The Sceptical Science kidz and Trenberth think that the deep ocean has absorbed all the heat that isn’t showing up in the atmosphere, and that’s [why] we have “the pause”. Well, that’s busted now according to ARGO data and JPL and it has NOT gone into the deep ocean.
NOTE: Graph by Bob Tisdale – not part of the NASA press release
From NASA Jet propulsion Laboratory:
The cold waters of Earth’s deep ocean have not warmed measurably since 2005, according to a new NASA study, leaving unsolved the mystery of why global warming appears to have slowed in recent years.
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, analyzed satellite and direct ocean temperature data from 2005 to 2013 and found the ocean abyss below 1.24 miles (1,995 meters) has not warmed measurably. Study coauthor Josh Willis of JPL said these findings do not throw suspicion on climate change itself.
“The sea level is still rising,” Willis noted. “We’re just trying to understand the nitty-gritty details.”
In the 21st century, greenhouse gases have continued to accumulate in the atmosphere, just as they did in the 20th century, but global average surface air temperatures have stopped rising in tandem with the gases. The temperature of the top half of the world’s ocean — above the 1.24-mile mark — is still climbing, but not fast enough to account for the stalled air temperatures.
Many processes on land, air and sea have been invoked to explain what is happening to the “missing” heat. One of the most prominent ideas is that the bottom half of the ocean is taking up the slack, but supporting evidence is slim. This latest study is the first to test the idea using satellite observations, as well as direct temperature measurements of the upper ocean. Scientists have been taking the temperature of the top half of the ocean directly since 2005, using a network of 3,000 floating temperature probes called the Argo array.
“The deep parts of the ocean are harder to measure,” said JPL’s William Llovel, lead author of the study, published Sunday, Oct. 5 in the journal Nature Climate Change. “The combination of satellite and direct temperature data gives us a glimpse of how much sea level rise is due to deep warming. The answer is — not much.”
The study took advantage of the fact that water expands as it gets warmer. The sea level is rising because of this expansion and water added by glacier and ice sheet melt.
To arrive at their conclusion, the JPL scientists did a straightforward subtraction calculation, using data for 2005 to 2013 from the Argo buoys, NASA’s Jason-1 and Jason-2 satellites, and the agency’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. From the total amount of sea level rise, they subtracted the amount of rise from the expansion in the upper ocean, and the amount of rise that came from added meltwater. The remainder represented the amount of sea level rise caused by warming in the deep ocean.
The remainder was essentially zero. Deep ocean warming contributed virtually nothing to sea level rise during this period.
Coauthor Felix Landerer of JPL noted that during the same period, warming in the top half of the ocean continued unabated, an unequivocal sign that our planet is heating up. Some recent studies reporting deep-ocean warming were, in fact, referring to the warming in the upper half of the ocean but below the topmost layer, which ends about 0.4 mile (700 meters) down.
Landerer also is a coauthor of another paper in the same Nature Climate Change journal issue on ocean warming in the Southern Hemisphere from 1970 to 2005. Before Argo floats were deployed, temperature measurements in the Southern Ocean were spotty, at best. Using satellite measurements and climate simulations of sea level changes around the world, the new study found the global ocean absorbed far more heat in those 35 years than previously thought — a whopping 24 to 58 percent more than early estimates.
Both papers result from the work of the newly formed NASA Sea Level Change Team, an interdisciplinary group tasked with using NASA satellite data to improve the accuracy and scale of current and future estimates of sea level change. The Southern Hemisphere paper was led by three scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.
NASA monitors Earth’s vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth’s interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.
Source: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4321
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If the deep ocean is cooling then the heat has to go somewhere. It certainly didn’t go into the ground so it has to go up. I doubt if the other study showing the upper layer has warmed accounts for that “little” issue.
It was converted to living biomass – or a hypothesis that won’t die. Or just maybe it was wasted by propelling global warming lies around the world.
…maybe ocean acidification is an endothermic reaction.
I believe his claim was that heat went to ‘the DEEP ocean (2000 m +), not that heat ‘went to the oceans’. Even so, he appears to be wrong either way.
Was it detected on the way down?
Nope.
Maybe they’ve discovered “stealth heat”. Of course, considering the characteristics, it might be just as easy to not discover it.
“leaving unsolved the mystery of why global warming appears to have slowed in recent years.”
Here’s a crazy thought: We were WRONG about how strong a GHG CO2 actually is and there simply is no extra heat?
It is truly amazing…the last sentence of the article, with the notion they share all of this information worldwide so we can “protect” mother earth. What is truly amazing is the hubris of our species to believe we can control or protect natural phenomena.
“[…] What is truly amazing is the hubris of our species to believe we can control or protect natural phenomena.”
Not only that, but our Overlord Wannabees have these Amazing 7 Simple Tricks to Control The Earth’s Climate.
1. Raise taxes
2. Raise taxes
3. Prohibit everyone else from driving
4. Raise taxes
5. Raise taxes
6. Prohibit everyone else from flying
7. Raise taxes
The Immaculate Convection always was a monumentally transparent flail. These folks are guided by faith – faith that extra CO2 in the atmosphere MUST be causing more heat to be trapped. Therefore, any reason you can come up with to explain why Nature seems not to be cooperating, no matter how far out, is immediately considered plausible.
After all, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. And, since it is impossible that extra CO2 cannot be causing extra heat retention, whatever remains must be the truth. Or, so they believe, to the point of religious fanaticism.
“The Immaculate Convection” – OK. You win.. I fell out of my chair laughing!
That was awesome!
Actually Immaculate Convection occurs during photosynthesis (an unknown scientific fact). All the missing heat is absorbed during this process and that is why the biosphere is greening. If you calculate how much the world has greened and then convert it to a heat value, you will see that it will equal exactly all the missing heat.
Bart,
Brilliant!
“Immaculate Convection” both funny and true. It is one of the primary games used to model radiative gases causing near surface warming.
Radiative gases absorb energy at low altitude, decreasing the time to air mass “breakaway” (Raleigh number exceeded) from the surface boundary layer after dawn. (Willis would call this emergent phenomena.)
Radiative gases emit energy to space at higher altitude, allowing radiative subsidence of air masses. As radiative gases are the only effective energy loss mechanism at altitude, they play a critical role in the speed to tropospheric convective circulation.
What did the climastrologists do? The modelled the speed of vertical circulation as constant for increasing radiative gas concentration. Immaculate convection!
Worse some even tried to model the speed of vertical circulation slowing for increased near surface warming after dawn and increased cooling at altitude. Raleigh and Bernard would be “rolling” in their graves…
Well, I was thinking more of the process by which heat got to the lower oceans without, er, ah, penetrating the upper layers first. But, if it can be applied elsewhere, be my guest.
Ah, that would be the other “immaculate convection”, the one that defies the laws of thermodynamics and whisks “missing heat” undetected past thousands of ARGO buoys and off into the dark and mysterious Trenberthian abyss…
The missing heat is in the mind of the (policy activist) beholder.
Isn’t the ‘missing heat’ perhaps Nature’s way of giving a hint that there may be something wrong with the assumptions underlying the ‘radiative forcing’ calculations which lead to the belief that there is missing heat to be accounted for?
Good thing the planet doesn’t have a molten core 1800°F ±300°F where fractions of a degree F could be totally obliterated in the temperature measurement record and error bar. I’d be more willing to give research money to any investigator who admits “I have, we have, no clue. We need to look at everything with no preconceptions.” as opposed to the current phlogiston peddlers.
Phlogiston was a very viable theory. It correctly postulated changes in chemical reactions, the only problem was that “phlogiston” was “negative energy”. Rather sad, because a great scientist missed out on being the discoverer of “energy”.
Time to revisit the “Small Comet” theory as a contributor (minor or major) for ocean sea-level rise? Perhaps there is even a solar component to the “Small Comet” flux? http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/preslectures/frank99/
Quote;Jimbo October 6, 2014 at 12:12 pm
Here is Judith Curry and Willis Eschenbach on the missing heat. It never went missing!!!
Changing cloud cover would explain much.
Several years ago, elsewhere, I discussed that from the early 1980’s, through the 1990’s, that I thought that mid-level clouds, – in particular, alto-stratus and alto-cumulus, were much less common than earlier.
This was of course, subjective, because my observations were local and not made routinely. But, these clouds have now become common again – imo.
And fog too.
Comments anyone?
There’s a funny thing about water. It shrinks, like most other materials, until it reaches 39F or thereabouts. Then something strange happens. Water begins to expand as it gets colder than 39F. It’s one big reason why ice floats, and why this planet isn’t a giant ice cube with only a few inches of liquid at the surface.
Soo– given this, I’m not sure just how much you can take the expansion of water as proof that it’s getting warmer, when the fact is that water near freezing expands as well. Hmmmm… might have to re-think that one.
Funny thing about SALT Water as in the oceans. It continues to shrink until it freezes out the salt then pops to the surface to form nice crystals of largely salt-free water. It is almost linear all the way down to the salinity based freezing point.
Fresh water behaves as you have described.
There is a very good chart of this density/temperature relationship at http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/index.html
mjmsprt40
This is a good point and if you are right, they should give you a Nobel Prize. Well, some have mentioned it before but you can still get it on account of being noticed.
If the 4 degree water cooled to 3.9 it would indeed do exactly the same thing as 4 degree water rising to 4.1 which is to expand. In the haste to assume the deep ocean is warming, this point may have been overlooked. Colder is also bigger if it was 4 degrees C to start with (which a lot of it is).
The chart in the head post takes on a much different complexion if it has an overlay of the methods of recording the temperature converted to heat.
1990 to 2003 was the ALACE program which averaged less than 500 depth ranging floats to 1000 m.
then the data switches to ARGO, 0-1500 floats 2003-2005, 1500-3000 floats 2005-2007, and 3000-4000 floats from 2007 on. See a sample overlay chart here.
Where is the change in slope on the head chart? 2003. Right at the change in instrumentation from ALACE to ARGO! Under the circumstances, the ALACE temperature record must be looked at with a good deal of skepticism.
Virtually any chart that records ocean heat content prior 1990 for 0-1000 meters or 2003 for depths 1000-2000 meters should be looked at askance. The data is poorly sampled spatially, biased to submarine patrol areas in the North Atlantic and North Pacific. (Who do you think paid the bills?). See these charts of sample coverage in a Mar 25, 2011 post by Bob Tisdale.
There is unbelievable accuracy claims in pre 1970 data. It takes about 10 ZJ to move the 0-700 m column 0.01 deg C. 27.5 ZJ to move the 0-2000 m column 0.01 deg C. (1 ZJ=10^21 J) Who can believe, with so much ocean unsampled in 1970, we know the temperature to 0.10 deg C much less 0.05 deg C?
Stephen, I’m with you on skepticism. However, to play devil’s advocate, why is temperature measurement accuracy so unbelievable? Man has been measuring temperature since the 1700s. It’s not something that one would expect to have improved much since 1970. In this case, accuracy is helped by knowing that the subject matter has a very small range.
We can do it electronically now. In the past it was thermometers using liquids in a precise tube. We know the thermodynamic expansion of the liquid – and so the measurements remain stable for a long long time. Electronic sensors degrade and require constant recalibration. The best we have today are platinum resistance temperature sensors called platinum RTDs (Resistive Temperature Detectors). The precision is what gets you repeat ability. Calibration gets you accuracy. The lack of quality of the station sites reduces the quality of what you are actually reading.
Mario,
I think you mean “electrically” and not “electronically”. The principle of RTDs was discovered in 1871, and they were being constructed by 1900. As an EE starting from the early 1980s, I learned about RTDs not as something new, but as something long since known. What’s new since 1970 is the transistor and the integrated circuit, neither of which help us –measure– temperature, but they are useful for helping us report and analyze data. Computers are also useful for doing calculations from IR measurements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_temperature_and_pressure_measurement_technology
VikingExplorer October 13, 2014 at 7:03 am
+++++++
Hi VikingExplorer: I actually meant electronically. Yes you are quite correct – the use of platinum is not new in temperature measurement. However it was rarely used because it was dearly expensive until relatively recent days. RTDs are made with the semiconductor deposition process now. Think silicon wafers that make 100’s of them on a disk which then get diced up and connected to terminals, 2, 3 and 4 wires. The 3 and 4 wire types use electronics to measure the resistance of the lead wires to remove their resistance measurement from the measurement of the detector. The original sensros used to require a long coil that was wound around form and were fairly large compared to RTD sensors today –which are considerably smaller than a match tip. The “electronics” that measure them need calibration factors, which are also done with a controller electronically to read the analog signals (tiny current and voltage readings to calculate the resistance that correlates to temperature). Todat’s RTDs are cheap and beginning to be ubiquitours where precise temperatures are required. They still need calibration and re calibration.
Asking where the missing heat went is like asking where the boogeyman is hiding.
Citing the recent warm decade as evidence of continued warming is like saying a drawing of a boogeyman is proof it is real.
Believing that waging a war against CO2 emissions can alter the climate is like believing your blanket can save you from the boogeyman.
AGW= the ultimate IQ test.
That made me laugh. My cat (Charlie), whenever a stranger walks into the house, runs to the bedroom and climbs up into the bed, between the blanket and bedspread. So my cat DOES believe the bedspread will save him from the bogeyman!
IQ test, indeed. It’s the one I use before voting for any politician. If a politician ‘believes’ in AGW, he is either too stupid to be in government, or too corrupt.
Anything that absorbs, will do it consistently…..the oceans did not suddenly decide to absorb another degree of “heat”…
..otherwise it would have been doing it all along….and we would be freezing our rears off
Tanks, A. Good news!
This is also at http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/06oct_abyss/ wich is more popular.
Another three years of data is available. Bob needs to include that in his graph!
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
I don’t bother with OHC data anymore. I’ve been presenting depth-averaged temperature data at different depths recently. OHC data are presented in terms of Joules*10^22 and that makes the warming look astronomical. Presenting it in deg C puts it into terms people understand and also shows how small (miniscule) the actual change in temperature has been.
Cheers.
Bob, I don’t believe in AGW. I seriously doubt that the graph represents all the oceans. It’s just one slice of the picture. However, showing this data in Joules is the only responsible way. A 2 C increase in atmospheric temperature is equivalent to .000175 deg C rise in ocean temperatures. If they said the oceans were up .000175, you would say it’s miniscule, when it’s not. The earth receives 1.5 x 10^22 J each day. So, the graph of Joules is a lot more meaningful. If it’s up 15 x10^22 J, that tells me it’s up the equivalent of 10 solar days worth of energy. Compared to the energy in the ocean, it’s an increase of .0094 %.
Viking, the only responsible way is to show both the Joules and the Temperature.
The temperature is important because you cannot estimate heat without measure temperature and the size of the temperature change is so small as to question its accuracy and validity, which I do.
Stephen, You’re right that energy data is based on temperature readings. I agree with you that temperature is important. However, my point is that from a global climate point of view, it’s total energy in the system that is most important. The global temperature profile is like a giant balloon, you push in one place, and balloons out somewhere else. It’s always shifting in 4 dimensions across 3 main components.
Saying that global warming is happening because one small area of the atmosphere got hot one summer is really saying nothing at all. I was very frustrated when all the focus was on atmospheric surface temperatures measured in cities. It’s much more productive to focus on ocean energy levels in Joules.
How accurate is the Argo data? “The temperatures in the Argo profiles are accurate to ± 0.002°C”
Like you, I’m skeptical of everything, but that accuracy seems pretty good to me.
Surely the inclusion of the graph at the top was mistake. (The only other choice seems to be intention misdirection.)
1) The headline is about “deep oceans” but the graph is for the top 700 m. Thus it has nothing to do with the body of the post.
2) The headline claims no warming since 2005, but the graph is artificially terminated 3 years ago to seemingly support this conclusion. If the last three years are included, then it is clear the data has been rising fairly steadily the whole time. http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png (And again, this is for the top 700 m, not the deep oceans).
I see what you mean, but I find it difficult to perceive that the ‘missing heat’ has gone into the sea. The overall trend seems to be (and I haven’t checked this) a fairly straight line so there is no indication of the rise one might expect if this is where the missing heat from the last 18 years is supposed to have gone, when the previous 18 years to the ‘pause’ when the temperature was rising the sea level trend looks the same.
Looking at chart 7 on your link emphasizes that there is nothing much going on here.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/halosteric_700m.png
I think this chart is probably more appropriate as you can see the trend clearly.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content55-07.png
Yes, with poor error bars, and still less then 1/2 of what the alarmist predicted.
“Halosteric” means related to changes in salinity. All this graph shows is that changes in salinity are not the cause of sea level changes.
Tim,
Look at the trend in the second chart I posted from before the pause, does it look steeper than from between, say mid 80’s to early 00’s than it does from early 00’s to the end ?
If the heat was hiding in the ocean, it is really hiding very well, isn’t it ?
If the data are smoothed over a 5 year period, you really can’t get any closer than 2.5 years ago. In the chart from ManBearpig, the pentadal average also cuts off, but also appears to be downsampled, so that the apparent upswing could be an aliasing chimera. Perhaps Bob’s chart is simply a continuous smoothing over 5 years, which shows what is happening for overlapping intervals.
If true, the NOAA chart is deceptive.
Found this article from Bob’s site. It appears the discrepancy is between adjusted and unadjusted measurements.
Apparently, the “rise” is models all the way down.
It’s hard for them to accept the obvious… this is the way the earth works. Nothing unusual at all.
The planet is heating up? You mean like, including the molten core? Sounds scary!
“Landerer also is a coauthor of another paper … on ocean warming in the Southern Hemisphere from 1970 to 2005… Using satellite measurements and climate simulations of sea level changes around the world, the new study found the global ocean absorbed far more heat in those 35 years than previously thought — a whopping 24 to 58 percent more than early estimates.”
24 to 58 percent hey! This is why I love (TM) climate ‘science’, it’s just so EXACTLY. I mean,
who wants a number when you can have a whole range.
Yup folks, they got a team on it, changing the sea level, maybe next year they will have one
for the oceans too!
Well, it’s only right, the Stock and Bond markets have the Plunge protection teams at
the various central bankia, so why not a Hiatus protection team for ‘Climate’ “Science” (TM)
Think Progress(TM) has an article on Landerer’s paper on ocean warming in the Southern Hemisphere. The money quote (to me anyway): “If estimations for temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere are readjusted to fit better with climate models, they increase, the scientists found.” They found the “missing heat” by adjusting old guesses to fit with the new and improved guesses they get from models.
Oops, forgot the link:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/10/06/3576234/ocean-surface-warming-faster/
Looks like you have only down to 700m. But ARGO goes down to 2000m. What does that data look like these days?
@ur momisugly Tim Folkerts & evanmjones
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Sea-Level.gif
Ocean heat content change above 2,000m depth. Curves show estimates based on data products from Scripps (blue), IPRC (red), JAMSTEC (black) and NOAA (green). The thick black curve depicts the mean among these estimates. The grey envelope denotes one standard error around this mean. Courtesy: authors and Nature Climate Change.
Back in July Jim Steele tried to track down the missing heat.
And so on. It’s still missing in action. Maybe we should look into the solar system.
Could it be that the data are systematically biased as the Argo buoys get attracted by currents running from cold to warm places, and drift into warmer waters over time? In terms of temperature, the change is really very slight.
Sorry
Wrong caption for the graph above, it should be:
0–2,000 m (red), 0–700 m (green), 700–2,000 m (blue). The dashed black curve shows an estimate for the remainder of the ocean below 2,000 m computed by removing the 0–2,000 m estimate from the GRACE-corrected observed mean sea-level
If possible please replace.
Thanks
Anyone have an idea of the average rate of movement for ARGO Buoys?
If it’s 5 mph, they’d be able to cover ~25% of the oceans volume. But that wasn’t stopping to deliver a data upload, nor drifting around in circles because that’s the way the water is moving. I looked for a bit then stopped looking.
Should be careful about this.
Isaac Held once put forth that since water is semi-compressible, it’s possible to get adiabatic warming/cooling from compression. Subsidence inversions are pretty easy to spot in the atmosphere, but for these small variances, probably pretty difficult to distinguish between irreversible heat changes from forcing and reversible changes from compression/decompression of ocean water.
Of course we have dealt with missing things before:
Has Josh Willis finally got tired of working towards the global warming ‘conclusion,’ and decided enough was enough. Regardless much thanks to him for having the courage to rock the boat. His equivocation is understandable considering the constant pressure that has been applied from ambient warming fanatics. From February, 2007 — in his own words. Scientific method being applied? You be the judge.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/