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.
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 @ur momisugly~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.]