Another “the science is settled” moment. From the ABC:
A new US-led study, featuring research by Tasmanian scientists, has concluded that warming ocean temperatures over the past 50 years are largely a man-made phenomenon.
Researchers from America, India, Japan and Australia say the study is the most comprehensive look at how the oceans have warmed.
The study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, examined a dozen different models used to project climate change, and compared them with observations of ocean warming over the past 50 years.
It found natural variations accounted for about 10 per cent of rising temperatures, but man-made greenhouse gases were the major cause.
One of the report’s co-authors, Hobart-based Dr John Church, is the CSIRO Fellow with the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research.
He told AM the study was one of the most comprehensive looks into the changes in ocean heat to date, “by quite some margin”.
Dr Church said the breadth of the study had “allowed the group to rule out that the changes are related to natural variability in the climate system”.
He said there was simply no way the upper layers of every ocean in the world could have warmed by more than 0.1 degrees Celsius through natural causes alone.
“Natural variability could only explain 10 per cent, or thereabouts, of the observed change,” he said.
Professor Nathan Bindoff is one of the world’s foremost oceanography experts, and has been a lead author on past Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports.
“Ninety per cent of the temperature change stored in the whole of the Earth’s system is stored in the ocean, so global warming is really an ocean warming problem,” he said.
Professor Bindoff said the new research balanced the man-made impacts of warming greenhouse gases and cooling pollution in the troposphere against natural changes in the ocean’s temperature and volcanic eruptions.
“This paper’s important because, for the first time, we can actually say that we’re virtually certain that the oceans have warmed, and that warming is caused not by natural processes, but by rising greenhouse gases primarily.”
And he described the evidence of global warming as unequivocal.
“We did it. No matter how you look at it, we did it. That’s it,” he said.
Full story: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-11/research-taps-into-ocean-temperatures/4063886
h/t to reader Mick Muller
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So that’s it then we know everything about global warming and don’t need to spend any more money on climate scientists. Time to sack them all and save a bit of money!
Was climate science created so stupid people could find jobs, too?
“>>>we’re virtually certain that the oceans have warmed…
by more than 0.1 degrees Celsius”
________________________
Keith Battye nailed it: “Well if the models say it’s so then it must be.”
So did Frank Zappa:
“I know, I think, the love I have for you will never die- well, maybe never.”
– The Mothers of Invention
“,,,,,,we’re virtually certain that the oceans have warmed,…..”
They are sort of sure that warming has occurred but know without doubt what the cause is. I am virtually certain which horse will the 3 o’clock and I am totally certain as to why it will win and thus you can risk your shirt on it.
So how does this “study” use the Argo data?
I love the ‘improved estimates’ part.
0.1 deg C accuracy, hahaha!
“we can actually say that we’re virtually certain that the oceans have warmed”.
Virtually certain.Can’t quite bring themselves to say they are certain.Because if they were certain then they would not have to be unequivocal because they would be well certain. 🙂
More billboards on the road to Rio…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/trend
Greenhouse gases cool the ocean. True story bro.
Computer models are like hot dogs, no better than what you put in them.
Steve Richards, thank you for the link to the paper. Surprisingly, it’s not paywalled.
From the abstract: .We examine the causes of ocean warming using these
improved observational estimates, together with results from
a large multimodel archive of externally forced and unforced
simulations.
Now they can make their predictions for the next 20 years, and 20 years from now we’ll know whether any of the models is a candidate to rely on for the subsequent 30+ years.
While at it, I would like to see the model output for the 1910-1945 period. Because the reality per HadSST2 is as follows:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1945/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1945/trend
This early 20th century warming is never replicated in any model, nor it is explainable by “GH forcing and here and there aerosols” climate models. If this warming, probably natural, will be captured by models, then we can discuss the alleged anthropogenic one, which is even less steep than this one. Any takers?
Why don’t they just use the sea coral that is able to tell us surface temperature and river flow thousands of miles away? Surely it also remembers the temperature of the water that is was immersed in?
Business of catastrophe as usual, you had “Maddoff” we got “Bindoff” and a “Church” of Global warming to justify Julia’s Green Carbon Tax and the ABC say it is so. it all fits in a model weird world……
So, “we” can actually say for the first time that:- we’re almost certain that the oceans have warmed; and we’re almost certain that warming is caused not by natural processes; and we’re almost sure that warming primarily is caused by rising greenhouse gases.
I could have sworn I’ve actually heard that said many times.
Anyway, I can easily accept what Bindoff unequivocally claims, on behalf of others, about the evidence of global warming: “We did it. No matter how you look at it, we did it. That’s it”.
Wonder what they make of this http://ktwop.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/ocean-warming-over-last-135-years-twice-as-great-as-over-last-50-years/
“And if warming in the last 50 years was just half the rate of warming over the last 100 years it follows that warming in the first 50 years was 3 times greater than the rate in the second 50.”
So, if their assertion that greenhouse gases are the cause of 90% of the ocean warming over the last 50 years and that ‘natural causes’ could not be responsible for more than 10% of the increase. What exactly caused the accelerated warming the previous 50 years since greenhouse gases where not a significant factor prior to 1940?
These guys – I dont call them scientists because they aren’t – have to blame Co2 because if they didn’t they’d be out of a job. The Australian government’s position is global warming is real and if you want a paycheque you had better agree with them.
The Climate Liars will use any means possible to impose their ideology on people. If they can’t convince us, then they’ll use force of law and if need be, violence.
I can see so many applications for any technique that can estimate correctly a 50 year trend with 20 years of data. Harry Nyquist must be completely amazed.
Is it really as bad as it looks? Is this really the argument that’s hiding coyly behind the media assurances? “Well, we guessed how much it would warm *without* AGW, and then we looked at how much it had really warmed and they weren’t the same! So that means AGW is unequivocal!
I’m seriously asking not just rhetoricising (if that’s even a word). Can it really be as bad as that?
what global warming?
Since oceans have a high heat capacity and air does not, air cannot heat oceans, but oceans can heat the air.
REPEAT: It is the oceans which send heat into the air, The atmosphere doesn’t even retain heat to put into the ocean.
That is just basic physics
As always its:
1. We build some models
2. We pick some forcing factor estimates, in which natural factors are ~10%, and different aerosol histories/estimates for each model
3. We run the forcing factor estimates through the models
4. The models don’t look like reality without the “anthropogenic forcings”
5. Including everything and the models look like reality
6. Therefore, natural factors are ~10%
7. Also, every model is correct when it says the sensitivity is high even though they all disagree about just how high
The conclusion in step six is inevitable after step two. As is seven. One might as well stop after two, the other steps just conceal that the conclusion is actually an assumption.
I’m sorry but Dr Church, unless he is being deliberately disingenuous, ought to go back to primary school to learn rudimentary physics
No matter how much food I put into my dog, no matter how different types of food I put into my dog….it all comes out as a turd, every single time. Same rule applies. My dog however is considerably cheaper and faster.
Isn’t being “virtually certain” like being a little pregnant?
Only around 380 parts per million of the atmosphere is carbon dioxide.
Only 3% of the CO2 results from human activity.
Only about 2-5% of the infrared radiation can be absorbed by a greenhouse gas, as shown by the IR absorption spectrum, which consists of a narrow band of frequencies.
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is not determined by production, because it is regulated by the oceans. Cold oceans absorbs more, and warm oceans release more back into the atmosphere.
The 30% increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past century indicates oceans heating (due to other causes), and it is too minuscule to be relevant. It is an indicator, not cause, of oceans heating.
Air has a much lower heat capacity than water, which means oceans can heat the air, but the air cannot significantly heat the oceans.
CO2 change temperatures less than 0.000001 degrees all of the time.
When el Nino heats the Pacific, CO2 increases in the atmosphere; and after El Nino, it normalizes. It wouldn’t normalize if oceans were not reabsorbing the CO2. And if oceans can reabsorb that CO2, they can absorb any other CO2.