far in 2010. This preliminary data indicates that in just three months, the number of manatee deaths has exceeded the highest number on record for an entire calendar year, which was 429 in 2009. The cause of death for the majority of these animals is cold stress…
Fish and Wildlife Research Institute
http://research.myfwc.com/features/view_article.asp?id=33589
http://myfwc.com/NEWSROOM/10/statewide/News_10_X_ManateeDeaths09.htm
Looks like colder water to me!

Don Shaw :
Go to this website
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/Marine_Atlas.html
You can download the program and subsequently the data every month. You can also get a CD sent to you with the program and the latest data. Contact Megan.

R. Gates says:
May 20, 2010 at 3:13 pm
“I doubt we’ll see the La Nina low temps we saw in 2008, though temps may fall somewhere to the 2009 low.”
================================
Well I am sure scientists and experts across the world are hanging on every word of that “prognostication”.
I doubt we will “see” this either, but you know what I would really like to see?
A live panel with you, and then Roy Spencer, Lindzen, Bastardi, Tisdale, Maue and other actual scientists and physicists.
It might be rather amusing to watch somebody who incessantly, and surprisingly “confidently”…talks out of his arse on this site, with material that is continually over his head and out of his league…get eaten up by the lions.
And if that still is unsuccessful in preventing your “25% skeptical” side from being “nudged down the road” toward the religion you SO want to “believe” in…then I guess you were predestined to go that way anyway.
Hint for ya: Listen and try to learn more. You might surprise yourself.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

richcar 1225
Afraid not. Where there are data to be tortured and idiots to listen the AGW movement will continue. There is tOOOOOO much money involved.

“The corresponding sea level pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin (SOI index, next graph) shows a rapid transition toward La Nina conditions is developing.”
Since this 2009/2010 event was classified as an El Nino Modoki ( http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/05/01/history-suggests-dont-bet-on-la-nina-this-year/ ) ,surely the chance of a La Nina event following this El Nino is very small…

Well Arctic sea ice is taking a nosedive as R Gates said.
“Could we break another record this year? I think it’s quite possible,” said Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo.
“We are going to lose the summer sea-ice cover. We can’t go back.”
We can’t go back apparently according to an “expert” as ice never comes back once it has melted, apparently.
There is of course one huge problem with the assumptions and that is very simple:
Monitoring of Arctic sea ice only began in 1972.
I know, lets play a game. Are you up for it R Gates???
Lets imagine you have Roald Amundesen and the crew of the St. Roch standing in front of you. Now explain how the current melting is unprecedented.

“R. Gates says:
May 20, 2010 at 3:31 pm
And I’m wondering why the AGW skeptical group is not talking about this major study on the overall warming trend of the oceans (not the cyclical rise and fall of temps based on the cycle of El Nino/La Nina):
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/pdf/nature09043.pdf
So while it is interesting to note the ENSO cycles, PDO, etc., more important for the long term climate are the longer term trends.”
The first sentence from the cite states:
“A large (~1023 J) multi-decadal globally averaged warming signal in the upper 300 m of the world’s oceans was reported roughly a decade ago1 and is attributed to warming associated with anthropogenic greenhouse gases”
The claim that the multi-decadal rise is due to greenhouse gases is a postulation.
Here is an alternate explanation: In Little Ice Age the oceans were cool, then at the end of the LIA the Earth starts warming (for some reason) as the oceans warm the solubility of CO2 in the oceans reduces (cf. Henry’s Law) and CO2 out-gasses from the oceans. So the warming leads to a steady rise in atmospheric CO2 that has continued to this day as the oceans have been warming. This matches with the observed geological pattern of the Earth warming then, some years later, atmospheric CO2 increasing.
The apparent correlation of CO2 with atmospheric temperatures is therefore not a causal relationship but atmospheric CO2 concentrations are a lagging indicator of ocean temperatures.
The timescales and lag of atmospheric CO2 increases starting after the LIA also matches the ‘start of the industrial period’ that is used in the AGW hypothesis as the reason for the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration.
The AGW hyppthesis cannot therefore be sustained.

The new meme is the heat bypasses the 700m layer undetected and stealthily reveals itself below? So the “physics as we understand it” is wrong, and the upper 700m of ocean does not contain ~85% of the heat storage of the planet? The science community has been lying to us?
R Gates and Anu, would you mind explaining how ocean heat suddenly decided in 2003 to stop increasing in the upper 700m and hide away for another day, completely undetected? Contrary to your claim R Gates, this is not in agreement with climate models.
If that is true, then the equatorial OHC in the upper 300m somehow miraculously disappeared as well, again completely undetected through the upper 700m.

Mark highlighted this from BoM
The map for the 5 days ending 10 May shows a large volume of cooler than normal water below the surface of the tropical Pacific, with anomalies more than 3°C cooler than normal for this time of the year. Two weeks ago there were no areas with anomalies of below −2°C.

Here is the ERSST PDO Index just sent to me by meteoroligist Joe D’Aleo. It shows the PDO re-entering in its negative phase in March and April as the last El Nino continued to dissipate.
ftp://eclipse.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/ersstv3b/pdo/pdo.1854.latest.situ.v3b.ts

blackswhitewash.com says:
May 21, 2010 at 2:23 am
I guess you missed the fact that it took Amundsen more than 2 years to traverse the
the Northwest Passage whereas in 2007 a sailboat did it in a several weeks.
Jim Clarke says:
May 21, 2010 at 1:01 am
What major rebound of Arctic ice are you talking about? I haven’t seen any evidence of a rebound. And Antarctic is still warming. Where are you getting your facts from?

blackswhitewash.com says:
May 21, 2010 at 2:23 am
Lets imagine you have Roald Amundesen and the crew of the St. Roch standing in front of you. Now explain how the current melting is unprecedented.

Amundsen took 3 years to sail west through the Northwest Passage (1903-1906). The St. Roch took 2 years to sail east through the Northwest Passage (1940-1942).
Amundsen was trapped in ice each of three winters. He came and went from his ship, and learned Arctic survival skills from the local Netsilik people that would later prove useful. For example, he learned to use sled dogs and to wear animal skins in lieu of heavy, woolen parkas.
Due to water as shallow as 3 ft (0.91 m), a larger ship could never have used the route Amundsen travelled. This says more about 7 guys with enough money and supplies to wait for years until the shifting ices of the Canadian coast allow them to slip through, than the Arctic being “ice free” 104 years ago.
Same for the St. Roch, which took the same path Amundsen did, going in the other direction. Neither man/ship made their historic journeys in one summer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Amundsen#Northwest_Passage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Roch_(ship)
Since “sea ice extent” defines a 15% filled gridbox as “sea ice”, there are probably plenty of opportunities to sail the Northwest passage in a couple weeks in recent years:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/images/20070926_extent.png
There seems to be only a few bottlenecks among the Canadian islands where a ship would have to sail among ice floes. This is probably unprecedented in historical times.

“And Antarctic is still warming.”
Where are YOU getting YOUR facts from???

Jim Clarke says:
May 21, 2010 at 1:01 am
“R. Gates,
You say that the ocean warming from 1993 to 2008 is just what the AGW models predicted. Fine. It is also what we expected from natural climate variation….
So why are you only 25% skeptical of a theory that only explains 1-2% of the last 2,000 years? Shouldn’t you be 98-99% skeptical based on the observations alone?”
________________________________________________________________________
R.Gates is NOT 25% skeptical, even though (s)he says he is. That is just a useful argument device. The true objective is to place doubt in peoples minds and recruit them to the AGW cause. Here is R.Gates without his sheep’s-clothing, on his favorite subject arctic ice.
“In addition to the complete destruction of the ecosystem going on in the Arctic, what people don’t realize is the extremely critical function the sea ice plays in regulating the temperature of the whole world. It:
1) Reflects sunlight, keeping the earth’s albedo in a constant range.
2) Keeps the ocean temperature is check (like an ice cube in your summer drink)
When the ice cap melts completely, you can be certain that RAPID global warming is immenent. An ice free arctic will mean massive warming from the loss of temperature control (like breaking the thermistat in your home), as well as the POSITIVE FEEDBACK of releasing massive amounts of methane from the arctic region.
All this is assured, and already too late to stop.. .and still the fools are arguing about who will get all their precious oil reserves from the arctic…as though it will be business as usual in the future…such a foolish, blind, narrowminded, and selfish species.
Gaia will be bringing on the culling soon.
God Bless you all.
R. Gates
[Response to R. Gates comment:]
The time is coming when many people will follow the exemplary behavior Zephyr, Glen Barry and R. Gates by speaking out loudly and clearly for something, for anything at all to do with the preservation of life as know it and Earth, even though it is not politically convenient and economically expedient to do so, even though thousands of greedy kings and self-proclaimed masters of the universe eschew such open expressions as well as maintain that “silence is golden.”
Soon people will be heard speaking out often in many places for something, for anything at all that does not have to do with the unbridled and soon to become unsustainable growth of the global political economy.
The silence regarding the threat of rampant economic globalization is deafening. How much longer will it continue?
Climate Ark: Arctic Going to Hell in a Hand-Basket
No I do not think our R Gates has a skeptical bone in his body.

stevengoddard says:
May 20, 2010 at 9:12 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/05/flashback-to-2007-sst-to-plunge-again/
I had a look at this earlier thread that Steve cited – there are some interesting quotes from it:
R Gates
February 5, 2010 at 2:11 pm:
I think we might see some “see-saw” effect in 2010, but there is at least one very important difference between now and 2007. In 2007 we were seeing a sun that was becoming less active as it headed for the minimum we saw last year. Now we are seeing an increasingly active sun with its irradiance steadily increasing toward the solar max of 2013. Plus of course, we have more CO2 and methane in the atmosphere than in 2007, so with any heat released, the more that will be trapped and continue to warm the troposphere. So far at least, there are no signs that 2010 will cool down like 2007 did…but we all can track it daily which makes this so fun & interesting…
O dear – what happened to the “increasingly active sun with its irradiance steadily increasing”? Spotless again today. Still no “signs” that 2010 will cool down?
There was also on the thread some betting action or at least macho betting talk from Tom P:
Tom P says:
February 7, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Steve Goddard (16:15:50) :
I’m willing to bet that 2010 is likely to be one of the warmest years recorded, if not the warmest. That’s hardly agreeing with your prediction of UAH temperatures. And I think the composition of the atmosphere would certainly play an important part in that warming.
Steve Goddard says:
February 7, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Tom P,
I’ll take you up on that bet. Based on UAH temperatures. 2010 will not be as warm as 1998.
I think Tom would be better advised to take his chances on the stock exchange than putting any actual money behind warming predictions just now.

JeffBrown
“And Antarctic is still warming.”
I thought we were talking about the Earth here? To what planet does this refer?

Even an oil spill cleanup team has to be politically correct these days: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OIL_SPILL_PROFESSOR?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

Anu says:
May 20, 2010 at 9:42 pm
I’d like to see something like a vertical wall of Argo floats measuring how much heat moves from the North Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean each year:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Arctic_circle.svg/1000px-Arctic_circle.svg.png
I think this is the main cause of the vanishing Arctic sea ice:
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/ArcticSeaiceVolume/images/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrent.png
Note that there is already less sea ice than in summer 2007.
I agree that water movement from the Atlantic is a key determinant of Arctic ice. Ocean currents around the Arctic can indeed be expected to have equal or greater effect on ice extent than air temps – this point is made repeatedly on this site when debates on Arctic ice get confined to air temperature and winds only.
“Be careful what you wish for”. If tomorrow there could be the “vertical wall of Argo floats measuring how much heat moves from the North Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean each year”, I can guess quite confidently what they would see: decreasing heat movement Arcticward. Why? A strong clue was given in a paper by Levitus et al 2009 concerning the Barents Sea, posted here last October:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/08/new-paper-barents-sea-temperature-correlated-to-the-amo-as-much-as-4%C2%B0c/
Look at the first graph with black (Barents temps 100-150m) and red (AMO) lines. Strong correlation between Barents subsurface temps and the AMO. Cyclical warming of Barents water with up to 4C magnitude can only be from ocean currents (tail end of the north Atlantic drift) not air weather. Forcasting the sinewave forward its not hard to predict that as AMO now heads south, so will Barents water temps, reflecting reduced warm input from the Atlantic. And thus the Arctic ice recovery will continue.

Gail Combs
Now we seem to have hit the top of that cycle and are probably headed towards lower temperatures
See Fig.9.1 in page 50:
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/005/y2787e/y2787e08.pdf
This take us to the forbidden side of science:
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=34190&sid=7dc1009f4b5d617fc52a4ec613528b61

Basil: You wrote, “In Bob’s defense…”
I never predicted that there would not be a La Nina or that there would be one. My last post on La Nina events illustrated that they rarely happen after an El Nino Modoki. Also, it’s not a La Nina…yet.

Bob Tisdale
May 21, 2010 at 9:07 am A La Nina helps to fuel the next El Nino.….but not perhaps iduring “interesting times”
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC22.htm
It looks like it follows the 80 years +-Wolf-Gleissberg cycle.

R. Gates wrote: “And I’m wondering why the AGW skeptical group is not talking about this major study on the overall warming trend of the oceans (not the cyclical rise and fall of temps based on the cycle of El Nino/La Nina),” and you linked Lyman et al (2010).
The basic reason is that we’ve discussed OHC before. Many of the bloggers here understand that natural variables dominate the rise in Ocean Heat Content since 1955, which is the start year of the NODC’s OHC dataset, and that’s the OHC dataset that was released with Levitus et al (2009). All anyone has to do is break the OHC data down into basin subsets to discover what caused the rise and you can do that using the KNMI Climate Explorer:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere
Or, if you’re one of the persons who doesn’t like to investgate data, you can read three posts I’ve written on that dataset. I believe there are links to other posts within them. Start here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
Then read this one on the North Atlantic:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/10/north-atlantic-ocean-heat-content-0-700.html
And there’s this one on the North Pacific:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/north-pacific-ocean-heat-content-shift.html
Regards

Murray Carpenter says:
May 20, 2010 at 2:53 pm …They speak of a “robust warming”, guess they will be “robustly fired” by the new government.☺

Gail Combs says:
R.Gates is NOT 25% skeptical, even though (s)he says he is.
Gail, I agree 100%. If R. Gates is 25% skeptical, I sure don’t want to meet a 0% skeptic.

“Gaia will be bringing on the culling soon. — R. Gates”
Wow, I used to have a grudging respect for R. Gates, supercilious but at least civilized, but this is quite revealing. Anyone spouting ‘Gaia’ nonsense and such anti-human ‘culling’ language loses all credibility in my book to their claims of being some sort of ‘rational inquirer’.
Gail, thanks for posting, that was a public service.

Anu says:
May 21, 2010 at 9:32 am
“heated surface water downwells”
No it doesn’t.
Downwelling significant to THC only occurs at locations such as the Norwegian sea and one or two other locations such as the Southern Ocean south of Australia & New Zealand. You need near freezing temperatures and increased salinity from ice formation for significant downwelling of the type that drives THC.
You cant push warm water down into cold, no matter how much political support you have. That is why ocean currents above and below the 3.5 degree isentrope are separate.
Amusing how AGWers are all of a sudden fancying themselves as oceanographers and concocting this wild myth of warm water downwelling. Desperate stuff.

“Trenberth’s missing heat went into hiding in the ocean, where it was subsequently presumed to be murdered.”
No, but look. During a La Nina event the PWP thermocline descends to unusual depths to store all that hot water. Then a gravity wave in the thermocline sashays in from California and bumps La Nina’s bottom, spilling hot water all over the Pacific in an El Nino. So if Trenberth (or more likely Santer) wants to find all that heat, all he needs to do is go to the middle of the Pacific Warm Pool at the height of La Nina, drop a thermometer down to just above the thermocline, and write a paper for Science interpolating that temperature at that depth over the entire Pacific (with GISS’ help, naturally) — and voila! “We found the heat and … [wait for it…] it’s even worse than we thought!!!“

phlogiston says:
May 21, 2010 at 11:28 am
Yes it does.
I didn’t say it sinks in place – there are existing vertical currents, and they are heating up as the ocean surface absorbs the radiative imabalance, decade after decade.
Look at the figures showing OHC down to 2 kilometers:
http://www.euro-argo.eu/content/download/49437/368494/file/VonSchukmann_et_al_2009_inpress.pdf
This heat doesn’t get there by diffusion – it’s the existing vertical ocean currents, heated up by a fraction of a ° C, which translates into massive amounts of heat.
Downwelling significant to THC only occurs at locations such as…
Yup, only at certain, existing vertical current locations. And these vertical currents are warming, as is the ocean.
Amusing how GWMers are all of a sudden fancying themselves as scientists and concocting this wild myth of oceans not warming. Desperate stuff.

For me the reason why I do not believe in AGW is really quite simple.I took it for granted it was true as MSM stated science has proven it. But as I began to pay closer attention it confused me why I would here one day that glaciers in the Himalayns would melt by 2035 then hear no it will be 2300 and the report wasnt from science but from enviromental activists through WWF.
I decided to turn to the internet and just learn the facts for myself,not even knowing that it was co2 that was to blame for man made global warming. I quickly found out the only places I could get scientific facts to satisfy my thirst for understanding were sites that were deemed “unscientific” by groups that had no science, only alarmism unsupported by facts.
Just the fact that the medieval warming period has been basically obilterated made me ask questions.The more I looked for answers the more disturbing it became for me. Why is it that the supposed denialists all have the same science and understanding that I now embrace and the warmist or alarmist sides are all over the map? One site says one thing, one site says another.
I think the answer is easy. It is not difficult to have the science stay consistant as truth does not require making up stuff along the way,it just is therefore consistent. I could go on and on but just for a lark listen to the congressman on you tube who is in charge of the dep’t of global warming. His name is Edward J Markey (d) and he compares proving AGW to baseball players taking steroids. The only scientific fact he even utters is a ridiculous prediction of sea levels rising 6 feet. Not even the suspect IPCC supports that wild statement and yet this man holds a chair of this importance? Truly scary, just my opinion.

Jim Clarke says:
May 21, 2010 at 11:52 am
Fair enough. But why do you need to wait for the next few years when there are no observations in the last 2,000 years (or 2 million, or 2 billion) that support the theory, except perhaps for the last 20 or 30 years? And even then, the observed warming does not fit the pattern prescribed by the AGW Theory, despite 20 years and billions of dollars of research money spent on trying to find the AGW fingerprints. It just doesn’t seem to make sense to have so much faith in a theory that has so little success at explaining observations.
————————–
Jim, can you please explain how the last 20-30 years of Arctic changes does not support AGW Theory? I think the Arctic explains it quite well. For many years before you started seeing record ice losses in the Arctic the models had predicted it would decline. Same with melting in Greenland, melting of other Arctic glaciers, tree-line moving further north, amplified autumn temperatures, permafrost thawing, etc. etc. These were predicted long before they were observed in reality. The thing with the Arctic is that if it was just one variable responding, say air temperature and nothing else, then you could make a case that AGW theory isn’t working. But the model-predicted changes are happening in ALL the climate state variables in the Arctic. And you don’t get those changes in the climate models if you run them with pre-industrial concentrations of GHGs. You can download climate model output and look for yourself at the differences in variables such as sea ice extent between model runs with and without the observed record of GHGs not included (and this is the observed record, not some future estimation of GHG levels). Basically the ice stays mostly the same (ignoring some natural up and down climate fluctuations). You only get the steep decline of sea ice in the models when you include the observed GHG record.
So then the question becomes, why is this so? Did the climate modelers tune the models so that when they put in the observed GHG record so that they would match up with the observed record of sea ice decline? Perhaps, but then you would think the model wouldn’t do a good job predicting other observed changes. I’m not a modeler so I don’t know all the tunings done to the models, and I don’t fully know all of the Earth’s variables the models have been able to accurately predict and which ones they haven’t. Perhaps someone on here is a climate model expert and can comment.

Smokey says:
May 21, 2010 at 1:38 pm
tonyb,
There is one crucial difference: those skeptical of the CAGW conjecture are not trying to get their hands into the pockets of everyone like the climate alarmists are.
—————
Wow, Smokey what an accusation. I didn’t realize that I’m only after your money. I thought I did the work I do because I love this planet. I sure wish I knew how it could make me rich too. Doing something you love and making money doing it would be a wonderful thing.

Gail Combs says:
May 21, 2010 at 2:21 pm
This cold that is setting up will be lasting much longer and be more intense.
So far no one has mentioned anything of the salinity changes as well.

Smokey, scientists have been looking for a natural variability signal for years in trying to explain things like the decline in the Arctic sea ice cover. How much better would it be for everyone if it is natural variability. Then we can hope that it will recover and the Earth won’t experience a dramatic shift in its climate like it would if the Arctic Ocean were to become open water (remember atmospheric and oceanic circulation is driven by the temperature difference between the equator and the poles).
There are many papers with links to natural variability, and I see in these papers that scientists are constantly struggling to find links to circulation patterns to explain the ice loss every year. But it doesn’t seem to be working. Weather patterns that scientists once believed would result in ice gain now also lead to ice loss (the negative AO this winter is a perfect example of this). Cyclonic or anticyclonic flow in the Arctic Basin seem to both give low summer ice conditions where before Cyclonic usually meant more ice. So ok if it’s the oceans causing the rapid melt, then why is the Arctic Ocean warming up so much? Is this the missing heat? And if so, isn’t that a bad thing since it would also lead to no summer sea ice which again is a big climate shift.
Honestly, I do believe the Arctic sea ice is on a trajectory towards ice free summers. And whenever the last time that happened was, there certainly were not 7 billion people on the planet depending on so much of the Earth’s resources to survive back then. The reason to care (and CO2 cap and trade is something I’m completely against btw), is that billions of lives will be affected by a shift in the Earth’s hydrological cycle, which for sure will occur if the Arctic Ocean is ice free in summer. And if it’s a natural cycle that makes this happen, well then it is still happening and we still need to deal with it. So spending so much time talking about what is causing it seems futile to me. What seems important is to understand the implications of such a big change in our climate system. And yeah..its probably still good to try to get a better handle as to what’s causing the current decline…
Honestly I hope I’m completely wrong and the ice rebounds in the next few years. That would be great for us all.

skye says:
May 21, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Skye, I can recommend Spencer’s latest book. I have worked with computers, modelling and control loops for many years.
Spencer is onto something when he describes how he believes climate scientists mis-interpreted the feedback-loop, and how they consequently modelled the climate wrong. He also has a very plausible theory on why. He has a peer reviewed paper on it, but it was total silence from the media.
Again, it’s highly recommended. You will enjoy reading it.

phlogiston says:
May 21, 2010 at 8:08 am
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that thread before.
The data in that paper is interesting (the area-averaged time series of temperature for the 100–150 m depth layer of the Barents Sea from 1900 through 2006), but that’s not quite the same as how many joules pass into the Arctic through a vertical wall in the sea between Greenland and Norway:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Arctic_circle.svg/1000px-Arctic_circle.svg.png
No doubt there were existing ocean currents and multi-decadal oscillations, but I was wondering if the heat was increasing, especially since 2000, when the Arctic summer sea ice had much faster summer melts.
I suppose a 60 year oscillation would have shown the same increased heat flow through such a vertical wall since the late 1970’s, if the Barents data can be extrapolated to the entire Arctic:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/barents_sea_temp_with_amo.png
The warm 1940’s would also match with the time of the St. Roch making it’s Northwest passage in a single season:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Roch_(ship)
It wouldn’t explain the rising global surface temps, or the world ocean’s heating, but it could be a significant warming signal superimposed on an underlying warming trend. Time will tell – the next 10 years, say. If the Arctic ice truly does recover (summer minimum extent, total volume) in the next decade, I will give a lot more attention to the AO/PDO/NAO arguments.

Since the late 1970s sea ice extent has decreased substantially [Comiso et al., 2008], whereas, simultaneously, AW [Atlantic Water] has become warmer and perhaps more abundant in the BS [Barents Sea].

The question is, will this warm water flowing into the Arctic from the Atlantic continue to become warmer, will it go back to “normal” because of a 60 year cyclical AO, or is there a sine wave signal (AO) superimposed on a global warming signal (exponential incline) ? I think data from the next decade will be much more persuasive to most people than all the arguments bounced around here.

sea level rise is a proxy for global warming although it needs to be divided into steric and mass components. The bottom line is the long term since the beginning of the Holocene is the same as it is today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
Therefore any radiative forcing due to global warming must be manifested in a sea level rise above what has been happening for ten thousand years. An increase in the rate of sea level rise is not happening.

tonyb says:
May 21, 2010 at 1:25 pm
R Gates, like Joel Shore, Brendan, Wren, and a few others, challenge us all here…
=================================
I wouldn’t put Joel Shore in the same sentence or classification as Gates and Wren.
The former is a real and legit scientist/physicist. The latter are not.
It is one thing to hear a legitimate, informed argument from the “other side.”
It is quite another to have to listen to people spout erroneous information continuously and worst, confidently. Said it before and will say it again: they should listen more and talk less and let the REAL experts speak [of which I readily admit, am not of them]. 🙂
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Smokey says:
May 21, 2010 at 1:38 pm
tonyb,
There is one crucial difference: those skeptical of the CAGW conjecture are not trying to get their hands into the pockets of everyone like the climate alarmists are.
_______________
Uh, I don’t think the Heartland Institute was offering up their little revival meeting this past week for free. Money is flowing on both sides of this issue…and billions of dollars are at stake on both sides of the issue.

Looks like a decent decline in temps on channel 4 and 5 in the last few days: http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps

The Sun is fixing to take off and we’ll be looking at a solar cycle that resembles an elongated solar cycle 21. To prove Hathaway and Svalgaard wrong.
Odd cycles are the ones that produce the warmth, not the even ones, but a decent cycle may prevent drastic global cooling.
Eddie Mertin
The Sun Man
Sunman, Indiana

Anthony said:
“Given what I’ve seen of USHCN2 and GHCN3, such pronouncements of “warmest x on record” are almost a certainty given the way they are adjusted. – Anthony
___________
Anthony, do you mean to imply that you would doubt the credibility of the data if multiple sources end of verifying 2010 as the warmest year on instrument record? This would imply a conspiracy on such a grand scale so as to be truly un-believable…
REPLY: Mr. Gates, first, I don’t like you putting words in my mouth.
I haven’t said “conspiracy”, but YOU DID. I expect an apology if you want to continue to post here. I take this issue seriously, and you can either apologize for connecting me to those words, or you’ll never post here again.
I said nothing about a “conspiracy” in the data, only about the way the post measurement adjustments tend to add a positive bias. NOAA confirms this by their own graph for example showing cumulative adjustments on USHCN1.
Look at individual adjustment biases here:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_pg.gif
and the cumulative bias here
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/epubs/ndp/ushcn/ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif
USHCN2 and GHCN3 have increased even over those numbers. It speaks to a flawed method, confirmation bias, and sloppiness in the data processing. It says nothing about conspiracy. When the adjustments add warmth, making press releases about “warmest on record” becomes more likely.
Secondly, if you understood in the slightest what you are talking about, you’d know that both HADCRUT and GISS derive a significant portion of their global data from USHCN and GHCN, which ties them to the same data adjustment problems. NOAA makes a processing change, they necessarily follow. It points to the problem of one group’s methodology (NCDC) having influence by the fact that it is the single source for the majority of worldwide surface data. This is why when countries like Russia do their own data examinations of their own country station data, they see differences.
I have now access to the same surface station data outside the NOAA adjustment process, done in parallel but with a process that cleans the data using a different set of processes that were developed for business forecasts where failure means loss of revenue. It was developed because business interests stopped trusting the NOAA/NCDC data when they had to bet millions of dollars on the outcome.
When that work from that data is published, perhaps even you might see the adjustment problem with NCDC’s methods.
You have one chance to apologize for connecting my statement about adjustments to “conspiracy”. I’m not going to get into an argument, as you’ve proven it here to be a waste of time. Choose now. Two words will suffice. – Anthony Watts

rogerkni says:
May 22, 2010 at 10:30 am
R. Gates says:
May 21, 2010 at 11:38 pm
Uh, I don’t think the Heartland Institute was offering up their little revival meeting this past week for free.
Attendees get their expenses paid and probably a speaker’s fee, but that’s only a once-a-year event. Maybe some of the free market think tanks have occasional dinners where speaker’s fees are also paid, or they pay reprint fees for articles in their journals. But that’s very thin gruel to try to make a living on.
_______________
You’re probably right on that, though they were charging a tidy fee for those who just wanted to attend. Regardless, I don’t see the conferences as being a big money maker for Heartland as overall that’s not the point of those particular conferences, and who knows, I may even get out to the next one myself. My more essential point is billions of dollars are riding on both sides of the issue, and with that much money at stake, sometimes the science gets lost. (okay, most of the time the science gets lost). In my own search for the truth of AGW science, the more someone on either side begins to take a political stance (which is at heart an economic one under our current system of government), the less I tend to listen to them.

Smokey says:
May 22, 2010 at 5:38 am
R. Gates,
Please cite the “billions of dollars” at stake for skeptics who refute CAGW. Contrast that with what the alarmist contingent is trying to get at… in which case it is $trillions.
So, whose $billions are skeptics trying to get?
Specifics, please.
_____________
The billions of dollars come in the form of the policies and laws that made be put into place (or not) depending on where the political wind blows. Corporations who end up on one side of the issue or another will either make or lose money. The “public relations” efforts (we dare not call in propaganda do we?) is aimed squarely at changing public perceptions with the final aim of changing the perceptions of the policy makers who will or won’t enact and enforce environmental laws. From a politcial standpoint, this is where the rubber meets the road on the AGW issue. From a science standpint, that is, what is actually happening or not to the climate basedd on human activities, the politics are meaningless…
REPLY: That’s not a citation, it’s an opinion. Cite facts, figures, budgets, etc. – Anthony

R. Gates says:
May 22, 2010 at 5:38 am
“The billions of dollars come in the form of the policies and laws that made be put into place (or not) depending on where the political wind blows. Corporations who end up on one side of the issue or another will either make or lose money. The “public relations” efforts (we dare not call in propaganda do we?) is aimed squarely at changing public perceptions with the final aim of changing the perceptions of the policy makers who will or won’t enact and enforce environmental laws. From a politcial standpoint, this is where the rubber meets the road on the AGW issue. From a science standpint, that is, what is actually happening or not to the climate basedd on human activities, the politics are meaningless…”
=================================
A new record. The most asinine, meaningless, quote from him ever. Nothing is said, because all bases are covered (obliquely).
Everything in the paragraph above is complete and utter nonsense. Moving on….
Have said it once, twice, three times a lady: Listen more and speak less. Your posts have nothing substantive to offer and they are merely sophistry. Not good enough!
I have mad respect for someone who has the cahones to say: “I don’t know.”
But for someone who has an answer for everything, talking out of his arse with “doublespeak”, like the paragraph above, then I lose total respect.
Hey R….go and read “1984.” If it convicts you, and you can man up, then “props” to ya.
If it has no effect, then…well….so be it. Prove me wrong though. Will give you the benefit of the doubt.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

I meant solar cycle 20, not 21…
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl20.gif
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
Can’t believe I did that, oh well I’ve been very busy lately and rush rush rush everything.

One year, or two or five, of lower sea temperatures does not have any bearing on the global warming hypothesis as a whole.