A Correction – And Much More of the Answer
Guest essay by Mike Jonas
I think this post is a big deal. It’s not quite the answer to everything but, if I’ve got it right, it solves a lot of the climate riddle. It also shows that CO2’s contribution to late 20th century global warming was very minor. So here’s a request: please can the best brains on WUWT check it all very carefully – a serious online peer-review. If I’ve stuffed up, I want to know that right away, so please get a critical comment in asap. Most of the relevant data is in the spreadsheet absorptioncalcs_upper (.xlsx see also Appendix B).
1. A Correction from Nick Stokes
What seems like a long time ago, when I saw Nick Stokes’ comment on my How Climate Works – Part 1 post, I thought it looked significant and I should check it carefully. Well, silly me, I didn’t check it until after my last post, which asked where El Niño’s heat came from. In that post, I looked into the ocean at 10-100m depth, and found enough extra energy absorption caused by a 1983-2009 cloud cover decline to match the global warming claimed for CO2. There’s enough energy for that alright, but the trouble is, when I examined it further, there’s too much water down there and not enough extra energy.
What I had been doing in the post was to check whether the extra heat going into the deep ocean was enough to match the amount claimed for CO2. All the analysis in the post was correct for the part of the ocean I was looking at, so what had I missed? [Actually, one formula I was using was wrong; I use the hopefully correct one in this post.].
I went back and checked Nick’s comment, and it supplied the answer. It showed the daily cycle of temperature in the upper ocean:
Figure 1. The diurnal (day-night) cycle in the top few metres of the ocean. From Nick Stokes’ blog Moyhu. NB. The two panels have different scales on the x-axes (that’s not an issue at all, just be careful to see the panels correctly).
What this chart shows is that, on a daily basis, the solar energy absorbed into the top fraction of a millimetre of the ocean then mixes (conducts and convects) into the top 5-10m only, and nearly all of it stays in just the top 1m. But overnight, it is all lost, back into the atmosphere.
I was looking far too far down into the ocean. The answers are much nearer the surface. That’s the correction from Nick.
So the first clue that put me back on track was that the daily mixing was in the top 1m, not the top 10m that I had been allowing for. There’s longer-term mixing too, but that basically spreads the heat across a wider band of ocean. The heat retained from the top 1m will still be there, it will just be diluted.
The second clue, which confirmed that I had been basically on track, was that the surface skin is cooler, day and night, than the subskin. What that tells you is that the net heat flow between the skin and the subskin is one-way – upwards from subskin to skin. So no matter how much the skin may affect the rate at which the subskin warms or cools, it cannot ever give it a higher temperature than its own. If the subskin’s temperature is higher, then the subskin’s other heat sources have to be capable of providing.all of its temperature.
I’ll make one more comment on Nick’s arguments, before I move on: It is unreasonable to extrapolate, as Nick implicitly does, from a single day’s data, arguing that the net zero effect over one day applies to longer periods. The net effect over one day may simply be too small to measure, or disappear in “noise”. To see what happens over longer periods, you need to find a way to work with longer periods.
NB. While you’re reading this article, please don’t think that I’m criticising Nick. Nick’s information and ideas have been invaluable. It’s just that I have a different interpretation, and obviously it’s the differences that get most attention.
2. The CO2 argument
Nick’s argument re CO2 is simple: “On average, the surface loses heat, by evaporation and radiation (and some conduction to air). Incoming IR does not generally need to be absorbed. It simply offsets some of the emission. [] In a very technical sense, the sea is heated by sunlight rather than downwelling IR, as is the land. That’s just trivial arithmetic – the sun is the heat source. [] But downwelling IR does add joules to the sea just as effectively as SW “.
Here, Nick confirms that the sun is the heat source, but skates over the mechanism saying it’s “just trivial arithmetic“. We’ll do some of the arithmetic in a while, and see if it’s trivial.
First, I want to establish how effective CO2 is.
The IPCC say that a doubling of CO2 increases downward IR by 3.7 Wm-2, and that without feedbacks this would increase global temperature by about 1.2 deg C [at equilibrium]. I’ll use these numbers, and use average surface temperature 290 deg K, to relate temperature to radiation: for radiation R, temperature T, some k, we have R=k*T^4 so k*291.2^4-k*290^4=3.7 hence k=3.7/( 291.2^4-290^4)=3.14E-8. That’s different to the black body figure, but presumably we’re not dealing with a black body. NB. I’m not looking for extreme accuracy, just the ball-park.
From 1983 to 2009, the increased CO2 delivered a downward RF increase of +0.20 Wm-2 (see previous post Appendix A). That would raise temperature by dT where k*((290+dT)^4-290^4) = 0.2 which gives dT ~= +0.07 deg C. That’s only reached at equilibrium, and as Nick says, ““Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity. What has happened after everything has settled down, which takes a very long time.“. [my bold].
I think that +0.07 deg C at equilibrium is probably about right. And its contribution from 1983 to 2009 would have been much less.
3. The cloud effect
The argument about clouds is even simpler: Clouds affect upward and downward radiation roughly equally, so cloud changes have negligible effect on atmospheric temperature. NB. We’re looking at averages, not day vs night.
I think that’s probably about right, too. As I said in my last post, “Clouds have a minor overall effect on average atmospheric temperature“.
But does that argument extend to the ocean ?
Nick Stokes argues that solar radiation that penetrates the ocean is just re-radiated away. He puts it this way: “A large part of the insolation that penetrates the sea, to a depth of several meters, is later radiated in this way. It’s a big part of the thermal balance. Somehow, that heat is conveyed to the surface, and is emitted by the surface layer.“. And that one word that I have highlighted is the third clue – what is this “Somehow“?.
Let’s look at those “several metres” and see what goes on there:
Using all the same data as in the El Niño’s heat post , here is the absorption profile for the ITO down to 15m depth:
Figure 2. ITO absorption to 15m depth.
Most of the solar radiation is indeed absorbed in the top 1 metre, but for the ITO virtually none is in the top 1mm. The total energy absorbed from thee ITO in the top say 5m is 88 Wm-2. That definitely doesn’t look trivial.
What we are interested in is the effect of clouds. Clouds have little net effect on IR, but for the ITO the equation is different. A reduction in cloud cover lets more ITO into the ocean well below the surface skin. There is now an additional heat source inside the ocean. Using the same figures as before, but correcting the formula (see Appendix A), the 4 percentage-point reduction in global cloud cover from 1983-2009 would see an additional 2.0 Wm-2 absorbed in top 1m, and 1.6 Wm-2 absorbed into the 1-15m band.
That’s a lot more than the +0.2 Wm-2 from CO2 over the same period. Sure, it’s going to get to the surface Somehow, but in the meantime it is going to heat the ocean below the surface. In fact, it can’t (net) release any of its heat to the surface unless it has warmed to a higher temperature. Just like the CO2 change, this extra wattage isn’t a one-day wonder, it’s coming in every day while the cloud cover stays down.
The exact equations from here onwards get difficult, because the situation in the real ocean is fluid – pun intended – ie, the water can move, horizontally or vertically, and heat conducts through it, too, so there’s a lot more going on than just radiation. But the bottom line is that the radiation balance – the “Somehow” – comes from the top few metres of the ocean getting warmer. And if the the top few metres of the ocean get warmer then the globe gets warmer. So …..
4. How much of the Late 20th Century Global Warming was Natural?
We now have the necessary data to start to calculate how much of the late 20th century global warming was natural, and how much was from CO2.
Downward RF from CO2 increased by about 0.2 Wm-2 over the 1983-2009 period. All of that went into the ocean surface skin. Nick’s data shows that it then mixed into the top 5-10m of the ocean, but mainly into the top 1m.
Over the same period, because of cloud cover changes, the ITO increased by 4.5 Wm-2. About 80% of this was absorbed into the top 15m in the following distribution (the rest went into the deeper ocean).
| Depth (m) | Absorbed | Wm-2 | Cumul. |
| 0-1 | 44.7% | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| 1-2 | 9.3% | 0.4 | 2.4 |
| 2-3 | 5.5% | 0.2 | 2.7 |
| 3-4 | 3.8% | 0.2 | 2.8 |
| 4-5 | 2.9% | 0.1 | 3.0 |
| 5-6 | 2.3% | 0.1 | 3.1 |
| 6-7 | 1.9% | 0.1 | 3.2 |
| 7-8 | 1.7% | 0.1 | 3.2 |
| 8-9 | 1.5% | 0.1 | 3.3 |
| 9-10 | 1.3% | 0.1 | 3.4 |
| 10-11 | 1.2% | 0.1 | 3.4 |
| 11-12 | 1.1% | 0.0 | 3.5 |
| 12-13 | 1.0% | 0.0 | 3.5 |
| 13-14 | 0.9% | 0.0 | 3.6 |
| 14-15 | 0.8% | 0.0 | 3.6 |
Figure 3. Where the ITO’s 1983-2009 increase of 4.5 Wm-2 was absorbed.
The greater the depth of the mixing, the greater the contribution from the ITO, as shown in column “Cumul.” in Figure 3.
If we assume mixing to 1m only, the proportion of the extra RF provided by CO2 is 9% (0.2/(0.2+2.0). For mixing to 5m it’s 6.1% (0.2/3.2), for mixing to 10m it’s 5.5%.
Those percentages for CO2 are still too high, because
· CO2 increased linearly, while the ITO increase had all occurred by 2000. The ITO then stayed high.
· The ITO is supplying some additional RF to the next depths too, while CO2 is not.
We can state with confidence that the data shows clearly that CO2 contributed less than 9%, and probably less than 6%, of the global warming that occurred from 1983-2000.
5. Discussion
The global temperature increased from 1983 to about 2000, but then stalled. This matches the pre-2000 / post-2000 pattern of the ITO as controlled by clouds. The relationship is surely worth investigating very thoroughly. The next 5 years of ISCCP cloud data is due out later this year, and that should present a testing opportunity. By contrast, the CO2 pattern was quite different, CO2 levels increased steadily over the period.
We have seen, above, how clouds are a major driver of ocean surface temperature, and hence of climate, though more data over a longer data period is probably needed before the process can be understood in detail. All of the ocean oscillations (ENSO, AMO, PDO, etc) have a big impact on climate over timescales that range from a year to a few decades. Solar variation appears to have a long term effect on climate, and a possible mechanism has been shown to be via GCRs and clouds. It had been thought that clouds had only a minor effect on temperature, but by looking specifically at the ocean not the atmosphere I have shown how clouds do have a significant impact.
The ocean oscillations are not, as far as I am aware, caused by clouds. Clouds can affect the temperature of the water going into the oscillations, and this I think is the likely cause of the 20th century global temperature pattern. This pattern could be seen as a ~60yr cycle on a rising trend. The cycle seemed to match reasonably well to the Atlantic and Pacific oscillations, and the rising trend related quite well to solar activity for most of the 20th century (increased solar activity => less GCRs => less clouds). The sun is not the only driver of clouds, and clouds continued to decline in the late 20th century even though the sun then started weakening. We need to find why the clouds behaved as they did, but it is clear that the late 20th century global warming was driven mainly by clouds. We know that El Niño affects clouds, so it is likely that the other ocean oscillations affect clouds too. Climate is non-linear, which adds another obstacle to analysis – the same factors can have different results at different times, depending on the state of other factors.
I would postulate that the ocean’s chief influence on the weather (periods of days, weeks) is from the top few mm. That is the layer whose heat is lost fastest into the atmosphere. CO2 would have no influence here, because it doesn’t vary on those short timescales, but clouds certainly would. Factors such as winds would be be important too. An El Niño operates on a slightly longer timescale, and winds have been identified as a (or the) major factor. An El Niño can lift local ocean surface temperature by around 10 deg C, and there is a limit to the depth of water that can be heated by that amount. It therefore seems likely that the pool of warm water that feeds El Niño is not very deep. The multi-decadal ocean oscillations, such as the AMO and PDO, change temperatures by less but over longer periods, so their pools of warm water are probably deeper, and consequently are released over a longer period. But if the pool of warm water is deeper, then the proportion attributable to CO2 over the 1983-2009 period would be at the low end of the range. Over even longer timescales, solar variation via clouds would appear to be a (or the) major factor.
Climate scientists would benefit massively, in my considered opinion, by abandoning their absurdly detailed and desperately manipulated computer models driven mainly by CO2 and the atmosphere. I have explained in previous posts why, as currently structured, they can never work. Energy in Earth’s system is basically a one-way street : sun – ocean – atmosphere – space. (Please note that the ocean surface is warmer than the atmosphere, on average, so net energy transfer is indeed from ocean to atmosphere. See here, eg.). Clouds have a major influence, as they control solar energy entering the ocean. The sun, in turn, has a long term impact on clouds. Until we learn how to predict activity of the sun, clouds and the ocean, we will not be able to predict future climate.
I need to re-write some of my earlier documents, in light of what I have learned since. This will take a while. The concepts are generally unchanged, but some of the detail has changed.
Appendices
Appendix A. Cloud Formula
It’s not very clear in the Kiehl and Trenberth energy budget diagram (Figure A.1 in the El Niño’s heat post) what the effect of a change in cloud cover on the various radiation components would be. So I’ve made some assumptions. NB. I’m not looking for extreme accuracy, just the ball-park. The assumptions:
· At 71.2% cloud cover (the 1983-2009 average), solar radiation entering the ocean is 168 Wm-2. (Figure A.1 in the El Niño’s heat post).
· At zero cloud cover, solar radiation entering the ocean would be 72.5% of total solar radiation. (Figure A.2 in the El Niño’s heat post, “70-75% transmitted“).
· Clouds’ effect is linear with cloud cover.
From this, a 1 percentage-point decrease in cloud cover would increase solar radiation entering the ocean by ~1.12 Wm-2. For a 4 percentage-point increase, it’s 4.5 Wm-2.
This formula is a correction to the one I used before. The previous one gave too high a figure.
Appendix B. A very brief guide to AbsorptionCalcs_Upper.xlsx
Download: absorptioncalcs_upper (.xlsx)
Atmosphere and Ocean data is digitised from graphs shown in worksheets AtmosphereGraphs, OceanGraphs respectively. Atmosphere and Ocean calcs are in worksheets Atmosphere, Ocean respectively. Some energy budget data is taken fron Kiehl and Trenberth’s energy budget chart in worksheet EnergyBudget. The full combination is then calculated in worksheet 2003.
I use SORCE data for 2003. All years are almost identical.
In the SORCE data, total solar radiation is 330.5 Wm-2 based on Earth’s surface area – cell ‘2003’!D4 divided by 4. Total ITO is 236.5 Wm-2 – cell ‘2003’!E4 divided by 4. The 88 Wm-2 absorbed in the top 5m comes from cells ‘2003’!BC1:BG1. Cells ‘2003’!BC2:BQ2 give the percentagess in Table 3 above.
In the previous worksheet, absorptioncalcs (.xlsx), there was an error in a section labelled Bands for graph only: at cell ‘2003’!AD8009 (now cell ‘2003’!AZ8009). This section is not used for any calcs. The error is that the z axis in the Absorption graph in worksheet Graphs is out by a factor of 10. The section is not used anywhere else, so no calcs are affected.
Abbreviations
AMO – Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
CO2 – Carbon Dioxide
ENSO – El Niño Southern Oscillation
GCR – Galactic Cosmic Ray
IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
IR – Infra-Red radiation
ISCCP – International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project
ITO – Into The Ocean [Band of Wavelengths approx 200nm to 1000nm]
PDO – Pacific Decadal Oscillation
RF – Radiative Forcing
SORCE – Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment
SST – Sea Surface Temperature
SW – Short Wave
Wm-2 or W/m2 – Watts per square metre
WUWT – wattsupwiththat.com
What about the total energy amount that comes from the combined inputs from the ocean floor. This is a lot of energy and not quantified. The value would also be very dynamic over time.
That heat moves up and out and is a contributor to ocean heat and it never gets mentioned.
Without that initial volcanic activity on earth it would never have warmed enough for the sun to to keep it unfrozen.
http://www.michaelmandeville.com/earthmonitor/polarmotion/plots/Table102_World_volcanism_trend_1875-1993.gif
Is this what throws up the extra heat to warm us up in shorter time spells. Does this have an effect on el nino throwing in heat that the oceans periodically expel into the atmosphere?
I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that graph, I have seen a few and they all are very similar. Just thinking aloud here.
There is a lot of energy not accounted for. Geothermal, crust convection largely unknowns are they not globally, mainly guestimations.
Of course I am assuming that if there is increased activity on land volcanoes there is also with the majority of them, which are submerged
undersea volcanic activity is a constant unlike on land’s explosive outbursts.
The main hub of volcanic activity is an area where eruptions are undetectable. The mid-ocean ridge
None of this is quantified and as such I can’t take ocean heat content seriously until it puts a number on total energy input from the ocean floor
There are more volcanoes on the mid-ocean ridge than on land in total. It is a constant input of energy.
ocean ridges
http://www.mlhi.org/science09/period6/Ilya_mid_ocean_ridge_files/image003.gif
The energy from Earth’s nuclear core reaches the surface very slowly at a rate of 47 terra watts compared to the solar incoming of 173,000 terra watts. The proportion of that 47 due to gravitational compression is about 5 to 10% if I recall correctly. This underfloor heating does not warm the surface on a global scale but it must surely act as a super insulator for conduction of heat downwards. I postulate that on a cold Earth with no nuclear core any warming of the surface by the sun would slowly be conducted downwards to result in permafrost on land. The oceans would freeze solid with just a surface melt where the sun shines strongly and we would be in big trouble.
@pablo Interesting, and I honestly dont have any idea. I do sys analysis on IT systems. There is no way I would ever try to come to any conclusion in an analysis with such a massive unknown in play.
precision is needed for the policies coming out of all this. It literally is life or death, given Biofuels caused deaths for sure. It is that important. Current and future generations ARE going to suffer and die from the policies from these green lunatics
@pablo
I am mainly interested in the combined total heat input from geothermal and volcanic activity. This is heat directly into the oceans. Massive amounts of heat we cant even measure, all we have are EXTREMELY vague estimations and NO way to validate them, none. It is entirely unknown
@paolo “energy from Earth’s nuclear core reaches the surface very slowly at a rate of 47 terra watts”
How was this value calculated? What is it based on? It seems like a simple average estimate, and I fail to see how it relates to how much heat is being pumped into the ocean. Time is also a factor, how much energy and when. Given the role of ocean in temperatures, this is surely a relevant question that needs some sort of answer.
There seems to be a norm in climate science to ignore things we can’t put a value on (natural CO2), and yet come out them other side with certainty values, which would make these values unreliable.
I have no climate science skills, none, but I do have plenty of experience with identifying problems with systems and processes.
Working this problem and not tackling this issue is like analyzing a network and ignoring a servers subnet. It’s an incomplete analysis. What use are incomplete analysis of systems in working out that system? Not much to be honest.
Example of completely dishonest science
Satellite tots up volcanic heat
“Robert Wright and Luke Flynn from the University of Hawaii in Honolulu used the NASA satellite MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) to measure the heat emitted by the world’s 45 most active volcanoes, ”
http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040301/full/news040301-1.html
As can be read there, we have absolutely NO idea on this number of energy from below
I do note from the Nature study
“When Mount St Helens erupted in 18 May 1980, it released more than 10^18 joules of heat at once – about 20 times the total heat flow from all the volcanoes studied in 2001”
How often does this happen beneath the ocean on the ridges and elsewhere. This is a lot of heat not even accounted for and it doesn’t come out at once like on land
https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2017/01/17/heat-earths-core-could-be-underlying-force-plate-tectonics
Heat from Earth’s core could be underlying force in plate tectonics
Heat driving tectonics.
“For decades, scientists have theorized that the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates is driven largely by negative buoyancy created as they cool. New research, however, shows plate dynamics are driven significantly by the additional force of heat drawn from the Earth’s core.
The new findings also challenge the theory that underwater mountain ranges known as mid-ocean ridges are passive boundaries between moving plates. The findings show the East Pacific Rise, the Earth’s dominant mid-ocean ridge, is dynamic as heat is transferred.
David B. Rowley, professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, and fellow researchers came to the conclusions by combining observations of the East Pacific Rise with insights from modeling of the mantle flow there. The findings were published Dec. 23 in Science Advances.
“We see strong support for significant deep mantle contributions of heat-to-plate dynamics in the Pacific hemisphere,” said Rowley, lead author of the paper. “Heat from the base of the mantle contributes significantly to the strength of the flow of heat in the mantle and to the resultant plate tectonics.”
The researchers estimate up to approximately 50 percent of plate dynamics are driven by heat from the Earth’s core and as much as 20 terawatts of heat flow between the core and the mantle.
Unlike most other mid-ocean ridges, the East Pacific Rise as a whole has not moved east-west for 50 to 80 million years, even as parts of it have been spreading asymmetrically. These dynamics cannot be explained solely by the subduction—a process whereby one plate moves under another or sinks. Researchers in the new findings attribute the phenomena to buoyancy created by heat arising from deep in the Earth’s interior.
“The East Pacific Rise is stable because the flow arising from the deep mantle has captured it,” Rowley said. “This stability is directly linked to and controlled by mantle upwelling,” or the release of heat from Earth’s core through the mantle to the surface.
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, particularly in the South Atlantic, also may have direct coupling with deep mantle flow, he added.
“The consequences of this research are very important for all scientists working on the dynamics of the Earth, including plate tectonics, seismic activity and volcanism,” said Jean Braun of the German Research Centre for Geosciences, who was not involved in the research.
The forces at work
Convection, or the flow of mantle material transporting heat, drives plate tectonics. As envisioned in the current research, heating at the base of the mantle reduces the density of the material, giving it buoyancy and causing it to rise through the mantle and couple with the overlying plates adjacent to the East Pacific Rise. The deep mantle-derived buoyancy, together with plate cooling at the surface, creates negative buoyancy that together explain the observations along the East Pacific Rise and surrounding Pacific subduction zones.
A debate about the origin of the driving forces of plate tectonics dates back to the early 1970s. Scientists have asked: Does the buoyancy that drives plates primarily derive from plate cooling at the surface, analogous with cooling and overturning of lakes in the winter? Or, is there also a source of positive buoyancy arising from heat at the base of the mantle associated with heat extracted from the core and, if so, how much does it contribute to plate motions? The latter theory is analogous to cooking oatmeal: Heat at the bottom causes the oatmeal to rise, and heat loss along the top surface cools the oatmeal, causing it to sink.
Until now, most assessments have favored the first scenario, with little or no contribution from buoyancy arising from heat at the base. The new findings suggest that the second scenario is required to account for the observations, and that there is an approximately equal contribution from both sources of the buoyancy driving the plates, at least in the Pacific basin.
“Based on our models of mantle convection, the mantle may be removing as much as half of Earth’s total convective heat budget from the core,” Rowley said.
Much work has been performed over the past four decades to represent mantle convection by computer simulation. Now the models will have to be revised to account for mantle upwelling, according to the researchers.
“The implication of our work is that textbooks will need to be rewritten,” Rowley said.
The research could have broader implications for understanding the formation of the Earth, Braun said. “It has important consequences for the thermal budget of the Earth and the so-called ‘secular cooling’ of the core. If heat coming from the core is more important than we thought, this implies that the total heat originally stored in the core is much larger than we thought.
“Also, the magnetic field of the Earth is generated by flow in the liquid core, so the findings of Rowley and co-authors are likely to have implications for our understanding of the existence, character and amplitude of the Earth’s magnetic field and its evolution through geological time,” Braun added.
“
Mark – Helsinki on February 19, 2017 at 12:23 am
Nobody really knows what you intended with this comment. Did you mean Earht’s core as a valuable heat source?
The average geothermal heat flow through the earth’s crust is roughly 0.1 W/m²; the average annual solar radiation arriving at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere is roughly 1365 W/m².
But maybe you thought of somewhat else?
Right at the start I said total energy output from ocean floor. I asked Roger Pielke sr about this, he said it’s a good question but didn’t know and said Geologists would better answer the question.
My point is it that we have a lot of heat going into the ocean and it is not quantified which matters if we are trying to work ocean heat content.
Accounting for energy balance, and heat exchange would demand identifying and quantifying all inputs\outputs.
I don’t see an issue with looking for precision, or as much precision as we can hope for when dealing with this topic. Ignoring elements of the problem is not good science, an example of this is the IPCC ignoring natural change and CO2.
Now we try work out ocean heat without looking at a massive source of heat. Like with natural CO2, ocean floor heat is not measurable at present due to technical and logistical limitations.
So should be just ignore something because we can’t currently quantify it?
Mark – Helsinki on February 19, 2017 at 6:03 am
Ignoring elements of the problem is not good science, an example of this is the IPCC ignoring natural change and CO2.
Please, Mark, manage to a least perform some diagonal lecture of this document:
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf
You might at the end still have another opinion than those reflected by the persons having contributed to the document’s elaboration; but that is then a different attitude 🙂
To John Harmsworth with reference to diesel particulate pollution in European cities http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412016305992
Just an experience note in passing.
On the one hand, swimming in dredger ponds in summer confirmed strongly that sunlight doesn’t heat very far down. There would be a significant thermocline at about 5-8 feet, where water went from bathtub warm to pleasant cold. Then another at about 15 feet where it became “don’t like it cold”. But that was in ponds maybe 50 meters across.
Sailing, you find yourself bobbing up and down even when there is little local wind (waves travel a long ways). With wave heights up to 100 feet, and constant crashing on shores around the world, and with many cyclonic storms at any one time whipping things up to 150 km/hr, the notion that “mixing” is limited to the first few meters is a bit daft. Submarines hide under thermoclines a couple of hundred feet down… where did they come from?
I think the issue of ocean mixing “needs work” just from the ignoring of cyclonic storms and long distance waves, if nothing else. Then there are places like the Drake Passage where a dramatic circumpolar current whacks into a narrow gap. This shoots a cold current right up the back of South America, and makes a nozzle jet on the other side of the strait that turns the whole south Atlantic gyre. I suspect there’s a lot of mixing and moving happening there, too.
Is any of that enough to really matter? Instinct says so… but it would need more real data to say.
Hello Mike – I don’t know if you can get my 2009 book ‘Chill: a reassessment of global warming theory’ Clairview, UK. in your part of the world, but I came to the same conclusions as you have with regard to the driving force of the warming. The ISCCP data can be combined with various sources of surface insolation data, plus a model from NASA (entitled ‘FD’), and a roughly 4 watt/square metre input figure derived for the surface of the oceans due to the 4% reduction in cloud cover. I compared this to the input calculated for CO2 but found a higher figure of about 1 watt/square metre compared to your 0.07 (but that is incremental). I am not sure the incremental value is the correct one – because the cumulative CO2 effect has not necessarily reached equilibrium. Thus, I came to about 20% as the CO2 driving force. There are appendices with data available on my website. If you can’t source the book itself – mail me (also on the website) and I would be happy to send you an e-version of the relevant chapters. The book contains all references to the science and monitoring data.
Recently there has been some data produced for the spectrally differentiated CO2 downwelling of IR….over a ten year period, during which concentration in the atmosphere increased by 22ppmv. The increment was 0.2 watt/square metre. If that is roughly right for the 100ppmv since pre-industrial times, then it comes to about 1 watt. Interestingly the TOTAL IR downwelling – mainly water vapour, increased by 10x this amount (ie 2 watts)!!! That is way more than any model of feedback – and I have not yet had the time to investigate this little documented observation.
As you know, cloud cover rebounded by 2% around 2001 – and that year witnessed a number of climate shifts, heralding as it did the ‘pause’. The next tranche of ISCCP data will be most useful in tracking the changes.
You state that cloud cover changes are unlikely to drive ocean oscillations – and you may be right, and it is a carts-and-horses thing, with oscillations driving cloud cover. The Arctic Oscillation with its major rising arm from 1990-2010 was accompanied by a 14% increase in cloud cover over the Arctic – but here, cloud insulates and warms the surface! We are still ignorant of what drives longer term variation of ENSO patterns, the PDO/AMO and the long cycle from the Medieval Warm Period through the Little Ice Age to the Current Warm Period. My feeling on the latter, is that solar magnetic cycles affect far-UV/stratospheric/jetstream patterns and the long-term heat storage of the oceans; and that the former shorter cycles may be a stochastic resonance phenomenon entrained in the long term pattern.
@Bindidon
Total heat flow from Earth’s interior to surface 47TW equal to 91.6mW/m2.
The ocean crust letting through 50% more than the continental crust.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_internal_heat_budget
Pablo,
Taking into account your 50% figure above, and the relative area of the oceans (71%), ‘back of the envelope’ calculations suggest that the oceans receive about 37 terrawatts of internal heat. The sun provides about 36,960 terrawatts [probably an upper-bound] to the oceans. Thus, about 1/1000 of the ocean heating comes from internal heat. It is an unstated assumption that the heat from spreading centers is constant. Considering that volcanic eruptions on land are episodic, that is probably an unsupportable assumption.
While I’m comfortable with the heat flow measurements on land, I doubt that the measurements of oceanic crust are as reliable.
Yes Pablo, but… this is exactly what I wrote: 100 mW is the same as 0.1 W.
Even if you add 50% to that, you move at best up to 0.15 W/m².
Clyde Spencer wrote the rest.
Just checking. LOL
We agree its a tiny amount.
The point is that a positive small outward flow puts a stop to any downward conduction of heat at a certain depth that is beyond the solar influence of daily/seasonal warming and cooling of the surface.
1m for the ocean, 10m for mid-latitude land and 1m for tropical land maybe. That makes those volumes the storage heaters for the Earth which can only cool to the base temperatures set at those depths by the core’s insulation.
@pablo February 20, 2017 at 12:41 am
You’re definitely looking in the right direction. Although small, the average 100 mW/m^2 flux through oceanic crust is sufficient to warm all ocean water 1K every 5000 years or so.
Since the seasonal warming / cooling of the oceans by the sun is restricted to the upper ~200 meters, the warm surface layer is the place where all solar energy is absorbed, to be released to the atmosphere again at the surface. This creates an effective barrier preventing bottom warmed water from reaching the surface (unless you believe in back-conduction of course 😉
Cooling of the deep oceans is only possible at high latitudes.
More on this:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/ben-wouters-influence-of-geothermal-heat-on-past-and-present-climate/
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/10/14/ben-wouters-geothermal-flux-and-the-deep-oceans/
Ben Wouters,
At the link you provided you state, “magma erupting continuously at plate boundaries, a small but reasonably steady flux” Considering that there is something like 45,000 miles of spreading centers, erupting over a width of a few miles, and that the temperature of the magma is very high, I’m curious how you came to the conclusion that it was a “small” flux. Have you made any calculations to estimate just what the magnitude is?
@Clyde Spencer February 20, 2017 at 9:05 am
The numbers I found for magma erupting at spreading ridges are in the 2-5 km^3 range per year range.
1 km^3 magma will warm ~1500 km^3 water 1K when cooling down to deep ocean water temperatures so
it takes roughly 1 million km^3 magma to warm all ocean water 1K.
Using 5 km^3/year it takes ~200.000 years to do what the geothermal flux can do in just ~5000 years.
To me this makes it part of the continuous flux of geothermal energy that more or less maintains the deep oceans temperatures. It takes additional events like the Ontong Java one to substantially increase the deep ocean temperatures.
Ben,
Assuming a spreading rate of about 2.5 cm per year, I get a surface area of about 2 km^2 of hot rocks. To get to your figure of 2 km^3 would require the assumption that water is circulating to a depth of about 1 km. That seems high to me, but I accept that it is at least in the ball park. However, the 1500:1 ratio resulting from the temperature difference apparently doesn’t take into account the difference in heat capacity of water compared to rock. Thus, I have to conclude that your statement about the contribution from spreading centers is small, as stated.
@Clyde Spencer February 20, 2017 at 3:06 pm
I believe the 1500:1 ratio is correct, since I’m using volumes iso weights.
Density of basalt is 3 times higher than that of water.
The 1500:1 ratio comes in handy when estimating the potential effect of large magma eruptions, where the volumes are given in millions km^3.
Volume of all ocean water is ~1400 million km^3, so 1 million km^3 magma can potentially warm all ocean water 1K.
This makes the Ontong Java event a major driver of the temperatures in the Cretaceous imo.
Possibly 100 million km^3 erupting in a relatively short period.
But the geothermal flux is small but very relevant imo. It can potentially warm all ocean water from freezing to boiling in just half a million years.
Just realize that the solar heated surface layer prevents bottom warmed water from reaching the surface, except at (very) high latitudes.
(if you want the calculation for the 1500:1 ratio you can contact me: ben at wtrs dot nl )
Ben,
OK, there may be a few loose ends on the details of the calculations. I had assumed that the 1500:1 ratio was the result of rounding up of the average temperatures of a basaltic lava or intrusive gabbroic magma. Maybe you had something else in mind. Also, as I think about it, while the average rate of spreading at spreading ridges may only be about 2.5 cm per year, individual flows may well cover much larger areas. Lastly, the specific heat of water, as I remember, is about 3X that of most rocks, meaning for equal volumes, the water will only increase its temperature 1/3 as much as a rock conducting heat away from an adjacent hot rock. How does all this come together in your analysis.
Clyde,
I’m not really interested in the finer details. Mostly in ballpark numbers like 5000 years/K or the 1500:1 ratio.
But here we go:
Cp’s (J/kg/K): water 4200, magma 1000, basalt 1400
Latent heat magma > basalt 400.000 J/kg
Kg magma 1300C > 1200C: 100.000J
Latent heat: 400.000J
Basalt 1200C > 0C: 1.680.000J
Total 2.180.000J for 1kg magma at 1300C cooling down to 1kg basalt at 0C.
Can warm 519 kg water 1K.
Density basalt 3 times that of water: 1557 m^3 water can be warmed 1K by 1m^3 magma cooling down.
My main point is that the temperatures of the deep oceans have been and still are completely caused by geothermal energy in all its forms.
This means that solar radiation does not have to warm a “black body” from 0K to some radiative balance temperature, but only warms a shallow layer of ocean water a bit above the deep ocean temperature.
The resulting surface temperature then decides the energy loss via the atmosphere to space.
The role of the atmosphere is the same as that of an isolation blanket: reducing energy loss.
Since we arrived at the current “balanced” situation coming from much higher temperatures, the atmosphere (isolation blanket) is NOT increasing the surface temperatures.
So no GHE.
Clyde Spencer February 21, 2017 at 12:55 pm
“Also, as I think about it, while the average rate of spreading at spreading ridges may only be about 2.5 cm per year, individual flows may well cover much larger areas.”
That’s why I make the distinction between “base warming” (geothermal flux and spreading ridges) that operates continuously and isolated events like the Ontong Java one.
The base warming seems unable to maintain the deep ocean temperatures. We see cooling for the last 84 million years. Only large, isolated events in the million(s) km^3 range seem to increase the deep ocean (and thus surface) temperatures.
Comment on your text:
1. Most author place the definition in parenthesis when the abbreviation is first used.
2. In discussing energy flux to and from the sea surface we would expect some mention of wavelength up front, distinguishing between visible and infrared or SW anf LW.
3. Then you could mention some non-radiative factors, such as wind speed (cooling effect) and evaporation/rainfall (cooling/warming effect), clouds and sun angle.
4. Now you are in a position to say that you will focus on penetration of solar radiation into the ocean and the loss of heat from the surface layer to the atmosphere and to the lower depths of the ocean.
5. You may have to tell your readers which zones you are interested in: the mixed upper layer of the ocean (epipelagic zone) to colder deep water in the thermocline (mesopelagic zone).
That is to set the stage. You show us the penetration of visible light by using a 3D graphic. This is familiar territory for anyone who has looked over the side of a boat in clear water: you can see things down below. This proves not only does visible light enter the water, but also it can be reflected back out of the water, one way that solar energy can leave the ocean. The other way is as thermal energy, which I discuss below.
My own experiments were with ASTER ((Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) datasets from a Japanese instrument fflown by NASA aboard TERRA. An ASTER dataset contains 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared (TIR).
I used one of the middle infrared bands to define the coastlines I was interested in because ASTER registers no middle IR from the oceans. The middle wavelengths are not emitted.
I used TIR to define effluent from rivers where they entered the oceans because ASTER does record thermal infrared emissions. I expect there are lots of other similar uses of the TIR band.
I regret that I cannot assess your model but hope these comments might help a little.
Such a shame Anthony told Nick Stokes to STFU and banned him, so he can’t refute this article.
Budgie and others,
I guess you didn’t read all the comments and missed this by Stokes: “As it happened, I was able to comment, for now at least without moderation.”
Such a shame you missed Nick’s replies in this thread eg.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/stokes-and-the-somehow-theory-of-ocean-heat/comment-page-1/#comment-2430198
But I’m sure you meant well.
Mike wrote: “The exact equations from here onwards get difficult, because the situation in the real ocean is fluid – pun intended – ie, the water can move, horizontally or vertically, and heat conducts through it, too, so there’s a lot more going on than just radiation. But the bottom line is that the radiation balance – the “Somehow” – comes from the top few metres of the ocean getting warmer. And if the the top few metres of the ocean get warmer then the globe gets warmer.”
Your explanation needs to take into account the fact that seasonal warming of ocean (due to more radiation in the summer and less in the winter) extends down to about 100 m, with an average penetration depth of about 50 meters. This is called the mixed layer and it is turbulently mixed by surface winds. The mixing time is approximately a month or so. To a first approximation, all of the heat from radiative forcing is going into this layer. Using heat capacity, it is trivial to calculate that a 1 W/m2 radiative imbalance can only warm the mixed layer at an initial rate of 0.2 K/yr. However as the mixed layer warms, it starts radiating more heat to the atmosphere and then space, so a 1 W/m2 radiative FORCING soon becomes a 0.5 W/m2 IMBALANCE, then a 0.25 W/m2 imbalance etc. Heat is ALSO slowly transferred into the bulk of the ocean below the mixed layer. That is being monitored by ARGO. Right now about 0.5-0.7 W/m2 of heat from the surface is continuously leaving the mixed layer because the deep ocean hasn’t caught up with the warming that has occurred on the surface.
When you are applying the S-B equation, you are ASSUMING radiative equilibrium – how much warming is needed to completely correct a radiative imbalance. However, an imbalance isn’t corrected instantaneously – which is what you are always wrongly assuming. Temperature change is determined in the short run by energy in minus energy out divided by HEAT CAPACITY. You live on a planet with a massive heat capacity that takes CENTURIES to warm up enough for equilibrium between incoming and outgoing radiation to be established. You and many other naively assume that such a radiative equilibrium is present after any period you choose. This is grossly flawed.
How can ARGO show 0.5-0.7 W/m2 of heat going into the ocean – if the recent radiative forcing from rising CO2 over the last few decades is only 0.2 W/m2??????????????? To say anything sensible, you need to understand the answer to this question. The total current radiative forcing from man is supposedly about 2.2 W/m2, but the warming from this forcing is lagging several decades behind. It took a century of tiny annual increases in radiative forcing to reach 2.2 W/m2, but the earth hasn’t warmed enough to emit an extra 2.2 W/m2 (to space), because some (currently 0.5 W/m2) is going into the deep ocean. AFTER a century, we are about 75% of the way to equilibrium warming for the current forcing. The Earth’s temperature is not in equilibrium with incoming radiation – but the mixed layer and atmosphere are. We know they equilibrate with the seasons every year.
In the case of El Nino, there is a slowing in upwelling of cold water from the deep ocean and downwelling of warm water from the surface. El Ninos are caused by a change in how existing heat in the system is distributed. This is UNFORCED variability, which is typical in systems exhibiting chaotic behavior. You can’t explain it in terms of external forcing. These chaotic fluctuation make it difficult to measure the rate at which warming from forcing occurs.
Good post and very much on the right track. The oceans control everything related to global temperature and energy distribution (just look at impact of Gulf stream) ….. and unless they are understood, there is not much point worrying about CO2.
One of the key questions is how did they achieve such a huge energy input in a short period of time to allow the world to warm 8-10 degrees to move into interglacial periods. Given the volume and specific heat capacity of water and the short time period (a couple of thousand years max), where did that energy come from.
I think you need to look below the ocean for this answer. There are 70,000km of mid ocean ridges and enormous potential for vast heat injections via increased magmatism. Just because we can;t see it now, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen that way. Consider a world where such magmatism occurs in pulses. Remenant magmatism of the latest pulse is what may explain the El Nino phenomena.
@ImranCan February 26, 2017 at 1:00 am
You may want to read the discussion starting here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/stokes-and-the-somehow-theory-of-ocean-heat/comment-page-1/#comment-2432044
The amount of magma coming trough the spreading ridges isn’t amounting to much.
Look for the multi million km^3 events like the Ontong Java one.
Ben
There are a couple of adds to this ….
1) indeed I am talking about large scale episodic magmatic eruptions. We need to think orders of magnitude bigger than any current observable events.
2) You have correctly calculated the amount of magma required to heat the oceanic temperature on average by 1K. But I don’t think there is any need for the whole ocean column to change T to explain difference between glacial and interglacial periods.
Create a temperature profile for high, medium and equatorial latitudes and you can imagine that during glacial periods there is less variation between the deep and shallow layers. All that is needed is a heat transport mechanism between the deep (where the magma is erupted) and the surface layers (which control the global air temperature). Warmer water rises !
My idea is that the majority of the water column of the oceans remains unchanged. But the transfer of heat upwards at the end of the glacial period caused by the large scale magmatic episode temporarily increases the surface water energy (top few hundred meters). That’s what starts an interglacial. Once the magmatism ceases the energy is gradually lost (with declining global temperature) until equilibrium is reached again (8 degrees colder than today). This also explains the shape of the historical global temperature plots (straight up to start an interglacial, but then following natural cooling curve downwards over much longer periods back to glacial equilibrium).
@ImranCan February 26, 2017 at 4:51 am
2) The temperature of the DEEP oceans does have a direct effect on the surface temperatures, being the “base temperature” on which the sun does its warming magic.
In the Cretaceaous the deep oceans were up to 15K warmer then today, so no ice age with its glacials/ interglacials cycles. Only with deep ocean temperatures low enough we see the start of an ice age.
I think I have the mechanism for the glacial/interglacial cycles figured out.
Will try to post here or someplace else.