Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
According to the current climate paradigm, if the forcing (total downwelling energy) increases, a combination of two things happens. Some of the additional incoming energy (forcing) goes into heating the surface, and some goes into heating the ocean. Lately there’s been much furor about what the Levitus ocean data says about how much energy has gone into heating the ocean, from the surface down to 2000 metres depth. I discussed some of these issues in The Layers of Meaning in Levitus.
I find this furor somewhat curious, in that the trends and variations in the heat content of the global 0-2000 metre layer of the ocean are so small. The size is disguised by the use of units of 10^22 joules of energy … not an easy one to wrap my head around. So what I’ve done is I’ve looked at the annual change in heat content of the upper ocean (0-2000m). Then I’ve calculated the global forcing (in watts per square metre, written here as “W/m2”) that would be necessary to move that much heat into or out of the ocean. Figure 1 gives the results, where heat going into the ocean is shown as a positive forcing, and heat coming out as a negative forcing.
Figure 1. Annual heat into/out of the ocean, in units of watts per square metre.
I found several things to be interesting about the energy that’s gone into or come out of the ocean on an annual basis.
The first one is how small the average value of the forcing actually is. On average, little energy is going into the ocean, only two-tenths of a watt per square metre. In a world where the 24/7 average downwelling energy is about half a kilowatt per square metre, that’s tiny, lost in the noise. Nor does it portend much heating “in the pipeline”, whatever that may mean.
The second is that neither the average forcing, nor the trend in that forcing, are significantly different from zero. It’s somewhat of a surprise.
The third is that in addition to the mean not being significantly different from zero, only a few of the individual years have a forcing that is distinguishable from zero.
Those were a surprise because with all of the hollering about Trenberth’s missing heat and the Levitus ocean data, I’d expected to find that we could tell something from the Levitus’s numbers.
But unfortunately, there’s still way too much uncertainty to even tell if either the mean or the trend of the energy going into the ocean are different from zero … kinda limits our options when it comes to drawing conclusions.
w.
DATA: Ocean temperature figures are from NOAA, my spreadsheet is here.
Bears repeating that the problem with the Argo Bouys, which measure ocean temperatures, is that they are free floating. While they only spend about 2 days a month on the surface, they will, none the less, drift away from areas of upwelling (colder waters) toward areas of downwelling (warmer waters), and particularly warmer water at depth.
The Argo data tells us nothing worthwhile about ocean heat or temperatures, because of this bias.
Willis, you say:
“[Heat] is a concept, not a physical flow, so it can’t “fly around” anywhere. […] There is no such thing as a “radiative heat flux”. There are only radiative flows of energy, not of heat. The radiative energy flows in both directs between two objects like say the atmosphere and the surface. The NET of these two energy flows to and from a given body is called heat.”
Oh my. I see your confusion. Wow. Just wow. Listen, ‘heat’ is what we actually and physically measure, Willis. We cannot physically separate and detect individual opposing flows of energy in a radiative field between objects, only the spontaneous flow of heat that results from temperature gradient from hotter to colder. Those individual fluxes are only inferred, assumed.
‘Heat’ is the physical flow. The ‘radiative flows of energy’, the ‘exchange’, is the concept.
You’ve got it all turned on its head.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrgeometer#Measurement_of_long_wave_downward_radiation
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/pyrgeometers-untangled/
Willis says:
“[…] your claim that solar radiation is a “heat flux” and longwave electromagnetic radiation is not a “heat flux” makes no sense at all.”
Again I have to say, wow. How is this possible to misunderstand so profoundly?
The solar flux represents a GAIN in energy for the surface. The atmospheric flux does NOT. It is the lesser part of the exchange in energy between surface and atmosphere. The ‘net’ represents a LOSS in energy for the surface.
There are two system interactions here, Willis, not one. The Sun is heat source to the surface, so it tranfers heat (a net gain of energy seen from the perspective of the surface) to the surface. The surface in turn is heat source to the atmosphere, so it transfers heat (a net loss of energy seen from the perspective of the surface) to the atmosphere.
What’s not to understand here?
From Eric H. on June 20, 2013 at 2:19 am:
Never be a doctor, especially an ER doctor. If hepatitis and acetaminophen overdose cannot be ruled out then cirrhosis cannot logically be the cause of liver failure?
Of course in the real world it could be all three at once.
CO₂ could be the bad front end alignment. As in, it is not the driver, the driver determines where the car’s going. But it can be a force the driver has to counteract, and if the hands are off the steering wheel then instead of going straight the car will drift left.
kadaka,
So the sun and clouds (drivers) are responding to CO2 (bad alignment)? How does that work exactly?
If your car cranks and doesn’t start you check for fuel and spark first (primary drivers of combustion) you don’t start by changing the MAF sensor. If fuel and spark cannot be ruled out then the MAF sensor cannot logically be determined to be the cause.
Or perhaps we should just avoid bad analogies?
Kristian says:
June 20, 2013 at 2:39 am
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It is because people conflate slowing the heat loss with warming.
A warmer atmosphere may slow the heat loss from the surface, but it does not warm the surface. Save in rare cases of a very warm wind where the wind is warmer than the ground below, all warming (ignoring geothermal) comes from the sun (and, of course, the sun was the source of the warm wind),
Unfortunately, some people give an example of clouds forming at night warming the surface below, as if clouds were heaters (when they are not).
Warming, and slowing heat loss are different processes, and it is important not to conflate one with the other.
Those who study the history of the science of hominid evolution have often said how remarkable it is that researchers in the field often find exactly the bones and tools that supports their stated pet theory. Or to be more precise, bones and tools that appear to support their theory, which may later be re-interpreted in a slightly different light.
I suspect that all this stuff about greatly increasing ocean heat content (OHC), especially the Cook graph posted by Anthony Watts above, is mostly a result of more measurements by people wanting to find more heat, but which heat was already there before. It’s a relatively easy mistake to make, to want to see more heat but which is simply a larger and denser number of measurements of the already existing heat, to give an apparently increasing amount of heat. Like the hominid researchers, they may be simply interpreting the results in the way they wanted to find them in the first place.
One would have to go back to the original data to see how much of the earlier raw data has been extrapolated or adjusted, to get a hockey stick in the OHC.
Willis Eschenbach says:
June 20, 2013 at 2:20 am
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Willis
Further to your explanation above.
Lets say that the facts are that YOU has no money at all and therefore has nothing from which to give ME anything, but there is an arrangement that at in the early morning ME gives to YOU his payment, and at the end of the day YOU gives to ME his payment. The arrangement can work because ME is effectively funding everything. IF YOU had to make the payment before ME handed over any money, the arrangement would fail instantaneously.
Now lets consider the position in relation to K&T energy budget where Surface absorbed solar is 168 Wper sqm .and where atmospheric back radiation is 324 Wper sqm. Lets say the atmosphere is YOU and the surface absorbed solar is ME.
On day 1, the very first day that Earth acquired an atmosphere, the atmoshere (YOU) has an empty bank. It has nothing to to give to the surface (ME). At the beginning of the day, ME gives to YOU 168 Wper sqm, being all the solar that it was able to absorb. At the end of the day, YOU is obliged to make his payment. He only has 168 Wper sqm being the payment made by the surfaced absorbed solar, so all he can pay to ME is 168 Wper sqm; he is unable to pay 324 Wper sqm because he does not start with anything in his kitty.
The example you gave works fine where ME is richer than YOU, or where YOU actually has something in his pocket with which to fund his payment independently of the payment made by ME. But is falls down IF those facts are not met.
The problem in the real world is that the only source of revenue is the sun,so how can the atmosphere pay more than it receives.
It is like government expenditure. Lets say a government cannot borrow. The only asset that the government has is tax revenues. How can it spend more than it receives in tax?
It is the problem we have in the UK. Some consider the public sector to be a wealth generator. They consider that the government should employ more people and this will help the government since the people it employs will pay tax. They consider it to be self financing.
In reality the only wealth generator is the private sector. It is the private sector that pay for everything. It is taxes taken from the private sector that enable the government to employ some people in the public sector. Of course the government does not have to pay the full gross wage of those it employs on the public sector, it only pays the net pay, ie., after the public sector workers have paid their tax. But none of the tax paid by the public sector workers enables the government to employ public sector workers. It is the tax paid by the private sector that enables this.
In short, you can’t spend what you do not have. It is difficult to see how the atmosphere can spend more than it receives from solar (surface absorbed solar which the surface radiates) when the only source of revenue into the system is from the sun.
Manfred says:
Yes, because Willis was talking about d(OHC)/dt, What is your point ???
no, willis’s graph is the *trend* of d(OHC)/dt, i.e. the second derivative d/dt[OHC’].
willis has succeeded in proving the ocean heating is *accelerating.*
willis wrote:
It is also why Mr. X is wrong when he claims that you can determine significance by looking at a graph.
i first gave the calculation, with uncertainty, then noted that eyeballing (intuition) clearly backs that up. Anyone can look at that graph of 58 points and see that it clearly has a positive slope.
But the more important point is that you have completely misunderstood what it is you’re calculation, which is not the trend in OHC but the trend in d(OHC)/dt.
Your entire post is badly wrong.
ironargonaut says:
The climate scientists said temperature was going up and would continue to rise. Hockey stick anyone. They did not say heat content would rise like a hockey stick. Temperature and heat are two different things.
the *change* in heat content is proportional to the change in temperature,
dQ = mc*dT
hence
dT/dt = (dQ/dt)/mc
if the heat content is changing, the temperature is changing.
From Eric H. on June 20, 2013 at 3:08 am:
Is it that hard for you to figure out?
Out here in the real world, we’ve been doing something horrendously old-fashioned, the taking of actual measurements and making deductions based on empirical evidence. From this we find the transient climate sensitivity (aka climate response) to further atmospheric CO₂ concentration increases is basically negligible, with the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ha ha, like equilibrium will happen anytime this millennium) likewise negligible to easily manageable.
But that’s in a system filled with feedbacks, overwhelmingly negative, that work to maintain the temperature, as found in the many different temperature regions and local climates with certain processes that have global effects, etc.
What would happen without them? Without the feedbacks, including clouds which you’ve mislabeled as a driver though they form in response to other things, what’s the effect of CO₂?
We’re shooting for a constant global average temperature. Don’t higher concentrations of CO₂ tend to bring about higher temperatures, when feedbacks aren’t countering that force?
Let’s say without the feedbacks, the “ideal” concentration for the preferred global average temperature was 300 parts per million (volume). Wouldn’t 400ppmv cause a higher temperature?
So there’s the analogy. 300ppmv CO₂ would be good alignment, the climate would keep going straight without feedbacks. 400ppmv would be bad alignment, the climate would want to drift warmer. But with feedbacks, the climate could still be going straight at 400ppmv because the feedbacks would be counteracting the bad alignment.
The Mass Air Flow sensor would be very low on the list of anything to check, as the worst that should happen if that goes bad is the computer will switch to the less-economical “static” setting where it computes with stored presets rather than dynamically with “live” measurements. These newfangled “modern” cars will also likely signal a problem, with a “check engine” light or similar, and plugging in the diagnostic scanner should quickly reveal that particular problem.
Hopefully you realize a diesel engine could be involved which doesn’t require spark.
With today’s vehicles, spark is rarely an issue, and good chance you’ll find individual ignition coils for each cylinder rather than a single central coil with a distributor, thus it is very likely you’ll have cylinders firing. If there are no cylinders firing then it’s possibly a loose connector, or a blown fuse, but also possibly a computer failure.
As long as there’s fuel in the tank showing on the fuel gauge, you likely have fuel. With in-tank electric pumps it’s easy to check for fuel at the relief valve on the fuel rail, but there’s normally a sensor checking that anyway. But even then, with injectors on every cylinder, for no cylinders to fire indicates a possible loose connector, or a blown fuse, but also possibly a computer failure.
Frankly, outside of the lawn tractor, the only vehicle I have that I have had a problem with starting for a long time, is an old Ford pickup with a V8 from the glory days of the early 1980’s when vacuum controls on carbureted engines reached their pinnacle of complexity before makers surrendered to practicality and went with fuel injection. Which has the brown grommet Ford solid-state ignition module, much less common than the blue grommet, which I replaced soon after getting the truck when the old module melted out. The mechanical fuel pump might die, but that’d more likely be at full-out highway speeds rather than slow starting.
If that truck doesn’t start, I just pump the pedal a lot more, and play with the gas pedal a lot more, trying to get it to start firing at least a little before the battery dies… Because it’s the computer that’s keeping it from starting, and I have to basically override the emission controls.
So to summarize, if a vehicle doesn’t start these days, fuel and spark are not the first things to check. Indeed, the most likely problem is electrical/electronic, plug in the diagnostic scanner, available at auto parts stores for about $90 and up depending on the frills. Which will report on many things, including the MAF sensor, at once. Thus the first thing to check, is what does the car think the problem is.
Please do so, yours was terribly screwed up.
willis wrote:
Remember that the Nychka equation is…
another point is that, if the Nychka equation gives such a low n_eff, it is not a good model for the autocorrelation, i.e. you can’t ignore higher-order lags. you need something like an ARMA model.
in any case, your physics is still all wrong — you aren’t calculating the trend of OHC, but the trend of its derivative. you’ve proven ocean warming is (probably) accelerating!
also willis, your graph is wrongly labeled. you’re not calculating the annual forcing that’s gone into/out of the ocean, but into/out of the top 2000 m of the ocean.
heat may well be going deeper into the ocean, below 2000 m. average ocean depth is about 4000 meters.
Last time I dipped my toe in the ocean it was way too cold. Maybe if you live in the tropics the oceans are barely warm enough to go swimming. Everywhere else and you risk dying of exposure with anything more than a quick dip.
Call me when the oceans are jacuzzi warm. There is a reason fish are cold blooded and whales have blubber. The oceans are COLD and at depth they are VERY COLD.
ferd berple says:
Call me when the oceans are jacuzzi warm.
silly. tell us, what do you think is the (approximate) difference in average ocean temperature between a glacial and an interglacial period?
Willis writes “So in terms of radiation, while a cold object cannot warm a warmer object, it can slow the cooling rate by the exact amount of the back-radiation.”
I know Willis has made a generalised statement here but for the specific case of the ocean, if the energy is added to the surface of the ocean where the back-radiation is absorbed in the top 10um or so, then that additional energy must increase evaporation with everything else being equal. Its a fundamental unavoidable result.
So the resulting decrease in cooling is less than the amount of back-radiation. Much less probably, because evaporation actually cools the ocean not just “uses up” that energy.
richard verney says:
June 20, 2013 at 4:32 am
The problem in the real world is that the only source of revenue is the sun,so how can the atmosphere pay more than it receives.
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surface warming can only increase if the atmosphere is made cooler. otherwise, energy is being created out of nothing.
So, for example, GHG in the atmosphere can remove energy by conduction from the surrounding air, and radiate this to the surface and space. This will cool the atmosphere while warming the surface. Which is what we observe, the atmosphere is cooler than the surface, rather than isothermal as one would expect without GHG.
However, there is a problem with this. As the surface warms and the atmosphere cools, this sets up convection which works to return the atmosphere to the same temperature as the surface. The stronger the atmospheric cooling and surface warming effect of GHG, the stronger the vertical circulation to remove the effects of GHG.
This negative feedback is inherent in the climate system. The limiting factor is the force of gravity, which determines the maximum acceleration of the atmosphere downward, which limits the conversion of PE into KE, which determines the dry air lapse rate.
Ximinyr says:
June 20, 2013 at 6:49 am
silly. tell us, what do you think is the (approximate) difference in average ocean temperature between a glacial and an interglacial period?
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Are you talking surface temperature or average temperature? There is a big difference. And what possible practical use is knowing glacial temperatures outside of academia? Are you planning to move from the interglacial to the glacial?
What is important to anyone that is routinely on the ocean is that for the most part the surface is bloody cold and you will quickly die of this cold long before you need worry about drowning.
Humans are one of the best adapted warm climate animals on the planet. Everything about us is optimized to deal with heat. So long as we have water and shade there is no place on earth too hot for us to survive. Which tells us that conditions where humans evolved were much warmer than where most of us live today.
In fact, if you sit naked on the beach in the tropics on the equator at noon under a palm tree and there is a breeze blowing you will be very comfortable. If you try the same thing at midnight and there is a breeze blowing, you will be cold. Even if you come out from under the palm tree and bask in the abundant back radiation.
Call me when the oceans are jacuzzi warm.
jai,
“surface mixing and transport” might be a good parameter label but it doesn’t describe much at the ocean surface. Do waves mix the surface? Sure. What happens next? The warm water comes right back to the top after having perhaps conducted some energy to nearby molecules a few meters deep, which molecules immediately join in returning to the surface.
Besides wind driven wave mixing there is shallow mixing from K and R waves bouncing back and forth. That’s it. There is no other downwelling “transport” in the tropics. The heat can’t hide from the satellites, and these tell us unequivocally that the surface component of Levitus’s averages is not evenly distributed. Rather, surface warming in the Indian and Arctic Oceans accounts for most of the increase.
ferd berple says:
Are you talking surface temperature or average temperature?
What I already indicated — average temperature. What is it difference between a glacial and interglacial?
The rest of your post is a lot of hand-waving arguments about optimum temperatures. Rates of its change are more relevant. Humans don’t live on the beach, and there is much more to the world than people — other animals, plants, ecosystems — that all have to adapt too. Historical evidence says such adaptation is difficult for them.
Big Macs don’t fall from outer space, you know.
Willis,
I understand the laboratory accuracy of the ARGO floats. The issue as I see it is the previous generation of methods for measuring the ocean used sensors of similar accuracy. Yet the ocean apparently cooled once ARGO was fully deployed. So different instruments with calibrated sensors of relatively similar design showed different enough results to go from warming to cooling just based on the homogenous method of sampling the ARGO floats use.
I think this highlights your point that the forcing or for that matter OHC change is not statistically significant. The data record is particularly problematic due to small sample size and a wide range of methods, sensors and equipment to take those samples over the graphs some 60 years of data. Which makes the overall error of the entire record large, very large.
This is also a problem for ARGO because there isn’t a really good way to test their operational accuracy in the lab. If I had the roughly 20k it would cost to throw about I would take a ARGO float out and test it in the OCEAN versus a suspended TCD to see if the float itself creates error as it operates. This would be pretty hard to accomplish but given some time and experimentation I think you could get an idea of accuracy. If ARGO were to be confirmed to an accuracy of .005C through out its operational range through rigorous operational testing then the rest of the record is essentially junk. In that case we should deploy more of the little devils and kick back for about 20 years to get a good idea of what is going on. Particularly since there is a new model coming out that is capable of doing 6000M.
Yet the ocean apparently cooled once ARGO was fully deployed.
completely false; just look at graph #2 here:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
in fact, the ocean has been warming strongly.
Philip Bradley says:
June 20, 2013 at 2:27 am
Oh my goodness, no, no, no. The Argo data, like any dataset, has its problems. Coverage is one of them, albeit not a large one.
Despite that, the Argo data is a huge irreplaceable addition to our knowledge about the ocean. The idea that they can “tell us nothing worthwhile” is simply not true. I’ve mined lots of valuable information from them.
w.
Ximinyr says:
June 20, 2013 at 4:52 am
Manfred is correct. The graph is of the first derivative of OHC, in units of W/m2. This is the forcing required to effect the annual changes.
Really, my friend … you should quit when you’re behind …
w.