More Oddities with the IPCC Numbers

If there really is a missing 0.7 W/m2, then your calculation possibly explains why the Earth has stable climate for long periods, with the oceans acting like a giant storage heater!
COMMENT: I think you mean to say “heat sink” rather than storage heater, its certainly not warming much. – mike.

Pleas stop publishing your methods and data so that ordinary people can follow the arguments. It gives real climate scientists a bad name and brings the field into disrepute.
You are not a real climate scientist, so butt out of our private discussions. You know nothing, and we know where you live.

Most of the changes leading to an imbalance did not start until about 1900, and much of that fraction has operated only since about 1970, so thermal inertia is mainly responding to decadal rather than centennial imbalances. Given the estimated heat storage capacity of the ocean, combined with the negative forcing from aerosols, the IPCC estimates are consistent with observed temperature changes since 1910 in concert with standard estimates of climate sensitivity. For more data on ocean heat storage, see Levitus et al at Ocean Heat Content

Since noone else is saying it; Its a Travesty.

“If there really is a missing 0.7 W/m2, then your calculation possibly explains why the Earth has stable climate for long periods, with the oceans acting like a giant storage heater!
COMMENT: I think you mean to say “heat sink” rather than storage heater, its certainly not warming much. – mike.”
Well I have always considered that the climate is just the output energy from the sun and the heat from inside the earth radiative energy input into a massive store in the form of the oceans, our climate being the interactive meeting layer between these things.
There are plenty of variables in all of the above.

To add to my earlier comment, one can’t average temperature changes over the entire ocean, because the upper 300-700 meters tend toward equilibrium on decadal scales and the entire ocean over centennial scales. We live on the surface, and so our observed temperatures (including the documented rises in SST) reflect what is happening in the upper layers. If we induced no further perturbations from now on, a 0.7 to 0.9 W/m^2 imbalance would ultimately even out as a very tiny temperature change over the next 500 years if no feedbacks were generated. With feedbacks, the change is larger, and with long term feedbacks, greater still. However, the SST and global temperature changes over coming decades would be substantial, and of course, if CO2 continues to rise, outstripping aerosol cooling, the rise will be greater.

Does this mean that its worse than we thought?

Willis,
I will say here and now that I have enjoyed, and profited from you frequent posts. You are missing nothing.
I have this to say though; do you not think that the answer lies in the positive? Or could it be a negative persuasion?
The answer, surely, is that we do not know enough of this science.

With (according to WP) the energy capture from photosynthesis being more than 100 terawatts, is the “missing” energy instead being used by the biosphere in response to the increased CO2/warming? I would guess that it is in the right order of magnitude.

To calculate the thermal mass of the ocean you apparently calculated assuming an average ocean depth of 3700 meters, but when looked at over a period of a few years, the effective depth of the ocean is somewhere in the range of 40 to 100 meters.

Willis — The linked article is not directly related to you calculations, but is related in that it uses some rather basic calculations to do a ballpark sanity check on the sensitivity numbers.
It uses surface temperatures rather than the Argo data that is now available, and which I believe would be a more reliable test of the AGW hypothesis.
I’m surprised that I have not seen any discussion of this non-peer reviewed article.
Testing the AGW Hypothesis by George White.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html

Heat lost during condensation/freezing of water vapor at very high altitude beyond most of the CO2 maybe? What happens when water vapor goes directly from vapor to ice crystals at extremely high altitude? Where does that heat go? Or what happens when it goes from water to ice at the tops of extremely high thunderstorms and tropical storms?
I believe it goes directly into space for the most part. It is at that point well beyond nearly all the CO2 in the atmosphere. You are above 85% of the atmosphere at 30,000 feet and those cloud tops can exceed that altitude. I believe there is a lot more radiation bypassing atmospheric CO2 and being radiated directly into space than they are calculating. Evaporation at the surface (and on the way up as it meets rain drops on the way down), transport to high altitude, and a phase change to water or ice transports a HUGE amount of heat every day to the upper reaches of the atmosphere completely bypassing most of the CO2.

The only thing that has kept this “science” going for the last ten years has been the strangle hold that the IPCC and their backers, the environmental movement, have kept on publishing studies that show the world does operate the way they need to make their models “truthy”.
Five years ago I thought McIntyre’s work would blow the lid off the scam. I was wrong, but it has taught me to be patient.
Keep up the steady barrage Willis. Its kind of like cannons balls on the walls of fortress during a 15th century siege.

Charlie A says:
October 23, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Testing the AGW Hypothesis by George White.
http://www.palisad.com/co2/eb/eb.html

A very interesting article… thank you… the following quote is interesting:
QUOTE
According to HITRAN based simulations, the atmosphere captures 3.6 W/m² of additional power when the CO2 is increased from 280ppm to 560ppm.
Of this, the atmosphere radiates half of this up and half down.
When the 1.8 W/m² of forcing power directed down is treated the same as 1.8 W/m² of additional solar forcing, the systems response is to increase the surface power by 2.88 W/m².
From the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, the starting temperature of 288K corresponds to a surface energy of 390.1 W/m². If the surface power increases by 2.88 W/m², the corresponding temperature increase is only 0.55°C and not the 3°C predicted by the AGW hypothesis.
UNQUOTE

I’m sorry but you’re ocean volume number is completely wrong and off the charts so to speak.
That so called volume is based on pretty much a level ocean floor, but the ocean floor is so far from level and flat and can be had. Even if this fact where taking into consideration the calculation of the volume doesn’t take into effect neither the slopes of continental plates nor blue whales and every other creatures that takes up volume in the ocean or mere coral islands.
When you can correctly calculate the, at least, about correct volume of the oceans you ought to be able to use it to your own advantage I’m sure.

@1DandyTroll: Dandy, I’m glad someone else pointed out the incaccuracies, from my own calculations, taking into account shoaling, and including nuclear submarines as well as wrecked ships (the Titanic has a significant effect) Willis’ calculation for ocean volume is out by a whopping 0.00000000000053%. I am off to realclimate to report this egregious error, where brighter minds will no doubt tell me that errors of this size are typical of the output from humans, which is why we should rely on computer models. They’re smart cookies over there and will no doubt produce a rebuttal paper in short order highlighting that the temperature rise by 2050 will be a staggering 0.0010000001C, not the trivial 0.001C reported by Willis. The MSM will have a field day with this.
Gerry

Slightly off-topic, but can anyone explain why the deep oceans are so cold? They appear to be sandwiched between a surface at approx 15C, and a mantle that’s even hotter.
I’ve found numerous documents that state that the deeps are cold as there is no sunlight. But where do they lose heat to to get so cold?
WUWT?

richard telford says:
October 23, 2010 at 1:17 pm
The oceans are not well mixed!
=========
Thus the currents.

Also related to the general discussion of simple models to determine climate sensitivity is Roy Spencer’s post on the response to Mt. Pinatubo eruption.
Revisiting the Mt Pinatubo Eruption as a Test of Climate Sensitivity.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/06/revisiting-the-pinatubo-eruption-as-a-test-of-climate-sensitivity/
He discussed the problem of trying to determine sensitivity by assuming that the climate changes from one equilibrium state to another. Instead he tried to model the changing state of the climate as the forcings (and feedbacks) from Mt. Pinatubo changed over a period of 2 or 3 years.
For the best fit of observed forcings and global temperatures, the heat mass was equivalent to the world’s oceans having a mixed layer of 40 meters deep.
The end result of his calculations is that the net feedback is slightly negative, resulting in an equivalent sensitivity of around 1 C for the radiative forcing of doubling CO2 levels.

Does the earth’s heat producing core have any effect on the climate?

My understanding is that the IPCC calculations and “missing” 0.7 W/m2 are predicated entirely on the net of incoming solar radiation and outgoing LWR. Trenbreth has suggested/alleged that the “missing” energy has been stored in deep oceans.
Seems to me your calculations and the IPCC miss a non-solar energy input or ‘forcing’ that goes under the name of geothermal. The earth’s crust conducts thermal energy into ocean water and the atmosphere while hydro-thermal vents, mid-oceanic ridges and submarine volcanoes transfer additional heat energy into the oceans. This geothermal energy contribution may not be large, but it is great enough to measure/estimate and is most definitely non-negative. One might say the IPCC leaves more than just 0.7 W/m2 of energy unexplained.

steveta_uk says:
October 23, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Slightly off-topic, but can anyone explain why the deep oceans are so cold?
My understanding is that the most dense water is 4 C, so it sinks at the poles, after it has dumped its heat, then gets circulated worldwide by the deep ocean currents.
The equatorial region works hard to warm the ocean, but the frigid polar regions are huge, and it only takes a minor reduction of incoming solar radiation to launch us back into another ice age.

cementafriend says on October 23, 2010 at 9:18 pm

It looks like my post got lost in the ether or filter. I was pointing out that measurements of evaporation point to the opposite of what is expected by IPCC and others with raising temperature ie the evaporation has been going down over the last 30 or more years. see here http://www.rsbs.anu.edu.au/Profiles/Graham_Farquhar/documents/271RodericketalPanreviewIGeogCompass2009_000.pdf
This points to
a) lower air temperature than measured or even temperature reduction
b) a reduction of insolence -maybe due to more cloud

Heh, that would be useful 🙂

You say:
Global Surface 5.1E+14 m2
“Missing” Incoming Radiation 0.7 W m-2 over earth’s surface
I have not checked your spreadsheet figures but does everybody realise that the radiation from the Sun appears on one side of the Earth only and not over the entire Earth’s surface.Therefore the area of the Earth receiving inward radiation from the Sun is one quarter of the total surface area of the Earth. However outward radiation should be calculated using the entire Earth’s surface.

“COMMENT: I think you mean to say “heat sink” rather than storage heater, its certainly not warming much. – mike.”
No I meant storage heater. Imagine what happens to 1sqm of of ocean water during a 24hr period. It heats up during the day and radiates some of the back into the atmosphere during the night, with a small amount, dT, being retained in deeper levels. Without this effect, air temperature at night would be lower than that measured. Now imagine what happens to that same 1sqm of water over a year, or any period where energy in is changing. The ocean behaves like a storage heater.

Willis, checking your math i keep coming up with ~463 years if the excess was 1 Wm-2 and 661 years if 0.7 Wm-2 but I guess it’s always good to land on the conservative side! I went by it a slightly different direction, computing in SI first to get mass of the 1 m2 3700m column, then at specific heat to get joules to raise it 1 K irregardless of when. Then seperately, 0.7 W/m2 for a year of seconds gives the joules of excess energy in a year. Took first divided by second to get years, 661 years. Change the 0.7 to 1 and I get 463 years. You might have been a bit low. ☺

What goes around …
The next thing to conviently forget is that climate sensitivity is an equilibrium concept. It tells you the temperature that you get to eventually. In a transient situation (such as we have at present), there is a lag related to the slow warm up of the oceans, which implies that the temperature takes a number of decades to catch up with the forcings. This lag is associated with the planetary energy imbalance and the rise in ocean heat content. If you don’t take that into account it will always make the observed ’sensitivity’ smaller than it should be. Therefore if you take the observed warming (0.6°C) and divide by the estimated total forcings (~1.6 +/- 1W/m2) you get a number that is roughly half the one expected. You can even go one better – if you ignore the fact that there are negative forcings in the system as well (cheifly aerosols and land use changes), the forcing from all the warming effects is larger still (~2.6 W/m2), and so the implied sensitivity even smaller! Of course, you could take the imbalance (~0.33 +/- 0.23 W/m2 in a recent paper) into account and use the total net forcing, but that would give you something that includes 3°C for 2xCO2 in the error bars, and that wouldn’t be useful, would it?
From a response to Milloy and Monckton doing the same thing in 2006…

I quite agree. I have always said that cloud has a great control on temperature and in both directions, depending on conditions. So cloud can be positive or negative and act as a thermostat.

I see statements here of people defending the IPCC numbers and logic like:
“Ocean waters take a long time to mix below 700 meters”. No links to data.
What about tides? Every day in 12 hour intervals a giant column of water from the bottom up is being dragged through the oceans lifting the surface at least 40cms and up to 20 meters in shallows. Doesn’t this turbulence have a wake that will pull waters down and bring waters up, all the way from the bottom, in addition to that of hitting under ocean mountains? How could this be explained away in the millenia needed to mix the waters?

richard telford says:
October 23, 2010 at 1:17 pm
The oceans are not well mixed!
That depends on your point of view. Ninety percent of the ocean has a pretty constant and consistent temperature very near three degrees centigrade. The ten percent of it that is warmer than that is the first few hundred meters below the surface.
The sixty four thousand dollar question is what factors determine the rate at which the (usually) warm shallow surface layer mixes with the vast frigid depths. If the mix rate slows the atmosphere will warm and if the mix rate increases the atmosphere will cool. If the surface and deep waters were to approach equilibrium, which would be about four degrees centrigrade, the earth will be in a full blown ice age. Now -that- is just cause for concern.

How does a small increase in infared radiation heat the ocean it cannot penetrate beyond a few millimeters?
Even if it eventually can would not this ocean mixing occur far slower then UV, and therfore is not UV energy more effective WM2 on a planet two thirds covered in water?
What obsevational studies have been done on this?
Thanks for any response.

I suspect the missing 0.7 W/m^2 is the result of incorrect science. The main mistake is the cloud optical physics. Present median AGW, 1.6 W/m^2, is assumed to be offset by 1.2 W/m^2 ‘aerosol cooling’, 0.5 direct and 0.7 indirect via clouds. The former is probably nearer 0.3: the latter is imaginary because the equation used to predict it, from Hansen and Lacis in 1974, is in my view as wrong as can be.
This is because it assumes diffuse internal scattering when there’s a second, pseudo-geometrical process at the upper boundary contributing the major proportion of albedo for very dark clouds. It’s strongly affected by pollution. An upper bound estimate is that changing droplet size from 15 to 5 microns reduces it by a factor of 10. So, a non-absorbing cloud with an initial albedo of 0.7 would allow 60% more energy through, a very potent form of AGW operating in parallel with any CO2 effect.
Because there’s a reversal of the sign as clouds get thinner, I’m not certain how much AGW has come from polluted clouds, but because it’s self-limiting [thick cloud albedo asymptotes to 0.5] it may account for the apparent cessation of global warming in 2003 as determined by ocean heat content. The quid pro quo is that fast ocean heating from 1985 may have been because of Asian industrialisation leading in 1999 to the observation of the ‘Asian Brown Cloud’. Soon after that, low level tropical cloud albedo may have reached its minimum level – no more cloud AGW.
So, I hope you realise by now that because of this fundamental mistake, which goes back to the physicists who devised the ‘two stream’ approximation to cloud aerosol optics, the present estimate of heating due to CO2-AGW is probably wildly exaggerated. I get to the other three major errors in the models at a later date!
PS I also strongly suspect that some in climate science know full well the basic problems. This may be why NASA puts out fake optical physics, e.g.: http://terra.nasa.gov/FactSheets/Aerosols/
‘Figure 2b. The high aerosol concentrations in these clouds provide the nucleation points necessary for the formation of many small liquid water droplets. Up to 90% of visible radiation (light) is reflected back to space by such clouds without reaching Earth’s surface.’
No professional physicist would put out such non-science yet the ‘reflection’ idea is widely believed in climate science. I’m less than impressed with the basic quality of people but that could be because of poor scientific training in the past 20 years or so.

Here is a chart showing how long it will take the oceans to catch up to the surface warming – 1500 years and it is still not 100% the way there yet – this is Hansen’s chart based on the slow temperature mixing which seems to be occurring so far.
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/1200/image002.png
I guess this backs up Willis’ calculations since Hansen is still assuming 3.0C (to 6.0C) of warming in this chart so it will should take 3 X 500 years (at the current rate of 0.2C per century).
So, – either the predicted 3.0C of warming will in fact, take 1500 years (after CO2 reaches the first doubling around 2060); or,
– Hansen is trying to push that the actual equilibrium response is up to 6.0C after 1500 years per CO2 doubling; or,
– the extra heat is not, in fact, “missing”, it is just the energy the theory expects to be there but it is not. Therefore, the warming will be much less than expected and it will take much, much longer than the current theory is pushing on us.
But the conclusion must be that the heat is not missing, the theory’s correctness is missing.
I don’t know how scientists can ignore the basic math problems in this theory. I guess they must still be relying on a gut instinct “feeling” that the theory is correct and would then rather just ignore the problems or try to change the measurements so it works. Noble cause corruption.

What you are missing is the temperature depressing effect of aerosols in the atmosphere that worked its magic from 1945 to 1978 until the clean air act fixed all that and let temps resume its upward trend.

B Buckner says October 24, 2010 at 7:24 am

What you are missing is the temperature depressing effect of aerosols in the atmosphere that worked its magic from 1945 to 1978 until the clean air act fixed all that and let temps resume its upward trend.

Makes no sense I’m afraid. What proportion of the earths surface did clean air acts relate to? Urban areas of the US and isolated parts of Europe at best. Just the usual contrived warmist excuse, where’s the empirical correlation let alone proof of causality?

Willis Eschenbach;
It was a long time ago when I went through AR4 and I’ve trashed most of my spreadsheets, but I found some notes to myself. Too bad I didn’t record where in AR4 the numbers came from so I could refer back. Bad scientist. Oh wait, I’m not a scientist. Ok, Bad skeptic. Here’s my recollection:
o The IPCC estimates doubling of CO2 to increase forcing by 3.7 w/m2 (no feedback)
o The IPCC calculates sensitivity against the EFFECTIVE black body temperature of the earth
o The IPCC estimates the effective black body temperature of the earth to be about 253K
o Hadcrut reports temperature anomalies against the SURFACE temperature of the earth
o Hadcrut estimates the average earth surface temperature to be 288K.
So to simplify matters, let’s eliminate feedbacks and just focus for the moment on the math in regard to CO2. IPCC estimates doubling co2 will increase forcing by 3.7 watts/m2, and increase temperature about 1 degree. STARTING FROM WHERE? Let’s turn to Stefan-Boltzman.
If we assume a surface temperature of 288K, then a temperature increase of 1 degree would require a change in energy input to achieve equilibrium of:
(5.67 x 10^-8 x 289^4) – (5.67 x 10^-8 x 288^4) = 5.45 w/m2
Does not compute. Can’t warm something up if it is radiating more that you are putting into it. So let’s run the numbers again using the effective black body temperature of the earth at 253K
(5.67 x 10^-8 x 254^4) – (5.67 x 10^-8 x 253^4) = 3.69 w/m2
AHA!!!!!
Thar be yer problem mate. CO2 be logarithmic and earth radiance be exponential, so we have to know sensitivity in terms of starting point. If we accept the IPCC estimate of sensitivity being doubling CO2 = 3.7w/m2 = +1 degree AT AN EFFECTIVE BLACK BODY TEMPERATURE OF 253k, we should be able to arrive at a rough approximation of the expected change in temperature at earth surface expressed as an anomaly against an earth surface average temperature of 288K.
To make it a simple back of envelope, let’s assume that small changes of 1 degree are roughly linear in relation to the starting point. That gives us an easy ratio. We should expect sensitivity at earth surface to be 3.7/5.5 of sensitivity at effective black body. So sensitivity as measured by Hadcrut would be:
3.7/5.5 = 0.67 degrees per doubling of CO2.
Using the same logic in regard to magnitude of positive feedbacks as estimated by IPCC as adding an additional 1.0 to 3.5 degrees AT EARTH EFFECTIVE BLACK BODY OF 253 we would arrive at sensitivity as expressed by Hadcrut of 0.67 to 2.35 for feedbacks. Sum total would then be CO2 doubling with feedbacks included resulting in sensitivity at earth surface being a range of 1.34 to 3.01 degrees as measured by Hadcrut, and roughly equivelant to the 2.0 to 4.5 degrees reffered to by IPCC as calculated against earth effective black body.
I suspect that if you run your numbers again in that context you’ll get a result that puts Hadcrut’s numbers more reasonably into the range. Better still would be to compare theory against actual measurement of effective black body of earth, but I have no idea how one would arrive at that from the historical record. I note however, the temperature at 14,000 feet as measured by AMSU-A averages about 253K which might make it a good proxy.
I actually found the 3.7/5.5 ration in one IPCC reference or another after I had calculated it myself, so it isn’t like this is some sort of secret. But screaming about a range of 2.0 to 4.5 is just that much more scary than screaming about a range of 1.34 to 3.01.

(SarcOn) Is anyone else beginning to come to the conclusion that the IPCC is all a GIANT MADOFF “Slight-Of-Hand” Trick? A Gigantic Ponzi Distraction? Think about it, while the ever vigilant sheep dogs (US) have been trying to save the flock (the World) from the big, bad wolves (Them), other members of the pack (Their Buddies) have been ‘sheering’ (and doing other terrible, unspeakable things) to the poor flock while we have been distracted with this “Global Warming/Climeology” stuff. Huuuuuuuuummmmmmm… where’s BatMan, Robin ,IronMan, and the rest of the Super Heros when you need them? Think, maybe, “The Great Recession” we’re now in up to our gills is the result of what their friends have been doing while we’ve been preoccupied? I smell a rat…(SarcOff)

Fred, thanks for the link to the Levitus paper. Don’t you think it is a little odd that the greatest atmospheric warming 1980-1990 took place while the ocean was giving up heat? Are we supposed to believe that CO2 warmed the air, the warm air pumped heat into the ocean, and the ocean cooled less than it would have otherwise? It’s always amusing to see the linear trend argument applied in cases like this. Does the system look linear to you? The paper also did not explain how the heat moves into the lower ocean, my understanding is that the turnover rate is insufficient to explain the lack of warming in the atmosphere with the alleged sensitivity of water vapor feedback added in.

steveta_uk says:
October 23, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Slightly off-topic, but can anyone explain why the deep oceans are so cold? They appear to be sandwiched between a surface at approx 15C, and a mantle that’s even hotter.
_______Reply;
Every winter at both poles as the sea water freezes to expand the polar sea ice area, extent, and volume, the salt in the solution is separated out and concentrated raising the density of the salt to the point that it does not freeze @ around 0C, but sinks to the bottom. Each winter freeze cycle processes a surge of colder, denser sea water, that reaches its peak density around 3C to 4C, flows away from the poles till it covers the bottom of the total ocean floors around the world.
At sources of bottom heat the thermal gradient causes the slightly warmer water to rise and be replaced by more 3-4C dense sea water. Because this process is ongoing from both poles, there is no shortage of cold water inputs. What the Argo buoy system would show is the amount of surface warming that is getting ahead or behind the rate of sea water to freshwater ice conversion rates.
The Thermocline http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/jetstream/ocean/layers_ocean.htm
should reflect any long term changes in global warming or cooling, if heat is actually being stored in the oceans long term, the level of the warmest water will be seen to get deeper. So far that is not happening to a measurable amount, Judith Curry had an Antarctic sea ice paper looking for .00? temperature changes posted on here a while back.
However the temperatures at the bottom of the sea will still be the same as long as there is polar sea ice being generated, to any great extent.

MalagaView says:
October 23, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Charlie A says:
there are severe flaws with the quote. for one, power from stefan’s law is for a surface – so it radiates in one hemisphere. If you don’t really have a surface or assume a thin sheet, one must double that value to radiate in both hemispheres.
what has happened with the additional 3.6w/m^2 is that this amount is no longer escaping from the atmosphere (in clear skies). Since around 239w/m^2 is absorbed as incoming solar, for balance the average outgoing IR at the surface is 390w/m^2 which indicates about 150 w/m^2 is blocked in the atmosphere which means about 62% actually escapes. This of course ignores the cloudy fraction and emissions from higher up in the atmosphere. It does suggest that a 3.6w/m^2 shortfall would need to have about 5.8w/m^2 which corresponds to around 1.06 deg C rise. Of course, this includes only radiative heat transfer in a region of the atmosphere which doesn’t transfer much by radiation anyway.

If one wants to view the daily Solar Radiation coming in versus the Radiation actually at the Surface throughout the day, it is a little surprising.
The actual radiation at the surface is very stable compared to the solar radiation coming in (or not coming in at night). Once the Sun sets each night, about 4.5 watts/m2 per hour escapes and then once the Sun comes up, the surface radiation level rises by about the same 4.5 watts/m2 per hour (it is not quite 12 hours each way so there is a little difference in the two rates).
http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/7350/dailysolarandsurfacerad.png
If the Sun did not come up tomorrow, it would take about 86 hours for the Earth to cool down to the cosmic background radiation level (give or take a lag from the Oceans which would freeze from the top down).

Willis,
As with all things IPCC finding the trail of references and a straight forward answer is not… uhm… straight forward. But here are a couple of sections the illustrate the math in my previous comment:
Section 2.8.1 of WG1 states clearly that their radiative forcing calculations are taken at the tropopause, and are different from the observed forcing at surface:
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-8.html#2-8-1
If you refer to figure 2.23 of WG1, you will find the graphs showing various forcings at the tropopause versus at surface. The total of all LLGHG’s is shown at just over 2 w/m2 which is about right for a 40% of doubling increase on a logarithmic function using 3.7 for doubling, but the surface forcing is only about 0.5 w/m2.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-2-23.html
Interestingly, they show the combined forcing at surface of LLGHG+Ozone+Aerosols+LandUse as NEGATIVE 1.4 w/m2. Not certain why they grouped them like that but the logical conclusion would be to expect COOLING at the surface over the last few decades, not warming. How they reconcile that with the surface temperature records they spout is beyond me.
But there you have it. Their sensitivity is calculated at the tropopause, and per their own documentation, doesn’t relate to the surface temps.

Article on how the research funding process in the medical field corrupts the validity of published results. This can be easily extended to climate science. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/8269/1/

OK so I may be showing my ignorance here but if we turned off the Sun right now (stay with me) how long would it take for the atmosphere (not the ocean – the atmosphere) to cool significantly. 24 hours – a few days – longer? 150 years?!
It seems to me that the planet’s (heat) energy is constantly being topped up on very short (daily) timescales. Take that away and it gets cold (I suppose) very quickly. I’m not suggesting the Sun will be switched off any time soon; I just use it as an illustration that the atmosphere probably doesn’t store heat very well for long periods.
So those who propose some time lag is hiding the heat still need to explain where it is hiding. It is no good saying its coming along later. Coming from where? You can’t store heat without it getting hot somewhere – or doing work like moving currents around a lot more as Mr Hayworth suggests (October 24, 2010 at 4:34 am) but evidence seems to indicate that isn’t happening either http://www.earthweek.com/2010/ew100402/ew100402a.html.
So it’s not in the sea, it’s not in the air. In short it is nowhere on earth (unless someone can show otherwise). If it’s coming, where from? Where is it now?
Please don’t get caught up in the boiling pot argument; that the 0.7C warming of the atmosphere will eventually warm the oceans by 0.7C which adds up to 1.4C. It doesn’t. It adds up to 0.7C more uniformly distributed. Yes it might eventually warm the oceans a bit and trap more energy overall – if the atmosphere doesn’t cool first – but the IPCC’s headline surface heat going forward would still be half what they said it would be.
In other words if half the energy was being absorbed by the oceans (it’s not apparently) then half the next lot of energy would be too. If you are using that as an excuse for the difference between your theory and empirical evidence than your expected surface temperature deltas should also be halved unless you expect the sea to suddenly change its behaviour.
So to return to my first point; the time lags in the atmosphere are measured in far shorter time scales than one and a half centuries. Mr Mosher, the sea might be a truck but the atmosphere’s a Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport and 6 seconds is plenty for 120mph!

This “hidden heat forcing in the ocean” is fascinating. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite of the lava lamps we amused ourselves with back in the precamb…er, the ’60’s. The hot water sinks, hits bottom, reverses course — and SHAZAMM, global broiling takes place when it again reaches surface. Darn it, why couldn’t I have been more observant! I’d be famous and flying off to Tahiti to reveal the “Upside Down Theory of Heat Transference” to a host of sycoph…er, true believ…er, climatologists. I coulda’ been a contendah!

Phil’s Dad says:
October 24, 2010 at 4:35 pm
—————–
You could also look at it as How long does the energy represented by a photon from the Sun spend in the Earth System before it is lost to space?
About 30.2 hours.
30% of the photons are reflected back to space almost immediately – in an average time of 0.00003 seconds.
70% spend an average 43 hours in the Earth System – some are captured by Ozone and then sent back to space in a millisecond or so and some might end up captured by the Ocean or Land surface and spend up to 1500 years in the Earth System, but the average of this 70% is just 43 hours.
This 70% of photons will spend time in 31 billion individual molecules on average before being sent off to space – in other words, every type of atmospheric molecule is constantly recycling the energies represented by a photon from the Sun – capturing and then releasing that energy in an average 0.000005 seconds which approximates a constant outward flow from the surface – it is not “back-radiation” – it is a constant outward flow which is provable by the lapse rate itself – and not just CO2 and GHGs are part of this, all the molecules are.
This all happens at the quantum level, at the speed of light and at the average relaxation time for a molecule. No climate model is going to be able simulate that accurately.

Willis Eschenbach;
My understanding is that the “climate sensitivity” linearly relates TOA forcing changes to surface temperature changes … if that’s not the case, please point me to a reference that explains what “climate sensitivity” means.>>
Sorry Willis, I can’t. You have to follow all the references to references to references starting with this quote from AR4 WG1 2.8.1 where RF is short for Radiative Forcing:
” It should be noted that a perturbation to the surface energy budget involves sensible and latent heat fluxes besides solar and longwave irradiance; therefore, it can quantitatively be very different from the RF, which is calculated at the tropopause, and thus is not representative of the energy balance perturbation to the surface-troposphere (climate) system. While the surface forcing adds to the overall description of the total perturbation brought about by an agent, the RF and surface forcing should not be directly compared…”
Their words. NOT representative of the energy balance. Should NOT be directly compared. As I said, it was a while back that I went through it. Looked for some of the papers they refer to, mostly behind pay walls. Some I found copies of but they make reference to other papers, mostly behind pay walls. Lots of dead ends but finaly figured out that they were calculating CO2 doubling = 3.7w/m2 = 1 degree at the effective black body temperature of earth, but were being very vague in terms of how that should translate into surface temps, leaving one with the IMPRESSION that it is linear, but no where actually saying so that I have found. In fact, I recall distinctly reading an article either in AR4 or referenced by AR4 saying that temperature changes could be treated as linear in terms of changes in surface radiance. Duh, say WHAT? Which part of T to the power of 4 is linear? The cite was I think, Ramaswamy so I started digging. Turns out to be a reasonable approximation FOR SMALL CHANGES IN TEMP LIKE 1 DEGREE. The implication in the article at the beginning of the chain was that this is true across the board but it isn’t, and it is only implied, it didn’t actually say that.
But do the math. As you said before, you believe that sensitivity varies with T. The surface temp CAN’T be linear with radiative forcing calculated against effective black body that is 35 degrees colder than surface based on a constant times… T raised to the power of 4. Any warming as a consequence must raise the temps of cold things faster than the temps of warm things and if you pump enough warming into the system the temp differential between them gets smaller and smaller even though they are both going up.
If I find the time I will try and reproduce the whole chain, but it was a long time ago, lots of dead ends, and many hours of frustration. But linear its not.

International JournRecent energy balance of Earthdal of Geosciences, 2010, vol. 1, no. 3 (November)R. S. Knox and D. H. Douglas
“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.””
This paper makes perfect sense to me. Perhaps you can explain where it is in error.

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steveta_uk says:
October 23, 2010 at 5:16 pm
Slightly off-topic, but can anyone explain why the deep oceans are so cold? They appear to be sandwiched between a surface at approx 15C, and a mantle that’s even hotter.
I’ve found numerous documents that state that the deeps are cold as there is no sunlight. But where do they lose heat to to get so cold?
********
The cold bottom-water at around 4-6C, which makes up the vast majority of the ocean volume, is a relic of previous cold periods and/or present glacier/sea-ice melting sinking below the top surface. Being sandwiched between the ocean bottom (crust that has a very high insulation value & hence little heat transfer from the hot interior) and warm surface water (which is stratified & isolated due to density differences) preserves its “coldness” for long times — perhaps thousands of yrs.
So for most parts of the world (other than the below-freezing ones), the cold bottom-water is actually a heat-sink, not a heat source. This makes the vast majority of the ocean volume a poor reservoir of “heat” — in fact, it’s a source of cold for affected areas — look at the east Pacific.
Of course, those areas that normally are governed by these cold currents would see a temp rise if the bottom water warmed, but the amount of heat necessary to raise such a vast amount of bottom-water even just a degree would be huge. During warm periods of the earth (like 60 mya) the bottom-water is not nearly as cold — it was as much as 60F (15C) instead of today’s 4C. This is because during those periods there was negligible sea-ice/glacier melting.

Laws of Nature says:
October 29, 2010 at 1:33 am

Dear Anthony, Willis, and all,
today I am facing a puzzle and I am not sure where to turn to . . I hope this thread didn’t go cold.. My only resources for this are two wiki-pages, so perhaps the answer is as easy as someone was describing the Revelle-factor incorrectly, but if I take whats written there at face value, here is what I see:
If you assume, that the ocean were about 1°C colder during the little ice age 200 years ago than now and use Henry’s law to calculate the difference you get according to wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry‘s_law
that the constant k_H(T) = k_0 e^-[ 2400 (1/(273.15+T) -1/298) ]
and T is something like 16°C and 17°C for the ocean surface
This leads to a difference in this number of about 2.8% and
in the wiki carbon-cycle you can read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
“The factor for the ocean is about ten: that is, for a 10% increase in atmospheric CO2, oceanic storage (in equilibrium) increases by about 1%, with the exact factor dependent on local conditions. ”
In other words:
If the near surface ocean warmed by 1°C since then, the raise of the CO2-concentration in the atmosphere is a natural consequence (almost completly with very little room for an anthropogenic contribution).
In order to explain this a bit more, I see there two sources and a sink:
The sea, the burning of fossil fuel and the sea again. The sea can easily take up any anthropogenic contribution if the temperature is right!
Could you comment on this math?
Thank you,
LoN, puzzled

Laws, I look at it a different way. Rather than deal with theory I go more for observations. In the Vostok record, a temperature swing of about 10° leads to a CO2 swing of about 75 ppmv.
Setting aside the question of logarithmic response, we get a 1° temperature change leading to a CO2 swing of 7.5 ppmv. Lots of error in that, lots of plus and minus, but that’s the general idea.
This makes it improbable that the current rise in CO2 is due to a change in ocean temperatures.