Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A new research paper claims that the Antarctic Ocean is staying cold, because it receives large infusions of “old water”, water which has been sitting in the freezing cold ocean depths since before the start of the machine age.
Antarctic Ocean Climate Change Mystery Could Be Explained By Deep, Old Water
A new study suggests that the Antarctic Ocean has remained unaffected by climate change and global warming due to deep, old water that is continually pulled to the surface.
A new University of Washington study reveals why the Antarctic Ocean might be one of the last places to experience the effects of global warming and human-driven climate change.
Over the years, the water surrounding Antarctica has stayed roughly the same temperature even as the rest of the planet continues to warm, a fact often pointed out by climate change deniers.
Now, a new study uses observations and climate models to suggest that the reason for this inconsistency is due to the unique currents around Antarctica that continually pull deep, old water up to the surface. This ancient water hasn’t touched the Earth’s surface since before the machine age, meaning it has been hidden from human-driven climate change.
“With rising carbon dioxide you would expect more warming at both poles, but we only see it at one of the poles, so something else must be going on,” said Kyle Armour of the University of Washington and lead author of the study. “We show that it’s for really simple reasons, and ocean currents are the hero here.”
The abstract of the study;
Southern Ocean warming delayed by circumpolar upwelling and equatorward transport
The Southern Ocean has shown little warming over recent decades, in stark contrast to the rapid warming observed in the Arctic. Along the northern flank of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, however, the upper ocean has warmed substantially. Here we present analyses of oceanographic observations and general circulation model simulations showing that these patterns—of delayed warming south of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and enhanced warming to the north—are fundamentally shaped by the Southern Ocean’s meridional overturning circulation: wind-driven upwelling of unmodified water from depth damps warming around Antarctica; greenhouse gas-induced surface heat uptake is largely balanced by anomalous northward heat transport associated with the equatorward flow of surface waters; and heat is preferentially stored where surface waters are subducted to the north. Further, these processes are primarily due to passive advection of the anomalous warming signal by climatological ocean currents; changes in ocean circulation are secondary. These findings suggest the Southern Ocean responds to greenhouse gas forcing on the centennial, or longer, timescale over which the deep ocean waters that are upwelled to the surface are warmed themselves. It is against this background of gradual warming that multidecadal Southern Ocean temperature trends must be understood.
Read more: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2731.html
The world’s oceans contain enough cold water to quench any imaginable anthropogenic global warming for hundreds, more likely thousands of years. If that deep water is upwelling around Antarctica, keeping the Southern Ocean cold, it is difficult to see how significant global warming can occur, or significant Antarctic contribution to sea level rise can occur, until that reservoir of freezing cold deep ocean water is finally depleted.
We show that it’s for really simple reasons, and ocean currents are the hero here.”
So you’ve woken up to the THC? Yes it’s real simple. Ocean currents are responsible for the cooling trend around Antarctica. Such currents and changes in vertical mixing are also causing the warming elsewhere. In fact, ocean circulation influences climate globally on century and even millennial timescales.
Sadly this leaves little role for CO2.
Every cloud has a silver lining. One of the consequences of climate scientists tearing themselves away from computer modelling/gaming in a distressed attempt to find reasons for global non-warming is that in the process they sometimes, even if, accidentally and in spite of themselves, they learn some climate science. So now the great effort of dissembling about Antarctic cooling, they have stumbled on the global thermohaline circulation. But it’s clearly baby steps at first, they have a steep learning curve ahead of them. What they will find if they do more reading is that Antarctica is the world’s biggest source of formation and downwelling of cold deep water. Not too surprising, one would think, since it’s the coldest place on earth. Antarctica is actually the “grand central station” of the THC – the most important hub of circulation at all levels.
So cold water flows away from, not towards, Antarctica. So they’ve got cause and effect inverted as usual. I remember reading in a history book somewhere that deliberate inversion of cause and effect is a trademark of propaganda narrative of fasc1st regimes. What a curious coincidence!
Didn’t they also claim that the ‘missing heat’ was ‘hiding’ in the ocean depths? The existence of “unique currents around Antarctica that continually pull deep, old water up to the surface” would seem to contradict the hypothesis that “deep, old water” has remained at the ocean depths for hundreds of years.
Physics tells us that water has almost zero tensile strength and so cannot ‘pull’ anything – water gets pulled DOWN by gravity, and water with lower density gets pushed out of the way as gravity pulls water with higher density (cold and/or salty and/or silt-laden) even harder.
The upwelling water MUST be less dense (i.e. warmer or fresher) than the surface water it is displacing. Since there is very little ‘fresh’ water in the ocean, I suggest that it is getting a little heat from another source: submarine vulcanism. The reason that it is not melting the glaciers is that the upwelling water is simply not hot enough to do that. Depressurizing the water as it rises cools it – just a little bit: http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/images/water_phase_diagram_3.gif
Tad, one way that warmer surface ocean water sinks is by trade winds which blow water to the western pacific. The water piles up and the weight of all that extra water pushes it down into the depths. The opposite sort of thing happens in the eastern pacific where we get upwelling of cooler water from the deep. In this case, the less dense (warmer) surface waters sink and the denser (cooler) deep water rises…
[??? .mod]
Sorry, about that mod {8^o)…
The words “In this case” refer to my paragraph on the whole (which is to say, the downwelling of warm surface waters in the western pacific). I probably should have put the sentence about upwelling water in parentheses…
“The upwelling water MUST be less dense (i.e. warmer or fresher) than the surface water it is displacing. ”
No it MUSTN’T.
It is akin to water being *sucked* up due to the removal of surface waters as they are blown northwards (is general) by surface winds.
It is conservation of mass.
In order for the column of water to remain at it’s total mass content then deeper waters get forced upwards. It is a *pulling* and NOT a rising due to density difference.
Same thing happens in the east equ Pacific during a La Nina.
Tony, it seems to me that agw skeptics are missing a golden opportunity with this trenberthe thing. As a skeptic, i view it as a case of be careful what you ask for because you just might get it (for agw proponents). The more warming that we see, the faster heat sinks into the ocean, thereby making it more difficult as time goes on for agw to sustain surface warming. There is also the possibility that a warming ocean should see a greater outgassing of CO2 even if surface temps are flat or perhaps falling. (this is consistent with the carbon growth rate tracking with temperature) I think that the polarization of thought on this issue does a good deal of harm to the skeptical cause…
I’m sorry; “Tony” should read “Toneb”… (as you can see, i’m not having the best of days)
except that is not how it works around the antarctic. the katabatic winds create polynas where new ice begins to form , increasing the density of the water below the new ice due to it expelling the salt while freezing. this water then sinks. this is apparently how the cooler antarctic bottom water is formed. the immediate ocean surrounding the antarctic continent appears to be dominated by sinking cold water.
http://www.anta.canterbury.ac.nz/documents/GCAS_7/Brockett_D_Lit.Review.pdf
The most interesting sentence is at (almost) the end of the article: “Although these results do not explain the observed cooling of the SO over the most recent few decades (Fig. 1a),…
All they write would makes sense if the SST between 65S and 50S were unchanged..anyway: they cooled down between 1981 and now, and they have no explanation for this. The paper is… unfinished!
The bigger problem is the South Pole is cooling (which is attributed to CO2 – because everything is CO2’s fault).
The runaway melting scenarios aren’t compatible with a cooling continent.
Further the huge amount of sea ice is due to cooling not warming. Does the South Pole look hot to anyone. Does blue signify warming?
Hopefully something will happen with these cooling trends because that sea ice is sending a lot of energy into space. Runaway cooling would not be a good thing.
…Oh FFS….I’m still waiting for Ontario, Canada to “heat up” !! It is well known in the Northern Hemisphere, that that the amount of beer allowed to be consumed in one given day is proportional to the actual temperature outside of my Air Conditioned abode ! Cheers….
Wow. Hidden old water that is super cold yet somehow rises to the surface. Amazing.
There you go – Old cold water is new again!
Yet this image
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/material/conveyor2.jpg
from this site
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/thc_fact_sheet.html
shows “deep water formation”, not upwelling, at the south pole…
I do wish they could all agree on at least the direction of their vectors… I know magitudes are beyond them, but just a clue about up vs down or more snow from hotter vs more from colder at S.P. would be a nice start…
E.M.Smith, I don’t think they can think beyond their next grant. How to get it doesn’t include anything smart, like facts or science. They are doing tricks for treats now, is the way I see it.
The diagram shows deep water flowing from the north towards the antarctic and surface water leaving the antarctic by the law of continuity some deep water must rise. There are two regions shown of deep water formation also.
Yes, Phil, “polar cells” are similar to “hadley cells” (trades) in that they both blow away from the poles toward the equator at the surface. (“mid latitude cells” head the other way) Anyway you slice it, there will be down welling of warm surface waters and upwelling of cool deep waters…
Here is a 3D-style diagram of ocean currents around the “Grand Central Station” of the THC, Antarctica:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_RXGJAF_XL5N0lOVHdxSVNGZTQ/view?usp=sharing
Cold water flows away from Antarctica along the bottom, as you would expect.
Warm water flows toward Antarctica near the surface, as you would expect.
Helpfully reposted by Vuk a little downthread, this time as a displaying image:
http://arizonaenergy.org/WaterEnergy/Soceanracetrack.jpg
This explanation conflicts with earlier explanations in significant ways. And this latest explanationn of the climate apocalypse does not reconcile with the known facts very well. The one explanation that is actually supported by the data is that there is no climate apocalypse to come. But that is rejected by the climatocracy out of hand.
All new cold deep water is produced by fractionation of seawater as it freezes at the poles. The ice is freshwater and the salt stays behind as cold dense brine, at the freezing point of the brine, which never changes. So old cold deep seawater is at the same temperature as new cold deep seawater, independent of CO2 concentration. I see no rationale for the idea that Global Warming will affect the temperature of cold deep seawater.
The ice is freshwater
Actually no. Salt is extruded but gets physically entrapped as seams of salt. As shown in this microCT image of sea ice:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_RXGJAF_XL5b0VGWkZ2ZmEtSjA/view?usp=sharing
In the spirit of such genius.
It is obvious to the inteligensi why the southern pole fails to warm.
Heat rises and cold falls.
Therefor as every (insert Hans Christian’s description of easily gulled from The Emperor’s New Clothes)knows,the world is working as ordained by Climatology.(Herein approved by the Cult of Calamitous Climate).
As the Southern Pole is the lowest spot on this globe, it will also be the coldest.
We will of course ignore the fact that the Northern Pole by this logic should be glowing hot desert.
Climatology; it ain’t science.
“old water”
I think they misspelled “cold.”
Yeah, but now it’s too late and they’re too embarrassed to admit their mistake so… hey waitaminit, something sounds familiar!
Actually, I meant “old.” I was trying to say that the deep seawater produced a millennium ago was produced in the same way as that produced last winter, at the same temperature, independent of CO2 concentration.
Just another metaphoric epicycle.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZgWvg_x6c7c/VA0Im1rqbNI/AAAAAAAABBY/Hpu9dcITpjU/s1600/1024px-Cassini_apparent.jpg
“With rising carbon dioxide you would expect more warming at both poles, but we only see it at one of the poles, so something else must be going on,”
With the sole exception of AGW of course.
Funny how they think that warming from CO2 would bypass the polar see-saw effect.
“Over the years, the water surrounding Antarctica has stayed roughly the same temperature even as the rest of the planet continues to warm, a fact often pointed out by climate change deniers.
Now, a new study uses observations and climate models to suggest that the reason for this inconsistency is due to the unique currents around Antarctica that continually pull deep, old water up to the surface. This ancient water hasn’t touched the Earth’s surface since before the machine age, meaning it has been hidden from human-driven climate change.
“With rising carbon dioxide you would expect more warming at both poles, but we only see it at one of the poles, so something else must be going on,” said Kyle Armour of the University of Washington and lead author of the study. “We show that it’s for really simple reasons, and ocean currents are the hero here.”
This “denier” has been stating the fact that our oceans have 1,000 times more heat capacity than the atmosphere and that climate models do not and can not dial that into projections.
Ironically, the term denier is still being used here, even as the explanations from this study sides with us so called “deniers”.
Even in the face of more and more evidence that the science is NOT settled, explanations for contradicting empirical data/observations are twisted and spun to read like they actually support the busted CAGW theory, even as they strongly suggest the opposite.
What will be the next new piece of information discovered that “deniers” have been shouting from the rooftops for the last 2 decades?
The oceans are finally getting a bit more of the respect that they deserve. Maybe in a few more years, we can get the gatekeepers to the climate science kingdom and authors of the IPCC climate science bible to come around to looking much closer at the sun.too.
This article appears to be extremely simplistic if not flat out wrong. There does not appear to be any comprehensive measurement basis for conclusions that are incomplete and somewhat contradictory both internally as well as with previous conclusions with better data. If, and if it’s a half a hemisphere.
If, this assessment is correct, then one might expect that Australia will see cooler, drier conditions under this paradigm while in the Northern Hemisphere we will have warmer and wetter weather. Bad news for the Aussies, good news for Canada and Russia.
Regardless, This newer climatic structure has to have limits. Any heat that accumulates at any location on or within the planet will find it’s way to somewhere colder on it’s way back to space. If necessary, “old water” currents will establish new pathways to redistribute heat. The Earth’s weather systems are a heat engine. What comes in must go out. Residence time in any geographic area is always limited by the fact that the engine is very active. Any excess of heat in -versus heat out merely speeds up the engine.
“This diagram depicts the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans essentially as continent-enclosed arms radiating from the central Southern Ocean, the diagram is schematic rather than a realistic map.”
http://arizonaenergy.org/WaterEnergy/Soceanracetrack.jpg
“With rising carbon dioxide you would expect more warming at both poles..”
If it had any considerable climate forcing power, rising CO2 would cool the Arctic because it would increase positive NAO/AO.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-3-5-6.html
The polar atmosphere of Venus is at some levels colder than the freezing point of CO2:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Venus_Express/A_curious_cold_layer_in_the_atmosphere_of_Venus
Why is this a surprise? Everyone knows that old people are always cold and never heat up, even in insanely hot temperatures. So why wouldn’t old water do the same thing?
hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Would you care to elaborate?
One would need a heck of a lot of accurate field data since the industrial evolution to make such assumptions (sorry, ‘could’)
How much do we really know about Antarctic marine currents and temperatures at depth? – sweet F all
Another case of chair polishers waving their arms I would say
Stokes hasn’t appeared to defend this because he knows it’s garbage. On the other hand, he won’t speak-out about it knowing that it’s garbage because it supports “the cause.”
Most of the supposed special processes which exclude the South Pole from warming are simply observations of long-term processes which have not changed during the period of interest.
The point is – that additional CO2 in the atmosphere is supposed to create a warming effect – all other things being equal.
In order for the CAGW grant-seekers and their fans to explain the Antarctic cooling then they would need to establish that a new climatological phenomena has occurred concurrently with their post-industrial apocalypse.
We can not just blame the circumpolar current for off-setting the warming effects of CO2. Since the circumpolar current has existed ever since South America abandoned Antartica and fled northwards.
(Actually, I don’t really know when it started. I should look it up. But clearly before the industrial revolution.)
So, they need to come up with something which offsets their magic all controlling heat trapping gases during the period in which those gases have been produced by humans.
I love all these excuses, since they are getting more and more feeble and smack of desperation.
But, I suppose that everybody in climate studies needs a post hoc for their post doc.
Publish or perish. Even when what you publish is unmitigated donkey-poop.
http://theinconvenientskeptic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/SP-RSS-UAH-April-2011.png
Not just “publish”…get quoted all over major media outlets and make a name for yourself. Might eventually be part of the team!
Absolutely, “shock value” is essential.
Climatology is now the “modern art” of science. Wow factor and attention are the commodities being traded.
Most modern art is not really art.
Most climate science is not really science.
The culprits, in either case, do not seem to care.
History will eventually repeat itself…
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/giss-busted-again-in-antarctica/