WUWT reader Pethefin writes:
Finally someone addresses the really big elephant in the room: the ocean vents and their role in climate modelling:
I covered this possibility in a previous post: Do underwater volcanoes have an effect on ENSO? and I have updated that post with this animation showing a heat plume disconnected from the ENSO pattern and Google Earth graphic showing possible subaqueous volcanism sources (you may have to click the top graphic to get it to animate).
This excerpt from an essay published on Quadrant Online by John Reid also explores the question.
It hardly needs to be said that climate modelling is a far-from-settled science, despite what its practitioners would have us believe. Just how flawed becomes even more apparent when you consider that massive heat sources on the ocean floor have been entirely omitted from the warmists’ calculations
THE TOTAL power expended in volcanic heating of the ocean is well in excess of the power dissipated by wind stress and tidal friction. There is growing evidence for the existence of volcanically generated megaplumes both from satellite imagery and from direct observation. Although the physical detail remains to be explored there is growing evidence that megaplumes are, at times, responsible for variations in climate, ocean productivity and ocean export of CO2.
There is a vast amount of CO2 stored in the ocean: 38,000 gigatonnes compared with 380 gigatonnes generated by human activity since the beginning of the industrial revolution. It is doubtful whether mankind’s modest one percent contribution has made very much difference. Nevertheless oceanographers seem quite reluctant to acknowledge the role of subaqueous volcanism in influencing ocean circulation, ocean ecology, climate variation and CO2 flux. Why should this be so?
One possible explanation is that oceanography and climate science have come to be heavily dependent on numerical fluid dynamic modelling. “Ocean-atmosphere general circulation models” or OAGCMs have become the preferred means of investigating ocean circulation. The ocean-atmosphere model is tuned to settle down, after “spin-up”, to a steady state where it remains until deliberately perturbed by some external factor such as changing the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide. According to these models the ocean in its natural state is a sort of machine, a conveyor belt steadily carrying heat, salt and dissolved gases around the planet’s oceans in the same unvarying manner until it is disturbed by humankind.
Volcanic activity does not fit this neat picture. Volcanic behaviour is random, i.e. it is “stochastic” meaning “governed by the laws of probability”. For fluid dynamic modellers stochastic behaviour is the spectre at the feast. They do not want to deal with it because their models cannot handle it. We cannot predict the future behaviour of subaqueous volcanoes so we cannot predict future behaviour of the ocean-atmosphere system when this extra random forcing is included.
To some extent, chaos theory is called in as a substitute, but modellers are very reticent about describing and locating (in phase space) the strange attractors of chaos theory which supposedly give their models a stochastic character. They prefer to avoid stochastic descriptions of the real world in favour of the more precise but unrealistic determinism of the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid dynamics.
This explains the reluctance of oceanographers to acknowledge subaqueous volcanism as a forcing of ocean circulation. Unlike tidal forcing, wind stress and thermohaline forcing, volcanism constitutes a major, external, random forcing which cannot be generated from within the model. It has therefore been ignored.
Well worth reading the entire story here:
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2014/05/ocean-vents-faulty-models/
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Question…If “THE TOTAL power expended in volcanic heating of the ocean is well in excess of the power dissipated by wind stress and tidal friction.” Why aren’t the oceans boiling? The earth is over 4 billion years old. Seems to me the heating must not be too great, or life as we know it would not exist.
FrankK says: “…Bob T, it would appear is a septic (about a significant subterranean heat source)…”
That’s funny. I don’t feel septic.
Aphan says: “Bob, I’m sure the data you need is located the the papers footnoted in the published article.”
Nope. We aren’t monitoring the monthly or annual fluctuations in the contribution of subsurface “volcanic heating” of the oceans, and without data, the entire discussion presented in the article is nothing more than conjecture. A volcano recently breached the surface of the ocean near Japan. Where’s all of data to note it’s contribution to the warming of the ocean there? It’s been forming for a long time.
It follows quite logically that almost every past paper on sea level change and GHG heating is wrong and should be withdrawn.
School level physics teaches that all parts of the oceans need to be measured for thermal expansion before there is any meaningful conclusion about changes in surface levels. The deeper 50% of the oceans are badly undersampled. We simply do not know if mechanisms like hydrothermal vents are causing thermal expansion or contraction changes that show in surface level changes.
Even my old Mum used to stir the soup before sipping it, lest there be a patch at the bottom that was too hot.
Studious-looking papers on satellite altimetry are ok for extending the art of measuring change. They have no scientific basis for linking change to GHG global warming when they ignore other warming.
Should such papers be labelled as sham? I think so.
Here’s an idea. Instead of dogmatising on the basis of some flimsy data (adjusted by revelation) and the test tube behaviour of CO2, let’s have this new thing we do and call it “climate science”. First up, we recognise that the world is mostly hot and plastic and that the great bulk of it is unvisited and poorly understood. Furious heat (though not as furious as Al thinks when selling geothermal) + constantly moving mass + unstable crust…any possibilities there? We recognise that the vast hydrosphere (also pretty much unknown) may well interract with with the hot and plasticky stuff, and that all may be affected by orbits, magnetism, influences beyond earth…
This “climate science” could be a branch of something called The Enlightenment, whereby you explore, enquire and experiment, and facts form notions rather than the other way around. For example, you have Antarctic expeditions to find out stuff, not to “demonstrate” stuff. I dunno, I just thought it might be worth trying.
How in God’s name did you catch that thermal blip in view of the mega-terabytes of data you are exposed to?
Who had their beady eyes on that?
Seriously.
Guys,
You want to bring some thought to this party?
Read this essay (of course sub-oceanic volcanoes effect climate. The terrestrial ones certainly do. Likely 3-5X as many sub-oceanic ones do too in about 3-5X as large a way).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ygv83mwpytn4p65/AN%20ENGINEER%E2%80%99S%20TAKE%20ON%20MAJOR%20CLIMATE%20CHANGE%20F.53.pdf
So if the geysers in Yellowstone go off/on on fairly regular basis – could that not be extrapolated to one of these vent systems partially shutting down on a regular basis on a long term scale like in ice age time scale?
Wondering aloud..
What effect would the chemical release of the plumes, volcano eruptions in the case of Gakkel Ridge have on ice production? near term?
Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition (AGAVE)
”’In 2001 researchers with the Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Expedition (AMORE) to Gakkel Ridge detected thermal characteristics in the water column that indicated volcanic plumes almost everywhere along the ridge.
“This was astonishing to hydrothermal researchers like myself!” Sohn explained. “This is the slowest spreading tectonic plate boundary anywhere on Earth. So it should have very limited amounts of hydrothermal circulation. Yet the sensors were returning signals from everywhere. ””
http://polarfield.com/blog/tag/arctic-gakkel-vents-expedition-agave/
Hotbed of Volcanic Activity Found Beneath Arctic Ocean
John Roach
for National Geographic News
June 25, 2003
””We expected very few fresh volcanic lavas. Yet the first maps and samples revealed a highly active volcanic province,” said Langmuir, noting that the abundant and recent volcanic activity was both surprising and remarkable.”’
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0625_030625_gakkelridge.html
25. June 2008: Fire under the ice – International expedition discovers gigantic volcanic eruption in the Arctic Ocean
..”’“The Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD and buried thriving Pompeii under a layer of ash and pumice. Far away in the Arctic Ocean, at 85° N 85° E, a similarly violent volcanic eruption happened almost undetected in 1999 – in this case, however, under a water layer of 4,000 m thickness.” So far, researchers have assumed that explosive volcanism cannot happen in water depths exceeding 3 kilometres because of high ambient pressure.
..“The Gakkel Ridge is covered with sea-ice the whole year. To detect little earthquakes, which accompany geological processes, we have to deploy our seismometers on drifting ice floes.” This unusual measuring method proved highly successful: in a first test in the summer 2001 – during the “Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge Expedition (AMORE)” on the research icebreaker Polarstern – the seismometers recorded explosive sounds by the minute, which originated from the seafloor of the volcanic region.”’
http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_releases/detail/item/fire_under_the_ice_international_expedition_discovers_gigantic_volcanic_eruption_in_the_arctic_oce/?cHash=c04ced8cdad8a962797feb463de2df39
“We aren’t monitoring the monthly or annual fluctuations in the contribution of subsurface “volcanic heating” of the oceans, and without data, the entire discussion presented in the article is nothing more than conjecture.”
Well said Bob.
If you look at the whole article you will see leaps and bounds of assumptions. Assumptions we would never let climate science get away with.
But when your theme is “anything but C02” then you can speculate for ever. It might be uncorns!!!
Bob Tisdale says:
May 4, 2014 at 4:10 pm
Aphan says: “Bob, I’m sure the data you need is located the the papers footnoted in the published article.”
Nope. We aren’t monitoring the monthly or annual fluctuations in the contribution of subsurface “volcanic heating” of the oceans, and without data, the entire discussion presented in the article is nothing more than conjecture. A volcano recently breached the surface of the ocean near Japan. Where’s all of data to note it’s contribution to the warming of the ocean there? It’s been forming for a long time
——————————————-
Maybe, in the near future, there will be enough info and data for some better conjecture..
But .. have a look at the global distribution of Hydrothermal Vent Fields..so far..looking familiar?
Global Distribution of Hydrothermal Vent Fields
http://www.whoi.edu/home/pdf/ventmap_2011.pdf
found that link above here
Hydrothermal Vents
http://www.whoi.edu/main/topic/hydrothermal-vents
So yesterday Monckton says the oceans are not warming….
Today they are warming and it is volcanoes…
Make up your mind.
There are some calculations of the heat dissipated by plate tectonics, the energy of which is supplied by convection in the earth’s mantle. This is intended to include volcanics, land uplift, subduction of ocean crust under the continents (Pacific Ocean crust mainly).
http://www.solid-earth-discuss.net/5/135/2013/sed-5-135-2013.pdf
“Energy of plate tectonics calculation and projection
“……..Based on Davies (2010), the total internal heat of the earth is equal to 1.5 ×10^21 J/yr, or the
upper mantle/asthenosphere convection removes 3.7% of the total internal heat of the
earth, which includes the work of plate tectonics that is estimated at 0.9% of the total
internal heat generated in the earth’s core. Approximately 30% of this internal heat is
radiated by land to space, 69% is exchanged with ocean water, and the remaining 1%
is relieved by plate tectonics.”
I don’t buy the simple 30% radiated by land to space (without some heating of the atmosphere). Also, they assume the core heat is ~ constant (radioactive decay adding back the lost heat).
I have proposed consideration of internal earth’s heat as a factor and been criticized because of the small geothermal gradient. This gradient, of course, is not measured at volcanoes, fault zones subduction zones active areas of uplift and “hot spots”.
This theory could be fairly easily tested using the seismic / geophysical theory of stacking data to increase signal to noise ratio & see the vent heat sources (if significantly present). Seismic analog terms in parenthesis below :
If this theory is correct, in terms of significant heat impulses coming from sea floor vents, then one ought to be able to take a series of world ocean temperature maps (“records”) and add them together and divide by the number of maps added in(a “stack” to use the seismic data processing term). Over a period of time, other non-volcanic variations should be random, more or less, & cancel each other out (“noise”), while the stationary “vent heat source” will continue to generate heat anomalies (“signal”) in the same spot over and over through time – and thus constructively “stack” to show the heat signal. This process basically would increase the signal to noise ratio for the heat plumes. Again, if there is something to this theory, then the anomalies in the stacked map ought to line up with sea floor spreading centers & known hot spots.
Perhaps this is something Willis could test out ?
With over 6 billion human body’s giving off heat and who could say how many other animals ..Is that ever been calculated ? Probably a dumb question eh .
This is a fascinating topic. Imagine 100+ Amazon rivers streaming through the Drake Passage over the top of one of the most seismically active places on earth. The Humboldt current is split off and goes north, possibly influencing El Nino. The “coanda effect” amplifies small changes in a flowing stream. (just move your finger slowly across a flow from a tap, a 1 mm interruption on one side of a 6 mm stream sends the flow far on the other side) If there was a sudden change in the Drake passage flow caused by a volcano it could cause the Humboldt flow to change and trigger major changes up the coast of S. America even an El Nino
I got to the first sentence, which says:
Now, I’m not the man to just walk past that kind of claim. So I took a look at their references to find out if this is true. According to their citation, the combination of wind stress and tidal friction is 0.001 W/m2.
At that point, I stopped reading … anyone making that claim is selling something, not investigating something.
w.
They just assume submarine volcanic effects average out and haven’t fluctuated enough to effect global temperatures in the 20th century. They may be right, but dead wrong about human atmospheric c02 having much effect on temperatures either. They just cant pick the right winner, it’s the sun stupid.
But I think another angle is the enormous amounts of c02 in the volcanic-marine subsurface which is buffered with seawater, this I think does affect and buffer ocean ph levels, and this is also ignored by the IPCC.
Someone above stated an estimate for heat flow in some part of the Pacific seafloor as “…it is some 300 mW/m² at the Western margin…”. Sounds about right considering world heat flow average is something like 60mW/m². It is of the same order of magnitude as tidal dissipation. Compare this to the estimate of 2,300mW/m² for the anthopogenic contribution from greenhouse gases, or the 1,000,000 mW/m² for direct overhead sunlight, and one can see that this is a very small heating source except in extraordinary circumstances. On the other hand, the acid rich water from these vents has a lot to do with maintaining ocean pH, as in its absence river waters would eventually make the oceans quite alkaline.
For the fun of it: Champagne vent near Eifuku volcano at depth creates large amounts of liquid co2 bubbles due to pressure. it’s an extremely gas-rich lava.
Yes! Finally, after many years after I actually sent an email suggesting this, we have evidence. I am not a scientist, but rather just a thinking and reasoning person who thought of this one day. It is not CO2, it is the earth that is warming. I am so excited to see a piece done on this idea.
One super eruption, either above or below water, can make most of man’s concerns pretty irrelevant. The Oruanui eruption in New Zealand, about 26,500 years ago, tossed some 430 cu km of volcanic material into the skies; the Glass Mountain eruption in California/Nevada, some 80,000 years ago, flung about 300 cu km of stuff skyward in a mere 6 days; and the grand daddy of all recent super eruptions, the Toba in Indonesia some 73,000 years ago, puked about 2,800 cu km skyward. By some views on mitochondrial DNA, the Toba reduced the human breeding population to about 40 couples worldwide. The estimates of heat, CO2 and also various noxious gasses ( I don’t count CO2 as a noxious gas) in these events are staggering. When Yellowstone goes ……..!
Coming soon (geologically) to an eruptive centre near you.
I suspect that the 7000 psi acting on the abysmal plain and the stability of the ocean floor compared with crust at continental margins would suggest that there are probably at lot more volcanoes on and near land.
Some thoughts-
Bob said-
“We aren’t monitoring the monthly or annual fluctuations in the contribution of subsurface “volcanic heating” of the oceans, and without data, the entire discussion presented in the article is nothing more than conjecture.”
Bob (and Willis) that statement cuts both ways. If we aren’t monitoring the monthly or annual fluctuations in the contributions of subsurface volcanic heating of the oceans, YOUR estimations (or anyone else’s) that they are minimal or insignificant are ALSO nothing more than conjecture. Correct?
I found another source of the author’s “money quote” (an article written in 2005..we’ve discovered a lot more HTV’s since then!)
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRepublish_1529789.htm
“So far, known hydrothermal vents put out about 17 terawatts of power, equivalent to about half the energy produced by humans”, says Dr Robert Reves-Sohn of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
“But with just 10% of the world’s ocean ridges explored, there are bound to be a lot more hydrothermal vent fields out there”, he says.
Was he talking about ALL volcanic activity below the surface…as in eruptions+magma flows+venting? Or just venting? If we assume he was just talking about VENTING:
In 2008, the world USED roughly 16.5 TW of energy (from all forms). According to Reves-Sohn in 2005, the KNOWN vents at that time produced 17 TW of energy. 10%=17 TW of power….100%= 170TW+ JUST IN VENTED energy that doesn’t include eruptions+magma flows etc. Is THAT a significant amount to you?
From “Characteristics of magma-driven hydrothermal systems” published by AGU-
http://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/bitstream/handle/10919/25300/ggge20109.pdf?sequence=1
“approximately 1000 hydrothermal fields are predicted to exist along the global ridge system and approximately one third of these have been identified” [Baker and German, 2004]
1000 vent FIELDS….
More on the author by the author-
http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2009/10/climate-modelling-nonsense/