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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@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.