The Canary in the Water Column – Atlantic Ocean Heat Content Plummets

The scientific premise of the movie The Day After Tomorrow is that global warming will cause a slowing of the Gulf Stream and in turn that will cause severe cooling.
The slowdown in the gulf stream is not “caused” by global warming. It is caused by the chaotic oscillatory dynamics of ocean circulation. The AMO is simply the oscillatory speedup and slowdown of the gulf stream.
Weather is of the atmosphere, climate is of the ocean. In regard to the gulf stream slowdown, the phrase “don’t believe anything till you hear the official denial” has never been more apropos.

Please no Day After Tomorrow, fantasy.
The cooling which we are currently observing has happened before and occurs cyclically. This is a holistic problem. There is only one solution that explains all of the observations.
The Atlantic ocean cooling due to the increase in surface winds which causes increased evaporation cooling and due to the increased low level cloud cover, both of which are caused by the interruption to the solar cycle.
http://www.geo.vu.nl/~renh/pdf/Renssen-etal-QI-2000.pdf

Reduced solar activity as a trigger for the start of the Younger Dryas?
Estimates for the start of the YD all demonstrate a strong and rapid rise of C14 (Cosmogenic isotope that increases when there is decreased solar activity that hence allows increased galactic cosmic rays GCR to strike and interact with the atmosphere.) This change is the largest increase of atmospheric C14 known from the late glacial period and Holocene records.

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/id.999,y.0,no.,content.true,page.1,css.print/issue.aspx

Recently, however, evidence has emerged that the Younger Dryas began long before the breach that allowed freshwater to flood the North Atlantic. What is more, the temperature changes induced by a shutdown in the conveyor are too small to explain what went on during the Younger Dryas. Some climatologists appeal to a large expansion in sea ice to explain the severe winter cooling. I agree that something of this sort probably happened, but it’s not at all clear to me how stopping the Atlantic conveyor could cause a sufficient redistribution of heat to bring on this vast a change. (William: As the basic simulation indicate the cooling due to a complete stoppage of the North Atlantic drift current is ten times less than the cooling that occurred and the does not explain the fact that there is cooling in the Southern Hemisphere also.)

http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~david/Gulf.pdf

Is the Gulf Stream responsible for Europe’s mild winters?
By R. SEAGER, D. S. BATTISTI, J. YIN, N. GORDON, N. NAIK, A. C. CLEMENT and M. A. CANE
It is widely believed by scientists and lay people alike that the transport of warm water north in the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Drift, and its release to the atmosphere, is a major reason why western Europe’s winters are so much milder (as much as 15–20 degC) than those of eastern North America (Fig. 1). The idea appears to have been popularized by M. F. Maury in his book The physical geography of the sea and its meteorology (1855) which went through many printings in the United States and the British Isles and was translated into three languages.
In summary, the east–west asymmetry of winter climates on the seaboards of the North Atlantic is created by north-westerly advection over eastern North America and by zonal advection into Europe. The Pacific Ocean has an analogous arrangement with meridional advection being an especially strong cooling over Asia. Since western Europe is indeed warmed by westerly advection off the Atlantic, we next assess how the
surface fluxes over the Atlantic are maintained.
In conclusion, while OHT warms winters on both sides of the North Atlantic Ocean by a few degC, the much larger temperature difference across the ocean, and that between the maritime areas of north-western Europe and western North America, are explained by the interaction between the atmospheric circulation and seasonal storage and release of heat by the ocean. Stationary waves greatly strengthen the temperature
contrast across the North Atlantic and are themselves heavily influenced by the net effect of orography. In contrast, transport of heat by the ocean has a minor influence on the wintertime zonal asymmetries of temperature. Even in the zonal mean, OHT has a small effect compared to those of seasonal heat storage and release by the ocean and atmospheric heat transport. In retrospect these conclusions may seem obvious, but we are unaware of any published explanation of why winters in western Europe are mild
that does not invoke poleward heat transport by the ocean as an important influence that augments its maritime climate.

Climate science is chock full of urban legends. Urban legend theories are theories (mechanisms) which are repeated when there is obvious data and logic that supports the assertion that the theories in question are completely incorrect, not part of the solution.
Solar cycle changes are the cause of past cyclic climate change and were the cause of the warming in the last 150 years.
1. The discrete thermal halone ocean conveyor theory has been proven incorrect by ocean float data. The discrete thermal halone conveyor started with a picture that Wally Broeker without proof. Ocean float data shows only 8% of the flow in the North Atlantic fallows the Broeker conveyor path. Therefore changes in the fresh water flow cannot interrupt the North Atlantic drift current and changes in the North Atlantic drift current do not affect ocean current flow in the Southern Hemisphere.
2. Basic analysis shows the heat transferred by the North Atlantic drift current is three times less than heat is transfer from summer warming of the North Atlantic current. A complete interruption to the North Atlantic drift current therefore cannot cause the cyclic warming and cooling of Europe and Greenland Ice sheet.
3. The warming in the Southern Hemisphere is simultaneous with the warming in the North hemisphere. If ocean currents where the cause of the warming there would be roughly a 1000 year lag.
4. When the Southern hemisphere, the Greenland Ice Sheet, and the Northern hemisphere warm, the Antarctic ice cools. This phenomena is called confusingly the Polar see-saw (see Svensmark’s attached paper). The Antarctic ice sheet cools as the albedo of that ice sheet is greater than the albedo of clouds. Therefore an increase in cloud cover over the Antarctic causes warming of that ice sheet rather than cooling. The albedo of the Greenland ice sheet is low than the Antarctic ice sheet and the Greenland ice sheet is not isolated by a polar vortex and hence unlike the Antarctic ice sheet follows the temperature of the surround ocean.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090513130942.htm

Cold Water Ocean Circulation Doesn’t Work As Expected
The familiar model of Atlantic ocean currents that shows a discrete “conveyor belt” of deep, cold water flowing southward from the Labrador Sea is probably all wet.
A 50-year-old model of ocean currents had shown this southbound subsurface flow of cold water forming a continuous loop with the familiar northbound flow of warm water on the surface, called the Gulf Stream.
“Everybody always thought this deep flow operated like a conveyor belt, but what we are saying is that concept doesn’t hold anymore,” said Duke oceanographer Susan Lozier. “So it’s going to be more difficult to measure these climate change signals in the deep ocean.”
The question is how do these climate change signals get spread further south? Oceanographers long thought all this Labrador seawater moved south along what is called the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC), which hugs the eastern North American continental shelf all the way to near Florida and then continues further south.
But studies in the 1990s using submersible floats that followed underwater currents “showed little evidence of southbound export of Labrador sea water within the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC),” said the new Nature report.
Scientists challenged those earlier studies, however, in part because the floats had to return to the surface to report their positions and observations to satellite receivers. That meant the floats’ data could have been “biased by upper ocean currents when they periodically ascended,” the report added.
To address those criticisms, Lozier and Bower launched 76 special Range and Fixing of Sound floats into the current south of the Labrador Sea between 2003 and 2006. Those “RAFOS” floats could stay submerged at 700 or 1,500 meters depth and still communicate their data for a range of about 1,000 kilometers using a network of special low frequency and amplitude seismic signals.
But only 8 percent of the RAFOS floats’ followed the conveyor belt of the Deep Western Boundary Current, according to the Nature report. About 75 percent of them “escaped” that coast-hugging deep underwater pathway and instead drifted into the open ocean by the time they rounded the southern tail of the Grand Banks.
Eight percent “is a remarkably low number in light of the expectation that the DWBC is the dominant pathway for Labrador Sea Water,” the researchers wrote.
Studies led by Lozier and other researchers had previously suggested cold northern waters might follow such “interior pathways” rather than the conveyor belt in route to subtropical regions of the North Atlantic. But “these float tracks offer the first evidence of the dominance of this pathway compared to the DWBC.”

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/the-source-of-europes-mild-climate

The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate
The notion that the Gulf Stream is responsible for keeping Europe anomalously warm turns out to be a myth
If you grow up in England, as I did, a few items of unquestioned wisdom are passed down to you from the preceding generation. Along with stories of a plucky island race with a glorious past and the benefits of drinking unbelievable quantities of milky tea, you will be told that England is blessed with its pleasant climate courtesy of the Gulf Stream, that huge current of warm water that flows northeast across the Atlantic from its source in the Gulf of Mexico. That the Gulf Stream is responsible for Europe’s mild winters is widely known and accepted, but, as I will show, it is nothing more than the earth-science equivalent of an urban legend.
Recently, however, evidence has emerged that the Younger Dryas began long before the breach that allowed freshwater to flood the North Atlantic. What is more, the temperature changes induced by a shutdown in the conveyor are too small to explain what went on during the Younger Dryas. Some climatologists appeal to a large expansion in sea ice to explain the severe winter cooling. I agree that something of this sort probably happened, but it’s not at all clear to me how stopping the Atlantic conveyor (William: As basic simulations indicate the majority of heat transport is due to solar summer heating and the prevailing west to east wind) could cause a sufficient redistribution of heat to bring on this vast a change.

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0612145v1

The Antarctic climate anomaly and galactic cosmic rays
Borehole temperatures in the ice sheets spanning the past 6000 years show Antarctica repeatedly warming when Greenland cooled, and vice versa (Fig. 1) [13, 14]. North-south oscillations of greater amplitude associated with Dansgaard-Oeschger events are evident in oxygenisotope data from the Wurm-Wisconsin glaciation[15]. The phenomenon has been called the polar see-saw[15, 16], but that implies a north-south symmetry that is absent. Greenland is better coupled to global temperatures than Antarctica is, and the fulcrum of the temperature swings is near the Antarctic Circle. A more apt term for the effect is the Antarctic climate anomaly.
Attempts to account for it have included the hypothesis of a south-flowing warm ocean current crossing the Equator[17] with a built-in time lag supposedly intended to match paleoclimatic data. That there is no significant delay in the Antarctic climate anomaly is already apparent at the high-frequency end of Fig. (1). While mechanisms involving ocean currents might help to intensify or reverse the effects of climate changes, they are too slow to explain the almost instantaneous operation of the Antarctic climate anomaly.
Figure (2a) also shows that the polar warming effect of clouds is not symmetrical, being most pronounced beyond 75◦S. In the Arctic it does no more than offset the cooling effect, despite the fact that the Arctic is much cloudier than the Antarctic (Fig. (2b)). The main reason for the difference seems to be the exceptionally high albedo of Antarctica in the absence of clouds.

Now back to the more important matter of the N. Atlantic
Number of well informed contributors to this website maintain that solar activity effect on the climate change amounts to about 0.1 C. I am not so well informed, and not easily convinced by anyone’s views, I go and do my own thing and form my view.
N. Atlantic SST is available from 1850s onwards, but there are uncertainties regarding the earlier data.
Central England temperature has far more accurate data and goes back to 1660.
Dr. Svalgaard & co tell us that the sunspot group number GSN is a more reliable metrix than simple SSN. Despite some reservation towards Svalgaard’s ‘new’ GSN numbers they will be used in this short analysis.
To ascertain any effect of the solar activity on the longer term climate change I compared rate of change in the average GSN to the CET. For averaging I used a low pass filter since it gives more accurate results than a moving average.
Since the ‘new’ sunspot date has lost most of its up-trend and the rate of change by its nature tends to eliminate trend, I de-trended the CET data to obtain a more fair comparison as shown in this graph.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/G&C.gif
(click on the graph to enlarge)
Data used are
GSN: http://sidc.oma.be/silso/DATA/GN_y_tot_V2.0.txt
CET: http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat
for the LPF response see the graphic inset.
From the graph above we can see that the solar effect varies from time to time, with respect to our dear sun, despite being the beginning and the end of it all, there are other factors, one of them being volcanic eruptions.
Strongest solar effect was just after coming out of the Maunder minimum and amounts to almost 1C, while the average is more likely to be around 0.5C. These values are based on highly smoothed data by the LPF, in reality the value could be somewhat greater. So much for the 0.1C limit to the solar influence.
I do not consider ‘global temperature anomaly’ index as having much value in relation to the real world I happen to live in, you are welcome to disagree, but I’m sticking to what I think to be right.