Global Average Sea Surface Temperatures Poised for a Plunge
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
Just an update…as the following graph shows, sea surface temperatures (SSTs) along the equatorial Pacific (“Nino3.4″ region, red lines) have been plunging, and global average SSTs have turned the corner, too. (Click on the image for the full-size, undistorted version. Note the global values have been multiplied by 10 for display purposes.)
The corresponding sea level pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin (SOI index, next graph) shows a rapid transition toward La Nina conditions is developing.
Being a believer in natural, internal cycles in the climate system, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that global-average SSTs will plunge over the next couple of months. Based upon past experience, it will take a month or two for our (UAH) tropospheric temperatures to then follow suit.
“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!!!“
Jim Clarke says:
May 21, 2010 at 11:20 am
jeff brown says:
May 21, 2010 at 6:43 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?”
Cryosphere Today is the source I have been looking at the longest. I believe this may be the most ‘pessimistic’ of the sites and have seen them make a ‘correction’ or two that seemed to increase the downward slope of the trend, but, none-the-less, I still look at cryosphere. Anyway, it is pretty obvious that 2007 was a record low year.
Yes.
Since then, the minimums each year have been significantly higher.
No, as shown here: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.arctic.png
The minima in 2007 and 2008 are a deadheat, 2009 shows an increase.
The maximums each year have been steadily increasing and reached the 30 year ‘normal’ level this spring. That’s a rebound, no matter how you slice it.
No the maximum in spring 2008 was the largest since 2003 but the maxima have decreased steadily since then. The 30 year ‘normal’ maximum is 14.136 Mm^2, this year it was 13.812 Mm^2. That’s not a rebound!
Will it continue? I believe it will, but that is irrelevant to my statement.
As far the Antarctic, I am well aware that the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed considerably and that some papers have used statistical methods that spread that highly localized warming to half the continent. I discount these studies. Other studies that aren’t entirely agenda driven, have indicated that about 95% of the continent has been either steady or cooling for the last 60 years. Certainly, the warming of the Arctic Peninsula can not be explained by AGW. It is an extremely local effect that is very likely the result of an ocean influence.
In addition, Cryosphere Today clearly shows a gradually expanding ice cover at the bottom of the planet:
No real evidence of that in their data, looks like a small scale fluctuation around the 30yr mean, the current cycle looks just like 1994/5.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.antarctic.png
A few more years of recovery at the North Pole and a continuation of the trend at the South Pole and we will likely be setting record high sea ice extent, approaching a tipping point where the Earth’s dramatically increasing albedo will topple us into the next ice age by 2100.
Yet the global ice plot at that same site shows the latest maximum to be the record lowest in the 30yr span, and the latest minimum to be the 4th lowest.
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.
Jim Clarke says:
May 21, 2010 at 11:20 am
If the Arctic ice has “rebounded”, why is it melting at a record rate this spring ? Are you going to ignore the ice thinning until the Arctic is ice free one summer ?
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
“Yet the global ice plot at that same site shows the latest maximum to be the record lowest in the 30yr span, and the latest minimum to be the 4th lowest.”
The “record” goes a lot farther back than 30 years. Warmth is better. Cold kills. And the climate is completely normal.
Argo is supposed to provide a temporal three D map of heat in the ocean to 2000 meters. If there is significant downwelling it should map it. I have seen references to the absence of the postulated Atlantic conveyor belt. It seems there are many missing parts along with the heat. Has anybody provided a time varient display of the Argo data similiar to the TLT displays of the atmosphere fromm RSS?
Anu:
“Amusing how GWMers are all of a sudden fancying themselves as scientists and concocting this wild myth of oceans not warming. Desperate stuff.”
Amuse yourself with this chart from today’s official ARGO site.
R Gates, like Joel Shore, Brendan, Wren, and a few others, challenge us all here, without them we would all be singing from the same hymn sheet. I welcome their debate provided it remains courteous-which it invariably does-and it has the merit of diverting us to some sites that otherwise we would never see. I suspect that they all have as little effect on our beliefs though as we do on theirs, but it makes for stimulating debate. 🙂
Tonyb
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.
Smokey says:
May 21, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Anu:
“Amusing how GWMers are all of a sudden fancying themselves as scientists and concocting this wild myth of oceans not warming. Desperate stuff.”
Amuse yourself with this chart from today’s official ARGO site.
——————-
Smokey, what are you trying to say with the link to an SST El-Nino temperature anomaly map? El Ninos come and go and affect the SSTs. I don’t see how that is relevant to Anu’s discussion.
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.
Smokey
Very true, but fortunately our pet climate alarmists on this blog can not rifle through our pockets over the internet (yet)
tonyb
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.
Jim Clarke says:
May 21, 2010 at 11:20 am
Jim, the Cryosphere today does not show the Arctic ice rebounding and I don’t think you have read the Antarctic warming studies and the factors responsible for those warming trends or you wouldn’t say that Antarctica hasn’t shown signs of warming. Remember, satellite data does cover the Antarctic ice sheet so surface temperature can be measured over the entire ice sheet (from 1981 onwards from AVHRR and there are also earlier sensors from TIROS).
I think it’s important to be clear also about the different sea ice trends between both hemispheres. In the Arctic you have statistically significant negative trends in all months and all regions. Only the Bering Sea in winter has shown some recent positive trends, but of course this still melts out every summer. In Antarctica you have negative sea ice trends in the Bellinghausen/Admundsen Sea that are statistically significant and you have statistically significant increasing trends in Ross Sea sea ice, both in winter. Really only the winter trends matter in Antarctica since it’s mostly a seasonal ice cover anyway and there is large interannual summer variability. The factors contributing to the negative trends near the Peninsula and the positive trends in the Ross Sea have both been explained by ozone losses and warming. The depletion of ozone maintains the cooling within the polar vortex, which increases the winds around the polar vortex (and this propagates downwards, strengthening surface winds). This in turn pushes the ice away from the coasts in the Ross Sea, increasing the sea ice extent. The Antarctic Peninsula adjacent to the Bellingshausen/Amundsen seas is an area of marked warming and the sea ice appears to be responding to that.
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.
Anu says:
May 21, 2010 at 1:07 pm
“…..Amusing how GWMers are all of a sudden fancying themselves as scientists and concocting this wild myth of oceans not warming. Desperate stuff.”
_______________________________________________________________________
Seems like it depends on where you look.
“Loehle, Craig. 2009. Cooling of the global ocean since 2003. Energy & Environment 20(1&2): 99-102.
ABSTRACT:
Ocean heat content data from 2003 to 2008 (4.5 years) were evaluated for trend. A trend plus periodic (annual cycle) model fit with R2 = 0.85. The linear component of the model showed a trend of -0.35 (±0.2) x 1022 Joules per year. The result is consistent with other data showing a lack of warming over the past few years.” National Council for Air and Stream Improvement
Here is one graph of Argo temperature data All data since 2002
This is The Ocean Heat Content graphed from Argo data by Friends of Science
Here is another graph of the ocean temp: ARGO SST anomaly
Even this graph from the CAGW Journal Nature, shows a plateau in ocean warming since 2004 which is consistent with what was said above and what Dr. Spencer is saying: Robust Warming of the Global Upper Ocean
And here is Bob Tisdale’s article on “El Nino” causing step changes in ocean temperatures: Flashback – Bob Tisdale’s November prediction on GISS exploiting the “warmest decade on record”
What I am seeing is a sixty year oscillation and we are now at the top plateau about to head back down to cooler temperatures, where La Nina will dominate.
jeff brown,
Sorry, clicked on the wrong one. Here’s SST and heat content.
skye,
You’re looking at it wrong. The Arctic, like everywhere else, always changes. If you can convince yourself to look at the issue like Dr Spencer does, you will begin at the null hypothesis: “No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperatures changes are a consequence of natural variability.”
Natural climate variability is the starting point. The problem is that alarmists start with the notion that CO2 is the null hypothesis. It isn’t. That is a red herring. The fixation on the belief that CO2 drives the climate results in wrong conclusions. How could it not?
And AGW is a hypothesis; CAGW is a conjecture. To accurately discuss the issues requires using the correct terms. For example, a theory provides a means to make accurate predictions; a conjecture, being simply someone’s opinion, does not.
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.
__________
You AGWers will never give up. We could be in the middle of another “Little Ice Age,” and you’d still be trotting out your manipulated GIGO models and claiming mankind is on the brink of a CO2-induced climate meltdown.
Here’s some news for you. The arctic was warm in the past, long before there were any evil human fossil-fuel emissions to blame. For example:
“The Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot,” according to a Commerce Department report published by the Washington Post.
Writes the Post: “Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers. . . all point to a radical change in climate conditions and . . . unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone . . . Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones . . . while at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared.”
More evidence of human-caused global warming? Hardly.
The above report of runaway Arctic warming is from a Washington Post story published Nov. 2, 1922 and bears an uncanny resemblance to the tales of global warming splattered across the front pages of today’s newspapers. It is one of many historical accounts published during the past 140 years describing climate changes and often predicting catastrophic cooling or warming.
Here is the full story about past climate alarmism:
http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-Examiner~y2010m3d2-Arctic-Ocean-is-warming-icebergs-growing-scarcer-reports-Washington-Post
wildred May 21, 2010 at 2:06 pm,
Who pays the piper calls the tune. Sorry it’s so hot in that kitchen, and you may sincerely be doing good work at whatever you do. But the government is joined hip and thigh with those intent on passing Cap & Trade, with very flimsy science supporting any of it.
But you’ve got yours, right? So you’re OK. The problem is, organizations like GISS and a lot of others want mine, too. Every time they make another scary announcement, I can feel their hands in my pockets.
wildred says:
May 21, 2010 at 2:06 pm
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.
____________
Wildred, That one does not fly, especially after we find out the BBC has all their pension funds tied up in Carbon Trading, Al Gore, Maurice Strong, Old Patchy and Soros are all set to make a very big profit. The World Bank is set to be the gate keeper reeling in big bucks in fees and the wall street traders are salivating at the chance to get in on the next “bubble”
The fact carbon trading is going to bankrupt countries and leave millions unemployed means nothing to the greedy who are behind this fraud. Check out Maurice Strong before you join the rest of Strong’s “useful idiots” under the bus five years from now.
Once the US Cap and trade bill is passed and the other WESTERN countries sign on, “capital” will head to China and India in a flash to take advantage of loose environmental laws. This means all the western climate scientists will now longer be needed and will find themselves without a job.
The really sad part is the environment will suffer dreadfully from unregulated pollution abroad and there will be no real reduction in CO2.
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 says:
May 21, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Smokey, ok now it’s time to tell me what natural variability is contributing to the declining Arctic ice cover observed these last 30 years. There has been no link to natural atmospheric circulation, or oceanic circulation, or sun activity, or volcanic
activity, or the Earth’s position relative to the sun, or what? So please, show me the
evidence that it is natural variability. Climate modelers have shown with their models
that GHGs are contributing. Satellite and in situ observations show storage of heat
in the atmosphere and the oceans and less outgoing LW emitted back to space
consistent with rises in GHGs.
There have been moments of natural variability, such as the extremely positive AO of the late 1980s/early 1990s that contributed to a reduction of old ice in the Arctic Basin, but that stopped and the ice is still declining. There have been pulses of warm water seen entering the Arctic, but it’s episodic and the ice is still declining. It seems that no matter what the weather patterns are doing, the ice is still declining. So why is that? What is acting on the system to cause this decline? It seems you constantly say “it’s natural variability” but you don’t seem to know what that means. We get why we have glacial and interglacial periods that gave rise to past extreme temperature and ice fluctuations, that’s not what is pushing on the system today. So please…point to the natural variability that is causing it.
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.
Kirk Myers says:
May 21, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Kirk, you get that icebergs come from land and not the ocean right? And moraines and earth and stone are on land and not the ocean. BTW..your link didn’t work.
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.