Guest essay by Mike Jonas
1. The basic physics
2016 was claimed as the “hottest year ever”. Well, the hottest for a few centuries, anyway, if the global temperature measures are to be believed. Let’s suppose that they are. It is known that 2016 was an El Niño year, and that the “hottest year ever” was caused by a burst of warm water from the ocean (and we know that CO2 doesn’t act that fast). So – where did the El Niño’s heat come from? Let’s look at some basic physics:
Greenhouse gases (GHGs) warm the atmosphere. From there, the downward Infra-Red (IR) radiation reaches the ocean surface.
IR cannot penetrate more than a fraction of a millimetre into the ocean, so it warms just the surface skin. From there most of its energy goes back into the atmosphere or space, but some of it can convect or conduct into the ocean. From the 2nd law of thermodynamics, in the absence of work, net heat transfer can only occur from a warmer object to a cooler one. So …
- The atmosphere cannot warm the ocean surface skin to a higher temperature than itself.
- Water in the ocean surface skin cannot mix with deeper water to create water of a higher temperature than itself.
- Water from the ocean cannot warm the atmosphere to a higher temperature than itself.
This means that none of the extra warmth from the ocean which caused the “hottest year ever” can have come from GHGs within the last few centuries. It’s not a question of how much came from GHGs and how much from natural causes. The proportion of the extra heat that actually came from GHGs (within the last few years at the very least) has to be precisely zero.
The basic physics tells us: The atmosphere cannot heat itself !
Figure 1. Can the Atmosphere heat itself?
So where did the extra heat come from; what could have provided the energy to cause a part of the ocean to be hotter than it “ever” had been before?
The argument that GHGs slow down the ocean’s rate of heat loss isn’t the answer. That can cause the temperature to be higher than it otherwise might have been, but, as above, it can’t provide the energy to cause a new high temperature.
A lot of solar radiation is absorbed into the ocean’s surface skin, but this could not have been the source of the extra heat. For that, the ocean’s surface skin would have had to be as warm or warmer than the later El Niño, but it wasn’t.
“Natural variation” won’t cut it as an answer either. The heat has to have physically come from somewhere. We need to know where.
And remember, whatever the process was, it was all going on at a time when temperatures were lower than 2016’s. GHGs were higher than they had been before, but their influence can only be slow and steady. They can’t act as fast as an El Niño.
The only candidate for providing the extra heat appears to be the ITO (“Into The Ocean”), that is, the band of solar radiation with wavelengths from about 200-1000nm which is absorbed below the ocean surface, some of it many metres below the surface. For more on the ITO, see [1] below.
So let’s have a look at the ITO, and see how it stacks up against the IPCC’s favourite pet, CO2.
NB. This is a general comparison between ITO and CO2, it’s not specific to the 2016 El Niño. It also has some pretty rough back-of-envelope calcs that could turn out to be a health hazard. But at this stage, I’m just looking for ball-park figures.
2. ITO vs CO2
[Supporting calcs are in Appendices A, B]
The ITO is controlled by clouds, ie. by changes in cloud cover. The sun has been shown to influence cloud cover [1], so the sun is a factor too, but much more for its effect on clouds than for its TSI.
Over the period 1983-2009 (the only period for which I have the data needed), the IPCC estimate for the increase in CO2 forcing – including feedbacks – was ~0.54 Wm-2 (global average). As I explained in [1] Part 2, this figure was arrived at by the modellers by tuning the climate computer models to match the 20th century warming. In other words, the figure of 0.54 Wm-2 (or its equivalent over some other period) was calculated as the amount that was needed to deliver the observed warming, and then parameterised into the models.
Looking at the ITO over the Pacific tropics, and arbitrarily using only the portion of the ITO that is absorbed from 10 to 100m below the surface, the change in cloud cover from 1983-2009 delivered an extra 0.55 Wm-2 on a global basis. ie, the extra energy delivered into the Pacific tropical ocean 10-100m below the surface was equivalent to 0.55 Wm-2 over the whole of Earth’s surface.
Don’t read anything into the closeness between the IPCC’s 0.54 Wm-2 and the ITO’s 0.55 Wm-2. My ITO calculations were done using some arbitrary numbers, simply to arrive at a ball-park figure, in order to check whether the ITO could have delivered enough energy into the ocean to explain the global warming that the IPCC attributed to CO2. It did.
In a way, it had to. Think of it this way: The warming from CO2 could not have produced the El Niño warming that gave us the “warmest year ever”, as I explained in 1 above. It also for example could not have produced the El Niño warming in 1998, for the same reason. Even with CO2 warming, the only actual source of energy that could have produced those El Niños had to have come from ITO, regardless of where the IPCC thought it came from. So when the modellers were tuning their models to the 20th century warming, they were actually tuning them to the ITO (though they didn’t know that). This means that the ITO must have already delivered the amount of energy that the models assumed had come from CO2.
Now, let’s briefly re-visit the theoretical basis.
3. SCO vs IPCC
The IPCC’s view of climate is CO2-centric. In their version, Earth’s climate is basically stable, with variations caused by varying levels of atmospheric CO2 concentration and by little else. They think that until man-made CO2 came along, there wasn’t a lot that changed CO2 concentration, so Earth’s climate was pretty stable. Various dubious techniques were used to promote this idea, such as the infamoous “hockey-stick” graph produced by Michael Mann in which proxy temperature series that did not support the narrative were truncated. See here.
In the SCO hypothesis (Sun-Cloud-Ocean [1]), the key factor is the solar radiation that penetrates many metres into the ocean – the ITO. The ITO is affected by cloud cover.. Over the longer term (decades to centuries) cloud cover is driven by solar activity, as described by Henrik Svensmark here, and later successfully tested. Cloud cover is affected by solar activity in the short term too, eg as described here, but these short term variations probably have little effect on climate, because it takes time for clouds’ effect to accumulate. Cloud cover does vary naturally for other reasons, but little is known about it.
Clouds have a minor overall effect on average atmospheric temperature [“clouds exert two competing effects .. The balance between these two components depends on many factors” AR4 8.6.3.2], but they have a significant effect on the ITO and hence on the rate of absorption of energy by the ocean. The ocean can accumulate some of this energy over many years before releasing it. The ocean then acts like a giant heat-pump. Accumulated energy in the ocean is pumped in short (months, years) or long (years, decades) bursts by the ocean into the atmosphere, typically because of an ocean oscillation such as El Niño, AMO, PDO, etc. In the short term, or even over decades, the release of energy might bear little relation to its acquisition.
The global temperature pattern over the 20th century bears little resemblance to the supposed warming by CO2, but it does have a very good correlation with ocean oscillations (see here), and El Niño’s influence is easily seen.
4. Conclusion
I need to re-work everything carefully, and there are still a few gaps in the SCO hypothesis to fill in, but I am confident that I have found the mechanism of the 20th century global warming. It involved the sun, the clouds, and the ocean. SCO fits the evidence, CO2 does not.
Very important: The statement made in 2 above – ” the change in cloud cover from 1983-2009 delivered an extra 0.55 Wm-2 on a global basis” – is a statement that does not rely on the SCO hypothesis. It is what actually happened (apart from any arithmetic error), based only on published data and a straightforward calculation. It is valid regardless of the IPCC or anyone’s hypotheses or CO2 or anything else that might affect the climate.
Figure 2. Absorption by wavelength, depth. The longer wavelengths (over 700nm) are almost completely absorbed in the first metre. Only wavelengths 300-600nm get past 10m depth. Little gets past 100m depth. [Note: Wavelengths 200-300nm are all scattered in the atmosphere and don’t reach the ocean.].Visible light wavelengths very approximately are 400-500nm Blue, 500-600nm Green, 600-700nm Red.
Appendices
Appendix A. CO2
The IPCC says:
“The concentration of atmospheric CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial value of about 280 ppm to 379 ppm in 2005.” – AR4 TS.2.1.1.
“The simple formulae for RF of the LLGHG quoted in Ramaswamy et al. (2001) are still valid. These formulae are based on global RF calculations where clouds, stratospheric adjustment and solar absorption are included, and give an RF of +3.7 W m–2 for a doubling in the CO2 mixing ratio. (The formula used for the CO2 RF calculation in this chapter is the IPCC (1990) expression as revised in the TAR. Note that for CO2, RF increases logarithmically with mixing ratio.)
[..] Using the global average value of 379 ppm for atmospheric CO2 in 2005 gives an RF of 1.66 ± 0.17 W m–2; a contribution that dominates that of all other forcing agents considered in this chapter.” – AR4 2.3.1.
[RF = Radiative Forcing, LLGHG = Long-Lived GreenHouse Gases]
At 3.7 Wm-2 per doubling of CO2, the RF increase from 280 ppm to 379 ppm in 2005 is +3.7*(log2(379)-log2(280)) = +1.62 Wm-2
I’m not sure why IPCC put it at 1.66 Wm-2. I think they used 277 as the 1750 CO2 concentration, but maybe the allowances made for “clouds, stratospheric adjustment and solar absorption” made a difference. To be on the safe side, I’ll adjust following calcs up to match.
I only have cloud data for 1983-2009, so I need to work within that period so that I can do comparisons. Mauna Loa CO2 in 1983 averaged 342.7ppm, in 2009 averaged 387.2 (Data downloaded from here in Feb 2012). That gives an RF increase of +3.7*(log2(387.2)-log2(342.7)) * (1.66/1.62) = +0.20 Wm-2.
I have to be careful here, because the IPCC claim “feedbacks” to CO2 warming that increase the ECS from 1.2 to 3.2. So the +0.20 Wm-2 RF increase from 19983-2009 becomes something like +0.20 * 3.2/1.2 = +0.54 Wm-2.
How does the ITO stack up against that RF increase? See Appendix B.
Appendix B. The ITO
About 168 Wm-2 of solar radiation reaches Earth’s surface directly:
.Figure A.1. Global annual average energy budget, from here).
Of this, about 3/4 is in the ITO band of wavelengths. This is calculated from SORCE data, with the longer wavelengths (missing in the SORCE data) estimated from this chart provided by davidmhoffer:
Figure A.2. Radiation absorption chart.
We’re looking for the total Wm-2 represented by the red area from wavelength 0.2-1µm (200-1000nm). This comes to 133 Wm-2 (about 3/4 of the 168 Wm-2 in Figure A.1).
The oceans are 3/5 of Earth’s surface, so the ITO, which is ocean-only, works out at 133 * 3/5 = 80 Wm-2 over the globe. But what we need is the change from 1983-2009.
Figure A.3. Global cloud cover 1983-2009, ocean only.
Global cloud cover over the ocean dropped by about 4 percentage points from 1983 to 2009, based on the linear trend. Note that we are not concerned here with the exact amount, we’re just getting an idea of what it is like.
The average cloud cover over the period is about 71%, and the ITO is about 80 Wm-2 on a global basis. So the change in the ITO’s RF from 1983-2009 is about 80 * 4/(100-71) = 11 Wm-2 on a global basis.
Of that, about 45% is absorbed in the first metre of ocean, 30% from 1-10m, 22½% from 10-100m, and about 2½% goes further down. The part we are interested in is probably the 22½% from 10-100m, which is about 2.5 Wm-2 on a global basis.
Check: The ocean area we’re interested in is the one that feeds El Niño. That’s basically the Pacific tropics, so we need to check the cloud pattern over the Pacific tropical ocean:
Figure A.4. Pacific tropics 20S-20N cloud cover 1983-2009.
The pattern there is even stronger, with a cloud cover decline of about 6 percentage points, but the Pacific tropics is a smaller part of Earth’s surface. It also has a slightly lower average cloud cover, 61%. Its area is about 20% of Earth’s surface, so the equation for 10-100m depth in the Pacific Tropics becomes 80 * (6/(100-61)) * 20% * 22.5% = 0.55 Wm-2 on a global basis. That’s similar to the global warming capability that the IPCC claims for CO2. And bear in mind that for CO2’s 0.54 Wm-2, that’s spread around the whole globe and they need all of it for El Niño, whereas for ITO’s Pacific tropics 0.55 Wm-2 there’s another global 1.95 Wm-2 (2.5 – 0.55) going into the rest of the ocean to feed the other ocean oscillations.
Note: I need to re-work the Pacific Tropics chart, using the El Niño ocean areas. The fact that the Pacific tropics comes out at almost exactly the IPCC figure for CO2 is simply a fluke. I chose 20S-20N arbitrarily, and I chose depths 10-100m arbitrarily, just to get a ball-park figure. A more detailed calculation is needed, using the ENSO areas and water depths.
References
[1] SCO information is on WUWT:
· Part 1 describes how climate works.
· Part 2 explains how mainstream climate science went wrong.
· Part 3 looks at the scientific process.
Data and Calcs
Absorption data and calcs are in spreadsheet AbsorptionCalcs.xlsx (7mb)
See the spreadsheet: absorptioncalcs (.xlsx)
Cloud data and calcs spreadsheet (37mb) is too large to post at this stage.
Abbreviations
AMO – Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
AR4 – IPCC’s fourth report
CO2 – Carbon Dioxide
ECS – Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity
GHG – GreenHouse Gas
IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IR – Infra-Red radiation
ITO – Into The Ocean [Band of Wavelengths approx 200nm to 1000nm]
LLGHG – Long-Lived GreenHouse Gases
PDO – Pacific Decadal Oscillation
RF – Radiative Forcing
SCO – The Sun-Cloud-Ocean hypothesis
TAR – IPCC’s third report
TSI – Total Solar Irradiance
WUWT – wattsupwiththat.com
Mike Jonas (MA Maths Oxford UK) retired some years ago after nearly 40 years in I.T.
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*being
in place of “is” before possible.
I have seen equation 1) below used to calculate the emissivity of a heated surface using the Stefan Boltzmann relationship. The general form being:
0) W = σ * ε * A * T^4
Rearranged algebraically:
1) ε = W / (Asource * σ * (T^4source – T^4sink))
T^4sink is the notorious “back” radiation.
In my opinion this equation is incorrect because it does not account for the radiative area of the sink. The following is what I consider to be the correct form.
2) ε = W / ((Asource * σ * T^4source) – (Asink * σ * T^4sink))
Because of conservation of energy:
3) (Asource * σ * T^4source) = (Asink * σ * T^4sink)
and the denominator goes to zero and the equation becomes indeterminant.
There is no spoon – or “back” radiation.
So what you are saying by your proposed equation #2, taken to its logical conclusion, is that two objects at the same temperature would transfer heat between them, net heat going to the object with a larger surface area? This violates at least two laws of thermodynamics and perhaps a third.
@ur momisugly Nicholas SchroederFebruary 8, 2017 at 1:32 pm: The sink temperature at which SB works needs to be understood before it is used in climastrology. Nor can a gas be a blackbody.
Point number two
“…Water in the ocean surface skin cannot mix with deeper water to create water of a higher temperature than itself….”
Well, it could if the deeper water were warmer than the surface, but we know it is actually colder. When dealing with any argument involving this topic, one needs to address all contingencies.
Some 2-3 years ago I did a look at ENSO and the tectonic activity in the equatorial Pacific, there it appears to be some association if not a direct correlation of the two sets of events, at least according to the data I collected. If so then the ENSO is simply result of a neutral energy perturbation between ocean’s strata, while the trade winds variability is a direct consequence.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/ENSOetc.gif
Interesting comparison Vuk’.
Those two peaks in tectonic data look a lot like 8.85 and 11.86 y , do you have a link to that dataset please?
The second highest peak looks to be 8.85/2 as well.
I’m sure you also noticed a ~65 year quasi oscillation, ~17 might be the data length effect on a possible 18.5 years, while 11.86 is not open for discussion.
I spent some months researching and assembling data files of the extreme tectonic events along the ‘ring of fire’, the equatorial Pacific (as in the graph above) and the Mid Atlantic ridge ( as in here ).
There is no link to data, just number of files on my PC, hope to publish some day, but without a convincing hypothesis the data files are just bundles of numbers.
OK, so you’re saying the data is proprietary since you are intending or would like to publish. That’s fine but disappointing. I love new datasets. I doubt the 16 point something is anything to do with 18.6 .
“but without a convincing hypothesis the data files are just bundles of numbers.”
You do not need a hypothesis of the cause to publish an analysis. Collating and presenting a new dataset is worth while in itself. The periodograms are suggestive of cause even without a specific mechanism.
Did you do a frequency analysis of the N. Atl data or was it too discontinuous?
Spectral peaks in the Pacific tectonix are 4.3, 5.2, 6.2, 8.7, 11.8 and 16.4 years
errors bars of at least + – 2% to 3% should be added.
16.1 years is one of the prominent periodicities present in the earth’s core magnetic field variability.
In case of N.A. tectonix graph is the ‘previous 30 year integral’ of the events count, data goes back to 1700. Data are contiguous but discontinuities are introduced to achieve a ‘wiggle match’ non-stationary correlation) of the two sets of events (non-stationary correlation).
Periodogram (possibly) for that reason has no AMO’s ~60 year component.
Eliminating noise from periodogram by cutting off lower portion of the graph for the direct data (not the integral) compared to the CET (summer, winter & annual) is shown here
More likely the temperature induced variations in the weight of the water overlying tectonic boundaries has an effect on tectonic activity.
Except, that as the graph shows tectonics precedes ENSO by about 4 or 5 years.
Interesting, but each ENSO event includes both El Nino and La Nina so the tectonic plates could be responding to either which fits the ‘weight of water’ hypothesis.
Very unlikely. If you look at the link posted in the reply to Greg Goodman, a similar relationship is observed in the N. Atlantic where there is no major see level decadal oscillation.
As said above I have no convincing hypothesis either for the ENSO or the AMO as related to the tectonics, and it appears no one else to anything else.
Vuk’, it would be interesting to see the cross-correlation fn and also the spectral analysis of the same.
“I have no convincing hypothesis either for the ENSO or the AMO as related to the tectonics,”
Same tidal forces causing tectonic activity could be affecting horizontal ocean heat displacement. El Nino is an atmospheric positive feddback but it needs a trigger. I suspect the trigger is slow multiyear tides at the top of the the thermocline.
In 2015 perigee full moon occurred very close to the equinox ,when sun and moon are over the equator. Similarly 18 years earlier in 1997.
vukcevic – have you looked for cycles within earthquake activity that may correlate?
The most logical explanation (IMO) is that it is simply a periodic release of ocean heat. I don’t know of any flux in nature that is linear over time. I agree that it is a cooling event that releases a degree of stored heat. A thermometer over a pot of water being heated is not going to show a lineal increase, is it? (never tried the experiment 🙂 )
What triggers the release once a certain equilibrium is reached is another question. I do agree that we don’t know enough about the tectonic heat influence.
Tectonic heat release might sometimes affect timing but the basic phenomenon arises from the fact that there is more ocean in the southern hemisphere so that more solar energy is stored south of the equator until the imbalance grows large enough for the release to occur in the form of El Nino.
Stephan – I believe that those with high budgets are discounting this possibility too easily. While the Atlantic blob was active it would have been oh so easy to get sea samples for chemical analysis – Duuggh! It sat bang over an active tectonic boundary
We were looking at the moon crossing the ecliptic plane as a possible trigger for Enso Kelvin Waves. Haven’t heard either way yet.
Someplace on this site a long time ago I showed that heat released from the Earth’s interior on the seafloor is many orders of magnitude too small to have any impact on the heat budget over periods of a few years. I realize those midocean ridges and seafloor volcanoes are very hot, but they represent a very small area of a very vast ocean.
Yes, negligently small, that is not what is proposed above, it is the normal tidal forces.
If I was to formulate a hypothesis it would be based on the ‘acoustic-gravity waves’ kind of ‘longitudinal seafloor tsunami’ following a major tectonic event. Such waves transport water at a velocity of only a few cm/sec but move millions of cubic meters of deep water per second.
‘negligibly’ (I blame auto-spell check)
Mike Jonas, your basic misunderstanding of the so called atmospheric greenhouse effect works makes this writeup a mistake. It is true the colder sky can’t directly heat the ocean. However it does slow net radiation up from absorbed sunlight, and the slowing of net radiation is the source of the increased temperature. It is a (T^4 hot -T^4 cold) effect, where the T^4 cold reduces the net radiation, thus slowing trapped heat removal faster than solar absorption accumulates. Conduction, convection, and evaporation partially compensate to balance the radiation up reduction but not fully, so the surface heats some.
Leonard,
Since evaporation requires 5 times as much energy as is required to induce it at 1 bar atmospheric pressure how do you think that there is anything left over when downward IR is absorbed into more evaporation ?
There is no problem in having convection whisk it all away because water vapour is lighter than air and so increases the rate of convection proportionately to the increase in evaporation.
You could only inhibit the underlying energy flow from the ocean bulk by reducing the temperature differential between cold skin and warmer bulk but more evaporation actually increases the gradient. That must be so because evaporation caused the cool skin and the accompanying thermal gradient in the first place.
If GHG’s can add heat to the oceans (they cannot) Then Water vapor dominates over the oceans – CO2 does not get a lookin
If GHG’s can add heat to the oceans (they cannot) Then Water vapor dominates over the oceans – CO2 does not get a look in
Stephen, I think we have had this discussion before. The only net effect of the radiation partial insulation of the greenhouse gases is to raise the AVERAGE altitude of final radiation to space. the lapse rate changes are much less affected (they only depend on average specific heat of the atmosphere and gravity), so the lapse rate calculated downward from the higher average location of radiation to space to the surface requires a warmer surface for balance. Your comments on water vapor, surface skin effects, etc. are irrelevant.
Leonard,
I was responding to your comment that “conduction, convection and evaporation only partially compensate to balance the radiation up reduction but not fully so the surface heats some.”
That does involve consideration of the effect of downward IR on the ocean skin.
In my view conduction and convection involve a closed ‘adiabatic’ energy loop that requires a higher surface temperature to sustain it but that is an entirely non radiative process so we can exclude that from current consideration.
That just leaves evaporation induced by downward IR and the huge energy demand of the evaporative phase change prevents any surface warming at all. Indeed, raising downward IR further intensifies the ocean skin effect.
We probably have discussed this before but since then I’ve satisfied myself that my description is indeed correct and have refined the terms of expression.
That probably won’t make it palatable to everyone though 🙂
Educated guess is that the “heat” along the Pacific Equator is the result of the 10,000 or more underwater volcanoes (the “Ring of Fire”) from which the heat trail points to like an arrow.
Mike Jonas
Good to see your innovative hypothesis with preliminary evidence supporting it.
PS Re: “Note: Wavelengths 200-300nm are all scattered in the atmosphere and don’t reach the ocean.].”
Don’t overstate your case. While not high, UV below 300 nm is incident, measurable, and can cause sunburn. See the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_index#/media/File:Erythemal_action_spectrum.svg>Sunburn effect
To the author Mike Jones , The missing link that is continually left out of the climate change debate is the global electric circuit, the way Earth and the ionosphere exchange energy is the key to understanding the way climate and weather patterns are connected. When salty ocean water flows through the magnetic field, an electric current is generated and this, in turn, induces a magnetic response in the deep region below Earth’s crust – the mantle. Because this response is such a small portion of the overall field, it was always going to be a challenge to measure it from space. http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Swarm/Magnetic_oceans_and_electric_Earth
As time goes by, through observations like SWARM science will come to the conclusion that Earth’s internal processes and resistance that is produced by the charging processes from within, is the main driver that creates resistance (heat) from incoming space charges, whether it be from the sun or cosmic ray’s it’s Earth’s 6000C interior that provides our magnetic shielding.
5.1. Atmospheric circulation, lightning and climate
The global distribution of atmospheric discharges (CG, IC, TLEs)
driven by solar heating and also influenced by land/ocean dis-
tribution on the planet follow the general circulation patterns of
the atmosphere (Williams, 2005). Atmospheric discharges are the
main contributor to the global electric circuit. The electric field and
vertical current near cloud may influence the change in shape,
terminal velocities, collision, coalescence and disruption char-
acteristics of the drops (Coqillat et al., 2003;Bhalwankar and
Kamra, 2008,2013) which may affect precipitation and also sur-
face temperature. It is known that Africa, South America and
Southeast Asia regions rank from the most lightning active and
least rainfall region to least lightning active and most rainfall re-
gion (Williams and Stanfill, 2002;Christian et al., 2003;Siingh
et al., 2011). These regions also dominate the Walker circulation
which clearly support to the fact that the global circulation is
energized by the convective process in the atmosphere
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282689707_Lightning_and_middle_atmospheric_discharges_in_the_atmosphere
Should read “To the author Mike Jonas ” not Jones , my apologies
In reply to the not-so-anonymous troll who asked “where his posts are going to?”, see this image below. I know who you are down there in YC, so just knock it off unless you want me to register a complaint with your ISP among other things. You’ve violated site policy so many times with your inane and hate-filled comments under dozens of screen names and proxy servers, I ought to do it anyway.
Feel free to be as upset as you wish, but do cease and desist unless you want me to escalate this.
To the readers, this is why we have such a tight filter and many of your posts disappear – because of people like this.
Anthony,
I think this explains why some of my postings disappeared when I used different versions of my name. I have now figured out the version that always works and have put it on all my machines. I am sorry you have to run such a tight filter.
What you need is a plain Jane name like mine. Except for the fact that if you google it, you will get everything from Hollywood stars to prostitutes. That said, the less unique you are and the more consistently boring you are, the less trouble you will have getting comments to post. I am pedantically boring. Unless I have too many glasses of red wine. Then all bets are off.
Pamela,
You are far too colorful to be Gray.
OT: i saw this odd radar pattern with what looks like a triangle over Sacramento. The right side is interesting, especially the upper part where the line of dry weather continues through rainy area. Is this easily explainable or? I stumbled onto a weather control site a few years ago and they were talking about HAARP iirc and i think it had strange patterns like in this image:
http://imgur.com/a/xYeon
any thoughts?
The answer is really simple. There never was any extra heat. The sun’s radiation does heat the upper surface of the water all the time, but there is a natural up welling along the coasts, warmer water will actually sink down in other spots, caused by the winds pushing the ocean water, and the Coriolis effect. The water welled up is cool and cools the surface. When we have El Nino, the water isn’t circulating the same way because winds change. This prevents the up welling action, so cold water doesn’t go to the surface, The surface then stays at the warmer because cold water isn’t brought up to mix with the warm. This was established long ago – don’t know why we need several paragraphs of head scratching.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2016/01/what-causes-el-nino-warmth/
(bingo marque… ☺)
Awesome reply.
That alone can explain the warming without CO2. More radiation reaching the oceans is all you need to warm the globe, CO2 has nothing to do with it. Even is the sun’s radiation is constant, fewer clouds allows more of that radiation to reach the oceans.
There is a big misunderstanding about what El Niño is, and this article is no exception.
To understand El Niño it is important to look at its paleoclimatology. Essentially there was no or very mild El Niño during the Holocene Climatic Optimum, and El Niño became a common feature during the Neoglacial period, increasing progressively in intensity. So El Niño characterizes a cooling world. But interestingly El Niño disappears during Bond events when the world is suddenly colder.
http://i.imgur.com/iTjpFQf.png
This is easy to explain when one understands the nature of El Niño. The energy of an El Niño is already within the system when El Niño starts, and originates from the Sun warming the oceans. Before an El Niño, this heat is partially lost to space through Outgoing Long wave Radiation (OLR), and partially transported by the meridional transport through oceanic currents and atmospheric transport towards higher latitude regions where there is a radiation deficit.
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/images/rad_balance_ERBE_1987.jpg
But the conditions that give rise to an El Niño mean that too much heat is accumulated in the equatorial Pacific to be transported by the Meridional Transport. El Niño is essentially a short circuit in the Meridional Transport. There is an outburst of heat towards the atmosphere. This produces an increase in tropical OLR detected by satellites, that coincides with El Niño index (MEI).
http://i.imgur.com/Sly0sK6.png
But most of the heat makes it through atmospheric transport increasing temperatures almost everywhere, producing the record temperatures. But eventually that heat makes it also to space as it has nowhere else to go. So what we record as increased heat and global warming, is actually a loss of heat by the system. The El Niño is therefore like a release valve outburst from a pressure cooker. It burns if you put your hand, but the cooker reduces its energy.
Now we can understand why El Niño is a feature of a cooling world. A cooling world is a world where the Meridional Transport is already working hard taking heat from the tropics towards the poles. During the Holocene Climatic Optimum the world was uniformly warmer and during Bond events colder than it is now, and the Meridional Transport did not saturate.
This also explains why we live in a period that doesn’t have as much El Niño intensity as previous periods. The world is warming and the Arctic amplification is reducing Meridional Transport by reducing the equator-polar gradient.
An El Niño means excess heat needed to get out of the planet. That’s all. It is a symptom, not a cause. Periods of frequent El Niño in the decadal timeframe during modern global warming are periods when the planet is warming and requires more frequent heat releases. When the planet is cooling, like between 1100-1500 AD, frequent El Niños mean faster cooling.
It used to be thought that the warmer than present Pliocene must have had a near continuous El Nino condition, but such is not the case, based upon paleoproxy data.
20,000 years ago the Sun was producing the same amount of energy as today. Precession had almost identical solar irradiance distribution over the planet 20,000 years ago as today, and the axial tilt was at that time almost identical to today. Same amount of energy and near identical distribution over the planet, yet 20,000 years ago the planet was at its coolest in a specially hard glacial maximum, while today it is quite warm during an interglacial. Thermal inertia and heat transport are key to explain why the planet is in such different condition.
El Niño does not depend on temperatures, at least not alone. Meridional transport, as a manifestation of the equator-polar gradient is even more important. There is an interplay of atmospheric phenomena over the tropics that is a direct response to the amount of energy (heat) that needs to be transported, and that includes the quasi-biennial and the Julian-Madden oscillations.
Which just goes to show that a few minor parameter changes can produce major climatic shifts.
Javier: “So what we record as increased heat and global warming, is actually a loss of heat by the system. ” Certainly heat is lost by the system in an El Nino. However, whether the system is cooling or heating also depends on the energy in as well as the energy out. The pressure cooker in your analogy has energy removed by the release valve, but it can still be getting hotter if we turn up the gas.
not unless the pressure inceases
That is obviously correct. The important thing is that El Niño is a cooling mechanism. The world will continue warming if in a warming trend, and will cool faster if in a cooling trend. Since we are in a non-warming period (hiatus) those that believe that El Niño ended it are most likely wrong. It increases the chances of the hiatus continuing, specially if it is not followed by a La Niña that increases the energy going into the system.
With the AMO turning negative (or at least not increasing), and the Sun in a centennial minimum it is going to be complicated for the planet to recover the lost energy during El Niño and more to continue warming the planet. The reported death of the Pause has been greatly exaggerated.
Please answer my simple question and you may find an answer to yours.
The Vukcevic correlation makes a lot of sense to me .
Why because every 9 years ( as I understand it ) the moons orbit is along the equator
as it was during this most recent El Nino .
It was also along the equator in 1998 ( as I recall ) , exactly 18 years ago .
Which also occurred close to a solar maximum ( coincidence ??? )
Surely therefore there must have been a massive tidal drag of water and atmosphere
towards the equator at that time . THE HOTTEST PART OF THE GLOBE . The
very place where it would gather the most possible heat both by mixing with warmer
water/air and from solar exposure .
There would also have been strong forces leading to increased volcanic activity
( Solar max + Moon gravitational max ) hence the Vukcevic correlation .
So my question is …… Why is the moon gravitational effect not considered relevant or
is it just ignored unintentionally .
…
The has orbital cycles, the moon does, and soda all of the planets. When el Nino was first recognized it appeared to occur about every 20 years. At the time there were no satellites in orbit and no hard data on the ocean to know what happened during an el Nino. If I recall correctly 1982 was the first time satellites were able to follow the an El Nino before and after it started. We now know they occur more frequently than 20years. However the biggest and strongest and most easily recognized ones still appear about every 20years.
Scientist have also recognized ocean currents have an effect on the heat moving around. Tidal currents in the pacific generally move surface water east to west. The editorial winds also generally blow east to west. Look at a map of the pacific. You will notice that was Asia, Australia and Indonesia form a funnel shape with a small outlet around Indonesia.
What appears to be happening is that the the Equatorial currents push warm water west ere it piles up. The hot water in the west pacific is either lost to the air or driven down by the currents. In the East Pacific around central america the warm water is close to the surface and the water gets cold very quickly as you go down. In the west pacific the warm water piles up and goes down and tends to stay there. The ocean currents and the shape of continents has in effect created a giant Thermal battery. As long as everything stays in balance the thermal charge of the battery stays constant. Unfortunately nothing stays constant.
The earths and moons orbital cycles combined withe gravitational pull of the sun cause the tidal current to periodically strengthen and weaken. When the current weakens some of the warm water in the western pacific rises to the top of the ocean and spreads out. The wind then gradually moves it around. This moving warm water will eventually interact with the atmosphere and this can eventually cause the the equatorial winds to weaken and even reverse direction. When the equatorial winds start blowing from east to west most of the warm water in the western pacific is moved east. it hits south and central america and starts to spread out into a thin large area a warm water at the surface. Most of the heat is then quickly dumped into the air. This destabilizes weather around the globe and increases the earths temperature. and the earth starts to cool.
When enough heat is lost the equatorial wind reestablish their normal east to west direction Eventually moving what warm water is left back to the east and recharging the thermal battery. A La Nina may form. During an El Nino Indonesia and Australia are in a drought due to less cloud cover cooler oceans. This extra light reaching the eastern pacific helps recharge the thermal battery. As the battery charges it helps to destabilize the normal weather patterns. Also if the sun is more active than normal it may overheat the ocean after the La Nina resulting in a step increase in temperature. At times when the sun is weak the Earth may take a step down in temperature.
If this description is correct the amount of heat released in each major El Nino will be very close to the amount released in the previous Major El Nino. Which is what appears to have happened between 1998 ad 2016. Most of the small difference appears to have come from the step increase the earth temperature that occurred after 1998. El Nino’s between 1998 and 2016 released less heat and had less impact which agains fits the above explanation. The suns output was in an upward trend between 1980 and 2000 which probably explains the more frequency larger El Nino during that period and the temperature increase of the ocean at that time. The thermal battery was constantly being overcharged and frequently leaked.
Interesting comment!
Is it plausible that activating 1 out of 2,500 molecules can actually change the temperature of the entire atmosphere? The IR spectronomy shows the wavelength, not the temperature. CO2 isn’t a black body, it only represents a small fraction of the black body total energy.
“Is it plausible that activating 1 out of 2,500 molecules can actually change the temperature of the entire atmosphere? ”
Yes, completely plausible. I don’t know why anyone would think otherwise. If I could magically target one in every 2500 water molecules in a swimming pool with a burst of energy it would inevitably increase the temperature of the pool.
The point is the ratio of energy to molecules. 1 degree is 1/300 the energy of a 300 degree body. Activating 1/2500 of the atmosphere to warm 100% means diluting that energy a lot. Those 1 out of 2500 molecules have to contain a whole lot of energy.
You would change the temperature of your pool by the temperature difference between your 1 hot molecule versus the pool full of molecules times the specific heat factor of your molecule- resulting in an utterly unmeasurable temperature change, probably compensated for by an immeasurable amount of increased evaporation of pool water- probably about one molecule.
Then you would have to start making up temperatures to produce a “proof”. I’m not sure where you are going to park a ship in your yard with the engines running so you can pump pool water through the engine room to a temperature measurement point but, hey, go for it! Meanwhile, can I come and play in your pool? It’s -20C where I am.
Global cooling means less rain at higher latitudes. Go south. I had two swims tonight. Pool is 28. Temp. Is now + 25.
You are so welcome here.
Pretoria. South Africa.
Originally Dutch. Would not be able to take your cold…
So how many air molecules are there per meter at sea level ? How far does a photon have to travel before it’s almost certain to run into a CO2 ? I understand it’s about 100m . That’s the basis of Beer’s law and why adding more makes little difference . The expressions for equilibrium temperature for any arbitrary spectra are on my http://CoSy.com in a downloadable APL .
But that straightforwardly computable spectral equilibrium , radiative balance , temperature does not change as one adds layers . The CO2 transfers heat to ( and from ) the molecules around it , but that does not change the equilibrium .
And in any case you are right : the atmosphere holds damn little total heat in any case .
The issue of why the bottoms of atmospheres are hotter than their tops is separate and not answered by spectral equations .
Thanks, that 100 m is a nice jem.
When i reached this line: “Greenhouse gases (GHGs) warm the atmosphere. From there, the downward Infra-Red (IR) radiation reaches the ocean surface.”
Totally BS!
“Greenhouse gases” doesn’t heat anything!
It doesn’t produce any energy (heat) and it doesn’t prevent energy from leaving the atmosphere, FULL STOP!!
Because the CO2-molecule is “blank” (doesn’t react) to infrared radiation in temperature between 220 – 320 K. (-53.15 to +46.85).
I won’t bother reading the rest when that is the standard ..
roaldjlarsen,
““Greenhouse gases” doesn’t heat anything!”
Kind of correct, but you are conflating the kinetic temperature of GHG’s with the radiant emissions of GHG’s. The kinetic temperature of any atmospheric gas can not heat the surface, but arises by conduction with the surface and distributed by convection. GHG’s have an additional property, which is to absorb and emit photons of very specific wavelengths which is active in the LWIR related to all of the relevant temperature ranges, although below 0C, water vapor absorption is attenuated and below about 195K (temperature of dry ice), CO2 absorption is significantly attenuated.
The failure of consensus thinking, which unfortunately spills over into the thinking of many skeptics, is considering that most or all of the absorbed energy is converted into the kinetic energy of molecules in motion. This would make the atmosphere hotter than the surface enabling it to further heat the surface, although, the relative heat capacities of the surface and air above means that an atmosphere at T1 and a surface at T2 will will both converge in LTE to a temperature far closer to T2 than to T1.
Of course, this is not how GHG’s make the surface warmer than it would be without them. GHG’s convert very little of the energy absorbed into the kinetic energy of molecules in motion. CO2 specifically converts none. Water vapor converts some as an energized water vapor molecule that is not in the ground state condenses upon a droplet of liquid water. This is observed as slightly more than a 50% reduction in planet emissions in water vapor absorption lines as seen from space which is offset by a slight increase in the power emitted by the water in clouds and passing through the transparent window.
The mechanism that explains how GHG’s make the surface warmer than it would be otherwise is to delay some fraction of surface emissions that they absorb which are then added to new energy arriving from the Sun at a later time. The atmosphere doesn’t create energy, but retains some portion of old surface emissions and returns about half to the surface at a later time as the other half is added to the power passing through the transparent window in order to offset the 240 W/m^2 of average power arriving from the Sun.
And how long is the delay?
The Earth only receives solar for 12 hours a day, but radiates LWIR 24 hours a day.
Richard,
“And how long is the delay?”
For GHG’s, the delay between when energy is absorbed by a GHG molecule and ultimately emitted from a different molecule, is from milliseconds to seconds. For the water in clouds, it’s from minutes to hours. The O2 and N2 is irrelevant to the absorption and emission of energy by the atmosphere.
“The Earth only receives solar for 12 hours a day, but radiates LWIR 24 hours a day.”
The input path from solar energy to energy stored by the virtual surface in direct equilibrium with the Sun is orthogonal to the output path emitting LWIR from that surface, so what is the meaning of your statement?
At each point on the surface of the planet, the ‘equilibrium state’ of input power == output power occurs twice per day, once in the morning and again in the late afternoon. Similarly, each average of day/night emissions is equal to the average of its solar input twice per year, once in the Fall and again in the Spring. Mathematically, the planet’s steady state is a hierarchical collection of steady states, each acting with the same periodicity as the change in solar forcing driving it. Since each of these steady state solutions is defined in terms of joules, rather than temperature, superposition applies and they can be trivially summed and averaged to arrive at the total energy response. The energy response can then be converted to an EQUIVALENT temperature by applying the SB Law in reverse.
The EQUIVALENT temperature of the virtual surface in direct equilibrium with the Sun is close enough to the actual temperature of the actual surface we care about, they can be considered the same and often are for the purposes of surface temperatures derived from satellite measurements of LWIR.
Nonsensical, dishonest word salad!
There’s no such thing as “Greenhouse gases”, and as i said in my previous post, CO2 doesn’t produce any energy. The closest we get a greenhouse gas is water vapor, but that is called latent heat.
“GHG’s have an additional property, which is to absorb and emit photons of very specific wavelengths which is active in the LWIR related to all of the relevant temperature ranges, although ..”
Question: How much more energy (you call it photons) does the CO2 molecule emit than it receive, and – in what temperature range does that magic occur?
roaldjlarsen,
“How much more energy (you call it photons) does the CO2 molecule emit than it receive, and – in what temperature range does that magic occur?”
Obviously, a GHG molecule will not emit more energy than it absorbs. Absorption and emission occurs at ALL temperatures where the GHG is in the gaseous phase, but only at specific wavelengths. It’s not magic, it’s called Quantum Mechanics, although to the untrained mind, Quantum Mechanics may seem like magic ….
IR Expert Speaks Out After 40 Years Of Silence : “IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2”
Mike Sanicola says:
I’m a professional infrared astronomer who spent his life trying to observe space through the atmosphere’s back-radiation that the environmental activists claim is caused by CO2 and guess what? In all the bands that are responsible for back radiation in the brightness temperatures (color temperatures) related to earth’s surface temperature (between 9 microns and 13 microns for temps of 220K to 320 K) there is no absorption of radiation by CO2 at all. In all the bands between 9 and 9.5 there is mild absorption by H2O, from 9.5 to 10 microns (300 K) the atmosphere is perfectly clear except around 9.6 is a big ozone band that the warmists never mention for some reason. From 10 to 13 microns there is more absorption by H2O. Starting at 13 we get CO2 absorption but that wavelength corresponds to temperatures below even that of the south pole. Nowhere from 9 to 13 microns do we see appreciable absorption bands of CO2. This means the greenhouse effect is way over 95% caused by water vapor and probably less than 3% from CO2. I would say even ozone is more important due to the 9.6 band, but it’s so high in the atmosphere that it probably serves more to radiate heat into space than for back-radiation to the surface. The whole theory of a CO2 greenhouse effect is wrong yet the ignorant masses in academia have gone to great lengths trying to prove it with one lie and false study after another, mainly because the people pushing the global warming hoax are funded by the government who needs to report what it does to the IPCC to further their “cause”. I’m retired so I don’t need to keep my mouth shut anymore. Kept my mouth shut for 40 years, now I will tell you, not one single IR astronomer gives a rats arse about CO2. Just to let you know how stupid the global warming activists are, I’ve been to the south pole 3 times and even there, where the water vapor is under 0.2 mm precipitable, it’s still the H2O that is the main concern in our field and nobody even talks about CO2 because CO2 doesn’t absorb or radiate in the portion of the spectrum corresponding with earth’s surface temps of 220 to 320 K. Not at all. Therefore, for Earth as a black body radiator IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/ir-expert-speaks-out-after-40-years-of-silence-its-the-water-vapor-stupid-and-not-the-co2/
Even if CO2 actually did absorb energy in the temperature critical for the (now long failed) hypothesis to be valid for absorption, it still wouldn’t make anything warmer. That is why i call it magic. If that magic was in fact a possibility, humans wouldn’t have existed as the internal organs would have heated itself and neighboring organs to the point of self destruction, and that is a closed system, i.e. the effect would be much stronger if such an effect in fact did exist. I am, so it doesn’t – so it’s FAKE!
roaldjlarson,
“IT’S THE WATER VAPOR STUPID and not the CO2.”
Please stop being silly. There”s no question that water vapor is also a GHG and its effect is about 2/3 of the total GHG effect. The salient point is that water vapor is a GHG and operates in the same way as CO2. You can’t disregard the effect of CO2 just because the effect from water vapor is larger. None the less, the effect from CO2 is small by any metric, but it’s not zero.
According to the scientific method, we agree we are going to use science and the scientific method, right!?
If so, according to the science and the scientific method, there has never been empirically measured or proven that CO2 does ANYTHING ELSE BUT TO COOL ..
(used to be for example a coolant in refrigerators)
If you want to speculate and imagine stuff, be my guest, but that is NOT SCIENCE!
raoldjlarsen,
“… it still wouldn’t make anything warmer. ”
Of course it does. The surface only receives about 240 w/m^2 from the Sun which corresponds to a temperature of only 255K. The surface is indeed warmer than that emitting about 145 W/m^2 more, or about 385 W/m^2 corresponding to an average temperature of about 287.5K. This extra 145 W/m^2 is replenished by surface emissions that were absorbed by GHG’s and/or clouds in the past and returned to the surface in the future. This delay is why it can add to the power from the Sun and contribute to surface warmth.
In the Global and Annual Energy Budget graph it is shown that incoming is 242 w/m2. Depending on which paper you select, energy fluxes as of 2002 was defined as
1370*(1.- 0.3)/4 = 239.7 w/m^2
Now to get 242 w/m^2 you would need a TSI of 1382. When was it ever 1382? Recently it has been shown that the instrumentation has been in error. As of last April the TSI was listed as 1361. In other official places it’s listed as 1368.
Now rounding numbers up to meet the matches and shrugging away numbers that don’t isn’t science.
Let’s talk about the alleged increase in temperature and how it relates to those temperatures. We will make use of Stefan Boltzmann Law.
239.7 = aT^4 => T = (239.7)/ (5.67X 10 -8)^4root = 254.98 K
242 = 255.59 K which is a difference of 0.61 K. Remember we are talking about heat on a planetary basis here. So, (242+242)/(5.67 x10 -8)^4 root = 303.959 K
Now if we are talking about a rise in temperature of about 1 C, isn’t it easy to fudge the numbers ? Now let’s take the TSI down to 238 w/m^2 (about 1360). That gives us 302.69 K
Let’s remember that dTs = ( – 288/4) (-4/240) = 1.2K .. Isn’t that a Surprise! The difference between 303.95 and 302.69 is 1.269 K. I have more to say about the dTs formula if anybody cares to play with numbers from warming by co2. The numbers go the wrong way, don’t they? Who thinks 240 was cherry picked ?
Here’s the problem with the change in Ts. More co2 should increase the temperature via more retained wattage. So let’s see what happens when we retain 260 w/m^2 instead of 240.
dTs = (-288/4) (-4/260) = 1.1 K . The temperature declined. It should be warmer not cooler.
dTs = (-288/4) (-4/220) = 1.3 K. Given less retained heat via less co2 means it would have been warmer ?
From above, the actual TSI is probably a little more than 1360, 1361 or 2, but hey, close enough for government work. That pesky 0.069.
“… via more retained wattage.”
Wattage is not retained or stored. Only Joules can be stored or used to perform work. Watts are Joules per second and represents a rate of energy. When you turn on a standard incandescent lamp, it consumes 60 Watts or 60 Joules per second. If you keep the lamp on for 1 hour, you will have consumed 21600 Joules which is the same as 60 Watt*hour, since 1 Watt*second = 1 Joule.
I’m making the point this is the math the IPCC and associates used to prove their point. The rest is just academic.
Also because of man made variability in TSI is much bigger than the offical estimate. They choose 0.012 % for a reason. Mathematically, 0.012% has little effect on temperature, greater than 0.015 % does.
They can’t argue this, it’s what they put out, and it’s wrong. Been wrong.
The 2016 El Nino heat came from the accumulation of solar heat via TSI from 2008 until 2016, ie seven years of increasing solar radiation, which peaked in Feb 2015. One year later in Feb 2016 as OHC was still high enough from that peak and the incoming solar for a temperature peak then. When TSI thereafter dropped, temps dropped. All the way to today. No surprises there.
I mentioned in 2014 here at WUWT “Solar activity ramped up late last year [2013] and has since tapered off. The “recharge” of the oceans from that rampup is now dissipating. If and only if there is another spike in solar activity this year will there be an El Nino.”
The solar uptick for the second half of 2014.into Feb 2015 is history, as was the revival and strengthening of the ENSO, confirming my 2014 prediction.
Once you know what to look for, solar activity-based ENSO predictions are not mysterious.
Bob, how do we know that el ninos come from a solar charging of the oceans given that the trigger for an el nino is also solar related (with the reduction of trade winds after a solar max)? What i’m getting at is that el ninos represent a break down in the cooling mechanism of the oceans due to the cessation of walker trades, vertical mixing and upwelling in the east. How much of the warming that we see is due to solar charging verses the break down in ocean cooling?
The atmosphere cannot warm the ocean surface skin to a higher temperature than itself.
Water in the ocean surface skin cannot mix with deeper water to create water of a higher temperature than itself.
Water from the ocean cannot warm the atmosphere to a higher temperature than itself.
The atmosphere can slow the release of warmth from the oceans to the atmosphere by being warmer than it otherwise would be.
A warmer than otherwise atmosphere being able to do my immediate above would make the water an inch below the surface skin warmer than it otherwise would be. This water an inch below the surface can mix with deeper water to create water deeper that is warmer than it otherwise would be. Any additional evaporation very close to or in the skin layer, increases salinity in the same area, increasing the chance of warm water sinking into cooler water and making it warmer than it otherwise would be. While part of the skin layer theory says it in effect bounces right back the atmosphere, that would then increases the salinity of the water then it sinks, and these joules are less likely to be released in the atmosphere. There isn’t a mirror at the surface, there is a physical process.
Water from the oceans can make the atmosphere warmer than it otherwise would be simply by being at 30 C rather than 20 C at the surface with an atmospheric temperature of 33 C. You stand in a sealed insulated room with a body temperature of 98 F. The room is 0 degrees F. Someone places an object in the room that is 90 F and conducts heat well. Such as 400 pounds of iron. You are still cold but the iron while cooling, makes you and the room warmer than it otherwise would be. Your body heat does not warm the iron, but it makes it cool a bit slower than otherwise. Some might say, body heat will continue for days as your body creates warmth. Replace you with a 400 pounds of water in an open barrel at 98 F.
“The atmosphere can slow the release of warmth from the oceans to the atmosphere by being warmer than it otherwise would be”
This just results in increased evaporation and the release of heat is barely impaired.What could make a difference would be a lack of wind to move the warm, humid air away. If it stays at the ocean surface it would impair evaporation and hence heat loss. This may be part of what happens when heat is accumulating in the Western Pacific before the el Nino “break out”.
“some of it can convect or conduct into the ocean.”
Energy cannot convect top down. Convection is exclusively a bottom heating phenomenon. The atmosphere is heated from the bottom. The ocean is heated from the top (except for that geothermal wildcard).
I am well aware that GHG’s cannot add heat to the ocean – they can only heat the surface & promote evaporation & I am not getting into an argument here – evaporation & water vapor over oceans has been increasing & falling over land as plants drop their emissions due to increases in co2 – which is empirical evidence to support my position –
The most important point here is that even if GHG’s could heat the oceans – water vapor would dominate the process completely over the oceans – co2 would not get a look in as the more its heated the more watervapor is evaporated. So that rules out co2 & human influence completely.
First of all there was the Blob – a spot in the ocean off west coast USA that caused a high pressure system that stayed there for over 13 months – this could only have been caused by Geothermal or volcanic activity in the ocean Hot spots in the ocean do not sit in one position for as long as this thing did.
There are a large number of studies that show clearly a huge correlation between El Nino & Submarine volcanic activity – the trade winds push the Pacific waters towards Asia normally (variation in SLR of 60 odd centimeters – from memory – which is why Pacific islands flood during an El Nino) – when El Nino occurs the trade winds stop or reverse allowing the ocean to rush back towards the west coast USA – this tilts the Pacific tectonic plate by 40 cm or more from memory & that causes submarine volcanic activity …. obviously there is a lot of heat coming from the ocean floor & heating the ocean – I have studies that show that they are wrong in what they think comes through – there is a massive amount of volcanoes & geothermal heating of the oceans in the Pacific – we have no idea or comprehension of how much it heats the oceans
“The most productive volcanic systems on Earth are hidden under an average of 8,500 feet (2,600 m) of water. Beneath the oceans a global system of mid-ocean ridges produces an estimated 75% of the annual output of magma. An estimated 0.7 cubic miles (3 cubic kilometers) of lava is erupted. The magma and lava create the edges of new oceanic plates and supply heat and chemicals to some of the Earth’s most unusual and rare ecosystems.”
The associated heat, DIRECTLY injected into the oceans with 100% efficiency, but stochastically, is not accounted for in any computer studies or models.
http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/submarine
how does this fit in with the notion that the diurnal effect has seen a change where nights are getting warmer faster than days?
Reduced cooling at night is usually a symptom of higher humidity.
it is from higher humidity almost exclusively. There’s an almost 98% correlation between Min temp and dew point.
Minimum T has been falling
globally
Here is the NIWA (NZ) monthly report for January:
“Well below average (1.20°C of average) for a small number of locations in Hawke’s Bay”
Hawke’s Bay makes up a minor area. There is certainly a whip in the tail of the 98 El Nino
Given that the ‘average’ baseline is 1981-2010 this is a dramatic drop. We farmers knew it only too well, It started in December. It was the coldest January I can recall after 40 years of farming. February is faring no better
Sorry – 2016 El Nino