Over at The Conversation Andrew Glikson asks Fact check: has global warming paused? citing an old Skeptical Science favorite graph, and that’s the problem; it’s old data. He writes:
As some 90% of the global heat rise is trapped in the oceans (since 1950, more than 20×1022 joules), the ocean heat level reflects global warming more accurately than land and atmosphere warming. The heat content of the ocean has risen since about 2000 by about 4×1022 joules.
…
To summarise, claims that warming has paused over the last 16 years (1997-2012) take no account of ocean heating.
Hmmm, if “…ocean heat level reflects global warming more accurately than land and atmosphere warming…” I wonder what he and the SkS team will have to say about this graph from NOAA Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory (PMEL) using more up to date data from the ARGO buoy system?
Sure looks like a pause to me, especially after steep rises in OHC from 1997-2003. Note the highlighted period in yellow:
From PMEL at http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/
The plot shows the 18-year trend in 0-700 m Ocean Heat Content Anomaly (OHCA) estimated from in situ data according to Lyman et al. 2010. The error bars include uncertainties from baseline climatology, mapping method, sampling, and XBT bias correction.
Historical data are from XBTs, CTDs, moorings, and other sources. Additional displays of the upper OHCA are available in the Plots section.
As Dr. Sheldon Cooper would say: “Bazinga!“
h/t to Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. for the PMEL graph.
UPDATE: See the above graph converted to temperature anomaly in this post.
And anything prior to 2003 is simply guesswork. The conflation of data sets and guesswork from the cli-sci people need to be highlighted more, IMHO. They have no idea what the OHC was in 1970.
[snip – sorry, drive by raw data claims from a table in a different depth data set aren’t useful with a visual post, graph it to show your claims and resubmit – Anthony]
Hmmm, I wonder what the second derivative of the AMO looks like?
Simply , here is where the magic ‘missing heat ‘ is so useful.
The ocean has heated , but has its not be found yet it not possible to measure it .
If the models say its so , its true no matter what reality tell us .
The graph of the 0-2000 m OHC — much more relevant than just the 0-700 m level — is, of course, here (Figure #2):
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
[Reply: Wrong graph. — mod.]
For those who can handle the raw data, the trend since 2005 is 240 trillion watts, or 0.47 Wm^-2 across the Earth’s surface:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc2000m_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv
By the way, the ten-year trend for 0-700 m OHC is still a statistically significant 45 terawatts.
REPLY: and each day around 120,000 terawatts of energy from the sun reaches the Earth, so it is a statistical sand grain on a beach in the whole Earthly energy budget – Anthony
@ James Sexton
All too true !
For that matter, Land Surface historical data is simply guesswork as well, since we have no statistically valid or accurate estimates of any type of errors or variability with non-random, unreplicated sampling for the entire historical record.
Garbage In, Garbage out.
But this is more UNFCCC conform “science” so it’s guaranteed in the next IPCC UNFCCC based “climate report”?
Placing a thick yellow line over the top of the graph does not make it flat – it is not flat yet. It may be considered flat for last four years but that’s hardly statistically significant. On longer period It has sure slowed down, but that’s it. Plus you’re comparing apples to oranges because the skeptical science graph is a sum of three factors out of which you only show one. That does not make a good counterargument, I don’t think the graph would change drastically if four more years were added to it.
REPLY: It is a highlighter marker, used to call attention to the area, like I routinely do with text. If I wanted to make a plot trend line, I would have used a plot trend line. – Anthony
The SkepSci graph appears to go through 2008. It goes up from 2003 to 2008. The PMEL data do not. So, either their data source was bad (not ARGO) or their plot of the data was wrong. Either way, it is not just old, it is bad. And in the context of that site, new evidence that it not only is not skeptical, it isn’t even science. Double fail.
Anthony wrote: “REPLY: and each day around 120,000 terawatts of energy from the sun reaches the Earth, so it is a statistical sand grain on a beach in the whole Earthly energy budget – Anthony.”
Unfortunately not, since vast majority of the Sun’s 120,000 trillion watts comes in and then leaves, of course. The 45 trillion watts is what’s sticking around (in just the top 1/5th of the ocean).
REPLY: and again, it isn’t statistically significant in the scheme of things, much like that 0.7C in the atmosphere isn’t statistically significant against daily diurnal variation or seasons. – Anthony
This is the correct chart which takes into account how much 10^22 joules is supposed to be accumulating and the tiny 0.46 W/M2 which is accumulating in the 0-2000 metre ocean.
http://s17.postimage.org/y2qsxky8f/OHC_Missing_Energy_Dec2012.png
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:27 pm
“— much more relevant than just the 0-700 m level — “
How so? IR from CO2 backradiation does not penetrate nearly that far. How are you supposing the heat gets there, when there is no change in the waters above?
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:30 pm
“By the way, the ten-year trend for 0-700 m OHC is still a statistically significant 45 terawatts.”
Claims of statistical significance are always dicey when the underlying correlations are unknown. It is necessary to assume a model, and that assumption drives the outcome. For example, we had a round of comments on another thread in which a disputant claimed that the trend in the global temperature metric from 1970 to 2000 was statistically significant, but the lull since then was not. When a reference was requested, he directed us to a paper which assumed a one-box model for the correlations. When cyclical correlations are so readily evident in the data record, such an assumed model is hogwash.
But, in any case, even if it were statistically significant, it is not climatically so.
Sea surface temperatures are flat since March, 1997 or 15 years and 10 months.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1997.1/trend
So heat presumably got lower down without affecting the surface. Is that correct? And am I to be worried if the deeper ocean went up from 3.0 C to 3.2 C?
My previous post was too polite. I did a quick check (less than 5 minutes using multilayer google) and found another Skeptical Science posting from 2011 showing the correct ocean heat as flat after 2003 in making a different but equally illogical and unsupported argument. See:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/cooling-oceans.htm
They really cannot have it both ways on one website at the same time.
As Wolfgang Pauli said, so bad “its not even wrong”.
Glikson also asserts “At the root of the issue is the non-acceptance by some of the reality of the greenhouse effect”.
Total fail. He is unable to distinguish between not accepting the greenhouse effect and sensible skepticism about its magnitude.
“””””…….Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:30 pm
By the way, the ten-year trend for 0-700 m OHC is still a statistically significant 45 terawatts…..””””””
So which Pope granted special dispensation to state ocean heat content in Watts; or even in terraWatts; or maybe its teraWatts ?
Howcome Joules gets lost in the shuffle here ?
Trenberth in his global energy budget cartoon, insists on using 342 W/m^2 as the value for TSI, instead of the more recently approved, NASA/NOAA value of about 1362 W/m^2.
TSI is a rate of arrival of solar energy on earth, or at least at our mean orbital radius from the sun, and it arrives continuously at that rate.
You cannot simply divide by four, because the earth is rotating. Power density is power density
Stuff happens at 1362 W/m^2 that can NEVER happen at 342 W/m^2.
So if you drop a 20 kiloton bomb on San Francisco; but you only do it once every 25 or 50 years or so, on average it really won’t do very much damage.
Good heavens!!! We have people actually believing we know what the OHC was in 1960?? NEWS FLASH!!! Even the ARGO buoys don’t provide enough proper coverage. What on earth brings people to believe such nonsense?
This ocean heat content thing is a genuine non-issue. Mass of the upper 2 km of oceans is about 6.5×10^20 kg. According to NOAA NODC OCL this layer has accumulated some 20.5×10^22 J of heat in the last 50 years. Specific heat of water is about 4.2 kJ/kgK, so average temperature of the upper 2 km of oceans has increased by a stunning 0.075 K in a half century.
In other words, ocean bulk temperature is utterly flat on multidecadal scale.
(On the other hand, if it goes on like this, in a mere ten million years our oceans will be 15,000 K warmer than they are today, much hotter than the surface of the Sun. Well, no. It would not go on like this for long, see?)
I don’t even believe a warming rate of 1.5 mK/year can be measured. Not even with thousands of buoys, much less with a few ships here and there pulling mechanical bathythermographs on strings.
REPLY: It is a highlighter marker, used to call attention to the area,
______________
That does not make any of my arguments wrong.
REPLY: it doesn’t make them right either, be as upset as you wish – Anthony
The PMEL graph look a lot like the Global temp anomaly graph over the same time period … and not surprising since most of the energy of the oceanic-atmospheric system is contained in the ocean (ie the current standstill in ocean heat content is largely driving the current standstill global atmospheric temp anomaly, as was the rise in atmospheric temps in the 90s)
Understand what’s driving the ocean heat content & where it’s heading you should be able to do the same for the atmosphere.
I recommend reading the post by Glickson (Visiting Fellow, Australian National U).
(1) He runs at length through the usual explanations for the pause — for which he cites no sources (do most climate scientists agree that the low in the solar cycle has had a substantial impact?) — then declares that there has been no “pause” since there has been ocean heating (most of which is in the 700-2000 m layer). What is the time delay for CO2-related heating to warm that layer? The pause is recent phenomenon, hence should it be seen as propagating from the atmosphere into the ocean heat sinks — layer by deeper layer?
(2) He winds up with a bang, attributing this mistaken view about the pause to “non-acceptance of the greenhouse effect”. Again no supporting cites (do the scientists mentioning the pause not accept the GH effect?). No explanation why so many prominent climate scientists (& the head of the IPCC) have acknowledged the pause — or reference to the peer-reviewed literature discussing the pause (eg, causes and significance).
What is his purpose in writing this? It looks quite slipshod for one of his professional training. Any guesses if he’ll receive critical feedback from his peers?
Bart said, “How so? IR from CO2 backradiation does not penetrate nearly that far.”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/
george e. smith says “So which Pope granted special dispensation to state ocean heat content in Watts; or even in terraWatts; or maybe its teraWatts ?”
A Watt is just a joule per second, and is an appropriate unit for the rate of accumulation of heat.
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:27 pm
Hi Phobos – Are the computer codes that perform the data processing summarized in the graphs available? I’d like to have a look at them. Thanks in advance.
“XBT bias correction” means they assume a “random + constant offset” measurement error model. This model ignores systematic measurement error and is certainly incomplete. Floating buoys have never been field-calibrated. No one knows the magnitude or distribution of the actual errors or the size of the accuracy confidence intervals.
Apart from all that, Graeme Stephens, et al.’s recent paper on the global energy balance puts the net surface budget to be 0.6(+/-)17 W/m^2. Given that uncertainty, how can anyone say that ocean heat content has increased?
Stephens, et al., wrote, “This [17 W/m^2] uncertainty is an order of magnitude larger than the changes to the net surface fluxes associated with increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (Fig. 2b). The uncertainty is also approximately an order of magnitude larger than the current estimates of the net surface energy imbalance of 0.6 ±0.4 Wm^−2 inferred from the rise in OHC [ocean heat content].”
As usual, climate stories depend on neglected error for their impact.
Phobos,
as Bere’nyi Pe’ter (Sorry about the apostrophes, not able to copy paste).
0.075K in half a century, is quite remarkably small amount. That looks like a number that could be due to a lot of sources. Maybe we need to measure another 50 years, before even bothering with making a comment about it.
After all, most solution proposed regarding global warming (Yup, stick with the original!) are all draconian government measures, that only a self serving totalitarian could like.
Most interesting. So, while atmospheric CO2 has been steadily increasing by 2ppm/Yr, not only have lower tropospheric temperatures been flat for 17 years, but upper ocean temps have also been relatively flat for 9 or 10 years.
So where’s the heat hiding this time?
Less energy entering the oceans whilst the jets remain more meridional with more global clouds.
Berényi Péter so how much extra energy would 0.075 K put into the atmosphere? Or how would this amount of energy contribute to global warming?
Anthony wrote: “REPLY: and again, it isn’t statistically significant in the scheme of things, much like that 0.7C in the atmosphere isn’t statistically significant against daily diurnal variation or seasons.”
So you think the daily temperature change in your backyard is more significant than the change of an ice age (~7 C)?
REPLY: Every time I read a sentence that starts with So…. I know its going to be a personal slam. Don’t put words in my mouth, Mr. Anonymous Coward. Your claim simply isn’t statistically significant, as other commenters also point out. – Anthony
Frank K. says: “Hi Phobos – Are the computer codes that perform the data processing summarized in the graphs available? I’d like to have a look at them. Thanks in advance.”
The NOAA OHC site gives the source for its graphs. Have you written those authors to ask them?
Once again Bill Illis hits the nail on the head, this time with the first graph that starts at zero (apologies if I missed an earlier one). If you really believe you have found a trend, go ahead and show a truncated graph that best makes your point, but if you want me to believe you, show me the same data nearby with the axis starting at zero.
Minor nit, the name is Glikson, not Glickson.
REPLY: Fixed, thanks. -A
Phobos says about heat accumulation . . .
OK, doing some quick math, perhaps others would like to check:
The top 700 meters of oceans is (rounded off) 2300 feet. At 70% of the earth’s surface, the volume is 1.263 E19 cubic feet (the ‘E’ is exponent – 1.263 x 10 to the 19th . .).
Sea water is about 29 kilograms per cubic foot – so the top 700m of ocean is about
3.6627 E20 kilograms.
It takes 4186 joules to heat 1Kg of water 1 degree C. Therefore the energy needed to warm the top 700 m of ocean 1 degree C is 1.533 E24 Joules.
Since a Watt is a joule/sec, and over 10 years (86400 seconds per day, x 365 days per year, x 10 years) 45 terawatts is 1.419 E22 Joules.
Dividing number of joules added to the ocean over 1o years (1.419E22) by the number of joules required to raise the ocean 1 degree C (1.533 E24) give a whopping 0.01 degrees C that the oceans have warmed.
Wow, that seems too low. Maybe I’m off by a factor of 10 ( . or not . .?) I don’t have time to check now. BUT 0.01 or even 0.1 degree C of temperature increase of JUST THE TOP 700 meters of ocean is awfully small . . .
. . seems to me like Phobos is trying give a false impression by noting how many terawatts the ocean was absorbing over 10 years. . . .
. .oops, didn’t finish the last sentence:
. . seems to me like Phobos is trying give a false impression by noting how many terawatts the ocean was absorbing over 10 years as IF IT WERE REALLY HEATING UP THE OCEAN. . .
I don’t understand. How does the ocean gain 10x the heat conternt accumulated in the air from the greenhouse effect? Especially when between 1960 and 1970 the ocean lost heat that didn’t appear in the atmosphere.
From ’97 to 2003: by warmist models, is this the “correct”, CO2 rate? Or is it a correct+natural rate, so the “actual” trend from ’97 is a split between 2003 and 2013?
A range of Scenarios leads you to the ballpark; observations tell you where the ball is heading. By now we should have at least one of the Scenarios deleted, wouldn’t you think? Unless you admit that the science is not settled, and the outcome, not certain.
It is weird how the warmist can be both definite and vague at the same time. Perhaps like the murder suspect who says he is definite he didn’t do the crime, but is vague about what he was doing during the time.
Anthony wrote: “REPLY: Your claim simply isn’t statistically significant.”
The math is actually pretty simple; the OLS linear trend is positive and statistically different from zero. That’s what a warming trend is.
REPLY: But in the larger scheme of things, still it is statistically insignificant, though I’m sure you’ll find it impossible to let go of that fact. For example total energy flux received by Earth by solar is 1730 petawatts, of which 30% is reflected by Earth’s Albedo, so figure 1038 petawatts of flux incident on Earth’s surface or 1,038,000 terawatts
Compare your retained 240 terawatts to that and you get a value that while it “is” technically greater than zero at 0.00023, it isn’t distinguishable from zero in the larger scheme of things. I’m sorry, your argument just isn’t something to get all that concerned about, unless of course you are a religious zealot where “any” change is not good and “must” be our fault.
See the new post by Willis where he converts to temperature anomaly, it is below the measurement precision (noise level) of the instrumentation. But, you can be afraid of it it you want. We are here for comfort and support of your fears. – Anthony
Martin C,
Thanks for that. You’re right, Phobos is trying mighty hard to give a false impression. I suspect he’s a regular at SkS, and he’s been running back and forth, collecting talking points.
His problem is people like you. Good job.
The more data that becomes available, the more obvious it is that CO2 is a completely insignificant player. There is absolutely no difference between global warming a century ago, when CO2 was much lower, and global warming from 1980 – 1997. Ockham’s Razor says that the simplest explanation is probably the best explanation: global warming is a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age.
Martin C said: “…give a whopping 0.01 degrees C that the oceans have warmed.”
Your number is basically correct for the top 0-700 m (I get 0.014 C in 10 years). The volume is huge, as you note, so the added heat is huge. If all that heat were added to the atmosphere instead, the warming would be roughly 1000 times larger, or 14 C.
We are dealing with large systems here; the ocean is a *huge* heat reservoir. That heat has consequences.
D.B. Stealey says: “Ockham’s Razor says that the simplest explanation is probably the best explanation: global warming is a natural recovery from the Little Ice Age.”
That’s a misunderstanding of basic thermodynamics. Thermodynamic systems don’t “recover” — they aren’t like a spring with a restoring force — temperature changes only if heat is added or subtracted from the system. Given the observed temperature changes, the question is, what is the source of that heat? Changes in solar irradiance don’t seem nearly enough to do so.
REPLY: Gosh, static state thinking. The Earth is a dynamic system, it changes its heat budget over time in response to a multitude of things (which is why we have cold years and warm years globally). It is not a static state system. Change clouds for example, just 2% and you have your answer…and that is just one variable. But please go ahead and try to argue that that Earth’s albedo or any other of its myriad of climatic variables have remained constant since the little ice age, and that couldn’t possibly affect solar insolation at the surface, TOA emission, etc. No for phantom folks like yourself, there’s no other answer but the mighty CO2 control knob, which is a factor, but just one knob in a whole dashboard full. – Anthony
Phobos says:
“That heat has consequences.”
Apparently not.
Phobos says: “Thermodynamic systems don’t “recover” — they aren’t like a spring with a restoring force — temperature changes only if heat is added or subtracted from the system.”
Phobos doesn’t understand. Prof Richard Lindzen explaina:
By the way, the ten-year trend for 0-700 m OHC is still a statistically significant 45 terawatts.
That is about 1/10 the internal heat flow from the Earth. Sure that this is not indicative of increased volcanic activity?
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 3:31 pm
“The NOAA OHC site gives the source for its graphs. Have you written those authors to ask them?”
No I haven’t. But I figured the source code(s) for processing the data should be available via links at the page. Do you work for NOAA? Could you ask them on our behalf? I think it would be very instructive to see the data processing codes. Thanks.
Floating buoys have never been field-calibrated. No one knows the magnitude or distribution of the actual errors or the size of the accuracy confidence intervals.
Nor do we know what biases free floating buoys introduce. Although IMO they introduce a warming bias, because drift will be from cold upwelling areas to warm downwelling areas, which explains the measured warming down to 2000 meters. All Argo has shown is ocean downwelling areas are warmer at depth than other areas of the ocean. Hardly a surprise.
We can say for certain is that the Argo buoys are not measuring the same ocean locations.
Werner Brozec 1.47pm says:
“So heat presumably got lower down without affecting the surface. Is that correct? And am I to be worried if the deeper ocean went up from 3.0 C to 3.2 C?”
Yes you should be worried. 90% or so of the ocean volume is below 3C. Water is at its densest at 4C. So if the ocean warms even by 1C there should be a corresponding drop in Sea Level.
I might be wrong as this flies in the face of what I have read elsewhere but it seems logical to me.
Phobos says: “Given the observed temperature changes, the question is, what is the source of that heat? Changes in solar irradiance don’t seem nearly enough to do so.”
Start here, Phobos: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/
The old “TSI does not vary much” meme will get you laughed out of here.
denniswingo says: “That is about 1/10 the internal heat flow from the Earth.”
No – heat flow from the Earth’s interior is about 47 terawatts
http://www.solid-earth.net/1/5/2010/se-1-5-2010.pdf
and constant over these time scales.
@frank K: NOAA’s OHC site says the results come from Levitus et al. They would be your contact for questions, code, etc.
@Michael Cohen says: TSI does not vary much
http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/tsi_data/TSI_TIM_Reconstruction.txt
and certainly not nearly enough to account for the observed changes in heat content.
PB, your comment about ARGO rings true. But then all previous records are much worse, by your own criterion. So the whole lot is worth nothing. So CAGW conclusions based thereon are worth nothing also.
Next time you opine, you might wish to think a couple of chess moves ahead, instead of playing the pathetic IPCC game.
You cannot have it both ways, now that your own data is falsifying your own conclusions.
Must be a tough cognitive dissonance.
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 4:53 pm
I downloaded the paper and no pointers or supplementary information about their code. Again, Phobos, do you work for NOAA? Can you ask on our behalf? Or does having the code available not matter to you? Do you care how the data were processed? Aren’t you curious at all? Just wondering…
@D.B. Stealey, quoting Lindzen: Of course climate changes. It changes when a factor(s) causes it to change. That’s what Lindzen is saying. There is no inherent restoring force drawing climate towards some preferred state — its state is determined by the forcings on it, and the specifics (feedbacks) internal to the system.
Here is the 0-700 metre ocean heat content and the 0-2000 metre ocean heat content (and the implied ocean heat content accumulation between 700-2000 metres).
http://s15.postimage.org/dyz8hdx0r/OHC_700_2000_M_Dec2012.png
As I noted, the ocean is accumulating a small 0.46 W/m2/year while the total net forcing today is 1.78 W/m2/year. Besides that, we should be seeing “Feedbacks” from water vapor and clouds reduction and albedo reduction which should be a further 1.5 W/m2/year. It is almost all missing or is merely being emitted back to space at an increasing rate as the forcing also increases (almost offsetting it entirely) [Now the theory always assumed OLR would increase as forcing increased but no estimate had the numbers at anything like the 72% plus that is occuring.]
There is also a question about the OHC accumulation below 2000 metres. There have been only two estimates done for this. One for a region around Antarctica which found a small 0.05 W/m2 accumulating there below 2000 metres and a new recent study for (most of) the north Atlantic below 2000 metres which found significant cooling. So, we can leave out OHC accumulation below 2000 metres until someone does the whole ocean.
Phobos;
temperature changes only if heat is added or subtracted from the system. Given the observed temperature changes, the question is, what is the source of that heat? Changes in solar irradiance don’t seem nearly enough to do so.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I do so love it when the trolls start talking physics.;
Sorry Phobos, but the doubling of CO2 changes the equilibrium temperature of the system as a whole by precisely zero. What is changes is the temperature profile from surface to top of atmosphere with some parts getting colder and some warmer. But it is not a source of heat, so your point is moot.
As is your point about the amount of energy change in the ocean and trying to translate that into a change in atmospheric temps based on the same amount of energy. Sorry, but you have the concept of a heat sink exactly backwards. Atmospheric temps can only stray so far from those of the ocean for the precise reason you stated. The oceans have 1400 times the mass of the atmosphere, and so where the temps of the oceans go, the atmosphere must follow. The fact that the oceans are such a massive heat sink is the reason WHY the atmosphere’s temperatures are incapable of the kind of fluctuation you propose.
If you wanted to extend your logic, we could calculate the kinetic energy of Mars and theorize what would happen if just 1% of it was transferred to poor little phobos. Why phobos would fly off in a random direction and exist our solar system in just seconds! But poor little phobos had no such worry, and so just orbits Mars thinking it is following some exotic desitny, but in fact it has very little actual choice in where it is going. It is going where ever Mars is going. And Mars is going where ever the Sun is going. And our atmospheric temps will indeed zig zag back and forth, leaving us wondering where they are going. But they are in thermal equilibrium with the oceans and hence they are going where the oceans are going.
Which appears to be nowhere.
Am I getting this right: there are people who believe that the steep rise on the graph from 1996 to 2003 is caused by the back radiation from an above-ocean atmosphere containing high quantities of water vapor and 360 ppm of CO2, going to the back radiation from an atmosphere containing high quantities of water vapor and 380 ppm of CO2 ??
Let me be more quantitive. That would be the square root of f*** all.
There are 3 published papers using the OHC data discussed here that the commenters on this thread should be aware of. All are published in Physics Letters A
———————– #1—————————-
Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance. II. Relation to climate shifts
by Douglass and Knox
Phys Letters A 366 (2012) 1226-1229.
(abstract)
In an earlier study of ocean heat content (OHC) we showed that Earth’s empirically implied radiation imbalance has undergone abrupt changes. Other studies have identified additional such climate shifts since 1950. The shifts can be correlated with features in recently updated OHC data. The implied radiation imbalance may possibly alternate in sign at dates close to the climate shifts. The most recent shifts occurred during 2001–2002 and 2008–2009. The implied radiation imbalance between these dates,in the direction of ocean heat loss, was −0.03 ± 0.06 W/m, with a possible systematic error of[−0.00, +0.09]W/m
——————– end #1. begin #2————————–
Comment on ‘Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance. II. Relation to climate shifts’
by D. Nuccitelli, R. Way, R. Painting, J. Church, J. Cook,
Phys. Lett. A 376 (45) (2012) 3466, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physleta.2012.10.010.
Nuccitelli et al. claimed that that the analysis of Douglass/Knox was in error.
——————end #2 begin #3 ———————————————
Reply to “Comment on ‘Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance. II. Relation to climate shifts’ ” by Nuccitelli et al.
by D.H. Douglass ∗, R.S. Knox
Physics Letters A 376 (2012) 3673-3675
(summary)
In sum, we show that the criticism of our results (change of slope in the implied FTOA at the climate shift of 2001–2002) by Nuccitelli et al. is unwarranted because they used different data of less temporal resolution. A more careful analysis of this data shows, in fact, consistency and not conflict with our results.
——————— end #3—————–
David H. Douglass
Dept of Physics and Astronomy
University of Rochester
Rochester Ny
Phobos, did you even bother to look at the link I gave you? Are you missing the point out of carelessness or deliberately being obtuse?, Never mind, I think we know.
davidmhoffer says:
February 25, 2013 at 5:29 pm
Phobos;
“temperature changes only if heat is added or subtracted from the system”
Actually, davidmhoffer, Phobos is quite incorrect here and apparently doesn’t even know the First Law of Thermodynamics…
Since the measuring instruments record temperature and not heat content, why is heat content graphed? Of course we all know why.
Why not report the heat content anomaly of the atmosphere?
Glikson also asserts “At the root of the issue is the non-acceptance by some of the reality of the greenhouse effect”
+++++++++
Greenhouses warm by reducing convection. Not by the glass blocking IR on its way out as is proposed for CO2.
Rather than a warming agent, CO2 is a radiator to space that cools the atmosphere, increasing convection, directly opposite to the process found in real greenhouses.
If CO2 actually heated the surface then we would see the atmosphere warm first, then the surface. This is what all the models predict. However, such an effect has never been observed during a warming period. The surface warms first, then the atmosphere. During a cooling period the surface cools first, then the atmosphere.
1) If you add GHG to the atmosphere, does radiation to space from the GHG increase or decrease the temperature of the atmosphere?
2) Without adding the GHG, how does the atmosphere cool in the absence of radiation to space?
3) If the atmosphere has no GHG and cannot cool except via conduction with the surface, would the atmosphere be warmer with altitude and coolest at the surface?
4) Is this not what we see in the ocean and in that portion of the atmosphere above the GHG layer? Increasing temperature with increasing altitude.
5) is this not also what we see on the Sun? Surface temperatures are much cooler than atmospheric temperatures without GHG.
Phobos,
What is the error model being assumed for this trend, and how is this selection justified given the sampling techniques involved? It seems you need to answer these questions before any claim of statistical significance can be believed.
James Sexton says (February 25, 2013 at 2:02 pm): “NEWS FLASH!!! Even the ARGO buoys don’t provide enough proper coverage.”
Willis discusses ARGO sampling here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/06/where-in-the-world-is-argo/
There are also links to some of his other ARGO articles.
Does anyone else think it’s a heckuva coincidence that ocean “warming” hit a plateau just about when ARGO went on line?
ferdberple says (February 25, 2013 at 5:59 pm): “3) If the atmosphere has no GHG and cannot cool except via conduction with the surface, would the atmosphere be warmer with altitude and coolest at the surface?”
Dr. Spencer discussed the no-GHG situation here:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/12/what-if-there-was-no-greenhouse-effect/
Tez says:
February 25, 2013 at 4:45 pm
Yes you should be worried. 90% or so of the ocean volume is below 3C. Water is at its densest at 4C. So if the ocean warms even by 1C there should be a corresponding drop in Sea Level.
That only applies to fresh water, not ocean water. See:
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/density.html&edu=high
“The density of ocean water continuously increases with decreasing temperature until the water freezes.”
So you figure I should now be worried about the rise in sea level due to the warming of 0.2 C and the resulting expansion? As I recall, the rate of sea level rise has been greatly over estimated by some people. Perhaps the oceans are not warming as much as some people think.
“Does anyone else think it’s a heckuva coincidence that ocean “warming” hit a plateau just about when ARGO went on line?”
Sorta just like the land temps plateaued very soon after satellites became accepted as a good way to measure temperature.
very odd coincidence, don’t ya think. 😉
It is relatively simple thermodynamics to understand that the phase shift from peak energy input to peak temperature will be much longer in the 0-2000 data than the 0-700 data. It should be expected that if actual Qin stops changing the deeper data will stop changing after the shallower.
Anthony: Note what the comics at Schleptical Science have done. First they used the pentadal data, which smooths out the sudden rise around 2002/03 and recent flattening. Then they placed the 0-700 meter data on top of the 700-2000 meter data and land heat content, which imposes the trends of those two datasets on the 0-700 meter data and skews the recent flattening of the 0-700 meter trend upwards.
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:27 pm :
What is the data source for previous, prior to 2003, 700-2,000 meter ocean depth?
Bob Tisdale says:
February 25, 2013 at 7:19 pm :
Skeptical Science is worthless anymore as a source of anything credible.
I remember when the first Argo data came out. It showed a cooling trend, until the data was “corrected.”
So if CO2 is thus shown not to correlate with anything in the last decade or so, what correlates with the rising temps since the start of the industrial revolution?
Evan Bedford says:
February 25, 2013 at 8:08 pm
A sarcastic skeptic would say “Only the number of years since 1650 has continually increased at the same average rate as the earth’s temperature since 1650.”
He (or she) would be wrong though, because that such sarcastic comment would be ignoring – just like the CAGW dogmatic religious would ignore it! – the rise in temperatures during the Roman Warm Period, the drop in the Dark Ages and Mayan deaths, the rise into the Medieval Warm period, and the subsequent drop into the Little Ice Age.
The ONLY correct answer is to modestly admit in all due humility ” We don’t know.”
RACookPE1978 says:
February 25, 2013 at 8:14 pm
Evan Bedford says:
February 25, 2013 at 8:08 pm
The ONLY correct answer is to modestly admit in all due humility ” We don’t know.”
___________________________________________________________
Well said ..
… but yet the Climate Cretins still can’t admit it.
If only the research money had been spent on real, as opposed to bogus research, I think we might actually know the answer by now.
D.B. Stealey says:
February 25, 2013 at 3:59 pm . .
THANK for the compliment D.B . . . the way that that ‘martian moon man’ (for those astronomy buffs out there) was going on about all that additional energy, my thought was ‘so what ?’; and it should be easy enough to calculate a temp change . .
Even his comment a little later about the ocean being a *HUGE* heat reservoir is misleading in my opinion, and I take exception to it. Now in terms of ‘joules’ and energy, it may be considered huge; HOWEVER, from a practical (and probably even a thermodynamic standpoint), an increase of ocean water from, say 84F to 84.03F (using his 0.014 C, and roughly converting it to F) in the tropics, or maybe 70 to 70.015 toward the ‘temperate zone’ latitudes, and , say 40 to 40.015 at higher latitudes, it has ZERO MEASURABLE EFFECT on the system – to evaporate any measurable amount of water, or somehow thermodynamically to do any measurable ‘work’ such as affecting ocean currents, relative to the heat energy (the enthalpy) already there.
Gary Hladik, even more interesting to see how Josh Willis of NASA corrected the ocean cooling to ocean warming from the first ARGO paper.http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
Bart says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:47 pm
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:27 pm
“— much more relevant than just the 0-700 m level — “
How so? IR from CO2 backradiation does not penetrate nearly that far. How are you supposing the heat gets there, when there is no change in the waters above?…”
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Before one considers how much DWLWIR penetrates the oceans to depth, one has to consider whether any and, if so, how much DWLWIR even reaches the very top surface layer of the ocean.
The optical absorption of LWIR in water is such that 20% of LWIR is fully absorbed within 1 micron, 40% is fully absorbed within 2 microns, and 60% is fully absorbed within 4 microns. About 83% of it is fully absorbed within the first 10 microns. See for example http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/10/06/does-back-radiation-heat-the-ocean-part-one/ This website cites a plot taken from Wiki.
For all practical purposes water is a LWIR block, much like a parasol is a sun block, or a high factor sun cream block is a powerful harmful UV block.
The first question that arises is, given that water is such an effective LWIR block, how does any DWLWIR reach the top surface of the oceans? This question arises because the ocean model referred to in Wiki (and the like) is an example of an ideal ocean, far divorced from the realities of life. The ocean considered is the ocean that is as flat as a mill pond. But in real life, this is not earth’s oceans.
According to a study conducted by Stanford University, the average wind speed over water is Beaufort 4 (see http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/winds/global_winds.html) Of course, averages can be misleading due to variability, and in the Atlantic and South Pacific, the wind speed is greater (see http://www.ceoe.udel.edu/windpower/ResourceMap/index-world.html). I have spent approximately some 30 years studying ship’s logs covering trading worldwide, and I can confirm that it is rather rare to see wind conditions of less than force 4 being recorded on ocean voyages, and such a review would suggest an average more like force 5 (on worldwide ocean trading routes).
NOAA gives a description of sea conditions as follows; http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/beaufort.html. It will be noted that at force 3 “crests begin to break, scattered whitecaps” and at force 4 there are “numerous whitecaps”. What does this mean? Well it means that already at force 3 the wind is drawing off the very top surface of the water which can be seen by the naked eye as crest beginning to break. The optical resolution of the human eye is not high, and the fact that the unaided human eye can, from a distance, see white crests means that more than a few microns of water is being ripped off. The human hair is between 17 to 180 microns. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair) perhaps on average approximately 50 microns (consider when standing say 5 metres from a person, how easy is it to see individual strands of hair?). The fact that the human eye can see white crests, which by force 4 are “numerous” in number, suggests that not less than about 50 microns of water is being ripped off the oceans and lies immediately above the oceans, particularly within say ½ metre above the ocean, as wind swept spray and spume.
Accordingly, before any DWLWIR can reach the oceans it has to first find its way through the wind swept spray and spume which lies immediately above the oceans. Given the optical absorption of LWIR in water, for practical purposes if there is even just 6 microns of wind swept spray and spume lying above the oceans at most only about 25% of DWLWIR even gets to reach the top surface of the oceans. If there is more than 6 microns of windswept spray and spume, even less than 25% of DWLWIR could penetrate this barrier. This is an issue which seems to be overlooked by those promoting the AGW meme.
It may well be the case that in force 5 conditions and above, none of the DWLWIR even reaches the very top layer of the oceans because it cannot penetrate the IR block consisting of the wind swept spray and spume that exists immediately above but divorced from the ocean below.
It is only once the DWLWIR has penetrated the spray and spume, that one has to ask how does that residual element (ie., such DWLWIR that is not absorbed by the windswept spray and spume which exists and lies immediately above the top surface of the ocean) heat the deep ocean? ie., the point to which Bart alludes. It is not easy to see by what mechanism DWLWIR can effectively heat the ocean, for a number of reasons:
1. Little if any DWLWIR actually reaches the top surface of the ocean since, for reasons detailed above, in the real world, most of it must surely be fully absorbed by the windswept spray and spume that lies immediately above the ocean (ie., say within ½ metre or so above the ocean).
2. Of the residual DWLWIR that has found its way past the windswept spray and spume some 60% of it is fully absorbed within 4 microns of the top surface of the ocean. But what happens to the DWLWIR so absorbed? Absorption of IR photons is essentially a light speed event, and theoretically (assuming the K&T energy budget is correct) there is so much energy absorbed within the first 4 microns of the top surface of the ocean that there would be copious amounts of evaporation (perhaps so much as to provide approximately 15 metres, or so, of global rainfall). This would arise unless in some way the energy received could be dissipated downwards into the deeper ocean before the top 4 microns are heated to evaporation point by DWLWIR being absorbed in the top 4 micron layer. But how is the energy dissipated downwards? What is the mechanism that dissipates this energy downwards?
3. It is not easy to see by what mechanism the LWIR absorbed in the first 4, or so, microns is dissipated downwards. It would appear that it cannot be conducted downwards since the energy flux is upwards not downwards at the top of the ocean and there is no known mechanism whereby conduction can take place against the direction of energy flux. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_surface_temperature from which it will be seen that the top surface of the ocean is cooler and that the ocean temperature increases from the top 10 microns through to about 5 metres, and only as from a depth of about 5metres onwards does the ocean begin to cool. It follows from this that energy flux is upwards not downwards, so how can any energy absorbed within the first 4 or so microns be conducted downwards?
4. The only other method that I have seen suggested is ocean overturning. However this is a slow mechanical method measured in many hours (about half a day). It is not clear that ocean over turning can effectively wrap and drag down the very top micron layer 9this is a problem in itself) but even if it could, this is slow mechanical process cannot dissipate energy downwards at a speed greater or nearly equal to the speed and rate at which DWLWIR is absorbed in the top 4 micron layer. Given the speed of photonic absorption in the top 4 or so micron layer, the mechanical process involved in ocean over turning cannot dissipate that energy down to depth before the energy absorbed in the top 4, or so, microns would raise the temperature in the first 4, or so, microns of the oceans to a temperature sufficient to drive evaporation form the top microns of the ocean.
I have asked Willis a number of times to explain the process by which energy from DWLWIR absorbed in the top few microns of the oceans can be dissipated downwards to depth before the energy absorbed in those microns heats those microns of water to a temperature driving evaporation. Despite many requests being made of him, he has at no time explained the mechanical process involved. He has not explained how heat can be conducted to depth against the direction of energy flux, nor how ocean overturning can dissipate the energy absorbed in the top microns before that energy would drive evaporation of those very microns of water.
As I see matters there is a significant problem with respect to the behavoir of DWLWIR and its interaction with the oceans which presently is not fully addressed, or even addressed at all, by those that support the AGW meme.
PS. I do not like referencing Wiki, but I consider that on the aspects covered above it is not contentious.
PPS. As noted I have studied ship’s logs for approximately 30 years. Today, ships record ocean temperature by taking the water temperature at the inlet manifold of the engine cooling system. This water is drawn at depth. Depending on the design and configuration of the vessel (to what extent it is laden and how it is being trimmed), an ocean going ship will draw water from a depth of between say 5m and 13m. A depth of 8m to 10m is probably quite typical (if there is such a thing). It will therefore be appreciated that when a ship records water temperature it is measuring water temperature drawn at a depth of say about 8 to 9m, not surface temperature. In practice, there is for the main part relatively little difference between the water temperature at about 8m and surface, but of course, ship’s logs, since they are not recording surface temperature, will understate what the surface temperature of the ocean is.
James Sexton says:
February 25, 2013 at 2:02 pm
////////////////////////////////////////////////
Absolutely. Even if the coverage was increased a thousand fold, we would still not have an accurate assessment of ocean heat content. ARGO is to be welcomed, but its coverage is far too sparse to draw any firm conclusions.
The point applies equally to all data sets being used in climate science. They are not fit for the purpose to which they are being put, the uncertainties are significant and are not sufficiently recognised by those promoting the AGW meme..
Bob, even more interesting; sea level budget including GRACE was used as justification for the corrections to bring OHC more in line. That leads me to believe ARGO is not based purely on empirical data by and of itself. Josh Willis had an epiphany.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page2.php
Martin C says: “Even his comment a little later about the ocean being a *HUGE* heat reservoir is misleading in my opinion, and I take exception to it. Now in terms of ‘joules’ and energy, it may be considered huge; HOWEVER, from a practical (and probably even a thermodynamic standpoint), an increase of ocean water from, say 84F to 84.03F (using his 0.014 C, and roughly converting it to F) in the tropics, or maybe 70 to 70.015 toward the ‘temperate zone’ latitudes, and , say 40 to 40.015 at higher latitudes, it has ZERO MEASURABLE EFFECT on the system.”
Here is an exercise for you. Estimate, to the nearest order of magnitude, the change in average ocean temperature between a glacial and interglacial phase of an ice age. It is closer to:
a) 10 C
b) 1 C
c) 0.1 C?
Re: Berényi Péter at 2:20 pm
To continue with Berenyi’s numbers,
if Mass of the Ocean, upper 2 km = 6.50E+20 kg
Specific heat of water is about = 4200 J/kgK
1 ZetaJoule is 1.00E+21 J
Heat to raise upper 2km Ocean 1 deg K = 2730 ZJ / deg K
Heat to raise 0-700m Ocean 1 deg K = 960 ZJ/K
Fig. 3 Y-Axis Range = 250 ZJ = 0.092 deg K (over 2 km depth)
Last Figure 0-700 m Anomaly = 180 ZJ = 0.188 deg K
Error bar height = 30 – 40 ZJ = 0.03 – 0.04 deg K.
We should also annotate these graphs to show when the Argo units were started to be deployed (mid 1990s?) when there were 1000, when 2000. The year 2007 saw the 3000 unit constellation in place. So frankly, the 0.1 deg K rise from 1993 to 2003 might be no more than inadequate spatial sampling, with error bars not accounting for the undersampling.
Which leads us back to Nyquist sampling as discussed in Decimals of Precision – Trenberth’s missing heat WUWT Jan 26, 2012.
See also:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/category/argo-data/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/23/an-ocean-of-overconfidence/ –
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/06/where-in-the-world-is-argo/ – On spatial sampling of Argo data.
.
I have asked Willis a number of times to explain the process by which energy from DWLWIR absorbed in the top few microns of the oceans can be dissipated downwards to depth before the energy absorbed in those microns heats those microns of water to a temperature driving evaporation.
Strawman argument. Nobody is claiming DWLWIR reaches the deep ocean. To the extent one can separate one packet of energy from another.
The oceans gain energy from visible light penetrating the oceans as much as 100 meters. In order for there to be no ocean warming. This energy gain must be lost at the surface.
Thus the oceans warm or cool due to factors that affect ocean heat loss at the surface, assuming constant solar insolation. One of those factors is DWLWIR, which increases the energy content of the atmosphere just above the surface (higher temps and increased humidity). Thus impeding energy loss from the ocean surface.
still ignoring that the ocean is not 700m depth and the sks graphs goes down to 2000m.
Phobos,
“Here is an exercise for you. Estimate, to the nearest order of magnitude, the change in average ocean temperature between a glacial and interglacial phase of an ice age. It is closer to:”
And you would know the correct answer how? 18O in carbonate shells? Oh wait, I thought that measured meltwater influx.
The reality is we have only the crudest notion what average ocean temperature is today. Guesstimates of glacial/interglacial average atmospheric change range from 4.5 to 10 degrees.
For the measures covered by the yellow line, the first half readings are all below the yellow line and the second half are above it. That’s not ‘flat’. (This isn’t the first time I’ve seen people making that mistake and I don’t expect it will be the last.)
REPLY: and again as answered previously and made clear in the story, it isn’t a trend line (though you want it to be) it is simply a yellow highlight to draw attention to the section of interest, just like I use the same highlight tool on sections of text or tables I post. – Anthony
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 2:34 pm
So, let me see if I have this right. You are saying that the deep ocean is being heated because the upper waters have a layer a few microns thick which absorbs IR backradiation from CO2, and this causes the upper waters to lose heat, apparently extremely, less rapidly than they otherwise would, and this excess heat is somehow being wicked to the depths without increasing the heat content of the upper waters.
Is that what you are saying?
Richard verner
Feb 25 2013 at 9:01PM
I like what you have to describe what happens out in the open ocean. However, if the wind is at force 4, the spray and spume you speak of is in a continuous transit state. It doesn’t matter what 4 micron absorbes the heat, a vast majority of that spray, spume and water surface, will churn within seconds by the wave action and the spray falling into the water. Not knowing more about how deep, waves mixes the surface, I am guessing, the top 5-10 meters, in the open ocean is quite well mixed. It will warm a little on a sunny windy day, it will cool a little on rainy dark days.
I grew up in an area where the tides are very small and the ocean is frequently covered in winter ice, but by late July and August the water is warm down to 4-5 meters, without any wind around. In fact, if it gets windy, then all that nice warm water we would go swimming in would be mixed out.
It cannot be that heating ends at the top 4 microns and everything below doesn’t warm somehow. It is not transferred through convection, currents or wind action. If it was, we’d freeze our butts off, instead of enjoying relatively warm 16-18C water 2-3meters down. With the sun up 18-19 hours a day in summer, the heat must simply be conducted down in such a stable environment. Discounting currents and wave action, some heat will conduct downwards. Not much but some.
The more interesting question is, how much would reach 700 meters down. I’d say nearly none. The layer is permanently stable, measured in geologic time. In other words, temperature changes if any happen due to tectonic changes, not much else.
The ARGO bouys are not tethered (?) so what stops them from “congregating” in the oceans like the pacific garbage patch?
http://ocean.si.edu/ocean-news/ocean-trash-plaguing-our-sea
Rehardless, we know the data is “adjusted”.
davidq says:
February 26, 2013 at 12:27 am
Richard verner
Feb 25 2013 at 9:01PM
I like what you have to describe what happens out in the open ocean. However, if the wind is at force 4, the spray and spume you speak of is in a continuous transit state. It doesn’t matter what 4 micron absorbes the heat, a vast majority of that spray, spume and water surface, will churn within seconds by the wave action and the spray falling into the water. Not knowing more about how deep, waves mixes the surface, I am guessing, the top 5-10 meters, in the open ocean is quite well mixed. It will warm a little on a sunny windy day, it will cool a little on rainy dark days.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
I agree that the spray and spume is in continuous transit and I agree that without knowing more about how deep waves mixes the surface, it is not easy to draw firm conclusions. What I have raised is what I perceive to be an issue on which more research and consideration is required. I consider it to be a factor that is overlooked.
I am sceptical that there is much interaction between windswept spray and spume and the water surface churning. The spray and spume is divorced from the very surface of the ocean; it is stripped off it and is airborne. At this juncture, convectional forces work upwards and away from the top surface ocean layer below, making churning difficult. Further, the airborne windspeed is say 7 to 9 metres per second (say 12 to 19 knots) whereas the speed of the ocean wave is perhaps only a couple of metres a second. The mechanical churning is at a slower rate and it is therefore difficult to see how it can effectively capture the windswept spray and spume and drag it back into the ocean surface below.
I have no definitive answers. I merely suggest that this is an area that needs much consideration of the physical processes involved since it may well be the case that relatively little DWLWIR actually finds its way into the top surface layer of the oceans and if that is indeed the case (even if only 10% of DWLWIR is absorbed in spray and spume and does not penetrate the top surface of the ocean) then reconsideration needs to be given as to whether DWLWIR is keeping the oceans from freezing (as Willis and others would assert), or whether it is solar energy received in the tropical ocean which is preventing the oceans from freezing (the amount of solar energy received in the tropical oceans being capable of raising the tropical oceans to well above 30 degC but this excess energy rather than heating the tropical oceans to a temperature above 30 degC is distributed to the non tropical oceans (thereby warming the non tropical oceans) by way of ocean currents etc.
RACookPE1978 says:
February 25, 2013 at 8:14 pm
The ONLY correct answer is to modestly admit in all due humility ” We don’t know.”
———————————————————–
I agree. To that end, 75% of all Climate funding should be immediately diverted to real world problems, h0w about we start with hunger in the USA? There should not be a man, woman or CHILD that goes to bed hungry. The other 25% can be divied up by people who’ve shown to be, and use the scientific method in their research.
Peter in MD
The deep ocean heat content argument is rather desperate since the models DON’T predict that the deep oceans should warm before everything else. No physical mechanism has been proposed which would concentrate heat down there. Indeed the time frame for ocean processes looks completely wrong for deep ocean warming (if such is occurring) to be caused by CO2. I remind you all that the deep ocean is still warming in response to the end of the last ice age! Not a sign of a system which responds quickly to changes in conditions.
The alarmists are arguing a highly inconsistent position here. If there is no mechanism to channel heat rapidly into the deep ocean then any observed warming down there can have nothing to do with recent changes in atmospheric CO2. On the other hand if such a mechanism did exist then it would pretty much kill any possibility of CO2 induced warming being dangerous. A mechanism of this type would mean that the two degrees of atmospheric warming which we are all supposed to be so concerned about would manifest instead as a 0.0005 degree change in deep ocean temperatures. If we have trouble even measuring it, how can it be a catastrophe.
Yes that tiny amount of ocean warming does involve an impressive amount of heat. If you could somehow take that heat back out of the deep ocean and put it into the atmosphere you would see some significant temperature changes. But the second law of thermodynamics forbids this. It is absolutely impossible for that 0.0005 degree change in deep ocean temperatures to ever convert itself back into a 2 degree rise in atmospheric temperatures for much the same reason that you can’t boil a pot of water on a block of ice. Heat just doesn’t flow in that direction.
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:43 pm
…[the] vast majority of the Sun’s 120,000 trillion watts comes in and then leaves, of course. The 45 trillion watts is what’s sticking around (in just the top 1/5th of the ocean)…
You were writing about the 0-2000 m depth. If the average ocean depth is 4 km then the 45 trillion watts is coming from half of the oceans and not 1/5.
Well, it appears my pleas to Phobos to help us get the source codes for the data he referred to in the first link he posted went unheeded. Given subsequent feeble responses to other simple questions, I think he/she is in over their head now…typical of our CAGW alarmists [sigh]. I’ll stop here…
THe picture I see shows heat increasing. Maybe more slowly, but I see nothing I would call a pause. Be fair, or the site turns into worthless propaganda, easily cut down by the opposing viewpoint.
OK, let me rephrase the question: what best correlates with the rise in temps since the start of the industrial revolution?
****
Phobos says:
February 25, 2013 at 1:43 pm
****
Nice wordsmithing! Reminds me of CO2 effects measured in nuclear bomb-blasts per unit area.
@frank K: I have no special access to any code. You can pursue it as well as I could.
Phobos’ claim makes my crap detector go off. Now that surface temperatures have been flat for 16 years we are to believe that by some unknown process CO2 greenhouse effect has stopped heating the atmousphere and started to heat the oceans?
It would appear to be good news as there is plenty of potential heat storage in the oceans that by the time CO2 doubles, we’ll have hardly noticed.
Champagne anyone?
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 7:39 am
Well, it was YOUR link. Too bad you don’t want to help out…apparently your not too curious.
Bart says: “You are saying that the deep ocean is being heated because the upper waters have a layer a few microns thick which absorbs IR backradiation from CO2, and this causes the upper waters to lose heat, apparently extremely, less rapidly than they otherwise would, and this excess heat is somehow being wicked to the depths without increasing the heat content of the upper waters.”
wicked = conducted [the average distance between water molecules is much less than a micron.]
The thin surface is much more complex, since it’s exposed to the atmosphere.
Phobos,
Everyone can see that you’re winging it. Run along now, back to Pseudo-skeptical pseudo-science for some new talking points.
Grant says: “Now that surface temperatures have been flat for 16 years we are to believe that by some unknown process CO2 greenhouse effect has stopped heating the atmousphere and started to heat the oceans?”
Not at all. CO2’s effect hasn’t “stopped” (of course). The surface temperature is subject to many factors, especially over short intervals — GHGs, but also ENSOs, solar irradiance, aerosols…. The effect of typical aerosols — that is, air pollution — is a big uncertainty in the equation. Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 attempted to control for solar, ENSOs, and stratospheric aerosols, and found the underlying manmade GHG signal is definitely there. (They weren’t able to control for low-lying aerosols, though, like air pollution over Beijing or Salt Lake City.)
Also, if you actually calculate the 16-year linear trend of the HadCRUT4 data, you’ll find it’s not zero. I get 0.05 C/decade, with a simple uncertainty (viz. no autocorrelation) of 0.02 C/decade.
@frank K.: Providing a link doesn’t mean providing everything behind it — it’s just a link. If you want the code, help yourself by writing to the authors.
Frank K. says:
February 26, 2013 at 5:10 am
“Well, it appears my pleas to Phobos to help us get the source codes for the data he referred to in the first link he posted went unheeded. Given subsequent feeble responses to other simple questions, I think he/she is in over their head now…typical of our CAGW alarmists [sigh]. I’ll stop here…”
Or, you could take the initiative and click on the link labelled “Access Data” at the bottom of the page on the first link he posted… or of course, you are perfectly entitled to just ‘stop here’ 🙂
Evan Bedford says: “OK, let me rephrase the question: what best correlates with the rise in temps since the start of the industrial revolution?”
The Berkeley BEST project answered that question explicitly: “…it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html
Phobos says:
Not at all. CO2′s effect hasn’t “stopped” (of course). The surface temperature is subject to many factors, especially over short intervals — GHGs, but also ENSOs, solar irradiance, aerosols…. The effect of typical aerosols — that is, air pollution — is a big uncertainty in the equation. Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 attempted to control for solar, ENSOs, and stratospheric aerosols, and found the underlying manmade GHG signal is definitely there. (They weren’t able to control for low-lying aerosols, though, like air pollution over Beijing or Salt Lake City.)
Wasn’t the point of your original comment supposed to counter the skeptic claim that temperatures have been flat? That all that extra energy trapped by CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans? Again your argument makes no sense because it was claimed that the hockey stick temperature rise was created by a dramatic increase in CO2 and that the science of the greenhouse effect was settled. Sorry, don’t buy it that somehow something dramatic has changed and that variables now mask what work CO2 is doing.
CO2 has increased quite a bit in the last 15 years, why haven’t surface temperatures followed if the science is settled.
Fact is, we have no idea why, just like we don’t know what the artic ice was like in 1925, or the OHC in 1990.
We don’t even have an idea of what ‘global average temperatures’ were like before 1979.
It’s indeed the point of The Surface Station Project that temperature data bases are flawed and unreliable.
“…ocean heat level reflects global warming more accurately than land and atmosphere warming…”
“…ocean heat level temperature variations are much smaller, and therefore easier to fiddle than land and atmosphere warming…”
There. Fixed that for you…
Grant says: “CO2 has increased quite a bit in the last 15 years, why haven’t surface temperatures followed if the science is settled.”
Again:
* Many factors influence surface temperatures, especially in the short-term.
* Aerosols are a big uncertainty, and certainly not “settled.”
* There are less factors for the ocean, which continues to warm.
* The surface *has* warmed in the last 15 years.
As a final comment. I am, as I think most of the ‘deniers’ that frequent this site are proponents of indefinite, unlimited increases in CO2 in our atmosphere. We simply see no evidence of any crisis and think the risk of doubling CO2 is quite minimal and that we are largely wasting resources to address a problem that doesn’t seem to exist.
If we saw sea level rise accelerating instead of its mostly 100 year unchanged rate
If we saw an an increase in the cyclone and hurricane activity (seems global warming prevents them ) sarc on
Or if we saw evidence of any other disasters,
But all we see are computer models predicting disaster.
None of the promised disasters of a warmer world have started to happen, let alone come to pass.
If those things were happening, we’d all be on board. We have eyes, and the emperor is buck naked and until he puts some clothes on we’ll call him out.
A. Crowe says:
February 26, 2013 at 8:18 am
Um…Sorry, A. Crowe, no data processing sftware there…BIG FAIL on your part for not even looking…
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 8:06 am
“Foster and Rahmstorf 2011 attempted to control for solar, ENSOs, and stratospheric aerosols, and found the underlying manmade GHG signal is definitely there. (They weren’t able to control for low-lying aerosols, though, like air pollution over Beijing or Salt Lake City.)”
Sounds like the theory is on life support if Tamino and Rahmstorff have to subtract arbitrary signals from the temperature average signal to show that it’s still there. Reminds me of…
“Blondlot, Augustin Charpentier, Arsène d’Arsonval and approximately 120 other scientists in 300 published articles[1] claimed to be able to detect N-rays emanating from most substances, including the human body with the peculiar exceptions that they were not emitted by green wood and by some treated metals.[3] Most researchers of the subject at the time used the perceived light of a dim phosphorescent surface as “detectors”, although work in the period clearly showed the change in brightness to be a physiological phenomenon rather than some actual change in the level of illumination.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-rays
DirkH says: “Sounds like the theory is on life support if Tamino and Rahmstorff have to subtract arbitrary signals from the temperature average signal to show that it’s still there.”
The signals aren’t “arbitrary” — they are factors that influence surface temperature. It would be incorrect to exclude known causative factors, right?
No doubt about it – the step up is associated with the super El Nino of 1998. Satellite record shows that global temperature was flat before it as well as after the step warming it initiated which raised global temperature by a third of a degree Celsius in four years. A case can be made that global air temperature is actually determined by the SST. This is very obvious for the ENSO oscillation which responds to local SST values.
If the warmists are acknowledging a ‘pause’ in global warming, how does this fit in with the ‘CO2 increases global warming’ theory. If there is a pause in atmospheric warming then the atmosphere is not warming how simple is that?
The CO2 being pumped in to the atmosphere has not abated, if anything it has increased. There have been no significant volcanic eruptions to cause any cooling and if they are now claiming that CO2 causes the Sea to warm, then why isn’t the atmosphere warming?
Finally, if they are claiming that the reason atmospheric warming has stopped is because of recent ENSO phases, then they must also acknowledge that the warm phase of ENSO can actually increase atmospheric warming.
To me it is looking more like ENSO effects air and sea temperatures more so than CO2..
Anthony wrote:
REPLY: It is a highlighter marker, used to call attention to the area, like I routinely do with text. If I wanted to make a plot trend line, I would have used a plot trend line. – Anthony
Wouldn’t it have been fairer to use a plot trend line?
[Reply: WordPress allows anyone to start their own blog for free. — mod.]
davidq says:
February 26, 2013 at 12:27 am
“It cannot be that heating ends at the top 4 microns and everything below doesn’t warm somehow.”
We are focused specifically on heating induced by IR radiation. Shorter wavelength radiation penetrates farther.
Ian H says:
February 26, 2013 at 4:40 am
“A mechanism of this type would mean that the two degrees of atmospheric warming which we are all supposed to be so concerned about would manifest instead as a 0.0005 degree change in deep ocean temperatures.”
Excellent point.
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 7:54 am
wicked = transported. In analogy to the capillary action of a wick in an oil lamp. You’re not explaining how this heat gets from the surface layer to the depths without leaving any signature in the upper layers.
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 8:06 am
Is there any observation which could falsify the proposition that human generated CO2 is heating the planet for you?
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 9:43 am
“Many factors influence surface temperatures, especially in the short-term.”
But, the same can be said of the preceding warming interval. It was of short duration, and has now retreated.
‘Aerosols are a big uncertainty, and certainly not “settled.”’
The science is supposed to have been “settled”. If you have a variable which can be fudged to cover any preceding era, but provides no predictive value, then you have no useful theory at all.
“There are less factors for the ocean, which continues to warm.”
At depth. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis of CO2 induced GHG warming, in which the forcing occurs at the surface. The temperature gradient is necessarily steepest at the boundary.
“The surface *has* warmed in the last 15 years.”
Insignificantly. Not consistently with the hypothesis of CO2 induced GHG warming.
Bart says: “Is there any observation which could falsify the proposition that human generated CO2 is heating the planet for you?”
If warming stopped (it hasn’t over climatologically significant timescales) or there were other known factors to account for the strong warming that’s being observed (there aren’t)..
The Earth emits infrared radiation. CO2, CH4 etc absorb and reemit infrared radiation. Given that, it’s just a matter of calculating the resulting energy imbalance.
These radiative issues are the part of the picture that is most amenable to calculations using bedrock physics, and they are among the *best* known parts of climate science. The complexities and difficulties lie in other areas: aerosol effects, clouds, and ENSOs and other ocean cycles.
Bart says:
“The surface *has* warmed in the last 15 years.”
Insignificantly. Not consistently with the hypothesis of CO2 induced GHG warming.
——————
Warming over the last 15 years according to GISS is 0.07 C/decade, with an 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.04 C/decade.
According to HadCRUT4, it is 0.04 C/decade, with a 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.04 C/decade.
Here the uncertainties are the simple OLS uncertainties. If you include autocorrelation with, say, an ARMA(1,1) model, the 15-yr trend uncertainty is large, about 0.14 C/decade, which simply shows you that there is enough noise in the system that 15 years is too short of an interval to find meaningful results.
Soon the very warm, El Nino year of 1998 is going to fall out the back of the 15-year window. What interval will be championed then? Can I suggest we simply use climatologically relevant time periods to deduce climatology, instead of periods that include weather (in the oceans)?
Anthony, what’s your evidence the warming has paused? The data you present show the warming continuing.
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 12:46 pm
I’ve been studying diurnal cooling, that has led me to purchasing a low temp (-58F) IR thermometer (Extech 42505). Yesterday it was finally clear out and I was able to measure the zenith. ~6:30 pm 1.5C temp @~50% Rel H, the Zenith was -40.2C.
I’m starting to believe that this is the big error in the models, where a doubling of Co2 would add ~1.1C that this temperature, not the surface temp. Since the zenith temp is from DLR.
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 12:46 pm
“…or there were other known factors to account for the strong warming that’s being observed (there aren’t)..”
It would be more accurate to say “widely accepted” rather than “known”.
“Given that, it’s just a matter of calculating the resulting energy imbalance.”
That is grossly simplified, to the point of being just plain wrong. It would be more accurate if you split the infinitive to say “just a matter of correctly calculating the resulting energy imbalance”. Then, you really should append “…, properly taking into account feedback reactions, which may be positive or negative.” Here are some considerations on these additions, and why they are necessary to produce an accurate statement:
1) To get significant warming from CO2, a positive feedback with water vapor has to be assumed. However, the evidence for such positive feedback is essentially non-existent (don’t give me any links to Dessler or any of the other poorly constructed arguments in support – they’ve already been eviscerated at this site and elsewhere) and, in fact, the balance of evidence suggests overall feedback, including cloud albedo enhancement, is negative.
2) Then, there is the matter of whether the direct local sensitivity of surface temperature to additional CO2 is necessarily positive. We had an enlightening discussion on this in the past week or two here at WUWT when Willis Eisenbach presented his “steel shell” analogy to the GHE. His setup was as follows: You have a planet with an internal nuclear furnace sitting in empty space. Based on the surface area and the rate of heat generation from the core, you can determine the steady state temperature of the surface using the Stefan-Boltzmann relationship. Now, you take a steel shell, or some material which is perfectly heat conducting and absolutely opaque to all radiation, and wrap it around the planet. The shell has some inner and outer radius, and is separated from the surface by a vacuum. It is elementary to calculate that the temperature of the planet’s surface will rise above what it otherwise would have been, and one can calculate it in steady state based on the four quantities: the rate of energy input from the core, the radius of the planet, the inner radius of the shell, and the outer radius of the shell.
Here’s the rub, which I showed in the comments to Willis’ post: if you leave the mean radius of the shell constant, and increase the thickness, the surface temperature goes down. The partial derivative of surface temperature to shell thickness is negative. This comes about because the radiating area toward the planet shrinks, while that to cold space increases.To the degree the analogy holds, the implication is obvious: with all other processes and reactions held constant, additonal CO2 in the atmosphere may actually tend to decrease surface temperatures.
3) This point actually goes beyond the statement, but it is the question of whether humankind is even responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration. The empirical evidence is actually negative on that score. Here is a plot of the rate of change of CO2 and scaled temperature anomaly with respect to a particular baseline. It is clear from this that the former is equal, to a high degree of fidelity, to the latter. Not only does this show that the arrow of causation is from temperature to CO2 and NOT the reverse, but it says that, to calculate the level of CO2 in the atmosphere at any given time in the last 55 years, all one needs is the starting level and the temperature history. Human inputs are largely superfluous. And, that fact argues that we do not understand the carbon cycle as well as we think, that human inputs are rapidly sequestered, and the level of CO2 is essentially a result of temperatures modulating the rate at which CO2 enters and exits the surface system.
So, in sum:
1) There is no evidence of positive feedback enhancing the GHE of CO2, and this is necessary for the effect to be significant
2) Additonal CO2 does not necessarily enhance the GHE, and may even produce surface cooling
3) Humans have no control over atmospheric CO2 levels in any case
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 1:02 pm
“If you include autocorrelation with, say, an ARMA(1,1) model…”
See my post above. There is no justification whatsoever for using such a model, and the results are meaningless.
I can’t believe you brought up the same one-box model I specifically critiqued.
“Anthony, what’s your evidence the warming has paused? The data you present show the warming continuing.”
It does? Whats the slope look like over the past 10 years (tip- look at the yellow line).
[My message of one minute ago had an apostrophe in “moderator’s” that was incorrect so I have reposted it below]
Wouldn’t it have been fairer to use a plot trend line?
[Reply: WordPress allows anyone to start their own blog for free. — mod.]
With all due respect the moderator’s reply has not answered my question. Normally my comments and questions tend to support postings on this blog but the reply above is the sort of reply that I would expect from the moderators of Real Climate if I questioned the way in which they displayed data. I expected better from Watts Up With That. If everyone started their own blog there would be no debate on climate issues.
From eye-balling the graph I suspect that a plot trend line would show a very slight upward trend. It would probably not be significant but even so a statistician should choose what he or she thinks is the fairest way of displaying data.
[Reply: Anthony explained, so it is a moot point. Maybe he will do it differently in future based on your suggestion. But I suspect that in this instance it will remain as is. — mod.]
The horizontal line here is within error of any given point, but it requires the upper end of the error bars on some points and the lower end on others. Together, those leave it very unlikely to be accurate. This is why having more data can narrow down results. The trend is small, the system is poorly modeled, and the data itself may have systematic errors or unaccounted-for sources of uncertainty so under no conditions would I support basing policy on this trend, but this is the sort of thing we are supposed to shoot down here.
Bottom line, even if the little bit of ocean warming claimed was perfectly accurate, it is still a very long way below what the models predicted, The fact that once again “climate scientist” produce charts without error bars makes them WORTHLESS for public policy.
Phobos, where is the C in your CAGW world of very minor ocean warming without error bars?
Anyone? Anyone at all? (Still trying to find out what mechanism best correlates with the warming since the start of the industrial revolution). (Thanks, Phobos. I already know what Muller and you and myself think; just trying to get some sort of hypothesis from the rest of the folks on here).
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 8:06 am
Not at all. CO2′s effect hasn’t “stopped” (of course). The surface temperature is subject to many factors, especially over short intervals — GHGs, but also ENSOs, solar irradiance, aerosols…. The effect of typical aerosols — that is, air pollution — is a big uncertainty in the equation.
———————————————————————————————
The problem is, phobos, that the length of “pause” is now approaching the length of the warming that started all this.
Very roughly, warming from 1975 to 1997 = 22 years (too short to be called climate under the AGW 30 year rule incidentally) followed by no warming 1997 to 2013 = 16 years with at least another 4 (to make 20) now predicted by the met Office. Note, I said “approaching the length”, not “reached”. i’ve noticed how you like to mischaracterise things that others post so thought I should make that clear 😉
So if the pause is a “short term effect of other factors” what’s to say that the (almost equally short term) increase in warming wasn’t also a short term effect of other unknown factors? Apart, of course, from the VERY unscientific (not to mention unconscionably arrogant) attitude that “It must be that because we can’t think what else it might be”!
@ Roy feb 26 2:24pm
,
The mod’s reply seems clear enough to be honest. The line isn’t intended to suggest a trend.
In fact, if you look again you’ll see that it’s not even a straight line. It’s a simple “brush stroke”, presumably done with a paint package, in exactly the same way you might swipe a highlighter pen over a printed diagram to highlight an area of interest. If it was intended to show a trend then we could expect (as is customary) a line in the same weight as the graph itself rather than a wiggly yellow felt-tip!
Perhaps he could have made it “more wavy” to make that clearer but he did actually refer to it as “the HIGHLIGHTED PERIOD in yellow”
David says: “The fact that once again “climate scientist” produce charts without error bars makes them WORTHLESS for public policy.”
The charts are presented both with and without error bars; per the note on the main page, the latter are here:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/index1.html
Mark Buehner says: “Whats the slope look like over the past 10 years”
This is very easy to calculate; the raw data is here:
0-700 m:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv
0-2000 m:
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc2000m_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv
For 0-700 m, the 10-year trend is 44 TW, with an OLS 2-sigma uncertainty of 30 TW.
For 0-2000 m, the trend since the data began in 3/2005 is is 240 TW, with an OLS 2-sigma uncertainty of 50 TW.
Joe says: “Very roughly, warming from 1975 to 1997 = 22 years (too short to be called climate under the AGW 30 year rule incidentally) followed by no warming 1997 to 2013 = 16 years with at least another 4 (to make 20) now predicted by the met Office.”
If you guys keep repeating the same mistakes, I’m going to keep pointing them out.
Surface warming over the last 15 years according to GISS is 0.07 C/decade, with an 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.04 C/decade. According to HadCRUT4, it is 0.04 C/decade, with a 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.04 C/decade.
That’s just the surface. In this period, the lower troposphere has warmed by one dataset (UAH), but not by another (RSS). And the oceans, where more than 90% of the extra heat goes, have warmed over this period in the 0-700 m level. (0-2000 m data is only 8 years old.)
The surface (especially) is influenced by other factors and fluctuations that can temporarily swamp the underlying GHG warming of about 0.15-0.20 C/decade.
Phobos keeps tap-dancing around the inconvenient fact that every alarmist prediction has failed. Every one of them.
The planet is simply not doing as they predicted. In any other field of science, that would require the rejection of their conjecture, hypothesis or theory. Honest scientists test their conjectures against real world observations. If observations contradict their hypothesis, then their hypothesis is falsified.
But the climate alarmist crowd is not honest. Despite being consistently wrong, they hang on to their belief system, proselytizing to skeptics here, who know better: Planet Earth, the ultimate and final Authority, is falsifying the alarmist narrative, which is proving to be pseudo-scientific nonsense.
What would it take for climate alarmists like Phobos to admit that his belief system has been falsified? For many years the alarmist crowd went along with noaa’s conclusion that 17 years would be sufficient to debunk the CO2=CAGW claim. We are at that cutoff, but all we see now is the ratcheting up of endless arguments about why we cannot use that time frame. It’s called moving the goal posts, and they do it all the time.
D.B. Stealey says: “What would it take for climate alarmists like Phobos to admit that his belief system has been falsified?”
As long as the ocean continues to warm as strongly as it is, and ice keeps melting, and each decade keeps being warmer than the past decade, AGW will certainly not be falsified. There is simply no other explanation for these, and the underlying science of the greenhouse effect is robust. (Aerosols, clouds, deep ocean dynamics, not so much.) The question is, without such an explanation, what will it take for your idea (that there is no AGW) to be falsified?
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 9:07 am
As long as the ocean continues to warm as strongly as it is, and ice keeps melting, and each decade keeps being warmer than the past decade, AGW will certainly not be falsified. There is simply no other explanation for these […]
——————————————————————————————————
You see, phobis, you’re using that appeal to arrogance again – what you mean is “there is simply no other explanation THAT WE KNOW OF”. Your stance, by contrast, relies on the implicit assumption that “we know everything”.
In scientific terms that’s a VERY big , VERY arrogant, and VERY basic fail – especially in a scientific discipline that hasn’t even crawled out of daipers to use the potty by itself yet!
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 7:13 am
If you guys keep repeating the same mistakes, I’m going to keep pointing them out.
Surface warming over the last 15 years according to GISS is 0.07 C/decade, with an 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.04 C/decade. According to HadCRUT4, it is 0.04 C/decade, with a 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.04 C/decade.
—————————————————————————————————–
Perhaps you could point out this continued warming-as-usual to the UK Met Office and the head of the IPCC, both of whom seem to have acknowledged the pause that we’re “mistaken” about? Just saying, like 🙂
Phobos – please go educate yourself about the First Law of Thermodynamics and stop bothering us with your politically-motivated CAGW diatribes… Do you work for NOAA or the controversial NASA/GISS? Wouldn’t surprise me…
Phobos says:
“As long as the ocean continues to warm as strongly as it is, and ice keeps melting, and each decade keeps being warmer than the past decade, AGW will certainly not be falsified. There is simply no other explanation for these, and the underlying science of the greenhouse effect is robust. (Aerosols, clouds, deep ocean dynamics, not so much.) The question is, without such an explanation, what will it take for your idea (that there is no AGW) to be falsified?”
May I deconstruct that pseudo-scientific nonsense? Thank you:
First off, the ocean is not ‘warming strongly’, as Envisat and ARGO both show [and before the latest “adjustment”, ARGO showed a clearly declining ocean temperature, and before another “adjustment” Envisat showed this.].
Next, “ice keeps melting”. But that is only in one hemisphere, and recovery has begun. The alarmist prediction was that ‘polar ice’ would decline. Currently, global polar ice has recovered to its long term average.
Next, Phobos dodges the question, saying, “AGW will certainly not be falsified.” Earth to Phobos: your belief system is showing. Answer the question: what would it take to falsify your belief in your CO2=CAGW claim? Specific numbers, please. Or is it a fact that nothing could falsify your belief system?
Next: “There is simply no other explanation for these…” That is the Argumentum ad Ignorantium fallacy: ‘Since I can’t think of any other cause, then CO2 must be the reason for global warming’. Arguing from ignorance is a hallmark of the alarmist crowd.
We are just beginning to sort out the various climate forcings. Many are still unknown. But the more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that CO2 is, at best, only a minor third-order forcing, which is swamped by second-order and first-order forcings [each higher order being an order of magnitude greater]. “Carbon” is claimed to be the primary reason for global warming. But that is false, as radiative physics makes clear. At current concentrations, additional CO2 is insignificant — as the planet is verifying.
Run along now back to SkS, Phobos. You are getting a thrashing from everyone here when you post your anti-science beliefs. The talking points you raise have been deconstructed here repeatedly in the past, and as you can see you are making no headway bringing them up again.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 7:13 am
“Surface warming over the last 15 years according to GISS is 0.07 C/decade, with an 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.04 C/decade. According to HadCRUT4, it is 0.04 C/decade, with a 2-sigma uncertainty of 0.04 C/decade.”
Based on an arbitrary statistical model which produces notional results, and even the high end is markedly lower than what would be required for significant warming. It is high time you started entertaining the possibility that the alarm has been, to say the very least, overstated, and plan your retreat to a more defensible position.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 9:07 am
“As long as the ocean continues to warm as strongly as it is…”
It hasn’t warmed strongly in the upper reaches. There is no pathway for the lower layers to warm from surface forcing without any complementary warming of the upper layers.
“…and ice keeps melting…”
Ice is always melting somewhere, and growing in other places. You are cherry picking your evidence, and leading yourself astray.
“…each decade keeps being warmer than the past decade…”
Even by a negligible amount? This is thoroughly specious. When you are on a plateau, the measurement error alone is enough to continue setting new illusory records.
“There is simply no other explanation for these…”
Argument from ignorance fallacy, as Joe explains. Thus, the leaders of the Church insisted Galileo must be wrong about the Earth moving about the Sun – they just couldn’t think of a way that could happen.
“…the underlying science of the greenhouse effect is robust.”
With large and increasing divergence between projections and reality? This is some definition of the word “robust” of which I was previously unaware.
“Aerosols, clouds, deep ocean dynamics…”
Grasping at straws, and getting bent out of shape over the trees whilst losing sight of the forest.
“The question is, without such an explanation, what will it take for your idea (that there is no AGW) to be falsified?”
That the model projections start agreeing with reality. That it be definitively proved that 1) water vapor feedback is positive and as large as assumed, and there are no countervailing significant feedbacks 2) that the local sensitivity to additional CO2 is, in fact, positive 3) that either the temperature data or the CO2 data are wrong, so that CO2 can indeed force temperature, and that the rise in CO2 concentration of the past century can indeed be laid at the feet of humankind.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 9:07 am
…
The question is, without such an explanation, what will it take for your idea (that there is no AGW) to be falsified?
———
Phobos,
I’m glad that you asked. I swear to you, I would not be here on WUWT today if somebody presented an AGW theory of temperature and climate with CO2 as the driving variable that proved to be useful in making accurate predictions. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard warnings about accelerating sea level rise, and yet sea level rise remains virtually constant at about 3mm/yr. I look at IPCC AR4 projections that are obviously in disagreement temperature-wise with conditions today, and in fact see that the case presented that most closely matches what has occurred is the ‘Year 2000 Constant concentrations’ case. This is not science.
Perhaps it’s the beginnings of a science. Maybe it will get there someday. Maybe the AGW theory is in fact correct! However, I don’t see how anyone can reasonably hold that it has been validated today. The state of AGW thinking right now, imho, is best described by this quote:
Take quantum physics. I hate the very idea of quantum physics. I don’t like it, it doesn’t make any sense to me, trying to follow the math gives me brain damage, and to put it very bluntly and simply I don’t want it to be true. Tough Noogies For Me, nobody has been able to falsify it. I promise you, you won’t find me on blogs arguing against quantum physics. So, on the day you (or anyone) can present an AGW that’s both useful and accurate in making predictions, I’ll be the first to admit I was wrong.
@D.B. Stealey: If someone asked you what was happening to climate during the Medieval Warm Period, would you base your answer on what happened from 997 A.D. to 1012 A.D.?
Bart says:
“…each decade keeps being warmer than the past decade…”
“Even by a negligible amount? This is thoroughly specious.”
The latest 10-year period is 0.14 C warmer than the previous 10-year period.
–
I realize you’re going to dismiss anything I write (all of which is, of course, just the standard scientific view). I’m wondering why you spend your time on blog comments instead of writing a series of papers that would set everyone straight and end all this debate once and for all?
Evan Bedford says:
February 26, 2013 at 8:29 pm
“Still trying to find out what mechanism best correlates with the warming since the start of the industrial revolution.”
Hot air from scientifically illiterate members of the press corps?
Martin C, in your calculus exercise, why didn’t you simply use energy imbalance of 0.7W/m2, where whole calculation is virtually a one liner? Oh yeah, this one liner gives 0.1C/decade, so it appears you made a mistake after all. You conceded that might happen, but I’m puzzled at why you would be totally unconcerned with order-of-magnitude error. Care to explain?!
“Im wondering why you spend your time on blog comments instead of writing a series of papers that would set everyone straight and end all this debate once and for all?”
Phobos – do you work for NOAA, NASA, or are employed by an agency (or academic institution) that is being funded by the government to work on climate-related research? And why are YOU spending your time on a blog?
And please – educate yourself on basic science like the First Law of Thermodynamics (which you clearly do not understand)…[sigh]
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 10:43 am
The latest 10-year period is 0.14 C warmer than the previous 10-year period.
———————————————————————————–
Oh for crying out loud! Can you REALLY not see the fallacy in that as evidence of continued warming? Or (more insultingly) do you really think that the rest of us can’t?
Here, let me help you.
10 minutes ago I put a kettle onto the gas hob to boil. The water out of the tap was very cold thanks to this global warming we’re having – around 6 degrees C. It took the kettle 5 minutes to reach boiling but I’ve been busy so haven’t turned it off yet and it’s still boiling away happily to itself.
Over those first 5 minutes, the average temperature of the water was 53 degrees C. Over the last 5 minutes the average temperature has been 100 degrees C – a whopping 47 degrees hotter!
That does NOT mean that the water is still heating up!
Phobos says:
“@D.B. Stealey: If someone asked you what was happening to climate during the Medieval Warm Period, would you base your answer on what happened from 997 A.D. to 1012 A.D.?”
Thank you for your strawman response. But my question to you concerned the fact that noaa stated 17 years as decisive. Argue with them if you want to move the goal posts. And when you answer a question with a question, it means you have no good answer.
My question, once again: what would it take for you to admit that your CO2=CAGW conjecture has ben falsified?
• • •
Here is my own falsifiable hypothesis, if you want to have a go at it:
At current and projected concentrations, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere
I have posted that same hypothesis numerous times over the past year. If you can falsify it, you will be the first. So give it your best shot.
Empirical observations show conclusively that CO2 does not have the claimed warming effect. AGW may exist, but there is still no verifiable, measurable scientific evidence of AGW. If there were verifiable measurements of AGW, the hotly debated question of the climate sensitivity number would be answered. As it is, WAGs range from the IPCC’s preposterous 3ºC+, to ≈1ºC, to many at ≤ 0.5ºC, to Dr Miskolczi’s 0.0ºC for 2xCO2.
CO2 probably does have a minor effect. But based on the fact that the only correlation was a temporary, coincidental one between around 1980 and 1997, AGW should be disregarded as inconsequential. You have hung your hat on the wrong rack, and now your comments are backing and filling, trying to explain away why your predictions all failed.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 10:43 am
“The latest 10-year period is 0.14 C warmer than the previous 10-year period.”
It wasn’t yet at the plateau. This is worse than specious. This is prestidigitation.
“…all of which is, of course, just the standard scientific view…”
Not really. Just standard. The crowd is often quite mad. Don’t be afraid to get separated from the herd. That way lies opportunity.
“I’m wondering why you spend your time on blog comments instead of writing a series of papers that would set everyone straight and end all this debate once and for all?”
It isn’t my job, I don’t get paid for it, and I don’t enjoy it. I just hate seeing others make such a hash of things. And, inter alia, making my life more difficult while closing off opportunities for my heirs. Besides, I am humble (or experienced) enough to know that there are more powerful forces than truth, and I’d hardly get a fair hearing, coming as I do from outside the clique. Maybe my observations will percolate up to someone with influence and make an impression. Best I can do. Small moves, Ellie. Small moves.
D.B. Stealey says: “Thank you for your strawman response.”
It’s not a strawman response — it’s a serious question, Please answer it.
Also, in January 2007, the 15-year trend for the UAH lower troposphere was 0.32 (0.06) C/decade. What were you saying then about the trend? What would you have said to someone who said that, based on that, we’d have a catastrophe by 2100?
“But my question to you concerned the fact that noaa stated 17 years as decisive.”
It’s not what NOAA says, it’s what one paper said (Santer et al) — a paper based on climate models. Are you now saying you consider the results of climate models to be natural law?
Phobos,
I asked first, and repeatedly, and you dodged. Answer my question — specifically, using numbers:
What would it take for you to admit that your CO2=CAGW conjecture has been falsified?
Your credibility is already low, so if you move the goal posts out much farther, it will be shot completely.
When you have answered, I will answer.
I note also that you did not respond to my challenge to you to attempt to falsify my testable hypothesis:
At current and projected concentrations, CO2 is harmless, and beneficial to the biosphere.
D.B. Stealey says: “What would it take for you to admit that your CO2=CAGW conjecture has been falsified?”
Asked and answered:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/02/25/fact-check-for-andrew-glickson-ocean-heat-has-paused-too/#comment-1233326
Now, about the MWP and that trend from 2007….
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 3:53 pm
“What would you have said to someone who said that, based on that, we’d have a catastrophe by 2100?”
The situation is not symmetric. Today, there is supposed to be a relentless process driving temperatures higher. CO2 is roughly 30 ppm higher than it was 15 years ago, 35 % of the delta from the pre-industrial era which is supposed to be responsible for the temperature increase of the period roughly 1970-2000. The signal should be much greater than the noise, and yet… nothing. No more rise in temperature. If you do not see that as a significant failure of the hypothesis, then you are in very deep denial.
Bart says: “Today, there is supposed to be a relentless process driving temperatures higher.”
Oh my, if that’s what you think, you really haven’t understood anything.
Phobos,
I asked for specific numbers. You gave none. Vague answers are non-answers; they can mean whatever you want them to mean.
Keep in mind that moving the goal posts very far from 17 years sharply reduces credibility.
Finally, I note your reluctance to try and falsify my testable hypothesis. Smart move on your part.
“…because the surface temperature is a massless two-dimensional global field while heat content involves mass, the use of surface temperature as a monitor of climate change is not accurate for evaluating heat storage changes.“
– Roger Pielke Sr., Physics Today, Nov 2008
http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-334.pdf
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 4:23 pm
“Oh my, if that’s what you think, you really haven’t understood anything.”
Riiight. So, sometimes, CO2 is forcing and sometimes, it’s just not in the mood. What a lame response.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 4:28 pm
But, the oceans are not showing any heating from CO2, either. That’s the whole point of this thread.
If you disagree, if you persist in this absurd idea that surface forcing can cause the lower ocean layers to heat without leaving any trace in the upper waters, then please give us your theory as to how the heat is getting down there. Is it a Star Trek transporter beam operated by the evil oil companies?
D.B. Stealey says: “I asked for specific numbers. You gave none. Vague answers are non-answers; they can mean whatever you want them to mean.”
I don’t have specific numbers. There are still a lot of uncertainties in calculating surface temperatures: aerosols, clouds, ENSOs, deep ocean dynamics.
As I’ve said already, the radiative part of the calculation is among the best known parts of the science (and easiest to calculate). Fundamental physics, proved long ago, shows that CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase causes warming. That’s 100% certain. The warming is about 1.2 K of surface warming for a CO2 doubling, and feedbacks (which are known to exist from paleoclimate studies) increase that, but they are difficult to fully incorporate, and equilibrium climate sensitivity is unknown to a factor of about 50% and maybe more. Many lines of evidence support these broad conclusions, but getting more specific is very, very challenging, both theoretically and observationally.
If you’re asking me to say when would I conclude that increases in CO2 won’t cause warming, there is no point at which I would say that. CO2 causes warming. If surface temperatures do not increase over climatologically significant intervals of several decades (15 years reveals nothing about climate due to oceanic weather), there has to be something else going on that is not understood — it won’t be that CO2 is misunderstood. Good bets would be clouds, or low-lying aerosols.
Now you can answer my questions.
The comments section was hilarious! I love watching people scramble to confuse the topic while they pretend they are speaking from a place of scientific authority.
I used to be as die hard of a believer myself, until of course I dug into the raw data. It will be interesting to watch the AGW theory die, it is to bad it will hurt reality based environmental threats.
We have a dynamic moving system with several factors not being fully understood that could more then account for our small shifts in temps. We have feedback loops that are simply not following their marching orders that are mandatory for the temps to even get to the levels we are told to fear. But still the choir is in full force. This generations climate “science” will alter how science is viewed for generations to come.
Bart says: “So, sometimes, CO2 is forcing and sometimes, it’s just not in the mood.”
Again, you either don’t understand or choose to pretend not to. There are other factors besides CO2 that influence surface temperatures, and over a short time period like 15 years they can combine to overwhelm the underlying GHG warming (like now) or combine to exaggerate it (like 2007).
“But, the oceans are not showing any heating from CO2, either. That’s the whole point of this thread.”
But they are. I’ve given the numbers many times now, and no one knows what they are for the bottom half of the ocean.
“If you disagree, if you persist in this absurd idea that surface forcing can cause the lower ocean layers to heat without leaving any trace in the upper waters, then please give us your theory as to how the heat is getting down there.”
Oceans circulation works like a conveyor belt. It may be that heat is being being carried to the North Atlantic and convected downward, or there may be changes in its circulation upwards. There are still many unknowns in this area.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 5:14 pm
“As I’ve said already, the radiative part of the calculation is among the best known parts of the science (and easiest to calculate). Fundamental physics, proved long ago, shows that CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase causes warming. That’s 100% certain.”
It isn’t. I have explained why. It’s presence increases warming relative to its absence, but the partial derivative (incremental warming for incremental increase) is not certain to be positive. It depends on the distribtution of the gas and the state of the system.
“…and feedbacks (which are known to exist from paleoclimate studies) increase that…”
Again, not demonstrable. You can’t diagnose the sign of feedback based on a scatterplot. Phase relationships can tilt the graph in either direction regardless of dc sign. A proper analysis, such as shown here can clearly identify the feedback as negative (180 deg phase at dc).
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 5:25 pm
“There are other factors besides CO2 that influence surface temperatures, and over a short time period like 15 years they can combine to overwhelm the underlying GHG warming (like now) or combine to exaggerate it (like 2007). “
Or, can cause a brief accelerated rise, as happened in the ~1970-2000 era. You are playing with a two-edged sword. If the current lull is not significant, then there is no reason to conclude that the previous run up was not due to “other factors” as well.
But, my point still stands. CO2 is supposed to be a relentless forcing. It does not take time off. And, it is supposed to be getting stronger, not weaker, so it should be even harder to override it now than it was during the previous warming spell.
“Oceans circulation works like a conveyor belt.”
OVER HUNDREDS OF YEARS!!! Where is the warming that is supposed to be occurring right now???
Well, let’s look at these “mythical” other influences that are claimed to have stopped global qwarming in its tracks for 14-15-16-17 years (take your pick) …
No volcanoes to speak of since Pinatubo. They are the cause, nor the excuse.
Western aerosols and particulates had never even been measured in the period when THEY were supposedly cooling the world (1940-1973), but China’s aerosols haven’t been measured either – and they’ve likely been increasing up ONLY up north. Not much circulation between north and south though – what overall reflectivity then? The same.
Actually, China excepted, the world’s air is more clear now than in the past 70-odd years. But temperatures stabilized? Hmmmn.
CO2 rose, but temperatures remain stable. Hmmmn.
Quick somebody think of something else. I’m afraid Phobos needs to look at his namesake, but, then again, they told us that the sun did NOT cause heating during 1973-1997. A very short 24 year period.
Actually, the ONLY 24 year period in the history of the world that both CO2 and temperature rose at the same time.
RACookPE1978 says:
February 27, 2013 at 5:53 pm
“Actually, the ONLY 24 year period in the history of the world that both CO2 and temperature rose at the same time.”
Well, if you believe the ice core data, they were both increasing in the period ~1910-1940, too. But, the increase above the nominal trend was the same in that period as ~1970-2000, about 0.4 deg peak to peak, even though CO2 was dramatically lower.
In fact, it is pretty clear that the temperature record is essentially a trend with an approximately ~60 year cycle superimposed, which hasn’t varied in the last century while CO2 levels have increased inexorably. It’s currently turning down right on schedule. There’s nothing unusual or CO2 related about it.
Phobos says:
“Now you can answer my questions.”
I note that your own ‘answer” was so vague as to be completely meaningless. I repeatedly asked for numbers, and you gave lame excuses. The fact is that you are a True Believer in your alarmist pseudo-science narrative. If you gave specific numbers you would no doubt be proven wrong. There is nothing more upsetting to a religious True Believer than to find out his god doesn’t exist.
So I will answer your question as follows:
In science, measurements are necessary. Without measurements, a conjecture can proceed no farther. It can become neither a hypothesis, nor a theory. It remains an assertion; a conjecture. An opinion. That is not good enough to implement policy.
A logical and persuasive case can be made that CO2 does not have the claimed global warming effect:
The best charts are the longest term charts. Whether or not there is great accuracy in the temperature recording instrument does not matter. It is the long term trend that matters. Because whether or not a centuries-old thermometer is accurate, it certainly will show an accurate trend line over time. Thermometers work, even old ones.
The Central England Thermometer record is a case in point. It clearly shows that the natural recovery since the LIA warmed the planet along the same long term trend line [the decelerating green line] for hundreds of years, without any recent acceleration.
If AGW was a scientific fact, then following the ≈40% rise in CO2 over the past century and a half, we would have observed a decisive acceleration in global temperature. But there has been no such acceleration. Rising temperatures have remained within fairly tight parameters, and they have not broken out above those parameters — as they must, if AGW does what the alarmist crowd had incessantly predicted. But the alarmists were wrong in that prediction, as in every other prediction they made.
Radiative physics is a fact, so how do we explain this glaring discrepancy? Easy: the first few dozen parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere produce most of the warming effect. But at current CO2 levels, there is such a minuscule effect that it is not even measurable. As Willis points out, CO2 is, at best, a minor third order forcing, which is swamped by second order forcings — which are in turn swamped by first order forcings. Each order is about an order of magnitude larger than the previous order. Conclusion: at present concentrations, CO2 — and thus, AGW — are non-events that can be completely disregarded for all practical purposes.
This is not just an opinion; it is backed by the actions of Planet Earth — and Planet Earth is deconstructing your ‘evil carbon’ belief system. Why should anyone listen to you, when the planet is decisively proving you wrong?
Finally, looking at the big picture, we see that all the wild-eyed arm waving is based on a myopic short term, coincidental parallel between CO2 and temperature. But that coincidence is breaking down, and the alarmist crowd is frantically running around [and incessantly thread-bombing], trying to rationalize the failure of another of their predictions.
Phobos seems to be one more mindless troll from the sks stable sent here to mouth inanities and obfuscate. But like all trolls, he ends up having his backside tanned and handed to him on a plate. This a scientific site, Phobos. The beauty of that is the facts are presented and speak for themselves. You on the other hand have presented nothing but arm waving and are being made to look like a fool with every inane post of yours, not that it was a very difficult task.
I find it astonishing that nobody on this learned website seems to know — or to even want to hazard a guess — as to what mechanism (other than those inconvenient greenhouse gases) might have caused the run up in temps since the start of the industrial revolution. The silence is deafening.
Evan Bedford says:
February 28, 2013 at 6:27 am
I think it remains to be determined, personally I think it’s somehow related to what the Sun is doing and or “Space Weather” and how it effects the Earth.
What I think has been determined is it can’t be from changes to Co2, and up until this pile of rubbish, I’ve never heard Scientists claim that because we can’t think of another cause it has to be X. I don’t have a problem with this being the basis of future research, but using it for policy that has led to people freezing to death, and dying from heat exhaustion is insane.
But it’s pretty easy to get an IR thermometer and when the temp is low enough to remove most of the moisture from the air(near freezing), then when the sky is clear measure the DLR from Co2. I measured the skies temp as -42C when it was ~1.5C outside. I suspect that even if an increase of Co2 increases that temp from -42C to -40.8C, it’s not going to do much of anything to surface temperatures. Especially when water vapor adds 20-30 more degrees of temperature to the sky.
IE water vapor, not Co2 controls surface temperatures, and a change from -42C to -41.8C isn’t by itself going to increase surface evaporation, causing an increase of temperatures. High CS values are fantasy of activists that are doing their own version of geopolitical engineering.
@D.B. Stealey:
You didn’t answer my specific questions. They’re rather simple ones:
1) Would you judge the climate changes of the MWP based solely on what was happening from 997 AD to 1012 AD?
2) What would you have said to someone in January 2007 who pointed out that the 15-year trend of the UAH lower troposphere data was 0.32 C/decade?
MiCro says:
February 28, 2013 at 8:05 am
Actually I think it’s more likely the bulk from the temp swing if from AMO and PDO cycles in ocean temperatures. Which might be influenced by the Sun and or space weather.
D.B. Stealey says: “It is the long term trend that matters.”
Then why have you been spending so much time and effort on the short, 15-year trend??
What would you have said to someone who pointed out, in Jan 2007, that the UAH LT 15-yr trend was a scary looking 0.32 C/decade? I suspect you’re not answering this because you know have said, that’s too short of an interval, let’s wait and see. Right? And if so, why doesn’t that same answer apply now?
The fact is (as Roger Pielke Sr pointed out in the quote above), the surface is subject to relatively large natural variations, and it’s a lousy place to look for the energy imbalance created by GHGs and other climate factors. It’s two-dimensional, so it can’t hold any heat anyway. There are many better places to look: the ocean especially. Also, ice. If those are warming and melting, who wouldn’t believe that the surface is bound to warm also, over the long-term?
D.B. Stealey says: “The Central England Thermometer record is a case in point.”
Why are you basing planetary climate based on what’s happening in one tiny corner of it?
As soon as you do that, you open yourself up to claims about other tiny corners, of which there are no end. You’re not doing planetary climatology, you’re doing very regionalized climatology.
REPLY: Apparently “phobos” hasn’t paid much attention to the lone tree at Yamal, the most “influential tree in the world”. Of course such focus on small data sets is OK when they do it. What a laugh phobos’ argument is. He/she/it is great entertainment. Another Linfield activist, no doubt. Love the name: Phobos (mythology); the Greek god of horror. Though… I think Comus would be a better fake identity for you. – Anthony
MiCro says: “I’ve never heard Scientists claim that because we can’t think of another cause it has to be X.”
And that’s not what they’re saying.
They’re saying
1) the Earth’s surface emits infrared radiation
2) GHGs absorb the upwelling IR, and re-emit it in all directions, some of it downward.
3) This continues until equilibrium is established, which is why the Earth’s surface radiates at 390 W/m2 when the Sun only delivers 240 W/m2.
4) Given this, it’s a matter of using spectroscopic data for the GHGs, quantum mechanics, and thermodynamic properties of the atmosphere to calculate the effect of changing GHG concentrations.
5) Compare measurements to expectations:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html
They’re *also* saying, we’ve looked around, and can’t find any other influences that would cause the warming we’re seeing. This reinforces our GHG findings.
MiCro says: “Actually I think it’s more likely the bulk from the temp swing if from AMO and PDO cycles in ocean temperatures.”
Here’s something I’d really like to know the answer to, if anybody knows: what is the change in regional (or global) ocean heat content between a crest and trough of a PDO or AMO cycle?
The PDO and AMO indices aren’t temperatures, but normalized first principal components of regional SSTs. Can they be translated into changes in regional OHCs? If so, what is the change in regional (or global) OHC over half their cycle?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 8:36 am
MiCro says: “I’ve never heard Scientists claim that because we can’t think of another cause it has to be X.”
It’s exactly what they’re saying, all of the following is just window dressing.
Unfortunately the link is behind a paywall.
But, measure DLR with a IR thermometer on a clear day with temps near 30F, tell me what temp you read.
Then calculate the difference between how much the daily temp goes up, and how much it falls during the night. I have, follow the link in my name, and look at the updated temperatures blog. I don’t care what the radiation/temp trend is doing, it’s not causing a loss of cooling at night. It’s as simple as that.
Phobos says:
“Then why have you been spending so much time and effort on the short, 15-year trend??”
I cover all the bases, both short and long term, as you can see in my reply above. The inescapable conclusion: the climate alarmists’ case is debunked by the ultimate Authority, Planet Earth. That is why Phobos is arm waving in such excruciating consternation: the planet is proving him flat wrong.
Tap dance all you want, Phobos, but the rest of us can see that your runaway global warming narrative has been totally falsified. All of your predictions have failed. There is nothing unprecedented happening, much as you wish for your climate disruption fantasy to occur.
Run along now back to SkS, where they eat up your globaloney nonsense. This is the internet’s Best Science site, and your arguments fail here.
MiCro says: “It’s exactly what they’re saying, all of the following is just window dressing.”
Window dressing??? That IS the core of everything — the basis of the greenhouse effect. Is there some specific part of that science you disagree with? Because all you seem to be doing is throwing it all out because it’s inconvenient.
You can see the relevant figure from Harries et al here:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~dennis/321/Harries_Spectrum_2001.pdf
Evan Bedford says:
February 28, 2013 at 6:27 am
I gave you my guess previously. But, this is a false dilemma. If I go to the hardware store to buy a hammer, and the proprieter tells me “we have no hammers, but we have light bulbs and a tuna fish,” I am not compelled to choose between the light bulb and the tuna fish. Neither one will serve my purpose to drive nails through hard wood. Similarly, I do not have to accept a clearly flawed hypothesis as fact, just because it is the only one you find acceptable.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 8:04 am
…and subsequent posts. You keep proffering the same shallow platitudes which have already been found wanting. Simply repeating the same discredited arguments over and over is not going to gain you any ground. It is getting monotonous.
Phobos says:
“You can see the relevant figure from Harries et al…”
That’s the problem, the link says the greenhouse effect is “inferred”. But there are no measurements of AGW or the ‘greenhouse effect’, so it is still nothing but a conjecture.
That the best you got? If so, it’s a big FAIL.
@D.B. Stealey:
OK, so you’re not going to address my two specific questions. Your avoidance of them is very telling.
PS: No one is predicting “runaway” global warming. Have you ever heard of the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 10:05 am
“That IS the core of everything — the basis of the greenhouse effect. Is there some specific part of that science you disagree with?”
Already addressed here. Your viewpoint is superficial and shallow. I wonder if you have ever even studied calculus.
@D.B. Stealey says: “but the rest of us can see that your runaway global warming narrative has been totally falsified.”
Remember this post?
“Sea level may drop in 2010,” posted on January 17, 2011, Guest post by John Kehr
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/17/sea-level-may-drop-in-2010/
Kehr concluded:
“This is yet another serious blow the accuracy of the official IPCC predictions for the coming century. The fact that CO2 levels have been higher in the last 5 years that have the lowest rate of rise than the years with lower CO2 levels is a strong indicator that the claims of CO2 are grossly exaggerated.”
And what happened to sea level? It rebounded from the strong La Nina, just as scientists said it would, and is now back on its trendline:
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
This was another instance where someone jumped the gun based on a short-term trend, and used it to conclude the consensus was wrong. Did Kehr ever issue a correction or mea culpa? I haven’t been able to find one….
Phobos,
I have answered your questions in great detail. You just don’t like the answer, or the inescapable conclusion: CO2 doesn’t matter.
I provided a thorough analysis explaining exactly why CO2 has no measurable effect on temperature. As usual, you have no answer to that. Your lame response is based on your religious belief, not on scientific evidence or empirical measurements, because you have none. You have no credible response to the fact that CO2 does not matter.
Face the fact that Planet Earth is falsifying your narrative. Nothing currently observed is unprecedented; it has all happened before, and to a greater degree — and when CO2 was much lower. You are just making up a fake narrative to support your silly belief system. Your anti-science is at best amusing to the rest of us, and your endless thread-bombing is not convincing anyone that you have a leg to stand on.
I’m disappointed, though not surprised, that Phobos has chosen to ignore my (and others’) point about his “the last decade is the Warmest EVA!!!!” claim. It would be interesting to know whether he genuinely belives that has any significance at all in the matter of whether or not it’s still warmingI
If he does then he needs to really go back to basics, if he doesn’t then I’m intrigued as to why he uses an argument he knows to be unsound.
So, Phobos, a really easy (multi choice) question for you:
Do you believe that the fact, taken on its own, that the last decade has been warmer on average than the one before is evidence in any way that warming is still continuing?
(a) Yes
(b) No
(c) I don’t know, but it’s on the list I downloaded of “things to confront sceptics with”
(d) No comment / Plead the fifth
Obviously, the whole point of “pleading the fifth” is to avoid incriminating yourself so, assuming you don’t comment, we’ll let the jury draw their own conclusions :).
Bart says: “Already addressed here.”
Oh, that paragraph. Yes, I can certainly see how that might invalidate over 100 years of scientific reasoning and calculations. /sarc
Perhaps you can construct *some* planet where the partial derivative of global radiative forcing with respect to average CO2 concentration is negative. It certainly isn’t *this* planet at this point in time, as about 8 decades of calculation have shown (and as verified by Harries et al and followup measurements.
You have constructed a completely alternative universe where *every* major finding of climate science is wrong, based on hand-waving arguments you won’t take the risk of publishing. No small feat. You must be a sci-fi writer by profession.
@D.B. Stealey: No, you didn’t my two questions, which were very specific.
The first has a simple “yes” or “no” answer.
I’m guessing your answer to the 2nd question would be, ‘let’s wait and see what happens over a longer interval.’ Am I right?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 10:05 am
Did you go look at what I’ve done?
I don’t disagree that Co2 will reflect IR, I disagree that the change in Co2 has made more than an insignificant impact to surface temperatures. And night time cooling data, and the skies IR temp agrees with that conclusion.
@Joe. (A). Of course.
As long as the decades keep getting warmer, it’s absurd to say that global warming has stopped.
Temperatures that in the 1980s or 1990s were considered remarkably warm and now viewed as routine and ordinary. The short 15-year trends only appear small because (a) their beginning years includes a large positive fluctuation due to an El Nino, and (b) their ending years includes a large negative fluctuation due to a La Nina.
You are making the classic mistake of confusing weather and climate, except the weather is in the oceans, not the atmosphere.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 10:08 am
…
PS: No one is predicting “runaway” global warming. Have you ever heard of the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit?
——–
I don’t know, has Dr. Hansen heard of the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit?
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/12/nasa-scientist-warns-of-runawa.html
see paragraph 10, or to go straight to the source,
http://www.columbia/edu/~jeh1/2008/AGUBjerknes_20081217.pdf
see slide / page 23.
Phobos,
You don’t get to determine how I answer a question. As stated above, I answered your questions in great detail. Your problem is that you don’t like the answer, which proved conclusively that CO2 has no measurable effect.
Now you can return to your endless thread-bombing.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 10:08 am
…
PS: No one is predicting “runaway” global warming. Have you ever heard of the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit?
——–
I don’t know, has Dr. Hansen heard of the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit?
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/12/nasa-scientist-warns-of-runawa.html
see paragraph 10, or to go straight to the source,
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/AGUBjerknes_20081217.pdf
see slide / page 23.
MiCro says: “I don’t disagree that Co2 will reflect IR.”
Ugh… CO2 doesn’t “reflect” infrared radiation. It absorbs and re-emits it. There are crucial differences, especially with respect to directionality,
No, I don’t know what you’ve done, and clicking on your name goes to a site of what looks to be science news. If you did something specific, please describe it here.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 10:34 am
@Joe. (A). Of course.
—————————————————————————————–
Then you are clearly not as scientifically literate as you think you are. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with confusing climate and weather. In fact, it has nothing directly to do with climate – it’s about basic high school maths!
Let me explain:
Say it warmed steadily through the 1990s. The average temperature for that decade will be roughly (start of 1990 temperature + end of 1999 temperature) / 2 .
The one thing that we can say for sure is that average for the 1990s decade will be LESS than the 1999 temperature because that’s how averages work – we’ve added a smaller number to a bigger number then divided by 2 so the resulting average MUST be less than the bigger number.
Now lets say, just for argument, that the temperature stops rising on 31st December 1999 and stays constant for the next 10 years. The average for the 2000s will then be (start of 2000 temperature + end of 2009 temperature)/2.
But, because the warming stopped at midnight on the 31st Dec 1999, “start of 2000 temperature” and “end of 2009 temperature” are both equal to “end of 1999 temperature”. So the average for the 2000s decade will be (end of 1999 temperature + end of 1999 temperature) / 2. That is EQUAL to “end of 1999 temperature”,
So the 2000s decade average (EQUALS 1999 end temp) is higher than the 1990s decade (LESS THAN 1999 end temp) even though the warming had stopped.
In fact, this holds true even if it cools steadilt during the 2000s decade, as long as it doesn’t cool more than it warmed in the previous decade.
So, “the last decade was warmer than the one before” does NOT mean it’s still warming. The ONLY conclusion you can draw from that fact is:
“the last decade didn’t cool as much as the one before warmed”
I’ve laid that out in nice bite-size chunks for you, so hopefully you can see where you (or the people feeding you these lines) have gione wrong?
Ps: Phobos, please accept my genuine apology if the tone in my last post seemed a little irritable. It’s just that I see that “warmest ever” line trotted out so often and the flaw in it is so basic that it gets a little tiresome to say the least!
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 10:24 am
“Yes, I can certainly see how that might invalidate over 100 years of scientific reasoning and calculations. /sarc”
You don’t get it. The calculations are valid. GHGs generally make the surface warmer than it otherwise would be without them. There is nothing in that statement which requires that the effect be monotonic with volume.
It is easy to show that it isn’t by taking the argument to the extreme limit. If you have CO2 so dense that it is effectively a solid shell in direct contact with the planet, then there is no GHE. Since the function attains its minimum at the boundaries, and it is non-zero in between, it follows that there must be at least one maximum somewhere, and there must be points at which the partial derivative is negative.
I have NOT said that we are in such a condition where the addition of CO2 takes us past the peak of the warming effect to produce incremental cooling. What I have said is the converse, that it is an open question, and it means you are NOT “100% certain” that adding CO2 results in warming.
All of the evidence indicates that there is no appreciable warming due to CO2. Temperature is driving CO2, and not the reverse. Temperatures show no deviation from long term behavior. So, some assumption underlying the current paradigm IS WRONG.
Think! Open your mind. The evidence against your position is compelling, and mounting daily. A year ago, the natural cyclical downturn was not yet readily apparent. Today it is. There can be little doubt that it will continue. This is a very regular natural cycle, and it’s going to be getting noticeably colder in the years ahead. If you are involved in the AGW endeavor in a professional capacity, I highly recommend you pack your parachute, and have an exit strategy prepared. Because those still standing when the music stops are going to be disgraced and discredited, and have a hard go of it.
“You have constructed a completely alternative universe where *every* major finding of climate science is wrong, based on hand-waving arguments you won’t take the risk of publishing. “
Not wrong, per se, but not properly applied. You can’t just take equations and apply them willy-nilly without consideration of the conditions under which they are valid. As I said, your viewpoint is shallow and superficial. You are taking for granted things which are not compulsory according any actual scientific principle.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 10:57 am
You’re right, I was being sloppy.
I did, I compared today’s temp increase with tonight’s drop. And I’m not going to re-write everything just for you.
I will point you to two pages, The first one explains what I did. I figured out that I lost one decimal place, and remade the graphs, which is the second page.
MiCro says:
February 28, 2013 at 8:05 am
“I think it remains to be determined, personally I think it’s somehow related to what the Sun is doing and or “Space Weather” and how it effects the Earth.”
Then show me a graph with the sun (or space weather or sun spots or whatever) and temps that has any degree of correlation. Show me any sort of mechanism that supposedly correlates. Then compare it to greenhouse gases.
I think Occam’s Razor enters into the discussion at some time. Then, after that, there’s a discussion on risk and insurance. Then, you have to look at your children and grandchildren and decide whether you give a damn.
Evan Bedford says:
February 28, 2013 at 11:27 am
Then, you have to look at your children and grandchildren and decide whether you give a damn.
——————————————————————————————————–
Personally I’d prefer to loook at the old dear down the road who can’t afford to heat her home in the (yet again) below average winter temperatures we’re having because the “green” charges and taxes that we’re paying are inflating our basic fuel and food bills by so much.
Or should the old and poor be taking pride in literally freezing to death today in order to (maybe) stop our grandchildren from (maybe) feeling a bit warm?
Evan Bedford says:
February 28, 2013 at 11:27 am
” Then, you have to look at your children and grandchildren and decide whether you give a damn.”
Yes, I care about them. I do not want to impoverish them by pursuing some fanatical scheme to address a problem which does not exist, and over which we have no control even if it did.
Too bad you care too little about your heirs to recognize your neurosis, and take measures to improve your emotional state of health.
Joe says: “Say it warmed steadily through the 1990s. The average temperature for that decade will be roughly (start of 1990 temperature + end of 1999 temperature) / 2 .”
*IF* it warmed steadily. It rarely does.
For someone admonishing me about high school math, you’re is sorely lacking.
Evan Bedford says:
February 28, 2013 at 11:27 am
I don’t have one.
Nice comeback, think of the children! How about the ones that go to bed in the cold because their parents can’t afford to heat their home, of they have to breathe smoke from wood or dung because they can’t get cheap fossil fuels or electricity?
See, I am a simulation professional, spent over 15 years supporting, creating models for, demoing, giving lessons on about a dozen different simulators. I’ve read the ToO for GCM’s, I know how they had to jack in a high CS value to get temps to respond, that Co2 alone didn’t do it.
And as of yet, there’s no physical measurements that any of it is real, and as more and more research gets done by real scientists, that value (CS) keeps getting smaller and smaller.
Then I went and got a copy of NOAA’s, CRU’s, and BEST’s data. Night time temps drop as much as it goes up during the day, at least to the accuracy of the data.
Lastly, I just got an IR thermometer, as I pointed out above, without water vapor the sky is quite cold, and while it might be warming with increased GHG’s, it’s still plenty cold to cool the surface at night.
Oh, you might want to look into changes in land use too. I don’t know where you live, but if you get frost at night, ever wonder why only grass and cars get frost, but not asphalt or concrete? Mix in some lousy station sitings (which Anthony has done a great job of documenting), and I’m not too worried about my grandchildren, well unless the Sun is shutting down, then it’s going to start getting really cold.
@Bart: You remind me of a friend of mine. She majored in literature, loves it, has read extensively and reads incessantly, and can talk to you all day about Faulkner and Hemingway and Fitzgerald, what they did right and what they did wrong and what they should have done instead.
She’d also love to write “the Great American Novel,” and has started it perhaps a dozen times. But she never gets more than a chapter or two in before other things come up or she starts anew. I try to encourage her to put her work out there, but except for a couple of literary journals no one ever heard of, her work stays in draft form in her notebooks. I’ve never had the heart to tell her what I really think, except in the most general terms: that she’s afraid of putting her work out there because she’s afraid of getting rejected. As long as her work stays with her she can be sure about it’s genius, beauty and veracity. Putting it out for publication would risk rejection and the shattering of all that. It’s much easier for her to pretend she has all the answers in the world she’s constructed for herself.
Phobos says:
“…clicking on your name goes to a site of what looks to be science news.”
Interested in who is responding to you, eh? That’s pretty hypocritical, coming from an anonymous coward.
@MiCro: Yes, it’s fun to do backyard experiments and make some spreadsheets. (I guess that’s what you did — I’m not going to take much time to sort through it and figure it out.)
It’s not science.
Maybe you’ve never been exposed to real science, or done any of it. If you had, you’d know that a few spreadsheets aren’t science, and are no comparison at all the the decades and decades of careful, detailed work done by thousands of science, any more than stick figures compare to Picasso or an accountant is an expert on monetary policy.
You’re just looking for a reason to reject results you, for some reason, don’t like, and these few spreadsheets are your cover.
D.B. Stealey says: “You don’t get to determine how I answer a question.”
Sorry, you are clearly still avoiding them (and of course, I know why).
They are two simple questions, with relatively simple answers.
I think ‘Fat Cheque’ is what Glik was hoping for, not this. Do people know that SkS’s skipper is a cartoonist by trade?.
Mark Bofill says: “I don’t know, has Dr. Hansen heard of the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit?”
I am interested in the science, not in personalities. As soon as I see someone write “But so-and-so did it!” I know they don’t have a scientific answer. I get that — most people don’t have the scientific background to really understand climate science, and it’s easier to just spit and fume about James Hansen or Al Gore or Richard Lindzen. But I have absolutely no interest in engaging in debate on that level. Sorry.
Evan Bedford,
I rarely click on a name, but your comment sounded so silly I did in your case.
I found some stale old debunked propaganda showing a supposedly stranded polar bear on an ice floe. Really, you must be an Algore acolyte.
This is a science site. What are you doing here?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:20 pm
You’d guess wrong.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:06 pm
Joe says: “Say it warmed steadily through the 1990s. The average temperature for that decade will be roughly (start of 1990 temperature + end of 1999 temperature) / 2 .”
*IF* it warmed steadily. It rarely does.
For someone admonishing me about high school math, you’re is sorely lacking.
———————————————————————————————————-
The “warmed steadily” was just to keep it simple – clearly you need that!
If you have a value that increases over time then, regardless of the pattern of increase, the average value will be LESS than the end-value of the linear trend of the increase. If that’s not so then you simply don’t have a positive trend in the first place.
If the trend then changes to zero, starting at the end-value of the increasing trend (which it must start at unless there’s a step change), then the average of the next time period will equal that end value,. It will therefore be GREATER than the average of the time when it was increasing.
The average of the second time period will only become lower than the first if the second period has a DECREASING trend that is greater than the increasing trend over the first period.
So, the ONLY definite conclusion you can draw if a decadal average temperature is higher than the previous decade’s is that the temperature trend hasn’t become negative by more than the initial positive. In other words, from the “warmest ever” statement taken alone, all we know that it isn’t now cooling faster than it warmed during the 90s.
It really isn’t that difficult a concept!
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:20 pm
Let me add, why would anyone bother to even converse with you, if that’s all the more you’re willing to invest?
You’ve made up your mind, that’s fine, but why come here?
We don’t need missionaries, people willing to discuss science get a fair shake. Offer me a reason that explains why the data I’ve extracted is wrong, I’m actually looking for that kind of feedback. But what i get are responses like your, you don’t like it, and thousands have spent decades trying to turn lousy data into a trend, so they must be omnipotent. I don’t need that, go find someone else to proselytize to.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:13 pm
It’s more equivalently, I’d love to write such lighthearted fare, but after polishing off War and Peace, I am currently engaged in writing a tale involving a great white whale. I have rather more interesting and remunerative applications for my talents.
I have laid out everything for you, and am appealing to your own sense of logic. Work it out for yourself, without abdicating your capacity for thought to others whom you imagine are endowed with greater perspicacity. More than half the time, the guys with the greatest reputations got them because they had the mojo to make others believe, not because their ideas have particular merit.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:27 pm
II get that — most people don’t have the scientific background to really understand climate science
——————————————————————————————————
Says the person who can’t understand a very basic, very obvious, fact about averages over time.
Absolutely priceless! 😀
@Joe: Of course I get your “concept.”
All you are saying is, if the short-term surface trend is zero, AGW has stopped.
I’ve responded to this criticism numerous times above: ocean heating, ice melting, sea-level rise, natural fluctuations, ENSOs, too short of an interval, cherry picked start and end points, massless surfaces, etc…. If you don’t get it by now, you aren’t trying or it’s beyond you.
As long as the average temperature of the current decade is significantly greater than the average temperature of the one before it, it’s absurd to claim warming has stopped. Just six years ago the 15-yr trend was 0.32 C/decade. What were you saying then?
@Bart: I have worked it out for myself, as best I can with the time I have. I find the science convincing, and your so-called reasoning superficial. And I have a lot more respect for people who spend their entire careers doing this and writing careful, detailed papers than people who spend all day commenting on all the blogs thinking hand-waving is science and that they’ve disproven absolutely everything.
MiCro says:”Let me add, why would anyone bother to even converse with you, if that’s all the more you’re willing to invest?”
Because you haven’t taken the time to say clearly, without jargon, what it is you’ve done. You just threw up a link to something that is, frankly, not very well written, and said, here, go figure it out for yourself.
My time, like everyone’s, is limited and you haven’t given me a reason to think you’ve done anything important that I should spend it on. Has this work, say, been published anywhere? If the result is so important, surely everyone in the field needs to know about it, right?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 8:04 am
1) Would you judge the climate changes of the MWP based solely on what was happening from 997 AD to 1012 AD?
So you agree there was a MWP and by extension it was warmer than today. If so why would think the warming of today is in anyway out of the ordinary as it happened in the MWP without being blamed on CO2?
@MiCro: For example, this is from your page:
“The methodology I used was to take the daily maximum temperature, and subtracted the morning low temperature. That provides the energy into the planet, I then took the Max temp, and subtracted tomorrow mornings low temp, which gives me the energy lost overnight.”
This is just nonsense. The planetary energy imbalance is not related to the simple temperature change you calculated. It’s absurd to equate the two.
Did you read Harries et al 2001? They’re trying to determine the global change in energy balance for clear sky conditions. You’ll notice they aren’t doing it by measuring temperatures on the surface a few times a day. Because you can’t.
Look. Like you, I love science and thinking about it. I also like playing with data, graphing it, testing out my little ideas. I suspect that you, like me, think that climate science is endlessly fascinating, especially at this point in time — we’re lucky to be living through this time when so much science is going on and everyone is struggling to find answers and understanding.
But I don’t think my little spreadsheets are science. They aren’t. Science is deep and complicated and requires careful data gathering and analysis. Even the experts have a hard time doing it, and make mistakes, take false steps, and so on. But little by little the field advances and the picture gets a little clearer here, and little less foggy there. It’s a slow process, and there seems no end to the complications one needs to consider. Frankly, the amazing thing is that science can tell us anything about not just climate, but the entire universe or some microscopic piece of it.
I read a lot of scientific papers, and know what it takes to write one. There is just no comparison between them and the spreadsheets I create. Or, I’m sorry to say, yours. I simply can not fathom why amateurs think they can counter the work of thousands, over decades, with a couple of spreadsheets.
mkelly says: “So you agree there was a MWP and by extension it was warmer than today. If so why would think the warming of today is in anyway out of the ordinary as it happened in the MWP without being blamed on CO2?”
No, I didn’t say that. As near as I can tell, there was an MWP in some places on the planet, but the science is still unclear as to whether it was a global phenomenon. (PAGES had an entire newsletter on this about 2 years ago.) And, if it was, what caused it. And, if it was caused by an increase in solar irradiance, that does not explain today’s warming, because there has been essentially no increase in solar irradiance since about 1950. And, if it was some kind of nonlinear fluctuation of the climate system, if that doesn’t make our current situation even worse, because we’d have to worry about the possibility of another one in addition to GHG heating. And, while the MWP did some nice things for Europe, it seems to have caused megadroughts in North America (see: Sand Hills, Nebraska).
So then, how about answering my question about the 997-1012 AD time period?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 1:02 pm
@Joe: Of course I get your “concept.”
All you are saying is, if the short-term surface trend is zero, AGW has stopped.
——————————————————————————————
No, Phobos, that’s not what I’m saying at all.
YOU posted on 27th Feb at 10:43 am:
“The latest 10-year period is 0.14 C warmer than the previous 10-year period.”
as evidence that it is still warming.
When i asked you, at 10:34 AM today, whether you actually believed that the average for the 2000s being higher than the average for the 1990s was evidence of continued warming, you answered categorically “YES” (you even added “of course”)!
Since then I have simply tried to explain to you, using the simplest possible language and examples, why that fact is NOT evidence that it’s continuing to warm. Neither is it evidence that the warming has stopped or reversed. I have NOT suggested it means that in any of my posts.
Others here have suggested that you might work for NOAA or similar. Given that you have categorically stated above that you believe without question something that is easily demonstrated to be invalid, EVEN WHEN PRSENTED WITH THE DEMONSTRATION, I sincerely hope they’re wrong!
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 1:06 pm
“And I have a lot more respect for …”
Respect is not a part of the equation. They’re either right, or they are not. In this case, they are not.
But, I understand. You do not have enough confidence in your own faculties and abilities to make your own conclusions. That’s a shame. But, you’ll learn. I’ve done all I can.
D.B. Stealey says: “That’s the problem, the link says the greenhouse effect is “inferred”.
Here is the definition of “infer”: “Deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements.”
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 8:04 am
2) What would you have said to someone in January 2007 who pointed out that the 15-year trend of the UAH lower troposphere data was 0.32 C/decade?
If I may jump in here, you raise a good point, however there are several things to note with your choice of UAH between 1992 to 2007.
There was a volcanic eruption that affected 1992 and satellites give more extreme values. So you are cherry picking with a volatile data set over a short period. And changing the date by three years from 1995 to 2007 makes a large difference. Using Hadcrut3, the difference between 1992 to 2007 and 1995 to 2007 is a difference from 0.0274 per year to 0.0195 per year.
Now let us compare this to Hadcrut3 from 1997.25 to date versus 2000.25 to date. It is flat both times. So while I agree that 1997.25 is a cherry picked time, there are cancelling affects due to the 1998 El Nino and the La Ninas that followed it. However there was no cancelling effect for the Pinatubo volcano.
See the four slope lines below to see exactly what I am talking about.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1992/to:2007/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1995/to:2007/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1997.25/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2000.25/trend
Furthermore, temperatures follow a 60 year sine wave. The 1992 to 2007 period was on the upswing of the sine wave. And now we are past the flat peak of the sine wave and heading down. See:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/akasofu_ipcc.jpg
@Mark Bofill: So I went ahead and looked at the Hansen links you gave about the runaway greenhouse effect. He says (in both):
“In my opinion, if we burn all the coal, there is a good chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect.”
That is a VERY big if. The amount of coal on the planet is estimated to be 98.6e17 g C (Swart and Weaver, Nature Climate Change, 2012). That’s 10,000 gigatonnes of carbon! — we have emitted only 380 GtC so far from burning fossil fuels.
I don’t think anyone has a model that can simulate such an extreme scenario. It seems he’s making an educated guess, which is why he prefaces it with “In my opinion….”
As Hansen writes, the Sun is stronger now than when atmospheric CO2 was 4000 ppm. I’d have to calculate how much.
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 1:26 pm
You’re right, I shouldn’t have used energy.
As I said, it’s behind a paywall, I did look at the graphs you sent though.
I’m not really trying to identify an imbalance, I’m trying to get real measurements of DLR, what I’m trying to do is figure out a way to separate the DLR from Co2 vs DLR from water vapor. One should be increasing based on increases of Co2, the other based on the variability of water vapor.
And yet, that exactly what is use to justify a warming problem, an increase in temperature of ~0.8C
What I did is based on the same data, it’s either a valid use of the data or it isn’t. Which is it Phobos? Valid, Yes or No?
But ignoring my poor choice of words, those “simple” spreadsheets are based on 120 million station records and about 224 million temp measurements.
BTW the temperature history all of AGW is based on is from a single temperature measurement a day, and prior to 1930 or so, a few thousand measurements/year. So, my graph has about 100 million more samples than the entire temperature history has, that the global warming trend is based on.
Phobos,
An inference is not measurable scientific evidence. I asked for measurable evidence. So far you are batting zero.
On the bright side, no one else has measurable evidence of AGW, either.
Phobos also speculates:
“As near as I can tell, there was an MWP in some places on the planet, but the science is still unclear as to whether it was a global phenomenon. (PAGES had an entire newsletter on this about 2 years ago.) And, if it was, what caused it. And, if it was caused by an increase in solar irradiance, that does not explain today’s warming, because there has been essentially no increase in solar irradiance since about 1950. And, if it was some kind of nonlinear fluctuation of the climate system, if that doesn’t make our current situation even worse, because we’d have to worry about the possibility of another one in addition to GHG heating.”
Where to start? First off, there is plenty of evidence that the MWP was global in extent.
Rather than wasting your time wondering why the planet is recovering from the LIA [which was also global in extent], you should be wondering what caused the anomalous LIA — one of the coldest episodes of the entire Holocene.
The planet has been warming from that cold period, and CO2 has either
a) little, or
b) nothing
to do with it.
Wake me when you can measure AGW. Then we will have settled the question of the sensitivity number.
Finally, anything would ‘make our current situation worse’. The past 150 years have been a true Goldilocks climate: not too cold, not too hot, but just right. During that time, harmless, beneficial CO2 has been both high and low, and it has not made a bit of difference. During the Holocene it has been unusual to go for 150 years with hardly a fluctuation in temperature. 0.7ºC is nothing compared with other times, when temperatures changed by tens of degrees over decadal time scales — and without changes in CO2.
Werner Brozek says: “There was a volcanic eruption that affected 1992 and satellites give more extreme values. So you are cherry picking with a volatile data set over a short period.”
Werner, thank you for taking on the question. I agree with your answer: that natural factors can have a large influence on the trend in an interval as short as 15 years.
So, if that was true in 2007, why isn’t it true today?
D.B. Stealey says: “An inference is not measurable scientific evidence.”
It’s frustrating when we can’t even agree on the meaning of words.
Here is the definition of inferred, from Google: “Deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements.”
Here is the definition of evidence, from Google: “The available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.”
Do you agree that Harries et al made measurements?
Do you agree that those measurements are information?
Bart says: “Respect is not a part of the equation.”
Ideally, yes. But human limitations mean one cannot independently reproduce or verify every piece of data and every calculation. Therefore, one must make judgements about how trustworthy the works of others is, and respect — one’s opinion gathered from prior encounters — is certainly part of that.
Phobos says:
“So, if that was true in 2007, why isn’t it true today?”
Listen to a true expert, instead of the pseudo-scientists over at SkS:
See, nothing is static. There are cycles within cycles, sometimes reinforcing each other, sometimes canceling. The planet is not in equilibrium, and there is no need to invoke a magic gas to explain tenths of a degree changes.
No doubt William of Ockham is spinning in his grave: “One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.” CO2 is an extraneous entity, which is not necessary for any explanation of the curent climate.
Finally, as I have repeatedly pointed out: there are no testable, empirical measurements of AGW. None. If there were, the question of the sensitivity number would be answered. But it is not; there is a long running debate over that number, with estimates anywhere from zero to 3+ºC and more. Measure AGW, and you will have the answer.
But I suspect you wouldn’t like the answer, because it would be much too small for your liking. You can’t scare people with a small sensitivity number. It might even be zero.
@MiCro: People have also measured changes in downward longwave radiation:
“Radiative forcing – measured at Earth’s surface – corroborate the increasing greenhouse effect,” R. Phillipona et al, Geo Res Letters, v31 L03202 (2004)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2003GL018765/abstract
There was also this poster:
“Measurements of the Radiative Surface Forcing of Climate,” W.F.J. Evans, Jan 2006
https://ams.confex.com/ams/Annual2006/techprogram/paper_100737.htm
Similar work is listed here:
http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/papers-on-changes-in-olr-due-to-ghgs/
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 3:21 pm
“But human limitations mean one cannot independently reproduce or verify every piece of data and every calculation.”
As Einstein said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” However difficult you might find it to tease out the truth of an hypothesis, it is not so difficult to prove it wrong through a single contradiction. The links I have given you contradict the hypothesis. Therefore, it is wrong.
D.B. Stealey says: “Finally, as I have repeatedly pointed out: there are no testable, empirical measurements of AGW.”
It is based on a series of inferences, each of which itself is based on the combination of theory and experiment.
This is done all the time in science.
* Can you show me a testable, empirical measurement that shows smoking causes lung cancer?
* What experiment measured the mass of the Higgs boson, when it exists for only 10^-22 seconds?
* Where exactly does one stand in order to measure the mass of the Earth? Of the Andromeda Galaxy?
Phobos,
Typical misdirection. You avoided the logical conclusion:
“…there is a long running debate over that number, with estimates anywhere from zero to 3+ºC and more. Measure AGW, and you will have the answer.”
No one has the climate sensitivity number. No one. It is all speculation. Therefore, there is no empirical, testable measurement of AGW.
QED
D.B. Stealey says:
“The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all climate change since the 19th Century.
~ Prof Richard Lindzen, M.I.T.”
Where is the proof that this is happening?
There isn’t any, because no one knows what is happening to the bottom half of the ocean.
On the other hand, we do know what is happening with GHGs, and we know (for clear skies, at least) that the Earth is radiating less at their absorption frequencies, and that downward longwave radiation is increasing, and that average humidity has increaased. That is, that the increase in GHGs is causing warming.
Whatever is going on in the deep ocean doesn’t undo what we know about GHGs.
Phobos says:
“Where is the proof that this is happening?”
Now you’re just saying something to be saying something — and to avoid my logical construct that proves CO2 has no measurable effect.
You cannot empirically, testably measure AGW. If you could, the sensitivity number would be established. It is not. There is a wide range of opinion.
If you would like some estimates of the sensitivity to 2xCO2, just ask, and I’ll educate you.
@D.B. Stealey: My response was *not* misdirection. It says that, like much of science, the result [for climate sensitivity] is based on a series of inferences.
in science, very few things are measured directly — most of them are inferred from a combination of theory and experiment. Heck, most scientists don’t even try to measure something until theory gives them a good idea of what the answer should be.
Do you reject the results for the mass of the proton because no one has placed it on a scale and weighed it? (And by the way, even a mass balance scale relies on inferences.)
P.S. Are you ever going to directly answer my two questions?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 12:27 pm
Mark Bofill says: “I don’t know, has Dr. Hansen heard of the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit?”
I am interested in the science, not in personalities. As soon as I see someone write “But so-and-so did it!” I know they don’t have a scientific answer. I get that — most people don’t have the scientific background to really understand climate science, and it’s easier to just spit and fume about James Hansen or Al Gore or Richard Lindzen. But I have absolutely no interest in engaging in debate on that level. Sorry.
———
Phobos,
Considering the relative unimportance of the original point, I’d have probably let this slide if you hadn’t responded at all. But seeing as how I don’t particularly enjoy being dismissed as not having the scientific background to really understand climate science by an anonymous troll with unknown credentials or listening to one suggest that I’m spitting and fuming about personalities, I feel compelled to address the matter. Therefore, allow me to begin by noting that your answer is without factual basis, unsupported, and unresponsive to the point I raised. Regardless of this, it contains interesting content that I’d like to address. In more detail:
Your answer is without factual basis in that I in fact do have the scientific background to understand climate science, and in that I was neither spitting nor fuming about anyone. Under other circumstances I’d be glad to present my credentials, however, I refuse on principle to enter a discussion about my qualifications in a discussion with someone who is not even using their real name. Your answer is unsupported, in that you assert (by implication) that I lack the scientific background to understand climate science without offering any evidence to back up your claim. Further, you offer nothing to support your contention that I was ‘spitting and fuming’ about any personality, as of course I obviously was not. Perhaps most importantly, your answer is unresponsive to the point I raised, as can be demonstrated by reviewing the pertinent portion of the thread.
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I reproduced the relevant sequence here above, because out of courtesy I did not attempt to rub your nose in the obvious in my post by explicitly stating that your statement No one is predicting “runaway” global warming is certainly questionable, if not demonstrably false, by my citing Dr. Hansen. Additionally, whatever supporting point you believed you were making by invoking the Kombayashi-Ingersoll limit is reasonably called into question if you accept Dr. Hansen as a competent authority regarding climate change.
This segues conveniently into what I referred to earlier as the interesting content in your post I’d like to address.
The first question I’m interested in is simple enough, and I mean it very sincerely; please construe no sarcasm or devious intent. IS Dr. James Hansen a credible climate scientist and an authority on climate change, or do you consider him a personality like Al. Gore? I ask this honestly because it irritates me no end when people confuse me with the Sky Dragon slayers, for example. Is this a similar case?
Thanks for your attention, and looking forward to your considered response.
P.S. – I am aware of your subsequent post regarding this material. I would not clutter up the discussion by creating a simultaneous branch. If you feel that this subsequent post has relevance to the issues I’ve raised of course feel free to reference it, but I’d prefer that we pick up our discussion here.
I note that your latest post debunks your ‘inference’ claim. There are plenty of inferences of the sensitivity number, based on all kinds of evidence.
Which number is the correct number?
Phobos says:
February 28, 2013 at 3:14 pm
Werner, thank you for taking on the question. I agree with your answer: that natural factors can have a large influence on the trend in an interval as short as 15 years.
So, if that was true in 2007, why isn’t it true today?
It is true today as well! Natural factors do have a large influence on any trend as short as 15 years. It is NOAA that says if natural factors are strong enough to produce a slope of 0 for 15 or more years, then something is wrong with the models that predict catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
D.B. Stealey says: “Now you’re just saying something to be saying something — and to avoid my logical construct that proves CO2 has no measurable effect.”
What measurement shows that CO2 has no measurable effect?
Werner Brozek says:
“It is true today as well! Natural factors do have a large influence on any trend as short as 15 years. It is NOAA that says if natural factors are strong enough to prod