Roger Pielke Sr. was quoted in David Appell’s recent article Whither global warming? Has global warming slowed down? over at the Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media. That portion of the article reads:
About 90 percent of this extra energy goes into the oceans. But meteorologist Roger Pielke Sr. of the University of Colorado in Boulder says he would like to understand why more heat is going into the deep ocean. “Until we understand how this fundamental shift in the climate system occurred,” says Pielke, “and if this change in vertical heat transfer really happened, and is not just due to the different areal coverage and data quality in the earlier years, we have a large gap in our understanding of the climate system.”
These large changes in ocean content reveal that the Earth’s surface is not a great place to look for a planetary energy imbalance. “This means this heat is not being sampled by the global average surface temperature trend,” he says. “Since that metric is being used as the icon to report to policymakers on climate change, it illustrates a defect in using the two-dimensional field of surface temperature to diagnose global warming.”
David Appell’s entire article about the recent pause in global warming is worth a read. It was also the topic of Judith Curry’s post more on the ‘pause’. There, in a comment yesterday, Roger Pielke Sr. provided his complete answer to David Appell’s interview question. Roger was also kind enough to email me his full reply with the italics, underlined and boldface text intact. It’s as follows:
#########
Hi David
Here is my reply to your question
What do you think of Trenberth’s recent paper on ocean warming (attached)?
Balmaseda et al, Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of
global ocean heat content, GRL
They obtain an ocean warming, for 2000-2009, of 1.19 W/m2.
Does that change any of your concerns about models overestimating net
radiative forcing, such as you wrote in Physics Today in 2007 (also
attached)?
My Answer
1. The recognition that ocean heat content changes can be used to diagnose the global radiative imbalance in Watts per meter squared, that I discussed in my paper
Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335. http://pielkeclimatesci.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/r-247.pdf
is applied in the Balmaseda et al 2013 paper. This, as I reported in my Physics Today article, is the much more robust approach to assess global warming and cooling, than using the global annual average surface temperature trend.
The Balmaseda et al paper is a step forward in understanding the changes of heat content.
2. However, there are substantive, unanswered questions that their paper introduces.
(i) First, they report that
“In the last decade, about 30% of the warming has occurred below 700 m.”
This change in heat content is a marked difference from what they report for the earlier years as illustrated in their Figure 1. They can only speculate on how this could have occurred; i.e. they write [boldfaced highlight added]
“….that changes in the atmospheric circulation are instrumental for the penetration of the warming into the ocean, although the mechanisms at work are still to be established. One possibility suggested by Lee and McPhaden [2008], is related to the modified subduction pathways in response to changes in the subtropical gyres resulting from changes of the trade winds in the tropics (Figure S04), but whether as low frequency variability or a longer term trend remains an open question. The 2000–2006 warming trend is likely associated with the weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC) in both experiments (see BMW13).”
Until we understand how this fundamental shift in the climate system occurred (and if this change in vertical heat transfer really happened, and is not just due to the different areal coverage and data quality in the earlier years), however, we have a large gap in our understanding of the climate system.
(ii) Moreover, how could this heat be transferred to depths below 700m without being been seen in the upper 700m of the ocean? [and this is a question also on the transfer of heat to between 300m and 700m without being seen in the upper 300m].
This absence of observable heat transfer through the upper 300m of the ocean is an issue that must be resolved.
3. There are also major implications for their findings even if they are robust.
(i) First, they report on a rate of heating that reads
the latest decade being significantly higher (1.19 ± 0.11 W m-2).
While, this is larger than found in the past, it is still less than the best estimate of the global average radiative forcing reported in the IPCC 2007 report (1.6 ± 0.6 to 2.4 W m-2 total net anthropogenic plus 0.12 ± 0.06 to 0.30 W m-2 from solar irradiance changes).
Since their reported diagnosed radiative imbalance for the last decade is 1.19 ± 0.11 W m-2 – which includes both the radiative forcings and all of the feedbacks (including from water vapor), this indicates that either the IPCC best estimate of the total radiative forcings by the IPCC is in error, and/or the radiative feedbacks in the climate system are a net negative.
(ii) Another very significant conclusion of their study, if it is correct, is that when they report that
about 30% of the warming has occurred below 700 m.
[and from their Figure 1, the percentage below 300m since 2003 is clearly well above 50%!]
this means that this heat is not being sampled by the global average surface temperature trend.
Since that metric is being used as the icon to report to policymakers on climate change (i.e. paraphrasing from other sources “we need to remain below a +2C change”), it illustrates a defect in using the two dimensional field of surface temperature to diagnose global warming.
I discuss this in my post
Torpedoing Of The Use Of The Global Average Surface Temperature Trend As The Diagnostic For Global Warming. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/torpedoing-of-the-use-of-the-global-average-surface-temperature-trend-as-the-diagnostic-for-global-warming/
(iii) Moreover, they write,
“La Niña events and negative PDO events could cause a hiatus in warming of the top 300 m while sequestering heat at deeper layers.”
If this is a real effect, than this is a muting of the radiative effect as this deep layer warming is unlikely to be reemitted back into the atmosphere in short time periods in large amounts (of Joules) as it would diffuse horizontally and vertically, at depth, in the ocean.
(iv) Also, the latest real world measurement of upper ocean heat content; [see the attachment in my e-mail from http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/] continues to show, little if any significant recent warming.
(v) Finally, with respect to the change in slope, this occurred when the ARGO network achieved world-wide coverage. This raises the suspicion that it is the date quality and coverage that remains more of an issue before 2003 than concluded in Balmaseda et al paper when they excluded the ARGO data.
Please let me know if you have any follow up questions. Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Best Regards
Roger Sr.
#########
CLOSING
When Roger wrote [my boldface]…
Until we understand how this fundamental shift in the climate system occurred (and if this change in vertical heat transfer really happened, and is not just due to the different areal coverage and data quality in the earlier years), however, we have a large gap in our understanding of the climate system.
…the following graphs from the post NODC’s Pentadal Ocean Heat Content (0 to 2000m) Creates Warming That Doesn’t Exist in the Annual Data – A Lot of Warming came to mind.
Kind of odd that the NODC’s annual ocean heat content data for 0-2000 meters, Figure 1, should warm hand in hand with the data for 0-700 meters from 1970 to 2003.
Figure 1
But then as soon as the ARGO floats are deployed and have close to full coverage of the global oceans, the datasets diverge, Figure 2.
Figure 2
Does anyone want to speculate about why the NODC removed their long-term annual ocean heat content for the depths of 0-2000 meters from their website?
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“how could this heat be transferred to depths below 700m without [first] being been seen in the upper 700m of the ocean?”
Until that question is answered, none of the rest of the text matters.
Heat doesn’t sink.
If – and that’s a big IF – the heat is going into the deep ocean then you can kiss goodbye to CAGW. CO2 can never ever heat up the deep ocean enough to raise Earth’s atmospheric temperature by a measurable amount.
This is pathetic, demonstrating the almost complete absence of true science in Climate Alchemy. The biggest transfer of heat in the oceans is the partial molar enthalpy of mixing of water of different ionic strength. That is an isothermal process under most circumstances and controlled by diffusion over variable boundary layer thicknesses.
Until there are some good minds in the subject they will continue to thrash around inventing yet more reasons not to junk the bad science with which they started out. The Atmosphere is self controlling no matter what [CO] you throw at it. The ‘missing heat’ isn;’t missing because it was never there to start with.
Perhaps the best thing would be to introduce a competition for the best new start to the science so the old people associated with poor thinking can be granted sinecures where they can’t cause any more damage to the careers of promising young scientists, currently forced to support scientific garbage akin to Lysenkoism. What next; Obama to introduce the death penalty for ‘deniers’ whilst the new Little Ice Age wreaks havoc on economies?
Wow
The sea is getting warmer by 0.0000001C per century or whatever it is.
Since I found it very hard to scare myself stupid about a 2C rise in atmospheric temperatures – where we live, breathe, grow things and do most everything else – imagine how much more difficult it will be to frighten me about an undetectable temperature rise in somewhere where we don’t.
A reasonable answer to rise in temperature below 700m is volcanic activity.
The AGW narrative deliberately misrepresents the amount of ocean volcanic activity, and volcanic activity in general as it deliberately misrepresents that man made fossil fuel combustion carbon dioxide can be told apart from volcanic production:
Volcanic Carbon Dioxide
Timothy Casey B.Sc. (Hons.)
Consulting Geologist
Uploaded ISO:2009-Oct-25
Revision 2 ISO:2011-Dec-11
“Abstract
A brief survey of the literature concerning volcanogenic carbon dioxide emission finds that estimates of subaerial emission totals fail to account for the diversity of volcanic emissions and are unprepared for individual outliers that dominate known volcanic emissions. Deepening the apparent mystery of total volcanogenic CO2 emission, there is no magic fingerprint with which to identify industrially produced CO2 as there is insufficient data to distinguish the effects of volcanic CO2 from fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere. Molar ratios of O2 consumed to CO2 produced are, moreover, of little use due to the abundance of processes (eg. weathering, corrosion, etc) other than volcanic CO2 emission and fossil fuel consumption that are, to date, unquantified. Furthermore, the discovery of a surprising number of submarine volcanoes highlights the underestimation of global volcanism and provides a loose basis for an estimate that may partly explain ocean acidification and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels observed last century, as well as shedding much needed light on intensified polar spring melts. Based on this brief literature survey, we may conclude that volcanic CO2 emissions are much higher than previously estimated, and as volcanic CO2 contributions are effectively indistinguishable from industrial CO2 contributions, we cannot glibly assume that the increase of atmospheric CO2 is exclusively anthropogenic.”
From which:
“In point of fact, the total worldwide estimate of roughly 55 MtCpa is by one researcher, rather than “scientists” in general. More importantly, this estimate by Gerlach (1991) is based on emission measurements taken from only seven subaerial volcanoes and three hydrothermal vent sites. Yet the USGS glibly claims that Gerlach’s estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes in roughly equal amounts. Given the more than 3 million volcanoes worldwide indicated by the work of Hillier & Watts (2007), one might be prone to wonder about the statistical significance of Gerlach’s seven subaerial volcanoes and three hydrothermal vent sites. If the statement of the USGS concerning volcanic CO2 is any indication of the reliability of expert consensus, it would seem that verifiable facts are eminently more trustworthy than professional opinion.
This is not an isolated case.”
continued on: http://carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net/
The global warmers have done it again and Dr. Pielke has called them out on it. Ocean warming at depth is merely an artifact of sampling changes. For,as he pointed out, how can heat transit from the surface to the depths without being detected in transit? Trenberth’s missing heat has become as the space alien of the old sci-fi story “Who Goes There?”
@ur momisugly Mike Jonas says:
May 9, 2013 at 1:03 am
Good point. If this is an ongoing mechanism, allowing the heat to successfully hide itself in such an irrelevant hidey hole, who cares?
I don’t know what they’re measuring… THEY don’t know what they’re measuring. But I do know what they’re NOT measuring: a result of CO2.
Heck, they can’t even figure out how the loss of thousands of stations could possibly affect the temperature record.
Clearly they’re either incompetent of making it up as they go. Maybe both. Neither is a good thing.
Heat doesn’t magically descend in the oceans.
“Does anyone want to speculate about why the NODC removed their long-term annual ocean heat content for the depths of 0-2000 meters from their website?”
How about this – if it doesn’t support “The Narrative”, then it doesn’t get published!!!
This isn’t science, this is the halfbreed lovechild of fundamentalist Gaia worship and PT Barnum.
Hansen backing out ASAP:
By John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia
http://antigreen.blogspot.com.au
“Jim Hansen postpones the day of doom
But first he gives us a pleasant little surprise. He confirms something that I have been repeating for some years now: That the high surface temperature on Venus is not the result of runaway global warming but rather a simple adiabatic effect of the weight of the huge Venusian atmosphere. Hansen writes:
“Venus today has a surface pressure of about 90 bars, compared with 1 bar on Earth. The Venus atmosphere is mostly CO2. The huge atmospheric depth and CO2 amount are the reason Venus has a surface temperature of nearly 500 degrees C.”
But Hansen has invented a “get out of jail free” card for terrestrial warming called “Climate system inertia”. Now that past climate prophecies have been falsified by the temperature standstill of the last 17 years, there is an urgent need for Warmists to regroup. And Hansen has done that by moving the goalposts. He says that the climate is so slow to respond to input changes that it will takes centuries for the prophesied warming to occur. That of course make his prophecies effectively unfalsifiable. He writes:
“Climate system inertia means that it will take several centuries for the eventual extreme global warming mentioned above to occur, if we are so foolish as to burn all of the fossil fuel resources”
Why we should believe the new prophecies when the old ones have failed utterly, Hansen does not tell us. But we should clearly be most wary of statements that are not only unproven but unprovable.
But Hansen will continue to have fun in his own little world with his assumptions and models — JR.”
More here:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2013/20130415_Exaggerations.pdf
I find it so strange that so called scientists work so hard trying to suggest that heat can flow from lower to higher temperatures. When all they need to admit is that they wrongly guessed the polarity or size of a feedback coefficient.
Trenberth got it wrong because he treats earth as a flat plate with 24/7 insolation from a cold sun. No wonder he has problems.
I do not know Trenberth’s qualification but he clearly has no understanding of heat transfer. Dr Pielke is to kind in his assessment.
At least three flaws here.
1. The radiative imbalance is not supposed to equal the increase in radiative forcing since most of the increase is sent back to space after heating the surface.
2. OHC 700 m unchanged at a high level and OHC 2000 m rising does not mean the transport is undetected. A constant flow from a high temp reservoir is transporting more energy than from a lower temp reservoir.
3. The 2000–2006 period is unsuited for the purpose since pre- and post-ARGO transition data clearly is not comparable. http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/inodc_heat700_0-360E_-24-24N_na.png
With the greatest respect to Roger Pielke and his carefully worded scientific response to Trenberth’s paper, carefully and deliberately picking out the faults in his argument, you don’t need to be a trained climate scientist submitting papers to well known science journals in order to see that Trenberth’s theory is basically pants! Though I guess it does help if you want others to take you seriously! Trenberth has no viable mechanism to explain why, suddenly and unexpectedly, global warming switched from manifesting as land and ocean surface temp increases (which one would intuitively expect) to then completely disappearing into the deep oceans (somehow bypassing the surface layers) where it cannot be objectively and quantitatively measured. Postulating that this is somehow due to abnormal circulation patterns just doesn’t (excuse the pun) cut any ice. It seems obvious to me that this is a purely speculative paper submitted by an ardent warmist in order to avoid admitting that there is a much simpler explanation for the lack of observed global warming, i.e. it isn’t happening.
I miss Roger’s sane, straightforward and polite assessments of new papers.
I smell data manipulation…again…
So there is a jump in the data series that coincides with the deployment of new instruments, there is no physical mechanism to account for the jump, but it is declared “real” anyhow because it fits the agenda. Wow. Some settled science. That sure is worth a few more million dollar of funding.
Deep ocean heat content is invoked by Trenberth as an Excuse rather than an Explanation. I am sure that they can get the model to match, but in absence of a physical mechanism (i imagine a tornado-type gyre ?) to connect shallow and deep to rapidly mix the upper and deep ocean in a way we have never seen before – this is pure speculation. Deus ex Machina, ‘and then a Miracle Occurred’ type stuff.
Thanks for letting us see the whole of the argument. Quite informative.
“Peter Stroud says:
May 9, 2013 at 2:15 am
I find it so strange that so called scientists work so hard trying to suggest that heat can flow from lower to higher temperatures. When all they need to admit is that they wrongly guessed the polarity or size of a feedback coefficient.
johnmarshall says:
May 9, 2013 at 2:23 am
Trenberth got it wrong because he treats earth as a flat plate with 24/7 insolation from a cold sun. No wonder he has problems.”
/ Gents, I find it most amazing that you two have the temerity to come up with statements that clearly applies to OLD science.We are talking about CLIMATESCIENCE(tm) here and rules and laws are made up as and when needed to support the fad of the day. Sadly, with these posts you two have effectively stopped your future careers in CLIMATESCIENCE(tm) because in order to enter that field you have to be a Merlin wannabe who “live in the land of Myth and in the time of Magic” where real world physics does not apply and I can not see how you two would fit in with that crowd because you are too deep into OLD science. /sarc off
Besides, sadly it is not just Trenberth that buys into the concept of flat earth/cold sun, too many who call themselves skeptics do that also. It seems to be some kind of anathema that subjects people to immediate abuse and ad hominem attacs if they suggest that we should start with 1361W/meter squared at TOA and work our way downwards, which is what one would do if normal physics laws applied. Not so in this very very very very special case, here we first have to average together all emissions ranging from at least minus 60 degrees C to plus 60 degrees C (look at the standard deviation) arriving at an average of MINUS 18 degrees C and then twist our minds to believe that the “hot” sunshine you can feel on your skin is actually MINUS 18 degrees C, then we have to invent some MAGIC GHE to make up for the difference between the GLT of plus 15 degrees C and the suns MINUS 18 degrees C.
It is amazing to see how fairy tales and propaganda can marginalise reason and real science.
According to S-B: 1361W/m2 = 393.61K, 340.25W/m2 = 278.33K. / Of course nothing happens at
393.61K that does not happen at 278.33K. /sarc off
Have a nice day.
How to find the “missing heat [if there is any]”.
Model:
1) Sun drives Trade Winds and heats the Pacific/Atlantic Oceans specifically in the perpendicular [Sun directly overhead] locations.
2) Trade Winds [this example during Sun approaching Tropic of Cancer] “Bulge up the warm water” in Indonesia/Gulf of Mexico.
3) Warm water is driven North/South in the Pacific and some subducted. Warm water in the Atlantic, due to geography, flows only north as the Gulf Stream.
4) Warm water gets trapped in the Pacific Gyres, until it is pushed into the colder water regions. Yes, you can push water by having a higher pressure behind it.
5) Warm water in the Atlantic does not sink due to salinity changes. It sinks since it has lost its heat, and become colder. Since the currents continue to flow the cooler water is pushed under.
6) Cooler water returns to the points of origin.
Measurements:
1) Measure height of Indonesian/Gulf of Mexico “Bulge”.
2) Measure current flows at surface and depth.
3) Measure heat stored in the Gyres, surface and depth.
4) Measure flow rates of upwelling s at Western South America coast at the Tropic of Cancer. Western African coast at the Tropic of Cancer.
5) Measure temperatures of upwelling s.
Determine Results:
1) Compare heat in at “Bulges” to returning temperatures at upwelling s.
2) Determine heat leaving at the Poles.
3) Determine heat remaining in the Oceans.
4) Determine heat dissipated into the Atmosphere.
5) Form a new Weather/Climate model based on Ocean heats and Sun inputs!
You can stil get the annual OHC down to 2000 metres from 1955 to 2012 from the NODC at this link. The ohc2000m_Levitus values (which need a little matching up to the more current numbers).
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/yearly/
Starting in 2005 you can get the 3 month period data here.
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/
—————————–
The ocean down to 2000m is absorbing 0.46 W/m2/year under the Argo float measurements. (below 2000m looks to be very close to Zero given the two studies done on it).
But the total net forcing is now +2.28 W/m2/year according to the estimates which will be used in the upcoming IPCC AR5 report.
Furthermore, we should be seeing +1.7 W/m2 of feedbacks right now given the 0.7C temperature increase we have seen since 1900.
So, the energy math just doesn’t work.
There is either energy accumulation hiding somewhere (and a lot of it – really a lot more than should be able to hide from us) or the postive forcing estimates are way too high or the feedbacks are net negative -1.7 W/m2 instead of a positive +1.7 W/m2.
3.0C per doubling only works if the feedbacks are more than +2.0 W/m2/C. If they are much less than that or especially if they are negative, the theory of global warming will eventually be renamed “the great global warming scare of the late 20th Century”.
The only mystery bigger than how the missing heat sunk into the deep ocean without being detected, is why Peilke Sr. would even acknowledge and comment to David Appell. He has no credibility as far as I am concerned.
Apart from situations where water is densest at 4 deg C will sink below water at 0-3 deg C ie heat can sink in water, which is why ponds freeze from the surface; this search for heat increase below 700 metres is sounding more and more desperate. Has the layer of water at the bottom of the ocean which is denser than water at 0 deg C increased in thickness? The average temperature for all ocean water is about 3.5 deg C
Myrrh says:
May 9, 2013 at 1:21 am
Given the more than 3 million volcanoes worldwide indicated by the work of Hillier & Watts (2007), one might be prone to wonder about the statistical significance of Gerlach’s seven subaerial volcanoes and three hydrothermal vent sites.
================
There is a fairly reliable statistical rule of thumb that your sample size should equal the square root of the population. So, to sample 3 million volcanoes requires a sample of about 1700 volcanoes, not 10.
A sample of 10 volcanoes is representative of 100 volcanoes, not 3 million. It is a statistically meaningless sample that should have been recognized by the “experts”.