Dana Nuccitelli published an article today in The Guardian Does the global warming “pause” mean what you think it means?…a play off a line by Inigo Montoya from “The Princess Bride”. Dana has expressed his misunderstanding of one of the most commonly used metrics of global warming—the surface temperature record. And he continues to display his unwillingness to accept that the hypothesis of human-induced global warming is dead.
Nuccitelli presents Box 3.1 Figure 1 from Chapter 3 of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report (my Figure 1).
Figure 1
(See the approved Chapter 3 (Observations: Ocean) of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report.)
Nuccitelli writes:
The speed bump only applies to surface temperatures, which only represent about 2 percent of the overall warming of the global climate. Can you make out the tiny purple segment at the bottom of the above figure? That’s the only part of the climate for which the warming has ‘paused’.
Nuccitelli is correct that the halt in global warming applies to surface temperatures, but he’s incorrect that it applies only to it. The warming of the top 700 meters has also slowed to a crawl, and is nonexistent in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, but more on that later.
The global surface temperature record includes land surface air temperature (measured at 2 meters from the surface) and sea surface temperature measurements. And as a reference, the GISS, NCDC and UKMO global surface temperature products show little (GISS) to no (UKMO & NCDC) warming since January 2001, based on the linear trends. (See Figure 2, which is from the post here.)
Figure 2
Nuccitelli refers his readers to “tiny purple segment at the bottom of the above figure” (my Figure 1), which is identified by the IPCC as “Atmosphere” in the illustration—not the surface of the oceans.
In their discussion of “Atmosphere” for their Box 3.1, Figure 1, the IPCC explains that the atmospheric component is estimated from lower troposphere and lower stratosphere temperatures, based on satellite measurements. The lower troposphere temperature measurements are from the layer that is approximately 3000 meters above sea level.
The IPCC has NOT presented the heat content for the surface of the oceans in their Box 3.1, Figure 1. The ocean surface warming is included in top 700 meters of ocean warming—not in the atmosphere.
# # #
Further to the IPCC’s Box 3.1, Figure 1, Dana Nuccitelli forgot to advise his readers that the data in the IPCC’s graph have been smoothed with a 5-year filter, and that the smoothing would hide the slowdown in warming of the oceans at depths of 0 to 700 meters and 700 to 2000 meters. And he has elected not to tell his readers that the quarterly NODC ocean heat content data for the North Atlantic during the ARGO era continues to show very little warming for depths of 0-2000 meters and cooling at depths of 0-700 meters. (See Figure 3.)
Figure 3
He’s overlooked the fact that the ocean heat content data for the North Pacific show cooling at both levels, with the 0-2000 meter data cooling at a lesser rate than the 0-700 meter data. (See Figure 4.)
Figure 4
(Figures 3 and 4 are from the post here. And the data are available here from the NODC website.)
CO2 is supposed to be a well-mixed greenhouse gas. Obviously, increased CO2 emissions in recent years have had no impact on the ocean heat in the Northern Hemisphere.
# # #
Nuccitelli uses the tired and misleading “atomic bomb” metric:
As the IPCC figure indicates, over 90 percent of global warming goes into heating the oceans, and it continues at a rapid pace, equivalent to 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second.
The IPCC doesn’t mention Hiroshima atomic bombs anywhere in their Chapter 3; the words “Hiroshima”, “atom”, and “bomb” do not appear in Chapter 3 of the IPCC’s AR5; so don’t think the IPCC is responsible for this nonsensical claim. One would have to assume Nuccitelli is referring to the 0.6 watts/meter^2 imbalance at the surface found in papers like Stephens et al (2013). See Figure 5.
Figure 5
As I wrote in Climate Models Fail:
The total of the downward shortwave (solar) radiation and longwave (infrared) radiation is about 534 watts/meter^2, so the estimated imbalance of 0.6 watts/meter^2 is only about 0.1% of the total downward radiation at the surface. Or, in other words, the total amount of downward radiation at the surface is about 890 times more than the difference. Also note the uncertainty in the imbalance. The estimated imbalance is 0.6 +/- 17 watts/meter^2. That is, the uncertainties are 28 times greater than the estimated value. Bottom line: the surface imbalance may exist or it may not.
Note: Radiative imbalance is the metric that alarmists like to portray in terms of atomic bombs. What the alarmists fail to tell their readers is that sunlight and natural levels of infrared radiation at the surface are almost 890 times the number of atomic bombs they’re claiming, and that the uncertainties in radiative imbalance are 28 times the radiative imbalance.
# # #
Nuccitelli continues to mislead his readers in that article:
Over longer time frames, for example from 1990 to 2012, average global surface temperatures have warmed as fast as climate scientists and their models expected.
As I noted in the post Open Letter to the Honorable John Kerry U.S. Secretary of State, the modelers had to double the rate of the warming of global sea surface temperatures over the past 31+ years in order to get the modeled land surface air temperatures even close to the observed warming. (See Figure 6.)
Figure 6
So let’s look at the difference between modeled and observed global sea surface temperatures since 1990 to put it into the time period Dana Nuccitelli prefers, Figure 7. “Climate scientists and their models expected” the surface of the global oceans to have warmed at a rate that was almost 3 times faster than observed since 1990.
Figure 7
Three times as fast must mean “as fast as climate scientists and their models expected” in the new climate change doubletalk of global warming enthusiasts.
# # #
Nuccitelli and the global warming enthusiasts from the IPCC like to present global warming in terms that are meaningless to most people, in Joules with lots of zeroes after it. The units in the IPCC’s Box 3.1, Figure 1 (my Figure 1) are in Zettajoules or Joules*10^21. But as we’ve illustrated and discussed recently, the warming of the oceans takes on a whole new perspective when we present it in terms familiar to people: deg C. (See Figure 8, which is from the blog post here.) Surface temperatures stopped warming, the warming of the top 700 meters of the oceans has slowed to a crawl, so if there is continued warming at depths of 700 to 2000 meters, it is so miniscule that it’s not coming back to haunt anyone at any time in the future.
Figure 8
# # #
After a long discussion of multidecadal variations in surface temperatures, Nuccitelli’s final paragraph begins:
In terms of the threat from long-term global warming and climate change, it really doesn’t mean anything. It just means that at the moment, more global warming is being absorbed by the oceans, but the next time ocean cycles shift, we’ll experience accelerated surface warming just like we did in the 1990s.
But Nuccitelli misses the obvious. We discussed this in the post Will their Failure to Properly Simulate Multidecadal Variations In Surface Temperatures Be the Downfall of the IPCC?:
Most people will also envision the multidecadal variations extending further into the future. That is, they will imagine a projection of future Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures repeating the slight cooling from 1945 to the mid-1970s along with the later warming, followed by yet another slight cooling of Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures, in a repeat of the past “cycle”. That is, they will envision the surface temperature record repeating itself. And in their minds’ eyes, they see an ever growing divergence between the models and their projections, like the one shown in Figure [9].
Figure 9
FURTHER READING
In my book Climate Models Fail, I have collected my past findings about climate model failings, and illustrated others, and I’ve presented highlights from the research papers critical of climate models—and I “translated” those research findings for persons without scientific or technical backgrounds. And as noted earlier, there is also a discussion of the natural warming of the global oceans. The free preview of Climate Models Fail is available here. It includes the Introduction, Table of Contents and the Closing. Climate Models Fail is available in pdf and Kindle formats. Refer to my blog post New Book: “Climate Models Fail” for further information, the synopsis from the Kindle webpage and purchase/download links.
Ocean heat content data and satellite-era sea surface temperature data indicate the oceans warmed via natural ocean processes, not from manmade greenhouse gases. This has been addressed in dozens of blog posts here and with cross posts at WattsUpWithThat for almost 5 years. I further discussed this in minute detail in my book Who Turned on the Heat? It is only available in .pdf form. A preview is here. Who Turned on the Heat? is described further in, and is available for sale through, my blog post “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About El Niño and La Niña”.
CLOSING
The hypothesis of human-induced global warming is dead. Global warming enthusiasts like Dana Nuccitelli and the IPCC just haven’t come to terms with their losses. They should be burying it with dignity, and moving on to greener pastures, but they’re not. They’ve chosen to parade around a failure of science like a pull toy.
barry:
I write to point out that you are failing to think things through. If – as you assert – heat is accumulating in the ocean then it cannot induce discernible global warming.
I am ignoring the simple fact that you and Nuccitelli are ‘moving the goal posts’: global warming was always about rising surface temperature and NOT ocean heat content until the surface temperature stopped rising.
At Octobe r 18, 2013 at 9:08 pm you write
No, Barry, Bob is implying no such thing. He is saying only some of the oceans have been measured for temperature so those sampled zones are the only convenience sample we have. We can infer that if the measured regions show no discernible temperature rise then the other ocean regions show similar lack of temperature rise.
And because the deep ocean is all sea water then, yes, we can use temperature as a direct indicator of “heat content” and we can convert between the two.
Importantly, the total deep oceans contain about 1,200 times as much heat as the total atmosphere for the same temperature rise. Therefore, if the heat which would have raised the atmosphere by 1.0°C goes into the ocean then that would raise the ocean temperature by 0.0010°C.
And the air is warmer than the oceans so release of that heat from the ocean would be very slow. And by very slow I mean thousands of years.
Now, Barry, please try to think how an increase of ocean temperature by a thousandth of a degree C can be a discernible problem of any kind. Indeed, how an increase of ocean temperature by six thousandths of a degree C a discernible problem of any kind? Please think about it.
If the air temperature is not rising because the heat is going into the oceans then there is no possibility of that heat causing problematic global warming.
Richard
barry says: “The oceans have a much higher heat capacity than the atmosphere. If Bob is implying it takes the same amount of heat to warm a swimming pool by 1C as it does to raise the temperature of a glass of water by 1C, then this is obviously wrong.”
Please advise where, in anything that I’ve written at anytime, that suggested, inferred or implied that “it takes the same amount of heat to warm a swimming pool by 1C as it does to raise the temperature of a glass of water by 1C…” I haven’t, so it must be you who is making this leap in illogic.
ironargonaut says: “[Bob] fell for the old bait and switch.”
The global warming enthusiasts have been moving the goal posts for years.
Thanks Bob,
Figure 1 says it all 0.6 +/- 17
So the supposed imbalance is 25 times smaller than the error in the measurement
As I pointed out on Dana’s blog it is physically impossible for the energy in to the earth from the sun to be different to the energy out, except on very short timescales.
If the deep oceans are “sequestering” heat, that’s better than sequestering CO2. Problem solved!
Does anyone actually think that the scripts of Dana Nuccitelli for his PR pieces, like in the Guardian, are actually prepared by him?
His ghost writing team is the same usual group of ideology biased CAGW activists within the science community and in the blogosphere.
John
John Whitman:
re your post at October 19, 2013 at 4:45 am
And your evidence is?
Richard
A second day that Nuccitelli won’t be happy. This post is still in WordPress’s Top 10:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/wordpress-top-ten-day-2.png
Oh, look, Judith Curry’s post is there, too.
Not too coincidentally, there are no posts from CAGW enthusiast websites in the 10 Ten. Me thinks they need to do something about their message.
Is it me or is there a problem with the uncertainty range given in the Stephens et al figure for the TOA imbalance. The energy imbalance is given as 0.6 w/m2 with uncertainty of +/-0.4 w/m2. However, the LW_out and SW_out figures have uncertainty of 3.3 w/m2 and 2 w/m2 respectively.
This doesn’t make sense. Either the uncertainty range for the imbalance is wrong or the uncertainty ranges for the the LW and SW outgoing energy figures are wrong. If the LW and SW ranges are correct then the uncertainty range for the imbalance should be nearer 4 w/m2 (i.e. 10 times greater than the range given)
@Jim Stevens says: October 18, 2013 at 9:29 am
Jim – thank you for your kind words, but it’s not my blog, just a link. The figures are so startling I thought hey needed a larger audience.
It’s in your article above.
Followed by a graph of ocean heat content change measured in degrees C, compared to the surface/atmosphere time series (Figure 8). Your paragraph and especially the graph following work on the implication that the oceans have the same heat capacity of the atmosphere, and you don’t spend one word pointing out that this is not the case. My example is just a simplified version of what you’ve done here.
The heat capacity of the world’s oceans is 1000 times greater than that of the Earth’s atmosphere. Your comments, and the graph accompanying completely ignore this difference.
To spare any confusion your readers may have, it would be well to explain how much heat energy it has taken to warm the oceans and the atmosphere (surface atmospheric temps) respectively since 1955. Global ocean heat content, not just selected oceans.
Richard,
If the oceans have 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, as you point out, how much would the atmosphere warm if the Earth’s oceans lost a thousandth of a degree C of their total heat to the atmosphere?
barry:
The idiocy of your post at October 19, 2013 at 7:53 am would have been avoided if you had read my post addressed to you at October 19, 2013 at 2:42 am. Please read it instead of trying (and failing) to make obscurantist and knit-picking objections to Tisdale’s wording. To help you find it I provide this link which jumps to it
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/18/dana-nuccitelli-cant-come-to-terms-with-the-death-of-the-agw-hypothesis/#comment-1452910
And, yes, it does contain a sentence with a serious typographical error although that does not harm the information of the post. The corrected sentence would be
Indeed, how can increase of ocean temperature by six thousandths of a degree C be a discernible problem of any kind?
Richard
We should also remind ourselves what the climate models were predicting for OHC uptake.
The 0-2000 metre ocean is absorbing 0.53 W/m2/yr according to the Argo floats..
But GISS Model ER forecast it would be 1.2 W/m2/yr.
http://www.realclimate.org/images/ohc11.jpg
And Trenberth’s model CCSM4 said it would be 1.3 W/m2/yr.
http://s21.postimg.org/e4ozrdnyv/Trenberth_s_OHC_Climate_Model.png
So don’t try to tell me that oceans are absorbing the heat, they are actually absorbing only 40% of that projected by the theory. Interesting how many times the less than 50% shows up – Always.
Henryp: Well, I looked in Rev 13:15 and can find no ref to people being linked with a device. It merely talks about the ‘image of the beast’
@snotkop
I cannot get anything up here
e.g. my replies to Cardin Drake
(which were on topic)
Revelation is probably off topic here (rightly so)
[Reply: Changing your screen name causes problems like that. — mod.]
Don’t worry. I am exhaustipated
(Too tired to give a shit)
I hoipe they will still put up my reply to Cardin Drake
Barry, thanks for quoting my earlier reply to you and the part of my post that you’re objecting to. You then wrote:
“Followed by a graph of ocean heat content change measured in degrees C, compared to the surface/atmosphere time series (Figure 8). Your paragraph and especially the graph following work on the implication that the oceans have the same heat capacity of the atmosphere…”
My graph simply presents surface temperature anomalies and subsurface temperature anomalies. You’re the one making the assumption that I’m implying anything with that graph.
And you continued, Barry, with “…and you don’t spend one word pointing out that this is not the case.”
Because it’s irrelevant, Barry. Is all of that supposed extra heat in the ocean hiding in one place, Barry, growing and growing and growing in heat, so that one day it’ll rise to the surface and blast heat into the atmosphere and fry everything on the surface? No. It’s mixed and distributed throughout the oceans. At worst, it provides a miniscule background warming.
And you wrote, “The heat capacity of the world’s oceans is 1000 times greater than that of the Earth’s atmosphere. Your comments, and the graph accompanying completely ignore this difference.”
Why do you dwell on that? Because the oceans to 2000 meters warmed less than 0.1 deg C in 55+ years? It’s not coming back to haunt us, Barry.
Last, there’s also no evidence that the warming at the depths of 0-700 meters since 1955 was caused by manmade greenhouse gases.
Regards
You missed the point, Bob. You can’t make a comparison of the temperature change of the ocean and the atmosphere – as you did – by expressing it in degrees C.
You are downplaying the enormous amount of energy it takes to heat the oceans, even by a little. You do this by implying a false equivalence (“a whole new perspective”) in the heat capacity of the two mediums.
You leave the reader with the impression that the oceans have taken up less heat energy than the atmosphere over the period since 1955.
If you state clearly the comparative amounts of heat energy required required to warm each medium as far as they have warmed since 1955, then this would clear up the confusion.
Would you be so kind as to make that clear? I am sure it is well within your capabilities. Your readers will be better informed.
So Bob says AGW is dead because he thinks ocean heat is “not coming back to haunt anyone at any time in the future.” So despite all of his graphs that do not show heat content of the global oceans, Bob’s point comes down to this unsupported belief. Good luck actually persuading anyone who is not already a WUWT true-believer.
Richard,
I’m not interested in discussing qualitative notions like “problem”. The language is way too political.
The heat energy that warms the oceans by 6 thousandths of a degree would warm the atmosphere by 6C. My point is about relative heat capacity, not about global warming, where we’re headed or policy implications.
HenryP: How can anyone take anything you say seriously if you duck such an easy question as Rev 13:15. Do you want to try again? Or are you happy for people to know that not only are you “Too tired to give a shit” – you’re full of it.
@snotkop
You will become a wise man if you would just follow and acknowledge what I have said on this thread,
Notwithstanding that which they have chosen not to publish here what I have siad.
Brian:
At October 19, 2013 at 11:17 am your post says in total
OK. I’ll bite.
The thermal capacity of the oceans is 1,200 times more than the thermal capacity of the air. Therefore, each amount of heat which would have warmed the air 1.0°C but goes into the ocean causes the ocean temperature to rise by by 0.0010°C. And 6.0°C is the most that even the most extreme warmunists claim AGW could raise global temperature.
Therefore, if the oceans constrain all of the heat which would induce the maximum asserted possible global temperature rise, then the oceans would warm by 0.006°C.
The oceans are cooler than the air so please explain how that heat could escape the oceans at a rate and in a manner which could have discernible effects.
Richard
@HenryP: Yep, I’m wise to you. Like I said, full of it. And there was I reading your stuff and thinking it worth the effort. You destroyed it all with a crap reference to Revelation[s]. And as you can’t get back from that, everything you’ve written to date deserves the same descriptor. So I shall save my time in future by not bothering with your posts.
@snotkop
Problem is we are off topic
That is an insult to Bob?
Worth remembering that the only reason for these BS claims about the deep ocean was because of the failure of models , which we were told work , and the diversion between reality / alarmists claims , in the first place.
The need of ‘hidden ‘ heat is sign of just how weak their case actual is in the first place and how little like scientists , who can accept the need to modify theory , and how much like religions dogmatist , who cannot accept even the smaller error in their ‘faith ‘ , they act.
Br— and Ba— sure seem stuck on the same whiny non-points. Almost like they might’ve cooked up a similar nutty opinion piece to the one this article is rebutting.