Guest post by Bob Tisdale
This is a deviation from my typical presentation of a subdivided dataset. Usually, I divide the dataset in a way that is intended to illustrate how and why natural variables can explain the warming over the term of that data. In this post, I’ve broken it into subsections that allow the data to show behavior that cannot be explained by anthropogenic global warming, and I’m leaving it to the proponents of manmade global warming to explain, through their own data analyses of the five subsets, how those five subsets show continuous and continued warming, when clearly they do not.
Believe it or not, the NODC’s ocean heat content data for the depths of 0-700 meters contain a couple of hockey sticks—that is, no warming for 4 decades and then, presto, there’s warming. One of the datasets is relatively small, but the other is quite large, representing about 39% of the surface area of the global oceans.
FOREWORD
The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) Ocean Heat Content data is only available to the public in an easy-to-use format through the KNMI Climate Explorer, where it is available only for the depths of 0-700 meters. The NODC recently released its new dataset for 0-2000 meters but it’s available only to the public in limited subsets and it is smoothed with a 5-year filter, which makes it useless in attribution studies. Regardless, this doesn’t stop proponents of anthropogenic global warming who repeatedly and nonsensically claim only greenhouse gases could have caused the warming and that the warming continues.
We know the NODC’s ocean heat content data for depths of 0-2000 meters are available on a monthly basis because the UKMO uses it in its EN3 ocean heat content dataset. The NODC and UKMO apparently do not want KNMI to provide the public easy-to-use access to UKMO EN3 data (in unadjusted form) because by KNMI removed it from their Climate Explorer only a day or two after my first post that included that data. Refer to the post here.
With that in mind, please don’t ask me why I did not use the NODC ocean heat content for 0-2000 meters in this post. That will save me the time of suggesting to you that you read the post instead of looking only at all the pretty pictures.
USING A GLOBAL DATASET TO REPRESENT GLOBAL WARMING IS MISLEADING
It sounds odd, but it’s true.
By looking at a dataset on a global basis, one can only assume greenhouse gases play a role in the warming. As I’ve noted in numerous previous posts, dividing the dataset into smaller subsets allows the data to present how it truly warmed.
That is, global temperature (and related) metrics show evidence of global warming. These include sea surface temperature, lower troposphere temperature, combined land+sea surface temperature and ocean heat content for depths of 0-700 meters. See Figure 1 for the NODC global ocean heat content anomalies for depths of 0-700 meters. While each of those datasets show warming has occurred, for more than 3 ½ years, I have illustrated and discussed here and in cross posts at WattsUpWithThat how the warming over the last 3 decades can be attributable to natural factors, primarily strong, naturally occurring El Niño and La Niña events. I’ve also published an ebook in pdf form that explains the natural processes that cause the warming. It’s written for those with and without technical backgrounds.
Figure 1
I’ve divided the global oceans into 5 subsets for this presentation. See Figure 2. As noted earlier, I’m taking a change of tack for this post. I’m presenting the data so that it shows how it contradicts the hypothesis (fancy word for guess) of manmade global warming.
Figure 2
But in this post, as also noted earlier, I’m leaving it up to proponents of anthropogenic global warming to explain, based on their data analyses, not climate models, how and why they find evidence of continuous and continued anthropogenic global warming in all 5 of the following subsets.
LOW-TO-MID LATITUDES OF THE NORTH ATLANTIC
The ocean heat content anomalies of the low-to-mid latitudes of the North Atlantic (0-45N, 80W-20E), Figure 3, would be ideal for proponents of anthropogenic global warming if it wasn’t for the fact that it stopped warming in the early 2000s. With its excessive trend (0.215 GJ/m^2 per decade) versus the global trend (0.075 GJ/m^2 per decade), this portion of the North Atlantic exhibits signs of the ocean heat content equivalent of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, but with this dataset, it has already started to cool.
Figure 3
This subset clearly fails to illustrate “continued recent warming”.
NORTHERN NORTH ATLANTIC
Figure 4 shows our first ocean heat content anomalies subset with a hockey stick-like curve. Ocean heat content anomalies for the Northern North Atlantic (45N-90N, 80W-20E) cooled significantly for 40+ years, from 1955 to 1996, a time period when manmade greenhouse gases were increasing at accelerated rates. Then, magically, in 1997, ocean heat content anomalies there skyrocketed. Notice also how the ocean heat content anomalies for the Northern North Atlantic peaked in the early 2000s and have been cooling since then.
Figure 4
This subset definitely does not show “continuous warming”.
SOUTH ATLANTIC
As clearly shown in Figure 5, since 1960, the ocean heat content anomalies for the South Atlantic (90S-0, 70W-20E) warmed in 1981 and over the 2-year period of 2004 and 2005. For the multidecadal periods before and between, and for the short period after, the South Atlantic exhibits no evidence of warming. In other words, the South Atlantic ocean heat content anomalies only warmed during the three years of 1981 and 2004/05. I don’t believe greenhouse gases can pick and choose which years they’ll impact and then sit idly by for the other 50+ years.
Figure 5
The South Atlantic does not pass the test for “continuous warming”. The same can be said for the next subset.
EAST PACIFIC
Figure 6 presents the ocean heat content anomalies for the first of the two major subsets. The East Pacific (90S-90N, 180-80W) covers about 33% of the surface area of the global oceans. There are a number of papers that discuss the impact of the 1976 Great Pacific Climate Shift on the sea surface temperature of the East Pacific. It also appears to have had an impact on the ocean heat content of the East Pacific. The data also exhibits an upward shift in 1990, immediately after the 1988/89 La Niña event, which was the strongest single season La Niña event in recent history. If not for the upward shifts in those two years, the East Pacific ocean heat content anomalies show no evidence of warming for the decadal and multidecadal periods before, between and after them.
Figure 6
INDIAN-WEST PACIFIC
The Indian-West Pacific (90S-90N, 20E0180) is the largest of the subsets presented in this post. It represents about 39% of the surface area of the global oceans. Curiously, it is the only subset to exhibit warming in recent years. Note also how the ocean heat content anomalies for this region failed to warm from 1955 to 1997, even though greenhouse gas emissions were increasing over those 4 decades. If anything, they cooled slightly. Then in response to the 1998/99/00/01 La Niña, ocean heat content shifted upwards. That upward shift actually makes sense, though we might have expected to see other less-notable shifts in the past. What really looks awkward is the continued warming in response to the pair of double dip La Niña events that followed the moderate-to-strong El Niño events of 2006/07 and 2009/10. They weren’t super El Niño events by any stretch of the imagination, but they caused unusually strong ocean heat content rises according to the data.
Figure 7
This is when I wish we still had access to the UKMO EN3 ocean heat content data through the KNMI Climate Explorer. That dataset presented the ARGO-era ocean heat content data without the NODC’s constant adjustments. Could it be that those adjustments are the only reason the ocean heat content data in this region continues to exhibit warming? Do we assume that when corrections are made they’re made equally across all ocean basins? They may not.
Regardless, the Indian-West Pacific dataset fails to provide the continuous warming one would expect from anthropogenic greenhouse gases.
CLOSING
Any takers?
If you’re a proponent of anthropogenic global warming and if you choose to present your data analyses, please do so using data available on a gridded basis in a reasonably easy-to-use format, from a source such as the KNMI Climate Explorer, as I always do in my blog posts so that anyone can verify results. What we’re not looking for are claims to the effect of, “oh, that’s caused by aerosols.” You’ll need to supply the data source to accompany your claim, to show cause and effect. If you’re a modeler and you’d like to discuss your models, please ask KNMI to add to their Climate Explorer the outputs of your ocean heat content simulations that exist in the CMIP3 and CMIP5 archives.
Please also explain, as part of your analyses, how anthropogenic forcings are responsible for the disparity in the trends, as shown in Figure 8. Don’t forget the data to accompany your claims.
Figure 8
If you’re a regular visitor to SkepticalScience, please don’t waste your time and present the gif animation The Escalator. That would clearly indicate you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.
SOURCE
The data presented in this post is available through the KNMI Climate Explorer.
“USING A GLOBAL DATASET TO REPRESENT GLOBAL WARMING IS MISLEADING
By looking at a dataset on a global basis, one can only assume greenhouse gases play a role in the warming. As I’ve noted in numerous previous posts, dividing the dataset into smaller subsets allows the data to present how it truly warmed.”
I’m very happy I didn’t have any coffee in hand when reading this – I would have spilled it and possibly injured myself laughing.
So in this post, by looking at sufficiently small regions (sub-basins of the oceans, not even complete oceans), over sufficiently small depths (0-700 meters, irregardless of the 0-2000 meter data), and sufficiently short time periods (under 10 years in some of your examples – far too small for statistically significant linear trends, let alone to identify the claimed step changes with three times the parameters) – you find portions of the data that don’t move in lockstep with globally average data? And you consider that a strong argument against global warming?
That’s a fine batch of cherries you’ve picked – “…the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking_%28fallacy%29 . You simply cannot discuss global warming without global data.
I’m going to share this post of yours with every statistician I know – they need the laugh.
—
More seriously – posts like this one, with obvious (and stated) tactics of slicing and dicing the data until a subset is found to confirm particular beliefs – do not support the AGW skeptic case. Instead, these, like 2nd law of thermodynamics arguments, serve only to convince many readers that the skeptic side has little to say based on reality.
In the deeper oceans?
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
(Click on number 2 graph)
KR says:
October 14, 2012 at 8:46 pm
Studying a system by looking is various subsystems is always an important way to study a system. It has to be done with care, for example with cars if you look at the radio, transmission, and center console you’d come across as barking up the wrong tree. OTOH, if you looked at the engin and transmission, you’ll get the impression the whole system can move under its own power.
How many do you know well?
Not really surprising that the oceans show no constant signal of human CO2 because the “It’s simple physics” says that we simply know of no mechanism for greenhouse gasses to warm the water except by gradually and proportionally reducing radiation from the water surface to the air by virtue of warmer air. Some will say that conduction to the surface through the skin layer is reduced by reducing the gradient through the top mm, but this ignores the increased radiation from a warmer water surface. (Go) whitecaps are a possible exception except that latent heat release is a warming function and warmed things tend to rise…
Any time a data set is subdivided there will be questions of selection. My personal objection is to grouping the West Pacific with the East Indian oceans. This probably came from Modoki and there are undoubtedly atmospheric connections of importance, but I don’t think a lot of water communicates and if the Kelvin and Rossby waves are reflecting off Indonesia back across the Pacific they aren’t passing through to the Indian Ocean. There is actually consistent leeward upwelling in the Indian Ocean west of Indonesia from the trades and whatever water does get through.
Bob Tisdale says: “If you like, why don’t you study the impact on the variability of the increasing samples with time? Also, while your studying that, you’ll need to consider that the Indian and West Pacific OHC data vary inversely with ENSO and that the variations in the East Pacific and Atlantic are related positively, which would affect their perceived impacts.”
LOL, that is what several people have told you is wrong with the analysis you posted here. That is what YOU need to do to present your argument.
Since I am looking at the global heat content and not oceans and bits of oceans I am not concerned with inter-oceanic swings.
The question of whether earlier sampling was good enough is an issue as is endemic problem of bias correction versus correction bias , as I already commented. The fact that fairly clear, period signals are clearly detectable and match cycles already documented in other physically independent quantities like aurora (Scaffeta) gives me a lot more confidence in the signal to noise ratio that I would have had before doing the rate of change analysis I posted.
http://i48.tinypic.com/zx1d9k.png
I do have reservations about the very strong increase in OHC around 2001/2003. This seems exceptional in the whole record and coincides with deployment of large numbers of ARGO. floats. On the face of it, it looks like a sampling discontinuity rather than climate. This will be significant in the fit parameters of the linear part of the model.
” it could be argued you’re seeing a response to ENSO.”
The El Chichon eruption, and what I’m suggesting as climatic rebound, happened before that change. The fact that the supposed “super El Nino” of 1998 does not stand out at all, despite the better coverage, is itself interesting. It was not captured as exceptional in the (peer refused) BEST data analysis either.
Just what part of what I found would you like to argue as being ENSO and why?
Slight correction. The second post Pinatubo peak was somewhat reduced. This is different from the El Chichon response which was followed by two clearly stronger peaks.
This reduction in the peak around 1998 may indeed reflect the heat lost to the atmosphere as a result of that stronger than usual El Nino.
“Instead, these, like 2nd law of thermodynamics arguments, serve only to convince many readers that the skeptic side has little to say based on reality.”
LoLoLoLoLoLoLoLoLoLoLoLoLoLoLoLoL
Actually, HaHaHaHaah! Haaah HaaahH haH haH HAH!
Soon he’ll be explaining how big oil captured all ..the infrared telescopic equipment on the globe and we can’t check the atmosphere by just LOOKING,
to see if AGW is real.
“Yew cain’t look thair, yew aint no CLIMATALujiST!”
…Indeed.
P. Solar says: “LOL, that is what several people have told you is wrong with the analysis you posted here. That is what YOU need to do to present your argument.”
Not sure why you’re laughing out loud. I’ve just scrolled through the comments and only you criticized my suggestion that the increased samplings played a role. There are no “several people”. In a comment, I introduced it as a possibility and then later offered that it may also be due to a shift in sea level pressure. You criticized my comment, so I suggested to you that you study it. The reason I made the suggestion was because it seems to interest you. It doesn’t interest me.
P. Solar says: “Since I am looking at the global heat content and not oceans and bits of oceans I am not concerned with inter-oceanic swings.”
The reason I separated the East Pacific from the Indian-West Pacific was precisely for that reason. ENSO is responsible for the “inter-oceanic swings” and the timings of ENSO events are known.
P. Solar says: “The El Chichon eruption, and what I’m suggesting as climatic rebound, happened before that change.”
Nonsense. My ENSO statement that you quoted had to do with the 1982/83 El Nino, that it was likely you were seeing the impact of the 1982/83 El Nino which started at the same time as the eruption of El Chichon.
http://i50.tinypic.com/28qynom.jpg
Adios.
Another good post from BT.
It demonstrates how it is possible to take part of a natural cyclic process, partly understood, and assuming that the upward trend was continuous rather than cyclic and heap blame needlessly on the humans for the increases, but not the drops of course.
KR says: “So in this post, by looking at sufficiently small regions (sub-basins of the oceans, not even complete oceans), over sufficiently small depths (0-700 meters, irregardless of the 0-2000 meter data), and sufficiently short time periods (under 10 years in some of your examples – far too small for statistically significant linear trends, let alone to identify the claimed step changes with three times the parameters) – you find portions of the data that don’t move in lockstep with globally average data? And you consider that a strong argument against global warming?”
My oh my, so many attempts to criticize my post in one sentence.
You wrote, “…over sufficiently small depths (0-700 meters, irregardless of the 0-2000 meter data)…”
If you had read the post, you would have understood the reason I did not use the 0-2000 meter data. First, it’s not readily available on a gridded basis. Second, from the NODC it is only available with 5-year smoothing which makes it useless in an attribution study.
You wrote, “…by looking at sufficiently small regions (sub-basins of the oceans, not even complete oceans)…”
If you understood the subject matter, you would know why I subdivided the oceans as I did. But since you obviously have no grasp of the subject, let me explain. The North Atlantic is isolated because it has a significantly higher trend due to AMO/AMOC, which are natural variables. I separated the high latitudes there due to the shift in the late 1990s associated with the change in wind patterns reflected by the North Atlantic Oscillation—a natural variable. That left the low-to-mid latitudes of the North Atlantic where the majority of the exaggerate AMO/AMOC trend is located. The East Pacific is isolated because it is the temporary home of the warm water released from the West Pacific and Indian Ocean during El Nino events—and the East Pacific also exhibits upward shifts in response to strong La Nina events. ENSO is a natural variable. The Indian-West Pacific is isolated because it is the source of the warm water for El Nino events, and because it’s warming obviously occurs during La Nina events. Again, ENSO is a natural variable. That leaves the South Atlantic. It’s simply the leftovers.
You wrote, “…under 10 years in some of your examples – far too small for statistically significant linear trends, let alone to identify the claimed step changes with three times the parameters…”
Some might say you’ve misrepresented what I’ve presented. Of the 8 trend lines in Figures 4 through 7, only one is for a period of less than 10 years. I really didn’t need to included it because anyone who can read a graph can see the South Atlantic has cooled since 2005. Six of the 8 trend lines covered multidecadal periods.
You concluded, “I’m going to share this post of yours with every statistician I know – they need the laugh.”
Please do. Because they will likely read your comment AND my reply to you, and when they laugh, they will be laughing at your expense, not mine.
Have a nice day.
gymnosperm says: “My personal objection is to grouping the West Pacific with the East Indian oceans. This probably came from Modoki and there are undoubtedly atmospheric connections of importance…”
Minor correction: The dataset you’re questioning is the “Indian-West Pacific” not the “East Indian-West Pacific”.
Also the reason I separated the East Pacific from the “Indian-West Pacific” is ENSO-related, not only as a function of Central Pacific El Nino events—aka El Nino Modoki. BTW, East Pacific El Nino events still occur in the east of the dateline—they simply do not extend east to the coast of South America.
gymnosperm says: “…but I don’t think a lot of water communicates and if the Kelvin and Rossby waves are reflecting off Indonesia back across the Pacific they aren’t passing through to the Indian Ocean.”
Refer to the Lee et al (2000) poster:
http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/documents/OSTST/2000/lee.pdf
Also refer to the animation here. You can get an idea of the magnitude of the volume of water that passes through the Indonesian Throughflow when Rossby waves reach Indonesia. And that wasn’t a large El Nino:
http://i54.tinypic.com/eu4pzq.jpg
It’s from this post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/argo-era-nodc-ocean-heat-content-data-0-700-meters-through-december-2010/
Regards
Oops, when I cut and pasted my reply to you from Word, gymnosperm, I missed part of it. Here’s the initial part.
gymnosperm says: “Any time a data set is subdivided there will be questions of selection.”
Why not ask the question then?
The North Atlantic is isolated because it has a significantly higher trend due to AMO/AMOC, which are natural variables. I separated the high latitudes there due to the shift in the late 1990s associated with the change in wind patterns reflected by the North Atlantic Oscillation—a natural variable. That left the low-to-mid latitudes of the North Atlantic where the majority of the exaggerate AMO/AMOC trend is located. The East Pacific is isolated because it is the temporary home of the warm water released from the West Pacific and Indian Ocean during El Nino events—and the East Pacific also exhibits upward shifts in response to strong La Nina events. ENSO is a natural variable. The Indian-West Pacific is isolated because it is the source of the warm water for El Nino events, and because it’s warming obviously occurs during La Nina events. Again, ENSO is a natural variable. That left the South Atlantic.
Barry, in response to the title question, you wrote, “In the deeper oceans?
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
(Click on number 2 graph)”
Thank you for NOT reading my post. Your comment broadcasts how little you understand of the subject matter and what was presented in the post. If you had read the first few paragraphs of it, you would have understood why I did not use the NODC’s OHC data for 0-2000 meters. In short, first, it’s not readily available on a gridded basis. Second, from the NODC, it is only available with 5-year smoothing which makes it useless in an attribution study.
NeedleFactory: Regarding your question about the UKMO using the NODC’s 0-2000 meter data in their EN3 data, the UKMO uses an older version (2005) of the NODC OHC data as the basis for its EN3 OHC dataset. As far as I know, the newer version of the NODC’s 0-2000 meter data is only available with the 5-year smoothing, which, as I noted in the post, makes it useless in attribution studies.
Thanks, Anthony.
Bob T. says: “Not sure why you’re laughing out loud. I’ve just scrolled through the comments and only you criticized my suggestion that the increased samplings played a role. ”
I was not criticising the idea that sampling changes played a role , I was criticising the fact that having noted it was a problem you do your whole article without taking account of it.
You now say you are “not interested”. Kind of undermines the credibility of what you put forward.
“The North Atlantic is isolated because it has a significantly higher trend due to AMO/AMOC, which are natural variables. I separated the high latitudes there due to the shift in the late 1990s associated with the change in wind patterns reflected by the North Atlantic Oscillation—a natural variable. That left the low-to-mid latitudes of the North Atlantic where the majority of the exaggerate AMO/AMOC trend is located. The East Pacific is isolated because it is the temporary home of the warm water released from the West Pacific and Indian Ocean during El Nino events—and the East Pacific also exhibits upward shifts in response to strong La Nina events. ENSO is a natural variable. The Indian-West Pacific is isolated because it is the source of the warm water for El Nino events, and because it’s warming obviously occurs during La Nina events. Again, ENSO is a natural variable. That left the South Atlantic.”
So you specifically and intentionally picked areas where you could be sure that natural variations drowns out any AGW , zoom in on cooling periods and think that proves something.
How odd.
Ya know, with all these armchair scientist wannabees and hasbeens (that would be me) and practicing independent scientists (that would be Bob and Anthony as well as others on this blog), a software developer should be able to come up with an affordable statistics program, aka Statview, that we non-slop-trough folks could afford. I still have my Statview SE (love that program) and it still runs on a very old and limping Mac. I’ve also done an ANOVA by hand and calculator. The math is really quite easy at each step when the design is a simple one. For correlation studies at climate and weather levels, one really needs software so those that wish to engage in this endeavor can at least have time to eat three times a day and sleep at night.
As for an above commenter’s thought that maybe a small percentage of SST change can be attributed to CO2, I doubt it rises above noise, meaning that you won’t be able to measure it at a significant variance or even correlative level. Short wave IR is such a powerful and deep heating mechanism compared to back radiation’s weak shallow skin deep ability. With trades and Kelvin waves being such highly variable mixing agents, the skin over the water being prone to evaporation, and clouds being such a powerful mitigator of IR, I don’t expect CO2 to be a player in measurable SST changes. That highly paid scientists keep beating this pretend CO2 drum boggles my mine.
Here is a comparison of the residual of OHC from the 2 sine + linear model compared to El Nino 3.4 data.
http://i45.tinypic.com/2mgr13q.png
Strong correlation for a lot of it . This would seem to support Bob’s hypothesis that ENSO is capturing and outputting heat rather than just being a passive “internal variation”.
( See, I told you I thought it was a good idea and an important finding )
What I suspect is that this mechanism is a important part of climatic negative feedback that helps keep climate stable. It needs more thought, but the warming rebound I’m proposing may actually be happening VIA the ENSO impact Bob suggested.
ie The volcanic cooling , that is generally accepted, may be the trigger of the stronger ENSO fluctuations seen in this period.
If it’s not then we need see why there are major volcanoes happening at around the same time there are large ENSO variations.
The 1998-2002 period seems to have another trigger , maybe a correction for the 30 years of warming.
Note in previous post that ENSO is inverted , La Nina events are replenishing OHC during the volcanic rebound periods , El Nino is giving up ocean heat to the atmosphere during the volcanic cooling.
Pamela Gray says: That highly paid scientists keep beating this pretend CO2 drum boggles my mine.
Not mind boggling really, it is because they are _highly paid_ to do it. I suspect they’ve already done the “what if” runs of the climate models with different parameters. They know they can keep on improving the software as long as they publish the right results. The day that the politics change they will “correct” some of their inputs and get runs that resemble real climate.
P. Solar: In response to my description of why I subdivided the ocean basins, you wrote, “So you specifically and intentionally picked areas where you could be sure that natural variations drowns out any AGW , zoom in on cooling periods and think that proves something.” And you ended with, “How odd.”
That is the most ridiculous comment you’ve made to date. The subsets are extremely logical IF you want to study the impacts of natural variability.
P. Solar says: “You now say you are ‘not interested’. Kind of undermines the credibility of what you put forward.”
Not at all. Your comment indicates that you haven’t bothered to read the post. The intent of this post was to illustrate once again that the global oceans have to be subdivided into logical subsets in order to see what caused them to warm and also to show that the warming was not continuous and that it continues in only one region.
Also note that I did not write the phrase “not interested”. So once again you are attributing a quote to someone on this thread when they did not write those words.
P. Solar says: “I was not criticising the idea that sampling changes played a role , I was criticising the fact that having noted it was a problem you do your whole article without taking account of it.”
Actually, this is what you wrote and what I responded to, “LOL, that is what several people have told you is wrong with the analysis you posted here. That is what YOU need to do to present your argument.”
So thank you for confirming that you fabricated the “LOL” sentence. That’s not good sign, P.Solar. Add to that your continued need to incorrectly attribute quotes to people. Also not a good sign.
As a result, I’m done replying to your comments on this thread, P. Solar. You may want to rethink your debate tactics because they undermine YOUR credibility.
Bob T. says: “Not at all. Your comment indicates that you haven’t bothered to read the post. The intent of this post was to illustrate once again that the global oceans have to be subdivided into logical subsets in order to see what caused them to warm and also to show that the warming was not continuous and that it continues in only one region. ”
No, Bob, it is you who don’t read comments or refuse to take on board what others are telling you. You make up some fictitious position that overall warming and even localised OHC has to be “continuous” and unrelenting because GHG effects are continuous. You extend this idea , quite illogically, into warming must be continuous in all subdivisions you may to chose when you choose them precisely because you know other factors dominate any AGW signal there.
Like I already said that is a straw man argument. This whole article is meaningless.
Bob T. says: ” You may want to rethink your debate tactics”.
I don’t have “debate tactics”, since I’m not out to “win” any debate. I make criticisms where I think they are appropriate. For you apparently winning the “debate” is more important than improving your work. You prefer to get in to knit-picking arguments rather than to address the issues. Fine, whatever motivates you…
I think your proposition about ENSO having the possibility to create a net warming ( and presumably cooling) is likely to be correct and is a useful contribution.
This article however, is not one of your best.
This article by Bob does achieve its objective. The more light of factual analysis is turned on the ocean dynamics, the less credible it makes CAGW look.
This is not about SSTs, but about heat and temperature down to 700m – recall that the top 1-2 m only of the oceans contain the same heat as the whole atmosphere. So the trends in OHC to 700m represent processes occuring on timescales of decades at minimum, up to centuries and millenia. This is the timescale required to move enough heat to make a difference in the ocean. This places a very small limit on the possible significance of conjectured minor atmospheric radiative forcing over less than a century.
This data also underlines the reality – which AGW proponents still try to evade – that oscillation and change are the norm for ocean temperatures, that the ocean and climate are complex systems with differing dynamics at different places.
Incidentally if you take figure 4 for the Northern north Atlantic, starting from about year 2000, and invert it, you get something close to the trajectory of Arctic ice summer extent for the last decade.
The endless returning to particulates and volcanoes, soot etc, is also an indicator of climate ignorance, a mindset in which every tiny up or down wiggle of global temperature needs its own unique and distinct – and always atmospheric – “forcing”.
Global climate is ocean -driven, complex, a nonlinear-nonequilibrium system, Lyapunov-stable, resistant to perturbation but subject at the same time to fluctuate ALL BY ITSELF. The only forcings at work are a bunch of hominids trying to force other hominids to believe nonsense.