Bob Tisdale points out the reality versus projection disparity. It would seem, that we have a GISS miss by a country mile. Where’s the heat? – Anthony
First-Quarter 2011 Update Of NODC Ocean Heat Content (0-700Meters)
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
(Update: I added the word “Anomalies” to the two graphs. )
OVERVIEW
The NOAA National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) has updated its Ocean Heat Content (OHC) data (0-700Meters) for the first quarter of 2011. The quarterly data for the world oceans is now available through the NODC in spreadsheet (.csv ) form (Right Click and Save As: all months). Thanks, NODC. That’s a nice addition to your website.
This is a quick post that shows the long-term quarterly OHC data and the ARGO-era OHC data compared to GISS Projections. I’ll provide another look when the data has been uploaded to and becomes available through the KNMI Climate Explorer, and that should be toward the end of the month. It’ll be interesting to see if the tropical Pacific OHC has rebounded yet.
DATASET INTRODUCTION
The NODC OHC dataset is based on the Levitus et al (2009) paper “Global ocean heat content(1955-2008) in light of recent instrumentation problems”, Geophysical Research Letters. Refer to Manuscript. It was revised in 2010 as noted in the October 18, 2010 post Update And Changes To NODC Ocean Heat Content Data. As described in the NODC’s explanation of ocean heat content (OHC) data changes, the changes result from “data additions and data quality control,” from a switch in base climatology, and from revised Expendable Bathythermograph (XBT) bias calculations.
THE GRAPHS
Figure 1 shows the Global NODC data from the first quarter (Jan-Feb-Mar) of 1955 to the first quarter of 2011. There was a minor uptick in the past three month period.
Figure 1
Looking at the NODC OHC data during the ARGO era (2003 to present), Figure 2, the uptick was nowhere close to what would be required to bring the Global Ocean Heat Content back into line with GISS projections. For the source of the 0.7 Joules*10^22 GISS projection, refer to the discussion of “ARGO-ERA TREND VERSUS GISS PROJECTION” in the post ARGO-Era NODC Ocean Heat Content Data (0-700 Meters) Through December 2010.
Figure 2
And for those wishing to discuss the draft of Hansen et al (2011), please first refer to the post for Notes On Hansen et al (2011) – Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications. It was cross posted at WattsUpWithThat as On ocean heat content, Pinatubo, Hansen, Bulldogs, cherrypicking and all that.
SOURCE
As noted above the updated quarterly NODC OHC data is available through their website:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Specifically their Basin Time Series webpage:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/basin_data.html
Scroll down to the “all months” link under “World”.
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Richard M says: “Looks to me like this debate is much ado about nothing. Both views are reasonable approaches. Neither one is clearly right or wrong, they are just different ways of looking at the data.”
Bingo!!!!! (Five asterisk marks.) Funny thing is, I wrote something very similar in the closing of my response to Tamino’s post about a half hour ago. Looking at the timing, you beat me to the punch.
Regards
So if my version is wrong, what is the correct pub argument version, then?
RoHa
Correct pub argument?
Instead of, “The warmers say that the oceans should be getting warmer. They aren’t”
Try being truthful and say, “Scientists say that the oceans should be getting warmer. They are”
You never know someone might buy you a (cold) beer. And if you print off a copy of the ocean heat content data for the last century or so showing five year average temperatures, such as this one:
http://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/ohc.jpg?w=500&h=325
and stick it in your back pocket to show people, then hopefully you won’t get involved in silly arguments with people who don’t want to face the truth and who pretend that the last few years data in a noisy graph is significant.
Woops. That should have been “ocean heat content data for the last half century or so”
Richard S Courtney May 10, 2011 at 9:34 am
Now that hopefully your blood pressure has returned to normal are you going to withdraw your false statement that Slioch has “repeatedly made” the claim that “the value of 9.6*10^22 Joules represents an absolute value”? Since I have neither stated that, nor implied it, even once, that seems to me to be a reasonable request.
I acknowledge that my statement on the subject omitted the words “that I said”, so should have read, “Yet in your post of May 10, 2011 at 3:50 am you pretend THAT I SAID that the value of 9.6*10^22 Joules represents an absolute value.”
Slioch:
Your post at May 10, 2011 at 10:38 pm is ruidiculous.
It admits that you lied (and says one of the the lies was a mistake).
It says that you did not say something then claims you said it.
It does not aplogise for your lies but calls for me to withdraw.
I suggest that you seek medical aid.
Richard
KR:
You are good at making assertions but seem to think there is no need to justify them. Indeed, your post to me at May 10, 2011 at 5:03 pm is a clear demonstration that evasion is your modus operadi.
Its first statement asks me;
“Well, then, why don’t you demonstrate that these declining trend statements also hold from (say) 2001?”
I answer: because they don’t. So what? The fact is that the divergence exists since 2003 and that divergence requires an explanation.
Its second statement says;
” Looking at the residuals on the yearly data, I will have to say that choosing 2003 is a cherry-pick. ”
No. 2003 is the year when the ARGO data starts and when the divergence started. It is that divergence that requires an explanation and, therefore, any other year is a “cherry-pick”.
Then you quote me having said;
““Too short a period” or “the signal is too noisy” is not an explanation. It is merely an excuse for not having an explanation. ”
And you reply to my accurate statement by asserting;
“Come on, Richard, you should know better than that. It means not enough data for a meaningful conclusion.”
No! If you can prove it means what you assert then prove it.
The “not enough data excuse” will not wash: it amounts to “Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.”
The fact is that for the last 8 years the diveregence has happened. I can do no better than to iterate the entire point which you are evading by use of assertion and selective quotation. I said;
“The issue is why the OHC has not risen over the last 8 years at the rate projected by GISS. Or, if you want to reword it, why is the “signal” so “noisy” that the observed rate over the last 8 years is a tenth of the rate projected by GISS.
The heat has gone into the ocean but the ocean’s heat content has not risen; why?
Or
The heat has not gone in; why?
“Too short a period” or “the signal is too noisy” is not an explanation. It is merely an excuse for not having an explanation.”
Richard
Since a casual reader might only be confused by claims and counterclaims let me restate the basic historical truth, namely that the ARGO scientists did thrir FIRST scientific conference in 2003, not 2001. If that means nothing, ARGO has been a useless failure.
Richard S Courtney:
“’Too short a period’ or ‘he signal is too noisy’is not an explanation. It is merely an excuse for not having an explanation.”
That’s funny because it’s true. Only God knows exactly why temperature and heat fluctuate from second to second. I guess we don’t have any explanation for these second to second variations, so there’s no hope in ever establishing meaningful trends…
The first ARGO floats were distributed in 2001, and while a conference was held in 2003, the current data record includes ARGO data from it’s initial floats as well as ongoing XBT data. 2003 is not a point of changeover, but rather part of an ongoing increase in data sources.
In other words, ARGO data started in 2001, and has increased in float number since then.
And yes, eight years is too short a time to derive a statistically significant trend from the rather noisy ARGO data. You’re welcome to your own opinion on that, Richard, but not your own facts about the statistics – I suggest you read up a bit on statistical significance in the presence of noise.
Anybody know where one would find this response? Any reason not to post a copy of it here? I’m very interested in reading how Bob Tisdale justifies his “reasonable approach”.
=> Why he selected 2003 (ARGO represented ~50% of OHC measurements) as the start point of a foreshortened and statistically insignificant time-frame to claim a shift in trend … that is, other than “It’d be saa-weeet to claim a new anti-warmist trend, but it doesn’t work well unless I start at 2003” …
=> And, why he hasn’t corrected his abysmally misleading and, yes, at this point, dishonest Figure 2, above. Tisdale didn’t even butcher that figure on his own blog to the degree he did here on WUWT.
REPLY: And why can’t you wait a bit while Tisdale finishes and I get the post up? Sheesh, what a sourpuss you are Greer. Nothing but denigration from you, never anything positive, just rants and demands. How sad for you. -Anthony
Sorry, Anthony. B. Tisdale posted his response yesterday – I suppose my expectations have shifted in this technology age.
(ohhh, and congratulations on the acceptance of your paper 😉 )
REPLY: Doesn’t mean he’s finished with it, and your congratulations ring a bit hollow due to it being prompted to make yourself look less onerous, but thank you. There’s a whole thread for that days old but I suppose my expectations have shifted in this technology age. – Anthony
Again, my apologies, I misinterpreted Tisdale’s comment as meaning he completed/posted his response somewhere but that it wasn’t published yet. And, yes, I used my congratulations to you to make sport of your “sourpuss” remark. But as you know, I’ve expressed support for efforts to improve data accuracy, and to the extent your work helps in that regard I’m all for it and my congratulations are sincere.
Jack Greer says: “Anybody know where one would find this response?”
My earlier reply to Richard M was about a post at my blog, not a comment here at WUWT. When I finish writing, and editing, and creating illustrations, I will post it there and leave a link here. Anthony may or may not elect to cross post it here at WUWT. That’s always his choice.
Jack Greer: Oops. I could’ve saved myself 30 seconds if I had scrolled down and seen that Anthony had already replied to you.
Regards
Utahn (at May 11, 2011 at 6:44 am) and KR (at May 11, 2011 at 7:12 am):
Your posts are classic examples of evasion.
8 years of a trend in measured data is not comparable to “second to second variations” that cannot be measured.
And the accuracy of the measurements is all that matters.
The fact is that since 2003 the measured change to ocean heat content has been an increase of about a tenth of the GISS projection. If you want to claim that the measured data is so “noisy” that this change cannot be determined then you are claiming that this data is worthless.
Show me your analysis which indicates the data is worthless and we can discuss it. Linking to a primer on statistical significance does not do that (and is insulting) but indicates that you cannot prove your assertion that the data is worthless.
I accept the data. You don’t like what the data shows so you are armwaving about the data being worthless. Facts, evidence and/or logical argument could convince me of your case. Your armwaving convinces me that you know you do not have a case.
Richard
Richard, you seem to have confused me with other posters in much of your reply above. In any case, what I was trying to say with misplaced sarcasm was that because short time frames are susceptible to noise, regardless of how accurate the measurements are, you can’t assign much meaning to those short term trends.
If I told you in 2006 that the trend from 2005 to 2006 was for OHC to increase by 25% per year (which it was), would you have thought that was
meaningful?
Should say OHC anomaly !
Utahn:
Having failed in evasion by ‘straw man’, in your post at May 11, 2011 at 6:55 pm. you demonstrate misrepresentation when you say;
“what I was trying to say with misplaced sarcasm was that because short time frames are susceptible to noise, regardless of how accurate the measurements are, you can’t assign much meaning to those short term trends. ”
Sorry, but that does not agree with what you wrote and my response to it.
You said;
“Only God knows exactly why temperature and heat fluctuate from second to second. I guess we don’t have any explanation for these second to second variations, so there’s no hope in ever establishing meaningful trends…”
And I replied;
“8 years of a trend in measured data is not comparable to “second to second variations” that cannot be measured.”
Warmists use all the classical logical fallacies. It works on the warmist blogs because all sensible comments are censored from those blogs. But here such fallacies are pointed out.
And you ask me;
“If I told you in 2006 that the trend from 2005 to 2006 was for OHC to increase by 25% per year (which it was), would you have thought that was meaningful?”
I answer, YES of course it is “meaningful”.
It means the oceans were measured to have obtained a large thermal input or a large reduction to thermal output that year. Hence, it raises the question as to the cause of that change and/or the flaw in the measurements which indicate that change.
I repeat my submission to you and KR concerning your evasions; viz.
“I accept the data. You don’t like what the data shows so you are armwaving about the data being worthless. Facts, evidence and/or logical argument could convince me of your case. Your armwaving convinces me that you know you do not have a case.”
Richard
Richard S Courtney
May 12, 2011 at 3:15 am
“I answer, YES of course it is “meaningful”.”
Whether it is meaningful or not is not the point – clearly such a measurement means something, though we may not be able to know what that something is.
To give an example with which many are familiar: there was an extraordinary spike in measured global average temperature in 1998. Was it meaningful? Yes, of course it was: but what it meant was that there was a very strong El Nino that year. That spike provided no statistically significant information about incremental global warming, in other words, by itself it didn’t mean anything about global warming.
If the interest is to inquire whether there is an incremental increase in the ocean heat content as a result of global warming, such annual measurements by themselves provide very little useful information and are certainly not statistically significant at the 95% level. The noisiness of the graph of OHC anomalies against time indicates that other factors – both concerned with measurement inaccuracies and with genuine changes in the heat content of the top 700m of the oceans – produce annual variations in the measured anomalies which are greater than the annual increment.
The situation is similar to the measurement for average global temperatures: there the annual variation in the measured figure, of some + or – 0.2C, is more than ten times greater than the annual increment representing global warming, which is less than 0.02C per year. In that case it has been calculated that about fifteen years of global average temperature measurements are required in order to be more than 95% sure that any trend observed is due to a real change in global average temperatures. Similar health warnings are just as pertinent when considering changes in OHC.
Slioch:
Your post at May 12, 2011 at 7:21 am is a ‘straw man’.
I answered the question from Utahn because I did not want any assertion that I had avoided his question.
That is not the issue here which is – as I have repeatedly said –
“The issue is why the OHC has not risen over the last 8 years at the rate projected by GISS. Or, if you want to reword it, why is the “signal” so “noisy” that the observed rate over the last 8 years is a tenth of the rate projected by GISS.
The heat has gone into the ocean but the ocean’s heat content has not risen; why?
Or
The heat has not gone in; why?
“Too short a period” or “the signal is too noisy” is not an explanation. It is merely an excuse for not having an explanation.”
Please address the real issue.
Richard
Richard:
“I answer, YES of course it is ‘meaningful’.
It means the oceans were measured to have obtained a large thermal input or a large reduction to thermal output that year. Hence, it raises the question as to the cause of that change and/or the flaw in the measurements which indicate that change.”
Good point, I should have been more clear as to what I meant by “meaningful”. Would a one year trend of increasing anomaly by 25% mean that there was a “divergence problem” as in the title of this post? Or would it mean that there was a “GISS miss by a country mile”?
I have no problem with trying to understand what causes the changes that constitute the noise that is measured, that’s a great scientific pursuit. It may also be that the reasons for some noise are so complex that humankind will never figure it out.
But in this post, the implication is that this short term data (well within the realm of past noise) “means” the GISS projection is way off or somehow far out of line with OHC. That’s what the post implies, but is that what you think it means? If so, why didn’t we talk about GISS’s divergence problem in underestimating the increase in OHC in 2006? How do you know 7 years is “meaningful” in interpreting the accuracy of the GISS projection, but that 1 year is not?
Utahn:
You pose two good question in your post at May 12, 2011 at 12:00 pm when you ask;
” If so, why didn’t we talk about GISS’s divergence problem in underestimating the increase in OHC in 2006? How do you know 7 years is “meaningful” in interpreting the accuracy of the GISS projection, but that 1 year is not?”
I do say the increase in OHC in 2006 was much greater than the GISS projection
and
I do say the increase in OHC since 2003 is much less than the GISS projection.
Both statements are very meaningful when considering the GISS projection.
The GISS projection is based on an assumption that a specific effect (i.e. AGW) will dominate change to OHC over the next e.g. 80 years. But the effects that dominated change to OHC and since 2003 are not known, so it cannot be known that they will not dominate change to OHC in the future.
Assertions about “noise” and “signals” do not change this. If the mechanisms of observed change are not known then it cannot be known what “signal” is not caused by those mechanisms. And it cannot be known that AGW will overwhelm those mechanisms.
In other words, the GISS projection is pure pseudoscience of similar kind to astrology.
Richard
Ooops!
I wrote’
“But the effects that dominated change to OHC and since 2003 are not known …”
I intended to write;
“But the effects that dominated change to OHC in 2006 and since 2003 are not known …”
Sorry.
Richard
Richard, that brings me back to my initial (poorly stated) point. You seem to be saying that since we don’t understand every up an down (the noise), we can make no predictions. In other words, that since we don’t know everything, we can’t know anything. Am I correct in that impression?