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/
Eh. Agree w/Tisdale & even Mosher on this one.
That heat west of Central America looks to me like a “mountain jet”.
What a breath of fresh air! Someone finally talking about the 1000 lb gorilla in the room.
Ok, my posts are being approved after review so there must be a glitch in the WordPress software.
I’ll just have to be more patient 🙂
[indeed, assuming the worst is seldom a viable option. . . mod]
David A said:
“I think a proper understanding of energy residence time as a universal factor in all thermodynamic processes is useful. ”
That gets to the nub of the issue.
The thing that is missing from the radiative energy budget is the variable length of time that kinetic energy (originally taken from the surface) is tied up in the form of gravitational potential energy within convecting overturning of the gaseous atmosphere.
Whilst in that form such energy cannot participate in the radiative exchange but the variable nature of the amount of that energy provides the thermostatic mechanism which so many of us observe to be in place.
That is the elephant in the room.
@Stephen Fisher Wilde:
“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.”
I read this that the convective overturning change means that any additional heat energy is carried away at an increased rate.
“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.”
Stephen, all of this can be true and yet those emergent phenomena are not, in themselves the average global temperature. Local or regional spikes would not be forbidden. In fact, to take your boiling water example a step further, if one has a point heat source under the water, and especially if the pan material does not spread the heat out quickly enough (for example with stainless steel vs copper cladding), the water directly over it is boiling while elsewhere the water is not quite boiling in as much of a roil. This would seem to indicate uneven temperature distribution, even when the average is only 100°C.
Talking of the average global temperature is not what this article and its underlying idea is about. It is that, even IN a balanced system, when point heat sources are injected, that heat MUST be carried away – and via one of Willis’ emergent phenomena. as far as I can see, this paper/article is suggesting that that convective overturning change” is, in itself, El Niño. The article is not saying that eh heat form vents increases the global average, no more than El Niño does.
As all of my non-technical non-specialist observations seem to show, El Niño DOES have seem to temporarily add heat to the system, which then takes some months for El Niño to remove via the surrounding convective overturning. Isn’t that even a good description of what an El Niño IS?
I would add that no overturning convective mechanism could remove excess heat in zero time; it must take some duration for the mechanism to work out, for the heat energy to be distributed. In the proposed ocean vent/El Niño mechanism, that heat first begins to be distributd into the ocean water locally, then heat plumes rise, and eventually the heat enters the atmosphere, whereupon an El Niño as we know it is in progress.
I see nothing in what you say that precludes this all happening. The global average is EVENTUALLY re-balanced. Until then an El Niño is operational.
beng says:
May 5, 2014 at 7:52 am
Eh. Agree w/Tisdale & even Mosher on this one.
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try to add a little more to the conversation. Feel free to answer my questions in my post here David A says: May 5, 2014 at 5:51 am, or to Steve Garcia says:
May 5, 2014 at 2:25 am
A couple of factoids for the above discussion. First, a phase diagram for water with the critical pressure of 218 atmospheres shown. http://langlopress.net/homeeducation/resources/science/content/support/illustrations/Chemistry/Water%20Phase%20Diagram-bl.jpg
The static head of a water column is about 0.434 psi/in2, so the critical point in the sea is around 7,400 feet in depth, depending on the density of water. At that point and deeper, there is no difference between steam and water, so no steam explosions.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
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David A says:
May 5, 2014 at 11:40 am
try to add a little more to the conversation.
***
I don’t discount the possibility shown by the graphic in this post (it could also be just an area of temporarily-halted upwelling), but it is localized and intermittent. But I wonder if such a “plume” of heated water from the bottom could make it to the surface without being dispersed/dissipated by mixing. Maybe….
Let’s look at the ocean temp profile. The “warm” water at the surface is surprisingly shallow — most of the ocean volume is much colder, colder even than the average global atmospheric temperature. The majority of it is only 4 – 5 C! If ocean bottom heat is having any effect on the ocean under the thin, sun-warmed surface, it’s not doing a very good job. All indications to me is that heat from the ocean bottom is insignificant.
There may be a possible alternative to consider:
“Mean Sea Surface, representing the sea level resulting from constant phenomena, computed from 16 years of altimetry data acquired by Topex-Poseidon, ERS1&2, Envisat, GFO and Jason-1 satellites. This Mean Sea Surface is shaped by permanent ocean currents and, above all, by the gravity field. Differences below the surface of the Earth (for example, variations in magma temperature) can generate sea level variations of over 100 metres between two ocean regions thousands of kilometres apart.” Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales
One way of estimating past gravity variability is the rate of change in the intensity of the geomagnetic field. The GMF data (annual resolution available only to 1995) indicates that both East and West Pacific are characterised by continues instability as shown here:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ENSO.htm
Could change in the gravity (in opposite direction, more often than not) be reason for the Pacific’s el Nino ‘sloshing’ ?
Steamboat Jack says:
May 5, 2014 at 11:53 am
_____________________
From the article of the topic, they describe the formation of subaqueous geysers.
Ocean Vents And Faulty Climate Models
..In fact remnants of such plumes, called “megaplumes”, have been observed as anomalous chemical signatures high in the water column. Small patches of high sea surface temperature indicative of megaplumes have been recorded by satellites.
There is an aspect of megaplume formation which has hitherto been ignored. HTV plumes which typically have an exit temperature of 360°C are rapidly cooled by the entrainment of surrounding sea water until they lose buoyancy and spread horizontally much like chimney smoke on a frosty night. However plume dynamics indicates that for a large plume the temperature of the plume interior could remain sufficiently elevated for the water to boil as the hydrostatic pressure decreases with decreasing depth. Indeed one HTV field, the Lucky Strike field near the Azores, is sufficiently shallow at 1700m depth for effluent to be close to boiling point as it exits the vents.
Once boiling commences, plume dynamics alters radically. The formation of steam bubbles greatly increases the buoyancy of the plume causing vertical acceleration of the effluent stream leading to increased further boiling and so on. In effect, the plume becomes a geyser.
Using buoyancy calculations alone and neglecting heat losses, one litre of vent effluent at 360°C, when it boils in a megaplume, will create sufficient buoyancy to lift 30 tonnes of cold sea water to the surface. A sufficiently powerful HTV field can conceivably generate enough buoyancy to turn an entire ocean basin upside down.
The most powerful HTV field so far discovered is the TAG field on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The power output of the TAG field is around 6 GW. It lies at 26°N, the same latitude as the Yucatan Peninsula, one-time home of the Mayan Civilisation. We can speculate that the TAG Field is the remnant of a major subaqueous event with a megaplume which transported large volumes of cool deep ocean water into the tropical mixed layer so cooling the sea surface. This led to decreased ocean evaporation and drought in Yucatan..”’
Mark Luhman said-
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. ”
Not true.
Deep sea volcanoes have been found to explosively erupt, they do make noise, they create shock waves, and they do shoot debris out into the ocean for miles, even under a whole lotta water column pressure.
“These are the first pyroclastic deposits we’ve ever found in such deep water, at oppressive pressures that inhibit the formation of steam, and many people thought this was not possible,” said WHOI geophysicist Rob Reves-Sohn, lead author and chief scientist for the Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition (AGAVE) of July 2007. “This means that a tremendous blast of CO2 was released into the water column during the explosive eruption.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080625140649.htm
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2009/20091217_volcano2.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110328151734.htm
@Aphan –
From that 1st link:
“Eruption of the West Mata volcano, discovered in May, occurred nearly 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, in an area bounded by Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.”
From SteamboatJack above:
“The static head of a water column is about 0.434 psi/in2, so the critical point in the sea is around 7,400 feet in depth, depending on the density of water. At that point and deeper, there is no difference between steam and water, so no steam explosions.”
Given that SteamboatJack’s numbers are right, the West Mata volcano eruption was less deep than his 7400 feet and therefore apparently could have been water turning to steam.
That doesn’t make Mark Luhman’s “A volcano on the ocean floor does not go boom because…” correct though. He is not precise at all about depth.
My first thoughts about this ocean vent possibility arose not in looking at anything specific to El Niño.
They arose looking at Trenberth’s earth energy budget diagram. I wondered at the total lack of any representation of heat being emitted by the Earth itself. It IS after all, NOT sucking heat from insolation, because it is not cold, and it has heat sources from below. it seemed odd that it isn’t represented at ALL.
After all, land volcanoes add some heat. And then I thought about the oceanic vents and volcanoes, which are occasionally in the news and which at that time I did not know the locations of at all. That heat may be small, and I didn’t know how small or large, but it still does exist. It IS entering the ocean-atmosphere system, so it should be shown, even if it might be minuscule. (IT IS – see http://www.heatflow.und.edu) But what IS the level of heat energy? I wondered.
Only after seeing that there were any number of vents and volcanoes right there on the Equator, right there at one end of the El Niño itself, did it occur to me that not only was there heat entering the system, but it was focused to some degree right AT that location. Coincidence? I wondered if there was a connection.
Ironically or not, the first oceanic vents were actually discovered right there, on the Galapagos Rift, in 1977. THAT could easily have been a coincidence.
THEN I found out that the East Pacific Rise at that end is the fastest spreading oceanic rift – and not by a little bit, either. I was able to find out how much heat flow there was at various oceanic rifts, and the northern end of the EPR is by far the largest of them in terms of heat flow, among the locations actually measured. When I took a rough look at the heat flow, it turned out to be about as great IN THAT IMMEDIATE AREA (0.75 Wm^-2) – an area 0°40′ of longitude by 0°55′ of latitude – as the heat flow shown in Trenberth’s diagram for “Net absorbed” (0.9 Wm^-2). This was a rough calculation, but based on data collected by the International Heat Flow Commission.
See http://www.heatflow.und.edu/marine.jpg and http://www.heatflow.und.edu
Thus, if it could more or less balance the 0.9 Wm^-2 “net absorbed” – in that region – then what effect would that have? I don’t know yet, but if we don’t ask, we can’t get an answer.
Maybe nothing. Maybe the region is too small. Maybe it is in a region where the stability of the ocean currents precludes anything more than entraining a little more heat.
But there is a measured amount of focused heat flow AT THE SURFACE. It seems something that may have some effect in that area. Also, does it change over time? If so, when? How much?
Walker shows flurries of seismic activity similar to land volcano seismic activity before an eruption. Can the seismographs’ data do what he thinks it does – signal eruptions just before El Niños? He thinks so and his papers keep getting published. The seismic data seems to show that the eruptions occur, and if so, are the heat flow measurements on the Heat Flow site during an eruption? Or are they during the non-eruptive phase? That 0.756 Wm^-2 number I came up with may be a high or a low number in a variable phenomenon.
I understand the average energy flow from below the earth´s surface is about 0.1 watts per meter squared. The fact that heat flow is uneven and tends to be higher over oceanic crust doesn´t matter that much because the rate has been essentially unchanged.
For a climate system to be in rough balance this energy has been radiated into space, as outgoing long wave radiation. This is fairly easy to accomplish, but we lack the instrumental record to establish how the earth´s radiation budget has evolved over the last few million years. Therefore my only suggestion would be to include the forcing in the global energy balance estimates.
Fernando Leanme –
The numbers in my head on this are that the average heat flow in the NH is about 0.064 Wm^-2, and SH is about 0.037 Wm^-2, overall about half of your number. It IS higher over ocean ridges.
The faster spreading ridges have the highest of all. And the fastest spreading ridge just happens to be the (N-S) East Pacific Rise (EPR). And the highest portion of the EPR is the part basically ON the Equator, right about where it meets the (E-W) Galapagos Ridge (GR), which is not only where the first ocean vents were found, but both of the two ridges have numerous vents. The average value in that portion is, by my personal rough calculation, about 0.75 Wm^-2, This is about 7.5 times the average you understood as average for the whole world and 15 times the actual average heat flow. Do we have a point at which the heat flow happens to be at a maximum, and it happens to lie at the eastern end of the El Niño heat plume region.
This, of course, could be just a coincidence. “Correlation does not mean causation.” But usually it does mean that it is worthy of inquiry.
Now, add to that this: Since about 1988 Daniel Walker’s papers and data point to seismic activity increases in the EPR just before El Niños commence, and that this seems to be consistently occurring. It’s behind a paywall, so all I can get to is his abstracts. The data must be there, because he keeps on getting his work published in journals, so the reviewers and editors must see something in it all.
Seismic flurries are very common in terrestrial volcanoes, and they occur, by my understanding, because magma is moving upward. This pretty strongly infers that magma movement upward is also occurring at the EPR near/at the Equator.
With the heat flow maps showing very high heat flow all along the EPR and GR normally, one can at least conjecture that the heat is coming from magma venting out of the ridges. That is during normal periods. If the magma is also, then, rising at SOME times – such as just before El Niños when Walker has seen the seismic flurries. It is not crazy to infer that the heat levels are also higher, and in that one spot.
All of this sounds like a reasonable mechanism for injecting heat into the ocean-atmosphere system just before the advent of El Niños. That doesn’t make it TRUE, but it does seem to make it worthy of further study. Again, is it coincidence? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
One additional thing. Some people here have talked about global averages. First of all El Niño is NOT a global average phenomenon. It is quite regional and quite specific to the Equator in the Pacific. Also, El Niño is either 1.) a confluence of conditions to focus (what is normally more evenly spread out) heat along the Pacific where the ITCZ can then inject the heat up into the Hadley Cells and thus northward and southward, or 2.) it is a simple injection of heat into that same region.
A question I continue to have is the timing of the El Niño, around Xmas time – no matter which of the mechanisms we discuss, the seasonality of it is not yet part of the discussion. WHY would it occur at around Xmas time? And why not every year? That may be very pertinent, but no one is discussing that right now. THAT suggests a meteorological cause, because connecting magma flows to seasonality is a stretch in anybody’s head. So for now, I see something happening and the picture is muddled. But Walker’s work and data seem to point to something to do with magma. Time should tell if his seismic flurries continue to precede El Niños. If they don’t, then (like the tree ring Divergence Problem) the correlation didn’t hold. In which case, the whole idea is probably wrong.