Part 2 of We Now Control Weather – Extreme Heat Events, Dirty Weather, Climate Disasters
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
This video is the second in the series of videos titled We Now Control Weather – Extreme Heat Events, Dirty Weather, Climate Disasters. The post that introduces Part 1 is here. The series are being prepared in response to James Hansen’s extreme heat events, Al Gore’s dirty weather, and Kevin Trenberth’s climate disasters videos that appear on YouTube. They all claim the weather we’ve been seeing recently can be attributed to manmade global warming. Unfortunately for those three gentlemen, who seem to believe more in climate models than observational data, the global sea surface temperature records do not agree with the models. That is, the global sea surface temperature records for the past 30 years indicate that Mother Nature is responsible for the warming, not manmade greenhouse gases. And that’s the topic of this video—the natural warming of the sea surface temperatures during the past 30 years. This video, like my book, lets the sea surface temperature data indicate and describe how it has warmed.
If you’ve ever run across one of my posts at a WattsUpWithThat or at many other climate change/global warming blogs or have seen me arguing with a proponent of anthropogenic global warming, and you’ve wondered what I was yakking on and on about El Niño this and La Niña that, this is definitely a video for you to watch.
I will be providing a third video in this series to illustrate and explain how we know the warm water released by an El Niño is created naturally. That video will also address questions received in response to this one. If there’s enough time, we’ll take a look at ocean heat content data to show how Mother Nature is responsible for its warming as well. If not, we’ll look at it in the part 4.
This video, Part 2, is less than 25 minutes long, so it’s something you could watch during your lunch break, or over dinner, or during a lull in your normal TV viewing schedule. I’ve decided against allowing YouTube to place advertising before the videos or to include any of those semi-transparent banners that obscure the view, but I have added a quick note about donations/tips at the end. They are very much appreciated.
Enjoy.
Links: I referred to a number of posts toward the end of the video. Here’s a link to the post Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About El Niño and La Niña… It provides a detailed overview of my book Who Turned on the Heat? The Unsuspected Global Warming Culprit, El Niño-Southern Oscillation. And here’s a link to Part 1 of my January 2009 cross post at WattsUpWithThat, which was my first post on this topic, and here’s Part 2. I’ve revised the data presentation since then to make it much easier to understand, primarily with how the oceans are subdivided. The dataset I used in that post has since been discontinued by NOAA, which is why I switched to the NOAA Reynolds OI.v2 data. The third post referred to in the video was The Warming of the Global Oceans – Are Manmade Greenhouse Gases Important or Impotent?
DATA SOURCES
I used the NOAA NOMADS website for the Reynolds OI.v2 data. But it and the HADISST data from video 1, along with the multi-model mean of the CMIP3 and of the CMIP5 climate model outputs (TOS) presented in this video, are available from the KNMI Climate Explorer. They’re provided so you can verify the graphs in this video.
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Thanks, Anthony.
A UK County Council leader has publicly challenged the warmists in his blog and then in a full council meeting, which has been picked up by the press.
Sound-minded people could pitch in to the debate on the newspaper website
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Cambridge/Global-warming-a-theory-by-bourgeois-left-wingers-16102012.htm
or on his personal blog
http://nickclarkeconservative.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/global-warming-the-king-is-not-wearing-any-clothes/
Any comments would be welcome and might prevent it just being a horde of Cambridge-centric warmists getting all the debate action.
Excellent work! Let’s extract a predictive model from the empirical data and test it.
Thanks for the second video Bob. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed but I can understand most of it.
BTW I’m surprised that after every Bob Tisdale post here that responders don’t include people like Leif or Willis and even Anthony doesn’t seem to want to get personally involved in Bob’s conclusions either.
Perhaps I’m wrong but Bob has given his explanation for the slight increase in temp over the last 100+ years but very few prominent people seem to come onto this site and either agree or disagree.with his conclusions.
Then one day if he’s proven to be correct there will have been countless billions $ flushed down many drains for a bit fat zero return.
Of course simple kindy maths shows us there is nothing we can do about the mitigation of AGW, but that’s another story. Problem is China, India and the non OECD won’t play ball.
Good presentation, but you mis-understand how GHGs warm the oceans. They do so by impeding cooling. So the failure to lose the heat gained from El Ninos is what GHG warming predicts. Although any cause of atmospheric warming would have the same effect, and probably cloud changes as well.
What I find significant is that it appears El Ninos are driven by East Pacific Ocean temperatures. This would explain why the EPO hasn’t warmed, while the rest of the world’s oceans have.
One other point. North Indian Ocean temperatures are strongly influenced by the strength of the Indian Monsoon, which is driven by summer temperatures in Central Asia. For that reason I wouldn’t draw any conclusions from North India Ocean temperatures without factoring in the strength of the Monsoon.
My takeaway from Bob Tisdale’s presentation is this: Oceanic warming is so lumpy/spotty, and so secondary to ENSO & AMO pulses, that it’s a bad fit with warmist theory, which would seem to prescribe something smoother and more evenly distributed. Trenberth’s attempt to wave the lumpiness & ENSO-secondariness away as mere noise is unconvincing. Rather, that noise seems to be the signal, for the most part.
@Philip Bradley
Hi Philip. You write “how GHGs warm the oceans. They do so by impeding cooling. So the failure to lose the heat gained from El Ninos is what GHG warming predicts.”
can you help me understand how this happens please? What GHGs are we talking about. Is it CO2 that is preventing heat loss from the ocean or are you including water vapour? I can understand the insulating effects of clouds but have a little trouble understanding how trace gasses which have differing properties of absorption at differing wavelengths are able to prevent heat loss from the ocean to the atmosphere.
Your comment appeared to be quite absolute so I’d appreciate if you could explain the process in a manner a layman can understand.
Thanks in advance.
Philip Bradley says: “Good presentation, but you mis-understand how GHGs warm the oceans. They do so by impeding cooling.”
The data indicates that greenhouse gases do nothing more than add to evaporation. There is no evidence of a greenhouse gas signal in the sea surface temperature or ocean heat content data.
Phillip Bradley: Further, climate model outputs represent how the sea surface temperatures of the global ocean would warm IF they were warmed by greenhouse gases. Sea surface temperatures in climate models that are forced (forced being the key word) by greenhouse gases simulate a relatively uniform warming among the ocean basins, inasmuch as the zonal-mean trends of satellite-era sea surface temperatures are basically the same for all ocean basins:
http://i56.tinypic.com/t4wpys.jpg
While in the real world they are not similar because the sea surface temperatures are not forced to warm. The warming is process related and the primary process is ENSO:
http://i53.tinypic.com/24zf4f9.jpg
Those two graphs are from the following post:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/part-1-%e2%80%93-satellite-era-sea-surface-temperature-versus-ipcc-hindcastprojections/
Yeah, Bob, sorry to be a pain. Don’t worry, getting dazed and confused in Excel is mandatory!
Could you address this question please, when you state there is no trend in the ” East Pacific”,
are you sure you are not just talking about the tropics (20S to 20N), in which case you would be right.
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh?ctlfile=monoiv2.ctl&ptype=ts&var=ssta&level=1&op1=14tave&op2=none&month=jan&year=1983&fmonth=sep&fyear=2012&lat0=-20&lat1=20&lon0=-180&lon1=80&plotsize=800×600&title=&dir=
zootcadillac says:
October 16, 2012 at 5:57 pm
can you help me understand how this happens please? What GHGs are we talking about. Is it CO2 that is preventing heat loss from the ocean or are you including water vapour? I can understand the insulating effects of clouds but have a little trouble understanding how trace gasses which have differing properties of absorption at differing wavelengths are able to prevent heat loss from the ocean to the atmosphere.
More than half the sun’s energy that reaches the surface enters the oceans. In order for the oceans not to get hotter and hotter, that energy must be transferred back to the atmosphere (and from there to space).
On average the atmosphere above the oceans is a little less than 2C cooler than the sea surface. And it is this temperature difference that allows the oceans to lose heat to the atmosphere. (avoiding the complexities of evaporation)
As GHGs warm the atmosphere they decrease the temperature difference with the ocean surface and hence slow (impede) the loss of heat from the ocean surface. Of course, anything that warms the atmosphere would have the same effect. With a partial exception for increased solar irradiance as that would also additionally warm the oceans.
here’s another CAGW extreme disaster!
16 Oct: Bloomberg: Dawn McCarty/Craig Trudell: Electric Car Battery Maker A123 Systems Files Bankruptcy
A123 Systems Inc., the electric car battery maker that received a $249.1 million federal grant, filed for bankruptcy protection and said it would sell its automotive business assets to Johnson Controls Inc…
The 30 largest consolidated creditors without collateral backing their claims are owed a total of more than $161 million, according to court papers. U.S. Bank NA, as trustee, is listed as the largest unsecured creditor with a claim of $142.8 million, according to court papers…
A123, which received a $249.1 million federal grant in 2009 to build U.S. factory capacity, needed a financial lifeline after struggling with costs from a recall of batteries supplied to Fisker, the plug-in hybrid luxury carmaker…
A123 has used $132 million of the $249.1 million grant awarded by the U.S. in 2009 toward building the two Michigan factories, the Energy Department said today in a posting on its website. A123 was required to spend up to one dollar of its funds for every incentive dollar received from the government, according to regulatory filings. The company also received a $6 million grant from the George W. Bush administration in 2007…
A123 has posted at least 14 straight quarterly losses. Its shares had fallen 85 percent this year to 24 cents as of yesterday’s close in New York.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-16/electric-car-battery-maker-a123-systems-files-bankruptcy.html
——————————————————————————–
Phillip Bradley: Further, climate model outputs represent how the sea surface temperatures of the global ocean would warm IF they were warmed by greenhouse gases. Sea surface temperatures in climate models that are forced (forced being the key word) by greenhouse gases simulate a relatively uniform warming among the ocean basins, inasmuch as the zonal-mean trends of satellite-era sea surface temperatures are basically the same for all ocean basins:
‘Forced’ is just the term from the Forcings Model of climate. It just means a change in forcing results in a change in the climate. I make no comment on whether this correct or not.
The real issue here is you are confusing causes with mechanisms.
For the purposes of this discussion, we can define causation as, a change in A results in a change in B.
You haven’t shown any change in ENSO. Therefore, you can not claim ENSO is a cause.
Just watched the debate. Everybody loves coal this cycle. Didn’t they read about the ice record?!
Thanks for the answer Philip. It appears you don’t actually know or are unwilling to say.
I understand the energy budget and I understand heat-transfer from the oceans to the atmosphere but merely saying that ‘GHGs warm the atmosphere’ is simply repeating the AGW hypothesis whilst offering no empirical evidence to prove it. Still unsure what GHGs you are talking about and what properties they have which is observed to be warming the atmosphere and shown to be statistically significant.
I know the theory and I fully agree that there are gases in the atmosphere that contribute some statistically insignificant warming effect but outside of water vapour I have yet to see anyone who posits the theory show me any actual observed evidence that trace gases are driving temperature rather than, as the ice core data show, being released as a result of the increase in temperature born of natural variability.
It’s all very well saying “this is what’s happening and this is why, but you have to trust me because it only exists in this computer algorithm I wrote fed by data I have adjusted from the observed” but for me, I like to know how it works and be able to see evidence of it working.
One of the answers I get from people when asking them how they know that “global warming’ is a man-made occurrence, is, “Thousands of scientists can’t be wrong, they have proved it with peer-reviewed papers” when what they should be saying is ” I have no idea so I just get my information from the mainstream media and trust that my taxes are being used to save us from a threat I’m guilty of aiding”.
The general public accept the theory as they have already bought the fear and in the face of catastrophe they would rather warming is a human creation because ‘if we broke it we must be able to fix it’. Natural processes need adaptation not mitigation.
Great Job on the presentation !
It would be a wonderful thing to have an interactive exchange for everyone on the same subject.
So many questions, and so little opportunity to ask about such tough ones anywhere aside from here!
Thank you !
Think about it………….
Philip Bradley says:
October 16, 2012 at 6:31 pm
Responding to:
zootcadillac says:
October 16, 2012 at 5:57 pm
Says Philip:
“As GHGs warm the atmosphere they decrease the temperature difference with the ocean surface and hence slow (impede) the loss of heat from the ocean surface.”
It sounds like you just made that up. How about this: As GHGs warm the atmosphere they increase the temperature difference with the cooler air above and because warm air is more buoyant than cool air the warm air rises faster, and is replaced by cooler air from above. Warmer air at the water surface allows more evaporation and that also causes more buoyant air. These normal processes give this lower region of Earth’s atmosphere its name, that is, the Troposphere**. The processes works mostly from conduction and convection and contributes to Earth’s energy balance by carrying energy away from the surface. A warmer lower layer of air should just speed the process.
____
**The term troposphere was first used in 1902 by Léon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort, a french meteorologist who was a pioneer in the use of meteorological balloons.
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/reports/wxfacts/Troposphere.htm
“The term troposphere was first used in 1902 by Léon Philippe Teisserenc de Bort, a french meteorologist who was a pioneer in the use of meteorological balloons.”
I think that soon there will be a paper from the warmist’s camp, where they “will find new knowledge” about conduction and convection. It will be unprecedentet and “unevoquival” ( or something like that ).
And they will need lots of tax-money for that super-duper computer hidden out there in the desert.
After 100’ds of billions of dollars, they will discover that, awwgh, it was the sun, the watercycle and coriolis behind it all. Damn!
But of course, they will say, it was worth it all, because we did what we thought was best at the time.
X Anomaly says: “Could you address this question please, when you state there is no trend in the ‘East Pacific’,
are you sure you are not just talking about the tropics (20S to 20N), in which case you would be right.”
X Anomaly, the maps in the video showed the East Pacific, from pole to pole, with the coordinates of 90S-90N, 180-80W. The corresponding graph showed it has a linear trend of 0.007 deg C/decade trend (no smoothing):
http://i48.tinypic.com/6nrnv5.jpg
The Eastern Tropical Pacific (20S-20N, 180-80W) that you illustrated, on the other hand, has a significantly negative trend of -0.081 deg C/decade (no smoothing):
http://i47.tinypic.com/34r9gub.jpg
So the source of any warmed water is below the surface of the West Pacific (subsequently brought to the surface and “sloshed” about. It presumably cools by convection and radiation, etc. The original warming of the subsurface Pacific must therefore be radiation absorption, mediated by cloud cover.
Great video, I understood it. No Homer Simpson moments.
When the DVD of the BOOK comes out I’ll buy it.
I laud the efforts of nearly everyone on this string for writing posts about science. Scientific information was shared. The science discussion was civilised. Posters asked polite, scientific questions and received respectful answers.
My view is that Mr Tisdale has some way to go before he meets exacting scientific standards for demonstrating the causality that lies at the heart of his la Nina/el Nino climate variability theory. I trust my summary represents his theory fairly.
Unfortunately, there were two politically-motivated posts that rather pollute the rational scientific discussion with unfunny sarcasm using non-scientific terms. I do not support censorship, self- censorship or cyber bullying with the intent to shut down discussion. Therefore, IMHO, such posts should be tolerated.
Perhaps, to save the precious time of serious scientific posters, non-science posters who want to play political games could put a little topic flag on their post headings: ‘non-scientific post follows’.
IMHO, the two peccant posts are:
pat says:
October 16, 2012 at 6:37 pm
here’s another CAGW extreme disaster!
Sarcasm says:
October 16, 2012 at 7:52 pm
Just watched the debate. Everybody loves coal this cycle. Didn’t they read about the ice record?!
Philip Bradley: Have you been hanging out at SkepticalScience? You seem to be trying their lame arguments. Example:
Philip Bradley says: “You haven’t shown any change in ENSO. Therefore, you can not claim ENSO is a cause.”
I have been illustrating, animating and discussing cause and effect for 3 ½ years. Where have you been? I seem to recall your comments on those threads, but maybe I was wrong.
Also, I’m not sure what you mean “that I haven’t shown any change in ENSO.” ENSO is a process that is continuously varying or changing. It creates warm water in the tropical Pacific during La Nina events and it releases that warm water during El Nino events. The process of ENSO released sufficient warm water from below the surface of the western Tropical Pacific during the 1986/87/88, 1997/98 and 2009/10 El Nino events to raise the sea surface temperatures of the South Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific about 0.24 Deg C since 1984:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2hh2dmf.jpg
Why? The sea surface temperatures of the South Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific fail to cool during the La Nina events of 1988/89 and 1998/99/00/01:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/figure-x.png
Why? As discussed and illustrated in dozens of posts before this one, there’s warm water left over from strong El Nino events. The following animation illustrates the Rossby wave returning leftover warm water from the 1997/98 El Nino back to the western tropical Pacific:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/animation-3-1.gif
You can also watch the impact of the Rossby wave and the returned leftover warm surface waters on the East Indian-West Pacific sea surface temperatures in this animation:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/east-indian-west-pacific-97-thru-012.gif
Additionally, the sea surface temperatures of the South Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific cool between the major El Nino events:
http://i49.tinypic.com/15ft2cl.jpg
Consider this, Philip. If the South Atlantic-Indian-West Pacific cooled fully during the La Nina events of 1988/89 and 1998/99/00/01, the sea surface temperatures there would be similar to those of the East Pacific. That is, they wouldn’t have warmed in 30 years:
http://i48.tinypic.com/6nrnv5.jpg
After you fully consider this reply, Philip, let me know, and we can discuss the North Atlantic.
Howskepticalment says: “My view is that Mr Tisdale has some way to go before he meets exacting scientific standards for demonstrating the causality that lies at the heart of his la Nina/el Nino climate variability theory. I trust my summary represents his theory fairly.”
Welcome, Howskepticalment. You appear new here, unless you’re using a new name. The discussion in the video was a very basic overview. I have been documenting, illustrating and animating cause (ENSO) and effect (the warming of sea surface temperatures, ocean heat content, lower troposphere temperatures, land-plus sea surface temperatures) at my blog and through cross posts here at WUWT since January 2009.
I’ll borrow a paragraph from a past post to give you an overview:
ENSO is a coupled ocean-atmosphere process that periodically releases naturally created warm water from below the surface of the western tropical Pacific and discharges heat to the atmosphere during an El Niño. The phrase “coupled ocean-atmosphere process” refers to the fact that many ocean and atmospheric variables in the tropical Pacific interact with one another. For that reason, a number of tropical Pacific variables are impacted directly by ENSO, including sea surface temperature, sea level, ocean currents, ocean heat content, depth-averaged temperature, warm water volume, sea level pressure, cloud amount, precipitation, the strength and direction of the trade winds, etc. I have presented the effects of ENSO on each of those variables in past posts. And since cloud amount for the tropical Pacific impacts downward shortwave radiation (visible light) there, I’ve presented and discussed that relationship as well. I’ve presented videos to show the impacts of ENSO on ISCCP Total Cloud Amount data (with cautions about that dataset), CAMS-OPI precipitation data, NOAA’s Trade Wind Index (5S-5N, 135W-180) anomaly data, RSS MSU TLT anomaly data, CLS (AVISO) Sea Level anomaly data, NCEP/DOE Reanalysis-2 Surface Downward Shortwave Radiation Flux (dswrfsfc) anomaly data, Reynolds OI.v2 SST anomaly data and the NODC’s ocean heat content data.
That is, I use data to support what I present.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. To give you an overview of the detail I’ve brought to the discussion, refer to the table of contents in the preview of my book:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/preview-of-who-turned-on-the-heat-v2.pdf
It’s likely I’ve already answered any question you may have. The following post provides an overview of the book:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/everything-you-every-wanted-to-know-about-el-nino-and-la-nina-2/
Regards
zootcadillac says:
October 16, 2012 at 7:53 pm
Thanks for the answer Philip. It appears you don’t actually know or are unwilling to say.
I understand the energy budget and I understand heat-transfer from the oceans to the atmosphere but merely saying that ‘GHGs warm the atmosphere’ is simply repeating the AGW hypothesis whilst offering no empirical evidence to prove it. Still unsure what GHGs you are talking about and what properties they have which is observed to be warming the atmosphere and shown to be statistically significant.
As I said. Emphasis added.
As GHGs warm the atmosphere they decrease the temperature difference with the ocean surface and hence slow (impede) the loss of heat from the ocean surface. Of course, anything that warms the atmosphere would have the same effect.
If you thought I was expressing an opinion on whether GHGs were the cause of atmospheric warming, I thought I was clear, I wasn’t.
If you are arguing the near surface atmosphere hasn’t warmed that is a different discussion.