Example Of Media Overstatement
Guest post by Dr. Roger Pielke Sr.
There are quite a few examples of overstatements and errors in media reports on climate science (and in the associated research paper). Today, I present one example that appears in a UCAR press release
Indian Ocean sea level rise threatens coastal areas
‘The key player in the process is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, an enormous, bathtub-shaped area spanning a region of the tropical oceans from the east coast of Africa to the International Date Line in the Pacific. The warm pool has heated by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees Celsius, in the past 50 years, primarily because of human-generated emissions in greenhouses gases.”
The attribution of the positive temperature anomalies “primarily because of human-generated emissions in greenhouses gases” ignores research that documents in the peer reviewed literature a much more complicated role of human and natural climate forcings and feedbacks in affecting all aspects of the climate system (e.g. see and see).
The current sea surface temperature anomalies are presented below. The attribution of the Indo-Pacific warm pool to human-generated emissions in greenhouse gases without commenting on the reasons for the cooler than average anomalies (e.g. see the developing La Nina and the cool south Atlantic Ocean) illustrates how this UCAR study has selectively chosen data that fits their preconceived assumptions of climate.
From http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/sst/anomaly.html [see also a larger view of the globe at http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2010/anomnight.7.15.2010.gif]
“It just seems so fundamental so I can only assume I’m missing something. Can anybody explain this… I mean even if you disagree with the conclusions of this study, is there even an ostensible explanation for how this could be possible? Seriously curious.”
Well, the surface of the ocean actually *isn’t* quite flat. Mostly for two reasons.
1. The Earths gravity field is a bit uneven depending on the uneven distribution of mass. This causes difference on the order of a few tens of meters between different parts of the Ocean. The ocean is for example higher near the continents because the mass of the land means that the gravity is slightly stronger there.
2. Changes in temperature and/or salinity will cause the oceans to “swell” and “shrink” a bit. Since the mass of the water column does not change this will also cause the form of the equipotential surface to change slightly. However the effect goes to zero at the coastline, a fact that is usually ignored.
The sea level is of course also affected by the barometric pressure, the tides and wind. These are all short-term effects, but long term changes in e. g. weather patterna can cause small semi-permanent changes.
To complicate things further the land surface everywhere is almost always either rising or falling slowly.
So changes in relative sea level are far from uniform, and can be quite different even in places quite close to each other.
“Our new results show that human-caused changes of atmospheric and oceanic circulation over the Indian Ocean region—which have not been studied previously—are the major cause for the regional variability of sea level change.”
Can someone please help me understand how this is known?
Now time to spot the weasle words:
“…sea level rise is at least partly a result of climate change.” Duh!
“…may aggravate monsoon…”
“…could have future impacts…”
“…may experience significantly more…”
“…may also affect precipitation by forcing…”
“This may favor a weakening of atmospheric convection…”
How about using the word WILL? What a waste of grant money.
rbateman says:
July 22, 2010 at 1:51 pm
It is like a person’s lungs. What is the resting lung volume? When I exhale, the volume goes down, when I inhale it goes up. But it is never at rest. So we could say that temporally, the lung volume varies so that at some times it is higher than the mean of high and low extremes. So a true statement would be that at least half the time period sampled the volume has increased. If one leaves out just a fraction of the exhalation, then the net is positive.
SO, if I were a warmist, I would begin measuring the lung volume halfway through the exhale, and end the measurement at the end of the inhale, noting that the total volume is net higher than the “average”. Graphing a partial sine curve in this way is a great “Nature trick”, courtesy Mann, Trenbeth and Jones
The warm-earthers, as Gene pointed out at the beginning of this thread, love to choose the start and end points in this way to suit their conclusions. They are not lying, they are just very bad, abysmal scientists in methodology and/or ethics.
Quickly browsed the comments, did not see it mentioned so here are my two cents: If the sea level is rising near densely populated areas, could it be that the land is sinking and the sea is remaining steady?
From R. Gates’ linked piece:
“At the moment we can’t really say that the pattern of deep warming that we see is a signal of human-caused climate change,” said Rintoul.
“And the reason we can’t say that is partly because we only have a few decades of observations and also because we don’t really understand the processes that control variability in the deep ocean as well,” he said.”
Sound familiar?
Next!
Jimbo says:
July 22, 2010 at 12:01 pm
Our very own Joel Shore refuted Fernencs paper over at RC.
Unfortunately, his refutation seems to be, “I don’t understand it, therefore it’s crap!”
DaveE.
“”” tty says:
July 22, 2010 at 1:52 pm
“It just seems so fundamental so I can only assume I’m missing something. Can anybody explain this… I mean even if you disagree with the conclusions of this study, is there even an ostensible explanation for how this could be possible? Seriously curious.”
Well, the surface of the ocean actually *isn’t* quite flat. Mostly for two reasons. “””
But is it actually “gravitationally flat”. Forgetting for the moment wave action; so we integrate out that noise; would the ocean surface be flat; so that a rolling ball will go nowhere from anywhere on there. Now we do have the daily tidal bulge; but that really just distorts the geometry of what still remains “flat”. The tides, and the acceleration due to rotation; simply reshape the geometry of “flat”.
RockyRoad says:
July 22, 2010 at 7:53 am
Maybe they haven’t heard of “gravity”… that indomitable force that brings the surface of liquids to the same elevation if given enough time. Certainly, 50 years would be sufficient; nay, 50 weeks would be sufficient, even on a body of liquid the size of the “Indo-Pacific warm pool.”
(And Billy, who comments on that)
When water expands due to temperature, it does not get heavier, so that does not create a pressure difference that would cause a flow to keep the surface level.
So if you run a cold bath and then run some hot water into it, for as long as the temperature difference remains, the surface at the hot end will be slightly higher than the surface at the cold end.
Think of thin columns of water of equal area. In equilibrium each column will have the same mass. But the hotter columns have lower density and so the surface is higher above the bottom of the bath.
So yes, local heating will cause a local sea level rise.
R. Gates says:
July 22, 2010 at 12:05 pm
from article re CSIRO “study”:
“He said the observed warming rate for the deep layers of the Southern Ocean, between Australia and Antarctica, was about 0.03 degrees Celsius per decade.”
They actually claim to be able to measure a 0.03 C difference over a ten year time period! Caveat emptor, R. Gates.
In many fields, circles, and areas of human reference, this is called “PACKAGEING”. The secret to getting scientific, psyentific, and every other form of ‘…entific’ material read is the “PACKAGEING”. (“PACKAGEING” is also the secret to getting funding proposals approved for studies to develope the material in the first place; I guess I shouldn’t have put the cart before the jackass;-)
This is all a Madison Avenue trick, gimmick, ploy to get money from idiots (Congress) to pay for the idiots (Xxx-entists) who write the material that the idiots (College Professors) read. Life in the modern world is really quite simple minded once you get the hang of it. The fact that the country is broke because of the unchecked nature of such spending in this area (and countless others) is of little concern to anyone involved in the process.
“Indian ocean sea levels are rising unevenly”
Except for very short term differences this is physically impossible.
Possible and quite common is that land masses sink unevenly. Faster sinking areas are often heavily populated due to land use changes, emptying underlying aquifers, buiding heavy infrastructure on loose soils, and things of that nature.
This speaks pretty poorly of the peer review and/or even editorial oversight at Nature Geoscience.
The fatal flaw in your explanation is that water is not compressible. Thermal expansion causes a volumetric change. Since the warmer water weighs the same yet occupies a larger volume it creates a pressure differential at the boundary which, due to the incompressibility of water, is felt almost immediately throughout the contiguous volume. No “flow” is required to keep the surface level just as no flow is required to drive a nail into wood. The increased pressure on the head of the nail when the hammer strikes it is almost instaneously transmitted to the far end of the nail.
@gareth
I tried a little experiment to see what happens to a lower density pocket of fluid in higher density body of water. Motor oil is lower density than water and immiscible so I put a drop of it into a bucket of water. If your hypothesis is correct it should have floated a bit above the rest of the water and since it is immiscible and the water was still it should have remained a droplet floating a bit higher. Instead it very quickly formed a uniformly thin film across the top of the bucket. Why did that happen?
I think, that they think that the CO2 makes the interior of the Earth warmer.