Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I got to thinking about the well-known correlation of El Ninos and global temperature. I knew that the Pacific temperatures lead the global temperatures, and the tropics lead the Pacific, but I’d never looked at the actual physical distribution of the correlation. So I went to the CERES dataset, and Figure 1 shows the result.
Figure 1. Correlation of detrended gridcell temperatures with the global temperature two months later. Blue square shows the extent of the 3D section shown in Figure 2. Gray lines show the zero value.
The joy of science to me is wondering what the final map will look like. This map made me laugh when it came up on the silver screen. I laughed because it’s a very good map of the path of the warm water pumped from the equator to the poles by the magnificent El Nino pump. I didn’t expect that at all.
To understand why a map showing each gridcell’s correlation with the planetary temperature two months later should also be a great map of the path of the water pumped by the El Nino pump, let’s consider the action of the pump in detail. Figure 2 shows a 3D section of the Pacific showing the ocean before and after the power stroke of the El Nino pump.
Figure 2. 3D section of the Pacific Ocean looking westward along the equator. The area covered is the blue box at the equator in Figure 1. Click on image for larger size. ORIGINAL CAPTION: This is a view of the current El Nino / La Nina evolving in the tropical Pacific Ocean. You are looking westward, across the equator in the Pacific Ocean, from a vantage point somewhere in the Andes Mountains in South America. The colored surfaces show TAO/TRITON ocean temperatures. The top surface is the sea-surface, from 8°N to 8°S and from 137°E to 95°W. The shape of the sea surface is determined by TAO/TRITON Dynamic Height data. The wide vertical surface is at 8°S and extends to 500 meters depth. The narrower vertical surface is at 95°W. SOURCE: click on “Animation”.
Now, every intermittent pump has a “power stroke” when it does the actual pumping. For example, the power stroke of your heart is marked by the “beat” of your heartbeat. (The heart has two pumping chambers, so there are two power strokes, with their timing signified by the “lub-dub” of your heartbeat.) The power stroke is the time when the work is done—it is the portion of the cycle where the water is moved by the pump. Figure 2 shows the situation before and after the power stroke of the El Nino pump.
On the left of Figure 2, we have the condition prior to the power stroke of the El Nino pump. In this condition, there is a build-up of warm water on the surface. As you might imagine, this also warms the atmosphere above it, and a few months later the warmth spreads to the planet as well.
However, when the amount of this warm water reaches a critical point, the El Nino phenomenon emerges. The wind that powers the El Nino pump arises, and it begins to blow. This wind blows the warm surface water strongly westwards. Essentially, the wind skims off the warm surface layer and pushes it all along the equator until it meets up with continental arc. This movement of untold cubic kilometres of water is the result of the power stroke of the El Nino pump.
On the right of Figure 2, we have the condition after the power stroke, when the wind has already blown the warm surface water westwards. Note that the cooler subsurface layers have been exposed. These layers are up to as much as 10°C cooler than the surface was before the power stroke. Naturally, the exposure of this huge area of cool water cools the atmosphere and thus the planet.
So with that as prologue, why does the correlation map of Figure 1 show the track taken by the warm water? It’s all a matter of timing.
Consider what happens when the El Nino pump skims off the warm surface of the equatorial Pacific waters. When the cool subsurface water is exposed all across that huge tropical area, first the Pacific atmosphere and then the whole planet starts to cool.
But actually, that’s not quite true. The whole planet doesn’t cool … because the warm surface water moved by the El Nino pump has to go somewhere. This means that the previously cooler areas to which the warm tropical water has been pumped are warming, while the rest of the planet is cooling … and as a result, we get the lovely blue and green areas of negative correlation shown in the western Pacific in Figure 1.
These areas demonstrate that when the warm Equatorial water hits the Asian continent and the shallow-water arc connecting Asia to Australia, the water pumped by the El Nino splits into two parts. One part of the warm water goes north, and one goes south.
And of course, like the other emergent climate phenomena, the El Nino pump functions to keep the Pacific from overheating. When there is a buildup of warm water, the El Nino pump emerges, pumps the warm water to the poles along the path shown in Figure 1, and then disappears until it is needed once again.
I can only stand in awe. This is a most ingenious method for temperature regulation. When the warm Pacific tropical surface waters get overheated, an emergent pumping system arises, which pumps the warm water polewards and exposes the cooler water underneath, and the cooler ocean waters in turn bring down the temperature of the whole planet … brilliant.
My regards to everyone,
w.
AS ALWAYS: If you disagree with something I’ve said, please quote the exact words you disagree with. That way all of us can understand exactly what you object to.
PS—It does strike me that with both a positively correlated and a negatively correlated area regarding the global temperature two months later, we should at least be able to forecast a few key climate parameters for a couple of months ahead …
“James Strom says:
February 27, 2014 at 11:48 am
Steven Mosher says:
February 27, 2014 at 11:30 am
“And of course, like the other emergent climate phenomena, the El Nino pump functions to keep the Pacific from overheating.”
teleology
____
Nope–just casual idiomatic language, which you are smart enough to translate into formal scientific prose”
Actually, if you look at the papers on UHI and Berkeley Temps that Steven Mosher has been involved in you know he believes in magic, so, assigning the statement to teleology would be hard science to him!! 8>)
JJM Gommers says:
February 27, 2014 at 10:49 am
Can I draw a conclusion that the frequency and/or intensity of the El Ninos should have increased with the rising global temperature over the last 100 years?”
I don’t think so, and actually the opposite might be true.
“The study finds that the rise in ocean heat (and temperature) in recent decades is far faster than anything seen earlier in the Holocene, the period since the end of the last ice age. But the researchers say that this rise is from a relatively cool baseline. Between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago, at depths between 500 and 1,000 meters, the Pacific Ocean was some 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today for many centuries.” Rosenthal et al (2013)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/75831381/Rosenthal%20ocean%20temps%20Supplementary%20Materials.pdf
the deep Ocean temperatures (at least in the Pacific) are currently lower then they have been for much of the past 10,000 years, as shown above. That includes about 0.65 Degrees lower then the MWP
We also know the atmospheric temperatures were similarly higher then today during that WMP, circa ~1000AD. (countless non-tree-ring/Mann peer-reviewed papers from across the globe indicate between 1-3 degrees higher at any given location. Many can be found for quick reference here http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php )
Meanwhile, what the ENSO did in response to said warming during the MWP was supposedly this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PDO1000yr.svg
That seems to be 300 years of basically straight skipping the El Nino/Positive PDO cycle
That period of extreme La Nina conditions, coupled with the Wolf and Sporer (Solar) Minimums that were about to come (roughly 1275-1350AD and 1450-1550AD, respectively), seems to have been what gave us thrust us into the Little Ice Age.
My untrained eye sees what looks like is a gigantic balancing attempting to take place. It seems as if the planet may be trying to steady itself(/temperatures?) at a certain level, using the PDO cycles like a gas and brake pedal on a car. The last 120 years we have seen 30/31 year perfect flips between Positive and Negative cycles (well, I have a theory the 1925 flip actually took place in 1915 – it is the only one slightly out of whack time), possibly indicating it feels it is approaching its balance. That is before whatever the new Solar Minimum will be called though. Last time it was attempting to cool itself when the series of minimums started to hit, and like I indicated above, it seems we know the results of that – the LIA. (of course, all of my thoughts could be nonsense too, and maybe people want to skip this paragraph. None the less, it is what I believe)
Willis, your timing confused me.
El Nino events are typically tied to the seasonal cycle, so El Nino events normally peak in December. Your Figure 1, with a 2-month lag, should represent February (give or take), should it not? And that’s a month before (give or take) the left-hand cell of your Figure 2, which states that it’s from March 2010. The right-hand cell of your Figure 2 states that it’s from October 2010, which would be a lag of 10 months.
DS says:
February 27, 2014 at 12:11 pm
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Thanks for sharing the links and your explanation. That provides a great counter response to those who claim the oceans are warming unnaturally.
Walt The Physicist says:
February 27, 2014 at 11:37 am “Dear Tim,
Real science is boring. It is boring to general public and it is boring to most of the government officers that decide what to fund and distribute funding. It is boring to the officers and heads of the private funds that support science. So, scientists that seek funding have to propose something that is exciting, disruptive, futuristic, fantastic,.. not boring. Something that is femto-, nonlinear Schrodinger, atto-, peta-, relativistic, nano-bio-, Higgs, and gravizapa related. Or, it should be something that will save us from killer-asteroid strike, man-made global warming, or will stop hurricane with 5,900 wind turbines in its path (and also will generate a lot of energy that will be stored in gigantic underground thermal storage chambers). Or, something that will disturb gravitation and disrupt navigational path of unfriendly alien civilizations if they will decide to attack the Earth… Studying water properties and its structure that, in spite of common believe, is practically completely unknown and not studied?! I see you yawning, falling asleep, I see you getting bored… So, who do you think “must stop this madness with its consequent massive damage of economies and our quality of life” and how will they do this?”
You are right.
Look at this water bottle in -20 weather. It freezes after an abrupt hit.
She runs Her own game, some win / some lose.
The rules change on Her whim.
I suppose it’s just correlation and not causation that the peak to peak increases for 1950-1998 of the SST anomaly correspond to the Pacific as a heat capacitor for the solar cycles over that period and that the run down of the peak to peak SST since 1998 corresponds to the sequential decline of the solar cycles in recent cycle numbers. An investigation of that relationship is more complex than just annual lags in a model since it involves solar cycles of different periodicity than SST. Go for it to get to causation from heat capacitor as driver.
You are another one who did not bother to read my book in which the El Nino phenomenon is explained. First, both El Nino and La Nina are part of ENSO, an oscillation. So what is oscillating? It is the oceanic water mass, sloshing back and forth from east to west within the ocean basin. A full ENSO cycle may take four or five years during which the El Nino and the La Nina are alternately active. Its power source is the Walker circulation that drives the trade winds which pile warm water in the west. New Guinea and the Philippines form a barrier and water piles up there to form the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool and the West Pacific Warm Pool. When water level is high enough reverse flow starts by gravity. An El Nino wave forms and crosses the ocean along the equatorial counter-current, runs ashore in South America, spreads out north and south, and warms the air above it. Warm air rises, interferes with trade winds, joins the westerlies, and we notice the arrival of an El Nino. But any wave that runs ashore must also retreat. As the El Nino wave retreats water level behind it drops, cold water from below fills the vacuum, and a la Nina has started. Your right hand slice shows the water level drop behind a La Nina. As much as the El Nino warmed the air the La Nina will now cool it. The cyclical temperature change from an El Nino peak to a La Nina valley may be 0.4 to 0.5 degrees Celsius.There is no long term warming or cooling involved. The article mentions lag but does not specify from where to where. There is a well known lag between warming observed at Nino3.4 and continental warming by El Nino. That is because the NINO3.4 is located right smack in the middle of the equatorial counter-current and it sees the El Nino wave crossing the ocean before it has reached South America. All this applies of course to the normal or regular ENSO oscillation. But a lot of things are going on in the ocean besides the El Ninos and La Ninas. It can happen that the equatorial counter-current for some reason gets blocked. That will stop an El Nino on the way from reaching its destination. As a result,its warm water spreads out in the middle of the ocean and creates an El Nino on the spot instead of on the coast. It is called an El Nino Modoki or Central Pacific El Nino. The La Nina phase is also changed but I have not figured out exactly how. It is these irregular El Ninos that could possibly be involved in unpredictable climate change but I do not know. They are not very powerful but the 1997/98 El Nino is the most powerful on record for more than a hundred years. Problem with it is explaining its power source which is way above what the preceding ENSO oscillation could have delivered. For now, it is one of the mysteries of climate science that the so-called “climate” scientists of IPCC have never even heard of, never mind trying to solve it.
Steven Mosher has a one word comment in this thread:
“teleology”.
Here is Buckminster Fuller’s definition:
Teleologic: The subjective-to-objective, intermittent, only-spontaneous, borderline-conscious, and within-self communicating system that distills equitable principles – characterizing relative behavior patterns – from our pluralities of matching experiences, and reintegrates selections from those net generalized principles into unique experimental control patterns – physically detached from self – as instruments, tools or other devices admitting to increased technical advantage of man over environment circumstance, and consciously designed to permit his modification of forward experiences in preferred ways.
See? That’s what Mosher meant. You knew that, didn’t you?
Me, too. ☺
Carry on…
Willis: Here’s an animation you’ll enjoy. Talk about a power stroke. Catch the transition from the 1997/98 El Nino to the 1998-01 La Nina. (It’s a 6MB gif animation so it may take a moment to load.) I should still have the original maps, so I could divide it into smaller animations if you like.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/sealevelglobal.gif
Regards
For this heat pump to actually have a cooling function for the global system it has to result in a great deal of energy leaving the Earth for the emptiness of space. How does that happen? The results are claimed (cooling occurs) but no mechanism for removing that energy from the system is identified. Just diluting it is not at all the same thing as removing it.
1. Does this seemingly unbalanced cycle always leave a (semi-) permanent increase in global temperatures at the end of the cycle…and therefore periodic step increases in global temperatures? And, if so, at what point will it stop….. or will it stop without some other forcing?
Until the PDO reverses to the cold phase. Bob Tisdale has written some brilliant books and blogs on the subject? Enjoy.
“However, when the amount of this warm water reaches a critical point, the El Nino phenomenon emerges. The wind that powers the El Nino pump arises, and it begins to blow. This wind blows the warm surface water strongly westwards. Essentially, the wind skims off the warm surface layer and pushes it all along the equator until it meets up with continental arc. ”
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Very telling correlation, interesting also the obvious tranfer of heta into the Atlantic.
But above appears to be wrong way. Warm water is generated in the western pacific warm pool. When El Nino starts, trade winds relaxe and warm water is sloshing eastwards.
dbstealey says:
February 27, 2014 at 12:58 pm
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Sometimes I catch myself anthropomorphizing my dog.
That is wrong.
I should instead be Teleogizing.
dp says:
February 27, 2014 at 1:41 pm
For this heat pump to actually have a cooling function for the global system it has to result in a great deal of energy leaving the Earth for the emptiness of space. How does that happen? The results are claimed (cooling occurs) but no mechanism for removing that energy from the system is identified. Just diluting it is not at all the same thing as removing it.
Maybe the transfer of warm water from the equator to the Arctic melts sea ice, in turn allowing more energy to escape from the oceans to space above the Arctic?
Willis says…
> PS—It does strike me that with both a
> positively correlated and a negatively
> correlated area regarding the global
> temperature two months later, we should
> at least be able to forecast a few key
> climate parameters for a couple of months
> ahead …
The ELI (ENSO Leading Indicator)… you know you want it. But seriously, that could be an interesting article I’d love to read.
dp says:
February 27, 2014 at 1:41 pm
For this heat pump to actually have a cooling function for the global system it has to result in a great deal of energy leaving the Earth for the emptiness of space. How does that happen? The results are claimed (cooling occurs) but no mechanism for removing that energy from the system is identified. Just diluting it is not at all the same thing as removing it.
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Spreading heat over a greater surface IS a cooling mechanism. That mechanism is applied in millions of man ade devices, from caps on electronic devices to all sorts of radiators.
Manfred is quite right to observe the wrong way problem. The warm water in the east *is* el niño, and the power stroke, a well meaning but regrettable introduction of terms, starts at the beginning of la niña precisely when el niño ends. Naturally I expect full agreement will follow 🙂
There is a better explanation here: http://www.geology.wisc.edu/courses/g115/el_nino/2b.html.
@dp,
you will also find that mechanism implemented in about every living thing on this planet. Why do elephants have big ears ?
This is why I hate the use of “cooling/warming/temperature” when describing the balance of energy between the Earth and the sun. Regions of the planet can warm and cool and without affecting the balance of energy and that is what you are saying, but to say the Earth is cooling requires more energy to be sent to space than is arriving. That as I understand it is the claim in this article. Discussions of climate change that only involve moving existing energy around the planet do not address the fundamental energy balance. The entire debate about CO2 is all about CO2 retaining energy that would otherwise be lost to space, not shuffling energy here and there, hiding it in the ocean, etc.
dp says:
February 27, 2014 at 1:41 pm
> For this heat pump to actually have a cooling
> function for the global system it has to result
> in a great deal of energy leaving the Earth for
> the emptiness of space. How does that happen?
> The results are claimed (cooling occurs) but no
> mechanism for removing that energy from the
> system is identified. Just diluting it is not at all
> the same thing as removing it.
The Stefan-Boltzmann Law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law states that a “black body” (theoretical model of matter) will radiate away energy at a rate proportional to the 4th (yes, fourth) power of its temperature, in degrees K. At 100 K (-173 C) it’s 5.67 watts per square metre. Note 1 watt = 1 joule per second.
Let’s take an example of sea surface water that is 27 C at La Nina, and 29 C at El Nino (i.e. the index goes from -1.0 to +1.0). How much difference does that make, you ask? Running the numbers through the equation shows that at 27 C (300 K), a black body radiates away 459.3 watts/m^2 and at 29 C (302 K) 471.6 watts/m^2. That’s an extra 12.3 watts per square metre at El Nino versus La Nina.
Now let’s scale up to planetary dimensions. 1 square kilometre is 1,000 metres x 1,000 metres, i.e. 1 million square metres. So one square kilometre would radiate away an extra 12.3 megawatts. A million square kilometres, and you’re looking at an extra 12.3 terawatts, i.e. 12.3 terajoules/second radiating away 24×7. This extra energy radiating away into space at higher temperatures is what prevents a “runaway greenhouse effect”.
Manfred says:
February 27, 2014 at 3:00 pm
@dp,
you will also find that mechanism implemented in about every living thing on this planet. Why do elephants have big ears ?
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That’s an easy one. They keep the mice from sneaking up on them, thus catching them by surprise. Nothing worse than a surprised elephant.
Thanks again for another good read.
This is a most ingenious method for temperature regulation.
Been reading the Reverend Paley lately? You nearly have “the argument from design”. 😎
Steven Mosher says:
February 27, 2014 at 11:30 am
Not quite. I got more precise in the comments, where I said:
So let me alter my previous statement to say:
However, I have no problem with understanding things based on how they function or what they accomplish. It’s like with the dust devils. To understand their place in the climate zoo, it’s necessary to look at just what work they are performing. Once you see that their job is cooling the surface, you can class them with other surface-cooling emergent phenomena.
However, this is not teleology because I’m not ascribing causality.
One reason for the lack of understanding of El Nino, in my opinion, is this bias against teleology in favor of looking for causality. All of these folks are going around trying to find out what the CAUSES of El Nino are …
I come at it from the other end. Me, I understand that heat engines do work, and to understand a natural heat engine, it’s necessary to take a hard look at what said heat engine actually accomplishes. So rather than look for causes, I look at the effects.
Note that I’m not doing it as a teleological explanation of the occurrence.
Instead, I am doing it simply to understand the occurrence … and then once I understand it, I can start thinking about what might or might not cause it …
Dang, Mosh, you got a lot of mileage out of one word … and I even understood what you meant.
w.
Great, the Hawaiin gods control the world!.