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?
meab writes:
“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.”
You don’t have a data need here, you have a hypothesis need. You need physical hypotheses which describe the natural regularities upon which ocean temperatures ride. At this time, no one has such physical hypotheses and, shockingly, no one is out there trying to identify and describe the natural regularities. So, the long and the short of it is, there are no known mechanisms according to which the atmosphere could heat the ocean. We might know in some general way that the atmosphere can heat the ocean but in exactly that same general way we know that space travel to other galaxies is possible. Let’s get out of the metaphysics and back to the science. What our government and our educational establishment needs to do is lay down the law to climate scientists and tell them to get out there and do the necessary experimental work to identify and describe the natural regularities that drive the heat exchanges that interest us.
Mooloo says:
May 11, 2011 at 5:11 pm
If you wish to posit that changes in cloud cover are making the difference, you are still left with explaining why that is changing.
Bull****! There is no change except in the minds of a bunch of communists, where there is always change, frenetic, toxic change.
Do the math on heat capacity of the ocean & heat capacity of the atmosphere. Not only does water have a 4x higher heat capacity than air, but it’s mass is orders of magnitude greater. From a simple thermodynamics standpoint, you quickly reach the conclusion the atmosphere (and it’s composition) have very little to do with it’s temperature. Now, I have to image that GCMs take this into account (right??? – that would be an extremely basic input to the model I would imagine) , but from a simplistic point of view, it seems that your point is extremely salient unless someone can explicitly explain how GCMs deal with this issue (clouds & radiational heating of the oceans & consequential heating of the atmosphere by the oceans). Comments anyone who knows something about the details of GCMs??
Folks, The OHC changed because there was a large 4% decrease in cloud cover during the 1990s. The cause seems to be a shift from a meridional climate pattern to a zonal pattern which the russian have found to alternate in a multidecadal cycle . Meridional winds increase the transfer of energy/moisture and so cause cooling though increased heat loss at the poles and increased cloudiness particularly at mid latitudes. Polar vortexes and hence Solar UV/volcanoes could be a significant driver of the pattern.
Zonal has the opposite effect.
This can also be extended to longer time scales such as the 1000year cycle and even the ice age cycle.
The ice ages started when the isthmus of panama blocked the the zonal ocean currents and created the meridional gulf stream/THC. It works just like a radiator.
If you increase the flow of water the radiator (poles) cool the engine(equator) while also creating more cloud.
The 1000 year cycle could be caused by variation in the salt density of the THC altering the flow rates.
It may not have been mentioned but wind speed is an important cooling factor in ocean temp. El Nino is initiate by a westerly wind burst that disrupts trade winds and hence evaporative cooling.
Wayne writes-
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?
Of course, it is always interesting to me to take observational data and see how it fits the theory. I suspect that the devil is in the detail and I cannot quite see how to globalize a data set from a single normal incident pryheliometer instrument in the NM desert. More likely this tiny data set might serve to open up a new avenue for us to explore and better quantify these “clear air” humidity effects on incoming SW solar radiation so that the present global “on average” values that are always used can be quantified in space and time with finer precision in order to gain the actual picture of this aspect of the earth’s thermal environment. And see how it really fits in the thermal balance scheme. I have observed these short term (periods of months) large fluctuations in SW solar input into a tiny point on the planet and I know that in the end it is the sun stupid so I just want to know if this is another significant iris effect like the clouds are. How do we measure it on a global basis and how do we fit it into the equation if it really is significant? Always more questions.
Bernie
Undersea volcanoes and vents could do serious heating of the oceans upon an increase in tectonic activity.
At the same time, volcanoes over land get more active. It would be silly to assume that increased vulcanism only takes place undersea or on land.
Yes, the “multiplier” for cloud cover changes is higher than any other. I think that’s the driver!
Theo Goodwin says:
May 11, 2011 at 9:16 am
What a wonderful post this is. Only WUWT has achieved a level of clarity that permits answering commonsense questions while fully respecting the scientific background.
I’ll second that!
And I agree with the rest of your comments…excellent.
dallas says:
May 11, 2011 at 12:57 pm
“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 allows the ocean to retain more heat for a longer period. This is probably why fish stocks tend to change with climate”
I love your website, by the way.
But I misread your final sentence in the above, in anticipation of what appeared to be a completely different line of reasoning..
I misread your final sentence as:
‘This is why fish stocks probably tend to change the climate!’
And I thought your line of reasoning went like this:
‘The concentration of bottom-of-food-chain, ocean-dwelling microorganisms between the ocean’s surface and 100m depth controls the depth of penetration of sunlight and thus the depth of ocean heating by sunlight. In particular it controls the amount of longer-term heating that occurs below the shallower mixing layers. The more microorganisms there are, the less sunlight gets to these depths, and so the less deeper, longer-term heating occurs there’.
And then, um… ‘So the more that fish stocks are depleted, the the less predation will occur at the top of the food chain, so the more little beasts will remain further donw to eat the even littler microorganisms, so the less microorganisms there will be, so the more heat will penetrate to depth, be retained for the long term..’ and so on and so on.
And then a whole new branch of science opened up, in which the human population has plunged global climate into crisis, not by burning coal, smoking joints, choofing out CO2, etc., but by fishing!
And that’s before you even start to think of the effects on deeper ocean solar penetration of the huge clouds of human sewage, deforested tropical soil, etc. that spread out from every major tropical rivermouth in the world (eg. the Kapuas in Western Kalimantan, or the Ciliwung at Jakarta, to name a couple that I fly over and look down on fairly regularly).
Chris Colose writes “The presence of the radiative imbalance at the top of the atmosphere is an indication that the sea surface has not warmed up sufficiently to match the forcing.”
This is nonsense Chris. The sea surface temperature takes minutes to hours to warm up in the sun and varies considerably. There is no long term radiative imbalance at the sea surface. Your argument can only be about the bulk and thats a much more complex argument with some important considerations such as what heating below the thermocline really means to the climate.
A long read after a demanding day. Never the less most interesting. Thanks all for such a lucid and diverse discussion. This does harken back to the “missing heat” discussion of some months ago. What we do is we think we might have a partial list of what we don’t know. Admitting that we don’t know stuff and trying to list that stuff is a great start making a plan that might some day put us in a position of knowing more then we don’t. Well maybe.
Devout ocean fans, loyally preoccupied with the heat capacity of water vs. that of air:
The sunshade is located in the ATMOSPHERE.
Heating water 101 (freshman course).
Sun tea warms up in a closed jar from SW IR. This an ocean does not make. The ocean churns like the water in a bathtub filled with three toddlers. Just try to warm that up with LW IR. I dare ya. You might keep the toddlers and the air in the bathroom a bit warmer (all those kids screaming, you get my point), but the water will continue to cool. Trust me. I know this to be a fact.
Out at the cabin (no electricity), if you want to warm the water back up, you shoosh the kids outa the bathroom and either add hot water, or let the Sun beam down on the calmed water for a bit.
All climate scientists need to be mothers of at least three children born close together. This ocean warming from CO2 business would get sent to bed early with no dessert in short order.
By the way Chris Colose, your fundamental misunderstanding comes from one of my bugbears which is that there is a common mistaken belief that CO2 (or any GHG) warms the ocean when in fact it only slows the rate of cooling.
I dont know how many times I’ve been told by warmists that is makes no difference to think of it as an equivalent “warming”. Because clearly it does when it allows people to misunderstand fundamental processes.
“The CO2 re-emits this energy – half of which goes back down. The oceans absorb much of this.”
Any heating of the ocean surface leads to increased vertical convections and evaporation which cools the ocean and reduces the convection. The “extra heating” is thus temporary.
It is gravity acting on the mass of the atmosphere, that gives rise to the lapse rate, which controls the long term difference in temperature between the surface and the upper atmosphere. Thus the absence of the “tropical hot spot” as predicted by the GHG models.
There is no need to “prove” the GHG theory in computer models. If the theory is correct, then it should be able to reliably predict the surface temperature of real planets outside of earth. We have the data. For both high and low CO2 atmospheres, for both dense of sparse atmospheres. And thus can separate the relative effects of CO2 and gravity on surface temperature.
That is where we should be spending taxpayers money to validate the models. Looking at real planets and analysing real data. Not phony baloney computer models that have demonstrated zero skill at predicting future climate, in spite of hundreds of billions of dollars invested. Imagine what we might have achieved had this been invested in real science.
“By the way Chris Colose, your fundamental misunderstanding comes from one of my bugbears which is that there is a common mistaken belief that CO2 (or any GHG) warms the ocean when in fact it only slows the rate of cooling.”
It doesn’t even slow the rate of cooling. The extra CO2 increases downward IR which increases the rate of evaporation. Since evaporation has a net cooling effct it has the power to use up all that extra IR and switch it to latent heat in water vapour with no effect on the ocean bulk.
In the process the top few microns of the water surface gets a fraction warmer but the rate of energy flow from the ocean bulk is unaffected.
My personal favourite is the coupling of time varying solar magnetic field energy into the oceans by induced currents in the same way as they do most noticably into pipelines and power grids during solar storms. The really interesting feature of this mechanism is the skin depth (1/e) is just a few hundred meters which is just enough to buffer ocean surface temperatures through solar minima but to result in longer term average cooling through periods with much reduced solar maxima (like the current one). This mechanism definitely does exist but I hasve been unable to obtain any numbers. What if the amount of energy coupled into the Earth’s climate system is this way was say 0.2% of the total? It could then explain a good deal when added to the increase in cloud cover due to increased cosmic rays and the solar intensity variations which are now looking significantly more variable than the IPCC guessed.
Anyone got any numbers here?
sorry as usual with such scientific discussions I can only sit and watch, although I could play devils advocate and try and frame a question from the AGW side, ‘La, La, La I’m not listening’, sticks fingers in ears.
Not sure if I got the tone right?
A littoral explanation. On-shore breezes start as the sun heats up the land causing the air above the land to rise, drawing in replacement air from the sea and a leeshore ensues. At night, as the land cools, the sea is relatively warmer than the land. The air over the sea rises gently setting up gentler off-shore breezes which can chill the back as you sit and watch the sunset (west coast watchers only). Cuddles begin.
None of the above would occur if the air warmed land and sea, in preference to the sun. Were the air to pass its warmth to land and sea, the air would cool and we’d be too cold to watch sunsets. No sunsets, no cuddles, no more humans. Simples!
Ocean temperatures are fed by solar input but the seeming abrupt area temperature changes need research to find out why. There is also vertical mixing but this invariably introduces cold lower water to warm surface water. El Nino /La Nina are a case in point but why this happens when it happens is the mystery.
Stephen Wilde writes “The extra CO2 increases downward IR which increases the rate of evaporation.”
That is one effect of the DLR but not the only one. It can also contribute to the Upward Longwave Radiation that the ocean must be constantly radiating according to the Stefan-Boltzman law and those two effects will each take a proportion of that DLR.
Stephen Wilde:
“By the way Chris Colose, your fundamental misunderstanding comes from one of my bugbears which is that there is a common mistaken belief that CO2 (or any GHG) warms the ocean when in fact it only slows the rate of cooling.”
Quite correct, and I have seen a few warmistas admit this and the consequence that the warming will tke place mainly in higher latitudes, mainly in winter, and mainly at night, with mostly beneficial results.
So we will not all fry after all!
It is hard to understand how anyone can place any energy source above the sun,The CO2 theory seems so pathetic, there is this vast atomic motor, and then it is deemes insignificant but a few mollecules extra of a trace gas, one essential for life its self, is proffered as the culprit, isnt that a bit insane?
The atmosphere exists between two temperatures; an average +15C at ground level and -273C above exosphere level, a delta T of 288C, so there must be a high energy transfer from earth’s lower atmosphere to the exosphere and out into space. The delta T between atmosphere and ocean surface is practically zero on average, hence energy transfer both ways is minimal on average except for the evaporation effect which must surely cool the ocean somewhat, transferring energy from the oceans to the atmosphere and then out into space.
Meanwhile the sun is shining, replacing all this energy lost to space in a perfect balance, give or take approx 1C change over a millenium while the warming scientists have absorbed billions of dollars to try to produce computer models, telling us that we are doomed to oblivion or thereabouts.
WUWT and its readers, in this post have achieved in a few hours and at no financial cost, what many scientists paid by our taxes have not achieved in 30 years of scientific grants, endless peer-reviewed reports and climate- and other gates.
Pamela Gray says:
May 11, 2011 at 9:41 pm
“Heating water 101 (freshman course).
Sun tea warms up in a closed jar from SW IR. This an ocean does not make. The ocean churns like the water in a bathtub filled with three toddlers. Just try to warm that up with LW IR. I dare ya. You might keep the toddlers and the air in the bathroom a bit warmer (all those kids screaming, you get my point), but the water will continue to cool. Trust me. I know this to be a fact.”
A folksy way of making a very important point. The oceans have their own processes that cause temperature changes. When you are talking about the atmosphere heating the oceans, you are talking about the atmosphere interfering to some degree in these processes. Given that we do not know what the processes are (do not have a description of the natural regularities that make them up) we can say nothing about how the atmosphere might interfere in a given process.