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.
So if they think old cold water will run out and be replaced by warmer old water, me thinks a Freshman level class in hydrology is in order. Might I suggest a simplified version? Just in case longer words stump the authors.
http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/o_strat.html
Hello all, I am in my 90 th year on this planet, so of course I know nothing as Sgt.Schultz would have said. But how can heat be hiding in the deep Ocean. Heat rises and cold falls, so what is going on. Before cars had water pumps we had tall radiators, they worked by convention, the warm water rose and cooled, then it dropped and went into the engine.
So what is different about the Oceans ?
Michael Elliott.
Is this why old ice cubes ruin a good whisky?
Two words: no, onions.
Why am I LMAOROFL with this thread? It seems funnier than 97% of any other threads I’ve ever read!!! .Could we have passed the “tipping point”?
Another grant trough study in Nature that is full of bollocks.
And there is no evidence of any warming in the abyssal deep. http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/06oct_abyss/
Do they actually read what they write?
Quote *old water that is continually pulled to the surface.*
They appear to be getting dumber every day.
Old water holds old cold. Is that any different from new cold? Inquiring minds want to know. Uninquiring minds, not so much.
What no one actually explains on a website such as this is exactly how increasing the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere avoids increasing the energy content of the atmosphere. I think because most folks on these blogs having only the sketchiest idea as to what the molecules of GHG actually do to increase the energy at the surface of the planet.
How many of them believe that it actually acts in the same way as a greenhouse because of the name ? How may actually understand the quantum process that explains that the absorption of a photon of IR radiation by a GHG molecule excites the bonds within that molecule into a higher quantum energy state ? How many then realise that as the molecule spontaneously drops back to its’ ground state energy it remits exactly the same amount of energy as a photon of IR in a random direction ? Some goes up and some goes down.
Do these folks understand the energy cascade that then happens up through the atmosphere to finally emit that photon back into space ? Do they understand that in fact the temperature of Earth as seen from space remains exactly the same irrespective of the amount of trapped heat due to the basic laws of thermodynamics ? But do they realise that the energy at the surface increases but the effective level in the atmosphere at which the thermodynamic balance with space occurs gets higher.
Hence GHGs are not heating the planet as such, just the lower atmosphere. In fact it is true that the stratosphere will cool as more of it’s energy is redirected back to the surface.
If you find on reading this post that there are physical processes happening that you didn’t understand or even realise existed then I suggest that a few hours studying these processes would stand you in good stead.
These processes are not conjectural they have been known about for over 100 years. Now you will understand that GHG do increase the energy near the surface of the planet you can start debating where that energy is going. That is what climate science is currently trying to discern. They are not debating the fact that energy at the surface has increased. That is a given from very basic physics.
And as a theory it has already been tested on other planets. Venus for example, which has a runaway greenhouse gas warming that is enough to melt lead at the surface despite the fact that the radiation balance at the top of its’ atmosphere gives a black body radiation temperature of just 231.7K.
The Earths’ black body radiation temperature is 254.3K. However the surface temperature of Venus is 737K and that of the Earth 288K. So you can see that the GHG effect gives a surface temperature on Earth, with its’ thin atmosphere compared to Venus, of 34K greater than is black body temperature (thank God for the GHG effect !). However Venus with it’s thicker atmosphere of green house gasses has a surface temperature that is 506K greater than its’ black body temperature.
This demonstrates the fact that increasing GHG concentration does indeed increase the surface temperature despite the black body temperatures being very similar.
So when you are criticising the scientists who are engaged in trying to understand the effects of this build of heat (used in the scientific sense. Heat is NOT temperature in science speak) at the Earths’ surface then bear in mind that the fact of that increase in heat is actually a given from very basic physics. The science is trying to understand the flow of that heat through the oceans and the atmosphere and how it will effect the climate. This I will admit is a very very complex topic with many possible pathways that the heat can take. And it is this that the computer models are trying to predict, not the build up of heat but its’ distribution.
As a side note : I think scientific language also confuses some folks when they read the science. Heat is a great example. Used in common language it tends to mean temperature. In scientific language, as used in scientific papers it has a very different meaning. http://physics.about.com/od/thermodynamics/fl/Heat-Current.htm
Nice theory,
But there is always the question of what really happens at the quantum level. Does it really do that.
Regarding Venus, what would the temperature on Earth get to in the day-time if the time from Sunrise to Sunset was 116 days long like it is on Venus – 2,800 hours straight. If you understand physics as well as you say, you will be able to calculate that the Earth in a daytime of 2800 hours long would reach about 700K just like Venus. All the water boils away, anything in the crust that can emit gases will be baked out and release it just like Venus. CO2 has nothing to do with it. But that is more like real physics again so you can just ignore that and go back to the simple theory stuff that climate science is based on.
It’s not really a theory as it’s backed by very solid evidence from the laboratory where they can measure the absorption spectra and the energy levels that the absorption lines correspond to.
Regarding the long days on Venus this does not really effect the overall average of the planets’ average atmospheric temperature. The simple reason being that it does have an atmosphere which is a fluid body which can easily transport energy from the dark side to the light side. One of the reasons weather of any kind exists of course is the tendency for a fluid body to redistribute heat to a uniform concentration. On Earth a lot of this redistribution is between the cooler poles and the hot tropics. This is on a planetary scale and for more information try googling the Hadley Cells.
This is of course what the topic of this article is about. The oceans are also a fluid and try to equalise the heat throughout the body of water. Of course the process is much much slower in the ocean as the viscosity of water is so much greater. The ocean version of the Hadley cell takes a molecule of water around 1000 years to complete the cycle ( http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/currents/06conveyor2.html ). Thus the reference to “old” water. Some of that water will not have been in contact with the atmosphere for 1000 years and hence not had the opportunity to absorb the energy that has been added by GW. This is a good thing for us as it will slow climate change since there is a large reservoir of cold “old” water available to absorb some of the energy the increase in GHG is trapping.
The reason a body like the moon does have huge surface temperature variation is that there is no atmosphere to transport that energy and no GHGs to keep the energy near the planet surface whilst that transportation takes place. Of course an atmosphere without GHGs would from the point of view of energy balance be the same as no atmosphere at all. Energy would be able to enter the atmosphere as UV and heat the surface, but equally there would be nothing to stop the radiation of energy straight back into space. That’s why desert nights are so cold. Water vapour is a very good GHG and so most of the planet has a good mechanism to prevent IR going straight into space. Not so over a very dry desert of course.
I would like to see scientific evidence that shows that my case for the way GHGs work is in error and that will then explain why many folks consider the possibility of increasing GHG concentrations at the surface will not trap more heat near the surface. If you can’t find a peer reviewed paper that shows that increasing GHG concentration results in more heat in the surface layers then maybe you could consider the possibility that it does. Once you have considered that possibility then maybe it would be better if this website engaged more in a discussion as to where that heat is going and what the effects will be on human living comfort on the planet in the future.
Tim,
Since global warming stopped for almost twenty years while CO2 was steadily rising, the observational (empirical) evidence clearly demonstrates that CO2 doesn’t have the claimed effect.
CO2 may cause some minuscule warming. But since it is too small to measure, it can be disregarded as a non-problem.
Bill Illis. You theory is interesting, but surely wrong. The temperature on Venus is roughly the same, day or night, because the thick atmosphere distributes the heat effectively.
From Univerese Today: ” But on Venus, the surface temperature is 460 degrees Celsius, day or night, at the poles or at the equator.”
Space.com: “The nights on Venus are as warm as the days.”
Moonphases.info: “On Venus, the temperature is set to around 460 degrees whether it is day or night at any section of the planet.”
Planets for kids “This means that temperatures on Venus remain relatively consistent, and the nights are not significantly cooler than the days.”
You contention that daytime temperatures are so high because the day is so long fails miserably when you realise that night-time temperatures are about the same.
Ulricyons ” very chilly layer at temperatures of around –175ºC in the atmosphere 125 km above the planet’s surface.” These cool polar regions are 125km above the surface.
seaice1,
The thick atmosphere, equal to the pressure of the ocean at 900 metres depth, plus the intensely strong winds given that extreme density are sufficient to transfer the energy across the dark side. Some layers of the atmosphere have winds over 700 kms/hour.
Surface ocean temperature a few days ago.
The White are sea ice and are below -2.0C. After that, the Arctic sea surface temperature is the same as the Antarctic sea surface temperature (mostly below 0.0C) so the “old water” story does not hold any water. Its the same temp in the Arctic as in the Antarctic.
The ocean is cold in the polar regions and it is just not warming (except in the fake numbers for the Arctic).
http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/data/sst/50km_night/2016/sstnight.5.30.2016.gif
The polar surface is rather cool too compared to the rest of the planet:
http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2012/10/terminator_temperature_profile/11867553-3-eng-GB/Terminator_temperature_profile_medium.jpg
Venus polar regions are very cold:
http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Venus_Express/A_curious_cold_layer_in_the_atmosphere_of_Venus
There is actually a link in this very thread that talks about how increasing CO2 in the atmoshphere actually INCREASES the loss – yes loss – of longwave emission:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GL066749/full
The net effect is that higher CO2 levels actually COOL a place like Antarctica. Meaning the accepted theory that everyone hews to (more CO2 = more warming) is turned upside down depending upon the conditions.
Isn’t physics wonderful? ESPECIALLY when it’s backed up – and matches – empirical measurements.
If you read the whole article which you link to you’ll find out that in the Antarctica there is an unusual if not unique situation in that the surface temperature is colder than the stratosphere. It is this temperature inversion that results in the finding that increasing CO2 levels increases the amount of radiation escaping into space in this region. The article makes clear that this is not a result that can be applied to the whole planet but might help fill in some of the missing details which will enable the models to become more accurate.
So your assertion that this article claims that increasing CO2 levels will cool the planet in it’s entirety points to the conclusion that you only read the part of the article that gave that information. Reading the whole article should have left you impressed that the scientists involved realised that there was a flaw in the models when comparing observation with theory and went to find the explanation. In fact the explanation did not involve discovering new physics just the application of known physics to an unusual situation i.e the surface being colder than the top of atmosphere.
I would also have thought that if you truly feel that scientists are fixing the data and science in order to con the population into “believing” in climate change then they would have burnt these findings and put the ashes out of reach. However they have done what a good scientist should, which is publish a result that can now be checked by anyone with the expertise to do so.
p.s I am NOT a scientist and never have been thus I have no vested interest in defending them. I’m a pilot by profession and study climate change as I have flown around the world for 30 years and have witnessed change happening. This piqued my interest in the subject.
Mother Earth is simply applying a cold compress to it’s fevered patient. This is easily understood and is settled science. Anyone who doubts this should to be incarcerated and sued blue (cold blue).
dbstealey
In reply to your assertion about the “pause” (which many dispute as ever happening by the way) proving that CO2 cannot be linked to increases in global temperature then I invite you to look at the basic physics. Without GHGs then the surface of the planet would be the same at the black body radiation temperature of the planet which is some 34 degrees cooler than we currently enjoy (SI units by the way, not Fahrenheit). So we have the GHGs that are present in the atmosphere to thank for the fact that we are here at all. If you want to explore what the planet would be like without them try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth and then scroll down to the section Mechanisms.
So if removing CO2 from the atmosphere causes the Earth to cool to that extent could you suggest why increasing the concentration of GHG will not increase the energy in the atmosphere ?
Tim says:
…could you suggest why increasing the concentration of GHG will not increase the energy in the atmosphere ?
Sure. That’s been explained so many times I’m surprised you missed it. Look at this chart:
As you can see, radiative physics demonstrates the declining effect of adding more CO2. If CO2 increased from where it is now by 30%, 50%, or even 100%, any resulting warming would still be too small to measure.
Currently, CO2 is ≈400 ppm. Use the chart to extrapolate from 400 ppm, out to where 800 ppm would be. How much global warming would that cause?
Answer: Doubling CO2 would result in only minuscule global warming — far less than one-tenth of a degree C.
Thus, the “carbon” scare is debunked by real world physics. The mistake is made by the alarmist belief, which incorrectly assumes a linear rise, when in reality the effect is logarithmic.
Also, the “pause” was so real that there were close to a hundred documented examples posted here showing scientists trying to explain the “pause”. So now the new talking point is that the “pause” (or “hiatus”) never happened! But that’s just backing and filling with an alarmist fabrication. They can’t explain why global warming stopped for nearly 20 years, so they simply lie about it now, claiming that it never happened.
Tim,
In reasearching the last question (the “pause” never happened?), I found more info:
Prof Richard Lindzen sent Anthony Watts an email in 2008, confirming that global warming had stopped. It didn’t resume again until the recent El Nino.
Next, the IPCC also verified the existence of the “pause” in global warming.
And the “pause” was reported in the mass media, quoting the scientific establishment. The Globe & Mail published a chart showing that global warming had stopped.
Finally, all the hoo-hah over ‘global warming’ is put into perspective when we look at the lack of temperature changes over the past century:
http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2012/05/Mean-Temp-1.jpg
The truth is that we’ve just been through the most benign century in the global temperature record. And there is no indication that will change any time soon.
So forget the “carbon” scare. There are too many other things to worry about. And…
Don’t worry — be happy! ☺
It’s déjà vu all over again:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/27/ipcc-fails-to-come-clean-over-global-temperature-standstill/
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John West says:
September 27, 2013 at 10:19 am
A reminder as to one of the reasons why “the pause” is important:
Back in 2007 Norman Page asks in comments @ur momisugly RC:
“what year would you reconsider the CO2 – Warming paradigm if the CRU Global annual mean temperature is cooler than 2005 – 2009…?”
Gavin Schmidt answers:
“You need a greater than a decade non-trend that is significantly different from projections. [0.2 – 0.3 deg/decade]”
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/a-barrier-to-understanding/
At that time it was outside the paradigm for there to be a decade without a warming trend. Now that we’re at a decade and half they’ve shifted the paradigm to accommodate the lack of warming as if they always expected this sort of thing to happen and it doesn’t change a thing. But something has changed; their paradigm has shifted in the “skeptical” direction (they’ll deny that). Consider one of the early skeptical arguments to catastrophic warming: the ocean is a massive heat sink that will moderate the warming. Here we are now with moderated warming and suddenly the past skeptic position is the alarmist position and they won’t even admit we were right. Oh no, they saw this coming all along while calling us “deniers” for predicting exactly what has happened. WUWT?
The paradigm has shifted towards lower sensitivity as well, again they can’t bring themselves to say skeptics were right.
Starting to look like a pattern to me.
————————————————–
No Doubt, it’s a pattern alright.
So what everyone is relying on is the temperature record to debunk climate change. That would be the one they say is false in other contexts when it shows a warming effect. What they don’t look at is the fundamental physics of the phenomenon and ask “so where is the heat going” ?
So what you are depending on is that the basic physics that can calculate what the radiative forcing effect of anthropogenic co2 production is and the climate sensitivity to that forcing is completely wrong http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=257
Let’s accept that there is uncertainty in this science. But let us accept the within that uncertainty there is still the possibility the AGW is a concern. What probability of practically all the peer reviewed papers being wrong are you willing to accept in order for there to be no effect that will damage the environment to the extent that it makes life for humans uncomfortable. Maybe there is just a 5% chance in your mind that just possibly all the scientists are right. A 95% chance they are wrong.
Would you get on a Boeing aircraft if the manufacturers said that there was a 95% chance of it getting you to your destination. Or would you just perhaps say “I’m not taking that risk”.
Are you so certain that all these scientists are wrong that you will take the risk with the whole planet and everyone you know on it so that you can continue to use carbon based energy where a non-polluting alternative can be found ? It seems to me that if that is the case then you have a faith that is way way stronger than mine.
It also suggests that you should probably not trust scientists in other disciplines as they are probably only in it for the money as well. So I would steer well clear of an oncologist if you get cancer. After all he probably only uses expensive cancer treatments because the drugs company takes him out for dinner from time to time. And as for computers that all those quantum physicists had a hand in designing they are clearly suspect. After all that’s the same discipline that offered an explanation of emissivity of CO2 so they must be wrong as the emissivity of the atmosphere has no effect on the surface temperature.
Tim says:
So what everyone is relying on is the temperature record to debunk climate change.
Tim, you need to re-think your premise, because the climate always changes. And linking to skeptical science is a non-starter. Look on the right sidebar. They have their own special classification: “Unreliable”. Why would you link to unreliable information?
Next, skeptics (real skeptics) do use the temperature record. It shows that what’s happening now is very benign. Look at the chart I posted above. How could that possibly scare anyone?
And yes, as you say it is ‘possible’ that AGW is a concern. But first you need to quantify AGW. How much is it? Is it 10% of global warming? Or maybe 3%? Or, maybe it’s 0.03%. Or maybe 0.00001%.
The fact is, we don’t know. But we do know one thing for sure: AGW must be very small, since no one has been able to measure it.
Well, actually Jerry Brown sees warming there now. That makes it instrumental in getting the Federal dollars for high speed rail based on rising seas from warm waters there now. Win-the-day courtroom tactics are in play everyday in the Great Climate Con.
“The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting remnants of mighty ice-floods that once filled the great valleys and poured into the sea. So, also, are those of Norway, Asia, and South America. Even the grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover Greenland, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of Alaska, and the south polar region are shallowing and shrinking. Every glacier in the world is smaller than it once was. All the world is growing warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is diminishing. But in contemplating the condition of the glaciers of the world, we must bear in mind while trying to account for the changes going on that the same sunshine that wastes them builds them.”
— John Muir, The Mountains of California, 1894
“The glaciers of Switzerland, like those of the Sierra, are mere wasting remnants of mighty ice-floods that once filled the great valleys and poured into the sea. So, also, are those of Norway, Asia, and South America. Even the grand continuous mantles of ice that still cover Greenland, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Franz-Joseph-Land, parts of Alaska, and the south polar region are shallowing and shrinking. Every glacier in the world is smaller than it once was. All the world is growing warmer, or the crop of snow-flowers is diminishing. But in contemplating the condition of the glaciers of the world, we must bear in mind while trying to account for the changes going on that the same sunshine that wastes them builds them. ”
–John Muir, The Mountains of California, 1894
Since satellite records of the Antarctic ice mass began over 35 (?) years ago, that overall mass has relentlessly continued to increase. I figure that it will slow (probably already is) as the circulation rate of water into and out of the atmosphere declines as the globe cools.
Record sea ice around the Antarctic continent in recent years… caused by rising cold water apparently making itself suddenly colder against the “warming” atmosphere; thermodynamics moving in reverse time, self-decreasing system entropy. Wow!! Quite a claim! Must be where Dr Who is hiding out. If we could harness this, we could make engines that suck CO2 out of the atmosphere into the exhaust pipe and produce oxygen and octane and still magically produce a positive power output — hey, over-unity systems!!! This is essentially the outcome of what greenies believe, since their ideologies are based in fairyland fantasies and the like.
The thing about a drowning moron is that any straw will do.
CAGW causes all of this (http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm), apparently.