…then why do the vertical mean temperature anomalies (NODC 0-2000 meter data) of the Pacific Ocean as a whole and of the North Atlantic fail to show any warming over the past decade, a period when ARGO floats have measured subsurface temperatures, providing reasonably complete coverage of the global oceans? See Figure 1. Or, in other words, why is the warming of the global oceans (0-2000 meters) over the past 10 years limited to the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans, when carbon dioxide is said to be a well-mixed greenhouse gas, meaning all ocean basins should be warming?
Figure 1
Or, to look at it in yet another way, we’re being told that, while surface temperatures are no longer warming, the oceans to depth continue to warm…yet the warming is not occurring in the largest ocean basin, the Pacific, and the North Atlantic is showing evidence of cooling.
Additionally, Kevin Trenberth and associates say the recent series of La Niña events are causing the Pacific Ocean to warm at depths below 700 meters, and as a result, global warming continues. See:
Why then has the annual vertical mean temperatures of the Pacific Ocean (0-2000 meters) failed to show any warming over the past decade? The data for the Pacific Ocean (0-700 meters, 0-2000 meters and 700-2000 meters) in Figure 2 reveals something different than portrayed by Trenberth and associates.
Figure 2
The data for the Pacific indicates that any warming at 700-2000 meters has simply opposed the cooling taking place in the top 700 meters. (Note: The basis for the temperature anomalies at the depths of 700-2000 meters is discussed in the post here.)
No wonder Trenberth had to use a reanalysis (instead of data) for his recent batch of “hey, I kinda-sorta found the missing heat” papers.
When the data doesn’t meet the climate model-based expectations of the climate science community, the climate science community adjusts the data. Then, when the adjusted data doesn’t meet the climate model-based expectations of the climate science community, the climate science community discards the data and uses the output of another computer model called a reanalysis. Bottom line: instead of admitting the hypothesis of human-induced global warming is fatally flawed, they perpetuate a myth.
A QUICK NOTE ABOUT THE VERTICAL MEAN TEMPERATURE DATA
The NODC’s vertical mean temperature data are the temperature component of their ocean heat content data. The other portion is salinity.
ADDITIONAL READING
Ocean heat content data, and the components that are part of it, are questionable at best, contrived at worst. For further information see:
- Is Ocean Heat Content Data All It’s Stacked Up to Be? (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.)
- NODC’s Pentadal Ocean Heat Content (0 to 2000m) Creates Warming That Doesn’t Exist in the Annual Data – A Lot of Warming (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.)
- A Different Perspective on Trenberth’s Missing Heat: The Warming of the Global Oceans (0 to 2000 Meters) in Deg C (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.)
- Rough Estimate of the Annual Changes in Ocean Temperatures from 700 to 2000 Meters Based on NODC Data (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.)
- AMAZING: The IPCC May Have Provided Realistic Presentations of Ocean Heat Content Source Data (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.)
- Comments on Stefan Rahmstorf’s Post at RealClimate “What ocean heating reveals about global warming” (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.)
- Trenberth and Fasullo Try to Keep the Fantasy Alive (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.)
- More on Trenberth and Fasullo (2013) “An Apparent Hiatus in Global Warming?” (The WattsUpWithThat cross post is here.)
Ferdberple
” When Argo was first released it showed cooling, which was contrary to what the experimenters believed they would see. So they identified those floats that showed cooling and eliminated their data.”
That is an interesting suggestion and one I hadn’t heard before. Do you – or anyone else – have links for further reading?
I think it might be useful to look at the warming oceans in more detail. Break it down into grids. Where is it warming. It may not be warming everywhere. This could lead to a better understanding of the causes.
Haven’t you read the latest AGW papers? The ocean waters that absorb the heat from CO2 related warming, due to the specific isotope of carbon involved, sink to the bottom of the Ocean. There are numerous papers detailing how water heated this way is heaver and thus makes it more difficult to find. There is a clear indication of higher concentrations of this isotope in the ocean depths that increase at the same rate as the build up of anthropological CO2. /sarc off
herkimer says: “Do you have a recent graph for north Pacific SST [ last 10 years ]?”
Yup, a couple, but not necessarily limited to the last ten years.
Monthly North Pacific (0-65N) sea surface temperature anomalies through Nov 2013:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/10-n-pac.png
From the November update:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/november-2013-sea-surface-temperature-sst-anomaly-update/
Weekly extratropical North Pacific (24N-65N) sea surface temperature anomalies from Jan 3, 1990 to September 18, 2013:
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/weekly-extratrop-no-pac.png
From the mid-September 2013 update:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/mid-september-2013-sea-surface-temperature-anomaly-update/
GHGs can’t warm the deep ocean directly ’cause their IR can’t penetrate significantly beyond the surface layer. GHG IR effects are manifested immediately as water-skin (or land) temp and evaporated water.
Only solar SW can affect water below the surface directly.
Is that ARGO data unadjusted. I have weird picture in my head, that they adjusted north atlantic in some point, because it showed cooling and computer models showed that cooling is impossible. In Finland FMI moves surfface temperature measurement places to warm spots, because trend shows cooling recently.
Short. Direct. To the point. Likely to be read in full and understood completely. Damning.
Excellent post, Bob.
Jon says:
December 19, 2013 at 3:54 am
What’s the last thing that goes trough a insects brain when it hits the windshield of a car?
If it’s head on it’s his a$$.
For those unaware of the Argo adjustments, here is the story.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/page1.php
In reply to:
@njsnowfan says:
December 19, 2013 at 6:25 am
TSI is one main reason.
My bet is the cooling trend has started and will continue with the TSI in the gutter.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/from:1970
William:
Mon Dieu! Where is Lief? Who turned off the sun? The significant reduction in TSI is an important issue and should either have its own thread or should be brought up in the next solar thread. The solar presentation at the AGU annual conference noted that solar UV radiation was down 20%.
TSI (total solar irradiation) is down roughly 1.5 watts/meter^2 from past cycles. P.S. The 1.5 watts/meter^2 is not averaged out over the entire surface of the earth, as there is night and day and the earth is a sphere the 1.5 watts/meter^2 is reduced to roughly 0.4 watts/meter^2 averaged over the surface of the planet as compared to the theoretical warming due to the increase in atmospheric CO2 of 1.5 watts/meter^2.
I don’t think there is any issue with deep water warming while surface doesn’t.
If you consider that the entire ocean is still recovering from the depressed temperatures from the little ice age, then you would expect continued warming of the overall ocean mass.
The upper layers would have recovered most quickly, but are moe sensitive to general atmospheric conditions, and so can start to drop more rapidly as well. But while this is going on, the bulk of the ocean is still trying to catch up, and hence the deep ocean continues to warm.
The evidence of this can be seen from the continued steady sea level rise which has remained at about the same rate for 100-odd years, and is driven by thermal expansion.
Is the data for the Indian and South Atlantic oceanic warming sufficiently detailed to compare the annual variation in global CO2 as measured at Mauna Loa to the annual temperature variation of those oceanic areas?
The near uni-modal rise and fall of atmospheric CO2, with a maximum of early May and a minimum in mid-October, makes me suspicious that oceanic de-gassing is a significant source of atmospheric CO2 during the year. If this be the case, then one must wonder how much is potentially simply NOT reabsorbed or reused each year, thereby contributing a non-A portion of the global CO2, because either planckton isn’t doing a 100% job as it did or the ocean surface water is simply getting warmer and thus unable to absorb as much as before.
The CO2 annual budget of the planet is not understood. It is ASSUMED that man’s contribution is THE signficiant portion of the CO2 rise; back-calculations are how we get the breakdown, not front calculations (modelling back-calculations, that is). What is these numbers are slightly out?
Regional, not global: the fingerprints are everywhere (even if we are raising temps with more CO2, the responses look more regional than global, in time as well as geography).
“Then why do the vertical mean temperature anomalies (NODC 0-2000 meter data) of the Pacific Ocean as a whole and of the North Atlantic fail to show any warming over the past decade,”
So to me, the million $ question is, how is slightly cooler water heading into the arctic going to effect ice production or ice area and how will effect the temperature of the water that exists the basin?
Who is monitoring the water stream exiting the arctic? We know the temp and volume going in, so if we know the gosoutsie of the arctic we should be able to estimate the amount of heat rejected and establish treands, right????
Thanks, Bob! Excellent post!
Please send some of that ocean warming to the Great Lakes:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-lake-ice-boats-met-121713-20131219,0,5159871.story
The answer to your question is surface tension.
CO2 is a well mixed gas. The greenhouse effect must be evident throught the atmosphere.
The fact that the “fingerprint” isn’t there (not as significant as predicted) means that there are convective processes that aren’t properly accounted for and likely reduce the effect.
The effect may be stronger at the surface and transfer heat to the oceans, but this is essentially a giant heat sink and limits the potential impact of warming in the atmosphere.
[ cap says:
December 19, 2013 at 5:04 am ]
Data??
We don’t need no stinkin data.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/12/Our mind is like a jigsaw puzzle
/sarc
Olavi says: “Is that ARGO data unadjusted.”
Nope.
I haven’t seen the unadjusted data in temperature format, so we’ll have to look at the ocean heat content version. The “unadjusted” ARGO era data (also includes some other types of data) is represented by the UKMO EN3 data in the following graph.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/figure-23.png
That’s Figure 2 from the post here:
http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/a-different-perspective-on-trenberths-missing-heat-the-warming-of-the-global-oceans-0-to-2000-meters-in-deg-c/
Aaron:
If the sea surface temperature is 70 degrees F and the air temp is 60 degrees F which way is the energy flowing?????
This is really getting entertaining to watch the desperation of warmists. Short of a true or complete conspiracy theory for coordinated obfuscation, one would expect to see an uncoordinated set of excuses and hiding places in the publication mill and data mining exercises for heat and mostly in places beyond the reach of taxpayer funded satellites, ocean buoys, and even legitimate data. Such random desperation will present a fragmented and even more unbelievable science tale over time. The characteristic unraveling of other science theories in history would be relevant comparisons even if the current AGW mantra dwarfs all other science frauds and enforced dogmas that came before it. Before Einstein put the final nail in the coffin of the ether theory, it was already undergoing serious credibility trials amid equally ridiculous defenses of it. That still came too late for some unfortunate young scientists that were punished by the academic enforcers.
There is definitely something going on with SH ice just look at this for a trend
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.antarctic.png you don’t even need to draw a line through it its so obvious (straight)
Bob,
Great work as always.
But can’t this and most of these “measurement anomalies” be explained as “things in nature fluctuate”?
That it would be impossible to measure anything and not find anomalies to any selected standard?
Like everything else, one can go out and find ocean areas of every anomaly. A little warming here, nothing there and a little cooling over there. Come back in a few years and they’ve all randomly changed, moved around and switched places. How disappointing it must be for the trend seekers to discover all of their trends are temporary in one scale or another which also vary. .
Polar bear numbers, rainfall, droughts, wildfires, storms, snowfall and all things human.
The “Measuring of all things brigade” seeks to report trends. Preferably alarming trends which imply the need for more monitoring and crafted plans to mitigate the trend, (quickly, before it reverses) for the sake of all things good.
Even the trend seeking monitors themselves trend in participation, funding, activities, reports etc. That just be a problem too?
So as the trending numbers of trend seekers wander the globe with measuring madness they anything they find in a stable, unchanging uniform status will soon be “trending”. They just need to wait and watch.
Now after rambling through all of that, is there any known measuring that has been duplicated precisely as it was previously done before for absolutely reliable comparison?
Because the slight variation in measuring techniques and sampling presents opportunities to create anomalies where none exist.
And so it goes.
Having failed to find the footprint of AGW in the Tropical Troposphere we are now following the muppets into the depths of the oceans. The ice should be melting by now but it’s not as can clearly be seen by the daily satellite data (as referred to above by Eliza).
What next Trenberth?…a debate with Bob Tidsdale (very unlikely)…….or retirement?
The latter one hopes.
Bob Tisdale: December 19, 2013 at 6:36 am
Thanks for the response Bob.
Re your observation that Indian Ocean (IO) heat content rises during El Nino but doesn’t cool proportionately during La Nina: clearly the IO must have some mechanism for releasing heat accrued during El Nino conditions; otherwise nothing would prevent it from continuously building up heat.
When do you think can we might expect to see this heat released?
The proposed mechanism for climate change is that the CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere, and THEN that heat affects the surface. Heat absorption in the atmosphere is a very rapid response, so, if the heat is absorbed by the oceans, there should be a decreasing temperature profile from atmosphere to the ocean surface near the ocean surface, and also a decreasing temperature profile into the ocean surface to a certain depth until it is well mixed. If there’s no significant warming observed in the atmosphere, then the proposed mechanism is disproved.
Also, anybody who has worked with sensors will realize that putting much faith in this temperature data is ludicrous. Undoubtedly, there are corrections and adjustments being made to this data set (as with every climate-change monitoring data set), which tilt the trend in the desired direction.