This comment seemed like a useful question to discuss, so I’m elevating it to post status
A. Patterson Moore says:
I see ocean heat content discussed here and elsewhere from time to time, but I have never seen a discussion of what causes it to increase. The clear implication is that it is increasing because of warmer atmospheric surface temperatures, but that makes no sense to me.
Surely the small increase in warming of the atmosphere to date could not transfer a significant amount of heat to the oceans. It seems obvious to me the only way that the oceans could accumulate much heat would be through direct heating from solar radiation. If that is occurring, wouldn’t that be direct evidence of a decrease in cloud cover, instead of evidence for AGW?
A scenario that may be happening:
The top layer of the ocean is being significantly warmed by solar radiation due to a number of factors. First, the direct sunlight heats up a sublayer of the top layer; wave action slightly increases this heat content and spreads it (horizontally and to a modest extent vertically); evaporation at the surface occurs and still warm water vapor is distributed throughout the air immediately above the ocean surface, some of it gaining enough heat to cause water vapor expansion and perhaps (basically ocean spray and near cloud formation yet not enough to be visible) some falling back into the ocean creating this layer of heat retention, or shield, above the ocean surface…this may in effect help to cause a decrease in cloud formation; near the coast vertical exchanges of water with cold water sinking and warming water rising and being mixed in with the top, warm layer of ocean water…then circulated around the globe by waves, wind, currents, and thermal convection across the oceans. This is from an informed, non-expert perspective.
Bernie McCune, May 11, 2011 at 10:42 am : Ditto! The water. Would you be open for some more general data that might help you expand your thoughs even further? Could post it later here. I especially you words on the 850 and 1050 Wm-2 aspect, that keys right in with an hour-by-hour breakdown of both Kiehl-Trenbeth papers and diagrams (still working on Miskolczi’s). All of those papers seem to imply an ~62% mean cloud cover but TK seems way too low on the mean water content.
Theo Goodwin says:
May 11, 2011 at 9:16 am
(See above.)
Thank you Mr. Goodwin, Sir. Would that all scientists could express themselves with such clarity.
Eric Anderson says:
May 11, 2011 at 8:54 am
“I have never seen any good information (maybe someone can point us to it?) to demonstrate that a massive body of water can be heated to any meaningful extent by a diffuse body of air contacting the surface. …”
———
I don’t know Eric. But I do know that on those rare occasions when a warm air mass (15C/60F) makes it into Vermont in Winter, snow and ice cover melts at a truly impressive rate. Water is streaming everywhere. But on a day with equal sunlight and “enjoying” a cold Arctic airmass, there is little melting. This suggests to me that the air is capable of transferring a fair amount of heat (at least the heat of fusion of water — 79.9 cal/gm) to a lot of frozen water.
Doug Proctor said
To clear up all the argument about heat transfer from atmosphere to oceans. Get a heat gun and apply it to the surface of a bucket of water for about 5 minutes, enough to set wood alight. Result no heat transfer, water remains cold, reason: surface tension.
Since I try to make a living fishing on the ocean, I may have a different perspective. Bob Tisdale spends a great deal of time on this subject, so he has a much better knowledge, I just have some fisherman kinda views.
The oceans absorb roughly 94% of the sunlight the strikes their surface. (yes, absorb, it is the overall depth of the absorption that is important to me.) The depth of the absorption is partially responsible to the average depths of the intermediate thermoclines. I fish normally in the upper 300 feet, so I watch these as close as I can.
Clearer water means deeper penetration so a deeper intermediate thermocline. For the offshore fisherman, the change in the depth of penetration is a lot due to changes in the concentration and type of microorganisms. The bottom of the food chain. When the second intermediate thermocline rises in the column that is an indication of more food, more bait, more big fish to eat the bait. When the second intermediate thermocline gets to around 150 feet, that is magic for tuna and marlin. Down here anyway. When that second intermediate thermocline reaches roughly 150 feet, it also kills the bite on the deeper wrecks.
From a climate perspective, a shallow thermocline means a shallower,tighter mixing layer which can increase the release rate of ocean heat. conversely, the deeper penetration alls the ocean to retain more heat for a longer period. This is probably why fish stocks tend to change with climate.
Cloud cover change of course changes the amount of solar energy absorbed, wind speed changes effect the rate of heat released/absorbed (La Nina makes for killer fishing in the Pacific off Central and South America) and to a lesser degree salinity can change the average depth of absorption.
Cold fronts drop sea surface temperatures much faster than warm fronts (bigger temperature difference, more heat transfer).
For the intermediate thermoclines: When there is calm weather and clear water, a pretty solid temperature break can be seen at roughly thirty feet (ten meters) The second intermediate is roughly at or above 450 feet, it is a little bit smaller temperature break, but a good sonar can pick it up. Ten meters just happens to be the depth where all of the red light spectrum is absorbed and 450 is where all of the yellow and most of the green is absorbed. (WOW physics and fishing!)
Don K says:
May 11, 2011 at 12:42 pm
“I don’t know Eric. But I do know that on those rare occasions when a warm air mass (15C/60F) makes it into Vermont in Winter, snow and ice cover melts at a truly impressive rate. Water is streaming everywhere. But on a day with equal sunlight and “enjoying” a cold Arctic airmass, there is little melting. This suggests to me that the air is capable of transferring a fair amount of heat (at least the heat of fusion of water — 79.9 cal/gm) to a lot of frozen water.”
This is one of those rare occasions where the weather/climate distinction is useful. When you are talking about snow melting, you are talking about the arrival of a front that might be 30 or 40 degrees warmer than the snow that it melts. When we are talking about the atmosphere warming the ocean, we are talking about an increase of .1 degree over a decade raising the temperature of the ocean. Not going to happen.
Ken Harvey says:
May 11, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Thank You, Sir. And may I offer a slightly different version. Would that all scientists STRIVE to express themselves with complete clarity. Climate scientists strike me as resembling a bunch of teenagers arguing about the basketball playoffs.
Don K says:
May 11, 2011 at 12:42 pm
“I don’t know Eric. But I do know that on those rare occasions when a warm air mass (15C/60F) makes it into Vermont in Winter, snow and ice cover melts at a truly impressive rate. Water is streaming everywhere. But on a day with equal sunlight and “enjoying” a cold Arctic airmass, there is little melting. This suggests to me that the air is capable of transferring a fair amount of heat (at least the heat of fusion of water — 79.9 cal/gm) to a lot of frozen water.”
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I see this transfer of heat of condensation from the air to any objects that are below the dew point of the incoming more equatorial air masses in sync with the lunar and solar declinational atmospheric tides.
If you watch the patterns of cloud condensation around the sea ice extent of Antarctica this effects becomes very noticeable, as does the damp concrete floor in your garage, and the way metal tools rust more in the shade over long periods of time.
Richard111 says on May 11, 2011 at 11:42 am :
James Lovelock pointed out back in the 1970s that phytoplankton will release DMS gas if they find the water too warm. This gas is an excellent cloud condensation nuclei. Those little beasties learned billions of years ago how to make a sunshade if things got too warm.
This is incorrect and speculation. Dimethyl sulfide (DMS) is rapidly oxidized by ozone to dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), which is miscible with water. DMSO could be further oxidized to dimethly sulfone.
CH3SCH3 + O3 —-> CH3SOCH3 +O2
CH3SOCH3 + O3 —> CH3SO2CH3 + O2
Ozone is soluble in water and these reactions can take place in the liquid phase.
DMS is the principal odorant in nat gas and has an exceptionally low odor threshold.
The air from an ocean breeze has no odor of DMS.
ATTN: dallas
You should invite the Team to go fishing for a few days. Perhaps they will learn a little bit about real climate.
Someone else has a similar idea:
The general consensus here seems to be that warmer air and/or extra downward IR cannot warm the ocean bulk.
Well it must do something but what?
If the ocean doesn’t warm up then it presents a ‘block’ to anything in the air significantly affecting the overall system heat content because for that the oceans rule.
But the air has to adjust in some way. More energy is present in the air but the ocean controls the air temperature so something has to give.
The answer is a speeding up of the water cycle and and a bottom up induced shift in the air circulation systems which then interacts with the top down effect of solar variability shifting the air circulation systems. But there are huge changes in energy transfer rates already involved in those two naturally variable forcing processes.
Now we know that from MWP to LIA and LIA to date there was a large shift in the air circulation systems. Civilisations rose and fell as a consequence. Ships logs show how meridional and/or equatorward were the mid latitude jets in the LIA and in the MWP warm air regularly encroached into Greenland to help the Viking settlements.
With that scale of natural variability in the air circulation (1000 miles or so latitudinally) what will a bit more CO2 do.
Elsewhere I have suggested that more CO2 would just shift the jets a miniscule unmeasurable extra latitudinal distance for virtually no climate effect at all.
So if one cannot get the extra energy into the ocean bulk it gets dealt with in the air for a near zero climate effect.
And even if one could get the extra energy into the oceans the heat capacity of the oceans is so huge as compared to the air that we would see no climate effect for millennia.
However one cuts it the AGW proposition has always been a dead duck (or parrot).
Jimbo says:
May 11, 2011 at 2:51 pm
Dr Roy Spencer, former NASA scientist
“How could the experts have missed such a simple explanation? Because they have convinced themselves that only a temperature change can cause a cloud cover change, and not the other way around. The issue is one of causation. They have not accounted for cloud changes causing temperature changes.”
Warmista worship the God Manmade-CO2. For them, Manmade-CO2 has to be the cause of warming. They will consider nothing that departs from this most fundamental principle of their religious faith. That is why I compare them to Ptolemy for whom planetary orbits around Earth had to be in perfect circles even if those circles were mounted on other perfect circles ad infinitum. Kepler came along like a wrecking ball and broke the circles (literally stretched them into ellipses), had the planets engaging in the imperfect practice of changing speed, and expanded the size of orbits beyond what any follower of Ptolemy could comprehend. Kepler was a scientist who created physical hypotheses. That is what scientists do.
As regards the quotation from the brilliant Spencer, it is not just a matter of causal direction. Even if Manmade-CO2 causes warming we know nothing until we have physical hypotheses explaining the behavior of clouds in this new environment. Warmista are not even working on those hypotheses.
“I do know that on those rare occasions when a warm air mass (15C/60F) makes it into Vermont in Winter, snow and ice cover melts at a truly impressive rate. Water is streaming everywhere. But on a day with equal sunlight and “enjoying” a cold Arctic airmass, there is little melting. This suggests to me that the air is capable of transferring a fair amount of heat (at least the heat of fusion of water — 79.9 cal/gm) to a lot of frozen water.”
Perfectly true, BUT:
Ice will absorb huge amounts of energy from air to achieve the phase change from solid to liquid but that energy is then locked in the liquid as latent (unmeasurable) energy so in effect the energy disappears having been removed from the air at a rapid rate with the water temperature becoming no higher than the melt temperature.
Then if one wants to take the next step to convert the liquid to vapour ANOTHER huge amount of energy is required for THAT phase change and again it ‘disappears’.
BUT (again) if one puts all that energy into creating more water vapour then because water vapour is lighter than air it rises via convection up through the atmosphere and that energy is lost to space faster when it is released by condensation at a higher level.
So instead of a temperature rise the ‘excess’ energy disappears (all that energy goes into latent non sensible invisible mode) and you just get an acceleration of the water cycle and it is the global oceans not the air or the greenhouse gases that set the equilibrium temperature for the system as a whole.
The air and downward IR cannot affect the bulk ocean temperature. Only solar shortwave can do that.
So it is a logical and physical impossibility for warmth in air to be maintained above a water or ice surface in an unsaturated atmosphere where the evaporation rate can readily increase.
The current atmospheric pressure on Earth is what ensures that the evaporation rate can readily increase but that is another story.
I have not a shred of evidence or authority to support any of these thoughts but (in the same way as the original question was posed, for debate) could it be that (a) in fact there has been no significant change to the historic heat content of the surface layer of the oceans, (b) the original question is therefore moot as there has been no significant change in cloud cover either, (c) little heat will flow from atmosphere to ocean (why would it flow downwards?) and (d) heat can fairly readily flow from a warmer ocean to a cooler atmosphere but this one-way only and generally will only happen at night, or in polar regions where an ice-free ocean warms a cooler atmosphere above.
I accept this gives no explanation for the ocean cycles: just trying to stir debate!
The TauTona gold mine in South Africa is 3.9km deep. The rock face temperature at that depth currently reaches 60°C. http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/tautona_goldmine/
The average depth of the Atlantic, not including its adjacent seas, is 3.9km. The average depth of the Pacific is 4.2km. The average depth of the Indian Ocean is 3.9km.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2006/HelenLi.shtml
If I sit a pan of water on a stove at 60°C it will get warm. This is a constant, the stove runs 24/7. If I also suspend a heat lamp over the top of the pan for 12 hours a day then it will get warmer still. I don’t think warm air is going to add much heat to the pan in comparison.
IanG
Concerning the amount back-scattered
I would generously guess that this “one-half” estimate should be lowered to somewhere around “one-third.”
Evidence please.
If you were right, do you think someone with some actual Maths – not an uninspired guess – might have worked this out by now?
In any case, the proportion back-scattered is irrelevant. If the CO2 theory holds the amount backscattered will rise with increasing concentration.
All this speculation about how air can’t warm water when no-one seriously suggests it does! If you wish to defeat the warmists, you need to not attack points that even they don’t believe. If you wish to posit that changes in cloud cover are making the difference, you are still left with explaining why that is changing. “Natural variation” is not an explanation btw: if you don’t know just say that.
Doug Proctor says: “…So rain “washes” the heat out of the atmosphere….”
It also washes CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Eric Anderson says: “I have never seen any good information (maybe someone can point us to it?) to demonstrate that a massive body of water can be heated to any meaningful extent by a diffuse body of air contacting the surface….”
The total heat capacity of the ocean is about 1100 times that of the atmosphere. The ocean is the dog, the atmosphere is the hair on the tail. The hair does not wag the dog.
Green Sand asks: “What would be the most effective system to heat domestic water, solar water heating system or an air source heat pump?”
A matte black, plastic-lined 55 gallon drum sitting on the roof. Seriously, if you’re talking cost effectiveness. Insulate the side of the drum where the sun doesn’t hit it.
Harold Pierce Jr says: “The air from an ocean breeze has no odor of DMS.”
The last ocean breeze I smelled reeked like dead fish, Harold. What does DMS smell like?
The unsmoothed GLOBAL average lower atmospheric temperature varies by about 3.8 degrees C per year. The global average peaks during the Northern Hemisphere summer and drops to a minimum during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer (NH winter). This effect is because the majority of the Earth’s land mass is in the Northern Hemisphere and the fraction of land in the temperate zone, the zone between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer, is even more biased toward the Northern Hemisphere.
Land heats up faster than the ocean for the same solar input. During the NH summer, the NH land mass absorbs sunshine, transfers heat to the atmosphere, and the atmosphere net transfers heat to the ocean. There’s also heat flow directly from the atmosphere to the ocean, but the net goes from land to ocean, not the other way around. Heat flows in the SH during the SH summer from SH land to the atmosphere, and from the SH atmosphere to the SH ocean too, but because there’s less SH land there’s less total heat flow into the atmosphere during SH summer vs. NH summer. Therefore, the global average atmospheric temperature drops during the SH summer. The heat flows reverse during each hemisphere’s winter. In the NH winter, NH heat goes from NH ocean to atmosphere to NH land, likewise in the SH during SH winter. In equilibrium, the heat flows average out over the entire year to exactly balance. In equilibrium, the long term global average (over the whole year) of the ocean’s temperature and the atmosphere’s temperature will be stable. You still see this very large 3.8 degree globally averaged air temperature swing during the year, but the yearly averages are stable in equilibrium from year to year.
Just knowing that the globally averaged air temperature swings so much from NH summer to SH summer, it’s easy to deduce that if the Earth was almost all land and very little ocean, the average atmospheric temperature would be several degrees hotter than it is now (and so would the smaller ocean’s temperature), and if the Earth was all ocean, air temperatures would be several degrees colder.
Now, assume that the balance in the atmosphere is upset by CO2 (it has been to a small extent), so the atmosphere is in disequilibrium. The atmosphere will warm, but the rate of warming will be a function of both these heat flows and a function of non-linear feedbacks (CO2’s effect on water vapor and cloud formation). If the CO2 concentration were to stabilize at some level, a new equilibrium temperature in the atmosphere would be achieved but not for a very long time, because equilibrium can’t be achieved until the net annual heat flows (land to atmosphere to ocean and the reverse) averaged over the NH and SH and averaged over the seasons again sum to zero. Since we know that a part of the heat flow needed to bring the ocean back into equilibrium is convected by the atmosphere and we know that the atmosphere’s energy content (mass times its heat capacity) is about 1/3000th of the ocean’s energy content, it takes many, many convected atmosphere volumes moving back and forth between land and ocean, moving heat one way in the summer and the other way in the winter, to net raise the entire ocean’s temperature enough to come back into equilibrium. Remember, if the Earth only had ocean, its temperature would be lower, so to eliminate the disequilibrium some net heat has to flow from land to water until equilibrium is again achieved.
In fact, it will take more than 3000 convected atmosphere volumes because the heat transferred at the interface between the air and the ocean must get distributed throughout the ocean and not all of the heat in the entire vertical atmospheric column will exchange at once. If CO2 were stabilized, the balance will eventually be reached and the ocean’s temperature will rise to equal the increase in lower atmospheric temperature, but the long-term balance can’t possibly be reached in even a few years because the average wind speed is far too low to be able to convect enough air between land and ocean. I would argue that it will take many decades or more for a true entire ocean volume equilibrium to be reached from a CO2 insertion simply because the convective transfer balance requires such a huge number of atmospheric volumes.
However, if the top layers of the ocean don’t readily exchange heat with the ocean depths, the initial progression toward an atmosphere / ocean equilibrium temperature will be more rapid, whether the actual heat input is from AGW or solar input. It will still take a long time for a true, entire ocean equilibrium to be achieved, but with slow heat exchange to the depths, the ocean’s surface temperature will respond very quickly to changes. Since the sun’s output has been constant for about 50 years, if heat doesn’t distribute quickly the surface temp will already be near the equilibrium, but if heat gets moved to the depths quickly, the ocean might still be responding to the the large solar output change in the first 1/2 of the 1900s.
Knowing how the ocean equilibrates, knowing how heat is convected within the ocean itself, is therefore critical to be able to separate solar forcing from AGW, and is critical to the understanding of non-linear feedback terms from AGW. To add to this critical data need, we also need to know how heat is circulated in the oceans from tropical latitudes toward the poles. A recent paper by Petr Chylek has shown that by not properly including the heat transport in the Atlantic and not accounting for the natural Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation the AGW non-linear feedback terms will be overestimated by a factor of 3. If climate models use the wrong feedback terms, the models will be faulty. Chylek argues that future temperatures have been severely overestimated because of the lack of fidelity in the ocean circulation part of the models.
Since we only recently have data from Argo, data that will allow a better understanding of ocean circulation, we don’t have data over a long enough time to understand the PDO, AMDO, El Nino, la Nina, and ocean circulation flows. Therefore, it’s just not credible for anyone to conclude that they know enough to be able to separate AGW from solar forcing from differences in ocean circulation well enough to be able to deduce these non-linear atmospheric feedback effects, especially when faced with the added difficulty that arises from noisy data caused by natural fluctuations.
In other words, with the limited ocean circulation data available, climate scientists cannot reliably predict future climate changes which are now assumed to be (but are not necessarily) dominated by these non-linear feedback effects.
“Atmospheric CO2 absorbs radiative heat energy coming from below that would otherwise go out into space quickly. The CO2 re-emits this energy – half of which goes back down. The oceans absorb much of this.”
Mike,
That is a new one. Care to elaborate?
I really think that if we had ARGO for the last 30-40 years, we would see virtually zero trend, or at best a very minor increase, in OHC. Like pretty much what we are seeing right now…
Green Sand asked: “What would be the most effective system to heat domestic water, solar water heating system or an air source heat pump?”
This looks to me like a “how long is a piece of string?” question. There are many variables, like the energy availability and the surface area of the heaters.
IanM