A new paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters describes how the oceans have warmed only 0.09°C over the last 55 years, from 1955-2010. Don’t let the red line fool you, read on.
Key Points
- A strong positive linear trend in exists in world ocean heat content since 1955
- One third of the observed warming occurs in the 700-2000 m layer of the ocean
- The warming can only be explained by the increase in atmospheric GHGs
That last bullet point makes me cringe a bit, because I seriously doubt the resolution of this study down to hundredths of degrees seeing the sort of measurements mess we’ve seen in the surface network. Nonetheless, even if the resolution is low, there’s little trend.
At the Hockey Schtick they write about Trenberth’s missing heat:
According to the authors, this resulted in a sea level rise of 0.54 mm per year [only 2.12 inches per century] and corresponds to 0.39 Watts per square meter of the ocean surface. However, the IPCC claims the increase in CO2 from 1955-2010 ‘should’ have warmed the oceans by 1.12 Watts per square meter [5.35*ln(389.78/312) = 1.12 W/m2].
Thus, even if one assumes all ocean warming is due to increased greenhouse gases, the IPCC has exaggerated climate sensitivity to CO2 by a factor of almost 3 times [1.12/0.39]. [This is why Trenberth can’t find his “missing heat“-it never existed in the first place]. In reality, greenhouse gases cannot warm the oceans at all because they radiate infrared which only penetrates the surface of water a few microns to cause evaporative cooling.
Here’s the paper:
World ocean heat content and thermosteric sea level change (0–2000 m), 1955–2010
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L10603, 5 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2012GL051106
S. Levitus – National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
J. I. Antonov -UCAR Project Scientist, National Oceanographic Data Center, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
T. P. Boyer -National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
O. K. Baranova – National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
H. E. Garcia -National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
R. A. Locarnini – National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
A. V. Mishonov -National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
J. R. Reagan – National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
D. Seidov – National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
E. S. Yarosh – National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
M. M. Zweng -National Oceanographic Data Center, NOAA, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA
Abstract:
We provide updated estimates of the change of ocean heat content and the thermosteric component of sea level change of the 0–700 and 0–2000 m layers of the World Ocean for 1955–2010. Our estimates are based on historical data not previously available, additional modern data, and bathythermograph data corrected for instrumental biases. We have also used Argo data corrected by the Argo DAC if available and used uncorrected Argo data if no corrections were available at the time we downloaded the Argo data. The heat content of the World Ocean for the 0–2000 m layer increased by 24.0 ± 1.9 × 1022 J (±2S.E.) corresponding to a rate of 0.39 W m−2 (per unit area of the World Ocean) and a volume mean warming of 0.09°C.
This warming corresponds to a rate of 0.27 W m−2 per unit area of earth’s surface. The heat content of the World Ocean for the 0–700 m layer increased by 16.7 ± 1.6 × 1022 J corresponding to a rate of 0.27 W m−2 (per unit area of the World Ocean) and a volume mean warming of 0.18°C. The World Ocean accounts for approximately 93% of the warming of the earth system that has occurred since 1955. The 700–2000 m ocean layer accounted for approximately one-third of the warming of the 0–2000 m layer of the World Ocean. The thermosteric component of sea level trend was 0.54 ± .05 mm yr−1 for the 0–2000 m layer and 0.41 ± .04 mm yr−1 for the 0–700 m layer of the World Ocean for 1955–2010.
Additional figures:
The preprint version of the paper is available through the NODC website here:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/PUBLICATIONS/grlheat12.pdf
The heat capacity of the oceans [defined as the [heat] energy J needed to raise temperature by 1 K] is ~1100 times that of the atmosphere.
I have never owned a Ferrari and i want to know where my missing Ferrari is.
When i was a little boy growing up on a farm i was well aware that the weather had a lot to do with sunshine and clouds. By the time i was about 12yrs old i understood that climate was all about the consistent presence and ratio (over time) of these two elements of nature. After hundreds of hours of reading, here and elsewhere i think i had it about right at 12 years of age.
@davidmhoffer
“…We need to pick someplace where there is no way to make any measurements, no way to verify that we’re just making it up…. hey! How about in the depths of the ocean below the depth we can measure with the Argo buoys….”
In my time I have worked extensively for governments. These sophisticated bureaucracies know a lot about how to hide information. All sorts of excuses can be raised – technical, political, legal, and finally, when your back is to the wall, security.
I suggest that we go straight to ‘security’. Now that the Eastern Bloc threat is dead, and the Mid-Eastern terrorist threat is waning, I see that the military are starting to incorporate Global Warming in their justifications for new spend. Great! What we do is incorporate the climate change workers into NSA and all their research immediately becomes ‘intelligence’ – which, of course, is heavily classified.
Problem solved…
If a specified fraction of rising sea levels is attributable to thermal expansion of the oceans, then the heat entering the oceans must be already known and quantified. By definition.
How then, could somebody [who took such a view] be also of the opinion that there must be some extra heat in the oceans? It seems like a logical self-contradiction to me. Is there something I am missing? Or does Trenberth not himself make any claims about sea-level changes?
TonyB’s comment is of note.
If the missing heat is to be found in the deep oceans then perhaps that’s where the missing sea level rise is as well. Someone’s been pumping all the excess sea water down to the bottom, sorted.
Alec Rawls says:
May 16, 2012 at 10:39 pm
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Yes, but also clouds.
To claim that the extra heat can ONLY be due to GHGs one would have to know the precise extent of cloud cover over the oceans. A slight change in the extent of cloud cover (including a slight change in the time of formation) could theoretically explain the observed warming.
We do not have data with sufficient resolution to rule out changes in cloud cover as an explanation for the observed warming.
In this uncertain world, how I hate seeing that this or that can ONLY be explained by X. Heck anyone would think that we know and understand everything when quite clearly we do not.
tallbloke says:
May 17, 2012 at 12:32 am
That confirms that the long period in the C20th when the solar activity level was higher than the long term average over the period of record from 1749 has a lot more to do with global warming
And especially this must hold also for the long periods of higher than average activity in the 1740s, 1780s, 1830s, 1870s, 1950s, and 1990s [ http://www.leif.org/research/Sunspots-1700-present.png ], that then would be responsible for the global warming at those times…
gymnosperm says:
May 16, 2012 at 10:03 pm
Two thousand meters is the greatest depth of the mixed layer in the in the oceans. The mixed layer is the inverted oceanic equivalent of the troposphere. Like the troposphere its thickness varies considerably with latitude and it thins towards the poles. Like jet streams in the atmosphere, ocean currents create shear zones that amplify the mixing.
Since IR can only penetrate water a few angstroms and UV maybe 30m (again like the atmosphere depending on silt, phytoplankton, and chemistry), warming of the oceans below 30m must be by mixing.
The critical question becomes: what is causing that molecule thick cooling of the ocean surface? Is it evaporation or radiation? Latent heat of vaporization energy could theoretically come from either the air or the water. Radiative transfer would be from water to air. Likely both but in what proportion?
Kind of a weird venturi effect affecting 70% of the earth’s surface.
In answer to your critical question:
What is causing that molecular thick cooling of the ocean surface? Evaporation. While the vapor pressure of the air is low enough water molecules will evaporate into the air without any need for external application of heat. Indeed this will even happen when it is cold – as in ‘lake effect snow’. The evaporation raises the water content of the air immediately above the water surface and, as moist air is lighter than dry air (the molecular weight of H2O is significantly less than either N2 or O2), the humid surface air will rise to be replaced by drier air). As the water molecules leave they take their energy – the latent heat of vaporization- with them. So the latent heat of vaporization comes from the water without radiative transfer. All externally applied IR will do is excite the molecules on the water surface that are close to escape energy and allow them to escape (i.e. become water vapor) earlier. Thus application of a low amount of IR at the right frequency can cool the surface layer of molecules as the surface molecules with the most energy /motion receive just enough extra energy to leave the surface and become vapor molecules, leaving behind those without sufficient energy to escape – the cooler molecules.
For people like Kashua – Importantly, this means that any IR energy will have an unmeasurable effect on the temperature of the water (energy of the molecules below the surface) as the excited molecules leave taking more energy with them than has been applied.
It would be a simple enough experiment to do expose water to very low power IR of ~3 watts/ square meter in the appropriate wavelengths and measure changes in humidity above the water and the water temperature. But climate ‘science’ prefers statistics and modeled assumptions to real world experiments
The warming can only be explained by the increase in atmospheric GHGs
It makes me cringe as well.
There are 2 primary mechanisms by which the oceans can warm.
Increased solar insolation
Decreased oceanic heat loss from the surface (this is the only way GHGs and CO2 can warm the oceans)
BobTisdale’s many post show the latter isn’t happening.
Ergo, the primary cause of ocean warming is increased solar insolation.
The heat is still missing because Kevin’s theories are wrong.
Estimate the number of piano tuners in New York.
GEE, and here I thought that any CO2 molecule that made the mistake of wandering to close too the ocean got gobbled up either by the plant life or the water itself.
More seriously:
The graph of ocean depth vs wavelength: http://www.klimaatfraude.info/images/sverdrup.gif
Variability of the sun:
This is in contrast to what was happening in the solar cycles before cycle 24.
Paper: http://cc.oulu.fi/~usoskin/personal/Sola2-PRL_published.pdf
Another article with several references.
References for above article: http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/Articles/lrsp-2008-3/refs.html
In 2010 Bob Tisdale found more recent ocean heat content is flat or dropping http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/06/january-to-march-2010-nodc-ocean-heat.html
When you ignore all the information that does not fit the “Political Correct” conclusion it isn’t science it is Lysenkoism.
Isn’t there an old story about knights in shining armor looking for the holy heat?
Jimmy Haigh says:
May 17, 2012 at 12:49 am
Bill Tuttle says:
May 16, 2012 at 10:10 pm
“The heat’s still missing? Has he tried passing our “Have You Seen This Heat?” flyers at the mall?”
that would make a good billboard for HI.
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Gents, these are good ideas, yes. But I think “Have you seen this heat” with a graph of reality overlaid on modelled predictions from the alarmists.
On the side of a milk carton.
The quest for the missing heat is a religious endeavour much like the quest for the holy grail.
I see some thing more akin to a Monty Python quest in all this and satire ,sarcasm, ridicule and innuendo is a better approach than trying to disprove their belief in fairies and unicorns.
It will hurt them more than trying to use science to disprove a theory that is based on belief and not facts.
SL rise, since well before this study is pretty much linear, and likely declining since 2005. SL rise is caused by thermal expansion due to warming, and melting ice. If the rate of SL rise is not increasing, but more recent SL rise is due to thermal expansion, then the rate of SL rise from melting ice must be slowing. If less ice is melting, then how is more heat getting into the oceans?
The missing heat must have not only bypassed the first 700 m of oceans, but must of bypassed all the ice above the surface, or else SL rise would be accerating, not declining.
Did climate scientist, yet again, produce a graph with no error bars? If they did produce a graph with error bars, how would they change over the couse of the study as methods of measuring changed?
If the rate of rise from 1955 to 1963 was, (as the graph shows) steeper then the rise from 1968 on, then why (among many other reasons) are they so certain CO2 was the only cause? When did the rise in OHC already occuring prior in 1955 begin?
@ur momisugly Bill Tuttle
Bill Tuttle says:
May 16, 2012 at 10:10 pm
The heat’s still missing? Has he tried passing our “Have You Seen This Heat?” flyers at the mall?
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Good idea! Perhaps Josh could come up with a milk carton asking the same…
Wait, is the heat actually missing
if it didn’t exist in the first place?
Just askin’.
This is all very amusing – however, this should be taken very seriously. This paper and Trenberth’s ‘heat in the abyssal depths’ assumption (excuse) will (as TonyB says above) end up in AR5 which will then be used as the delivered wisdom of “thousands of the worlds top scientists and Nobel laureates”, by the politicians. This is an end-run around science and the scientific method.
“We hope to acquire additional deep ocean data from research cruises so we have opted to present results for the 0-2000 m layer.”
Perhaps this explains why there are 11 (eleven!) authors on this paper. Wonder if they’ll get to take spouses on the cruise?
I stand by my suspicion that the Koch brothers are secretly hoarding the heat, the missing sea level rise and are sneaking about widening tree rings behind the Ural mountains.
If all the heat ends up in the deep ocean, wtf is all the fuss about? How is that going to make the climate worse?