Guest essay by David Archibald
President Obama didn’t start the war on coal. That war had its origins back in the 1970s. The nuclear industry joined the fray in 1982 with the establishment of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) at Oak Ridge, part of the U.S. Department of Energy. The CDIAC collects data on carbon dioxide concentrations around the planet and conducts experiments with pre-ordained outcomes. By that I mean growing plants in elevated carbon dioxide concentrations to study the effects of that on growth rates but at the same time adding ozone so that the growth would be stunted. Not everything the CDIAC is completely useless though.
The pause in global temperature rise might cause a loss of faith in the global warming faithfully so the priests of the movement are required to provide an explanation. The explanation they have come up with is that the missing heat is hiding in the depth of the Altantic Ocean and will one day leap out at us when we are least expecting it. This is an illustration of the heat gone AWOL:
The illustration shows heat plunging into the depths as far as 1,500 metres. The oceans don’t work like that. Most of the heat energy of sunlight is absorbed in the first few centimetres of the ocean’s surface. Waves mix the water near the surface layer such that the temperature may be relatively uniform in the top 100 metres. Below that there is almost no mixing and no vertical movement of water.
This is where the CDIAC comes in handy. Following is a map of CDIAC voyages in the Atlantic Ocean:
And this is the temperature profile of A16 from almost 60°S to near Iceland, a distance of over 13,000 km.:
It shows how the Antarctic is a giant refrigerator for the planet. The dark blue in the bottom left is cold water below 1°C plunges near Antarctica and ponds in the deep ocean right up to the equator. The CDIAC voyages also record carbon dioxide data of course. This is the carbon dioxide and total alkalinity profile for A20, to the west of the A16 voyage:
Once again, most variation is near surface while the bulk of the ocean is effectively homogenous.
We didn’t need the CDIAC data to debunk claims of missing heat in the ocean depths but it is good to have empirical data. The CDIAC is well past its use-by date though. Apart from the unnecessary cost, it was conceived for a dark purpose under President Carter. The United States will need all the energy it can get soon enough.
David Archibald, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance: Why Life in the 21st Century Will Be Nasty, Brutish, and Short (Regnery, 2014).
Reference:
Is Atlantic holding Earth’s missing heat?
Eli Kintisch
Armchair detectives might call it the case of Earth’s missing heat: Why have average global surface air temperatures remained essentially steady since 2000, even as greenhouse gases have continued to accumulate in the atmosphere? The suspects include changes in atmospheric water vapor, a strong greenhouse gas, or the noxious sunshade of haze emanating from factories. Others believe the culprit is the mighty Pacific Ocean, which has been sending vast slugs of cold bottom water to the surface. But two fresh investigations finger a new suspect: the Atlantic Ocean. One study, in this issue of Science, presents sea temperature data implying that most of the missing heat has been stored deep in the Atlantic. The other, published online in Nature Climate Change, suggests a warming Atlantic is abetting the Pacific by driving wind patterns that help that ocean cool the atmosphere. But some climate specialists remain skeptical. In a third recent paper, also published online in Nature Climate Change, other researchers argue that the Pacific remains the kingpin. One reason some scientists remain convinced the Pacific is behind the hiatus is a measured speedup in trade winds that drive a massive upwelling of cold water in the eastern Pacific. But there, too, the Atlantic may be responsible, modeling experiments suggest. A consensus about what has put global warming on pause may be years away, but one scientist says the recent papers confirm that Earth’s warming has continued during the hiatus, at least in the ocean depths, if not in the air.
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Anthony, please see my previous post regarding the date of the A16 voyage. I’m adding your name to get my question to a moderator. If I’m correct in my assumption, the date of the A16 voyage should be prominently noted in the article. If I’m wrong, then I don’t understand the article at all and would appreciate clarification.
SpaghettiO might not have started the war on coal, but he sure escalated it.
So I try to go to http://www.tellEPA.com and when you try to put in my zip code it won’t take it (required field) and then my android phone goes bonkers. Anyone else ever had this problem?
Albert Einstein Was Correct About Technology,
“I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots.”
http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/nj1015.com/files/2012/10/Having-Dinner-w-friends.jpg
http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/nj1015.com/files/2012/10/Enjoying-a-museum.jpg
http://drinkingwateradvisor.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/pages-from-scafetta_models_comparison_atp.jpg?w=500&h=358
Global warming scare has been based only on gaps in our knowledge where technology is replacing scientific method. The belief with a basis of anything unknown has never been science and is taking our civilization back centuries.
The missing heat isn’t missing. It left the house via the poles. Antarctica is setting new record cold in large areas. Check out http://www.wunderground.com/weather-forecast/zmw:00000.1.89828 . The wunderground.com forecasts have been high by 20 to 30 degrees F all winter. We are talking -100 to -120 F.
Cold doesn’t come in: it is driven away by heat. No heat, the cold regions expand.
The way the “missing heat” graphic is designed, the hot areas are over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge including Iceland. Couldn’t this just be due to geothermal activity?
“The oceans don’t work like that”
They do
“Below that there is almost no mixing and no vertical movement of water.”
Except for a tiny few tens of million cubic meters per second?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1029/2007JC004477/
I believe the Chen/Tung paper is simply a discovery of how the AMO is driven. Useful work but not evidence of hiding heat. What it is is evidence that some (if not all) of the warming we did see in the late 20th century is perfectly natural. The AMO along with the PDO being positive is all it really takes to produce the GASTA changes we’ve seen. This doesn’t mean AGW is zero, but it is unlikely to be of any concern.
As I’ve mentioned before the speed of the MOC/THC can easily be the driver of global warming/cooling. This includes both the Pacific and the Atlantic. As the MOC slows we have sun warmed water staying on the surface longer which releases more heat into the atmosphere. When the MOC speeds up this effect reverses.
Is it possible for one of the more graphically gifted of you to recast the two graphs in similar scales for a more direct comparison? The first appears to show 0 – 1500 meters and the second ( over roughly the same lattitudinal area) shows 0 – 6000 meters, and one scale is joules and the other (apparently) is in degrees C. This makes it difficult to see the proof of the contention, and even harder to explain to my (even less) scientifically literate friends.
Otherwise I completely support this thread, and would love to see the sea level expansion data matched to this so called sequestration of heat as well.
Needs correction:
“Waves mix the water near the surface layer such that the temperature may be relatively uniform in the top 100 metres. Below that there is almost no mixing and no vertical movement of water.”
Here are 2 simple rules of physics.
1. Heat rises whether in air or water.
2. Heat will migrate to cooler areas close to it.
The “heat migrating to the bottom of the ocean” hypothesis depends on rule 2 above; warmer air continually migrating to cooler areas, first the ocean surface and then progressively cooler areas of the ocean. As in with CO2 there is extraordinary tunnel vision that happens in climate science. Isolate one certain behavior or aspect of a process and then assume it is the primary controlling element. So rule number 1 (Heat rises) is ignored, how the ocean currents work at various depths ignored, effect of wind and cloud interaction causing cyclic cooling/warming ignored, etc, etc.
I am pedestrian when it comes to climate science and while common sense is not infallible in all circumstances, I hope for a day when common sense starts to play a much more significant role in understanding our climate.
Rainfall. Water gathered up in the tropics falls in northern latitudes regularly. In Seattle we call it the Pineapple Express.
Reblogged this on Centinel2012 and commented:
The problem the believes have is not only that temperatures have not gone up but if the heat was to go deep it would first have to be hotter at the surface; otherwise the heat would have to jump over the surface to get to the deeper layers.
Alx says:
August 24, 2014 at 8:23 am
“2 simple rules of physics.”
…
Add a third rule which throws a wrench into rule #1…
3) Ice floats on water.
…
Without this rule, rule number one would cause the oceans to freeze solid.
Excellent post and commentary. Who knows where fluid lunacy will migrate next?
Using the only reliable ocean heat data for the Atlantic ocean, there is no supportive evidence for missing heat. The energy content here has been declining since 2006 and yet there has been no rise in global atmospheric temperatures since.
http://climate4you.com/images/NODC%20NorthAtlanticOceanicHeatContent0-700mSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
It shows whatever little delay there was in the energy exchange between the Atlantic Ocean and the atmosphere has already been loss and we are almost back to late 1990’s levels. The heat content is declining while global temperatures remain static and the ocean heat mainly rose previously while global atmospheric temperatures were rising also.
How many so called expert climate scientists are still discovering the AMO like its brand new information? Very obvious these so called experts are nothing of the sort, when they come up with science that has already been known about and treat it like brand new discoveries. When you know little about this how can you make a sound judgment on global warming? The answer is of course you can’t and it’s been obvious to many for numerous years with the rubbish excuses year on year, showing your lack of knowledge.
For accuracy, Eric Worral’s statement that climatological theories are unfalsifiable needs amendment.A theory is falsifiable if and only if a statistical population underlies it. In testing such a theory one compares the predicted to the observed relative frequencies of the outcomes of observed events in this population. If there are no events, this is impossible.
Prior to publication of AR5, IPCC assessment reports do not reference a statistical population or compare the predicted to the measured relative frequencies. Thus, all of the research that is reported in IPCC assessment reports is non-falsifiable and unscientific, as Mr. Worral points out.
In AR5, Chapter 11, report of Working Group I, events, outcomes and relative frequencies enter the picture that is painted by the IPCC. It looks as though the comparison between the predicted and the observed relative relative frequencies is based upon far more statistically independent observed events than are available in the temperature time series, however. Also, while the IPCC has the opportunity to report whether the referenced models are falsified or validated, it fails to seize this opportunity.
A question from one of those that these climatologists call ‘ignorant’:
If a huge number of joules warm a thick and massive layer of the ocean 0.03°C is there any possible way for those huge numbers of joules causing the rise, through natural processes of energy transport, to exit upward and warm the atmosphere any more than 0.03°C? I thought I understood entropy properly, but possibly not. Could someone clue me in on as to how or just agree that is impossible?
These climatologists seem to imply solely by nature and ocean water, excluding the solar energy, can somehow re-concentrate itself but I can’t imagine it via physics or thermodynamics.
How does the heat get from the surface (which doesn’t seem to be warming, but never mind that) to the deep, dark ocean depths without being defected?
Easy! Quantum teleportation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quantum_teleportation
Prove it’s not true.
/sarc
It’s like the naturalists “time and chance” of the gaps.
What we don’t know and can’t predict is blamed on something equally unknowable and unpredictable.
richardscourtney says: August 24, 2014 at 6:35 am
…But I continue to point out that the misleading propaganda of the word ‘pause’ for plateau is not the most important issue which is that there may be no missing heat.
Why not just say that the global warming has stopped and get on with discussing the meat of David Archibald’s excellent rebuttal of yet another meaningless paper trying to explain the (non-existent) ‘missing heat’.
Until climate scientists stop using linear trends and start to get their heads around MEP and spatio-temporal chaos they will continue to have no clue about the energy balance of our Earth. Careful dismissal of inconvenient truths is not helping their cause, and it will not help them to develop climate models which have any degree of skill about predicting the future.
dipchip estimated the sea level rise per degree temperature increase, but sea level can only expand mainly in one axis so all three axes of expansion have to express themselves as a rise, with only a bit of relief due to a slightly greater surface area and thus only slight lateral expansion. Just a logical problem here, I imagine may be important, and may juice up the actual predicted expansion considerably, up to the third power of the expansion factor itself to fold X,Y, and Z expansion just into Z. Similarly, a thermometer cannot expand in but one direction either, so the calculator for mile long thermometers would be appropriate.
andrewmharding says: August 24, 2014 at 2:16 am “4) Global warming by increased CO2 levels can only warm the air, the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth is unchanged.”
Key is the solar radiation rising and falling. Rising heats and expands the atmosphere; allowing for increased water vapor, resulting in a denser atmosphere. Falling radiation does the opposite. Everyone knows this.
Commented here: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/another-great-triumph-for-climate-science/#comment-410394
But seriously, I agree with:
rogerknights says:
August 24, 2014 at 12:08 am
“It’s time to go beyond ARGO and have anchored, densely spaced monitoring instruments (including for acidification) in all the world’s oceans…”
Put this nonsense to bed once and for all.
Haven’t we been here before? The measurement of the change in ocean temperature at depth is a very small change and difficult to quantify (the change is smaller than the margin of error for the instruments used) but the potential energy for the atmosphere is very large. One exchange mechanism that has been proposed are el ninos.
David Archibald wrote:
“Below that there is almost no mixing and no vertical movement of water.”
There is. In the north Atlantic, the volume of water transported by the Florida Current is about 150 Sverdrups south of Newfoundland.
“The heat carried within this volume equals roughly that transported through the atmosphere to make the relatively milder climate of north-western Europe.”
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdrup
highflight56433 says: August 24, 2014 at 9:40 am
“Key is the solar radiation rising and falling. Rising heats and expands the atmosphere; allowing for increased water vapor, resulting in a denser atmosphere. Falling radiation does the opposite. Everyone knows this.”
Sorry, I have my doubts on this. Water vapour is H2O, = 1 + 1 + 16 = 18.
N2 = 28, O2 = 32, so increased water vapour makes the atmosphere less dense. QED.