There are now 2 UPDATES at the end of the post.
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Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
This post presents a very simple way to illustrate the tempering effect of the oceans on global warming. The idea for this simple presentation came from the response of the reality-impaired wing of the catastrophic human-induced climate change movement to the deep-ocean-warming portion of yesterday’s blog post On The Blog Post “Hiatuses in the rise of temperature” at ClimateLabBook. The cross post at WattsUpWithThat is here, and an archived edition of the response from Miriam O’Brien (a.k.a. Sou) at HotWhopper is here.
It is often said that more than 90% of the heat caused by manmade greenhouse gases is absorbed by the oceans. But as skeptics often note, the absorbed heat has little impact on the temperatures of the oceans to depth, and that’s because of the seemingly limitless capacity of the oceans to store heat.
INTRODUCTION
More than 3000 ARGO floats were distributed around the global oceans in the early 2000s to the measure temperature and salinity in all ocean basins for the depths of 0-2000 meters, about 1.25 miles…from the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica to the Arctic Ocean. From that ARGO-based data and other measurements, the National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) now determines and provides data for the annual change in the heat stored by the oceans, starting in 2005. Ocean heat content data from the NODC for the depths of 0-2000 meters are presented in terms of Joules*10^22 (here), and the NODC provides the vertically average temperature anomaly data (here) from which the heat content is calculated (along with the salinity data). The temperature data are presented in terms many people are familiar with, degrees C.
The units used to present the ocean heat content (Joules times 10 to the 22nd power) look like an astronomically large number. Feel free to add 22 zeroes in your mind to the following graphs. And since few people have any idea what those units mean, we helpful people try to present them in more-familiar terms (deg C) as well.
The reality-impaired wing of the catastrophic human-induced climate change movement doesn’t like it when we present data in familiar terms. They claim silly things like we don’t want our readers to know data indicate the oceans are absorbing heat. Again, see the archived version of the post here. What’s really strange about that is, if you were to do a Google Image search of “NODC ocean heat content” the vast majority of the images presented by Google are those I prepared for my blog posts and the posts at WattsUpWithThat. In Figure 1, I’ve highlighted all of the illustrations I prepared or that were prepared by others and included in my posts that show up on a screen cap.
Figure 1
To me, it doesn’t look like I’m trying to hide the fact the oceans have absorbed heat. In fact, I’ve explained, using data, the naturally occurring processes that cause the oceans to warm at the surface and at depth. See the free illustrated essay “The Manmade Global Warming Challenge” (42MB).
THE SIMPLE PRESENTATIONS OF THE TEMPERING EFFECT OF THE OCEANS ON GLOBAL WARMING
Well, I came up with a very simple way to keep alarmists AND skeptics happy. I’ve presented the NODC ocean heat content data in terms of Joules*10^22 and the NODC vertically averaged temperature data in terms of deg C—ready for this?—on the same graph. See Figure 2. In it, the data have been zeroed at 2005.
Figure 2
The caption for it and Figure 3 reads, A hypothetical energy imbalance resulting from the emissions of manmade greenhouse gases has caused the oceans to absorb heat from 2005 to 2013 at a rate of about 8.6*10^22 Joules/decade, according to the NODC data for the depths of 0 to 2000 meters, but due to the heat capacity of the oceans, the oceans for those same depths have only warmed at a rate of about 0.03 deg C/decade, also according to NODC data.
For those who would prefer the NODC data to not be zeroed at 2005, see Figure 3.
Figure 3
Again, the warming rate illustrated in Figure 2 and 3 is only +0.03 deg C/decade. Let me repeat a portion of yesterday’s post:
That’s read 3 one-hundredths of a deg C per decade, which is a very tiny warming rate. It would be even tinier if we had data for the oceans from the surface to the ocean floor.
The oceans are deeper than the 2000 meters reached by the ARGO floats. So we have to look elsewhere to see if the deep oceans below 2000 meters have warmed. The title of Llovel et al. (2014) explains the findings of the paper Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade. “Not detectable” says it all. Phrased differently, there has been no detectable warming of the deep ocean (below 2000 meters) from January 2005 to December 2013, the time period covered by Llovel et al. (2014), which happily coincides to the period we’re discussing.
From the NOAA OceanToday webpage Deep ARGO, we learn that the depths of 0-2000 meters include only about one-half of the volume of the global oceans.
Based on those findings, we can assume the trend in the temperature of the oceans, from surface to ocean floor, from 2005 to present, is one-half the +0.03 deg C/decade trend calculated for the depths of 0-2000 meters, or a warming rate of +0.015 deg C/decade. That’s read 15 one-thousandths of a deg C per decade.
That minuscule warming rate of the oceans serves only as the background for the surface warming. It can’t magically come back to haunt us.
CLOSING
I want thank Miriam O’Brien (Sou) from HotWhopper. Without her nonsensical response, I would not have come up with the idea for this post. Now, in the not-too-distant future, every time someone performs a Google Image search of “Tempering Effect of the Oceans on Global Warming”, or some derivative thereof, they’ll see Figures 2 and 3 from this post…and read the all-important caption.
(Sarc on.) I’d like to also thank the always-helpful William Connolley of Wikipedia fame and the blog Stoat for trying to post my full name and address on that thread at HotWhopper. A special thanks to Mariam O’Brian for leaving the U.S. Copyright Office website address for my book Who Turned on the Heat? (On sale for only U.S.$5.00.) Now global warming skeptics from all around the world can easily find my name, address, phone number and email address. When they’re in the neighborhood, they can take me out for a cup of coffee*. Or those who have always wanted to tip me for my work, but didn’t want to use PayPal, can now send me checks by mail. How convenient! (Sarc off.)
*PS: Please call first.
*PPS: Skeptics can also use my new-found home address to send me Christmas cards
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UPDATE: The following is a screen cap of a Google Image search (from the morning of December 1, 2014, a day after this post was originally published): The Tempering Effect of the Oceans on Global Warming
That didn’t take long. Never does. As I wrote above… every time someone performs a Google Image search of “Tempering Effect of the Oceans on Global Warming”, or some derivative thereof, they’ll see Figures 2 and 3 from this post…and read the all-important caption.
Once again, thank you, Sou (Miriam O’Brien). Someday Miriam will figure out she’s helping skeptics, not hurting them. Will that stop her rants? I think not. It will simply make her madder.
UPDATE 2: Believe it or not, this is one of the posts that Sou (Miriam O’Brien) has chosen to comment on at HotWhopper. See my post Miriam O’Brien says: Warmer oceans matter. It includes an archived version of her painfully flawed rebuttal. Miriam has also given me another idea for a post on ocean warming.
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I find it incredible that after just 10years of data there is an assumption in the warmist camp that we now know what the oceans are doing when it comes to heat. Also I note that a lot of CAGW graphs on the top 2000m use a start date in the 1950s as if the data accurately and continuously goes back to then.
Until we have completed a global warming and cooling cycle we cant possibly know what, how and when the oceans are storing/releasing heat. 60 years maybe…..that would be 2 climate cycles at least. I would think that it is more likely to be centuries before full sense of the data can be made
Yes, but you are suggesting a measured and rational approach which depending on the flavor of the alarmist is either incapable of or is purposely avoiding.
I imagine the next phase of the propaganda campaign will have the oceans boiling, which at 3 hundredths of a degree centigrade per decade will mean in about 15,000 years saunas will go out of business.
In 1000 years we’re off this planet, providing religion doesn’t get in the way again..
Speaking of measured and rational approaches, I went for the first time to see what’s at “Sou’s” blogsite. Initially intended to leave at least a single message asking some basic question such as how she can support her statement that the warming in the next 30 years will be as rapid as the last 30.
But, it is simply such a dreadful, sorry, pained place I was unable to bring myself to contaminate my evening by contributing a single word. Generally I do not ascribe a condition of spiritual illness to someone, but based on what I read there from “Sou” I believe genuine pity is the only reasonable response.
The attack on anyone who educates themselves about the climate was particularly strange given that she is obviously no expert in anything scientific that relates to the climate. For her, an “expert” is rare and I suppose it is her task to repeat those things they deign to communicate to the lesser mortals who should be rightly worshipping at their golden feet.
Wow. Even Gavin at his worst over at the suffocating Real Climate cannot hold a candle to the bile generated at Hotwhopper. Strangely, without WUWT it seems she would have nothing to talk about. I guess we can thank her for sending so many new people here to have a broadening experience.
Carry on Bob. It’s great. I am still waiting to find out how the sun knew it was time to stop heating the atmosphere and start heating the oceans. I am looking forward to more warming. It was -34.9 C in Western Alberta last night, without the wind chill. And winter has not yet officially arrived.
With regards to ocean heat we suffer from a lack of historic data of quality and also that the data we do have does not measure the deep ocean adequately.
Bob has posted material showing data to a depth of 2000 metres. The average depth of the Oceans is 4000 metres. We have a study by Purkiss et all attempting to quantify the oceanic heat content at this depth. However, according to Thomas Stocker speaking in June at a climate conference held at Exeter University and assisted by the Met Office, which featured a panel of IPCC reviewers, we do not have the technology to measure the deep ocean, which was that below 2000 metres.
tonyb
MWH:
I question the capability of the devices in question to actually measure .03 degree centigrade accurately. The data noise has to be much larger than that. Any trend seen inside that noise band is the equivalent of the Mann Hockey Stick trick. Perhaps the .03 change represents the deterioration of the equipment in a rough environment second only to space. Who knows.
Equations will give you very precise answers and they look great on graphs. But my electronics and science instructors were close to violent about the difference between precision and accuracy.
There is another example of this available with the satellites measuring ocean height. I have been told that the wavelengths being used can only measure with an accuracy of centimeters. Yet Warmists try to get us excited about millimeter changes that may not even be there.
On strictly technical grounds I am one hundred percent in agreement with what you are trying to say. Talk to my great-grandson about it in a hundred years of data collection. Develop a system that can be used to cross check results, meanwhile.
The temp is not measured but an average of an extrapolation, I presume of a vertical column of water, arrived at from the ARGO data. Yes average upon average upon average with nary a nod to error bars, explains the certitude.
“””””…..But my electronics and science instructors were close to violent about the difference between precision and accuracy……”””””
Well they should take a powder then.
Accuracy is not essential to repetitive measurements of the same thing; but precision surely is.
And Temperature changes of milli-degrees are easily measurable. Referring them to absolute standards of Temperature is not so easy, and knowing exactly what it is, whose Temperature you are measuring, is even harder.
And no ! I did not say that a global oceanic Temperature rate of increase of 0.03 deg. C is measurable.
That’s why we do calculate from physical principles, so we know what the expected order of magnitude of some purported change should be.
I believe Bob has established that the expected rate of oceanic Temperature rise is quite un-measurable; but not for lack of precision.
DEEBEE, I understand the temperature is a calculation. Just to be clear, I question the ability of the instruments to give accurate enough readings to make those calculations reflect real world temperature changes. I am not the first to suggest what is being calculated is the deterioration of the actual instrument.
The whole concept is an exercise in futility. Each Argo float is, in effect, measuring a volume of water equal to several BILLION Olympic-sized swimming pools (I forget the exact/precise figure,it’s a while since I did the calculation) and when you take into account the deeper half of the ocean not covered by the floats, that is two times several billion. So where does any idea of accuracy, precision or even reality fit in?
David Chappell – thanks,
But, with respect, I suggest an under-estimate for the ‘Olympic Swimming Pool’ comparison.
I appreciate you haven’t revisited calculation done years – or more ago.
May I refresh your memory – and the memory of those suggesting an ARGOS float is – after cleanliness, next to godliness . . . . .
Global Oceans – about 120,000,000 square miles.
3,000 ARGOS buoys: – 1 ARGOS buoy per ~ 40,000 square miles.
(Indiana, US, has – per the peerless Wikipedia – an area of 36,419.55 square miles.
Same peerless source – The land area of Scotland is 30,414 square miles (78,770 km2);
Indiana get nearly one buoy to itself, Scotland – about three-quarters.
Even Texas – at about 270,000 square miles (per the Wiki source again), would get a tad less than seven ARGOS buys (sampling stations) across its formidable area!
An Olympic swimming pool [Osp] is 50m x 25m.
A Mile is ~1600m – so 32 x64 Osp’s areas per square mile.
32 x 64 = 2048. Let’s say 2000. Hey – even close order of accuracy will suggest that invoking ARGOS buoys may have some problems with accuracy and/or precision.)
Average swimming pool depth [for an Olympic job, not a swimming/diving/teach the nippers to swim (and that is ” r e a l l y ” important – can your kids/grandkids swim?? They should be able to do so . . . . .)] – perhaps 2m.
Average depth of the waters sampled by Argo – 2000m.
So, an ARGOS buoy samples 40,000 square miles of ocean – each square mile of which is some 2,000 Osp’s – => about 80 million Osp’s by area.
But the depth sampled by each ARGOS buoy is about 1000 times deeper than an Olympic swimming pool, and, consequently, the volume sampled is greater by a factor of a thousand.
So an ARGOS float – doing sterling work – samples a volume of some 80,000 million Osp’s.
But a narrow water column – metres not many miles across.
And – even if the ARGOS float can measure temperature to 0.03 degree – is it reasonable to suggest that that that very precise, and jolly accurate temperature is truly representative, in all seasons, in all weathers, day and night, calm and storm, for a volume of water equivalent to Scotland drowned beneath water some 8000 feet deep.
One probe.
One ARGOS Buoy.
Umm.
One magic probe?
I ask. No /.sarc here. Absolutely not
A query, because it may be that some – on both sides of our friendly discussion of what payback the fraudsters should give (their claims to be within touching distance of someone who saw a Nobel prize, their pensions, their kidneys, etc. Not their first-born, as their sons and daughters {should that be in alphabetical order??] are not complicit!) – are, possibly lots of many orders of magnitude out with respect to the ocean.
The oceans are very – that is: very, very – big.
The former Soviet Union had an area of some 11,000,000 square miles.
The Indian Ocean is about 28,350,000 mi² [Above mentioned peerless source [All sampled tonight – about 2100 Z]]
The oceans are jolly big, don’t you know. I’ve sailed some . . . . . . . . . . .
Do not imply consistency if such is not shown to be likely, I suggest.
Smiles.
Auto.
Once again, I wish there were a “Like” button.
What he said.
Bob, I believe your simple depiction of the inability of the deep ocean heat storage to manifest itself, as a perceptible rate of ocean Temperature rise, also explains Willis Eschenbach’s inability to find a signature of the 90 W/m^2 p-p annual TSI cycle.
When the TOA solar insolation is at its annual maximum, the earth’s deep oceans are pointed at the sun, to sop up all that extra 10^22 joule units of solar radiation, and hide it where the sun doesn’t shine; deep in earth’s protective oceans.
And when the northern land masses are pointed at the sun, they quickly reach high daytime surface Temperatures, that can radiate at nearly twice the rate for earth’s mean Temperature of 288 K.
So get some sleep Willis; your signature ain’t there to find. Bob has buried it !
“Willis Eschenbach’s inability to find a signature of the 90 W/m^2 p-p annual TSI cycle.”
——————————————————————————————–
And yet the signature clearly is there, only it is the opposite sign of the increase in insolation. The atmosphere cools. Apparently much of the more intense insolation falling on the SH oceans is aborbed into the oceans, and thus, for a time, denied to the atmosphere Of course the NH albedo increases, thus reflecting more insolation, thus cooling the atmosphere as well.
1. Query, does the earth gain r lose energy during the SH summer?
2. Is there published error bars for the argo T estimates?
3 Do the Argo floats drift? Has the average latitude of the Argo floats changed over the years?
The funning thing about deep ocean heating is if surface temperature ever becomes an issue, we could accelerate the process of dumping the heat in the ocean depths using ocean thermal heat pumps. The best part is since the ocean depths are cold, and the surface is warm, the process will produce useful work – you could generate electricity from it. This dumping process would delay for centuries any possible consequence of global warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion
That sounds more effective that carbon capture and storage.
It’s a non-starter. How do you tax it?
Stockholm, Sweden, has 180 MW sea water heatpump for heating the city.
With respect, sir, sounds inefficient. Reason being, there should be lots of wood/waste/coal driven energy available as sideproduct of electricity production. Combiplants.
In order to get one 10E22 J with 180 MW plant you have to run it over 10E13 seconds. That is millions of years.
And yes, its 1.0E22, not 10E22.Missing dots.
Let’s not even get into the fact that the absorbtion of 8.6*10^22 joules is a hypothetical number based on an assumption that man made CO2 is responsible for “back radiating” this energy in the first place!
Bingo!
The Greenhouse Equation predicts temperatures within 0.28°C throughout entire troposphere without radiative forcing from greenhouse gases
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.at/2014/11/the-greenhouse-equation-predicts.html
It simply is. The only question is of the amount, which can be rightly disputed.
…….but only once when, as we should understand, once this back-radiation cycle is started it can never end, until…………………………………..
Same comment I was going to make.
That 8.6*10^22 joules is the amount of energy the AGW crowd needs the oceans to absorb in order for there to be no atmospheric warming. (That of course raises the question: how can you have Oceanic warming without Atmospheric? As I understand it, the Atmospheric warming would have to occur first.)
I would prefer that the graphs not be zeroed at all. Refer to all the heat stored in the ocean above absolute zero. People tend to look at the huge number for the increase in heat in the ocean. They don’t know about the much much huger* number that describes all the heat stored in the ocean. Compared to that, the increase is puny.
*huger is a real word and is legal for Scrabble. 😉
Yeah. Anything with a zero intercept is an anomaly, and not a real physical variable.
Hmm, let’s see if we can have some fun with this.
Per this, the total amount of energy per Kelvin is 5.6 * 10²⁴
Average temp at the surface is 14°C
Average temp at the bottom is 4°C
So let’s say 9°C or 282K
Multiplying these gives us
1,579,200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules
Amount added in a decade
86,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules
Damn, should have added two extra spaces to the last line to get them to line up, and added
The amount added in a decade is 1/18,362 of the total Ocean Energy content. It’s the Hiroshima Bomb FUD all over again.
Paul, Just a rough check using 1.3 trillion cubic kilometers of ocean water @ur momisugly 282K gives 3.7E26 calories.
The 10 year trend is 2.06E22 calories which is 1/17,836 of the total heat energy. Close enough!
Many Thanks for the check, Ken.
@Ken . . Thats 1.3 Billion cubic kilometres surely.
QUOTE
Keitho
December 1, 2014 at 9:46 am
@Ken . . That’s 1.3 Billion cubic kilometres surely.
END QUOITE
120,000,000 million square miles, at arm-waving 2,5 lie depth – about 300.000.000 cubic miles.
Per http://www.onlineconversion.com
300,000,000 cubic miles – is about 1,250,454,547.6 cubic kilometres
Mine is an estimate – Keitho is right [as far as I know . . . . . .]
Smiles
Auto
I was more concerned with ken referencing “trillion” rather than “billion” rather than the rounding error.
Keep up the good work Bob. Thank you for the same.
One thing I have long since learned from conflicts with climate alarmists / LIARS, is that they cheerfully re-write everything one says, to make it sound to their clueless cronies like you’ve said / believe something else entirely.
Due to the thermosteric expansion of sea water, it is easier to detect a rise in sea level than it is to detect a 0.003C/year rise in temperature. If the rise of the oceans since 1900 at a fairly steady 2mm/year were 100% thermal expansion, with no melting glaciers, etc., then given the average ocean depth of about 4000m, 0.002m/4000m = 0.5ppm/year. That translates to a temperature change of 0.5ppm/(150-300ppm/°C) = 0.0033 to 0.0067°C/year. If you multiply that by the ocean volume of 1.37×10^9 cubic km at 1cal/degree/cc, and divide by the surface area of the Earth, you get (1.37×10^24 cc)(1cal/degree/cc)(4.184watts/(cal/sec))(0.0033 degrees/year)/(31,536,000 seconds/year)(5.1×10^14m2) = 1.18 – 2.36 W/m2.
The total net anthropogenic radiative forcing is estimated by the IPCC to amount to 1.6W/m2. So, if “The Pause” is from heat going into the ocean, then it accounts for just about all of the sea level rise, with no room for ice to melt.
Much appreciated.
I think the lesson from your comment – and from many other comments – is that the science is – in truth – not yet fully settled, shall we say. . . . .
Thanks
Auto
Or you can work out if it was all ice melt.
4.13 x 10^17 joules / KM^3. What does that number represent? That is the energy it takes to convert one cubic kilometer of continental ice from -30 oC to water at 4 oC
Useful information:
heat of fusion of water = 334 J/g
heat of vaporization of water = 2257 J/g
specific heat of ice = 2.09 J/g•°C
specific heat of water = 4.18 J/g•°C
Step 1: Heat required to raise the temperature of ice from -30 °C to 0 °C (for temp see average profile temp Antarctica) http://www.pnas.org/content/99/12/7844.full Use the formula
q = mc?T Per Kg 1000 x 2.09 x 30 = 62700 Joules
Step 2: Heat required to convert 0 °C ice to 0 °C water
q = m•?Hf Per Kg 1000 x 334 = 334000 Joules
Step 3: Heat required to raise the temperature of 0 °C water to 100 °C water
q = mc?T per Kg 1000 x 4.18 x 4 = 16720 Joules
Total -30 oC ice to +4 oC water per Kg = 413420 Joules / KG
Where
q = heat energy
m = mass
c = specific heat
?T = change in temperature
?Hf = heat of fusion
One metric tonne of water has a volume of one cubic meter (1 tonne water(1,000 KG = 1 m³)
One gagatonne of water has a volume of one billion cubic meters, or one cubic kilometer.(1 Gt water = 1 km³)Of course, one gigatonne of ice has a greater volume than one gigatonne of water. But it will still have a volume of 1 km³ when it melts.
413420 Joules/KG x 1000 KG/t x 1,000,000,000 t/KM^3 = 4.1342E+17 Joules / KM^3
But you say ‘DD’ how does this compare to the well known ‘Hiroshima bomb’ measurement.
By today’s standards the two bombs dropped on a Japan were small — equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT in the case of the Hiroshima bomb and 20,000 tons in the case of the Nagasaki bomb. (Encyclopedia Americana. Danbury, CT: Grolier, 1995: 532.)
In international standard units (SI), one ton of TNT is equal to 4.184E+09 joule (J)
Hiroshima bomb TNT 15000 x TNT to Joules 4.18E+09 = Joules total 6.276E+13 =>
or 1 KM^3 of ice melt (4.1342E+17 / 6.276E+13) = # HiroBmb per Km^3 = 6587
That is correct. Place one Hiroshima bomb in a grid every 54 meters apart to melt the ice.
How about all that ‘Missing Heat’? Ocean heat content has increased by about 2.5 X 10E23 Joules since 1970 (IPCC AR5).
So 2.5 X 10E23 Joules / 4.1342 x 10E17 Joules/KM^3 = 604,712 KM^3
Well that sounds like a lot of ice, but Antarctica has between 26 and 30 million and Greenland has 2.5 million of those KM^3, so in reality it works out to 604,712 / 30,000,000 = 2.02% of the total.
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/HannaBerenblit.shtml
Please tell me to what accuracy in percentage has the volume of ice has been measured since 1970?
Noted. Good reference for land ice-to-water volume heat exchange.
Wow, Again Thank you for so informative and concise post here. So , the oceans to depth have warmed by a hot whopping three hundredth’s of a deg. C. Holy split hair Batman! There have been some great comments in other threads here regarding temperature measurement and accuracy that noted the near impossible precision of hundredth’s of degree with regard to the variety of measurement tools and mechanical limitations as well as the challenge of measuring the vast medium of water in the oceans. Sooooo 3 hundredth’s deg. C warming of the oceans is a stunning number in my mind because it seems impossible to measure something so big to such a fine precision worthy of a Swiss watch. How close can we measure a warming trend to Zero warming? becomes my question….
I love that precision as well. If I do the math right (using Cp for plain water) in order to heat the ocean’s mass of 1.4 x 10²² kg up by 0.01°C would require something like 5.87 x 10²² Joules of energy. The surface area of the ocean (according to that awful source, Wikipedia) is 361 million km² or 3.61 x 10^14 m². Now simple division says each square meter of ocean surface needs to absorb an additional 1.62 x 10^8 Joules of energy over x amount of time and lose none of it through evaporation, convection or radiation. That Mann made part of the atmospheric CO2 must be some really powerful stuff to overcome all those obstacles while being less than 0.00005% of the atmosphere’s gases.
But…but…that is 0.3degC per CENTURY. We are DOOMED.
You forgot about the other 2000 feet of ocean. Supposedly that will slowly warm as well, which means .15 per century.
0.3 degree/century.
Noted.
At 0.3 degree/year – possibly a cause for concern, but – what about adaptation?
The natural world adapted to this coming out of the Little Ice Age [and going into it, and the Roman . . . . ahhh, sugar, it’s normal.
At 0.3 degree/decade – even if we agree a smooth increase, which, despite the spin there has not been for two decades . . . . – well, noted, I suppose, until the cycles turn.
And still within natural variation it is suggested!
0.3 degree/century.- right. Warn me if an Ice Age comes, please.
And some – not all – recent Ice Ages have befallen our planet in a matter of a decade or three it seems.
Beware.
Be very wary.
Auto
The top couple of microns of the ocean surface is totally opaque to long wave radiation (atmospheric radiation) so 100% of greenhouse radiation will be absorbed there.
I have made careful detailed measurements there with IR guns and there is no surface temperature difference between a clear sky and a fully overcast sky even though there is up to 140 watts difference in radiation. (The surface temperature should rise several degrees a second)
What atmospheric radiation does is directly cause evaporation which instantly cools the surface.
Solar shortwave radiation though, is absorbed in the ocean and warms it. The ‘regulator’ for that is clouds. More clouds mean ocean cooling, less clouds mean ocean warming.
Evaporated water mixes with air. What happens then? Does it cool ground by blocking sunshine or does it warm it by preventing IR outflow? How latitude, time of day, humidity etc affect? For how long the increased water vapour is supposed to stay? This is not really trivial.
Indeed it’s not trivial, some water molecules may fall back to the surface again, condensing and releasing latent heat in the boundary layer between water and air. However increased evaporation makes the total air lighter as lighter water molecules (molar mass 18) mixes with air (molar mass 29). This makes it rise by convection and adiabatic cooling of the rising parcel makes the waper vapor to condense again, hence forming clouds, hence shielding the sun and providing a formidable negative feedback to heating.
Hugh, I agree it isn’t trivial. The vapor is transparent to sunshine and the convection is adiabatic so it doesn’t heat the surrounding air. The water vapour expands and rises so it doesn’t stay around long.
Hence if there are less clouds, then the ocean can take up more heat, now, guess what, there were less clouds roughly in the last 1.5 decade:
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverTotalObservationsSince1983.gif
Source: http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateAndClouds.htm
Hence. it appears to be that simple, the reason of the unbalance of radiation at the TOA and why the ocean took about 90% of the missing heat.
But it has nothing to do whatsoever with greenhouse effect, just cloud variation.
leftturnandre, “But it has nothing to do whatsoever with greenhouse effect, just cloud variation.”
You are 100% correct as far as I can tell.
Absolutely.
And it is the sun that did it as described here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/new-climate-model/
Just look at that change of trend at 2000.
I’ve been drawing attention to that since 2007.
That is when the change in the level of solar activity began to create a change in global cloudiness.
It also coincided with a cessation of stratospheric cooling.
And a recovery of the ozone holes.
Not only was AGW a fantasy but so was the CFC panic.
Nobel prize awaited 🙂
Genghis, the essays Humidity is still wet and Cloudy Clouds in Blowing Smoke show how nontrivial your ocean evaporation example is. And essay Models all the way Down explains why climate models will not be able to model the essential processes for decades, if ever at all.
Rud, that was funny, (and accurate).
They have to show how increasing CO2 decreases evaporation and cloud coverage in order to increase the radiative imbalance.
Obviously it doesn’t. So they are left with nothing more than false circular reasoning.
Ghengis said:
“I have made careful detailed measurements there with IR guns and there is no surface temperature difference between a clear sky and a fully overcast sky even though there is up to 140 watts difference in radiation. (The surface temperature should rise several degrees a second)
What atmospheric radiation does is directly cause evaporation which instantly cools the surface.”
Excellent, Ghengis.
You have experimentally confirmed a contention I have been putting forward for some years.
Due to evaporation being a net cooling process it follows that if DWIR from GHGs causes more evaporation then the amount of energy taken up in evaporation as latent heat will EXCEED the energy required to provoke that evaporation.
Thank you.
See here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/the-setting-and-maintaining-of-earths-equilibrium-temperature/
Stephen, I read your new climate model and let me point out a couple of differences in how I see it.
Atmospheric (not solar) radiation decreases the net radiation from the ocean surface and increases the evaporation and convection rate.
Solar radiation bypasses the atmosphere and warms the ocean. The average temperature of the Ocean is apx. ~5˚C, while the apx. surface temperature of the Ocean is 22˚C.
There is where the Greenhouse warming is, just below the surface of the ocean.
Genghis, atmospheric radiation doesn’t descrease ‘net radiation’ from the ocean surface. The atmospheric TEMPERATURE does that. There is no radiative FLUX (energy transfer) from the cool atmosphere to the warmer surface. There is only a temperature POTENTIAL facing the surface temperature potential, generating a spontaneous radiative (heat) flux from warm to cool, from sfc to atm. If the atmosphere warms without the surface doing the same, the difference in temperature potentials is reduced and the heat flux from the surface to the atmosphere is consequently reduced as well.
P/A = es(T_sfc^4 – T_atm^4)
P/A is the only radiative flux involved here, the heat transfer. The righthand side of the equation simply shows the temperature POTENTIALS. These potentials would constitute real radiative heat fluxes only if the two bodies were isolated from each other and surrounded by perfect vacuums at 0 K.
Don’t look at this formula thinking that you see two physically opposing thermodynamic fluxes (transfers) of energy. That concept is only mathematically derived. In reality, in the real physical world, there is but one flux, one transfer of energy, and in a spontaneous heat transfer situation, it always and only moves from hot to cold.
I agree Genghis; I’ve seen (in numerous places) that radiated IR from carbon dioxide can only affect the very top layer of the ocean. The net effect is to increase evaporation, thus causing a small amount of cooling at the surface (via loss of latent heat).
Thank you xyxxy, also the surface is generally cooler than the water just below it, never warmer.
Genghis,
Can you please elaborate on the detailed measurements you made with IR guns? Thanks in advance.
Frans
The top couple of microns of the ocean surface is totally opaque to long wave radiation (atmospheric radiation) so 100% of greenhouse radiation will be absorbed there.
100% of nuthin is nuthin Genghis……………………..
This is why we use water to cool engines instead of air – although I used to have a 1959 VW bug with an air cooled engine. Using water is much more efficient.
jochlarson
Except the VW’s were not a good car for winter driving. They were COLD and what little heat you did get had to be used to keep the windshield clear.
But having the engine right on top of the drive wheels helped a lot in the snow and slush, right?
I can’t get past Dr. Josh Willis and the story about his Correcting Ocean Cooling.
Is that the one where he threw out the ARGO data which didn’t fit his predetermined theory?
I am surprised that the alarmist didn’t use erg’s instead of joules. That would seem to fit their narrative better.
I don’t think greens make a difference between 1e10J and 1e30J. Thats a scientist thingy.
What’s a few zeros, when we’re talking about the end of the world?
That magnitude thing is evil and the eco-loons want no part of them… Dirty Harry had one he clung to.
Or electron-volts (1.6e^-19 joules).
lol, that is so funny!
If the oceans are warm how come we have more seaice than ever?
According to http://climate4you.com we have 11.million square km in the arctic and 15 millionsquare km in the Antarctic. In 1979 when record begins we have 24,7 million square km total. At first look it seems that 24-25 is the normal average.
Because the missing heat is hiding in the deep ocean, where conveniently it cannot be measured. Kevin is clever. You have to be nimble to stay on top in CACA Crazytown.
This discussion of heat absorption assumes the Earth is a closed system; the heat comes in to the planet, but it does not leave the planet. However, hurricanes and typhoons are the air conditioning units of our planet. As the heat of the ocean builds up, it generates cyclones, which have a strong vertical column of rising hot air. As the column rises high enough to puncture the upper atmosphere, the heat becomes radiated into space as infrared light and the resulting cold damp air returns to Earth. Factor the radiated heat during cyclones into the equation and it should all balance out.
David, “As the heat of the ocean builds up, it generates cyclones, which have a strong vertical column of rising hot air. As the column rises high enough to puncture the upper atmosphere, the heat becomes radiated into space as infrared light and the resulting cold damp air returns to Earth. Factor the radiated heat during cyclones into the equation and it should all balance out.”
The problem with that theory is that the tops of the cyclones are extremely cold. The cyclones radiate less IR radiation to space.
But the process does do a lot of things, it extracts heat from the ocean, expands the atmosphere (work) and blocks Solar long wave radiation from entering the system and increases LW radiation in the surrounding area.
Is a rate of rate of about 0.03 deg C/decade within the error bars of the measurements? In other words is it real?
The extra heat absorption is hypothetical. It is extra only if all else remains the same.
Thus a hypothetical extra heat produces little or no actual temperature rise. Some heat seems to be missing? Maybe its warming Pachauri et als homes?
“Is a rate of rate of about 0.03 deg C/decade within the error bars of the measurements? In other words is it real?”
As a result of having had some experience of measuring the temperature of liquids under laboratory conditions – let alone measuring the temperature of the whole of the World’s oceans, I very much doubt it.
As with so many of the numbers bandied about by the WGW religionists it just looks like another example of False Precision Syndrome to me.
If the vast oceans temper any atmospheric warming, do the much smaller Great Lakes have the same effect? Given last year’s freeze-over followed by a cold year in the Central USA followed by an early freezing this year, does this portend a reinforcing cycle? Or, like heat waves, is this just weather.
Bob, it’s enjoyable to learn from you and simultaneously be entertained at the way you pull the drain plug every time Sou thinks her settled science holds water. Would gladly treat you and yours to chicken dinner at the Do Drop Inn so you could meet the ‘dawter farmers’ from “Hooterville”.
Thanks to you, Bob, I now visit HotWhopper regularly.
I Do hope you bathe afterwards…..
Once seemed more than enough.
pochas, Miriam is very funny.
It’s not fair to laugh at the mentally ill.
It’s illuminating that there is NO ONE from “The reality-impaired wing of the catastrophic human-induced climate change movement” capable of producing presentations for their case like Bob Tisdale does for skeptics.
In all of their vastness of government, academia and so called settled science they remain shackled with their mendacious bromides, red herrings, analogies and tall tale suppositions.
Interestingly someone sort of tried at RealClimate and it relates to Bob’s work today.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/10/ocean-heat-storage-a-particularly-lousy-policy-target/#more-17608
Pielke chimed in.
Roger A. Pielke Sr. says:
20 Oct 2014 at 2:07 PM
Dr. Rahmstorf
You have presented several reasons not to use ocean heat content changes as the metric to diagnose global warming and to present this information to policymakers. Unfortunately, you have not properly framed your reasoning.
First, all physicists would agree that heat is measured in Joules. Thus an increase in Joules is heating. In the context of global warming, it must involve an accumulation of Joules. The ocean is the largest component of the climate system in terms of its heating and cooling. I assume you agree with this…..
…..more at link.
Steve Oregon,
I read that thread when it first hit with some interest. Pielke Sr. makes a great point, if I may restate, that Joules are the the only SI unit to use when the question is net change in energy. I don’t think there’s any scientific dispute about that here. However, the science cannot limit itself to Joules when studying the rates of change, or more typically flux per unit area, hence Watts per sq. meter. Ultimately though, one needs to know what effect those energy fluxes have on the system, and in weather (thence climate) pretty much everything is temperature dependent, hence Kelvins. I can’t remember from that thread whether it was Gavin or Stefan who said it … probably both at one point … temperature at or near the surface is most important for them to understand because that’s where the majority of the appreciable effects will occur. Not that they ignore net energy change, or change per unit time — they absolutely cannot ignore them — but they’re most interested ultimately in starting and ending temperature of things since that drives pressure, phase changes, etc. on down the line.
From a policy and public communication perspective, temperature has been the go-to because “nobody” understands Joules, nor cares really. We want to know when we switch on the weather report how warm or cool it’s going to be tomorrow, how cloudy or clear it will be, and whether there will be precipitation — not how many Joules the driveway is going to accumulate from dawn until noon.
Of course, as Tisdale has amply demonstrated an ability to take advantage of, talking change in ocean temperature is not real impressive since “nobody” understands heat capacity, or cares, any more than they do Joules.
Once again the laws of physics in conjunction with Mother Nature work against the consensus policy and public communication efforts because ignorance is bliss. Especially the willful sort.
Bob
That is not a helpful graph. All that you have shown is that the heat capcacity of the oceans is much greater than 10^22 J/K. They use units of 10^22 J because that gives whole numbers. You used whole degrees because it is a common unit. But the two data sets do not go together that way. If you wanted to plot together I recommend using mK as the temperature axis or use 10^24 J for the heat axis.
Maurice Strawn, Mike Mann, and assorted members of the climate gate e-mail exchanges,
A Hopi Indian Nation language for them would be “Those Who Make Numbers Dance”, but only to their tunes. Clear case of “Life Out of Balance”.
By a strange coincidence I was using the WUWT data yesterday to check, by the simplest of sums , whether Trenbeth might be correct in his assertion about the oceans storing the heat .
The starting point was the IPCC 4th report (2007) , specifically section 2.9.2 with its charts of :
GHG radiative forcing at 3 W/m^2 and net forcing after aerosol correction at about 1.4W/M^2 .
Assuming a 15 year pause , the Joules accumulated are : 7.1×10^23 and 3.4 x10^23 Joules respectively for the whole earth surface ( 5.1×10^14 m^2).
Now in the data available here , only the ocean heat content and sea level measurements show any consistent, if unsteady, increase during the last 15 years . The estimates that I made from the graphs were , for the last 15 years ;
0-700 m data : 8 x 10^22 Joules accumulated
0-2000 m 1.0 x 10^23 joules .
Not identical to the figures above , but not an order of magnitude out.
Given that some posts here have suggested that the clear air forcing is <3 w/m^2 and that a recent monte carlo study of aerosol scattering of solar input suggests that the cooling effect is greater than IPCC have allowed , then the difference becomes even lower. This to me suggests that Trenbeth's assertion may be correct , but of course there are assumptions , such as that the forcing is the same over land and ocean . Also the mechanism for storing land generated heat in the ocean needs some explanation – but that is what the vast army of climate scientists is being paid for is it not?
Incidentally, I followed some leads from an earlier post of yours which led me to a paper by the paleoclimatologist R A Berners who claimed that during Cretaceous era the depths of the oceans may have reached 14C. And this of course made me think of the coelacanth who , for the last 350 million years has been quietly evolving in whatever ocean plate tectonics has allowed it , whilst continents have collided, asteroids have wreaked mayhem and ice ages have come and gone . Hopefully the clip below will take you to a National Geographic photo of one such individual with a " what me worry " expression;
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/06/110609-coelacanths-long-lived-fish-science-animals/
I made the unfortunate choice of clicking on a link in the article which brought me to hot whopper. In an earlier response to a comment I suggested alarmists would be soon claiming boiling oceans, but yet was still surprised to see this heading to the article the link brought me to.
Yes, that is correct the ocean temperatures rising at a rate of 3 hundredths of a degree centigrade per decade warrants a comparison to a kettle of boiling water. Hot Whopper, apparently a place where common sense is avoided like Ebola. I was tempted to a add a comment telling them to no longer invest in saunas since in 15,000 years the oceans will be boiling, but then thought better of it. Who knows maybe stupid is more contagious than Ebola at Hot Whopper.
Alx, at a rate of 3 deg C per 1000 years, the temperature of the oceans will increase by about 45 deg C in 15,000 years. Did you underestimate the number of years it will take to get the oceans to the boiling point? Or are you saying that the average temperature of the oceans is currently about 55 deg C?
I don’t know many saunas at 100C
I recall getting some warmist numpty (Pekka something) over at Climate etc to acknowledge that if the oceans were absorbing the energy from our CO2 emissions it would take some 3000 years to notice any difference.
In the meantime,note my acknowledgment of the primary importance of the oceans here:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/the-hot-water-bottle-effect/
Many thanks to Bob for his continuing efforts in relation to ocean behaviour.
Another buried lede: NODC data “1955.500, -0.013 2013.500, +0.071”
So, in 58 years the oceans of the world changed temperature by 0.084 degrees C. Measured by thermometers that until very recently were accurate to +-0.5 degrees C. In other words the world’s oceans have not warmed measurably.
Bob Tisdale, serial climate lede-burier, great information presented in the most incomprehensible way. Thanks, keep up the good work. I could help with your next one if you like…
Thanks for the offer, Michael. But I’d appreciate your comments more.