Inspired by a WUWT comment from Bill Illis in the Maybe they’ve found Trenberth’s missing heat thread, I’ve elevated this to full post status and provided the relevant graphics from the links Bill provided. From a National Science Foundation article on April 15th, 2010:
“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.”
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Bill Illis writes:
Trenberth is looking for about 0.8 watts/m2 of the projected increase in energy held in the Earth system that is not going into heating the surface.
Either this energy is not being held in the Earth system (and is just escaping to space and hence climate theory is not correct) or it is hiding and the most likely place for that would be the deep oceans (or continental ice sheets warming up and melting that we have not observed).
This paper measured/extrapolated the potential heat content going into the nearly the entire global ocean below 2000 metres [It doesn’t appear they measured the Arctic bottom water but the north Atlantic does not appear to have warmed so it is likely no extra heat is going into the Arctic bottom water].
So, Table 1 in the paper shows 0.068 watts/m2 is going into the oceans below 2000 metres. Far less than the 0.8 watts/m2 Trenberth is looking for.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/Recent_AABW_Warming_v3.pdf
We also know there is no accumulation in the last 7 years in the 0-700 metre ocean – von Schuckmann 2009 found 0.77 Watts/m2 going into the 0-2000 metre ocean (although no one seems to believe these estimates since almost all of the warming they measured was in the 0-300 metre area which is contradicted by the Argo floats).
Trenberth Missing Heat – 0.8 Watts/m2
Going into 0-700 Metre ocean – 0.0 W/m2
Going into 0-2000 Metre ocean – ? (but could be as high as 0.77 W/m2 but this contradicts Argo)
Going into the 2000+ Metre Ocean – 0.068 W/m2
Going into the 2000+ Metre Ocean from the Arctic – ? (but looks to be very low)
===============================================
It is unlikely that the ARGO measurements are wrong, and thus it can’t be found in the oceans, so where is it? Balancing budgets is never easy; there’s always a missing penny somewhere. Most often, that missing penny is due to human error. – Anthony
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Duncan: You wrote, “Isn’t heat accumulation measurable in thermal expansion (e.g., global sea level)?”
You need to account for the mass contribution from glacial run-off, etc., and changes in salinity, before you can claim a rise in sea level represents the warming of the oceans.
George E. Smith says:
Theo Goodwin says:
September 27, 2010 at 12:37 pm
……………………
What is most needed at this time in climate science is a scientific understanding of the behavior of clouds.
———————————————————
See these:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticReflector/arctic_reflector2.php
Well, George, I followed the link to find a popular article about a scientist who studies clouds. No information there. I do not understand why you are referencing my comments. As far as I know, I haven’t contradicted a claim by you or commented on you. If you want to continue referencing my comments, would you please tell me why?
Jimbo says:
September 27, 2010 at 2:58 pm
What are you trying to tell me? That clouds reflect sunlight? When referring to a science of clouds, I mean a science that tells us whether cloud cover is increasing and where the clouds are to be found and what kinds of clouds are to be found at what places. That sort of thing. Actual empirical hypotheses about the environment.
Ian W says September 27, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Here you go Ian, two fat ladies just for you 🙂
Panic over.
Found it.
Its in a Black Heat Hole, sucks in all the surrounding heat so that none can escape. But on occasion it emits some.
We wish to call attention to our paper Recent energy balance of Earth which is in press http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/KD_InPress_final.pdf
This answers most of the questions raised.
In what follows bracketed words are added for clarity.
Abstract: “A recently published estimate of Earth’s global warming trend [inward flux imbalance] is 0.63 ± 0.28 W/m2, as calculated from ocean heat content anomaly data spanning 1993–2008. This value is not representative of the recent (2003–2008) warming/cooling rate because of a “flattening” that occurred around 2001–2002. Using only 2003–2008 data from Argo floats, we find by four different algorithms that the recent trend ranges from –0.010 to –0.160 W/m2 with a typical error bar of ± 0.2 W/m2. These results fail to support the existence of a frequently-cited large positive computed radiative imbalance.”
In regard to “missing energy” of Trenberth and Fasullo (TF) we state in our summary: “Trenberth and Fasullo (TF) [2] believe that missing energy has been accumulating at a considerable rate since 2005. According to their rough graph, as of 2010 the missing energy production rate is about 1.0 W/m2, which represents the difference between FTOA ~ 1.4 and FOHC ~ 0.4 W/m2. [FTOA = inward top-of-atmosphere net radiative flux, FOHC = rate of ocean heat content increase per unit Earth area.] It is clear that the TF missing-energy problem is made much more severe if FOHC is negative or even zero. In our opinion, the missing energy problem is probably caused by a serious overestimate by TF of FTOA, which, they state, is most accurately determined by modeling.
In regard to the paper by Purkey and Johnson (PJ) we state: “We note that one recent deep-ocean analysis [16, Purkey/Johnson], based on a variety of time periods generally in the 1990s and 2000s, indicates that the deeper ocean contributes on the order of 0.09 W/m2. This is not sufficient to explain the discrepancy [of TF].”
PJ’s claim of that the deep ocean captures 16% of the upper oceans’ absorbed heat is based on a ratio of fluxes covering time periods that appear to be non-commensurate and thus may be misleading. The Lyman et al value 0.63 W/m2 refers to 1993-2008 while the PJ value is based on combinations of results spanning different periods.
The value 16% cannot be applied uncritically to the period 2003-2008 because data from corresponding time periods are clearly not used. It can be stated that PJ’s value 0.095 W/m2, if regarded as a simple additive correction to our computed implied FTOA, does not affect our conclusions about radiative imbalance and missing energy. [Our published comments on PJ are based on an early version of their paper in which the 16% figure was not mentioned.]
R. S. Knox
D. H. Douglass
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Rochester
Sea level could be a better measure of ocean heat accumulation. But the heat accumulation measured in the new study below 2000 metres could account for 0.113 to 0.150 mm/year (as shown in Table 1 above) while the latest estimate of sea level rise is 3.1 mm/year (or as low as 1.5 mm/year from the European satellite Envisat).
So, the measured heat accumulation in the deep ocean below 2000 metres only accounts for a very, very small fraction of the current sea level rise numbers (less than 5%).
———
There has been some criticism of the von Schuckmann 0-2000 metre numbers (including a mathematical mistake noted which might reduce the heat accumulation number to 0.47 W/m2). My main criticism (which I’m not sure has been mentioned to date) is that almost all of their warming was in the 0-700 metre ocean (not the 700-2000 metre ocean) and this warming trend is not found in the Argo numbers (even though von Schuckmann used them).
von Schuckmann warming by depth.
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/3310/vonshuckmannwarming.png
A new study coming out in November continues the (slightly) declining 0-700 metre ocean heat content numbers (although there is a bump in the first part of 2008).
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/KD_InPress_final.pdf
Just noting I didn’t see the post by Bob_Knox at 7:09 before I finished and posted mine just above. (obviously it is more pertinent).
First, a little history: Back when I took freshman physics (and chemistry and mechanics and…), we were required to study the theory 0f (see above list) and build our own simplistic (mostly math) models of the phenomena. THEN we had to do lab tests to test the models. THEN we had to explain why the measurements didn’t match the predictions of the models. THEN the professor/instructor would explain all the known unknowns for which most of the models didn’t account. (Remember we were freshmen; most of our models were intended to get us out of the lab as fast as possible with the minimum amount of real work [gee, that seems to match a lot of the support for global warming being mostly caused by anthropogenic CO2, so all the messy details can be ignored, doesn’t it?]) THEN (and here’s the point of this story) HE/SHE POINTED OUT THAT EVEN IN THE LABORATORY YOU HAD TO LOOK FOR THE UNKNOWN UNKNOWNS!! It took awhile before it finally became clear that there always are going to be differences between ANY model and reality. The key to effective engineering (or any other discipline, like…climatology) is to recognize when a model is close enough to reality to be useful. And when it is so far away from reality that you need either more measurements – you know, so you can improve the model to match reality – or you need a different model – those times when the model results just don’t come close enough to justify continuing maintenance and development of a model that diverges too far from the reality it’s supposed to predict. Generally, that comes from either a faulty theory or a faulty model of the theory, or a combination of both (one of the reasons dissertation defenses are so…animated) Trenbarth’s interpretations of his model seem to be almost triumphant in the pronouncement that there still are known unknowns, although he seems to be saying that he knows what all of them are. However, the absence of a recognition of the concept of unknown unknowns seems, to put it mildly, a little arrogant and short-sighted. Until he can demonstrate a correlation of his model with reality, it seems far more likely that the discrepancy lies in his model, his theory or both. To leap at the confusion that his model is sufficiently ‘real’ to draw conclusions that can be relied upon to demonstrate a fundamental gap in our understanding of instantaneous (or even short interval) global energy balances is just that: a leap.
So the bottom line of this post seems to be what the whole global warming/climate change/disruption imbroglio demonstrates is that the perpetrators seem to have forgotten their freshman lab courses. Who’s telling them that their models won’t match until they at least get the known unknowns bounded – and at least look for what factors they’re missing completely?
And the end quote from the conclusion of that new study (thank you Bill Illis for the link) is:
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“In our opinion, the missing energy problem is probably caused by a serious overestimate by Trenberth /Fasullo, of the net inward radiative flux at the top of the atmosphere., which, they state, is most accurately determined by modeling.”
“In summary, we find that estimates of the recent (2003–2008) OHC rates of change are preponderantly negative. This does not support the existence of either a large positive radiative imbalance or a ‘missing energy’.”
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Cue the fat lady for an encore.
-Chris
An addendum I just found at the end of another article on WUWT* (More follow up on the solar-neutrinos-radioactive decay story – experimental falsification) that seems very apropos:
Quote: “There are always more unknowns in your measurements than you can think of,” Lindstrom says. End quote.
Pretty much says everything I said earlier. Except that HE seems to remember his freshman labs….
*Amazing the things you can find there, isn’t it?
All proper men know that women, especially when young, are cold. Cold hands. Cold feet. Always asking that the heat be turned up or ‘borrowing’ the jacket you thought to bring with you to add to theirs… Finding ingenious ways to press ice like feet into your back to ‘warm up’ a little… even disguising it as asian massage.
So my thesis is that the heat is hiding in the added population growth. We’ve added a couple of billion women in the last few decades, all with cold extremities (and a few, I can assure you from personal exposure, cold hearts as well…) and I’m quite sure that if computed, it will be found that they will have soaked up all that ‘excess heat’ and then some.
However…
This heat WILL come flooding back to warm us into catastrophic global warming as soon as this young population ages sufficiently for Hot Flashes to commence.
So we must all, quite assuredly, prepare for That Day; for when it arrives, the earth will be consumed by a degree of Global Warming unmatched in history as all the ‘stored heat’ is released… and air conditioners around the planet are found to be reset from 76 to 60 F…
(For the humor impaired: It’s just a joke. Based a bit on true life experiences, but just humor. I’m fondly looking forward to my spouse cycling the HVAC through 20 F swings hour by hour, I’m supporting her in this by taking commands well from SWIMBO, and don’t see anything wrong with that at all… After all, I have been given back my parka now.
😉
Though I’m still trying to figure out why I have to eat dinner when she is hungry…
Theo Goodwin wrote:
“What is most needed at this time in climate science is a scientific understanding of the behavior of clouds.”
Science has nearly complete understanding of clouds. Clouds form when air conditions reach certain well known thermodynamical characteristics with certain well known concentration of water vapor while having sufficient concentration of nucleation centers. These conditions occur as result of movement of air masses across buoyancy-driven atmosphere heated from below and rotating. What science does not know is when and where these particular conditions occur in the turbulent atmosphere. Therefore, what is most needed at this time in climate is an urgent solution to the problem of turbulence. Best physicist and mathematicians tried to solve this problem for 150+ years, and did not succeed. Now it is the time for brave climatologists to carry the torch.
[just yanking your chains 🙂 :-)]
Poor Kevin Trenberth. I feel sorry for him. By all accounts he is a smart and decent bloke who is doing his best to perform good science. Unfortunately for him, he appears to be a firm believer in AGW, and when the facts don’t support one’s belief it is the most inconvenient truth of all. In these circumstances, a significant degree of intellectual suppleness is required to make it possible to sleep at night. (Politicians are richly endowed with such moral flexibility, which is what makes them different from normal people.)
In his Climategate email statement – “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment, and it is a travesty that we can’t” – Kevin should have trawled his memory for a more apposite word.
Travesty means, “to imitate or ridicule something in a grotesque or distorted manner”, which is how some might describe the pseudo-scientific method by which the mild-mannered, plant-nurturing, life-giving trace gas we call CO2 has been systematically vilified, to the point of being called “pollution” by environuts and their lickspittle PR/political front men.
A far better word, Kevin, would have been an “embarrassment”, or a “quandary”, or “dilemma”.
The good news is that, although he doesn’t like the fact that OHC expressed in joules is largely stable or falling, he seems to have accepted it and will continue his search for better data, or better interpretation, or the existence of a whole new heat sink that’s bigger than the oceans. All one can say is, “Good luck with that.”
And to those of the doom establishment who are fully aware of this fundamentally inconvenient truth – the ultimate falsification of the notion of CO2-trapped heat in the pipeline waiting to strike back – but fail to acknowledge it in their continuous wailing about impending disaster, I say – “Remember: we’re watching you.”
It sucks not being able to read the original paper. From a perusal of the NSF website article and previous papers on this topic that I’ve read, it appears that the “missing heat” is analagous to the phlogiston theory, that is if the theorists of that day had supercomputers to model phlogiston behavior.
What is really annoying is that no-one seems to include measurement errors in their paper summaries anymore. The “missing heat” is on the order of 0.5 w/m**2 and, perusal of the satellite photographs of reflected sunlight and IR radiation from the earth indicates that we’re dealing with about 1000 W/m**2. 0.5 W/m**2 is 0.05% of the total — what is the accuracy of the satellite measurements? Also, how many satellites are there and what is the difference in measurements between satellites? If the satellite readings differ by more than 0.05%, then there is no missing heat, and that’s just looking at indirect means of estimating temperature.
Ocean temperature as measured by the Argo floats (despite their well known limitations) give a far closer estimate of the amount of heat retained by the earth than satellite measurements as the oceans are a great calorimeter. If the theory doesn’t predict ocean temperatures, then the theory is wrong and it’s time to come up with a new one. The attachment of some people to the AGW theory is truly pathologic. What I’d be curious about is whether adherents of the “missing heat” theory would be able to solve 1st year physics problems dealing with the calculation of measurement errors where one takes a number of measurements, each with a given error and sticks them into an equation.
I think that the atrophysics community would be very interested in Trenberth’s discovery. I believe he has found evidence of Dark Energy here on earth.
Bill Illis says:
September 27, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Sea level could be a better measure of ocean heat accumulation. But the heat accumulation measured in the new study below 2000 metres could account for 0.113 to 0.150 mm/year (as shown in Table 1 above) while the latest estimate of sea level rise is 3.1 mm/year (or as low as 1.5 mm/year from the European satellite Envisat).
So, the measured heat accumulation in the deep ocean below 2000 metres only accounts for a very, very small fraction of the current sea level rise numbers (less than 5%).
I would recommend once again that people study this document
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/ml/ocean/J2_handbook_v1-3_no_rev.pdf
It is the data products handbook for the Jason 2 satellite system, which is the latest and greatest of the number of satellites that have been the source of data used to calculate MSL as the basis of that oft displayed graph of rising sea level, The pertinent section for this discussion is 2.3.1 where they describe how they hope to achieve globally averaged RMS accuracy of 3.4 CENTIMETERS, which would seem to be a fantastically optimistic hope since in the following table they indicate that there ability to measure significant wave height is limited to accuracies of o.4 to o.9 METERS
In other words we have another example of data quoted to phenomenal levels of precision, where the underlying accuracy is numerous orders of magnitude worse. If you lay a +/- 3.4 cm error band on that rising MSL graph it nicely covers the entire difference from the beginning to the end and as I said this is the latest and greatest sat. which is probably several orders of magnitude better than the sats that provided the earliest data. Even if their speculations about tenth of a millimeter changes in sea level were entirely correct, we have no hope of being able to measure those changes. Not now and in all probability not in any of our lifetimes.
Theo Goodwin says:
September 27, 2010 at 12:37 pm
“…What is most needed at this time in climate science is a scientific understanding of the behavior of clouds.”
Unfortunately quantifying the underlying factors responsible for cloud production is not possibles. Cloud production is driven by deterministic chaos and we currently don’t have the required tools or data to be able to even get a good estimate of what is going on in our interlinked, turbulent atmosphere/ocean heat processing system.
No surprise then that the algorithms sitting behind our temperature data gathering systems and the GCM’s used to predict our future climate are not even able to produce consistent ball-park results. It’s a travesty!
The deep oceans are heating but not expanding??? CAGW teaches you new laws of physics every day. [/sarc]
Looking at the graph above the turning point seems to be at 2005. Wasn’t that when the sun went on strike?
The gas balance of the atmosphere and oceans is controlled by the vegetable, invertebrate and tiny vertebrate life-forms on this planet, which make up the vast majority of the biomass. They’ve been at it for a few billion years now, and have worked out a system of checks and balances which keep the Earth within a 12C range which tends to settle towards either the warm or cool end of the range for extended periods of time.
This is despite quite big changes in solar output over that timeframe.
Solar energy, water in it’s three states, oxygen level. These three are what we need to investigate and understand. Co2 is a sideshow distracting us from discovering how the climate actually works.
I calculated from the steric component of sea level rise between 1993 and 2003 the oceans absorbed and extra 8×10^22J of energy. This is equivalent to ~4W/m^2. Co2 and TSI changes can’t have done that, so it has to be down to albedo changes, which amplify the solar signal.
Heat is stored in and released from the oceans on much longer timescales than has been previously considered by the climate modelers. Logic proves it. Once that is accepted, my demonstration that solar can account for all of global warming might get listened to, at least by skeptics.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/nailing-the-solar-activity-global-temperature-divergence-lie/
1 + 1 = 2. ????
If CO2 can reradiant energy back to earth then it can just as easily radiate it out into space before it enters our atmosphere. Natures balance. This would make the GHG effect of CO2 nearly, if not, neutral. Wouldn’t that be inconvenient.
The missing heat is more like the stranded polar bear. Invented.
regards
The extent of my scientific knowledge is limited to the various processes and chemical reactions involved in transforming simple sugars into ethanol (better known as the wonderful world of malts, grains, hops, yeast, and H20… lol)!
Is there a plausible hypothesis out there that suggest the missing heat……. cooled? If not I would say it can be found in Los Angeles. Its hotter than the hubs of h3ll there today!
Tucci78 says:
September 27, 2010 at 3:46 pm
“Unless the character of solar output has changed markedly in recent years – and shortwave radiation from this source should certainly have been appreciable with instruments available for most of the past century, right? – the earth’s deep ocean waters have been receiving this energy input for a helluva lot longer than the time marked in the Global Net Energy Budget graph and the other representations incorporated in the article above. ”
I’m glad you mentioned that, Tucci, because my comments did not deal with the timing issue.
It ia apparent that in fits and starts the solar activity levels have been increasing since the Maunder Minimum. So I contend that similarly the cloud bands have been shifting poleward and solar shortwave into the oceans increasing ever since. That will have set up a corresponding increasing temperature profile along the horizontal line of the thermohaline circulation. Since that circulation takes about 1000 years
the increasing trend will be about halfway along the length of that circulation with the other half still processing the decline from the MWP to the LIA (we therefore have slowly developing colder ocean cycles to look forward to for the next 500 years). During that time since the Maunder Minimum there would have been a long slow accretion to ocean heat content and such an accretion was indeed observed during the late 20th century when we first became capable of measuring such things in a primitive fashion.
As many have pointed out the level of solar activity has been declining since the peak of cycle 23 and is currently at a historic low in terms of the last couple of centuries.
Many have also pointed out the equatorward shift of the jets and declining ocean heat content the last few years.
I have often pointed out that I first noticed the equatorward shift around 2000 so all the timing and all the trends fit perfectly.
Up to the late 90s:
Sun highly active, jets poleward, ocean heat content rising, albedo falling, troposphere warming, ocean cycles positive, stratosphere cooling, ozone declining.
Since the late 90s:
Sun much less active, jets shift equatorward, ocean heat content falling, albedo rising, troposphere no longer warming and possibly about to cool, ocean cycles becoming negative, stratosphere no longer cooling and maybe slight warming, ozone no longer falling and maybe recovering.
So there we have 8 seperate phenomena all linked to climate that all simultaneously went into reverse in the late 90s just as the activity level of the sun changed.
My New Climate Model contains the only existing hypothesis that accommodates all those observed changes.
Coincidence ? I think not.
No it will not because it has already escaped to space never to return. Law 2 implies that heat cannot ‘return to haunt’. Back to basics Dr Trenberth.
George E. Smith says:
September 27, 2010 at 2:08 pm
“There is no physical mechanism whereby an INCREASE in total global clouds over any climatically meaningful time scale can result in more solar spectrum photons reaching the surface; and they have to reach the surface to be able to do anything for us or to us.”
I am just trying to reconcile these two statements, my math and physics are near nonexistent but I like to have a clear mental picture, hoping you can clear this up.
“The argument from the AGW fraudsters is that O2 and N2 are “IR inactive”, or in other words that these two gases are transparent to infra-red. But it must be remembered that all substances with a temperature above 0 K emit IR at light speed. In order to maintain a certain temperature above 0 K a substance must acquire energy at the same rate as it loses it. Therefore there can be no substances which are transparent to IR. To claim anything to the contrary is an outrageous and deliberate fraud”.
Taken from
http://www.spinonthat.com/CO2_files/The_Diurnal_Bulge_and_the_Fallacies_of_the_Greenhouse_Effect.html