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.
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Bernard J. says:
March 9, 2013 at 7:12 pm
“You are scrambling for a euphemistic fig leaf …”
Sorry, no, it is you who are scrambling for an emotional plea.
“1) Humans are increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is a trivially obvious fact.”
You are wrong. I have demonstrated it. Clearly, it is outside of your ken.
“2) A significant portion of the CO2 emitted by humans dissolves in the oceans, where it reacts with water to form carbonic acid. These too are trivially obvious facts.”
In other words, you assume it without giving it much thought.
“By your own admission you are not up on chemistry, so it is unsurprising that you are having difficulty understanding that humans are causing this increase in sea water hydronium concentration.”
What a stupid statement. It is not at all difficult for the untutored, such as yourself, to jump to a post hoc ergo propter hoc conclusion.
It is not about chemistry. It is about feedback. Feedback is a topic which requires many years of study to properly master. Your perspective is superficial, glib, and trivial.
There’s no emotion involved. You obviously do not understand the basics of scientific process, let alone of the specific, relevant chemistry.
Empirical data say that the oceans are acidifying. Centuries of inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry give us an extremely good understanding of the processes involved. If you disagree with any of the numbered processes that I listed at my post of March 9, 2013 at 7:12 pm, you have but to explicitly contradict them, with necessary detail, and with appropriate reference to primary literature.
Knock yourself out.
What? Seriously? You think that you’ve “demonstrated” that humans aren’t increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?
If so, you’re deluded.
No, in other words (and ones more accurate than yours) I’ve learned this in my time doing undergraduate, Masters and PhD degrees, and also during more than two decades of professional science.
In the matter of ocean acidifcation I assume nothing. Rather, I study, I learn, I understand and I apply my knowledge.
Which seems to be somewhat more than you do, given your own volunteered admission that you don’t even have a grasp of chemistry.
As I said, I am both tutored and professionally experienced in chemistry – amongst other sciences. Of course you wouldn’t understand that, as you do not know me.
And if my “conclusion” is incorrect, I would point out once again you have but to demonstrate scientifically why this is so.
Oh, and for the record the ætiology of the occurence of ocean acidification in its contemporary maniestation is not a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Again, if you actually understood the science and the empirical evidence on which it is based, you’d be aware of the supportable chain of causality between human emissions of carbon dioxide and the acidification of sea water.
Bernard J. says:
March 11, 2013 at 5:46 am
“What? Seriously? You think that you’ve “demonstrated” that humans aren’t increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?”
It is right up above you. It is fairly basic, but whether you have the maths for it or not is something I do not know. I will give you a synopsis.
As I have shown, the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere, since reliable measurements began to be taken 55 years ago, is essentially an affine function of temperature:
dCO2/dt = k*(T – To)
where k is a coupling constant in ppmv per unit of time per degree of temperature, T is temperature, and To is an equilibrium temperature. This relationship integrates, as it must, into the observed CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This equation should be considered simply a first order Taylor expansion of what is likely a much more complicated function of temperature, so the parameters k and To likely should be varied depending on the state of the system to provide the best local representation over a given time interval. However, since 1958, they have apparently been remarkably stable.
The equation establishes that CO2 is driven by temperatures, and not the reverse, for it would be absurd to claim that temperatures depend on the rate of change of CO2, and not its absolute level. The relationship accounts for almost all of the observed CO2 in the atmosphere. The remarkable thing about the fit is that, when you choose the value of k to fit the variations, you also get a good fit to the overall trend. That fit leaves no room for significant anthropogenic forcing. Why? Because the rate of change of anthropogenic input is also a trend, which integrates into a quadratic factor, but the quadratic term which comes from integrating the temperature already fits the curvature of the absolute integrated concentration, and adding to it would cause it to be too large. We could deweight the temperature driven component, but that would cause a mismatch with the variational components.
The ineluctable conclusion is that the carbon cycle is not well understood, that human inputs are rapidly sequestered, and have little effect on the overall concentration.
The differential equation relationship above is to be expected in a continuous flow problem in which CO2 is constantly entering and exiting the surface system, and the differential rate at which it does so is dependent on temperature.
“No, in other words (and ones more accurate than yours) I’ve learned this in my time doing undergraduate, Masters and PhD degrees, and also during more than two decades of professional science.”
Big deal. I’ve got all that, too. I’ve built (well, I designed, others built them to my design) complex mechanisms which actually work in rather harsh environments.
“Which seems to be somewhat more than you do, given your own volunteered admission that you don’t even have a grasp of chemistry.”
I have a grasp, but it is moldy, as I haven’t studied it since my undergraduate days more than two decades ago. You, on the other hand, apparently have no familiarity with my specialty, which is feedback systems.
“Again, if you actually understood the science and the empirical evidence on which it is based, you’d be aware of the supportable chain of causality between human emissions of carbon dioxide and the acidification of sea water.”
To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. A shallow understanding of processes leads one to assume a simplistic model in which an action takes place, and there is no reaction which modifies it as time progresses.
“Don’t hide your light under a bushel – explain to us where science has it wrong. Publish, and let the world be amazed.”
There is no point. Perhaps you are familiar with Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions? We have not yet reached the stage of the paradigm shift, and until we do, nothing new is going to get past the gatekeepers. But, that day is coming soon, as temperatures obstinately refuse to cooperate with the prognostications of the very simplistic, and quite simply very wrong, expections of the current reigning paradigm.
Mod – my apologies, but one of the links did not come out. Could you replace the above with the below? Thanks.
Bernard J. says:
March 11, 2013 at 5:46 am
“What? Seriously? You think that you’ve “demonstrated” that humans aren’t increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere?”
It is right up above you. It is fairly basic, but whether you have the maths for it or not is something I do not know. I will give you a synopsis.
As I have shown, the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere, since reliable measurements began to be taken 55 years ago, is essentially an affine function of temperature:
dCO2/dt = k*(T – To)
where k is a coupling constant in ppmv per unit of time per degree of temperature, T is temperature, and To is an equilibrium temperature. This relationship integrates, as it must, into the observed CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This equation should be considered simply a first order Taylor expansion of what is likely a much more complicated function of temperature, so the parameters k and To likely should be varied depending on the state of the system to provide the best local representation over a given time interval. However, since 1958, they have apparently been remarkably stable.
The equation establishes that CO2 is driven by temperatures, and not the reverse, for it would be absurd to claim that temperatures depend on the rate of change of CO2, and not its absolute level. The relationship accounts for almost all of the observed CO2 in the atmosphere. The remarkable thing about the fit is that, when you choose the value of k to fit the variations, you also get a good fit to the overall trend. That fit leaves no room for significant anthropogenic forcing. Why? Because the rate of change of anthropogenic input is also a trend, which integrates into a quadratic factor, but the quadratic term which comes from integrating the temperature already fits the curvature of the absolute integrated concentration, and adding to it would cause it to be too large. We could deweight the temperature driven component, but that would cause a mismatch with the variational components.
The ineluctable conclusion is that the carbon cycle is not well understood, that human inputs are rapidly sequestered, and have little effect on the overall concentration.
The differential equation relationship above is to be expected in a continuous flow problem in which CO2 is constantly entering and exiting the surface system, and the differential rate at which it does so is dependent on temperature.
“No, in other words (and ones more accurate than yours) I’ve learned this in my time doing undergraduate, Masters and PhD degrees, and also during more than two decades of professional science.”
Big deal. I’ve got all that, too. I’ve built (well, I designed, others built them to my design) complex mechanisms which actually work in rather harsh environments.
“Which seems to be somewhat more than you do, given your own volunteered admission that you don’t even have a grasp of chemistry.”
I have a grasp, but it is moldy, as I haven’t studied it since my undergraduate days more than two decades ago. You, on the other hand, apparently have no familiarity with my specialty, which is feedback systems.
“Again, if you actually understood the science and the empirical evidence on which it is based, you’d be aware of the supportable chain of causality between human emissions of carbon dioxide and the acidification of sea water.”
To every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. A shallow understanding of processes leads one to assume a simplistic model in which an action takes place, and there is no reaction which modifies it as time progresses.
“Don’t hide your light under a bushel – explain to us where science has it wrong. Publish, and let the world be amazed.”
There is no point. Perhaps you are familiar with Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions? We have not yet reached the stage of the paradigm shift, and until we do, nothing new is going to get past the gatekeepers. But, that day is coming soon, as temperatures obstinately refuse to cooperate with the prognostications of the very simplistic, and quite simply very wrong, expectations of the current reigning paradigm.
Oh, please, put the conspiracy theories away. If your ‘equation’ holds water it can be published, even without peer-review (publishing houses such as Energy and Environment are happy to by-pass that process), and be up there for everyone to see.
It’s an Open Access world now, and you don’t even have to pay to be seen. There’s no excuse not to put the entire body of your extraordinary proof into the public domain, so that all can see either the strength of your argument, or its weakness. For heaven’s sake, if you don’t publish someone else might, and whisk your Nobel away from you.
Why not test it now?
Bernard J. says:
March 12, 2013 at 7:10 am
Who said anything about a conspiracy? It is “normal” science. I guess you don’t know much about Kuhn, either.
It will all come about in good time, and I am busy with more interesting and remunerative projects.
Besides, they hardly give Nobels for such straightforward observations using well established tools. What they need is an inverse Nobel for the boobs who led us up the current path.
I am making two specific predictions for the future and, as you watch them unfold, you will come to realize the truth of what I have told you.
1) The rate of change of CO2 will continue to track temperatures, as it has for the last 55 years. There is already a marked deceleration in precise step with flattened temperatures in the last ~17 years.
2) As temperatures continue to decline with the ~60 year cycle which has been in evidence for more than a century, and which has not deviated a smidgeon while CO2 in the atmosphere has increased markedly, the divergence between human generation of CO2 and atmospheric concentration will become even more pronounced. This will, no doubt, be greeted by head scratching and epicyclic conjecturing among those who have failed to appreciate the actual dynamics of atmospheric CO2.
Watch what happens.
BTW, on the outside chance that anyone else is following the discussion and wishes to investigate further, please feel free to take my observations and use them in any way you desire and even call them your own. My interest lies in other fields of research, and I wish for no notoriety in this one.