It has been quite entertaining to watch the various explanations coming out to rationalize “the pause” in surface temperatures for the last 16 years. For example, as Jerome Ravetz points out to me in email, The Times Hannah Devlin says the warming has just gone into hiding.
But there is a funny thing about that deep ocean warming.
As Bob Tisdale wrote:
Ever since the NODC released their ocean heat content data for the depths of 0-2000 meters and published Levitus et al (2012), it seems that each time a skeptic writes a blog post or answers a question in an interview, in which he or she states that global surface temperatures haven’t warmed in “X” years, a global warming enthusiast will counter with something to the effect of: global warming hasn’t slowed because ocean heat content continues to show warming at depths of 0-2000 meters. Recently, those same people are linking Balmaseda et al (2013) and claiming the warming of ocean heat content data continues.
It is true that the NODC’s ARGO-era ocean heat content (0-2000 meters) continues to warm globally, but always recall that the ARGO data had to be adjusted, modified, tweaked, corrected, whatever, in order to create that warming. That is, the “raw” ocean heat content data for 0-2000 meters shows the decreased rate of warming after the ARGO floats were deployed. (See the post here.) Also, while the much-revised NODC ocean heat content data for 0-2000 meters might show warming globally, it shows very little warming for the Northern Hemisphere oceans since 2005. See Figure 1.
Figure 1
Can well-mixed human-created greenhouse gases pick and choose between the hemispheres, warming one but not the other? One might think that’s very unlikely.
Something else to consider: the Northern Hemisphere warming of ocean heat content for depths of 0-2000 meters occurs in only one ocean basin, and it’s not one of the big ones.
Right there is a premise falsifier. But I find this figure even more interesting:
There was a comparatively minor warming in the Northern Hemisphere at depths of 0-2000 meters from 2005 to 2012. But the upper 700 meters in the Northern Hemisphere cooled. The difference is provided to show the additional warming that occurred at depths of 700 to 2000 meters.
Figure 2
So the question here is simple. As Hannah Devlin writes in the Times:
The pause in global warming during the past decade is because more heat than expected is being absorbed by the deep oceans, according to scientists.
How does that heat get to the deep ocean hidey hole, down to 2000 meters, without first warming the upper 700 meters in transit? That’s some neat trick.
You can read more on how that deep ocean hidey hole doesn’t seem to hold up when the data is examined carefully here.
The claim has been made that its the sun doing it:
[Tisdale] SkepticalScience’s Rob Painting provides a reasonable explanation of the hypothetical cause of greenhouse gas-driven warming of the global oceans in the post Observed Warming in Ocean and Atmosphere is Incompatible with Natural Variation. Painting writes (my boldface):
Arguably the most significant climate-related impact of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is that they trap more heat in the ocean. Over the last half-century around 93% of global warming has actually gone into heating the ocean. A little-known fact is that the oceans are almost exclusively heated by sunlight (shortwave radiation) entering the surface layers.
Back in 2009 it was claimed that solar radiation changes would do just that:
Well Duncan, we are still here, speaking clearly to the issue.
That article was a reaction to this Judith Lean Paper in GRL (bold mine):
=============================================================
How will Earth’s surface temperature change in future decades?
Judith L. Lean, David H. Rind Article first published online: 15 AUG 2009 DOI: 10.1029/2009GL038932
Reliable forecasts of climate change in the immediate future are difficult, especially on regional scales, where natural climate variations may amplify or mitigate anthropogenic warming in ways that numerical models capture poorly. By decomposing recent observed surface temperatures into components associated with ENSO, volcanic and solar activity, and anthropogenic influences, we anticipate global and regional changes in the next two decades. From 2009 to 2014, projected rises in anthropogenic influences and solar irradiance will increase global surface temperature 0.15 ± 0.03°C, at a rate 50% greater than predicted by IPCC. But as a result of declining solar activity in the subsequent five years, average temperature in 2019 is only 0.03 ± 0.01°C warmer than in 2014. This lack of overall warming is analogous to the period from 2002 to 2008 when decreasing solar irradiance also countered much of the anthropogenic warming. We further illustrate how a major volcanic eruption and a super ENSO would modify our global and regional temperature projections.
==================================================================
Since that obviously hasn’t happened, and “the pause” is an inconvenient truth, the cheerleaders are looking for alternate explanations. Voila! The deep ocean hidey hole.
The ocean provides the perfect cover for global warming because unlike the atmosphere, few people experience it directly. Few people go diving down to 2000 meters with thermometers and few people go swimming in the ocean with pH meters to check the claims of “ocean acidification”.
On the other hand, virtually the whole of humanity can and has experienced “the pause” in air temperatures.
When the deep ocean hidey hole doesn’t pan out in a few years, and that stored hidden warming doesn’t spring out of the deep ocean like a caged lion, where will they put the warming next? They are running out of places.
“””””””…….Arguably the most significant climate-related impact of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is that they trap more heat in the ocean. Over the last half-century around 93% of global warming has actually gone into heating the ocean…….”””””
{A little-known fact is that the oceans are almost exclusively heated by sunlight (shortwave radiation) entering the surface layers..AW-BT ??}
Well actually not; they DO trap(?) more incoming solar radiation in the ATMOSPHERE, and convert that to “heat” energy IN THE ATMOSPHERE; but that means LESS solar radiation goes into the oceans between 0 and 2,000 meters (also between 2,000 and 12,000 meters) where it too becomes LESS “heat” energy.
There’s not much in the way of thermodynamic processes that can transport “heat” energy from the warmed atmosphere, down to the deep oceans from 0 to 12,000 meters; or actually much beyond 0 to 12,000 microns, as LWIR radiation.
Seems like prompt evaporation short circuits that deep stuff.
“”””””……Joe says:
July 24, 2013 at 10:20 am
“WHAT IS THE MECHANISM? What told the heat to hide? In 50 words or less of plain English, please.”
Look up the meaning of the word ‘occult’…….”””””
Well “occult” means to block; as in “occulting disk” used to block the SUN in a telescope so you can look at the corona any time you get bored.
So clearly, the GHGs are “occulting the solar energy, and stopping it from getting to the deep oceans, from 0 to 12,000 meters, or pick a number.
Looks like no one on either side of the issue is going to offer a physical explanation for heat “hiding” in the deep ocean. Ergo, the whole idea is plucked from, er, thin air and debating it is ridiculous.
Funny how some are still d*nying that there’s a “pause”, aka halt to the warming, claiming that it’s “cherry-picking” to say the warming has stopped the past 16 years or more. Maybe they’d better climb aboard this exciting new hidey-hole bandwagon, and pronto. It also looks and sounds better when they’re all singing from the same hymnal.
If warmists are now saying that atmospheric heat can be transferred into the oceans, causing a stall in the atmospheric temperature rise – how many times has this happened in the last 2000 years?
Doesn’t this invalidate all proxy temp measurements?
Okay, I was due to say something really stupid, and so far today has seemed to be my day for it, so I may as well continue. Here goes:
With regard to the question of how the heat tunneled to the deeper ocean without affecting the shallower, who says it has? As I recall from Mr. Eschenbach’s heat-transfer post here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/06/18/time-lags-in-the-climate-system/, conductive heating through the upper layers to the lower can result in the lower’s continuing to get warmer after the upper have started to cool–even though the heat came from the upper layers..
Now, that was heat transfer by conduction, and I’m told that conduction is not a dominant mode of heat transfer in the mixed (upper) ocean layer. So the cognoscenti here no doubt know reasons why the effect mentioned above is inapposite. But it would help some of us laymen get our minds around this post’s subject if someone knowledgeable could explain it in simple terms to the rest of us.
Deep Rub is where the heat was once found; now’ it’s “Deep Ocean”?
I understand the first; I can’t see a plausible explantion for the second.
Massage me senseless.
blackadderthe4th says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:55 am
@ur momisugly Private S Baldrick
News just in!
Methane in the atmosphere increasing at much lower rate than pre-1998:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/iadv/graph.php?code=MLO&program=ccgg&type=ts
(Choose methane from the dropdown box)
Another lamentable and utterly pathetic attempt at grant seeking built on a discredited economic model. Cambridge and Erasmus Universities must be desperate.
Earl Wood,Dirk H and others:
Not only would it take 60,000 years to warm the oceans by 1degC, but we haven’t got fossil fuels for more than, say, 600 years at the very outside. So the worst we could do is raise the temperature by, let me see – a hundredth of a degree. I should have thought the Denizens of the Deep could live with that.
“””””””……..DirkH says:
July 24, 2013 at 9:03 am
DirkH says:
July 24, 2013 at 8:55 am
“Maybe what Argo shows us is just digital noise in a constant average temperature.”
To clarify, with digital noise I mean the random toggling of the least significant bit when you convert an analog signal from a sensor to a digital word (you cannot avoid this for principal reasons even when you have constructed perfect hardware)……..”””””””
Dirk, it’s normally called “quantization noise.” That’s more accurate, since the “noise” arises from the A-D conversion process; and to be fair, the noisy part is entirely in the analog end, not in the digital. So “digital” noise would be a travesty.
I have to admit, the idea that AGW would somehow warm the atmosphere but not be noticed because the warmer atmosphere would somehow transfer so much of that heat to the ocean so that the atmosphere would then cool (this is getting difficult), sounds a little bit hard, ok hard, ok really hard, ok incredibly hard, ok 1&$B)&@ur momisugly?(!/ hard to believe.
I think what really happened is that the missing heat has jouled its way into the New York mayoral candidate, Wiener (an appropriate name if there ever was one).
Plain English?
If there is no warming but you must have warming you fake warming. The models show warming but in real life there is non so you must tell some story and for now the warmt wneht in to the water. How inposibel that is so it works.
What I expect is that the planets are in sync with the sun internally. What the sun goes through internally is also reflected throughout the rest of the bodies in the solar system. This does not only occur due to external radiation but from internal activity. That would be a very minor aspect of sync’d activity. Obviously, the mechanisms for this are currently unexplained. But we live in a ‘solar system’. The earth is part of that system. All bodies would increase or decrease activity in tandem.
Along with Alien space ships and the lost city of Adlantis we ‘find’ the missing heat.
In realty its a desperate claim from people who are desperate to find anything to back up what was always a poorly evidenced thoery.
Silly me. I spelled the New York City mayoral candidate’s name wrong. It’s Weiner, not Wiener. Anthony Weiner. Some young ‘uns know him as ‘Carlos Danger’. Maybe that’s cause of all the missing heat he’s hiding.
chris y says:
July 24, 2013 at 9:40 am
According to my [possibly incorrect] calculation, the NH 0-2000m heat content trend is just slightly less than the heat flux expected from the earth’s core.
According to:
http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Hofmeister2005.pdf
the flux from the core through the oceans is 63 mW/m².
The area of the oceans is [from Wiki] 3.6 x 10^14 m²
Total flux = 22.68 TW or TJ/sec
No of seconds per decade = 10 x 365.25 x 86400 = 315.576 x 10^6
Heat input from earth’s core = 22.68 x 315.576 x 10^18 J = 0.716 x 10^22 J/decade
cf 0.531 x 10^22 from Bob Tisdale’s data.
Harkening back to the Wegman report, plagiarism is apparently very serious offend to the team defenders. Yet none have challenged Travesty Trenberth for his shameless plagiarism of Lewis Carroll and the Hunting of the snark.
The missing heat hides in the deep, where only necromancers may discern it?
Argh auto corrct.. plagiarism is apparently a very serious offence..
Even the BBC’s David Shukman is baffled by the ‘expected’ pause.
Shukman sounds reasonable for once. He is finally opening his eyes.
Anthony Watts says:
“When the deep ocean hidey hole doesn’t pan out in a few years, and that stored hidden warming doesn’t spring out of the deep ocean like a caged lion, where will they put the warming next? They are running out of places.”
How about the Antarctic ice sheets?
Yeah, that’s the ticket! The ice is getting warmer but not warm enough to melt yet. But, boy, watch out! When it does, then you’ll see some serious catastrophic action. Can’t say of course when exactly it’ll happen, but soon & it’s gonna be bad!
Okay. Let’s accept a lot of joules of energy has been stored deep in the oceans.
Please explain how these stored joules of energy warm up the atmosphere at some future time.
Even just a little bit by say next month or whenever? Just how does water warm the air that is already warmer then the water? As somebody above asked, “What is the mechanism?”.
I should have added to my above post that the 0.7 x 10^22 J/decade is split between the N and S hemispheres ~ 1/3 to 2/3 so NH trend from core 0.23 x 10^22 J/decade, SH trend from core 0.47 x 10^22 J/decade
Dave,
You might want to check out studies of radioactive half-life changes near solar events. Turns out that neutrinos can interact with radioactive nuclei and alter the halflife. Granted, this is a small effect (partly since neutrino crossections are so small), but if the sun goes through an active phase and the radioactive decay of materials in the earth’s core increases very slightly, then we would expect the earth to warm slightly. Similarly when the sun is less active there would be slightly less heat emitted from the earth’s core. I would expect a fairly significant lag in the amount of time it takes excess heat from the core to reach the atmosphere.
However, when the sun goes through a quiet phase even if the luminous flux is constant a decrease in neutrino flux could have a change in planetary temperature.
Weird:
In reality the claimed energy differences are too small to measure effectively with the instruments in place, so the fact that there are more sensors south of the equator than north means that the “adjusted noise” shows a greater positive effect south than north.
If the deep waters were really heating differentially (mechanism?) we’d see a change in average water density and a remix in the standing column that would quite quckly average things out again.
So, either we have aliens at work – or the politics of warmism have once again ovewhelmed science.
You are forgetting that CO2 is now supernatural. Of course it can transfer heat directly from the (non-warming) tropical troposphere to the deep ocean, just to find out who the true believers are.