From the University of Washington and the department of Trenberth’s missing heat comes a claim that we’ll have to wait another 15 years for global warming to resume. Sounds like a goalpost mover to me.
The Oceans that Slowed 21st Century Global Warming
Why did the rapid global warming that characterized the latter part of the 20th century slow down over the last 15 years or so? Many different theories have been proposed, but a new study suggests that a massive movement of heat from shallow surface waters to deep regions of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans — but not the Pacific Ocean, as many researchers had predicted — might be responsible. Xianyao Chen and Ka-Kit Tung analyzed data from profiling floats, or oceanographic sensors that can move vertically throughout the water column, and traced the pathways that heat has taken through the world’s oceans since the turn of the 21st century. The oceans are capable of storing about 90% of the world’s surface heat content, and the researchers suggest that most of the excess heat that would have otherwise continued to fuel global warming is currently stored in the basins of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans.
The researchers also suggest that a sudden shift in salinity that corresponded with the slowdown of global warming at the beginning of the 21st century may have triggered this migration of heat to deeper waters. Historically, similar events have lasted 20 to 35 years, according to Chen and Tung. Consequently, the researchers suggest that global warming will pick back up in 15 more years or so, when heat returns to the surface waters.
Article #11: “Varying planetary heat sink led to global-warming slowdown and acceleration,” by X. Chen at Ocean University of China in Qingdao, China; X. Chen; K.-K. Tung at University of Washington in Seattle, WA.
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Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth’s surface. At first this was a blip, then a trend, then a puzzle for the climate science community.
More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. New research from the University of Washington shows that the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and is part of a naturally occurring cycle. The study is published Aug. 22 in Science.
Subsurface warming in the ocean explains why global average air temperatures have flatlined since 1999, despite greenhouse gases trapping more solar heat at the Earth’s surface.
“Every week there’s a new explanation of the hiatus,” said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung, a UW professor of applied mathematics and adjunct faculty member in atmospheric sciences. “Many of the earlier papers had necessarily focused on symptoms at the surface of the Earth, where we see many different and related phenomena. We looked at observations in the ocean to try to find the underlying cause.”
The results show that a slow-moving current in the Atlantic, which carries heat between the two poles, sped up earlier this century to draw heat down almost a mile (1,500 meters). Most of the previous studies focused on shorter-term variability or particles that could block incoming sunlight, but they could not explain the massive amount of heat missing for more than a decade.
“The finding is a surprise, since the current theories had pointed to the Pacific Ocean as the culprit for hiding heat,” Tung said. “But the data are quite convincing and they show otherwise.”
Tung and co-author Xianyao Chen of the Ocean University of China, who was a UW visiting professor last year, used recent observations of deep-sea temperatures from Argo floats that sample the water down to 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) depth. The data show an increase in heat sinking around 1999, when the rapid warming of the 20th century stopped.
“There are recurrent cycles that are salinity-driven that can store heat deep in the Atlantic and Southern oceans,” Tung said. “After 30 years of rapid warming in the warm phase, now it’s time for the cool phase.”
Rapid warming in the last three decades of the 20th century, they found, was roughly half due to global warming and half to the natural Atlantic Ocean cycle that kept more heat near the surface. When observations show the ocean cycle flipped, around the year 2000, the current began to draw heat deeper into the ocean, working to counteract human-driven warming.
The cycle starts when saltier, denser water at the surface northern part of the Atlantic, near Iceland, causes the water to sink. This changes the speed of the huge current in the Atlantic Ocean that circulates heat throughout the planet.
“When it’s heavy water on top of light water, it just plunges very fast and takes heat with it,” Tung said. Recent observations at the surface in the North Atlantic show record-high saltiness, Tung said, while at the same time, deeper water in the North Atlantic shows increasing amounts of heat.
The authors dug up historical data to show that the cooling in the three decades between 1945 to 1975 – which caused people to worry about the start of an Ice Age – was during a cooling phase. (It was thought to be caused by air pollution.) Earlier records in Central England show the 40- to 70-year cycle goes back centuries, and other records show it has existed for millennia.
Changes in Atlantic Ocean circulation historically meant roughly 30 warmer years followed by 30 cooler years. Now that it is happening on top of global warming, however, the trend looks more like a staircase.
The temperature oscillations have a natural switch. During the warm period, faster currents cause more tropical water to travel to the North Atlantic, warming both the surface and the deep water. At the surface this warming melts ice. This eventually makes the surface water there less dense and after a few decades puts the brakes on the circulation, setting off a 30-year cooling phase.
This explanation implies that the current slowdown in global warming could last for another decade, or longer, and then rapid warming will return. But Tung emphasizes it’s hard to predict what will happen next.
A pool of freshwater from melting ice, now sitting in the Arctic Ocean, could overflow into the North Atlantic to upset the cycle.
“We are not talking about a normal situation because there are so many other things happening due to climate change,” Tung said.
The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
(I expect we’ll see a rebuttal from Bob Tisdale soon) UPDATE: We have and it is here.
UPDATE2: The list of excuses is up to 38 now, and an updated permanent count is here on this WUWT page under “Climate FAIL files”: http://wattsupwiththat.com/climate-fail-files/list-of-excuses-for-the-pause-in-global-warming/
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Okay. So the AMO ate the heat, but this this quote is the nugget I find interesting.
“Rapid warming in the last three decades of the 20th century, they found, was roughly half due to global warming and half to the natural Atlantic Ocean cycle…”
Was that an admittance that “Global Warming” estimates are twice what they should be for the 20th century?
If I read it another way it appears to falsify their own claims. If the Atlantic phase change is responsible for half the Global warming, where did the other half go? We know that ALL the warming has disappeared, yet this statement would admit that only half of it should be gone.
I am confused. How can the heat be stored in the ocean? According to the CAGW theory, the heat should not reach the ocean. It should be stuck in the 3.5 to 4% co2 in the atmosphere. I’m just saying….
Fabricated Data, fabricated conclusions. Do they really expect us to believe this data EXISTS and that it can be found. DANG IT! I was still building TUBE electronic devices in the ’70’s. In the 80’s compact A/D cards and devices…capable of remote application (not just in a Lab) were JUST BEGINNING to become available. YES, in the ’90’s they WERE available. BUT, as is well know with regard to TEMPERATURE profiles, until the ARGO bouys there were NO reliable, regularily taken data of the sort the Argo’s provided. Now we are supposed to believe that there were measurements of ocean salinity and “heat content” prior to 2000???? Rubbish. Nonsense, worse than the 97% solution. (I think most of the folks doing this are on the 7% solution…if anyone knows what that means!)
I had nearly given up hope of finding how heat escapes the poles during weak solar conditions but here it is! This article allows one speculate that
1/ A weak stable solar wind leads to a stable polar vortex
2/A stable polar vortex leads to continuous strong catabatic antarctic winds increasing antarctic sea ice formation.
3/ Increased sea-ice formation increases ocean salt concentration allowing deep water formation at a higher temperature
4/ More heat escapes the polar region with an increased volume via the deep water thermohaline circulation
5/ An increased THC causes more deep water upwelling which may lead to more low clouds.(For a brief period antarctic sea-ice formation matched Dr Spencers’ low cloud data but unfortunately the satellite went off line).
The 25 year “rapid global warming” ~1975 — ~2000 is at almost exactly the same rate as the 35 year “rapid global warming” ~1910 — ~1945 before human emissions could possibly have been a significant factor:
http://i1244.photobucket.com/albums/gg580/stanrobertson/Twowarmingperiods_zps6123c6c3.jpg
“New research from the University of Washington shows that the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and is part of a naturally occurring cycle.”
This is the thermohaline circulation. Its cycle time is 1,000 years. The heat will resurface after a millennium. It’s too long for warmists so they mixed it up with AMO to shorten it to 30 years. The explanation is contrived because AMO is currently in the warm phase.
Tung and Chen are right with the paradigm that changes in heat distribution in the ocean are a major source of climate change. However they are wring to mix it up with the flawed dogma that heat is being gained by the earth as a whole by co2. The former is based on good thermodynamics and real data. The latter is a fiction of simplistic computer models that fatally exclude nonlinear thermodynamics.
Co2 really is the spare prick at the wedding. It is not responsible for any climate change. Its all the oceans under weak nonlinear astrophysical forcing.
I wonder if the authors expect not to worry about grant fishing in about 10 years , but till then are very keen to keep the gravy train on track . Meanwhile remind again how much actual measurement of the ‘vast area’ of the deep ocean actual exists,as opposed to loaded dice ‘models’?
In a current article on this topic, The Guardian has taken to deleting perfectly reasonable comments from skeptics because they are getting more likes than the Warmist cheerleaders…the wheels are really falling off now!
Anth0ny:
At 08.08 BST this morning BBC 1 TV reported this paper and admitted there is “what some people call a hiatus to global warming that has lasted about 15 years”. The entire report lasted less than a minute.
I think it to be the first time the BBC has openly admitted on air that global warming has stopped.
The matter is important because the BBC has an official policy of only providing one-sided pro-AGW propaganda that excludes contrary information. Thus, a breakthrough may have been obtained in getting a major MSM outlet to tell some truth about the present state of the global warming scare,and I think it important for climate realists to now pressure the BBC to provide more factual information and less propaganda.
Richard
These poor desperate CAGW grant hounds…
I almost feel sorry for them..
None of their “settled science” is working out and all they can do is come up with excuses for why their hypothesis sucks and doesn’t reflect reality.
Their models overestimate CO2’s warming effect by a factor of 5~10, so all they can do is move the goal posts to buy more time in order to steal more government funding until their hypothesis is tossed on the trash pile of failed ideas…
Come to think of it, perhaps a more appropriate metaphor than “moving the goal posts” is picking up the entire stadium and dumping it in the ocean…
Their precious CO2 induced “missing heat” isn’t being “buried in the ocean”, it’s getting blown out to space…
CAGW hypothesizes that roughly 1.2 watts/M^2 is being “buried in the oceans”, but Levitus et al puts OHC for the top 2000 meters of oceans at about +0.09C since 1948, which works out to only 0.4 watts/M^2, which is off by a factor of 3…
What seems to be even more important than the AMO is the PDO, which entered its 30-yr cool cycle in 2005. The AMO entered its 30-yr warm cycle around 1994, which perfectly explains all the energy being dumped in Arctic and the loss of Arctic sea ice since then. The 30-yr AMO is starting to wind down, which may explain the Arctic sea ice recovery since hitting its 2007 low (the 2012 Arctic minimum was just due to a one-in-50-year Arctic cyclone, not Gloooobal Waaarming; even NASA/NOAA acknowledge that).
CAGW is seriously in a crash and burn mode… How much longer can they keep this farce going? It’s getting pathetic.
Their top graph sure look like a portion of an oscillation…..
charles nelson says August 22, 2014 at 12:13 am
Sorry, they’ve been doing that for a while. There are about three Warmist commenters on that site who are tasked with engaging sceptics – mainly through linking to SkS. They go by the names of SteB1, Liam23 and rockyrex. If they aren’t around they just shut the site comments down, effectively. For the last week they haven’t been in. Probably they are on holiday.
On the Guardian, when the sceptic wins you are deleted.
If it isn’t clear who won some of your comments are deleted to give a false impression.
Not sure what happens when you definitively lose.
My favourite rockyrex quote:
I don’t debate, as that is not how science works; I refer to scientific information from scientific organisations.
Says it all, really.
Must have missed that bit in physics class where warm water and heat sinks…..
Must be this “simple” physics about AGW i’m getting confused about………
Warm water rises to the top, denser saltier water descends does any one have a graph that correlates saltiness to temp differences and buoyancy. I’m thinking that the salty water is some what diminished in tropical heat before it descends.
Mixing for fifteen years with the cold water below would further reduce it’s temperature, thus when surfacing would not give much warmth. This I feel is one of the Earths thermostats to dump excess heat.
The Guardian is back on form.
I wrote this;
“Or to quote the IPCC AR5:
Almost every guess they made was wrong and they were all wrong the same way – too warm. That isn’t just bad luck. It’s a systematic failure.”
An immediate reply from the mysteriously named ID4625022
And then my every post was not allowed to appear. This made it look like I made it up.
But I could quote the page (772) and Box 9.2… yet they censored the reference.
Andy says:
August 21, 2014 at 11:40 am
I wish somebody with more talent than me created a news story from 1998 say, whenever the mainstream Gore BS kicked off and had the hard-of-thinking running around in circles waving their hands in the air. Instead of the models it could use today’s reality as if it’s a panic story.
You know, that is one advantage of this new theory for the “missing heat” surfacing. At least, with it out there, if temperatures dive for the next 10-15 years we won’t have the next “global cooling” scam foisted upon us. Plus it will be cold enough for long enough that everyone will actually be looking forward to the resumption of some warming. This theory could save us trillions of dollars worth of wasted taxpayer dollars and inane government regulations over the next two to three decades. I say we go with it.
Tung writes:
“Rapid warming in the last three decades of the 20th century, they found, was roughly half due to global warming and half to the natural Atlantic Ocean cycle that kept more heat near the surface. When observations show the ocean cycle flipped, the current began to draw heat deeper into the ocean, working to counteract human-driven warming”
It has not really flipped yet. A more pertinent measure of the north Atlantic temperature is the AMO, and that will stay in its warm mode for at least another solar cycle yet (max to max):
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-amo/mean:25/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1855/normalise
Increased forcing of the climate gives a colder AMO, the warm AMO mode since 1995 is due to declines in solar forcing. In which case, half of the global warming in the last three decades is due to the negative feedback of increased poleward oceanic heat transport as a result of weaker solar activity. By means of a more southerly atmospheric circulation caused by increasingly negative AO/NAO conditions.
I nearly spluttered tea all over my bed this morning listening to the 7am news on BBC Radio 2 back hear in Blighty! Coupled with the announcement that the EU has banned high-power vacuum cleaners & we only have two more weeks to buy one if wanted. This follows recent advice & guidance from the UK DECC (Department for Entropy & Catastrophic Claptrap) that fat people refrain from purchasing large tvs & refridgerators. This is all about the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of the European Union’s desire for us all to use less & less of everything because we’re such a drain on natural resources & thus a burden upon Gaia! Honestly, it’s true I tell you! Check it all out! So, you colonists of the Virginias, you’re next! I’ll make a small wager with anyone that the US EPA will in the not too distant future make a ruling that you’re all using too much energy & therefore natural resources. You will be expected, probably under pain of a fine, to keep as many lights & devices switched off in your homes, so that as you drive past the nearest EPA building with its lights & every electrical gizmo blazing away I dare say! Remember, it’s not Guvment that must reduce its Carbon Footprint, it’s the flagrantly irresponsible energy abusive people that must do so! Long live freedom & democracy. Sometimes I seriously do wonder why we as a people, sacrificed so much on that great alter around the World in WWII, & other subsequent conflicts in the name of that potent vision, for what? Apologies for borrowing from Abraham Lincoln but was one of my historical heroes as a boy!
Sorry about typo, I didn’t mean “fat” people, it should have read “the people”!
I don’t understand why there is the need to try to explain anything, as I’ve been told over and over again that the science is settled. The AGWers would be wise to stick with that mantra, and conduct no more research into studies like these. The principle of unintended consequences is going to catch up with them, and one of these researchers is going to unintentionally shine the light on something that will not only shoot them in the foot… it will shoot holes in their entire field of study.
When they start looking for the lost heat on the ocean bottom I know that the warmists are really desperate. The cause of that hiatus/pause they fear is not lost heat but lack of understanding of applicable laws of nature. More specifically, laws controlling the production of the greenhouse effect. According to the Arrhenius greenhouse theory addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will cause CO2 to absorb IR and thereby warm the air. There is no doubt that the amount of atmospheric CO2 is increasing today but there is no sign of the corresponding warming it should lead to. Clearly the predictions of the Arrhenius greenhouse theory are incorrect. If a theory predicts warming and nothing happens for 17 years this theory should be rejected. There is a spot for it in the waste basket of history, right next to phlogiston, another failed theory. Of all the possible greenhouse theories the only one whose predictions are correct is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory (MGT). It predicts exactly what we see: addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does not warm the air. The problem with Arrhenius theory is that there are several greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but Arrhenius theory applies to only one – carbon dioxide – and is incomplete. Not so with Miskolczi theory that can handle several greenhouse gases simultaneously absorbing in the IR. The most important GHGs in the atmosphere are water vapor and carbon dioxide. According to Arrhenius they form a joint optimal absorption window in the IR which they control. Its optical thickness in the IR is 1.87, determined from first principles by Miskolczi himself. It corresponds to an IR transmittance of 15 percent or absorbance of 85 percent. If you now add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it will start to absorb, just as Arrhenius says. But this will increase the optical thickness. And as soon as it happens, water vapor will start to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. The introduced carbon dioxide will of course continue to absorb but the simultaneous reduction of water vapor will prevent this from causing any warming. This is the reason why there is no warming now despite a steady increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. This has important consequences for climate theory. For one thing, it makes a runaway greenhouse effect that Hansen keeps babbling about entirely impossible. That is why very high carbon dioxide in geologic time did not cause any runaway warming. For another thing, it blocks the enhanced greenhouse warming alleged to be the cause of anthropogenic global warming or AGW. Hence, we can say that AGW is nothing more than a pseudo-scientific fantasy, invented by over-eager climate scientists wishing to prove that the greenhouse effect is real. The existence of the pause/hiatus proves that it is not.
I doubt they have found the missing heat. The temperature difference we are talking about is of the order of hundredths of a degree. Together with the sparseness of Argo coverage there is little reliable data that can state with significance that heat has been found hiding in the oceans.
But they could be right. If so, there is still nothing to worry about because that heat cannot any longer raise the GASTA. The heat has been stored at a low temperature and cannot flow to a higher temperature. That is basic thermodynamics.
Problem solved.
“According to Arrhenius…” should be: “According to Miskolczy…”
Anthony, you have been taken in by bogus temperature data when you cite: “…Why did the rapid global warming that characterized the latter part of the 20th century slow down over the last 15 years or so?” There is no such thing as a rapid global warming that characterized the latter part of the 20th century. But rapid warming appears also as part of your first global temperature anomaly chart.This chart is simply phony. Those dots representing yearly temperatures are inaccurate, misleading, and useless. I should show you a real temperature chart but this comment does not accept it so you just have to be content with looking up my Figure 15 in “What Warming?” and following the commentary that follows. The figure itself is an annotated satellite temperature chart from 1979 to 2010 and includes that “rapid warming” region you speak of. You will note details that are impossible to show otherwise. On the left there are five El Nino peaks, separated from one another by La Nina valleys. The temperature difference between the tip of an El Nino peak and the bottom of the adjacent La Nina valley is about half a degree Celsius. Ground based data, if they show them at all, show this as a mere 0.2 degree difference. The half way mark between the El Nino peak and its adjacent La Nina valley defines their mean temperature. You will find these marked with yellow dots in Figure 15. To get the history of global mean temperature you must connect these dots. There is a small amount of scatter but a straight horizontal line fits them well from 1979, where the chart begins, to 1997, where the super El Nino starts forming. This is an 18 year stretch of no warming, a period comparable to the current pause/hiatus. It is completely wiped out by fake warming in ground based temperature curves. What you will find is that instead of a horizontal straight line indicating no warming, their mean temperature curve rises by one tenth of a degree in this time period. This is false as I pointed it out in my book but nobody seems to listen. Instead of a no-warming region as long as the present pause/hiatus it becomes a “late twentieth century warming.” You will find it in GISTEMP, HadCRUT, and NCDC temperature sources. This is not the only thing that they have in common. All three were computer processed, quite likely with the aim of coordinating this fraud. But they screwed up and the computer left its calling card on all three data sets in the form of high spikes sticking up above the temperature curve. They are all near the beginnings of years and their locations are exactly the same in all three data sets. “It could not happen by pure chance” applies here. It is proof of secret temperature machinations that demands an explanation. The row of five normal El Nino peaks I just described is followed by the super El Nino of 1998. It is sharply defined so I left off the red band that covers the rest of the graph. It is also twice as high as the other five peaks are. This difference in height is lost in ground-based data which reduce the super El Nino to a pancake. Checking global temperature records it is clear that the super El Nino of 1998 is the only one during the entire twentieth century. The warmist dream of a super El Nino to rescue their warming obviously is not going to happen. To create one it needs an additional source of warm water beyond that available to a normal El Nino, like the five before it. Theoretically, there are only two possibilities – either the southern warm pool or the Indian Ocean, both hard to get. Right after the super El Nino receded there was a short step warming in 1999. In only three years it raised global temperature by a third of a degree Celsius, and then stopped. Its origin most likely is related to the large amount of warm water the super El Nino carried across the ocean. It was followed by the pause/hiatus we are experiencing now. This short step warming is actually the only warming since 1979 when the satellite era began. While the super El Nino itself was temporary the step warming it brought is its permanent imprint on climate. That is why the temperature of the twenty-first century is higher than that of the eighties and nineties before it. Hansen noticed that too and pointed out that nine out of ten warmest years occurred in the decade between 2000 and 2010. He had no knowledge of the step warming and put it down to his greenhouse warming. And then he just neglected to tell us that there was no warming whatsoever during that entire decade. The super El Nino itself lasted only two years and does not count as part of any rapid global warming. What does count as rapid global warming is the three year spurt of the step warming that followed it. It had nothing to do with any phony greenhouse effect. None of this has been investigated because the billions allotted for climate research by governments were all spent trying to prove that the greenhouse effect is real. Apparently it is not real because existence of the pause/hiatus proves that there cannot be any such thing as greenhouse warming.