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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I think something you are sure of is wrong else Ivanpah wouldn’t work.
Mike Jonas to be blunt you fail when you treat temperature as a unit of heat. You claim el-Nino temperature increase could only be caused by an increases in heat. High school physics tells us temperature is not a unit of energy. Yet you treat it as one. Wind pattern changes causing changes in humidity can just as easily explain why a global average temperature would vary. No change in sun output ITO or CO2 needed.
Can wind pattern changes alter global humidity and thus global temperature ?
Wind picks up humidity in one location and drops it in another, so how does it change the total ?
Furthermore, humidity per se doesn’t increase the temperature because water vapour is lighter than air and heat lower down is just shifted higher up where condensation occurs and the condensate radiates more energy to space.
Humidity makes any given temperature FEEL hotter to us because the humidity reduces the efficiency of our sweat mechanism.
First you assume it picks up and drops off evenly. That is an assumption with no basis.A wind pattern shift from moist isthmus of panama to dry northern mexico would lose moisture one year that in previous years pattern it would not have.
“Furthermore, humidity per se doesn’t increase the temperature because water vapour is lighter than air and heat lower down is just shifted higher up where condensation occurs and the condensate radiates more energy to space.” First never said humidity would increase only change. Second, you make a point for me. Global temperature is measured at surface not upper so using surface temps as measurement of heat of all atmosphere is wrong in multiple ways. Third you also confuse temp with energy you assume a movement of one means a movement of the other. Move heat from a hot plate into ice water, temperature remains constant for quite some time. Fourth does the desert or the rain forest have a higher temp? Which has the higher energy content? So, higher energy but lower temp hmmm. Has nothing to do with “feeling” but basic physics. And, guess what accompanies every elNino, that is correct a wind shift.
Prove to me why this 100yrs of accumulated climate change (.1C/decade) that occurs in single year can’t be caused by a wind shift. Oh wait that is practically the definition elNino. Couldn’t smaller subtle shifting winds be the cause of 0.01C/yr change?
Humidity is a part of total enthalpy in any atmospheric condition, so it also makes any cold temperature feel colder. Also, wind doesn’t “drop” humidity at all. It transports it to another location where it may raise the local humidity, possibly high enough to cause precipitation. relative humidity is a function of temperature and absolute humidity. When humid air arrives at a drier location, it may warm the area and relative humidity will change accordingly. As the air warms, the dew point will rise and the air will still have to cool or acquire more moisture before precipitation can occur. The magic of CO2 is completely lost in the details of heat transfer on our perfect little rock.
How to confuse yourself in one epic tedious lesson.
And please, if one more person puts up that awful and dreadfully muddled ‘energy flow’ diagram (Fig A1) I may not be responsible for my actions.
DO NOT confuse convective and conductive heat flow with radiative flow. OK? Pretty please.
The simple way to understand the Green House Effect is to use the Reductio Absurdio method.
Assume it is correct then look for things that it would cause down here on the ground.
DO NOT be bamboozled, amazed & befuddled by words like ‘troposphere, tropopause, absorption etc
Every can/bottle of carbonated soda-pop is a miniature Earth. Do they spontaneously heat up?
Is there a China Syndrome event every day of the week in every grocery store the world over because of things containing CO2 ‘trapping’ heat and getting hotter and hotter.
Maybe that’s why soda pop is usually kept in the fridge???
Some refrigerated delivery trucks use Dry Ice to keep their cool. Do they erupt in a blinding flash of white light when the doors are opened on a sunny day?
They’d go off like Krakatoa on a cloudy day because as we all know, clouds trap heat and make you hot.
Lord help us.
“some of it can convect or conduct into the ocean.”
It cant conduct up hill though, and there is a hill, called the cold layer, due to evaporation.
“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. ”
Nobody claims that the energy came from anywhere except the sun. The surface warms because it absorbs short wavelengths from the sun. Because it is warm it emits most in the long IR part of the spectrum. Energy from UV/VIS in = energy from IR out (long term).
Look at figure 1 and add in the actual heating energy. The water is heated by UV/Vis light. There is no magic.
Sure, but quite a few people are claiming that GHG are pushing the Earth toward a new equilibrium at higher temperatures because they’re trapping more of the Sun’s energy in the atmosphere, and some are claiming that the aforementioned energy is being stored in the oceans and will later be released to raise temperatures further.
Since GHG do not directly increase the energy reaching at the surface, the only mechanism for this storage is a (magical) process whereby energy sometimes flows from the cooler ocean to the warmer atmosphere. That requires the ocean to do something other than what the Second Law implies it must do (be a giant stabilizing heatsink). There are certainly ways that could happen on certain timescales, of course, but they in the long run it requires something like work.
BTW it should always be mentioned in these types of articles that the hydrosphere is two orders of magnitude more massive than the atmosphere and its average temperature has changed very little since 1950. So I’d argue an even bigger problem with “ocean heat storage” is that the ocean could store a lot more heat before reaching a new equilibrium with a modified atmosphere.
We all know where the heat comes from. Where the hell does it go in Magic CO2 land? The world is back down to the same temperature it was in 1997. How is that possible if CO2 is retarding heat loss? Don’t even bother throwing Mannian reconstructions and fake proxy crap at me. CO2 can’t ratchet up temperature if the ratchet doesn’t work! Everybody, back to work! Some lying idiots set off a false alarm!
Just my 3 cents as a physicist looking at the climate debate: Why do I perceive that there are quite a few assumptions in climate modeling that could be replaced with data, but people are too cheap or lazy to collect it?
1) Interactions between land and air, and cloud cover: Why doesn’t someone put temperature, humidity, pressure, and 4 pi steradian wind gauges, every 100 meters up, every high altitude RF tower in the world and network the data into a fusion center? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_structures ) with a couple fish eyed multispectral camera measuring cloud cover and sky luminance and ground luminance at the top of these towers?
2) Why can’t there be 3 geosynchronous multi-spectral cameras that measure the luminance of every 10km square on Earth down into the IR and up into the UV? Maybe have white and black bodies on a boom in front of the camera for continuous or routine pixel calibration?
3) Why couldn’t this data flow into a genetic algorithm and big data mining tools that would attempt to match and predict the data from the above sources, independent of any theories as to the underlying complex physics? I know this approach would put a lot of scientist out of work but it would answer a lot off questions.
You’re pretty close to understanding how corrupt these jokers are and why they didn’t become physicists!
The question of tectonic heat has been raised here. Often we get the simplistic (IMO) response that it is insignificant based around lava production from MOR’s. Volumes, temperatures and heat capacity of this lava is used to calculate capacity to heat water. The result comes out to be insignificant.
Well – there is a heck of a lot more going on on the sea bed then just MOR activity. MOR geothermal activity is of a rather slow but persistent nature. In the above calculations other tectonic zones are being ignored e.g. tectonic boundaries, back-arch basins, and extension zones. These zones are commonly associated with the big-daddies of volcanism that dwarf MOR activity e.g. silicic volcanism. Furthermore, the crust is commonly thinner in these zones, meaning the geothermal heat gradient (temp at depth) is much higher over a wider area than around MOR’s.
These zones can act as giant radiators. Water penetrates through fractures into the crust and can circulate driven by variations in temperature and pressure. So, there is much more to this then just lava production.
One can see a very impressive back-arch basin on Google Earth that runs from Tonga right down into central North Island, New Zealand. We have geothermal power stations tapping its energy. By scanning elevation the depth of the basin in relation to the tectonic boundary to its east can be defined. Multiple volcanic cones can also be identified. We know that many of these are active.
There has been very credible field reports on this forum about elevated sea temperature zones around Tonga. Scientist have recorded large rafts of fresh pumice near the kermadecs.
In science we eliminate possibilities though evidence before discounting. Well, that the way it is supposed to work.
Michael
I indeed did find T going up in Raratonga -21.2 latitude by about 0.02K/annum over the past 40 years
yet, overall, in the SH, it [heating] counts to nought
whilst in the NH warming seems to continue
my only explanation is that earth’s inner core is moving
[up north, as the evidence will show]
go down 1 km into a gold mine here [in South Africa]
and notice the elephant in the room?
Jonas – the source of the heat in the 2016 El Nino has to be the sun, and this is how.. It is not the locally generated surface layer of warm water that does it but the steady accumulation of that warm layer by winds that does it. Thus way, a warm pile of water called the Indo-Pacific warm pool is produced in the western Pacific. It is comprised of the warmest water on earth. The winds that cause it to pile op are the trade winds. .Their constant blowing elevates the surface of the warm pool above the average sea surface level of the Pacific Ocean. Eventually a point is reached where the force of wind pushing the water uphill is balanced by the gravity of the accumulated pile of warm water. This starts a reverse gravity flow of warm water along the equatorial counter-current that crosses the ocean from west to east an runs ashore in South America. It is clearly visible in satellite photographs. From the point of impact it is forced north and south along the coast and spreads out. This spreading out on the surface warms the air above it, warm air rises, joins the westerlies, and we notice that a La Nina has arrived. But any water that is forced ashore must also retreat. As this water retreats, a gap up to half a meter deep opens up behind it. Cold water from below then wells up and a La Nina has started. This is why El Ninos and La Ninas come in pairs. They have been doing so ever since the Panamanian Seaway closed and thereby established the current Pacific current system. The frequency of this ENSO oscillation is approximately five years, during which one El Nino and one La Nina are generated. This varies, however, because of other things going on in the ocean which makes long term El Nino mprediction notoriously hard. Not all El Ninos are created equal, however, and some rare big ones are considered super El Ninos, like the one in 1998. I am inclined to doubt that these supers originate in the same Indo-Pacific Warm Poo tthat gives rise to ENSO. They might as well come out of the Australian warm pool or be caused by Indian Ocean overflow, for all I know. These guys with billions to spend on climate study have not bothered to spend a penny of it on such basic questions that still remain open.
Typo: La Nina has arrived s/b El Nino has arrived.
At this point, there are 228 thoughts on “where did the 2016’s El Nino’s heat come from”.
None have even touched upon the actual cause of the warming.
Between 1975 and 2011 (the latest year for which global anthropogenic SO2 emissions are currently available), temperature projections based solely upon the amount of their reduction are correct to within .02 deg. C.or less, proving that they are the control knob for climate change.
The cleaner air from their reduction allows sunshine to strike the earth with greater intensity, warming both land and sea surfaces.
The “very strong” 15 month 1982-83 El Nino had ENSO temperatures of 0.5 – 2.1 deg. C. (avg 1.44). It raised avg. global J-D temps., with respect to 1981 (0.33), by -0.03 deg. C.
The “very strong” 17 month 2015-2016 El Nino had ENSO temps. of 0.5 -2.3 deg. C.(avg. 1.41). It raised avg. global J-D temps, with respect to 2014 (0.75), by 0.13 deg. C.
Clearly, it is impossible for essentially identical ENSO temperatures for an El Nino to temporarily raise average global J-D temperatures. by an extra 0.15 deg. C.
The extra warming had be due to reductions in average global SO2 aerosol emissions, the only other way to temporarily increase average global temperatures.
Google “Climate Change Deciphered” for proof of the above.
“The basic physics tells us: The atmosphere cannot heat itself !”
Mike, this is irrelevant to GHE theory. The atmosphere does not heat itself. Solar radiation heat both atmosphere and surface. GHG reduces the rate of cooling of both atmosphere and surface thus increasing their temperatures. That’s the basic of GHE theory.
In El Nino conditions the trade winds weaken and large areas of calm conditions prevail across the tropical Pacific. The normal wave driven mixing of the surface layer of the ocean ceases and a near surface 1-2m layer of extra warm water forms. For more details see: http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2017/01/climate-confabulators-sinking-ships/
Mike Jonas asks: Can the atmosphere heat itself? Sure, water vapor can condense, converting latent heat to an atmosphere with a higher temperature. It happens all the time.
Your presentation of heat flow (including radiation and latent heat) and temperature change is over-simplified Nothing on the planet is heated and cooled by a single process. Temperature change is the net result of all processes that transfer energy from one place to another. If more comes in than goes out, the temperature rises. (The law of conservation of energy demands that the extra energy become “internal energy” – warmer temperature.) Warmer temperature leads to more loss of energy via thermal radiation (and by evaporation for water). Eventually the temperature will rise until incoming and outgoing energy fluxes are equal.
The top 10 um of the ocean (the skin layer) absorbs all of the DLR from GHG’s in the atmosphere (average 333 W/m2) and a small fraction of SWR during the day. The top 10 um of the ocean emits all of the surface OLR (average 390 W/m2) and loses more energy as latent heat and simple heat (100 W/m2). So it is losing about 160 W/m2 MORE energy than it gains. This difference can be made up by SWR around noon, but certainly not at night. So the topmost layer of the ocean is usually colder (and denser) than the water below, especially at night. CONVECTION carries the cold water downward from the surface and replaces it with warmer water from (a few centimeters to meters) below. Conduction also warms the skin of the ocean. As you discussed, the sun deposits most of its radiative energy during daylight (an average of 160 W/m2 over a full day) below the surface. Now we have a complete picture of the energy flows between the cooler skin layer of the ocean, the warmer top few meters of ocean, the atmosphere and the sun.
Seasonal warming and cooling of the ocean is transmitted to an average depth of about 50 m due to turbulent mixing by winds. So the top 10 m or so warmed by the sun mixes several tens of meters of water below. This constitutes the mixed layer, which is in near equilibrium with SST and the atmosphere above whenever the wind is blowing normally – say on a monthly time scale.
Now see if you explanation still works and compare it to what Bob Tisdale says about El Nino. (I don’t think the sun can possibly be responsible for the rapid changes in SST (and the mixed layer below) that occur during an El Nino.)
Mike: I think you are wrong here:
“Greenhouse gases (GHGs) warm the atmosphere. From there, the downward Infra-Red (IR) radiation reaches the ocean surface.”
The CO2 acts more like a reflector, which can reflect without much of an increase in temp.
The atmosphere actually warms from the earth’s surface.
Hello! Is anybody listening? First, please review:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/10/interesting-climate-sensitivity-analysis-do-variations-in-co2-actually-cause-global-significant-warming/
Now, then, from August, 2014 to February, 2015, Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano underwent the largest basaltic eruption since Laki in 1783, releasing large amounts of hydrogen chloride and bromide to the atmosphere. If Peter Ward and I are right, then it is these volcanic halogen emissions thinning the ozone layer and letting in increased UV-B irradiation, and not CO2 or other so-called “greenhouse gases” that is the true cause of the recent El Nino. This is a very simple and logical explanation for the heat spike, and it should be duly considered.
I can provide all of the measurement data you would like to review this. While I use the day to day change from changing length of day time to see it’s effect on temps (so I have all of the day to day change during your gap period), I’ve noticed no effect (agreeing with your hypothesis).
The data sets are build from NCDC global summary of days, and each report is a defined areas, where only stations that produce a specified number of records per year are included. I do daily and annual averages of all of the station weather data, plus a number of add on derived from that data. What you want will be in a daily report. Each area gets a number of reports, what stations are included, some basic info on them, running averages, and with solar, and I construct an effective sensitivity. The CS report uses the slope of daily change in min and max temp, and for most it looks like a pretty straight line from march to september.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/gsod-rpts/
But I also discovered why the energy from co2 doesn’t do much. follow my name
I said that our new alternative hypothesis of warming through ozone depletion by anthropogenic (CFCs) and non-explosive volcanic chlorine needs to be considered as a possibility, and if I interpret your response correctly, you’ve only looked at existing datasets, which wouldn’t cover such an effect. One pertinent fact of interest is that every major uptick in the delta-oh-eighteen temperature proxy in the GISP2 ice cores is accompanied by a major deposit of volcanic sulfate from Icelandic volcanoes, suggesting that basaltic eruptions somehow play a part in warming. The only way in which they could do that is by means of release of halogens and their subsequent depletion of the ozone layer, letting in a higher insolation by UV-B.
I was referring to your previous post, and the need for data.
Micro6500, Rowland and Molina established that Cl does destroy ozone catalytically. You’re asking, I take it, that it be shown observationally by recorded data that the HCL released by basaltic eruptions actually winds up on polar stratospheric clouds in March in sufficient quantity to cause an amount of ozone thinning to allow a sufficient increase in UV-B to account for observed warming. There is no question that it can happen, the question is can it be shown that it does. Clearly, the data that could confirm this don’t exist, and obtaining them would be virtually impossible, so the next best thing is to show that there is no known process that would interfere with this mechanism. Can you point to any such process?
In the referenced post, there was a hypothesis about peak temps and peak co2 values, and whether they coincided or not. I was offering daily surface data that might provide light on the topic. Nothing more than that.
Check. Tx!
David
increases and decreases in ozone respectively follow decreases and increases in solar magnetic field strengths. I can prove this.
My theory is that as the solar polar magnetic field strengths decreases, more of the most energetic particles are able to escape, forming more ozone, peroxides and N-oxides TOA. The atmosphere protects us, against these harmful rays.
The ozone hole was another dumb scare story. My bet is, that peroxides are formed preferentially above the oceans as more OH radicals are available TOA>
The amounts of stuff produced by volcanos is not enough to produce any effect of the order that you claim possible. Increase in volcanic activity in Iceland does show you that earth’s inner core has been moving, north east, going by the change in the magnetic north pole. Go down 1 km into a gold mine here and feel the elephant in the room?
Hence, there has been some warming at the north pole and in the NH.
Here in South Africa, there has been no warming and overall, for the SH, it is almost zero or even below…
“The amounts of stuff produced by volcanos is not enough to produce any effect of the order that you claim possible.”
Can you substantiate this claim? How else can you explain the correspondence in the GISP ice core between every single sudden warming, including all 26 Dasgaard-Oeschger events, with Icelandic eruptions?
David
True. You caught me out there on the one question that I cannot answer. It could well be that there is a small influence; but how to measure it? If I look at all my results, it can never be much.
All my results infer greater power to
1) solar cycles – energy out to in – formation of ozone, peroxides and N-oxides which screens the amount and type of UV coming in, and that determines how much water evaporates.
2) inner movement of earth core – energy in to out [magnetic stirrer effect]
3) mixing of the top layers of water with the lower layers – lunar tides
4) position of the planets – movement of the exact center of the solar system.
for example,
my results show -0.0003K/annum warming in the SH over the last 34 years. (measured in 2014}
my results show 0.0205K/annum warming in the NH since same time.
Average = ca. 0.01K/annum global
which does not compare that bad with global UAH and RSS when looked at same period?
So let me ask you: How would my results fit in with your theory, i.e. do you say volcanic activity is more prominent in the NH than the SH?
Well, of course! You’re wedded to your results; I’m wedded to mine, n’ est ce-pas? The question I’d raise here is what percentage of your results is theoretical and how much is based on hard data? The theory in mine is based on hard data observed in the ice cores plus theoretical inferences drawn on the basis of a lack of other available data or mechanisms that could possibly yield this result,. I’e., it’s the only possible conclusion regarding the evident relation between sudden warming and basaltic volcanism, based on the evidence available. The same could be said for my graphic in the url I presented with my first post.
As for north-south volcanic distribution, the important thing here is that Iceland constitutes an unusual case in that it’s subaerial, not submarine. I know of no counterpart on the oceanic spreading ridges of the southern hemisphere. Subaerial means that whatever HCl and HBr is released from the basaltic lava isn’t dissolved in seawater, but go directly into the atmosphere, where they can become photodissociated on polar stratospheric clouds in March and subsequently destroy ozone, thereby increasing irradiation by high-intensity UV-B, which, if it causes sunburn, certainly has a heating effect on water-bearing matter.
David
when it comes to climate change [and politics]
trust no one but yourself.
My results are all based on hard daily data 99%. If a month of daily data was not complete, I used the following rules
1) if daily data > 15 days, take average of the month
Normally, in stats you fill in long term averages, if data is missing. However, to study climate change over time, per year, on average, I thought it wiser that
2) if daily data < 15 days, take average of same month in the year before and the year after.
As far as I remember my chemistry, I don't think HCl (H+) and Chlorine are stronger oxidators than ozone?
the HCl would simply fall out the sky as acid rain, just like sulfuric acid. Probably kills some trees in the process.
Bromine, maybe, but as I reckon, I doubt that the quantities involved can be that much..
In our model, HCl and HBr wind up on polar stratospheric clouds, where they are photodissociated in March, yielding monatomic chlorine, which then destroys ozone catalytically. We follow Rowland and Molina in this. The photodissociated H is presumably lost to space. I’m sure your data analysis is internally consistent, and I’m certainly not disputing it. In fact, it ties in rather nicely with our contention that it’s solar UV-B, and not re-radiated IR, that actually heats Earth through its absorption by water. We simply provide a mechanism for an increase in this UV-B to take place.
David
true
it is the “type” and amount UV coming through that determines a large part of ‘climate change;
that type of radiation easily heats the top layer of water molecules to 100C.
I have grown skeptical of man made ozone destruction [Fluor/Chlorine] since I never saw any results of peroxides inside the hole. Nobody ever thought of it>?
look at the spectrum of peroxide and ozone? it looks identical. no co-incidence.
Just like, according to my analysis, there is no man made global warming. I started doubting when I looked at the exact quantities involved.
you can figure out the way I thought from here:
Concerned to show that man made warming (AGW ) is correct and indeed happening, I thought that here [in Pretoria, South Africa} I could easily prove that. Namely the logic following from AGW theory is that more CO2 would trap heat on earth, hence we should find minimum temperature (T) rising pushing up the mean T. Here, in the winter months, we hardly have any rain but we have many people burning fossil fuels to keep warm at night. On any particular cold winter’s day that results in the town area being covered with a greyish layer of air, viewable on a high hill outside town in the early morning.
I figured that as the population increased over the past 40 years, the results of my analysis of the data [of a Pretoria weather station] must show minimum T rising, particularly in the winter months. Much to my surprise I found that the opposite was happening: minimum T here was falling, any month….I first thought that somebody must have made a mistake: the extra CO2 was cooling the atmosphere, ‘not warming it. As a chemist, that made sense to me as I knew that whilst there were absorptions of CO2 in the area of the spectrum where earth emits, there are also the areas of absorption in the 1-2 um and the 4-5 um range where the sun emits. Not convinced either way by my deliberations and discussions as on a number of websites, I first looked at a number of weather stations around me, to give me an indication of what was happening:
The results puzzled me even more. Somebody [God/Nature] was throwing a ball at me…..The speed of cooling followed a certain pattern, best described by a quadratic function.
I carefully looked at my earth globe and decided on a particular sampling procedure to find out what, if any, the global result would be. Here is my final result on that:
Hence, looking at my final Rsquare on that, I figured out that there is no AGW, at least not measurable.
Interesting! I’ll spend some time with this, and will get back to you. I’m pretty heavily committed right at the moment. Tx!
Regarding: “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.”
This is incorrect. It equals .66 W/m^2. .2 W/m^2 is the answer using log10 instead of log2.
I’m inclined to think think that it’s 0.18 w/m^2. Why is that ? If you work the formula backwards that’s what you get. Additionally, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo confirms that the cooling was somewhere around 0.15 w/m^2. If co2 acted that way, the cooling would have been more severe. The number 0.66 w/m^2 is 3 times higher. I don’t see a basis for it.
The linear sensitivity is probably a little higher than 0.20 w/m^2. The warming is not a log up in saturation, but a decline. In other words, the rate of warming declines as the co2 levels increase. Holding that thought, I think that’s what the record shows. Otherwise, the models based on 3 times higher would reflect that in reality.
I have never seen any example of where co2 could go over unity. If it does, that would be a truly wonderful thing.
based on changing solar from changing length of day, it’s under 0.02F/W/m^2
I don’t think any of the warming has been from co2 at all. So I’m not going to disagree. In fact, I’ve said warming is from co2 is no more than 3% of the reported warming. Background noise. And some think that number is way too high. I’m arguing from the IPCC prespective. It was convient for them to come up with that number in 2002 so that all the math fit at that particular time. None of it works foward or backwards. In any case it can not possibly be 0.66w/m^2. The world would be 3 times warmer than today. .
( do note I’m not a Luke warmer in the sense that co2 is the cause. I think it has warmed somewhat from about 1967 to 1978 but from other causes)