Guest post by Bob Tisdale
For years, Tamino (aka Grant Foster) has complained about the placement of the GISS model projection at the start of the ARGO-era OHC data. Well, Gavin just discovered an error in his presentation of the GISS model simulations. And he’s corrected them. Funny how, if we only looked at the ARGO era, the new GISS model-data comparisons would now resemble mine. So I acknowledged, and thanked Gavin–and then showed his graphs.
NOW Will Tamino Correct his Posts?
Tamino has complained about my model-data presentation of ARGO-era Global Ocean Heat Content in numerous posts. See here and here, and my replies here and here. My replies were also cross posted at WattsUpWithThat here and here. Tamino didn’t like the point where I showed the model projections intersecting with the Ocean Heat Content data. Refer to Figure 1.
Figure 1
A few months ago, Gavin Schmidt of GISS also suggested that my presentations were wrong in his 2011 Updates to model-data comparisons. There he wrote [my boldface]:
As an aside, there are a number of comparisons floating around using only the post 2003 data to compare to the models. These are often baselined in such a way as to exaggerate the model data discrepancy (basically by picking a near-maximum and then drawing the linear trend in the models from that peak). This falls into the common trap of assuming that short term trends are predictive of long-term trends – they just aren’t (There is a nice explanation of the error here).
(That language, by the way, still exists in his updated post even though he has corrected his data.)
Gavin missed the point that I wasn’t interested in presenting long-term trends in that graph. That aside, today, Gavin Schmidt issued a correction to his presentations of Ocean Heat Content in his model-data comparisons. Gavin writes:
This is just a brief note to point out that a few graphs that I have put together showing Ocean Heat Content changes in recent decades had an incorrect scaling for the GISS model data. My error was in assuming that the model output (which were in units W yr/m2) were scaled for the ocean area only, when in fact they were scaled for the entire global surface area (see fig. 2 in Hansen et al, 2005). Therefore, in converting to units of 1022 Joules for the absolute ocean heat content change, I had used a factor of 1.1 (0.7 x 5.1 x 365 x 3600 x 24 x 10-8), instead of the correct value of 1.61 (5.1 x 365 x 3600 x 24 x 10-8). This problem came to light while we were redoing this analysis for the CMIP5 models and from conversations with dana1981 at skepticalscience.com.
That error was similar one Roger Pielke Sr. had made in one of his Ocean Heat Content posts, an error that Roger corrected almost a year ago.
Gavin went back and corrected the graphs in his earlier model-data comparisons at RealClimate. Thanks for the corrections, Gavin. I’ve been suggesting that your presentations were wrongfor a while now.
So what do the new RealClimate model-data comparison graphs look like for Ocean Heat Content?
From today’s post:
From the update for 2011:
From the update for 2010:
And from the 2009 update:
If we were to look at only the data since 2004, the RealClimate graphs would look very similar to mine shown in Figure 1. In fact, I may have to shift the model projection a little to the left in my graphs.
I wonder if Tamino will continue his nonsensical claims about my ARGO-era presentations and whether he will correct the posts at his blog. If history repeats itself, Tamino won’t.
Thanks to Bill Illis for notifying me of the RealClimate corrections.
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Also Gavin it is useless to talk trends when the system observed is cyclic and you trend from the bottom of one cycle to the top of the next. You still get the wrong answer.
A warmer atmosphere does not impede heat loss. A warmer atmosphere looses heat faster than a cooler one. That is what the satellites tell us, and what thermodynamics tells us. It is the models that claim the warmer atmosphere impedes heat loss which is completely wrong
I guess the only people left over at Tamino’s is the ones that will happily drink the Koolaid.
All that’s left for him to post at his compound is Cherry or fruit flavoured? (He run out of bitter and sour years ago).
James Sexton says: “I understand the mechanism for the lower depths getting warmer. I don’t understand the lower depths getting warmer more than the higher depths. My understanding of heat transfer doesn’t allow for this.”
And DR says: “If there is a net heat gain 0-2000m over the same time period as 0-700m where it has leveled off, how can that be?”
There are two avenues through which the upper 700 meters can lose heat. One is at the surface, where it releases heat primarily through evaporation. The second is it carried to depths greater than 700 meters by ocean currents. Each ocean basin has MOC; it’s just most pronounced and studied in the North Atlantic. Let’s assume for example that there is an increase in ocean heat at the upper 700 meters due to an increase in visible sunlight or a decrease in evaporation. But at the same time that increase in heat there is matched by an increase in flow that carries that warmer-than-normal water to depths greater than 700 meters so that the OHC at the top 700 meters remains constant, but the OHC increases at depths greater than 700 meters.
Now, if he’d just correct Yamal…..
Probably of the levorotatory kind (turns left when put in light).
http://web.archive.org/web/20090409182900/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/rss-and-uah/
Warmer sea water can accumulate below a cooler surface if that water has a higher density due to its salt content but we are talking a couple of degrees and over time this water will mix and cool.
John Marshall says:
May 23, 2012 at 2:36 am
A warmer atmosphere does not impede heat loss.
A warmer atmosphere does impede heat loss from the oceans. Which is what I said.
Nice work Bob. No, from my own experiences, Tamino won’t fix his errors.
Thank you John Bills for the Wayback link.
Read all the Tamino & Friends smears against Spencer and Christy or anyone questioning the Immaculate Tamino’s wisdom. Witness the snarky remarks Tamino was dishing out to legitimate arguments against his “analysis”. That is how they do “science”; pile on. The usual figures (cce, DeepClimate, Hank Roberts et al), are still spreading their fertilizer around various blogs today. After all the attacks, the last update Tamino entered is:
At some point after that, I don’t recall when, Tamino deleted a whole bunch of threads. It may have been around the time someone sued a AGW loon blogger for libel, but I don’t recall the details. Some postulated Tamino went into panic mode over that and just dumped everything that put him in a bad light.
That’s how I remember it, but not in detail.
Due to lower density of warmer water the only way for the ocean can be heated is for the heat to be subducted near the poles where the surface temperature is the same or lower than the temperature of the deep ocean.
The thermosteric heating of the top 700m is said to be about 0.4mm/year. (Levitus et all 2012), but the average ocean depth is 4.3km, so if it is heating from the bottom up does that mean that overall thermosteric sea level rise is up to 6x that 0.4mm =2.4mm/year? That would be pretty close to the rate of observed sea level rise (3mm/rear give or take), and would suggest that ocean heating has been pretty constant for at least the last 100 years.
Bob Tisdale says
“There are two avenues through which the upper 700 meters can lose heat. One is at the surface, where it releases heat primarily through evaporation. The second is it carried to depths greater than 700 meters by ocean currents. ”
I believe the largest transfer of heat from the oceans to space occurs through infrared radiation from September to March reaching a max of 10 w/m2. John Kerr over at Inconveinant skeptic has an interesting arcticle about how rapidly this flux has increased over the last twenty five years due to the fact that the flux increases with the fourth power of temperature as predicted by the stefan boltzman law.The corresponing increase in forcing due to an increase in relative humidity (green house gases) can not match this thus explaining the lack in TOA radiative imbalance that we now see in the lack of shallow ocean warming.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/2012/05/the-science-of-why-the-theory-of-global-warming-is-incorrect/
Bob,
The problem with the 0-2000m OHC data compared to the 0-700m data is that the rate of thermosteric sea level increase also declined when the 0-700 OHC curve flattened. Even though the expansion coefficient of sea water decreases with temperature, this is difficult to explain if OHC accumulation remained constant. Then there’s the problem that the plots of OHC vs thermosteric sea level for 0-700m have a massive break between 1995 and 1996. I would take the OHC data below 700m with about a ton of salt. Cazenave, et.al, 2008, for example, didn’t use it.
Bob,
The MOC cools the deep water, not warms it and it goes much deeper than 2000m. If you want to increase heat flow to the 700-2000m layer, you want a decrease in MOC causing a decrease in upwelling of cool water and a drop in the average depth of the thermocline. But a decrease in MOC is not consistent with increased loss of Arctic sea ice. Nor have I seen any publications on a drop in the thermocline depth.
Gavin Schmidt says: “This falls into the common trap of assuming that short term trends are predictive of long-term trends – they just aren’t (There is a nice explanation of the error here).”
This is true. The short term (150 year) increase in temperture has no effect on the overall downward trend of the 8000 years decline in temperature from the Holocene Optimum.
richcar 1225 says: “I believe the largest transfer of heat from the oceans to space occurs through infrared radiation from September to March reaching a max of 10 w/m2….”
You’re discussing heat loss to space while I’m discussing heat loss to atmosphere.
Good to see gavin issue a correction – the first of many I suspect 🙂
Have any apologies come your way yet Bob?
DeWitt Payne, regarding MOC, refer to the following YouTube animation. Unfortunately, the anomalies are based on the averages of cross sections at only two meridians so we miss a lot. But notice the abrupt change after the 1997/98 El Nino. Hopefully, someday in the next decade or so, someone will create a 3D animation using all of the ARGO buoys that are bobbing up and down in the Pacific:
Bob,
Further on the 0-700m vs 0-2000m OHC: The problem is that the plot indicates that the total rate of accumulation of energy remains constant in the 0-2000m plot after 2005. That would require about an order of magnitude increase in the rate of heat accumulation in the 700-2000m layer. If we assume that heat must pass through the 0-700m layer, that can only happen if the net rate of heat transfer from the 0-700m layer to the 700-2000m layer increases by about an order of magnitude. If we assume that there are parallel paths, then the rate of heat transfer to the top of the 0-700m layer has to decrease by about an order of magnitude and conversely for the 700-2000m layer. That pegs my BS meter.
The ratio of heat accumulation in the layers could change without changing transfer rates, but only if the total accumulation rate also changes. The ARGO data says that hasn’t happened. The ARGO 0-2000m data are clearly flawed.
Rob L says:
May 22, 2012 at 11:46 am
I notice that the massive spike in NODC OHC just at the onset of the Argo era (2003) is not matched by any similar spike in sea level (http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/ocean/) which we know is very heavily influenced by thermosteric contribution. To me that clearly shows that the splice to Argo era data has been manipulated in a hockeystickesque manner to enhance the OHC trend.
Given the remarkably linear seal level rise of the last hundred years I have very little faith in assertions that rate of warming of the ocean has changed significantly – except for perhaps a drop in last 5 years.
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Bingo!! Since 2005 SL is flat; linear before that and before new ajustments. so the new heat below 700m must bypass the atmosphere, the ice, the first 700 m of ocean, and, like magic, appear in the ocean depth. I think not.
I imagine it is possible for the 700-2000 metre to warm (ever so slightly) while the 0-700 metre ocean stays relatively flat. It is just an relative energy transfer issue.
But the numbers are still far, far lower than would be required to explain an expected 2.0 W/m2/yr GHG/aerosol forcing while the numbers say 0.4 W/m2/yr is going into the Oceans and a small 0.08 W/m2/yr is accumulating in surface/atmosphere warming.
And the 2.0 W/m2/yr expected accumulation is before feedbacks which are expected to triple this number.
There is a lot of expected energy accumulation which is not happening; 0.5 versus 2.0 (plus feedbacks).
So, either the forcing numbers are wrong, the feedbacks are negative versus positive, aerosols are 2 times bigger than thought, the energy is escaping faster than expected (along the lines that the Stefan Boltzmann theory expects but is ignored in the theory), OR, the energy is still accumulating in some unknown place that does not translate into surface or deep ocean warming.
Trenberth’s “Missing Energy” paper has been restated by many to be about the missing energy that the CERES/ERBE satellites measures (0.5 W/m2/yr) but it really started out as where is our missing 1.5 W/m2/yr.
Bill Illis,
1. Feedbacks don’t change the forcing, they change the temperature response to the forcing.
2. The feedbacks aren’t linear with temperature or time. The initial response is determined by the transient sensitivity which isn’t affected much at all by feedbacks. There’s a post at The Blackboard that is relevant.
DeWitt Payne: It sounds like you might find the Met Office presentation of OHC for 0-700m and 0-2000m more agreeable. I should be posting on it in a few days.
http://i47.tinypic.com/2a5auy0.jpg
Bob,
That does seem to be more self consistent than the NOAA data.