In a recent interview, Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Senior Scientist, from NCAR said the upcoming 2014/15 El Niño might shift global surface temperatures upwards by 0.2 to 0.3 deg C to further the series of upward steps. Curiously, Trenberth is continuing to suggest that the warming we’ve experienced since the mid-1970s resulted from naturally occurring, sunlight-fueled El Niño events and that we might get to experience yet another of those El Niño-caused warming steps as a result of the 2014/15 El Niño. So let’s take a look at what he’s suggesting and what the future MAY POSSIBLY hold in store…if Trenberth’s dreams come true.
Peter Sinclair of ClimateCrocks recently produced two YouTube interviews with NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth about the upcoming 2014/15 El Niño. See Part 1 here. At about the 9-minute mark in Part 2 (here), Trenberth speculates, sounding gleeful, that the upcoming El Niño may lead to another in the series of upward steps in global surface temperature:
One of the real prospects to look out for is whether we go back into a different phase of this Pacific Decadal Oscillation. And one of the potential prospects we can watch out for is whether the next whole decade will be distinctly warmer…uh, uh…and so, in terms of the global mean temperature, instead of having a gradual trend going up, maybe the way to think of it is we have a series of steps, like a staircase. And, and, it’s possible, that we’re approaching one of those steps. And we will go up, you know, two- or three-tenths of a degree Celsius to a next level, and maybe we won’t come down again. I think that’s one of the things we could possibly look out for.
Some of you may believe that Kevin Trenberth is actually looking forward to another upward step…not just looking out for one. So let’s take another look at the upward steps in global surface temperatures he was happily discussing.
Kevin Trenberth introduced his “big jumps” in global surface temperatures in an article last year, without stating their cause. We discussed those big jumps and identified their causes in the post Open Letter to the Royal Meteorological Society Regarding Dr. Trenberth’s Article “Has Global Warming Stalled?”. Please refer to that post for the detailed discussion. Figure 1 is an update of Figure 10 from that post with data through 2013. NCDC global land+ocean surface temperature anomaly data were used for consistency with Trenberth’s original article (Data source here.)
Figure 1
SUPPOSE TRENBERTH’S DREAMS COME TRUE
Trenberth is now suggesting that global surface temperatures might shift upwards 0.2 to 0.3 deg C again in response to the 2014/15 El Niño. So for illustration purposes only, let’s take the data from the 16-year period of 1998 to 2013 and shift them up those 0.2 and 0.3 deg C and insert them in the time period of 2015 to 2030. See Figure 2. The period-average temperature anomaly of 0.57 deg C for the period of 1998-2013 would shift up to 0.77 deg C or 0.87 deg C for 2015-2030.
Figure 2
WOULD AN UPWARD STEP HELP THE CLIMATE MODELS?
An upward shift in global surface temperatures would definitely help the models for a few years, but, because the global surface temperatures warmed in a step, the hiatus period that followed would again cause a continued divergence between the models and the real world. See Figure 3 for a model-“data” comparison starting in 1979 and running through 2030.
Figure 3
The graph includes the multi-model ensemble-member mean for the climate models stored in the CMIP5 archive, with two scenarios: RCP6.0 and RCP8.5. And the two sets of future “data” are created once again by taking the NCDC global surface temperature anomalies for the 16-year period of 1998 to 2013, shifting them up 0.2 to 0.3 deg C and inserting them in the time period of 2015 to 2030. Figure 4 includes the same model-data comparison but with the commonly used start year of 1998.
Figure 4
TRENBERTH’S CONFLICT
Kevin Trenberth appears to have conflicting causes for the global warming we’ve experienced since the mid-1970s. On one hand, for decades, Trenberth has been a true-blue proponent of the hypothesis of human-induced global warming, with the warming caused by the emissions of manmade greenhouse gases. On the other, for about a year, he has been promoting the “big jumps” in global surface temperatures, with the steps in the staircase of global surface temperatures being caused by El Niño events.
There would be no conflict if Trenberth was able to show that manmade greenhouse gases somehow contributed to the warm water that fuels El Niño events. But Trenberth has always noted that it is sunlight that provides the warm water for El Niños. In a recent post (see here), we presented two examples of this from his peer-reviewed papers, and for those of you new to this discussion, they’re worth repeating. The first is Trenberth et al. (2002). They write (my boldface):
The negative feedback between SST and surface fluxes can be interpreted as showing the importance of the discharge of heat during El Niño events and of the recharge of heat during La Niña events. Relatively clear skies in the central and eastern tropical Pacific allow solar radiation to enter the ocean, apparently offsetting the below normal SSTs, but the heat is carried away by Ekman drift, ocean currents, and adjustments through ocean Rossby and Kelvin waves, and the heat is stored in the western Pacific tropics. This is not simply a rearrangement of the ocean heat, but also a restoration of heat in the ocean.
The second paper is Trenberth and Fasullo (2011). They write (my boldface):
Typically prior to an El Niño, in La Niña conditions, the cold sea waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific create high atmospheric pressure and clear skies, with plentiful sunshine heating the ocean waters. The ocean currents redistribute the ocean heat which builds up in the tropical western Pacific Warm Pool until an El Niño provides relief (Trenberth et al. 2002).
And we confirmed in the post Open Letter to the Royal Meteorological Society Regarding Dr. Trenberth’s Article “Has Global Warming Stalled?” that it is sunlight that provides the warm water that serves as fuel for El Niños.
“….MAYBE WE WON’T COME DOWN AGAIN…”
Trenberth’s statement in the YouTube interview, “And we will go up two- or three-tenths of a degree Celsius to a next level, and maybe we won’t come down again,” is similar to one made in his August 2013 interview on NPR . There he is reported to have said:
…what happens at the end of these hiatus periods, is suddenly there’s a big jump [in temperature] up to a whole new level and you never go back to that previous level again…
Those are curious statements. Trenberth has never taken the time to explain that we would NOT expect the surface temperatures to go back down again. So his “never go back to that previous level again” seems to be a clear case of misdirection.
An El Niño…
- releases a tremendous amount of heat from the tropical Pacific to the atmosphere, and…
- it redistributes a tremendous amount of warm water within the oceans from the tropical Pacific to adjacent ocean basins, and…
- according to Trenberth and Fasullo (2011), an El Niño causes changes in atmospheric circulation that reduces the evaporation from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and allows more sunlight to penetrate and warm those ocean basins to depth, both of which contribute to the warming of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans in response to an El Niño without the direct exchange of heat from the tropical Pacific.
Regarding 3, Trenberth and Fasulo (2011) includes:
Meanwhile, maximum warming of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans occurs about 5 months after the El Niño owing to sunny skies and lighter winds (less evaporative cooling), while the convective action is in the Pacific.
The upward steps are precisely what we would expect of ENSO if it is viewed, not as noise in the surface temperature record, but as a chaotic, sunlight-fueled, recharge-discharge oscillator.
It appears that El Niño events, combined with the heat uptake in the tropical Pacific during La Niña events, are major contributors to any radiative imbalance that may (or may not) exist.
CLOSING
The climate science community hasn’t bothered to properly account for the contribution of ENSO. And there’s no reason that we would expect them to do so. Any attempt by the climate science community to account for ENSO’s contribution to the warming of surface temperatures and the oceans to depth would detract from the hypothetical influence of manmade greenhouse gases.
EARLIER POSTS IN THIS SERIES
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 1 – The Initial Processes of the El Niño.
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 2 – The Alarmist Misinformation (BS) Begins
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 3 – Early Evolution – Comparison with 1982/83 & 1997/98 El Niño Events
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 4 – Early Evolution – Comparison with Other Satellite-Era El Niños
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 5 – The Relationship Between the PDO and ENSO
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 6 – What’s All The Hubbub About?…
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 7 – May 2014 Update and What Should Happen Next
- The 2014/15 El Niño – Part 8 – The Southern Oscillation Indices
And for additional introductory discussions of El Niño processes see:
- An Illustrated Introduction to the Basic Processes that Drive El Niño and La Niña Events
- El Niño and La Niña Basics: Introduction to the Pacific Trade Winds
- La Niñas Do NOT Suck Heat from the Atmosphere
- ENSO Basics: Westerly Wind Bursts Initiate an El Niño
FURTHER READING
My ebook Who Turned on the Heat? goes into a tremendous amount of detail to explain El Niño and La Niña processes and the long-term aftereffects of strong El Niño events. Who Turned on the Heat? weighs in at a whopping 550+ pages, about 110,000+ words. It contains somewhere in the neighborhood of 380 color illustrations. In pdf form, it’s about 23MB. It includes links to more than a dozen animations, which allow the reader to view ENSO processes and the interactions between variables.
I’ve lowered the price of Who Turned on the Heat? from U.S.$8.00 to U.S.$5.00. A free preview in pdf format is here. The preview includes the Table of Contents, the Introduction, the first half of section 1 (which was provided complete in the post here), a discussion of the cover, and the Closing. Take a run through the Table of Contents. It is a very-detailed and well-illustrated book—using data from the real world, not models of a virtual world. Who Turned on the Heat? is only available in pdf format…and will only be available in that format. Click here to purchase a copy. Thanks. Book sales and tips will hopefully allow me to return to blogging full-time once again.
@Mike Jonas:
Per: ““Heat” is both a noun and a verb ( and the modern tendency is for all nouns to be usable as verbs)”
Don’t you mean: “In English any noun can be verbed.” 😉
Has anyone taken the time to realize that this enso event, so far, is more than one month behind the 97 event and is comparably less powerful already (during the same stage)? I think the warmistas are hoping this turns into a “thing” because it’ll help sell their political agenda (Obama’s draconian executive orders; next years UN agreement).
It’s a hope and a prayer. These types of things usually turn out very badly for those doing the praying. It’s already becoming obvious that this won’t come near 1997 and will likely be a weak to moderate el nino. If Joe is right about the ice returning to a normal extent this summer, this could be an ugly fall for the warmistas going into such a make or break 2015.
It’s funny how these people set themselves up for failure by making such ridiculous predictions in the first place though.
I agree with Joe that MEI’s the “secret sauce”. Reviewing Bob‘s MEI exploration I realized it may be possible to improve on MEI by devoting careful attention to the ratio of low-to-high-frequency variation in each of the time series used to construct MEI.
“Engineers, i.e. people who build things that work and get sued if they break, have always defined heat as energy.”
I’m also an engineer. What you say it’s not true. At least not in this country. I do recall quite clearly that is was a way to fail an exam: to claim that heat can be stored.
It is also not true that heat was defined rigorously when you say it was. I would suggest you to get a little bit more info about that.
I would also suggest you to really find out what power is.
And apparently you did not see one of my messages: Then how do you differentiate between ‘stored heat’ and ‘stored work’? You do realize that work can be done on the system?
Bob Tisdale says:
Greg says: “During the recent warming it is clear that the both max and min excursions were greater. Looks like you oscillator was pumping a bit harder.”
And global surface temperatures responded accordingly; that is, they rose.
====
Well by definition temperature will rise during “recent warming”. You seem to have missed the point I have made previously, that was demonstrated nicely in your graph: the ENSO variations are a mechanism for capturing solar energy and transmitting it to the rest of the climate system, including atmosphere (as you have been saying for a long time) , so it needs to be seen in terms of throughput. More throughput induces warming.
It is not so much a case of predominantly Nino or predominantly Nina but the amplitude of swings in both directions.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/figure-7-2.png
Looking at your graph again, The post WWII period was notable small amplitude swings (even the war-time bump is questionable). Then the envelop gets steadily wider until 1998. Post-2000 it has dropped off notably. In fact, we could draw a very smooth envelop both sides of the data and it peaks in about 1992.
As your caption notes, there is no long term trend. It is the amplitude envelop that seems to be the important factor. By the end of this year we should see whether this envelop continues to shrink.
Apparently amplitude is currently sufficient to maintain no change. If it gets smaller we could move into global cooling. To quote our Kev: : “I think that’s one of the things we could possibly look out for.”.
I again draw your attention to the steps you have indicated in fig ! and recent sunspot minima.
http://climategrog.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=943
It seems upward steps have occurred almost exactly at min SSN. Coincidence, or not?
@John Eggart: Claes Johnson and I have tried to add to what Planck created, the missing bit which would bring the physicists into the same fold as the engineers. Johnson developed a mathematical concept that is not easily intelligible. My own explanation is simpler, based on Poynting Vectors.
Two opposing, in-phase plane waves of the same amplitude each have the same but opposing PVs. The net wave is a standing wave with zero PV, in other words the PVs annihilate vectorally. Do the same calculation for waves with different amplitude and you get a standing wave at the amplitude of the cooler emitter, and an imposed travelling wave with the difference of amplitudes, showing the net PV is their vector sum, delta |PV|.
Do this over all wavelengths and add thermal incoherency and you get the same, but on average. Thus two Irradiances, the integral of all the PVs over all wavelengths, add vectorally. Hence for equal temperature and emissivity sources, there is zero net IR amplitude.
The atmosphere appears at an interface with condensed matter to emit GHG IR from ‘self-absorbed’ molecules at the black body level; it’s easy to show why. Because the Earth’s surface is a near black body emitter, at the surface there is no net PV, no net IR energy flux in self-absorbed wavelength ranges. For temperate regions, the emissivities are 1 and 0.6, meaning net energy flux surface to atmosphere is 396 [W/m^2] x 0.4 = 158.4 W/m^2, very near the observed 160 W/m^2.
We engineers call the 0.4 net emissivity the ‘operational emissivity’, and can use it in empirical calculations. However, in the atmosphere, vibrationally activated sites at the surface can also transfer energy to adsorbed molecules or liquid water. Hence we have the split [2009 data] to 17 W/m^2 convection and 80 W/m^2 latent heat by evaporation. The residual 63 W/m^2 net IR is about 40% of the maximum possible net IR emission, meaning the operational emissivity of the Earth’s surface to its atmosphere is about 0.16 (average).
The Earth’s surface then adapts to give the correct mix of convection and IR. The difference of its temperature and the zero GHG temperature for 341 W/m^2 incident SW is the GHE. Equilibrium radiative temperature for no clouds or ice would be 4 to 5 deg C, so present GHE is c. 11 K. Hansen et al in 1981 made a big mistake in claiming it is 33 K (there is no single -18 deg c emission zone in the upper atmosphere).
Clouds control the Earth’s GHE with the difference between now and the Last Glacial Maximum, about 9 K, being from biofeedback reducing cloud albedo. There is virtually zero effect of CO2. Our surface temperature is where we evolved. Neanderthal man who had the same genes with some switched on, had larger eyes, more optical processing, less other brain processing capacity, a cold and dark adaptation. As cloud droplets coarsened much more rapidly, the World was darker in the icy regions.
Climate Alchemists think operational emissivity is 1.0, add the convection and evaporation, then scream ‘denier’ at anyone who dares tell them they’ve got the bloody concept wrong. Then they embark on a series of bad physics’ decisions to pare away excess energy to fit past data. The models run hot, ‘positive feedback’ is imaginary. The worst part is to claim the atmosphere is a grey body so you can apply Kirchhoff’s Law of Radiation at ToA to offset 238.5 W/m^2.
I once argued with the Met. Office people about this; it comes to a guy at a local University who got it wrong; they put out a false justification. However, these people are not going to relinquish their careers because they have been taught wrongly since Carl Sagan made the initial mistakes. That’s 50 years or so!
This heat transfer cockup is probably our era’s equivalent of Phlogiston with Houghton reprising the role of religious fanatic Joseph Priestley. Houghton’s treatise accepts the Earth’s atmosphere has no IR source at ToA but he believed the atmosphere is a grey body. To do the job properly, you have to apply irreversible engineering thermodynamics at ToA. Brookhaven is doing this but it uses a grey body approximation, which is damned wrong. We engineers work with reality, the engineering thermodynamics of Gaia……..:o)
Heat is simply a form of energy, not the transport of energy.
I see that once again the thread has been distracted on a semantics issue by somebody calling himself a physicist. He isn’t.
Heat can be transported. For example, all electromagnetic radiation transports energy from its source until it is absorbed at its destination.
Heat can of course be stored. It can be stored in the form of heat, as in a thermos flask (as CommieBob said) or a storage heater.
Bottom Line: Heat is a form of energy.
phlogiston says: “Update on ENSO: for the second month I have seen a “double take” on the published equatorial anomaly transect down to 450 meters….”
You’ve simply caught it in the process of updating. Those “preliminary” plots have appeared regularly for years, There’s nothing strange going on.
michael hart has hit the nail on the head. All heat spikes in the temperature record lose their gains as fast as they are made. We only need to look at any temperature chart to see this.
Trenberth has come out with a central assumption to a bunch of theories. He is obviously a very bad scientist.
Empirical proof to what we have all seen before:-
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996/plot/rss/from:1996.51/trend/plot/rss/from:1996/mean:12
The extra CO2 that will be released is obvious but give it 18 months and this variance will have decayed in to line up with temperatures. Top line is CO2 variance to compare with temperature fluctuations:-
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/normalise/mean:12/detrend:0.81/offset:0.46/scale:10/plot/wti/from:1997/mean:12/normalise/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997/mean:12/normalise/plot/wti/from:2000.9/normalise/trend
@Andyj: Trenberth was trained in Meteorology. It teaches false ‘back radiation’ physics based on mistaking Irradiance for real IR energy flux. As Planck said; “Science proceeds funeral by funeral”.
Lindzen also believes in the ‘Extended GHE’ based on the Meteorologists’ mistake. It’s been 50 years of going up a blind alley we grizzled old engineers never did because we had to get the sums right.
However, modern engineers and physicists are X-box technicians. The real knowledge is in the programmes; the operators can’t work from first principles and direct experiment, the basis of my powerful, by comparison, intellect.
A Guy Named Jack (@JackHBarnes) says: “Does anyone have a guess why the anomaly would be red for a place with historic ice levels or is this the new norm?”
Personally, I do not pay any attention to the map you’ve linked.
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/anomnight.current.gif
It is a special sea surface temperature anomaly product that was created for the NOAA Coral Reef Watch program. They do not include satellite observations during the day; thus the “anomnight” in the address. It is notorious for appearing warm. Some of that also has to do with the scaling.
The daily OI.v2 data for May 19th do not show the warm anomalies in the Great Lakes:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/oisst/navy-anom-bb.gif
“Heat is simply a form of energy, not the transport of energy.”
You should really look a little bit into a book of thermodynamics and/or statistical physics instead of making a fool out of yourself. But tell more about that, and how you also store mechanical work.
And about how you just invented a perpetuum mobile.
A good start for those that do not know what heat is: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heat.html The caloric theory is long gone. Really.
michael hart says: “The so called “upward step” didn’t occur until about 2001. What gives?”
The plot you provided…
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996
….clearly shows that the TLT anomalies did not cool fully from the peak of the 1997/98 El Nino to peak of the 1998/99 portion of the trailing La Nina. They only return to the pre-El Nino value at the peak of the La Nina. They do not cool fully as we see in an ENSO index.
http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/02-nino3-4-ssta.png
Heat and work are interchangeable, albeit with thermodynamic limitations controlled by the Laws of Thermodynamics and entropy. This is the basis of engineering thermodynamics.
The Perpetual Motion Machine of the 2nd Kind in the IPCC Climate models comes from mistaking Irradiance, the potential energy flux in the electromagnetic continuum of an emitter to the zero point energy field of Absolute Zero, for a real energy flux or rate of thermodynamic work.
The most amazing aspect of Atmospheric Physics is Goody who wrote with Yung a definitive text on Atmospheric Physics which has in it the Law of Conservation of Energy between matter and the electromagnetic continuum: qdot = -DIV Fv. qdot is the monochromatic heat generation rate per unit volume of matter and Fv is the radiation flux density per unit volume. This shows heating rate = – gradient of radiative flux. At a plane surface, qdot = – delta |opposing Poynting Vectors|. For all wavelengths, gdot = – delta|opposing Irradiance Vectors|.
Yet Goody apparently accepted the 33 K GHE idea and the PPM 2nd Kind, based on Sagan’s idea that surface irradiance is a real energy flux, and taught his students the same.
You can prove that Irradiance is the vectorial rate of work for an electromagnetic wavefront, from ‘Radiation Pressure’, hence the idea of solar sails for spacecraft. Similarly, the electromagnetic energy dissipation rate in the atmosphere from the surface IR flux is the rate of working of the Radiation Pressure. This is pretty small though; 23 W/m^2 mean level. The IPCC climate models increase it 5.1x to get the imaginary ‘positive feedback’.
Sagan made his mistake because he got aerosol optical physics wrong and the sums for his two-stream analysis of the Venusian atmosphere. I could be wrong too, but that’s science.
Change ‘Irradiance’ to ‘net Irradiance’ in 2nd to last paragraph. At a solar sail, the net Irradiance is the Sun’s irradiance to the sail minus the sail’s irradiance to the Sun, in both cases W/[m^2.Str]
Trenberth like Mann could not get a job teaching in a third rate high school if it was not for ‘the cause ‘ given that level of Personal commitment its hardly a surprise to his crossing his fingers and hopping really hard for El Nino to lead to temperatures increases that stay up. Even is this happens he remains a third rate ‘scientists’ that has shown a willingness to throw away any scientific principle in the name of ‘the cause’ and as own ego.
In physics “heat” = “energy transfer”. Energy that is being transfered (and only the energy being transferred) by various means (conduction, convection, radiation) is called heat. Heat (by rigorous physics definition not common usage) cannot be trapped or stored.
“Heat may be defined as energy in transit from a high temperature object to a lower temperature object. An object does not possess “heat”; the appropriate term for the microscopic energy in an object is internal energy. The internal energy may be increased by transferring energy to the object from a higher temperature (hotter) object – this is properly called heating.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heat.html
@John West: in thermodynamics we refer to the Gibbs and Helmholtz free energies, and enthalpy.
‘The Gibbs free energy is the maximum amount of non-expansion work that can be extracted from a closed system; this maximum can be attained only in a completely reversible process. When a system changes from a well-defined initial state to a well-defined final state, the Gibbs free energy ΔG equals the work exchanged by the system with its surroundings, minus the work of the pressure forces, during a reversible transformation of the system from the same initial state to the same final state.
G(p,T) = U + pV – TS
which is the same as:
G(p,T) = H – TS ‘ where U is the internal energy, H is the enthalpy, T is absolute temperature and S the entropy
‘the Helmholtz free energy…..measures the “useful” work obtainable from a closed thermodynamic system at a constant temperature. The negative of the difference in the Helmholtz energy is equal to the maximum amount of work that the system can perform in a thermodynamic process in which temperature is held constant. If the volume is not held constant, part of this work will be performed on the environment. The Helmholtz energy is commonly used for systems held at constant volume. Since in this case no work is performed on the environment, the drop in the Helmholtz energy is equal to the maximum amount of useful work that can be extracted from the system. For a system at constant temperature and volume, the Helmholtz energy is minimized at equilibrium.
A = U-TS’
For the case of the conversion of Electromagnetic energy to heat at constant pressure, and vice versa, there is volume change, so we have to use Gibbs free energy. The heat term is the change in enthalpy delta H, which includes the pV term, the work done in changing volume. The Gibbs free energy change is assessed with reference to the entropy change Delta G = Delta H – T delta S.
Alex Says (May 21, 2014 at 8:27AM)
I fully agree with your position because it is fully in accord with Gibb’s seminal work that established the foundation for thermodynamics in the early 1900s. However, I also think I understand “Somebody” and “John West” ’s confusion about the distinction between “heat” and “heat flow”.
I believe that their confusion results from a common explanation of the First Law of Thermodynamics which is often presented as [1]:
Delta U = Q – W;
wherein “Delta U” is the change in internal energy; Q is the heat put into the system; and W is the work done by the system. The phrase “heat put into the system” likely suggests “heat flow”. But that interpretation is obviously incorrect because “Q” has units of energy. Instead, as you and others have already pointed out “heat transfer” is govern by the temperature difference between the bodies (media) which exchange thermal energy (i.e., via Fourier or S-B equations etc.).
If “Somebody” and “John West” are still unclear on terminology, I’d suggest that they consult a thermodynamics or heat transfer textbook. It is universally acknowledged that “ heat” is energy and not a “rate of heat flow”.
Dan
[1] Richard Swalin, Thermodynamics of Solids, pg 3, Wiley 1962.
So what does this have to do with human greenhouse gas emissions? Let’s suppose Trenberth’s correct — who can show the el nino has anything to do with human activity?
I’ll let this here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/38695619/The-Use-and-Misuse-of-the-Word-Heat-in-Physics-Teaching It explains better than I have patience to explain myself. As a hint, both heat and work are path dependent. If you claim you can store heat, then you can store work. Is that whatever stored path dependent? Nope. The thing you store in the system is called internal energy, and there is no difference between how it was added to the system: by heat or by work. It’s path independent and it’s a state function of the system (unlike heat).
“The phrase “heat put into the system” likely suggests “heat flow”. ” – Nope. It suggests the sign, and it means energy flow. I would suggest you to look better into those books. More rigorous ones, and closer to the current time than to the caloric theory time. Good luck.
Maybe Trenberth is being a phenomenologist, maybe without realising it. The data does look like it has steps, though maybe the eye is fooled just by drawing lines. There could be some physical explanation for steps, maybe something to do with changes in the transparency of the ocean, a drop in transparency would keep more heat near the surface, giving a higher temperature.
A cynic might say that this is timed for the 2015 UN thing, the Great Green Hope for saving the planet. An El Nino before then would allow the consensus to claim it as the new global mean temperature, based on Trenberth’s “prediction”.
Is there anything dumber than rooting on a natural phenomenon like it is some kind of sports team?
Thanks Bob.
–——————————–
Somebody and some others:
about that “heat” thingy:
Say I roll a ball up an inclined plane to a flat top where it rests.
Have I stored the “roll”, the “ball” or something else. Heat? I don’t think so.
Your guess.
–—————-
Clive best says:
May 20, 2014 at 1:17 pm
… “ the missing heat … In the meantime all that heat would have expanded the oceans leading to an acceleration in sea levels which has not been observed.”
In some places it seems Trenberth and like minded folks claim the missing energy is deep in the ocean and in other statements it seems they mean the Western Pacific Warm Pool. If the latter case is assumed the “expansion” would be regional and SLR likewise. If the energy is very widely dispersed and deep it isn’t going to appear quickly and regionally. Adding more confusion, in the first quote used by Bob T. in this post, Trenberth appears to invoke the Pacific Decadal Oscillation into this imagined sequence of possible events leading to a step up in temperature. I lost the connection there.
If possible he (Trenberth) should be made to put one leg in ocean bottom water and the other in the Pacific Warm Poll. He should feel just fine, on average.