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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you have to ask yourself if it all as really as ‘settled’ has they often claim , why there be a need for all the smoke and mirrors in the first place , they should have enough good quality data not to resort to such tricks
I wonder why they stopped so early? We have Warm Water Volume from 1985 to the present. Notice the cyclical nature of the data. Notice that WWV has been decreasing recently. Remember that WWV in the El Nino 3.4 region is calculated based on the depth of the 20D isotherm (measured by those floating thermometer things that send a thermometer down below the surface http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/proj_over/map_array.html). Under calm El Nino conditions, any warm water we have will rise to the surface. Maybe we don’t have much left?
I would love to see a comparison of this metric with the evaluation done by the authors of the current study under discussion.
http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/SOURCES/.NOAA/.NCEP/.EMC/.CMB/.GLOBAL/.Reyn_SmithOIv2/.monthly/.ssta/T/%28Jan%201982%29last/RANGE/X/%28170W%29%28120W%29RANGE/Y/%285S%29%285N%29RANGE%5BX/Y%5Daverage/dup/T/12/splitstreamgrid%5BT2%5Drmsover/div/T/3/runningAverage//fullname/%28NINO%203.4%29def/SOURCES/.NOAA/.NCEP/.EMC/.CMB/.GODAS/.monthly/.BelowSeaLevel/.POT/T/%28Jan%201982%29last/RANGE/X/%28125E%29%28170E%29%28180%29RANGE/Y/%2810S%29%2810N%29RANGE/%28Celsius_scale%29unitconvert/Z/exch%5B20%5DZ/toS/POT/removeGRID%5BX/Y%5Daverage/dup/yearly-climatology/sub/dup/T/12/splitstreamgrid%5BT2%5Drmsover/div/T/3/runningAverage//fullname/%28W-Pac%20WWV%20%28125E-180%2C10S-10N%29%29def/figviewer.html?map.url=dup+T+fig-+colorbars2+-fig
BTW, the oceans have warmed. Has anyone calculated out how much energy it takes to warm the oceans? Is there even enough energy in the atmosphere to cause such warming? Is there enough energy at 15µ to warm the oceans? I doubt it. even if you took all the energy in the atmosphere and transferred it to the oceans the oceans would remain unchanged.
Solar insolation from the entire bandwidth of solar radiation rarely meets ideal clear sky conditions of 1000W/m2 at the ocean surface. It ranges (based on satellite sensors) more typically from 0 to 500 with spikes here and there greater than that. Full fledged downwelling longwave radiation from greenhouse gases has a fraction of 1W/m2 at the ocean surface. And a lot of that is spent just penetrating the skin (due to evaporation). Based on back of the envelope then, CO2 warming of the oceans would not be measurable. Solar warming is too noisy.
That is my point. The warming oceans is the smoking gun. What is warming the oceans is also most likely warming the atmosphere above it, and it has nothing to do with CO2. We either have 2 separate phenomenon happening where one natural cycle is warming the ocean and increasing all GHGs except CO2, and another cycle where man is causing the increase in CO2 and atmospheric temperatures, or the same phenomenon is causing both. My bet is the sun heats the oceans, the oceans de-gas CO2, the oceans warm the atmosphere above it. That theory is also supported by the record high day time temperatures that have nothing to do with CO2, and everything to do with the sun’s radiation reaching earth.
@ur momisugly co2islife
I can agree with your point. I think you might like to read the following post about the US Standard Atmosphere which was developed in the 50s, 60s, and 70s during the cold war “space race”. We had to know about the atmosphere as that was critical to flight.
“This massive effort was critical to the entire space program and aeronautics, and hundreds of rocket scientists, physicists, meteorologists, aeronautical engineers, and atmospheric scientists contributed to this project necessary to physically model and then verify with millions of observations from weather balloons, research flights, and rocket launches, that their physical 1-D vertical model of the atmosphere was correct. The 1958 first edition of the US Standard Atmosphere was followed by revisions, mostly of the far upper atmosphere at the edge of space, as more data became available from the space program, with revisions published in 1962, 1966, and the final 1976 version still widely used as the gold standard today.”
I lived though those days and saw a lot of the launches as I was in central Florida during the era. I was also taught in school all the way though university how the atmosphere worked which was pretty much exactly what these experts came up with. The model that these experts developed had no use for CO2 and a radiation based greenhouse effect at all.
“These early atmospheric scientists began this effort to model the atmosphere with the basic physics of gases and air known since the 1800’s from the ideal gas law, 1st Law of Thermodynamics, Newton’s second law of motion (F=ma=mg), the physical chemistry of molecular weights, partial pressures of each gas, heat capacities of individual gases and air at both constant pressure and constant volume, the gravitational acceleration constant, barometric formulae, Boltzmann’s constant, Avogadro’s number, mean atmospheric molecular weights, number density of individual species, total number density, atmospheric mass density, mole volume, scale height, geopotential height of gravitational potential energy (PE), mean air-particle speed, mean free-path of air molecules, mean collision frequency, calculated speed of sound, dynamic viscosity, kinematic viscosity, coefficient of thermal conductivity, and on and on…”
No mention of the James Hansen inspired delusion. That came in the late 80s. Any yet, we are told just today on WUWT that those who don’t buy the radiation based greenhouse effect but think it is a mass based greenhouse effect are as far out there as James Hansen’s latest craziness. Hmmmmm.
Anyway, this is a good read:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-us-standard-atmosphere-model.html
Policy based evidence manufacturing.
This is what our modern bureaucrats, read Kleptocrats do.
Much like the way they “consult” the citizens for their preconceived plans.
For in following the money with respect to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming, now referred to as Climate Change, one finds tax payer funds, $ billions directed to create and propagate mass hysteria.
Over weather.
It is almost impossible to parody such idiocy.
Bob, I am looking at Cheng et al.’s figure 4. Their first panel is laughable. Are we to believe that ocean temperature rise has been linear for the last 45 years?Their second panel is irritating. First, the two unnamed volcanoes are El Chichon and Pinatubo. Second, the CMIP5 ensemble mean shows two alleged “volcanic cooling” incidents immediately after each eruption. There is no such thing as volcanic cooling as I proved in my book “What Warming?” but they have ignored it for the last five years and still show the imaginary warming in their output. It is written into their code and they are going to thrust it down our throats whether we like it or not. For your information, the temperature dip associated with Pinatubo cooling is nothing more exotic than an ordinary La Nina cooling in 1992/93. The original misidentification goes back to Self et al. in the compendium called “Fire and Ice” by Newhall and Panongbayan. They had no idea what ENSO phases look like and chose that La Nina as Pinatubo cooling because it directly followed the eruption. That of course was a matter of pure luck because Pinatubo’s eruption just happened to coincide with an El Nino peak that is invariably followed by La Nina valley. El Chichon was not so lucky because its eruption coincided with the bottom of a La Nina valley. As you should guess by now, it was followed by an El Nino peak and poor El Chichon got cheated out of its very own cooling. Self et al. even noticed this absence of El Chichon cooling but simply did not know what to make of it. It is all very simple. All so-called “volcanic coolings” are nothing more than misidentified La Nina valleys. Global temperature curve is actually a concatenation of ENSO phases, El Ninos alternating with La Ninas. Its period is four to five years but external conditions can and do sometimes change this. However, when they get out of phase the phase is re-established, even as far back as CET.That is because ENSO is powered by tradewinds and its phase is set by the oscillation frequence of the Pacific basin, Occurrence of volcanoes, however,is not in phase with ENSO and an eruption can coincide with any part of ENSO. If an eruption should coincide with an El Nino peak as Pinatubo did it is followed by a full La Nina’s worth of cooling. On the other hand, when it coincides with a La Nina valley it gets nothing decause what comes next is an El Nino peak. And intermediate cases yield various grades of weak cooling. There you have it. These modeling guys just don’t know what they are doing when they build volcanic cooling into their code. And while on the subject of not knowing, they don’t even know that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere does not create greenhouse warming.This follows from the existence of hiatuses in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Having that built-in greenhouse warming in their models made it impossible for them to match the actual hiatus of the twenty-first century. The twentieth century hiatus in the eighties and nineties they got rid of, or so they thought. But they could not control the satellites and you can still download it from satellite sources. To find the facts, check my comments to “Risk Assessment” on Climate Etc. on July 20th.
I concur with you related to volcanic eruptions in and out of phase with short term El Nino/La Nina variability. Where that eruption happens and how much sulfuric acid gets into the stratosphere is a complicating factor, as is the occurrence and location of a major blow at a point in time in-phase with a peaked long term ocean/atmospheric cycle (IE more evaporation under more cloudy conditions that slowly depletes ocean stores of energy). I am of the opinion that this may have been the setup that caused the extreme cooling after the Medieval Warming cycle had peaked. The long term Solar recharging cycle was inhibited due to thick atmospheric veils. However, once those veils were cleared away, ocean warming commenced uninhibited during a long term predominate series of strong La Ninas (because the oceans were now colder than normal?). We are now working through some El Ninos that may or may not be near the peak of a modern warm period and may or may not be resulting in a slow but nonetheless net loss of stored energy. If we are, over a long period of time, losing stored energy (which would be difficult if not impossible to ascertain based on ocean temperature sensor coverage), this period of land warmth will peak, the oceans will no longer be able to calm the winds with any more radiated heat, and we will go through a long period of predominate La Nina’s with their strong easterly trade winds, and cold land temperatures.
Pamela, there is one problem with those “…predominate La Ninas…”, namely that you can’t have them. For the same reason, Hansen’s El Nino-like Pliocene is also impossible. The reason is that El Ninos and La Ninas come in pairs. They are generated as a result of an harmonic oscillation of ocean water from side to side in the equatorial Pacific. If you blow on the end of a glass tube you get its resonant tone that depends on the dimensions of the tube. Trade winds are the equivalent of blowing at the end of a tube and the ocean answers with its own resonant tone – about one side to side oscillation every four-five years or so.Starting with trade winds, they push warm water up in the west where it piles up in the Indo-Pacific warm pool. When the pile is high enough reverse gravity flow starts along the equatorial counter-current. It crosses the Pacific, hits South America, and spreads out north and south along the coast. This warms the air above it, warm air rises, joins the westerlies, and we notice that an El Nino has arrived. But any wave that runs ashore must also retreat. As the El Nino wave retreats water level behind it drops as much as half a meter. Cool water from below wells up to fill the vacancy and a La Nina has started. As much as the El Nino warmed the air La Nina will now cool it and global mean temperature does not change. A good example of it is the wave train in the eighties and nineties I have referred to before. But this is the normal ENSO routine. It is possible for something to block the path of the El Nino wave that has just entered the equatorial counter-current. If this happens it will not reach South America but will spread out in the middle of the ocean and create an El Nino on the spot. That is called El Nino Modoki or CP (Central Pacific) El Nino. It is not clear how many such aberrant El Ninos there are or how the return flow works. My guess is ten percent maybe. Off hand I would guess that more of the heat carried east by the normal El Nino wave is retained in the ocean. And the La Nina might also be weakened but I don’t know. And for some reason those millionaire climate scientists have not spent any of their millions to find out.
Arno, you make the mistake of thinking this is a simple mechanism that has a simple opposing mechanism of like value when it is actually, based on observations, a very complicated multiple process oceanic/teleconnected system that is not confined to just the equatorial band. The data we have so far indicates that the ENSO system is very complicated and is not yet understood to any degree of depth or breadth.
@Arno Arrak,
Where is that? Why didn’t you provide a link?
The concept of curve fitting (by itself not a bad thing), when done with unsupportable methods, will be referred to as “narrative fitting”, just like splicing data without putting explanations in captions or footnotes is known as a “Mannian graph”. Narrative fitting is a common sign of narrative bias and is found on both sides of the climate warming debate.
Why even rely on graphs and curves? Can anyone point to an ice core data set that shows that the temperature variation over the past 50 and 150 years is statistically different from the previous 12,000 years? Can anyone point to an ice core data set where current temperatures are at a record level for the Holocene? Every ice core data set I’ve analyzed shows that the temperature variation of the past 50 (using NOAA and NASA temperature data) and the past 150 years’ is statistically no different form the rest of the Holocene. We aren’t above the Roman and Medieval warming periods. We are emerging from a little ice age, and we are basically just above the mean of the Holocene. Does anyone have an ice core data set that disagrees this my findings? Even Al Gore’s chart shows that we aren’t at the peak of the Holocene.
Ice core data has a resolution of 100 to 300 years
Here is the data from Vostok. The age steps in 18 to 50 years.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cdo/f?p=519:1:0::::P1_STUDY_ID:15076
References for Vostok δD: Petit et al., 1999.
depth (m) ice age (a B1950) δD (‰)
0 -50 -438
1 -32.1316 -438
2 -14.2632 -438
3 4.15281 -438
4 22.5688 -438
5 41.6247 -438
6 60.6805 -438
7 80.3558 -438
8 100.031 -442.9
9 121.087 -437.9
10 142.142 -435.8
11 163.679 -443.7
12 185.215 -449.1
Co2, is that continues throughout the data period?
I agree that there are some scientists that can manufacture and alter data, in order to promote and support their thesis. The only thing that we can be sure about is the fact that ocean governs climate, as shown here: http://oceansgovernclimate.com/are-oceans-warming/.
Who is the blog owner? I can’t find any information about the blogger.
I have no idea who’s the blogger, but I started reading this blog some time ago and i find it quite interesting.
Ironically much of the data they manufactured doesn’t work to their advantage. Warming oceans aren’t due to CO2, a warming N Hemi vs S Hemi can’t be due to CO2 and localized ice shelf melting on Antarctica can’t be due to CO2, record day time temperatures can’t be due to CO2. They have a tendency to want higher temperatures and more signs of warming, but they can’t tie it to CO2. How did CO2 lead us out of an ice age? How did CO2 cause the Kilimanjaro glacier to “melt” in sub-zero temperatures?
Perhaps because Kilimanjaro is a volcano? Did they study it and what were the findings?
What possibilities are there? A wobble in Earths orbit we haven’t observed yet? A wobble in earths rotation further N/S every few millennia? Ice ages come in fairly regular cycles and last appx. relative lengths of time, from memory. Either solar cycles, distance from sun and / or combinations. What makes more sense? Co2 has been all over the place in history of Earth, but doesn’t follow ice age cycles. Or does it and we just don’t have accurate proxies to tell?
Ok everyone, I just wrote this from memory, but my point is in answer to co2islife…”How did co2 lead us out of an ice age?” “How could” is better question.
It was revealed in the climategate emails that they are aware that it is sublimation.
I think I asked “by what mechanism does CO2 lead us out of an ice age,” but your question gets at the same thing. CO2 is the result of life and a warming ocean. Neither of which exist when an ice age ends.
…imaginay warming… = …imaginary cooling….
Typos happen. There should be a way to fix them.
Now that the maximum of solar cycle 24 is in the process of ending I expect sea surface temperatures will be on the decline from this point in time moving forward.
The present El Nino being an intrinsic earth bound climatic item which is a temporary climatic item and further is not going to bring the climate into a new climatic regime which is the case for all earth bound intrinsic climatic items although they do cause variability within a climatic regime on their own accord.
I bring this up because the article I am presenting although good needs to include external influences as to why the climate changes. It is not due to just random earth bound intrinsic factors.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL050168.pdf
This article is good but it needs to emphasize the prolonged minimum solar /volcanic climate connection( which it does not mention ), and other prolonged minimum solar climate connections such as an increase in galactic cosmic rays more clouds, a more meridional atmospheric circulation due to ozone distribution/concentration changes (which it does not do ) which all lead to cooler temperatures and more extremes .
In addition they do not factor the relative strength of the earth’s magnetic field.
When this is added to the context of this article I think one has a comprehensive explanation as to how the start of the Little Ice Age following the Medieval Warm Period may have taken place and how like then (around 1275 AD) is similar to today with perhaps a similar result taken place going forward from this point in time.
I want to add the Wolf Solar Minimum went from 1280-1350 AD ,followed by the Sporer Minimum from 1450-1550 AD.
This Wolf Minimum corresponding to the onset of the Little Ice Age.
John Casey the head of the Space and Science Center, has shown through the data a prolonged minimum solar event/major volcanic eruption correlation.
Today, I say again is very similar to 1275 AD. If prolonged minimum solar conditions become entrenched (similar to the Wolf Minimum) accompanied by Major Volcanic Activity I say a Little Ice Age will once again be in the making.
Milankovitch Cycles still favoring cold N.H. summers if not more so then during the last Little Ice Age , while the Geo Magnetic Field is weaker in contrast to the last Little Ice Age.
I would not be surprised if the next Little Ice Age comes about if the prolonged solar minimum expectations are realized in full.
http://spaceandscience.net/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/ssrcresearchreport1-2010geophysicalevents.pdf
Once my low average solar parameters are attained we will see if this line of reasoning on the climate going forward is correct. I think it will be and that is the danger because mainstream keeps pushing global warming.
This is my point, the oceans require daily doses of irradiation 6x what the earth emits 150 vs 25, just to maintain their temperature, and CO2 only captures a small traction of the earth’s much lower energy radiation. CO2 simply doesn’t trap enough heat to warm the atmosphere, let alone the oceans. The clear dry desert nights prove CO2 can’t warm the atmosphere.
?w=882
BTW, this chart demonstrates that for the first 3K of the atmosphere H2O absorbs 100% of what CO2 does. Note how the purple line basically represents H2O absorption collapses to the CO2 absorption as you go higher into the atmosphere. Basically you could have 0PPM CO2 and the climate in the lower 3K wouldn’t be altered at all. As you go higher H2O precipitates out leaving CO2 to do the absorbing. This seems to be a built in mechanism to prevent run way cooling, not run away warming. Because H2O falls in concentration with altitude, without CO2, radiation would rapidly escape above 6K. The result would be rapid near catastrophic cooling, and temperature swings like those found in the Sahara over the entire globe.
http://www.hashemifamily.com/Kevan/Climate/Earth_Atmosphere.gif
Questions never answered…
Lets us assume there is an increase in DLWIR. (for round numbers say 10 watts per sq meter)
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/V clear sky AND cloud cover reduce ocean and surface heating?
Quantify the above. (Keep in mind the atmosphere absorbs about 25% or more of incoming solar radiation. For clear sky, water vapor accounts for 70% of this (according to KT97).
Super Bonus question, What is the difference between the residence time of the energy lost to the surface vs. the residence time of the energy if it had reached the surface, land and ocean?
“revised method of tweaking ocean heat reconstructions”
I think the correct verb is “twerking” Bob.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/06oct_abyss/
I think this nasa paper disputes this heavily. The way they go about estimating the deep oceans temps is factoring in the then current surface warming, ice melt/ sea level rise, thermal expansion and other factors to conclude there was nothing left, meaning the deep ocean hadnt warmed. So, this new paper would be implying if the surface of the ocean did warm more then thought, the deeper ocean must have cooled somehow. Or sea level rise is less then estimated etc.
This is the problem the climate “scientists” have. The incoming radiation is astronomical, whereas the part of the IR downwelling is relatively inconsequential. I however don’t have the W/Sr/M^2 values, Does anyone know the W/M^2 for the incoming sun irradiation at the earth’s surface, vs the W/M^2 for the downwelling between 13 and 18 microns? Is there a way to isolate just the IR irradiation of the earth by CO2? How much energy/power per M^2 is that? Is that enough to warm water? I doubt it considering it can’t even warm the atmosphere over a desert.
?w=882
You do not need the amount of LWIR to calculate that, but the increase due to doubling CO2, something like 2 W/mSq. However see my post here, just above…http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/26/ocean-heat-new-study-shows-climate-scientists-can-still-torture-data-until-the-data-confess/#comment-1994049
I think these climate scientists are so far into their lie and they’ve received so much funding from governments, they don’t dare for any reason admit being wrong. Somebody may want their money back. So of course they have to adjust the numbers to fit their incorrect models and find this “missing heat”.
It’s been a cool summer here in the Chicago area again. It’s finally warmed to summer temperatures but we are way behind in 90 degree days. We still have missing heat.
Has anyone done an experiment with downwelling IR on a thin film of water, to see if it evaporate faster?
Well yes, a blow dryer pretty much does that. There is no question increased LWIR directed at a water surface will accelerate evaporation with all of the energy absorbed in the first few microns. This evaporation accelerates convection, lifting latent heat to elevation where it condenses, releases said heat to altitude to radiate to space.
However this tells us nothing abut the ability of LWIR to heat the oceans. Much of the SW radiation is not absorbed in the first few microns, so does not as effectively cause or accelerate evaporation, but instead is absorbed in cooler water below the evaporative layer, warming them. The residence time of this energy is vastly longer then LWIR energy. Quantifying the ocean warming difference between surface LWIR and surface S/W radiation is clearly critical and should have been done along time ago. AFAIKT the IPCC, in many ways, treats all watts as equal, when their ability to accumulate and change earths energy balance is based on their residence time within the system.
Is there any experimental evidence to support the idea that the change in CO2 from to 250 to 400 ppm alters the rate at which heat flows from water? And by how much? It seems relatively simply to make some measurements from insulated containers of water. It would appear the global warming industry is staking everything on this simple proposition. It could be falsified. It might also be possible to prove it true.
Yep, that is my point. Boil all this AGW nonsense down to a nutshell and reduces down to can IR radiation contained in the 13µ to 18µ range warm the oceans? That is the contribution CO2 makes to warming the oceans. If there isn’t enough energy there to heat the oceans, something else must be warming the globe. That experiment needs to be run and the results presented to Congress. IMHO that is the smoking gun to debunk AGW.
Finally! . . Jeez that was a long and tortuous ride to get to the nub of the matter.
CO2
Once you get the experiment run all they will do is say the oceans aren’t really warming. They will just move the goalpost.
I agree, but it s not an easy experiment…Assuming 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/V clear sky AND cloud cover reduce ocean and surface heating?
Quantify the above. (Keep in mind the atmosphere absorbs about 25% or more of incoming solar radiation. For clear sky, water vapor accounts for 70% of this (according to KT97).
Super Bonus question, What is the difference between the residence time of the energy lost to the surface vs. the residence time of the energy if it had reached the surface, land and ocean?
With funding for global warming research in the tens of billions, and the results costing us hundreds of billions of dollars, are you telling me that nobody has experimentally measured the difference in heat loss from water in a controlled environment, with various levels of CO2 concentration? The linchpin of the whole theory? I thought the science was settled. And remember, it is not just whether IR in the above range can heat the ocean, it is whether the delta in IR radiation from the increase in CO2 can heat the ocean. Since there is a lot of water vapor close to the ocean’s surface, which also absorbs IR in that range, it seems to be a dubious proposition. Or at the least, an unproven proposition. It makes you wonder if the experiments have been run, but don’t show the wanted results.
Climate “science”, it’s a travesty.
DavidA, sure, it is hard to test experimentally with the ocean. But how hard is it to get a large insolated container of heated water with no lid in a large room at a controlled temperature, and measure the temperature drop? Repeat, controlling for CO2 concentration. At least prove there is an effect.
Cardin, I agree. There was a poster here, Conrad I think, who did some fairly tight experiments which demonstrated the inability of LWIR radiation to effectively heat water. Perhaps someone can link to one of his posts. He called the oceans a S/W selective surface, a phrase I have borrowed. The S/W flux at the surface is far more important then LWIR flux to earth’s energy balance, (Land, oceans, atmosphere) SW radiation has disparate ocean residence time thousands of times greater the LWIR. This means SW surface flux has vastly greater impact on earth’s energy budget. This should have been sorted long ago. but is neglected due to CAGW.
Cardin, be aware the counter argument is not that LWIR heats the oceans directly. but slows the cooling. This can not be substantiated without answering my questions here… http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/07/26/ocean-heat-new-study-shows-climate-scientists-can-still-torture-data-until-the-data-confess/#comment-1994317
DavidA, that’s why the experiments should just be to see whether CO2 slows the cooling. Open insulated container at say 95 degrees F. A room at say 65 degrees F. How fast does it cool in ordinary air with 400 ppm CO2. Repeat with varying concentrations of CO2. Surely this has been done already? This whole grand elaborate Rube Goldberg theory can’t all be theory, can it?
The fact that these very basic experiment haven’t been run and published pretty much proves that the climate “scientists” aren’t really looking for the truth. How do I know they haven’t been performed and published? Because if they had been performed this whole nonsense about AGW would never have occurred. Solar radiation can be as high 1000W/M^2, whereas DLWIR is about 1W/M^2, and CO2 absorbed IR is about 1/12 of that at most. Basically there isn’t enough energy in the CO2 emitted IR to warm a tea cup, let alone the oceans. If anyone reading this post has the ability to run some of the experiment discussed in this thread, and sincerely seeks the truth, please do so, and then forward your findings on to Sen Inhofe or some other elected official that might be willing to start an investigation. Bottom line the truth must get out, and in order for that to happen real scientists need to present evidence in an easy to understand manner to our elected officials. A 2 year old can understand this Ocean warming theory.