Eddies pull carbon emissions into deep ocean, new model simulates complex process
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., June 24, 2015–Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a computer model that clarifies the complex processes driving ocean mixing in the vast eddies that swirl across hundreds of miles of open ocean.
“The model enables us to study the important processes of ocean storms, which move heat and carbon from the atmosphere into the deep ocean,” said Todd Ringler, who leads the Accelerated Climate Model for Energy (ACME) ocean science team at Los Alamos. “This happens very slowly, but over the next 1,000 years, much of the fossil fuel carbon emissions will end up in the deep ocean; ocean eddies make that happen.”
The Lagrangian In-situ, Global, High-performance particle Tracking (LIGHT) model is a first-of-its-kind tool because of its ability to exploit the power available from today’s supercomputers.
Global climate simulations are beginning to be able to resolve the largest ocean eddies, called mesoscale eddies, which are considered the “weather” of the ocean. The model that the Laboratory researchers developed for ocean mixing leads to an improved understanding of these mesoscale eddies and how they mix the ocean waters. This information increases global climate simulation accuracy through a better representation of heat fluxes and carbon into the deep ocean.
Eddies move heat, carbon, and other biogeochemical tracers from the ocean surface into the deep ocean and, as a result, store the carbon and heat away from the atmosphere. Transport and mixing regulates the global climate and the distribution of natural marine resources.
The team’s paper “Diagnosing isopycnal diffusivity in an eddying, idealized mid-latitude ocean basin via Lagrangian In-situ, Global, High-performance particle Tracking (LIGHT),” was recently published in the Journal of Physical Oceanography. The work will be released as part of the Model for Prediction Across Scales Ocean (MPAS-O), a core component of ACME.
The MPAS-O is a global, multiscale, ocean code that simulates spatial and temporal scales ranging from coastal dynamics to basin-wide circulations. The primary application of MPAS-O is for the global ocean and its role in the evolution of global climate change. In their research, the team conducted ocean simulations with a massive number of particles spread evenly throughout the ocean; each particle is carried along with the ocean currents.
“Not only does each particle tell us about the ocean currents, but groups of particles tell us how turbulence in the ocean mixes temperature and carbon dioxide throughout the ocean” said Phillip Wolfram, a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory and a member of the ACME science team.
The results highlight the capability of LIGHT to compute the horizontal and vertical structure of diffusivity within the high-performance computing of MPAS-O, Wolfram said.
“This project quantifies the key fundamental processes of the ocean and points the way to improved techniques to better simulate climate change over a range of spatial and temporal scales,” Wolfram said.
###
Just the ocean doing what it is supposed to do.
Yeah, lets blame it all on Eddie
I object!
Eddie’s in the space-time continuum, according to Ford Prefect.
Eustace
Fantasy – I think.
Ish . . . .
Auto
Eustace Cranch on June 25, 2015 at 11:17 am
Eddie’s in the space-time continuum, according to Ford Prefect.
“Is he” replied Arthur Dent.
In: The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, Douglas Adams
Erratum: “Is he?”
yes but now we have a computer model based on our limited knowledge of what it does…to tell us what it does
Can we really trust any computer model that is based on “limited knowledge”?
This describes the current climate models that are so far out of whack.
If the knowledge is limited I hope the empirical data will not be ignored.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Again with the deep oceans. Missing heat, meet carbon emissions. Oy!
When the world realises that global warming was a scam, and all the alarmists go missing, maybe we should look for them in the deep ocean.
You don’t know if climate scientists are compatible with the deep oceans. We’d have to do a study.
Global temperatures January-May 2015 exceeded 2010’s as the warmest first five months of any year, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center noted that the first five months of 2015 nudged ahead of January-May 2010 by 0.09 degrees Celsius.
Brooks,
so what? It is the CAUSE of such ‘temperatures’ that is at issue not the temperatures themselves. i.e. are they just a contemporary phenomenon like the Mediaeval or Roman Warmings or something else.?
As for NOAA’s DCDC data, is that the raw data of the fiddled data? What does their ‘data’ say about the Mediaeval or Roman Warmings? Nothing you say? NOTHING? SO where does that leave us?
There is also the very real possibility that the so called ‘global temperature’ data set is utterly unsuited to delivering such a number to the accuracy required to reasonably make such statements with any meaningful certainty. This due to reasons of uncertainty or lack of quality of siting, consistency over time, the liklihood of a consistantly increasing UHI influence over time and other factors that Anthony and others have gone into for a long time. The issues with the changing apparatus for measuring sea surface temperatures is an exemplar of this. Until the deployment of the ARGO network, the apparatus used ( various buckets and sea intake thermometers in the ( rather warm) engine room interiors) were little more than a joke given the sort of accuracy sought and wide open to bias an order of magnitude greater than the accuracy of the anomaly figure.
No “reply” for me to click for M Seward
2. Roy Spencer
“infrared-absorbing gases warm the surface and lower atmosphere” http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/slaying-the-slayers-with-the-alabama-two-step/
and
“I have not yet seen any compelling evidence that there exists a major flaw in the theory explaining the basic operation of the Earth’s natural Greenhouse Effect.” http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/comments-on-miskolczi%E2%80%99s-2010-controversial-greenhouse-theory/
Anthony Watts
“I suppose that because I agreed that global warming occurred over the last century, and that CO2 plays a role (though isn’t the only driver) that he [Spencer Michels, PBS Newshour correspondent] was surprised that he didn’t have a “denier” soundbite to work with.” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/17/ill-be-on-the-pbs-newshour-tonight/
This is a reply to M. Seward’s reply to my first comment
Roger Pielke, Sr.
“The emission of CO2 into the atmosphere, and its continued accumulation in the atmosphere is changing the climate. We do not need to agree on the magnitude of its global average radiative forcing to see a need to limit this accumulation. The biogeochemical effect of added CO2 by itself is a concern as we do not know its consequences. At the very least, ecosystem function will change resulting in biodiversity changes as different species react differently to higher CO2. The prudent path, therefore, is to limit how much we change our atmosphere.” http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/skeptical-climate-responses-to-my-questions-and-my-reply/
Fred Singer
“One of [deniers’] favorite arguments is that the greenhouse effect does not exist at all because it violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics…One can show them data of downwelling infrared radiation from CO2, water vapor, and clouds, which clearly impinge on the surface. But their minds are closed to any such evidence.”
and
“Another subgroup simply says that the concentration of atmospheric CO2 is so small that they can’t see how it could possibly change global temperature. But laboratory data show that CO2 absorbs IR radiation very strongly.” http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/climate_deniers_are_giving_us_skeptics_a_bad_name.html
Anthony Watts
“I suppose that because I agreed that global warming occurred over the last century, and that CO2 plays a role (though isn’t the only driver) that he [Spencer Michels, PBS Newshour correspondent] was surprised that he didn’t have a “denier” soundbite to work with.” http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/17/ill-be-on-the-pbs-newshour-tonight/
and
“I’m saying that the data might be biased by these influences [urbanization’s buildings and streets] to a percentage. Yes, we have some global warming, it’s clear the temperature has gone up in the last 100 years. But what percentage of that is from carbon dioxide? And what percentage of that is from changes in the local and measurement environment?” http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/09/why-the-global-warming-crowd-oversells-its-message.html
Roy Spencer
“infrared-absorbing gases warm the surface and lower atmosphere” http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/03/slaying-the-slayers-with-the-alabama-two-step/
and
“I have not yet seen any compelling evidence that there exists a major flaw in the theory explaining the basic operation of the Earth’s natural Greenhouse Effect.” http://www.drroyspencer.com/2010/08/comments-on-miskolczi%E2%80%99s-2010-controversial-greenhouse-theory/
Christopher Monckton
“Is there a greenhouse effect? Concedo [concedo / concede]. Does it warm the Earth? Concedo. Is carbon dioxide a greenhouse gas? Concedo. If carbon dioxide be added to the atmosphere, will warming result? Concedo.” http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/monckton/climate-freedom-hancock-background.pdf
“I have not yet seen any compelling evidence
===========
This graph of temperature and CO2 it is clearly that of an astable multi-vibrator. It is not a graph of a simple log function as envisioned by GHG theory.
“Global temperatures January-May 2015 exceeded 2010’s as the warmest first five months of any year, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center noted that the first five months of 2015 nudged ahead of January-May 2010 by 0.09 degrees Celsius.”
Seriously Brooks?
How about this:
http://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ScreenHunter_9740-Jun.-25-06.54.gif
Or this:
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/hansen-the-climate-chiropractor/
Warmest year evah…in a pigs eye!
For some reason Brooks stopped the quote before Moncton made his point:
“Our quarrel is not with what is known but with what is merely guessed at. The central question in the scientific debate is not qualitative but quantitative: not whether warming will occur but how much will
occur. ”
I don’t have time to find out what was excluded from the other references.
Or this:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Screen_shot_2012-10-06_at_11.14.04_AM.png
ferd berple
June 25, 2015 at 12:09 pm
The last triggering episode on the right looks like there is a loose connection. Perhaps someone is fiddling with the output.
Climate change as such is not a scam, cagw otoh has scammy features.
ferd, from that graph, you will note that peak CO2 was ALWAYS followed by a drop in temperature.
Even at its peak atmospheric concentration, CO2 was totally unable to maintain a warmer temperature.
“NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center noted that the first five months of 2015 nudged ahead of January-May 2010 by 0.09 degrees Celsius.”
FFS, these charlatans really have no shame, have they?
“ferd, from that graph, you will note that peak CO2 was ALWAYS followed by a drop in temperature.”
I take your point, but did you say it the way you meant to?
I think the graph shows that peak CO2 is always preceded by a drop in temperature. In other words, by the time CO2 peaks, the temp has already begun to fall.
Same thing when CO2 hits a trough…by the time CO2 hits a low and begins to trend up again, warming had/has already begun to rise.
If they mean carbon dioxide, why do they say “carbon emissions”, and “carbon”?
And is there some reason that only the carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels will wind up in the deep ocean?
Several weeks ago there was a rather long discussion about how and where water from the surface winds up in the deep ocean, and I do not recall anyone suggesting that eddies had a major role.
And is that picture a 3D representation of this new model? Is that the entire globe?
And besides all of that…this phrasing:
“…developed a computer model that clarifies the complex processes driving ocean mixing…”
sounds like the assertion is being made that the entire process is now clear. Really?
Not “shed some light on”, or “gave some hints as to”, or “may provide some new insights”, or some such?
Like it is all settled now.
Then again…why am I surprised?
Once again, the climatologists assert a theory, and use wording suggesting they have found truth.
But without confirmation from real world data, a theory is never more than a theory, even if the theory is run through a computer. And so far, the real world data keeps coming up inconvenient for the (CAGW-promoting) climatologists’ assertions.
Brooks,That is using the new, improved, adjusted data from Karl et al (2015), ERSSTv4. The bastard child of an unseemly cohabitation between noisy ship data and pristine buoy data.
“new model simulates complex process”
Which means that this is no more than a hypothesis which needs to be tested against reality. I am heartily sick of so-called reputable scientists making the most basic schoolboy error of mistaking modelled data for real world evidence. Models are animated demonstrations of a hypothesis. Models are not a scientifically valid test of a hypothesis.
A run-of-the-mill computer modeler can make a good living modeling most anything, so long as the model’s resulting output cannot be proven or dis-proven within the span of the modeler’s lifetime. Project selection is the key to survival of the incompetent modeler. Since private enterprise is not much interested in “models unprovable within our lifetimes”, ‘gubment is where you will find high concentrations of incompetent modelers. There are many exceptions, but that is the general rule. The hot-shots like proving they’re good. Others like hiding out in a crowd.
Our govt has proven their incompetence with computer programs, security, cost control etc. If fact no organization that offers lifetime employment in spite of permormance can be trusted inclufing the Supreme Court.
Max
My thoughts exactly. Has this simulation been tested against reality? No? Geeze. But WE HAVE A COMPUTER PROGRAM!!!
Yes, but this one projects over 1,000 years rather than just the next 50.
Wake me when get there, and let me know what how well the model correlates with reality.
“Eddies move heat, carbon, and other biogeochemical tracers from the ocean surface into the deep ocean and, as a result, store the carbon and heat away from the atmosphere. Transport and mixing regulates the global climate and the distribution of natural marine resources.” But it never brings it back up or generate a neutral mixing, so Trenberth is OK with his theory that the “pause” has been caused by the oceans gulping up the excess heat as well as half the CO2. It will be great if they are right because in the end the CO2 in the atmosphere will stabilise regardless of the amount of fossil fuels burned or not!? The eddies will come along as the 7th cavalry to save us.
How can the model satisfy continuity if it takes heat, carbon, etc. down to lower depths but never brings them back up? Where did Wiley Coyote get his tools and equipment? ACME.
And Trenberth never explains why this began to work all of a sudden, and not in the past.
“And Trenberth never explains why this began to work all of a sudden, and not in the past.”
Look here…it is all settled. Except for some ongoing massaging, and fancy footwork.
SETTLED!
Got it?
Besides, why should he bother warmsplaining it to us…we are just going to try to find something wrong with the warmsplaination anyway.
how nice. a hard science ocean behavior paper that doesn’t spout climate CO2 alarmist crapola.
Although some may say that it’s a find the missing heat paper, the one easily observed, globally available measure that there is no missing heat is the steady state of SLR. If missing heat were to involve deep ocean input, then thermal expansion would be accelerating SLR. Conversely, a deceleration or reversal of SLR will be an unambiguous signal of cooling deep ocean water.
Except that I don’t ever see surface heat penetrating the thermocline.
Besides, where will they chase after the missing heat when the AMO and PDO are both negative during a solar grand minimum?
In modeling to get the ‘right answers’, you have to leave out certain key elements, like SLR and just focus on where the co2 and heat are going. And of course ocean acidification. There is soo much co2 that not only are the oceans getting warmer but more acidic as well…. who knew. I wonder if CAGW can do math at all. I’m sorry complex math that involves more than one variable.
There we were, being lead to believe ‘by 97% of all scientists’ that CO2 was THE big player and now this shows that it’s the oceans that really call the shots on just about everything. Had to laugh at the final para though:
“This project quantifies the key fundamental processes of the ocean and points the way to improved techniques to better simulate climate change over a range of spatial and temporal scales,”
They just couldn’t resist the ‘Climate Change’ money shot.
I can see how eddies can assist the absorption of CO2 into water.
But it’s the sun that heats the ocean, not the atmosphere.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/05/10/empirical-evidence-oceans-make-climate/
Journal of Physical Oceanography 2015 ; e-View
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JPO-D-14-0260.1
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JPO-D-14-0260.1
if I read this correctly, that is a bit more than 9 million particles of what exactly??
Clearly this contradicts Dr. Trenberth’s idea that the heat has moved into the deep ocean within mere decades.
+10, commieBob. Like most of he fear mongers, Trenberth was just arm waving for a nice science sounding distraction.
This study is yet another that shows he skeptics are right.
Too bad the public square has been so polluted by the fear mongering of Trenberth an gang that it may make little difference to policy decisions. We seem to have far too much of the “leaders” of the world committed to non-fact based policies regarding energy and climate. Facts do not seem to sway the climate obsessed from their faith.
commieBob, I think this will be construed by the fear-bogers to mean: “It will take 1000 years for ocean eddies to cleanse the atmosphere of fossil fuel pollution that our generation has created.”
it also contradicts basic meteorology. Storms build over oceans by taking heat from the surface. This is why you can see hurricane tracks as colder SST’s. The amount of energy taken from the ocean is huge. In a day an average hurricane releases an amount of energy “equivalent to 200 times the world-wide electrical generating capacity” see http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html for the calculations.
Any heat driven down by eddies is heat that got into the ocean due to solar radiation being absorbed. It did not come from the atmosphere.
Then getting mealy mouthed an non-scientific and calling carbonic acid ‘carbon’ shows that they are looking for publicity not doing good science.
Is the kinetic energy of these eddies greater than the difference in thermal energy between the surface water and deep water in the column of water within and below the eddy?
If not, how would the difference in buoyancy be overcome? And if so, is this energy accounted for I climate models?
I think the kinetic energy must be less than the difference in thermal energy.
If you stir up a bucket of water very vigorously, and wait for the kinetic energy to be dissipated by friction, is the water measurably warmer?
And how deep do such eddies penetrate?
Some comments here lead me to think that some are imagining a tornado of water extending from the surface to the abyssal plain.
I do not think that such occurs.
And I suspect it will involve the food chain in a major way.
Ok, maybe I’ll buy into the idea that vertical mass transport in the oceans can move energy from atmospheric gas molecules into the liquid molecules in the colder, deep oceans. But once distributed therein, what mass transport mechanism will collect that energy and return it to the warmer air?
Once a CO2 molecule is assimilated into ocean water, it cannot be thought of as carrying any ‘heat.’ Think of a can of soda pop, unopened it is under pressure, when cooled it is under less pressure. An opened can of soda pop will outgas its carbonation(CO2) faster if at room temperature, but an opened can placed in the fridge will retain its carbonation longer. Someone correct me if I’m wrong here.
And it might end up as a solid carbonate in clamshells etc
This paper seems to overlook that the only way water gets to the deep ocean is when it becomes very cold and excessively salty.
Does this model compliment or replace what is thought to be the case re the thermohaline circulation?
Looks like the ocean will save us from CO2agedon.
Oh no, another acronym! I guess LIGHT is easier to remember than LISGHPPT? 😉 At the very least this will help the layman, and perhaps the AGWers as well, to understand how and why CO2 actually follows and does not lead temperature changes over time.
And it’s catchier than “WERSSTv3b.”
But they did get ACME in there. Wiley Coyote must be proud.
“Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a computer model…” And that’s as far as I got.
I guess this is a good replacement for handing Stalin the research secrets on nuclear bombs real time to Stalin. They get it all now via hackers anyway, without meeting under the bridge in Los Alamos.
“a computer model that clarifies the complex processes driving ocean mixing in the vast eddies”
It’s been around for years and it’s called CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics). Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I wouldn’t trust it until it has been thoroughly verified.
I thought the ocean and atmosphere were subject to chaotic processes, where even if we knew every flap of the butterfly’s wing we could not predict the course of the resulting hurricane. And we do not know those wing-beats, and never will. Yet here they ignore that, and just play pretend at a multi-kilometer scale. Below that scale they are blind to what’s going on, and what emerges to drive the larger trajectories.
So: they are just making stuff up. Maybe they are doing their “best” given the limitations of supercomputers, but it seems to me another example of the boy with the hammer, to whom everything looks like a nail. They have this big shiny supercomputer, they have to justify its continued care and feeding, and this modeling produces wonderful eye-candy and impressive-sounding statements about ever-more precise simulations of –what?
Well it is interesting, but I agree wit Ken, it is a model after all, based upon limited knowledge in the first instance, with a few assumptions thrown into the pot for good measure, & hey, Bob’s your uncle. They may be right, they may be wrong, but isn’t experimentation. I had this out a few years ago with a former chorister & a Wet Office physicist I sang with who wanted to call me out over couple of beers because I wrote an article in the Parish Magazine about why Copenhagen would fail, after an initial rejection by the partisan editer. After two hours of pleasant discourse, during which I let him tell hoe the models were “built”, obeying the Laws of Physics, then we shifted to warming & cooling of the climate system through ice-ages & inter-glacials. Eventually he got to the stage of asking why the models showed the warming through added CO2, so I told him, they had to programme the model to show a given amount of warming for an assumed level of climate sensitivity to a given amount of CO2! He was rather stunned at the simplicity of my answer, & didn’t really have a response! Another ex-Wet Office physicist I currently sing with admitted (after a couple of pints on a Friday night), that there would be little change to atmospheric conditions as a result from a few extra ppm of CO2, but he did acknowledge that it was about changing peoples behaviour towards energy! BTW he’s a nice chap & all that, but he is also a very early retired guy, which annoys somewhat as I will probably have to work til I drop! 🙁
Well, they certainly seem to have succeeded in changing people’s behaviour towards energy.
Certainly, here in the UK. We used to allow engineers and economists to take a significant role in providing the maximum amount of energy for the minimum cost.
The two variables that were foremost in the minds of the experts and the public, were energy and money. The subsidiary variables were jobs and particulate pollution, perhaps.
Then that all changed, and CO2 was turned into the principle point of interest.
This shift enabled a group of fluffy-headed eco-aware numpties to muscle their way into influencing UK energy policy.
The vast mis-allocation of, and destruction of capital, that has occured in the energy sector in the last 25 years would not have occurred, had the political class and the eco-left-leaning fluff-heads recognized their own incompetence and simply requested that hard-headed capitalists and engineers design them a low CO2 energy infrastructure. (i.e. via a rationally designed carbon pricing mechanism).
It seems to me that two-variables is all that a public debate can handle.
So, when CO2 was added into the number of considerations, the other significant variable – MONEY, dropped off the back of the cart.
Formerly everything was about creating cheap energy.
Latterly everything has been about creating low carbon energy, BUT AT ANY COST.
This situation in public debate and in the media, has become so severe, that even attempting to suggest that maybe we should consider how it might be possible to make the maximum reduction in CO2 AT THE LOWEST COST PER UNIT OF CO2, immediately stirs up animosity, slander and accusations of denial.
They sure changed people’s behaviour towards energy.
We used to be smart(ish) – and now we are radically stupid.
The perfect symbol in my mind for the transformation, is Didcott power station.
We used to have large effective non-flammable concrete cooling towers at Didcott power station. These were recently willfully destroyed in order to satisfy some bullshit agenda.
Now we have lots of small wooden cooling towers. Nice and eco-friendly looking, like the wooden shelving at the local whole-food cooperative.
How odd that the new wooden cooling towers should have set on fire and burned out of control for many hours.
I suppose that nobody could have anticipated such a thing.
Wood is perhaps not the ideal material for the construction of power stations, it seems.
Who knew?
What happened to old idea of leaving engineering to engineers?
Completely off subject but when I tried to log onto wuwt by Coogle I reached the site but then was dumped and told no such site. I went to DuckDuckgo and was also dumped in the same manner twice. I believe all of them sent me to Home Depot. Is someone screwing with wuwt or is it my computer?
Max
Great word: “numpties”, which I have never seen/heard before….must a kind of “empty nullity” or such. Is that close?
Anyone who has ever tried to take a process from model to bench top to pilot plant to full scale production understands the limitations of models based on theory. Climatolgists don’t have a scaled bench or pilot to test and translation to full scale without them is doomed from the start. But the public still eats it up.
Discussing how hoes and models are built, and over beers you say? Hmm…
Oh never mind…I thought I saw a joke there, but it must have been my imagination.
Does this work on all the naturally occurring CO2, or just that from burning fossil fuels? Are “carbon neutral” fuels excluded as well?
What does this study do about all of the past analysis based upon the amount of pollutants and the depth of these pollutant’s in the ocean indicating the age, quantity amount, etc., that man has generated and released to the environment. Eg. The gasoline additive that replaced lead and its potential harm was based upon the old theory of the depth the pollutants would sink to. Is all of the old science, predictions no good?
I’m all for computer models but they must be verifiable and not used for policy decisions until they are verified, and that may take a long time. If modified the verify clock must reset to zero. Those invoking the precautionary principle must not be allowed to board airplanes.
Pochas,
Actually, the correct term is Validated. Verification in software simply means that is works as designed. Validation, on the other hand, means that it has been checked against reality and is suitable for real world work. Just ‘cuz a program produces an output that matches your expectations, that program cannot be claimed to be validated. (unless your goal is to produce bogus results 😉 ) Fortunately, much of what this model is supposed to do can be checked using chemical tracers and such though it would take a number of years to reach a level that might be called Validation.
Correct. Thanks
Spot on. There are really too many hand-waving criticisms of models on this thread.
Everything in science is a model. An equation is a model. It’s all models and measurements.
Frictionless incline planes, laminar flow, the sum of infinitely many thin vertical slices, etc etc.
It’s all models. None of these things ARE the thing that they represent.
This is all fine, providing that we all understand the limitations of the model.
Judith Curry, for example, would like to tell policy makers about the limitations of the models.
Policy makers do not want to hear. They have bananas in their ears and dollar signs in their eyes.
It seems to me that if the deep ocean is cold (which it is), that means more water and CO2 reaches the deep ocean from polar regions than does water in eddies in tropical and temperate zones.
So this may nicely describe a second order effect, and Trenberth need to keep looking.
Those eddies mix vertically both up and down so CO2 is as easily transported from the deep to the surface as it is transported from the surface to the deep. The kicker in this process is that in the tropics, the CO2 concentrations in the deep are much higher than they are on the surface so the net flux of CO2 will be into the atmosphere rather than into the ocean. Most of the transport of CO2 from the atmosphere to the deep ocean is done in the Arctic ocean and circumpolar currents of the Antarctic as sea ice freezes increasing the density of the unfrozen salt water. They need to include these observations into the design of their models.
And just how does water at about 4 degrees C in the deep ocean of the tropics become easily transported to the surface? Cold water is denser. And there is no place that water from the deep wells upward.
The upward leg of the thermohaline circulation is a broad and very very slow upward movement…nothing at all like a rapid flow or vertical current. As new cold water enters the abyss, the water already there is displaced upwards a bit. And the last places it could ever rise is where the surface water is hot.
To be clear: If it is truly your contention that water from the deep ocean rises to the surface, and does so at the tropics, please provide a source for this assertion. I believe that no such thing happens…ever.
You have a lot of upwelling in the eastern tropical Pacific (el Nino 2). Think about the Cromwell current and Kelvin waves that ride on top of the thermohaline interface, that comes to the surface around the Galopagos. Those eddies will be active at that interface picking up cold salty water saturated with CO2.
My understanding is that the Humboldt (Peru) Current, where it bends back towards the west, causes massive upwelling of the Western South American coast(I believe only when there is NOT an el nino occurring), and is one of the world’s most productive fisheries as a result. But this upwelling does not originate from the abyssal depths. Not even close. Much of the upwelling originates over the continental shelf, and above the thermocline. Below the thermocline, the water is just too dense to rise to the surface
Every graphic representation of the thermohaline circulation I have ever seen looks about like this one:
Transect of Atlantic Ocean:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/Ocean-temperature-vs-depth.png
The words: “ARGO”, “floats”, “bouy” are absent from the paper. Is there any real data used in this study or is it simulations all the way down “to the bottom of the sea”?
Correction, the words are absent from the PR and the post. I don’t know about the paper.
The Lagrangian In-situ, Global, High-performance particle Tracking (LIGHT) model
Note the word “Lagrangian” this is a type of orbit .
Have fun from here.
michael
Mike, see Lagrangian mechanics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_mechanics
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=lagrangian%20point
Me thinks they using a satellite, the new one that was put up several months ago. Then I may be wrong.
michael
They are only using computers. It’s just a model.
Stephen Rasey:
Indeed! It IS nothing more than numerical simulations all the way down into the deep ocean. One has to wonder if even the strong density stratification of the oceans has been taken into account realistically.
Ahh yes, models taken to new depths. Got it.
“if you give a mouse a cookie…”
“if you give a climate scientist a model…”
Surely trying to understand ocean fluid dynamics by modeling them is a worhwhile scientific endeavor. It’s sad that they have to repeatedly cite “carbon” and reference “climate change” to make the case for their studies.
The only reason to model something in science is to point you to what you need to measure in the real world or real laboratory. Anything else is playing video games.
I would also add – or to make sense of something you have already measured that doesn’t make sense.
Say you actually measured the variables of the ocean and had tracked chemical tracers going places that current theory did not predict. You could then make a hypothesis, work out the math, run the math in the computer to see if the new hypothesis actually explained your observations, then go out and reproduce it in a new location to see if the hypothesis is complete, write the paper, collect accolades or criticism, find new places to explore, get tenure, inflict theory on generations of hapless grad students.