Torpedoing Of The Use Of The Global Average Surface Temperature Trend As The Diagnostic For Global Warming
By Dr. Roger Pielke Senior
There is a new paper by Gerald Meehl of NCAR and other collaborators that has been announced in the media; i.e. see in the International Business Tribune [h/t to Watts Up With That]
Global Warming on Temporary Hold Thanks to Deep Oceans
First, I am glad the authors implicitly acknowledge the importance of the ocean heat changes as the primary diagnostic of climate system heat changes, as I have urged in my papers
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335.
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.
There are two major issues, however, with the new study that the authors [that the news article reports on] did not seem to recognize:
1. If heat is being sequested in the deeper ocean, it must transfer through the upper ocean. In the real world, this has not been seen that I am aware of. In the models, this heat clearly must be transferred (upwards and downwards) through this layer. The Argo network is spatially dense enough that this should have been seen.
2. Even more important is the failure of the authors to recognize that they have devalued the use of the global average surface temperature as the icon to use to communicate the magnitude of global warming. If this deeper ocean heating actually exists in the real world, it is not observable in the ocean and land surface temperatures. To monitor global warming, we need to keep track of the changes in Joules in the climate system, which, as clearly indicated in the new study by Meehl and colleagues, is not adequately diagnosed by the global, annual-averaged surface temperature trends.
The news article has the text [highlight added]
Global warming is temporarily on hold as the deep ocean currents and circulations absorb the sun’s heat before releasing it finally, scientists said on Sunday.
The study conducted by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia was published in the Sept. 18 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.The last decade saw an incessant growth in greenhouse gas emissions which ideally should have increased Earth’s temperature. However, Earth’s temperature didn’t increase vastly. Where was the “missing heat” going?To find out the mystery, Gerald Meehl, lead author of the study that revealed the connection between global warming and temperature hiatus caused by ocean’s heat absorption, and scientists at the NCAR in Colorado ran five simulations on a computer model that studied the complex interactions between the atmosphere, land, oceans and sea ice.The study revealed that temperature has already increased by several degrees in this century and will increase more in the coming days but the hiatus period will interrupt the increase. During this period, the missing temperature will lurk inside the deep ocean.“We will see global warming go through hiatus periods in the future, however, these periods would likely last only about a decade or so, and warming would then resume. This study illustrates one reason why global temperatures do not simply rise in a straight line,” said Meehl.
Kevin Trenberth, a study author and NCAR scientist, said: “… this study suggests the missing energy has indeed been buried in the ocean, the heat has not disappeared and so it cannot be ignored. It must have consequences.”
They found the vast area deeper than 1,000 feet (305 meters) warmed by about 18 to 19 percent more during the hiatus periods than at other times. Meanwhile, shallower global oceans above 1,000 feet warmed by 60 percent less than during non-hiatus periods in the simulation.
The study also revealed the regional signature of oceanic warming during hiatus periods. During a hiatus, average sea-surface temperatures decrease across the tropical Pacific, while they tend to increase at higher latitudes.
Meehl says these patterns are similar to those observed during a La Niña event.
“Global temperatures tend to drop slightly during La Niña, as cooler waters reach the surface of the tropical Pacific, and they rise slightly during El Niño, when those waters are warmer,” he added.
A final comment on this paper, if heat really is deposited deep into the ocean (i.e. Joules of heat) it will dispersed through the ocean at these depths and unlikely to be transferred back to the surface on short time periods, but only leak back upwards if at all. The deep ocean would be a long-term damper of global warming, that has not been adequately discussed in the climate science community.
From the linked article: “”The main hiatus in observed warming has corresponded with La Niña conditions, which is consistent with the simulations,” Trenberth says.”
But Kevin, we haven’t had “La Nina conditions”. Since the begining of the 13+ year flat trend we have had 5 El Ninos and 4 La Ninas. Things have been fairly balanced.
I think we need a cartoon of Kevin Trenberth smiling and pointing at his computer saying, “We found it. It was in there all the time”.
Foxgoose says:
September 20, 2011 at 3:12 pm
It’s the Sea Monsters.
They’ve been known for years – Wikipedia has all the details:-
Sadly, people haven’t taken sea monsters seriously enough over the years – bloody sceptics as usual.
If anyone’s got a couple of million quid spare I could write a peer reviewed paper.
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Don’t you mean “squids”?
Spector reckons only the Red Sea has salinity causing sinking. I think that’s an error. Where sea ice freezes, the surrounding water becomes very salty (as well as cold) and sinks to the sea bed.
However, I see two other issues.
A) If heat reaches the deep ocean, that implies a lot of mixing; but the IPCC CO2 residence time depends on very restricted mixing (of shallow and deep water)
B) Anyway, why not (as an engineering solution) set up pumps to accelerate mixing? That would bring CO2 into equilibrium sooner, bury unwanted heat, and store that heat to overt the inevitable next glacial epoch.
This is climate science … on crack!
>Ralph says:
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>September 20, 2011 at 1:53 pm
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>Can someone answer the question of CO2 absorption saturation?
Ralph:
A bit off topic on this thread. I’ve a little thing on my blog that I would be happy to discuss there with you. I can explain the criticisms of it and whether I believe them to be apropos or not.
I found it in my finance management computer model that the federal government owes me 200 billion dollars. A check will do, thank you.
Foxgoose says onSeptember 20, 2011 at 3:12 pm :
“———— If anyone’s got a couple of million quid spare I could write a peer reviewed paper.”
Foxgoose, I ain’t got no money, but I am your “peer” – or friend – and I say your story is o.k. by me. — So, that’s peer review as we know it. — OK?
A bit O/T but in looking for a copy of the paper “Model-based evidence of deep-ocean heat uptake during surface-temperature hiatus periods” Meehl et al (2011) Nature Climate Change Letter, I noted that it had been cited by the subject of another recent thread “Issues in Establishing Climate Sensitivity in Recent Studies” Trenberth et al (2011) Remote Sensing.
The reference was in respect of the following statement in Trenberth et al:
“Further complicating the diagnosis of the climate system’s feedbacks is natural variability, which is considerable on decadal timescales, both in the atmosphere and ocean. It can easily lead to a hiatus in the rise of global mean surface temperature. This has been demonstrated in a number of recent studies involving both observations [18-20] and models [21-24].” Trenberth et al (2011) Remote Sensing
The paper is reference [24]. I think what a reasonable person would conclude from the above statement is that these studies show that if you separate out external forcings the remaining system can produce flat global mean surface temperatures on a decadel scale. Reference 24 is reasonable in this regard – but it was the references to being able to do this with observations that really caught my eye. References [18-20] with my comments in italics are:
18. Trenberth, K. An imperative for climate change planning: Tracking earth’s global energy. Current Opinion Environ. Sustain. 2009, 1, 19-27.
The theme of this Opinion piece is precisely the opposite; we lack the information system to say what is happening in the energy budget, as a quick read of the Introduction would establish.
19. Trenberth, K.E.; Fasullo, J.T. Tracking earth’s energy. Science 2010, 328, 316-317.
This Perspective piece says the same as ref. [19]: “Closure of the energy budget over the past 5 years is thus elusive. State-of-the-art observations are unable to fully account for recent energy variability”.
20. Santer, B.D.; Mears, C.A.; Doutriaux, C.; Caldwell, P.M.; Gleckler, P.J.; Wigley, T.M.L.; Solomon, S.; Gillett, N.; Ivanova, D.P.; Karl, T.R.; et al. Separating signal and noise in atmospheric temperature changes: The importance of timescale. J. Geophys. Res. 2011, doi:10.1029/2011JD016263.
Estimates of the climate change signals in this paper were derived from models, not quite what one would take from the reference.
Spector says:
September 20, 2011 at 2:47 pm
There might be polar regions where surface water in the critical range below four degrees C might also sink with heating, but I would imagine this to be quite a minimal effect.
No, that’s not the case. It’s only fresh water which is the most dense around 4°C. Seawater’s density increases with decreasing temperature until it gets frozen.
While I do agree that ocean heat content is the way to measure changes in climate, they need to stop taking super computers on simulated voyages to do so. Personally, I think they need to take their super computers loaded up with their models on real voyages and toss them overboard to test their robustness. Ocean heat content needs to be measured with real instruments dangling in the water communicating to real recording instruments. Say, isn’t that what ARGO does?
It’s an interesting shell game that is played where what is under the shells are empty computer models and solid observation. Except in Trenberth and Meehl’s version of the game, if you choose an empty shell you win.
“They found the vast area deeper than 1,000 feet (305 meters) warmed by about 18 to 19 percent more during the hiatus periods than at other times. Meanwhile, shallower global oceans above 1,000 feet warmed by 60 percent less than during non-hiatus periods in the simulation.”
Being a total non-scientist, and barely able to keep up with the second law, it just seems to me that if shallower global oceans above 1000 ft warmed at 60% less than non-hiates periods, does this mean that the area above the 1000 ft. mark are COOLER during non-hiates periods? Please explain how that would work. Or am I misreading here something?
We seek him here, we seek him there,
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven?—Is he in hell?
That demmed, elusive Pimpernel.
They search and they search and they search but they never find, because if they found the missing heat they’d lose all their funding. Keep on teaching the horse to sing, guys.
“The study revealed that temperature has already increased by several degrees in this century and will increase more in the coming days but the hiatus period will interrupt the increase.”
It seems like a very good, accurate model. Could they ask it when the hiatus period will end and ‘the coming days’ will start? That would be useful to know. Something in the falsifiable line (bit of a novelty that would be.)
Actually, Rapture occurs when you’re still way under, due to nitrogen narcosis. What you get from rising too fast is the Bends. Awful agony from bubbles appearing in your muscles and throughout the circulatory system. Has also been known to cause severe brain damage.
Apologies to PJB, I should’ve read all the comments. We think alike. : )
Greg Cavanagh says:
September 20, 2011 at 3:11 pm
Well, at least they are coming out in public and stating their case.
It’s a good thing… that they are proving themselves fools.
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Greg, they’ve all been doing exactly that for years now….
…why any one pays attention at all is beyond me
If there was missing heat in the deep oceans, heat makes expansion.
Expansion of the water would cause sea levels to rise.
Sea levels are actually dropping,
Therefore this “missing heat”, seen only in computer models, and not detected directly, is shown to be false.
In addition, actual measurements of these deep ocean temperatures shows no such heat.
Conclusion, before this “study” was even published, it has been falsified.
The inputs to these “computer models” are thus shown to be totally imaginary, based entirely on the beliefs, that is to say, religious beliefs, of the modelers. Warming is thus shown to be not a scientific fact, but a religious belief. Now, there is nothing wrong with a religious belief, after all, just because someone, religiously or otherwise, believes something does not make it automatically false, simply because they believe it. Using the scientific method, however, we CAN show whether some belief, religious or otherwise, is or is not true. It is therefore show that this belief is, in fact, a false beleif. Therefore “warming” is show to be a false religion, not even close to science, or even religion.
RE: Berényi Péter: (September 20, 2011 at 4:09 pm)
There might be polar regions where surface water in the critical range below four degrees C might also sink with heating, but I would imagine this to be quite a minimal effect.
“No, that’s not the case. It’s only fresh water which is the most dense around 4°C. Seawater’s density increases with decreasing temperature until it gets frozen.
Thanks for the correction. I see this is a factor that retards the development of sea ice because it tends to sink before freezing.
Charlie A says:
September 20, 2011 at 2:26 pm
“Is it necessarily true that there cannot be heat transfer from the surface to the deep ocean without being observed by the Argo system?”
A good old Troll try, Charlie, but we all know the burden of proof is on you. Otherwise, we would find trolls asking people to prove that manmade CO2 isn’t just darn hot stuff that heats the atmosphere directly.
Ever notice the media only report on the lack of warming when they hear what they think is a plausible explanation eg. aerosols, heat hiding in ocean.
Such as study cannot “reveal” anything. It can and does help define a hypothesis. “the deep ocean has warmed several degress over the last century.” Assuming arguendo that “several degrees” is in fact quantified, this is now testable and falisifiable. This is the first step in the scientific process. No on to step two: gather data which supports or disproves the hypothesis. Step three: other scientists (with no vested interest in the proof or disproof of the hypothesis) replicate the result (or fail to) using independent means.
Well said.
A quantifiable radiative inbalance is the core prediction of the Forcings Model/Theory of the climate.
Until we have measurements that conclusively show the radiative inbalance and where the heat gain is going, the Forcing Theory can not be said to be established as a viable theory of the climate.
The claim the ‘science is settled’ is simply false.
The “Deep Ocean” seems to be the new Aether of XXI century.
“Surely, I mean surely, highly intelligent people wouldn’t even dream of pulling the wool over the eyes of other highly intelligent people with utter tosh like this?”
They say they have enough temperature history for the last 150 years to determine 0.x Cº degree precision and even people here believe them.
They say that “earth temperature” can be measured and people here believe them.
JaneHM says:
September 20, 2011 at 1:10 pm
“MattN
I watched ‘The Day After Tomorrow” over the weekend and the hero of that film is a paleoclimate climate modeller. Their work is very important.”
Is that the one where they are using Marijuana plants and Cocoa plants for paleo-reconstructions of temperature? You know, where they discover that no matter what year they pick it is warmer than the preceding year picked?
Maybe the Joules just wait until the Argo Buoys go to sleep and then sneak by ?
Ironic thing is that one of the early proponets of the Argo system was James Hansen. Seems we needed it to measure the heat that was accumulating in the oceans. Whoops…….
Maybe the heat gets converted to coolheat and then sinks to a lower level before converting back to warmheat ?
Cheers, Kevin.
Ok, so I must have missed “Ocean Heat Retention 101″ or Thermodynamics 101”, but I thought heat rises and cold falls. Please clue me in. Thanks.