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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My question is why do we not see signal from all the ocean rises? Why would this one little guy off the coast of Mexico telegraph mightily to the surface, intermittently, when all the magma rising at the spreading ridges does not seem to?
Idd,
For the record, the geysers at Yellowstone don’t “shut down” or go on/off. They are always “on”. They “erupt” only steam and hot water when enough pressure builds up beneath the surface. As soon as the geyser stops, that pressure starts building up again.
The vents on the ocean floor are under enormous pressure not just from below, but from above due to ocean depths above them. Many of them are magma vents or volcanic debris eruptions (as opposed to just steam) as thinner areas of “crust” moves over the hotspots beneath the surface. Think Hawaiian Islands….tectonic plates moving the crust over the same hotspot causing a chain of islands made of cooled magma to form. They might continually erupt if there was not a wall of water above them, we don’t know.
There is evidence of MANY vents and volcanoes that have gone extinct on the ocean floor. In fact, the worlds largest known extinct volcano-Tamu Massif, is on the ocean floor.
Bob Tisdale says:
May 4, 2014 at 4:01 pm
FrankK says: “…Bob T, it would appear is a septic (about a significant subterranean heat source)…”
That’s funny. I don’t feel septic.
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Well spotted Bob, and worth the $100 I sent you recently.!!
A skeptic is aseptic to intellectual rot:
The arrogance of ignorance is not what we’ve got.
We’re quick to acknowledge
There may be some doubt,
And never solve equations
With factors left out!
–sp
This is a ridiculous theory posed in this post.
What those blips of warmth are off the coast of Mexico are ocean eddies creating down-welling. During the fall and winter months, areas of high pressure ridge down the east side of the Rocky mountains from Canada down into Mexico where it reaches the Sierra Madre del Sur and the Sierra Madre del Chiapas along the Isthmus of tehuantepec. Here, the difference between high pressure to the north and the lower tropical pressures south of the mountains creates the “Tehuano Wind” through the Chivela Pass. In the Gulf of Tehuantepec, it creates strong upwelling currents, which can cool the water surface temperatures by up to 5-8°C. However, east/west of the Gulf strong anti-cyclonic/cyclonic eddies develop which push warm surface waters down to depth, which is displayed in the animation above. These eddies are then carried with the general ocean circulation current in that region southwest then arcing more west.
The East Pacific Rise is the fastest spreading ocean ridge – by a long shot – which among other things means that much more magma is pushing up through the crust. This means more heat as well.
But such activity in the region of El Niño might mean that there is some connection. I think there is. If heat is welling up out of the deep earth overall it may not mean much. However, if it is coming up in concentrated locations, then it has much more capacity to affect ocean temps in particular regions. I never argue about overall heat flux out of ocean ridges or ocean vents. I only argue that in THIS case – in THIS location – this specific heat addition to the ocean-atmosphere system may be causing a periodic surge in heat added to the system. I think it is a significant enough possibility to warrant some investigation – of which I myself do not have the ability to pursue. But I do thin it is real and sufficient to be adding that little bit of ‘kick’ to the ENSO to be a trigger.
In electronics the current across the gap in a vacuum tube is not enough by itself to make a difference. Same thing holds true for a transistor. But the small current can allow a much larger current to pass from one electrode to the other. I think that the heat coming from vents may be just such a trigger/catalyst, like a transistor. ENSO would be the transistor or vacuum tube, with the heat from the vents being the control voltage.
Um, my calculifier sez 38K/380 is 100. 1%.
Whether the global energy budget is significantly affected by undersea vents or not the fact remains that the system remains remarkably stable apart from minor variations above and below a mean temperature of about 288K (15C).
Thus one still needs an underlying thermostatic mechanism as often pointed out here by Willis Eschenbach.
As per my regular contributions there is only one physical phenomenon capable of providing such a thermostat and that is convective overturning within the body of a gaseous atmosphere of a specific weight and with a specific average surface pressure.
Whatever internal system changes seek to affect surface temperature then if insolation remains the same the surface temperature does not change but instead the amount and distribution of convective overturning changes.
Willis applied the term ’emergent phenomena’ which is a useful way of describing what happens.
The problem then is that so many think that one has to have a higher average global surface temperature to drive an increase in the speed or scale of emergent phenomena but in fact the fixed weight of the atmosphere on the surface means that there is a maximum surface temperature that can be achieved which in turn limits the extent to which any internal system forcing element can affect the average surface temperature.
It is just like a pan of water which has just begun to boil. From that point on the rate of boiling can increase but the maximum temperature can not increase.
The average temperature of the body of water in a boiling pan can still rise but that rise becomes less and less as a proportion of the additional energy input as one moves closer to the boiling point.
Eventually no further increase in the average temperature can occur however fast new energy is added. Only an increase in the rate of boiling can occur at that stage.
That we are already at that point (albeit controlled by the rate of evaporation rather than the rate of boiling) is illustrated by the observed phenomenon of a maximum surface water temperature of about 32C in the tropics.
That maximum is set by atmospheric pressure at the surface in just the same way as a body of water boils at a lower temperature when pressure is reduced.
All that happens in practice is that instead of that maximum surface temperature changing the area of ocean surface at that maximum temperature alters which drives the necessary convective changes to achieve a complete negative response to any internal system forcing.
If our GHGs seek to alter the global energy budget then in the end all one sees is a miniscule increase in the area of ocean surface which attains that maximum temperature. The change in average surface temperature for the Earth as a whole would be indistinguishable from zero because it is total atmospheric mass which controls the energy budget and not the radiative characteristics of constituent molecules.
Tom Woods says:
May 4, 2014 at 11:03 pm
I agree, in that location simple eddies is a more likely explanation than volcanic plumes.
I note that my posts are not appearing at all. If they are to be subject to moderation there is usually an indication of that.
Is there a problem ?
SIGINT EX says:
May 4, 2014 at 11:20 am
Out of the cellar: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/25/science/hot-vents-in-the-sea-floor-may-drive-el-nino.html
………………
Thanks for the link, very interesting !
Data I assembled ( see here)some couple of years ago do appear to confirm that the submarine tectonics has a role to play, if not as the principal driver then possible as an initial trigger of the process.
However, I do think that heat energy input is minuscule in comparison what tropics and sub-tropics get from the solar; interference with ocean currents as a possible alternative.
ES :
A volcano on the ocean floor does not go boom because the pressure on the bottom of the water column does not allow the water to turn to steam. Have you not seen videos on how pillow lava is formed? In Hawaii hot lava flows into the ocean from the land and relative the cool water harden the outside if lava and then the magma flows in a tube ever growing longer at the end. Yes some of water boils away but in the end more just flow in, from the film I have seen the diver can remain a few feet from it an not cook. If magma is at a certain depth the water would just remain liquid since at that pressure it would never get to a boiling point.
I also got news for you, water reside in most magma for the very same reason, only when it is no longer held in that state by pressure it will turn to steam. That is why volcano blow up and the more water in the magna the larger the boom. Steam is what picked up the one side of Mount Saint Helen’s and tossed it outward. The mountain could not exert enough pressure to keep the water in a liquid state, when it the water expanded to steam the steam blew the mountain aside.
That is generally not a problem with a large column of liquid water is on top of a volcano as water weighs over eight pounds per gallon i will admit I cannot tell how many PSI build up per foot but I do know that a column of water sightly over 30 feet or ten meters weigh as much as the entire column of air above us. With that knowledge it is easy to see that pressure build up rather rapidly as you descend into the depths of a body of water . That pressure will keep super heated water in a liquid state. That is also how pressure cooker work faster than just boiling pan of water, under pressure water remain liquid at greater temperatures. That is also why most ocean volcanoes remain undiscovered until they quite literately surface.
Jeff L says:
May 4, 2014 at 6:07 pm
I’ve sailed over an actual volcanic hot spot, where the water was all discolored and rising up with pumice in amongst it, over the Tonga Trench. So there definitely are hot spots.
But for most of the ocean, the amount of heat flowing up from the bottom is very, very small. And where it’s warmer, over the rift zones, it’s typically very deep. So I suspect that any extra heat would be so diluted by the time it reached the surface that it would be undetectable even with stacking.
All the best,
w.
Steve Garcia
Sorry to nit pick, But all those hours of tube and transistor theory class will not allow you remark go through uncorrected. Either you understanding of how amplifier there either wrong or you just over simplified it, Tubes are voltages driven very little current flow through the grid on a tube, It the voltage fluctuation on the grid that controls the current flow between the anode and the cathode. That voltage fluctuation is the current flow across a resistor that attached to the some sort of voltage source and the grid. the other end of the resistor is normally attached to ground, Bipolar transistor are current driven the flow from the base to the emitter does control the current flow between the emitter and the collector. MOS FET transistor work similar to tube a voltage controls the current flow across the doped semiconductor material, the nature of the doping and transistor structure affect how large the effect is. I may not know much about climate but electronics and computers have been my bread and butter for the last 45 years am am also old enough to have had to fix tube equipment, I have had more than one hole burned in my fingers by putting said finger or fingers in the wrong place at the wrong time, I really hated tube power supplies who did not have bleeder resistors in them, a 40 microfarad capacitor bank full charge and at 750 volts can really bite even with the amplifier unplugged.. So please excuse the nit picking correction.
Please correct the article. The Navier-Stokes equations are stochastic. As can be demonstrated by exact solutions of the N-S equations (Direct Numerical Simulations). DNS of the atmosphere will not possible for centuries (even assuming computing power increases by an order of magnitude every decade). In addition to the complex physics GCMs rely heavily on turbulence modelling to close the N-S equations. Turbulence models should ideally mimic the stochastic nature of the N-S equations. This is non trivial.
Hi Mark Luhman.
Yup and cathode ray tubes can bite too.
Got a new time out …
Going to Sverdrup my horse.
“How can you model chaos?”
Well of course you can.
Because Chaos mathematics isn’t purely random.
It just looks that way.
What chaos mathematical analysis CAN tell you is what LIMITS there are likley to be on a dynamic system. That is the likley range of variability, if not exactly where its going to be next week.
Take the classic predator/prey example,. For various values of species replenishment and so on, you can establish the likley range of population density so something like a locust storm can be shown to have some particular peak value, and for how long it will last before the food runs out.
So a chaos analysis of climate might show us more or less how much climate variation we could expect from the output of deterministic processes of non stochastic events.
Then its easy enough to stick those in anyway. Simply do a Monte Carlo analysis. Run your chaos model and then inject random volcanoes. Perhaps you will find a jump to a new attractir, Perhaps not.
I guess its engineering that exposes you to a type of thinking alien to many sciences..boundary analysis.
Instead of knowing exactly what a system will do, you need to know whether it will stay within a given area of operations. Complex circuit design of e.g. a computer chip has so MANY possible variations in specifications its not possible ti say ‘this chip design is in spec.’ What you do is say that for a given statistical pattern of variability within its elements 99.999% of the chips will be ‘within spec;’ and the rest you reject on the production line. Or mark as ‘sub spec. Do Not OverClock!’
Perhaps the point I am making is this:
” The inability to get a perfect result is no barrier to getting some meaningful results.”
Regardless of Bob T’s and Willis’ dismissive responses without even reading past the first sentence, this concept is being given SOME consideration in the literature, some disagreeing and some supportive.
If 10 km^3 of lava isn’t worth even consideration, one has to ask if the two have a little disconfirmation bias. No specific takedowns – just dismissal. SOUND LIKE A WARMIST? Not meaning to tweak either Bob or WIllis, but come on guys, at least read the details and then argue specific points.
Bob T as we all know is invested heavily in a western Pacific cause of the El Niño, but he needs to keep an open mind. Even when I have pointed out the obviously initiating heat plumes (not the one shown) in his own graphics, Bob merely points at other things and doesn’t address the East Pacific Rise plumes.
I don’t wish to argue with Bob, because his mind is already made up. Perhaps Willis might have a more open mind.
I am happy to not only see that this is under consideration NOW, but that it was first brought up in 1995:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/25/science/hot-vents-in-the-sea-floor-may-drive-el-nino.html?src=pm&pagewanted=1
H/T SIGINT EX at 11:20 am
And in 1997
Add in this one:
@Keith. Distel 11:03 am:
“I asked this question several years ago on here and was poo-poohed by the guest poster. Glad its getting some thought.”
Amen. As you will note in this comment, work has been ongoing on this since at least 1995, so you are not a fool, Keith. Even if the idea is wrong in the end, it is and was worth more than flippant dismissal without people – especially HERE – even looking at the evidence brought forth.
As to data, there DOES seem to be plenty of data, though I cannot access it, since it is behind a paywall.
It has been getting a reasonable hearing at Geophysical Union, for about 20 years, if not the “experts” here.
@Mark Luhman at 1:02 am:
Actually, Mark, thanks for the corrections. It had been decades since I had studied all that and I didn’t have a lot of confidence in the details. I should have added, “The particulars may be wrong guys, so if anyone wants to jump on it and correct it, my thanks to you.” Electronics was NOT my strong suit.
So, THANKS!
Qualitatively and intuitively speaking, in looking at the Ocean Vent map at http://www.whoi.edu/home/pdf/ventmap_2011.pdf, one can see that the East Pacific Rise intersecting with the Galapagos Rift is right on the equator, with the latter’s known vents following the equator for about 1500 km.
Total conjecture here (first time it come to mind – and thinking out loud), but that amount of heat coming out of the rift rising in that narrow corridor (and it IS narrow) should present SOME localized convection UPWARD, sort of the opposite of Wallace Broeker’s oceanic conveyor and the sinking of cold fresher water in the NE Atlantic.
The plumes HAVE been tracked upward about a km. And what is a plume but flow OR convection?
I don’t present this as if it was fact, but may be something to look into if anyone else sees merit in Daniel A Walker’s work AND DATA.
For those interested, there’s a lot more information on the ocean vents at the website previously pointed out by Carla: http://www.whoi.edu/main/topic/hydrothermal-vents
Among other things, there are even Google Earth and Google-map versions of the pdf-file that Carla and Steve Garcia have mentioned, with more detailed information on each of the discovered vents:
https://maps.google.com/?q=http://www.interridge.org/irvents/files/vents_InterRidge_2011_all.kml
Steven Mosher says:
May 4, 2014 at 5:16 pm
“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.”
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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!!!
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Typical Mosher. The article makes few claims, but offers a source of reasonable investigation. I sometimes think you get all flustered when someone says we do not have the numbers, just as you appear to accept anything that is labeled in numbers, because “hew, they all add up”
This is what I read in the article….”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.
“Although the physical detail remains to be explored” is operative.
So Steven, you like numbers. Tell me, how much heat energy in the oceans is from volcanic sources. I agree that we do not have the numbers.
I think a proper understanding of energy residence time as a universal factor in all thermodynamic processes is useful.
I have, on the basis of residence time, questioned the veracity of the proposition that the watt per square meter down welling LWIR due to clouds, is equal to the same watt per square meter down welling SW , sans clouds, and I question that they make the same contribution to earth’s energy budget.
I postulate that the SW radiation will enter the earths oceans to depth, having far longer residence time. I postulate that the LWIR will expend much if its energy in accelerating the water cycle, be lost in evaporation, and released at altitude, to be liberated by GHG molecules, the more numerous, the more likely to be quickly liberated from our “system”
I assert that (as an example) 10 straight days of SW pumping into the tropical ocean, will accumulate for the entire 10 days, losing little to space; whereas 10 days of LWIR from clouds, will lose far more total energy to space. I postulate that the residence time of the WL of radiation, as well as the materials encountered, are the reason the residence time and total accumulated energy within the system varies, despite an equal wattage flow per square meter.
So again, with regard to volcanic energy, how much is in our oceans?
What is the mean residence time of volcanic energy in the oceans?
How much is there now?
How much, and for how long of a period does volcanic energy fluctuate?
Is this years volcanic energy adding to last years, or to ten years ago?
Since is it energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, I maintain that residence time is crucial, and a small change, lasting decades, can add to a large number. (Consider solar energy and flux within these thoughts on residence time)
Steve Garcia @ur momisugly Thanks for the added information. In spite of the predictable comment by Mosher, the beauty of this inquiry is recognizing how very little we truly know versus what we think we know. My test is what do I believe the scientists of 2100 will think of this subject. My instincts tell me they will laugh at those who blew it off without calling for more investigation.