Given Lew and Oreskes latest admonition to scientists who use the word “pause” or “hiatus” it looks like they’ll be applying the “D” word to the entire AGU community of scientists any minute now. From the AGU website, EOS:
Tracking the Missing Heat from the Global Warming Hiatus
Despite indications that the Pacific Ocean is helping to take up the world’s missing surface heat, the heat doesn’t linger; oceanographers now find that heat has moved over to the Indian Ocean.
Illustration of increased trade winds in the Pacific and Indian Oceans during the recent warming hiatus, which enhanced the flow of ocean water through the Indonesian archipelago. This resulted in an abrupt increase of Indian Ocean heat content. Credit: Sang-Ki Lee
By Christina Reed 21 May 2015
At the end of the 20th century, climate scientists noticed what they thought at first was an anomaly: a slowdown in the pace of global warming in the lower atmosphere. Today, it is a recognized trend that has lasted more than 15 years. Perplexed, oceanographers are on a hunt to find where this missing heat has gone.
In the latest report out of Nature Geoscience this week, University of Miami physical oceanographer Sang-Ki Lee and colleagues may have found some of this missing heat: The Pacific Ocean is keeping its cool by sending heat over to the Indian Ocean. This heat redistribution, the researchers say, could play a role in regulating the rate of global warming.
Oceans: A Complex Buffer
Rather than showing any signs of storing heat, as is the case in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean has actually cooled over the last decade.Why the global warming hiatus has happened and how long it will last is a mystery. However, scientists do know that the ocean has recently helped to buffer what was otherwise an accelerated surface warming, one that has not yet stopped. Warming in the upper atmosphere continues to show that the planet is undergoing a radiation imbalance.
However, rather than showing any signs of storing heat, as is the case in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean has actually cooled over the last decade.
“When I noticed from the hydrographic data that the Pacific Ocean heat content has been decreasing since 2003 or so, I was very surprised and puzzled,” Lee told Eos. “And when I found a large heat increase in the Indian Ocean, I was almost convinced that there was something wrong with the hydrographic data.”
How Does Heat Escape to the Indian Ocean?
Lee ran a computer model simulation and found that he could explain the difference if a massive amount of heat from the Pacific flowed through Indonesia’s archipelago into the Indian Ocean. However, how best to move the heat?
Warm water, like warm air, rises—or, rather, stays at the surface when nothing else is disturbing it. This is why, in a lake, the upper layer is warmer than the bottom layer.
To get warm surface water from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean requires wind—and not just any wind. The trade winds need to be strong enough to push water from the eastern Pacific all the way across the ocean basin to the west, where it piles up and creates a region of above-average sea surface height.
Warm surface water can then flow like a river down around the Indonesian archipelago to the Indian Ocean. A difference in height of less than a dozen centimeters is enough to get the heat moving.
…
Full story here: https://eos.org/articles/tracking-the-missing-heat-from-the-global-warming-hiatus
Citation: Reed, C. (2015), Tracking the missing heat from the global warming hiatus, Eos, 96, doi:10.1029/2015EO029947. Published on 21 May 2015.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
If we were to experience a rapidly forced and exact heat in/heat out balance (something watermelon liberals think is the ideal state), many organisms and weather systems that depend on an imbalance (the real ideal state), could possibly become so disrupted as to lead to drastic and undesirable affects. The all the cycles of life depend on imbalance to survive.
The “imbalance” often referred to by climate scientists is partially modeled with a fudge factor based on what climate scientists believe “should” be happening as a result of CO2 buildup. They are so convinced of their calculated thesis that when the increasing heat phenomenon is not observed in the natural setting, they insist it is hiding somewhere, versus admitting it is just not there and they need to rethink their thesis.
The calculations. Not easy to find. Most of the time they are buried in jargon and camouflaged to look like observed data when in reality, it is calculations and models all the way down.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/13421/2011/acp-11-13421-2011.pdf
Symmetry IS, Non symmetry works.
universal law
Yes. Earth is in a normal state of imbalance, especially over long spans of time. The mistake climate scientists often make is to ascribe that imbalance to anthropogenic CO2 build up causing increased back radiation. But because their calculated thesis says heat should be building up everywhere in spite of the fact that atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are not observed to be doing that in the way expected, heat must be building up in some hidden way and location. That reasoning makes no sense (for the thesis to be true, heat should be building up fairly evenly and in lock step with increasing anthropogenic CO2) and more importantly, has no plausible mechanism whereby heat selectively, almost sentiently, builds up only in a certain place. This convoluted response to the “pause” exposes the biased nature of enquiry ubiquitous among climate scientists.
“Slight imbalance” Is how I would say it.
This imbalance exists within the stability of our atmosphere.
its not hiding … it doesn’t exist …
Sssssshhhh, the kiddies might log on here, then they’ll be asking about the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.
I quote: “…Rather than showing any signs of storing heat, as is the case in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean has actually cooled over the last decade.Why the global warming hiatus has happened and how long it will last is a mystery.”
A mystery it will be and inter-ocean currents do not explain it. In addition to the current hiatus a second hiatus exists in the eighties and nineties that is covered up by fake warming from the global warming monopoly of HadCRUT, GISS, and NCDC. This cover-up has a bad odor attached to it. They have known of it at least since 2008 when I discovered it while doing research for my book [1]. ENSO had been active in the eighties and nineties and created a wave train consisting of five El Nino peaks with La Nina valleys in between. If you mark the center points of these waves they line up in a horizontal straight line, indicating no warming for 18 years. That is the same length of time the current hiatus has lasted. That wave train came to an end in 1997 when the super El Nino of 1998 arrived. It does not belong to ENSO and is a rare phenomenon. This one is the only one in the entire twentieth century. In 1999 it was followed by a short step warming that raised global temperature by a third of a degree Celsius in only three years and then stopped. It was the only warming during the satellite era that begins in 1979. It was not greenhouse warming but had an oceanic origin. Greenhouse warming is ruled out because there was no increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide when it started and also because it stopped for good in 2002. Hansen noticed the temperature rise it caused because thanks to this step warming all twenty-first century temperatures are higher than twentieth century was (except for 1998). That for him proved that it was greenhouse warming in action which is completely wrong. This error proves that once you buy into the groupthink of greenhouse warming thinking simply stops. All the attacks on hiatus have been aimed at the current hiatus so far. Anthony kept track of them until their total reached fifty and then gave up. I am waiting to see what happens when they realize there is another one for them to tackle they did not even know about. The temperature keepers have been very brazen and ignored my periodical comments about the existence of a hiatus in the eighties and nineties. On top of which they continued their fake warming into the twenty-first century and that way got 2014 declared the warmest year ever. The true history of global temperature in the satellite era beginning in 1979 consists of two hiatuses – the one in the eighties and nineties and the current one – separated by the super El Nino of 1998 and by the step warming of 1999 to 2002. It is possible that there is one more hiatus from the fifties to the seventies but I can not be sure because of the poor quality of available temperature data. The important observation is that if you compare this warming pattern to the global carbon dioxide history displayed by the Keeling curve there is no way a causal relationship between the two can exist.
[1] Arno Arrak, “What Warming? Satellite view of global temperature change” (CreateSpace, 2010)
Shouldn’t there be a hotline for the missing heat? Also, a reward wouldn’t be a bad idea.
But they’re already being rewarded by being paid to look for/model it!
The face of Missing Heat should be on milk cartons, I reckon.
Poor Missing Heat, on the run and in hiding for eighteen years now. What horrible fate has caused Miss Heat to vanish?
Who abducted her? Why was she kidnapped?
Only Peer-Reviewed Detectives will able to solve this one, I’m afraid.
“Warm water, like warm air, rises—or, rather, stays at the surface when nothing else is disturbing it. This is why, in a lake, the upper layer is warmer than the bottom layer.”
…except when colder or less warn than 4 °C (39.2 °F) occurs…that is the temperature pure water is most dense and will sink to the bottom, while cooler water remains at the surface where it can freeze and make ice roads (for the next ice age)….everybody knows that…so just for the non-science readers …. 🙂 cheers!
Go swimming in a high mountain lake, e.g. Jackson Hole or Estes Park. The top 2 to 3 feet might be comfortable, but go vertical and tread water, wow, shock to the system!
Yep. Learned how to float after being tossed into Wallowa Lake. You automatically want to tuck your butt up out of that frigid layer right quick!
Eliza said –
“The temperatures at mid latitudes and subtropics seems remarkably low over the past 3 months or so has anybody noticed (ie Brisbane 24 degrees south) 22-23C nearly every day”
Maryborough is a 3-hour drive north of Brisbane:
22 April: Fraser Coast Chronicle: Maryborough low of 6.2 degrees is coldest April morning on record
UPDATE: Maryborough’s minimum of 6.2 degrees at 6.13am on Tuesday is the city’s lowest April temperature on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.”In Maryborough, we haven’t seen this occur in the last 107 years,” Bureau of Meteorology spokesman Jess Carey said.
“That’s not to say it hasn’t occurred before but certainly the time at which we’ve been taking temperature records there, since 1908, we haven’t seen a temperature this cold in April…
Mr Carey said both Maryborough and Hervey Bay were 10 degrees below their April averages…
http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/news/mboro-low-62-degrees-coldest-58-years/2614706/
There’s a lot of cold air coming up from Antarctica, much to the confusion of Australian Warmists who have been told that Antarctica has practically melted!
Perth has also had a distinct lack of either drought or high temperatures this year so far. Early snow in Victoria and NSW. Not that this signifies anything special, other than an embrassment to the warmists who in previous years had pointed to hotter dryer weather as a global warming sign.
may have found some of this missing heat: or ran computer models designed to give the ‘right result’
and the actual physical data that proves this claim is ?
Of course the very best thing about deep oceans is that there is little know about them so you can claim much is missing in them , cities , UFO’s , heat, knowing it is unlikely people can prove your wrong , has it is so ‘deep’ and ‘unknown ‘
There must be a ton of mismatched socks down there.
Needless to say, COP21 and all future climate jamborees should be postponed until the missing heat is found. It would be unseemly otherwise.
Let me see if I understand this. CO2 heats the earth surface with back radiation. CO2 has been increasing but surface temperature has not.
The back radiation has been heating the oceans. So while land surface temperature is not increasing ocean temperature is increasing.
I propose that the CO2 heating hypothesis is false. Yes I know about the photons going hither and thither but there has never been experimental verification of this mechanism for the four measly CO2 molecules in 10,000 air molecules.
CO2 is magic
Except that back radiation (DWLWIR) can’t actually heat the oceans, most of that radiation is absorbed in the top few microns of the water, probably causing increased evaporation and thus lowering temperatures a little due to latent heat loss.
As I understand it the CO2 back radiation heats water vapor which supposedly has a positive feedback and thus heats the air, ground, ocean, etc. However, one of the properties of water vapor is to absorb/release huge amounts of heat through evaporation/condensation without changing the surrounding temperature. The psychrometric properties of moist air apply.
Heat leads to cooling by clouds (-20 W/m^2), snow albedo, precipitation, etc. Self correcting.
The heat they imagined was missing was imaginary after all it seems.
Must be the Chinese building all those artificial islands, on what were previously shallow reefs
The IPCC should put “MISSING HEAT” on milk cartons across America under the following format:
Name: MISSING HEAT
Photo:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1996.6/plot/rss/from:1996.6/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/normalise/trend/plot/esrl-co2/from:1996.6/normalise
Age: 19
Missing since: June, 1996
Last seen: UN Building, New York, New Yiork
Hot Line: 1-800-Save-Our-Hoax
I always miss out on stuff … not this time
My new Ferrari is missing
I never had one in the first place
but when it’s found, I expect it to be returned to me immediately
I knew climate science could change my life in a positive way
Thank you
@John Smith
You’ve just solved a great puzzler. I just noticed that my Ferrari is missing, and my gold Rolex is missing, too.
I suspect our Ferraris will show up in our garages about the same time as the missing heat is found, so I’m rooting for Trenberth’s missing heat to be found as soon as possible.
Oh… and return the keys. My keys are missing… again, but I don’t think that has anything to do with ocean heat. More of a memory thing, I think.
About these supposed indications that the Pacific Ocean is eating the heat in violation of the second law of thermodynamics:
This from Singh et al 2005 showing satellite derived latent and sensible heat flux from the oceans to the atmosphere from 1988-2003. As you can see they did not bother to go below zero because heat flux is ALWAYS from the ocean to the atmosphere.
Although the terminology (“missing heat”) derives from the CAGW hypothesis, if you assume constant solar input to an ocean and a reduced heat flux to the atmosphere, then the ocean would increase in temperature. The campaign to find the “missing heat” may have been quixotic but the mechanisms to transfer energy to and from the oceans are valid research issues. As the data improves we should be able to determine whether the oceans have, in fact, warmed slightly or whether clouds have reduced incoming solar radiation, etc.
opluso
You assert
NO!
The “mechanisms to transfer energy to and from the oceans” occur at the ocean surface. Therefore, the putative missing heat must first warm the ocean surface layer – n.b. NOT the ocean depths – and that heat then may transfer to the ocean depths.
There is no evidence that the ocean surface layer has been warmed by the putative missing heat.
There are two possibilities; i.e.
The ocean surface layer did not transfer heat to the ocean depths so the missing heat is not in the oceans.
OR
Temperature measurement of the ocean surface is not adequate to indicate the warming of the ocean surface layer.
In one possibility the missing heat is not in the oceans
and
in the other possibility changes to global surface temperature anomaly (GASTA) cannot be discerned because the ocean surface is most of the Earth’s surface.
Hence, the putative missing heat was not and is not a spur to research of the mechanisms to transfer energy to and from the oceans.
Richard
Declaration of possible personal interest.
I spent the first 5 years of this century living on a boat and wasting my time by researching energy interactions at sea surface. My expensive research project was a total failure induced by a previously unknown effect of ripples. The mechanisms to transfer energy to and from the oceans were the valid research issues I was investigating, but the issue of ‘missing heat’ did not then exist. RSC
Visible light (the part of the spectrum that has enough energy to change the temperature of such a large volume of water) penetrates deep into the top layer. Any variations in this part of the spectrum before it gets to the ocean surface and below, will result in measurable changes in absorbed energy. Under clear skies, such as during La Nina, the ocean gets a good dose of recharging energy (measured as insolation at the ocean surface). Under cloudy skies, such as during El Nino, insolation is much less.
That visible light penetrates so deeply partially explains how heat can “hide” below the top skin and then show up somewhere else. The mechanism is well known and can be accurately modeled. As for longwave radiation somehow getting below the top skin layer, there is no plausible mechanism, so no models have been developed that pass the laugh test.
http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/ocean-layers.html
Yes, we need way more data on the ocean/atmosphere interface. Satellites are great for sea surface temperature but not so much for the atmosphere immediately above. Cloud cover has been decreasing, mid latitude UV increasing. To whatever extent the atmosphere has actually been warming the efficiency of ocean/air heat exchange will be reduced. The atmosphere will react far more quickly to changes than the ocean.
Pamela Gray explained what I meant in greater detail. I did not intend to suggest that energy input to the oceans was limited to the surface or to infrared radiation. Interaction with the atmosphere is limited to the ocean’s surface but solar energy penetrates beyond the surface layer. If the release of heat to the atmosphere is reduced or delayed (deep currents, sea ice, etc.) then the overall ocean would warm.
Ah, The Sun’ relationship with the oceans.
3 quarters of the Earth’s surface absorbing huge amounts of solar energy.
Seems this Solar/Ocean system would be the determinant of the average global temperature.
There is no greater interaction (like CO2 and LWIR) that might affect temperatures so profoundly as the sun upon the ocean.
Pamela Gray
You say
Almost all the visible light is absorbed in the upper ~250m of the ocean (your link says 200m). That is “deep into the top layer” but it is not deep in the ocean
Any increase to energy imparted by total radiation into ocean surface has to warm that upper layer if it is to pass into lower layers.
As you say “no models have been developed that pass the laugh test”.
Richard
Much depends on whether we are talking about Trenberth’s missing heat, which was based on a decrease in ocean enthalpy in spite of increased radiation; or the missing heat from the “halt” or “crawl” in the atmosphere. The atmosphere is supposed to be the source for Trenberth’s increased radiation.
The “crawl” apologists want to transfer energy from the atmosphere to the ocean. They are not talking about visible and UV light which both seem to bottom out within the +-80m mixed layer (visible light seems to penetrate human skin deeper than UV).
Sure, maybe more vis/uv went into the ocean for lack of reflecting clouds, but the atmosphere does not resonate in this part of the incoming spectrum, so this has nothing to do with the crawl.
Richard is correct. Only the top layers receive any visible light . UV penetrates much deeper but it does not have the joule energy to affect ocean temperatures in any measurable way.
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/La-Mi/Light-Transmission-in-the-Ocean.html
What I was explaining is that people think only the top skin and a few inches below it is warmed by solar insolation. That is not true. Visible light can warm deep enough to affect below the skin currents. This energy can be stored in these layers, to rise to the surface at a later time and place.
Missing heat? What missing heat? There is no missing heat at all. It’s a virtual construct. My model predicts a warmer world, but it doesn’t get warmer. There must be “missing heat”., surely? No! My model must be wrong. What’s missing is not heat but a better model.
Actually, there is missing heat. Spring in Saskatoon has been rather cool this year and I miss the missing heat. It should be a lot warmer now than it is. Please find the missing heat and send it to Saskatoon.
Thanks
You’re getting a little today I see. Western Canadian ridge will keep you warmer for a few days.
Dark heat.
Water doesn’t stack like boxes. We’re told there is an increased Indonesian flowthrough warming the Indian ocean. Maybe they can tell us where the displaced cool water is going and perhaps how this movement of warm and cold water does not represent a net zero condition? I would ask them to show their work. Just right now I think they’re describing an over-unity engine where success requires a miracle or a minor adjustment to understood science – like gut everything we know about thermodynamics.
This post actually resolves two issues.
1) Maxwell’s Demon’s whereabouts has now been constrained to the Indonesian Archipelago.
2) The physical law violations woven seamlessly into BHO’s Coast Guard graduation address seemed perfectly natural to him
from the time when he and the Demon began sharing Indonesian citizenship.
Come to think of it, this may also go a long way towards identifying Kerry’s Jakarta speechwriter.
“Maxwell’s Demon’s whereabouts has now been constrained to the Indonesian Archipelago.”
I thought that Maxwell’s Demon was the main lead author of the IPCC’s theory of mann-made global warming. I thought the old boy was in his office at the UN building.
Oh dear, it appears the Warmists have impaled themselves on the horns of a dilemma; whether to simply deny that there is a “pause” or to claim there is, but only because the heat has simply gone missing.
Such fun to watch them squirm, squawk, and squabble.
BruceC’s plot of the distribution of the Atgo floats (May 22 at 7.15pm) shows virtually none within the Indonesian archipelago. Given that the floats spend part of the time near the surface , why is the supposed flow of warm water through the archipelago not represented in the float distribution map?
Sorry typo: Argo floats not Atgo
“I was almost convinced that there was something wrong with the hydrographic data.”
Then I found a rationalization that would allow me not to question my assumptions…. – Just finishing his thought process.
When I read or here alarmists claim the last 3 years were the warmest in history I am scratching my head. Can anybody tell me what data set they use to justify this claim? What data set is nasa using when they make these statements on press releases?
Is it the average measurements of available stations?
Warmunists use a special “secret sauce”, known only to them to spice up their “data”. Besides, why should they tell us since we will only find something wrong with it? It’s a red herring anyway. We say 18-year warming Halt, they say “look, squirrel!”
So they never supply the raw data and methodology to be explain this claim? That information is not available at all?