Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
A week or so ago, a troll left a link at my blog (Thanks, David) to a supposed-to-be-alarming blog post about a new climate study of ocean heat content. According to the study, a revised method of tweaking ocean heat reconstructions has manufactured new warming so that the top 700 meters of the oceans are warming faster than predicted by climate models. In other words, the “missing heat” is missing no more.
The new paper is Cheng et al. (2015) Global Upper Ocean Heat Content Estimation: Recent Progress and the Remaining Challenges. (Not paywalled. A pre-print edition is available.) John Abraham, alarmist extraordinaire from SkepticalScience and The Guardian’s blog ClimateConsensus, was a coauthor. See Abraham’s post The oceans are warming faster than climate models predicted. Can anyone guess the goal of their study from the title of Abraham’s post?
While the stories about the paper focused on the newly manufactured warming, the paper itself was somewhat critical of (1) the large uncertainties in the reconstructions, (2) the lack of consensus in infilling (mapping) methods used in the reconstructions and (3) climate model simulations of ocean warming. The Cheng et al. abstract reads:
Ocean heat content (OHC) change contributes substantially to global sea level rise, so it is a vital task for the climate research community to estimate historical OHC. While there are large uncertainties regarding its value, in this study, the authors discuss recent progress to reduce the errors in OHC estimates, including corrections to the systematic biases in expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data, filling gaps in the data, and choosing a proper climatology. These improvements lead to a better reconstruction of historical upper (0–700 m) OHC change, which is presented in this study as the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) version of historical upper OHC assessment. Challenges still remain; for example, there is still no general consensus on mapping methods. Furthermore, we show that Coupled Model Intercomparison Project, Phase 5 (CMIP5) simulations have limited ability in capturing the interannual and decadal variability of historical upper OHC changes during the past 45 years.
Bottom line: To manufacture the new warming, Cheng et al. adjusted, tweaked, modified (tortured) subsurface ocean temperature reconstructions to the depths of 700 meters starting in 1970.
My Figure 1 compares the “unadjusted” data versus the much-adjusted ocean heat content reconstruction from the NODC. It is not the data presented in Cheng et al. (I used the UKMO EN3 reconstruction for the NODC “unadjusted” data. It used to be available through the KNMI Climate Explorer.) I’m providing Figure 1 to give you an idea of how horribly the data had already been mistreated to prepare the base NODC reconstruction.
Figure 1
If you were to read Cheng et al., they bounce back and forth between the metrics of ocean heat content and average subsurface temperatures, both to depths of 700 meters. That is, in the text, Cheng et al. present trends in ocean heat content for the period of 1970 to 2005, but in their Figure 4, my Figure 2, they’re showing trends for subsurface ocean temperatures. (Their Figure 4 made the rounds in the warmist blogs and mainstream media.) It appears climate scientists have realized the public will relate better to temperature than joules. But the trends listed on the graph are so minute, shown in ten-thousandths of a degree C per year, they’re likely losing some of their audience with all of those zeroes.
Figure 2
Presenting the subsurface ocean reconstructions using those two metrics is not unusual. Subsurface ocean temperature reconstructions and ocean heat content reconstructions mimic one another because subsurface ocean temperatures are the primary component of ocean heat content. You just have to keep track of which metric they’re discussing and illustrating.
Take a closer look at the results of the revised Cheng et al. reconstruction (red curve) in the top cell (Cell a) of their Figure 4 (my Figure 2) and the curve of the data using the “NODC-mapping” method of infilling (blue curve), which is not the NODC data. We can see Cheng et al. employed the cool-the-early-data method to increase the warming rate for the period of 1970 to 2005. [sarc on] They’re probably saving the warm-the-more-recent-data method for the next paper, which will then show the oceans warming even faster so the modelers can crank up climate sensitivities. [sarc off]
After seeing the trends listed on their Figure 4 for the “NODC-mapping” method, I decided to check to see what the vertical mean temperature reconstruction directly from the NODC website shows for the world oceans, to 700 meters, for the period of 1970 to 2005 (data here.) See my Figure 3.
Figure 3
Isn’t that amazing? Using the “NODC-mapping” method, Cheng et al. show a warming rate for the global oceans of +0.0045 deg C/year for the period of 1970-2005, but the reconstruction for the same depths of 0-700 meters directly from the NODC website show a warming rate of only +0.0033 deg C/year. Now consider that the outcome of Cheng et al.’s new method of infilling the oodles and oodles of missing data in the depths of the oceans shows the global oceans warming at a rate of +0.0061 deg C/ year. In other words, for the period of 1970 to 2005, Cheng et al. have almost doubled the warming rate of the basic NODC reconstruction for the depths of 0-700 meters.
Now, I guess you’re wondering about the differences in warming rates between the Cheng et al. “NODC-mapping” method and the reconstruction at the NODC website itself. Under the heading of “2 Data”, Cheng et al. write:
Assessment of OHC change relies on in-situ temperature observations. In this study, ocean subsurface temperature profiles for 1970–2014 are from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) and the Global Ocean Temperature (IGOT) dataset (Cheng and Zhu, 2014b), which is a quality-controlled and bias-corrected dataset. The in-situ temperature profiles of the IGOT dataset are sourced from the World Ocean Database 2013 (WOD13) (Boyer et al., 2013).
In other words, it appears for the Cheng et al. results, the (1) data starts out as the observations-based data from the NODC’s World Ocean Database, then (2) the data are mistreated for the IGOT reconstruction, and, not satisfied with those results, (3) Cheng et al. tortured the IGOT reconstruction even more for this study and presented it two ways and one of those ways was the “NODC-mapping” method.
Did you notice the other remarkable coincidence? In their Figure 4 (my Figure 2) Cheng et al. show a climate model-simulated warming rate of +0.0053 deg C/year…for the multi-model mean of the climate models stored in the CMIP5 archive. That’s the archive used by the IPCC for their 5th Assessment Report published in 2013. The (good) “Observation” reconstruction presented by Cheng et al. has a trend of +0.0061 deg C/ year, while the already-tweaked and tweaked again (bad) “NODC-mapping” reconstruction shows a trend of +0.0045 deg C/year. The average of the “good” and “bad” reconstructions is +0.0053 deg C/year, exactly the same as the models. [sarc on.] Kind of, sort of, looks like the revisions to the data were planned to surround the models. Sheesh! [sarc off.]
CLOSING – NO MATTER HOW THEY TRY TO LEGITIMIZE OCEAN HEAT CONTENT DATA, IT’S STILL IN THE REALM OF MAKE-BELIEVE BEFORE THE ARGO ERA…AND QUESTIONABLE DURING IT
For years, climate scientists have been concerned about the “missing heat”, which was the difference between modeled and observed ocean warming to depth. The actual value of the missing heat has always been hard to find because the modeled ocean heat content and depth-averaged temperature of the oceans are not available in an easy-to-use format…from the KNMI Climate Explorer for example. Luckily, for the depths of 0-700 meters, Cheng et al. listed a warming rate for the global oceans of +0.0053 deg C/year for the multi-model mean of the CMIP5 climate models, while the reconstruction directly from the NODC website show a warming of only +0.0033 deg C/year. While the missing heat isn’t actually half of what was predicted by the models, it’s still a big chunk…almost 40%. That missing heat, of course, suggested that the climate models were way to sensitive to carbon dioxide.
But things have changed rapidly in the past few years. Climate scientists have not only “found” the missing heat by tweaking their reconstruction methods, they’ve manufactured more heat than the models show by torturing the reconstructions even more.
Unfortunately for the climate science community, no matter how they mistreat the source data, their reconstructions are still make-believe. Why? There’s very little source data, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. See Figure 4, which is an annotated version of Figure 13 from Abraham et al. (2013) Review of Ocean Temperature Observations: Implications for Ocean Heat Content Estimates and Climate Change. The IPCC used an edited version of it in Chapter 3: (Observations Ocean) of their 5th Assessment Report. See the IPCC’s Figure 3.A.2. We discussed the IPCC’s version in the post AMAZING: The IPCC May Have Provided Realistic Presentations of Ocean Heat Content Source Data.
Figure 4
Is it any wonder why Cheng et al. didn’t bother trying to reconstruct the temperature observations below 700 meters?
For more information about the numerous problems with ocean heat content reconstructions, see the post Is Ocean Heat Content Data All It’s Stacked up to Be?
Once again, the climate science community has shown, when the models perform poorly, they won’t question the science behind the models, they are more than happy to manufacture warming by adjusting the data to meet or exceed the warming rate of the models.
This paper will make a nice addition to a chapter in my upcoming book. Thanks, Cheng et al.
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Phew, it’s worse than we thought.
Looking at the big lift in the ’70s, you can actually see the major drought that blighted Australia during the Fraser years.
I meant in the unfudged line in figure 1, obviously.
Sorry, was too quick to post.
Can’t get real historical data? 🙁 Where’s Dr. Who when you need him? The BBC has let us down.
That is a great observation Bob. I don’t see how any climate “science” can be done using the “data” that is available from the government funded sources. I know that the planet has warmed from the depths of the Little Ice Age but I don’t think we know a whole lot more than that. Certainly anything from any division of the USA’s NASA has to be looked at with a lot of skepticism. I even understand that some agencies delete old data as they manufacture new data. (manufactured data?)
The theory behind CAGW (or climate weirding or whatever) has failed. The models have failed. The predictions have failed. Only fiddling with the data partially hides these facts.
Thanks for the continued vigilance Bob.
“I even understand that some agencies delete old data as they manufacture new data.” Brought to you courtesy of Winston Smith, Ministry of Truth.
markstoval, all datasets are products of a manufacturing processes. Simple changes in the processes can manufacture warming.
Bob, what was the ocean warming rate between 1750 and 1950? Does anyone have a clue?
If the ocean rise rate hasn’t changed in ages why does anyone think the temperature would be running ahead of it?
One way to catch people fiddling is to show the rate of ocean rise that must necessarily accompany a temperature rise. If the claimed temperature is ahead of the volume expansion then one of the conclusions is wrong. If they found ‘missing heat’ they must also locate the ‘missing sea level rise’.
In a discussion with a friend about sea temps, I asked him how many thermometers he thought he’d need to accurately measure the temp of an olympic sized pool. When he came up with a double digit figure, I pointed out how much bigger the worlds oceans are and how few thermometers were measuring down to 700m. His faith in his ability to claim that the oceans are warming was somewhat shaken.
I’m not even sure what “the average temperature of the ocean” actually means.
I’m on holiday in the Caribbean. At 9:00 am the ocean outside the hotel (Atlantic Ocean) is warm. If I go back at 6:00 pm it is noticeably warmer. How do you define average temperature? Also this is July. What about the temperature in other months.
If I go to the SW of the island, the water is again noticeably warmer (Caribbean Sea). This is only a distance of less than 100 miles.
A single Argo Buoy can not measure the average temperature of these locations. Yet we are lead to believe that the ensemble of 3000 odd Argo Buoys can measure the temperature of the oceans to within 0.01 C?
Despite the:
“I even understand that some agencies delete old data as they manufacture new data.” Brought to you courtesy of Winston Smith, Ministry of Truth.
Comment – which may have just a whiff of truth . . .
For me –
======
Walt D.
July 26, 2015 at 9:37 am
So you don’t believe that it is possible to measure the temperature of an Olympic sized swimming pool in London to 0.01 C by measuring the temperatures of Olympic swimming pools in Glasgow and Edinburgh?
======
– hits the nail very squarely on the head.
Even today, 4000 plus Argo Buoys each represent [apparently] some 25,000 square Miles of ocean each – West Virginia, say, or Slovakia or Croatia.
One Buoy.
One miraculous buoy.
Observations to one -ten-thousandths of a degree.
Yeah Right!
The highest form of affirmation in the English Language. Yeah Right!
Possibly the only double positive that is a negative!
CARP.
Tomorrow’s Monday.
Auto
Walt D.
The claim is to be able to report the temperature to 0.001 precision using AGRO Resistance Temperature Detectors precise to 0.01 degrees and accurate to 0.02 to 0.06 depending on their age. They can report whatever average they want but the answer is ±0.02 at best.
ALL measurements have error bars. All of them. All extra precision is false precision.
My son bought me a copy today of the classic ‘How to lie with statistics’. It has a section on this very subject. No result is more accurate than the devices that make the measurements. That is why people make better, more accurate instruments (if they can).
RTD’s can be bought as matched pairs. I understand an ARGO has a pair, one for reference. They drift (pun intended) and cannot be recalibrated on the ocean. That’s life.
One thermometer will do quite well.
Mosh, one thermometer would do quite well if you could take a large number of measurements with it.
Now make one measurement and move on. 500 miles away is a second swimming pool with its own thermometer. Measure that pool once. You are not allowed to check if the two thermometers agree on anything. That was done 5 years ago.
Now measure 3500 swimming pools once each with 3500 different thermometers and you still can’t calibrate them to each other.
The thermometers are accurate to ±0.02 degrees. Produce an average temperature that is more accurate than 0.02 degrees by a factor or 20.
Show your work.
For you, because you will fill in the rest.
Sorry Steve, but that’s a bait and switch argument and you know it. For practical purposes, yes, one thermometer will give a very useful temperature of a pool.
.
However, once you consider gradients due to varying pool depth, dimensions, circulation, and sulight, I would be very surprised if you could get a single measurement to measure it consistently to within 1C, and even then, it would have to be very carefully placed. I would fail any student who would claim to measure it to within 0.01C without at least dozens of simultaneous measurements.
I agree with Steven on this one.
Because, you know, we’re not insisting on implementing massive societal changes based on the temperature of a pool. We’re just trying to ascertain the degree of “shrinkage” that will occur. Important to know, yes. But only on a deeply personal scale…so, one thermometer should suffice.
rip
So you don’t believe that it is possible to measure the temperature of an Olympic sized swimming pool in London to 0.01 C by measuring the temperatures of Olympic swimming pools in Glasgow and Edinburgh?
According to your Figure 4, the standard for “observational sampling coverage” is met if you sample a 1 degree bin area once per year.
Once per year? I wonder whether there is a difference in trends that result from using only rarely sampled sites vs only using frequently sampled ones? I suppose you also might have to control for latitude, season, etc. but that would just call the value of once-per-year data into question even more.
Have you posted a comparison of temp (or heat content) trends comparing once-per-year sample areas to areas that have more frequently gathered data?
Phantom data is increasing. It has utterly swamped real data. The machine that is doing this are the computers run by climate ‘scientists’ who have to prove that we are roasting to death so CO2 (aka: thin air) can be heavily taxed by governments.
Looks like a new winner of the “Data Adjuster of the Month” prize parking spot
“Now consider that the outcome of Cheng et al.’s new method of infilling the oodles and oodles of missing data in the depths of the oceans shows the global oceans warming at a rate of +0.0061 deg C/ year.”
“… +0.0061 deg C/year.”
The reason these guys use decimal points in such a precise manner is to demonstrate to the world that they have a sense of humor.
What kind of lab equipment and process would it take to measure the temperature of a glass of water to this precision?
The kind made from unobtainium?
If there was no sampling error (which there obviously is) you can get such a number but you have to put the error bars on it.
Make measurements many years apart. Find a difference that is ‘significant’. Divide by the number of years. Presto, but the error bars remain as they are attached to the instrument that made the measurement.
taz1999,
Lab equipment gets you down to just below a mK. The Fluke reference thermometer uncertainty is about 0.6mK.
Go here…
http://us.flukecal.com/products/temperature-calibration/digital-thermometer-readouts/1594a1595a-super-thermometers?quicktabs_product_details=4
and look at this app note: 1594A/1595A Super-Thermometer Uncertainty Analysis (Application Note) (883.47 KB)
And that is for the readout.
For the sensor see this
http://us.flukecal.com/products/temperature-calibration/its-90-temperature-standards/5681-5683-5684-and-5685-quartz-sheat-0?quicktabs_product_details=2
Drift rates of one or two mK over a hundred hours.
Throw onto that the uncertainty in the triple point of water calibration is about 0.1mK.
And this is absolute laboratory reference grade stuff. Out in the field, over years, good luck with 0.01K.
Thank you J.
So it’s not as hard as I might have believed to measure to that accuracy.
“Accuracy as good as 0.06 ppm (0.000015 °C)”
Fluke looks about $25,000 each. Maybe get a volume discount.
That comment alone would justify the return of the “recommend ” feature.
I was asking the question a bit seriously. e.g. What device would claim such precision. I’m thinking at some point Heisenberg would start having something to say.
But, “unobtainium” hilarious. Well played.
I wonder if they waterboarded the results to get this?
I hope they didn’t drown the poor statistics!
I find the whole idea that they can measure “the effect of CO2” in the deep oceans frankly laughable.
Even assuming there is a mechanism by which this effect can be distributed there, the changes in temperature would be impossibly small to measure.
Paul: if the sampling was perfect, it should be possible to show a measured warming after ten years.
how much money does it take to turn someone into a government stooge?
how much would it take to turn them into a whistleblower?
As I responded on Bob Tisdale’s site:
Your figure 3 is typical of the noisy data one sees everywhere in climate science. Any data analyst [well, any GOOD data analyst] can tell at a glance–from long experience–that the devil is in the noise (and the shortness of the time period involved), and that the trend could easily be, not 0.0033°C/yr, but as small as, say, 0.0016°C/yr., in other words an uncertainty of about +/- 0.0016°C/yr in the trend (and that’s just for the featured 35-year time period; the longer-term trend could easily be zero.) The point is that the 0.0045°C/yr, for the “NODC mapping method” differs from the “NODC website” trend of 0.0033°C/yr by almost the full uncertainty in the underlying data, and the 0.0061°C/yr of the “Cheng-infilling” method differs by twice that uncertainty, implying Cheng et al. tortured the data by fully twice the standard deviation in the data to get their “ha ha, it’s worse than we thought, so there” result. So I for one consider the use of the term “torture” in describing their efforts to be appropriate.
As I recently wrote in my blog post, “It Is Fraud, Not Climate Science At All”, “The proper lesson of the present debate … is that the data used to calculate the global mean surface temperature (GMST) by today’s climate scientists is too noisy (naturally varying and uncertainly measured) to support any claim of global warming at all, and it has to be tortured–fraudulently, to any truly competent physical scientist–to do so. That’s what the man on the street should be hearing from any so-called ‘expert'”.
…If you can clean up my HTML typo error, that would be good.
[done -mod]
The uncertainty is AT LEAST 0.02 degrees C. But that is for measurements, not trends. The trend has to be shown graphically with upper and lower limits at each end. McKitrick would say there is no proven trend change at all in recorded history because the accuracy isn’t good enough to detect it If it is there. If one were to say the trend is unchanged the claim cannot be falsified with available data.
Since anomalies are calculated, and not directly measured, they are presented as being as precise and accurate as the underlying mathematics used in the calculation.
Whether they represent the global reality with the same precision and accuracy seems to be a point of debate.
Correcting Ocean Cooling
i hope that was not meant to inspire confidence in climate science. if so ,it failed, spectacularly .
Bob, how confident are you about the Enso readings?
I also have concerns about Ice measurement, recent photo seem to disagree with the official Ice data.
Speaking of official Ice Data, the US NSIDC is starting to vary substantially with the Danish DMI for this year’s Arctic melt. I apologize for not knowing how to paste an active link.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
Yes, I noticed that, too. Nothing is being said about it at present. It will be interesting to see if the divergence continues.
Ah, just noticed that the lower one might not be up to date.
A C Osborn, reasonably confident. The TAO project buoys are like weather stations for the equatorial Pacific that also include subsurface temperature and current measurements. The only problem is those buoys fail (for any number of reasons) and need to be maintained, but NOAA had a cutback in TAO maintenance funding for a while (or they sold the ship used to maintain them?) so many of the buoys were off line for a time in 2013 and 2014. I understand they’re back online now, though. Sea surface temperatures are also supported by satellites, ship and drifting buoys (not ARGO).
Sounds like climate change articles need to include an MGM style disclaimer.
All temperatures used in this study are completely fictitious. Resemblance to the actual temperature at any location, past or present, is purely coincidental.
They could also add:
This study was based on real data. The numbers have been changed to protect the climate models.
Thanks, Walt D.
Plus several.
Unhappily.
Auto
The climate models and the global warming prophesy have twice to three times the increase in OHC or Ocean temperature rise than is being observed by the Argo floats. It is as simple as that.
You can show this to the warmers over and over again but they just do not get it. As long as it is rising, that is all they care about. The fact that the small increase rates being observed by the Argo floats translates into very little warming in the long run, does not matter to them.
Idée fixe
i•dée fixe (i deɪ ˈfiks)
n.
pl. i•dées fixes (i deɪ ˈfiks)
a persistent or obsessing idea, often delusional, that in extreme form can be a symptom of psychosis.
Two quotes seem to apply and have been posted here many times before:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
and
“It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.”
Bill, I think even that minor warming is after ARGO was adjusted from initially showing a slight cooling.
Can someone please explain to me how CO2, a gas that absorbs 2.7µ 4.3µ and 15µ possibly warm the oceans, especially the deep oceans? There is 2,000 to 4,000 more heat energy in the oceans than the atmosphere. Isn’t it far more likely that move visible light is reaching the oceans, warming them, they de-gas CO2, and the warmer oceans warm the atmosphere above them? BTW, if CO2 were the cause, by what mechanism does CO2 increase to bring us out of an ice age? If I take an IR lamp of peak radiation of 15µ and shine it on water, will the water warm?
“If I shine a lamp…. will it warm?” Depends on the temperature of the lamp compared to the temperature of the water. There is also the air inbetween to consider. Heat travels from hot to cold.
““If I shine a lamp…. will it warm?” Depends on the temperature of the lamp compared to the temperature of the water. There is also the air inbetween to consider. Heat travels from hot to cold.”
Sorry, if I take a pool of water the temperature of the oceans and shine an IR light of peak radiation of 15µ with 50% the intensity of the earth’s radiance, will the pool of water warm?
Basically if I shine this light on the ocean, will it warm?
15µ is consistent with a black body or temperature -80°C.
http://www.spectralcalc.com/blackbody_calculator/plots/guest563299626.png
“If I shine a lamp…. will it warm?”
If you send radiative energy into a substance and this substance absorbs this radiative energy then the substance will either undergo a change of state or it will warm … or maybe it will do both.
“Heat travels from hot to cold.”
But radiative energy is not heat in the same way conductive energy or convective energy is heat. Radiative energy can – and does – travel from hot to cold and cold to hot all the time.
If “heat” is a measurement of kinetic energy that causes matter to vibrate then radiative energy is not heat; Radiative energy will only become heat when it is absorbed by molecules to become transformed into kinetic energy, only then does become heat.
Because radiative energy is not in itself heat it does not have to follow the rules that apply to heat (i.e. only travel from hot to cold).
“Can someone please explain to me how CO2, a gas that absorbs 2.7µ 4.3µ and 15µ possibly warm the oceans, especially the deep oceans? There is 2,000 to 4,000 more heat energy in the oceans than the atmosphere”
CO2 absorbs infrared, this warms the CO2 molecules, and in turn they warm the other gases. The effect warms the lower atmosphere. I think this isn’t controversial.
The warmer atmosphere slows down heat transfer from the water. Water absorbs incoming radiation so indeed it does warm up very nicely when exposed to light. As far as I can tell the heat transfer rate is a function of the difference in temperature between the warmer and the cooler body. If the cooler body is a bit warmer the heat transfer rate is reduced.
How does the heat get transferred down? The warmer water evaporates a bit more, this increases salinity, and saltier water sinks.
In isolation yes, but not in totality. H2O overwhelms CO2 near the surface of the ocean. Warmer oceans, more humidity more CO2 de-gassing, warmer oceans even more humidity even more CO2 de-gassing, either Mother Nature has created a natural doomsday bomb or the climate “scientists” are missing something.
http://www.hashemifamily.com/Kevan/Climate/Earth_Atmosphere.gif
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Iris/Images/greenhouse_gas_absorb_rt.gif
The Sahara has extreme temperature variation, the Mediterranean has minor. Both have 400 PPM CO2, they only differ with H2O. The deserts prove CO2 doesn’t trap diddly. Doubt me? Sleep naked in the Sahara.
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/spectra.gif
Maybe co2 molecules, when absorbing radiation, do not vibrate but squirms around a bit, like jello. ; )
Yes, water vapor does absorb infrared. This doesn’t take away CO2s ability to absorb infrared. As far as I know there’s no pecking order when it comes to molecules absorbing infrared of the key wavelengths CO2 loves to absorb. Water vapor absorbs infrared, so does CO2.
if you want to argue whether CO2 is absorbed by seawater or viceversa that’s a different issue. It really has nothing to do with the question I answered. To me it’s evident the ocean is absorbing CO2 (ocean ph is dropping, and half of the co2 we emit is taken away from the atmosphere).
The issue is not whether infrared radiation can warm water, the issue is how much is it actually warming? Back-radiation from GHGs amounts to only 0.6 Watts per square meter, which is completely overwhelmed by sunlight, which varies from hundreds to over a thousand W/m2. So the amount of warming of the oceans by GHGs is miniscule and virtually insignificant. It’s ability to warm the deep oceans is similarly negligible.
Do we know how much of that 0.6 Watts/M^2 is due to 13µ to 18µ that would be CO2’s contribution to warming the oceans. I think we can all agree it doesn’t amount to much, and if that is the case, the Climate Alarmists have a major hole in their theory. If they can’t explain how CO2 warms the oceans, then we must accept that the sun is warming the oceans, and if the sun is warming the oceans it is most likely warming the atmosphere as well.
Leanme
“The warmer atmosphere slows down heat transfer from the water. Water absorbs incoming radiation so indeed it does warm up very nicely when exposed to light. As far as I can tell the heat transfer rate is a function of the difference in temperature between the warmer and the cooler body. If the cooler body is a bit warmer the heat transfer rate is reduced.”
how ever the atmosphere isn’t warming! so what is causing the oceans to warm?
“How does the heat get transferred down? The warmer water evaporates a bit more, this increases salinity, and saltier water sinks.”
if it is evaporating more then it is cooling more, which means it doesn’t warm!
Use a stir bar and magnetic stirrer to provide some mixing, and your water will warm up nicely. So sorry for those people who assert that you can not heat water with a heat gun or heat lamp. But a heat source at peak of 15µ will not be very hot, and will not have much in the way of intensity either, if it is a black body source.
Use an IR laser in the KW output range, that will get things going.
But your graph is something else again. 99.9% transmission goes deeper than 50% transmission? I am missing something. And in the blue-green to green, 450-550 nm, we have depth of 20,000 and 200,000 meters!
HUH?
Oh, those are decimal points, I see. 20 and 200 meters. That’s better.
That is my point. Changes in CO2 result in minimal changes in heat absorption.
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/co205124.gif
The energy to heat the oceans is enormous. The earth vs the sun radiation demonstrates that it is infinity more likely that sun light and not CO2 is warming the oceans.
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter2/graphics/earth_sun_plank.jpg
Note the Scale:
True scale like this:
“If I take an IR lamp of peak radiation of 15µ and shine it on water, will the water warm?”
wrong question.
if you put coffee in a thermos and radiation is refected back by the sliver lining will it COOL less rapidily
than it would otherwise?
GHGs dont “warm” the planet. They slow the rate at which it cools making it WARMER than it would be otherwise.
That’s how it works.
Of course some people have suggested that downwelling IR is somehow a cause. Its not
downwelling IR is the effect
In order to decrease the rate of ocean cooling, the atmosphere would have to show increased warming. Where is it? I realize your land surface data show an increase. The satellite TLT do not.
Notice that ocean warming precedes atmospheric warming. If the atmosphere were retarding ocean cooling it should be reverse or at least simultaneous.(The WFT index is a composite of global satellite data chosen because it graphically better represents the absolute temperature relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere)
No disagreement there, the 1st Law of Thermodynamics remains intact. Does CO2 trap enough heat to slow the cooling of the oceans? Can IR of 15µ trap enough heat to cool the oceans…given that H2O is abundant over the oceans which most likely makes CO2 irrelevant.? Is there evidence that night time temperatures demonstrate slower cooling? I doubt it. Changes in CO2 concentrations have minimal impact on the amount of energy they absorb.
http://members.casema.nl/errenwijlens/co2/co205124.gif
That is the whole problem with this climate “science.” They claim delta Temperature due to a delta CO2 is large, direct and highly correlated, when in reality the truth is just the opposite. Changing CO2 concentrations have an almost negligible impact on the amount of energy it absorbs.
The oscillations you see are associated with ocean dynamics (the big bumps are mostly ElNiño). CO2 infrared absorption and the way it influences temperature is a very subtle phenomenon. The system is incredibly complex because we got feed backs acting in both directions (positive and negative), some are delayed feed backs, and there must be effects we still know nothing about. If you want to debate the issue I would get more into the feedbacks and regional climate rather than try to debate about the CO2 absorption spectrum.
Interesting to note that the biggest GHG has been declining since 1940 at all levels of the atmosphere.
You can forget about data that adjusted and made up, that is all you need to know, as it is accepted that when the earth warms water vapour increases.
Steve;
Funny though the silver lining will warm from the radiation that it is reflecting back, but the atmosphere isn’t warming, except of course were you infill the data that isn’t actually measured.
GREAT QUESTION:
Thank you. I try to find the “keen sense of the obvious” questions that demonstrate that the climate “scientists” can’t see the forest through the trees. The other question is by what mechanism can CO2 cause “climate change” it is isn’t through warming? We’ve had stable temperatures for almost 20 years, and yet all these “extreme weather” events are blamed on CO2. How does CO2 affect climate change if we aren’t warming? How would CO2, if it is the main cause of warming, ever allow the earth to cool if CO2 continues higher? Climate “scientists” simply fail to ask the most basic and common sense questions. The oceans warming and record high day time temperatures are other events they blame on CO2, but don’t have a mechanism to explain them.
CO2 doesn’t increase to bring us out of an ice age. I think that’s caused by orbital effects. Or so they say. Once sea water starts warming the co2 comes out of solution, and I assume bacteria eat previously frozen organic matter. Today’s circumstances are different because we are an extra co2 source. The co2 we put in the atmosphere raises concentration and this makes the ocean a net CO2 absorber.
I think the extreme events issue is baloney. This issue has become very political, we even got a red pope mixing climate change with his pet economic ideas we know always fail. Big mistake. I sure wish this was more of a nerdy topic rather than a cat and dog fight about taxation and regulation.
Questions never answered…
Lets us assume there is an increase in DLWIR.
1. How much of that energy is lost in evaporation?
2. Does this increase in evaporation increase cloud cover and w/v even in clear sky conditions?
3. Does the increase in W?/ clear sky AND cloud cover reduce ocean and surface heating?
Quantify the above.
What evidence is there of that? Certainly not the pH of the oceans. It would take a vast amount of CO2 to alter the pH.
Ocean ph is dropping. It is absorbing huge amounts of co2. As it should.
co2
simple it can’t.
So they admit the models are wrong. That’s nice of them to recognize.
It depends on how you define wrong. I would be kinder and say something like “models sure don’t seem to be that accurate”. Problem is we may need 50 years to figure out if they work or not.
I’d rather use a bit of common sense, keep trying to see if models can be improved, and gather lots and lots of data. I don’t think we got enough satellites looking down at earth, or enough buoys and things like that.
Heck, I would close down the space station and use some of the saved money to send more spaceships to other planets and to measure what goes on right here.
“I’d rather use a bit of common sense, keep trying to see if models can be improved, and gather lots and lots of data.”
If the models are programed using a false theory then you can not improve them to where they will give you anything other than the garbage they are giving now. And, my friend, they are based on a false theory.
Yes, gather lots and lots of data. The problem is the data that needs to be gathered is either data over the last 1000 years, or the data over the next thousand years, minimum. Extant records and proxy data show climate variations in various places with cyclic variations of daily, ~11 years, ~ 30 years, ~60 years, ~1000years, and ~10,000 years. All the actual measurements of temperature have taken place in the last 100 years- late in an interglacial period that is, according to ice core proxies, one of the colder interglacials. Talk about lack of data commensurate with the size of the problem.
Improving the climate models is a fools errand until a few mathematical geniuses discover ways to actually solve a complex system of partial differential equations. One of them will not be me! As E. Lorentz and others have shown even a climate model of only three equations can’t be solved. Possible solutions can only be estimated and are highly dependent on the true initial conditions. Keep in mind that the earth’s climate system has been running free for many millions of years. We haven’t a clue how to guess, much less measure the starting conditions. Given that length of time, there is no way to be sure that any climate model can be started in mid-stream, so to speak, and actually be in synch with the earth’s system.
Mark, they aren’t “based on a false theory”. They use well documented physics. The problem arises because they can’t incorporate ALL of the physics and they lack resolution. There are too many missing factors, and the model grid is way too coarse.
There is only one way to heat the oceans and that is more direct sunlight. Less cloud cover over tropical areas for extended periods of time could do it.
When you think of water absorbing the sun’s energy, then evaporating, then absorbing IR radiation from the water that hasn’t evaporated, then sending half of that energy back to the waster that hasn’t evaporated, that now becomes warmer, causing more evaporatation, which then absorbs IR radiation again, which…… Stupid huh?
Do yourself a favour Bob get yourself a heatgun and fire the heat at the surface of water in a bucket for about 5minutes After 5 minutes stop and check the temperature of the water, you will find that no heat has affected the temperature of the water including the surface where the heat is directed. heat in the atmosphere can not pass into the ocean and the reason appears to be that it is blocked by surface tension.
The truly hilarious thing about the “climate science community” is that it puts on the table the proposition that the increased temperature caused by co2 in the atmosphere can be stored in the ocean and ultimately alter the climate and they forget to check that heat can pass through the surface of water. The answer is radiation can pass heat itself cannot.Try the experiment Bob you’ll never look at water the same way againr.
That is my exact point, the warming of the oceans is a smoking gun that CO2 isn’t causing the warming. Answer what is warming the oceans and you answer what is warming the atmosphere. Also, daytime temperatures are reaching record highs. What does CO2 have to do with record daytime temperatures? Nothing. CO2 is transparent to visible light, that is why it reaches the earth surface.
Let’s see if I can figure this: While there are large uncertainties regarding its value it is quite possible that JFK was shot by Elvis Presley.
I am surprised they didn’t use submarine intake temperature readings, Karl Et al style, to adjust the records. Sarc?
There seems to be no stopping these cheaters from continuously trying to alter history on all fronts. Sad really, but Paris is coming and the glove has to fit. Barry says so …_ _ _…
“What is it about these models,
All computer generated,
That have us so enthralled,
And so captivated?
Their garbage in garbage out
Seems to hold us in awe,
As real world observations
We choose to ignore…..”
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/computer-models/
If this wamth is manufactured, why don’t they harvest it and save us from all the windmills?
And how much carbon tax do they pay during the manufacturing process?
(Sorry, couldn’t help it.)