From the INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES and the “worse than we thought” mind of climate activist John Abraham comes this study, that frankly, isn’t very believable, especially when you invoke the word “consensus” as part of your proof.
Oceans are warming rapidly, study says
More than 90% of the earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) in the climate system is sequestered in the ocean and consequently the ocean heat content (OHC) is increasing. Therefore, OHC is one of the most important indicators of global warming. During the past 30 years, many independent groups worked to estimate historical OHC changes. However, large uncertainty has been found among the published global OHC time series. For example, during the current surge of research on the so-called “hiatus” or “slowdown”, different scientific studies draw quite different conclusions on the key scientific question such as “Where is the heat redistributed in the ocean?” This motivates us to give a detailed analysis about global and basin OHC changes based on multiple ocean datasets.
A just released study, led by Ph. D student WANG Gong-jie from National University of Defence Technology, cooperating with Professor LI Chong-yin and Dr. CHENG Li-jing from Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP)/ Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor John P. ABRAHAM from University of St. Thomas (USA), comprehensively examined the OHC change on decadal and multi-decadal scales and at different ocean basins. Through three different objectively analyzed ocean datasets (Ishii from Japan, EN4 from Met. Office and IAP), they found that the oceans are robustly warming, regardless of which data was used. In addition, the heat among global oceans experienced a significant redistribution in the past several decades.
During 1998-2012, which was famous for global warming slowdown period, all of these basins had been accumulating heat, and there was no clear indication of which ocean basin dominates the global OHC change. In other words, below 100-m depth in the Atlantic and Southern Ocean, and between 100-300m depth in the Pacific and Indian Ocean, there was statistically significant warming and they all contributed to global ocean warming. The discrepancy results from previous studies are due to the difference of depth ranges used in calculating OHC as well as the uncertainty in subsurface temperature datasets.
Why are there substantial differences among different datasets? This study shows that Ishii analysis underestimates the heating rate in the southern hemisphere in the past century. And EN4 analysis cannot correctly reconstruct the sea surface temperature (SST) during the past 30 years and underestimates the warming rate by ~90% compared with an independent SST datasets such as ERSST and OISST. This indicates the Ishii and EN4 analyses may underestimate the ocean warming rate.
“In plain English, it will be important that we keep high-quality temperature sensors positioned throughout the oceans so in the future we will be able to predict where our climate is headed,” explains co-author ABRAHAM. “We say in science that a measurement not made is a measurement lost forever. And there are no more important measurements than of heating of the oceans.”
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The press release: http://english.iap.cas.cn/RE/201706/t20170629_179178.html
The paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-017-3751-5
Consensuses and discrepancies of basin-scale ocean heat content changes in different ocean analyses
Inconsistent global/basin ocean heat content (OHC) changes were found in different ocean subsurface temperature analyses, especially in recent studies related to the slowdown in global surface temperature rise. This finding challenges the reliability of the ocean subsurface temperature analyses and motivates a more comprehensive inter-comparison between the analyses. Here we compare the OHC changes in three ocean analyses (Ishii, EN4 and IAP) to investigate the uncertainty in OHC in four major ocean basins from decadal to multi-decadal scales. First, all products show an increase of OHC since 1970 in each ocean basin revealing a robust warming, although the warming rates are not identical. The geographical patterns, the key modes and the vertical structure of OHC changes are consistent among the three datasets, implying that the main OHC variabilities can be robustly represented. However, large discrepancies are found in the percentage of basinal ocean heating related to the global ocean, with the largest differences in the Pacific and Southern Ocean. Meanwhile, we find a large discrepancy of ocean heat storage in different layers, especially within 300–700 m in the Pacific and Southern Oceans. Furthermore, the near surface analysis of Ishii and IAP are consistent with sea surface temperature (SST) products, but EN4 is found to underestimate the long-term trend. Compared with ocean heat storage derived from the atmospheric budget equation, all products show consistent seasonal cycles of OHC in the upper 1500 m especially during 2008 to 2012. Overall, our analyses further the understanding of the observed OHC variations, and we recommend a careful quantification of errors in the ocean analyses.
The study was co-authored by John P. Abraham, this guy:
For those of you that don’t know, he’s part of the wrongheadedly named “skeptical science” crew of 97% consensus baiters. He’s also an activist, writing political commentary for The Guardian.
For example:
Climate change will have very long lasting consequences that we will be dealing with long after he is gone. Long after other issues like immigration, the economy, debt, jobs, terrorism, or new words like “covfefe” have passed from our minds, the implications of our climate effect will linger. Frankly, no challenge we are facing (except perhaps a potential nuclear war) presents the consequences that climate change does.
And this, sadly, will be the legacy of conservatives in my country. As we wake up to more severe weather, more droughts, heat waves, rising seas, severe storms, the world will remember that these issues could have been solved long ago but for an ideology and tribalism.
Talk about misguided, even the IPCC doesn’t think we are getting more severe weather..
He’s also not a climate scientist, nor even a meteorologist, but rather a mechanical engineer.
Just like the antics of of his buddies John Cook and Stephan Lewandowski, I don’t trust this guy to come up with accurate and unbiased science. The key red flag is the sentence in the abstract:
“Inconsistent global/basin ocean heat content (OHC) changes were found in different ocean subsurface temperature analyses…”
Abraham is playing the “order out of chaos” game, setting himself up as the unifier of all these “inconsistent” pieces of data to fit a theory. Just reading the paper makes me think it’s another one of those “conclusions first, justifications second” type paper.
Strange that they don’t mention how the runoff of cooling water from Fukushima has upset the Northern Pacific Energy Imbalance (NPEI) over such a wide range.
Can you provide a citation? I don’t get coherent results searching “Northern Pacific Energy Imbalance (NPEI)”
References please, otherwise your are claiming BS.
Here’s a link to WUWT threads with “John Abraham” in them:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=john+abraham
“He’s also not a climate scientist, nor even a meteorologist, but rather a mechanical engineer.”
Being a Climate Scientist doesn’t mean that person is always right on this subject, otherwise that is ‘appeal to authority’. Also being a mechanical engineer should not mean this person can only be wrong on this subject, just as consensus is not proof. In the past there were many polymaths. All that matters is whether what is said is true.
The warmists have time and again declared that anyone who doesn’t have a degree in climate science should be ignored. (Unless of course they agree with the other climate scientists)
Disagreeing with the consensus, independent of what your degrees are in, seems to be sufficient for the alarmists to disregard anything you say. Beside, what’s a climate science degree anyway? Nowadays, so many of those who claim this title have a degree with ‘eco’ in it, which based on the typical syllabus for such a degree is more like a papal degree than a scientific course of study which almost always prevents them from learning how to be an objective scientist.
What your degrees are in only matters when you’re fresh out of college. Anyone who thinks learning stops after school didn’t learn the most important thing you should have learned, which is how to learn. For my part, I’ve put more time and effort studying the climate than I did to get my engineering degrees.
MarkW
97 per cent agree with that conclusion
co2isnotevil June 30, 2017 at 1:58 pm
“Nowadays, so many of those who claim this title have a degree with ‘eco’ in it, which based on the typical syllabus for such a degree is more like a papal degree than a scientific course”
I visited a University here in the UK and started talking to a student who was studying the environment. He appeared to have no knowledge of the scale and breadth of the last glaciation, such as when the last inter-glacial was, the sea being 100 meters lower than now and the current Great Barrier Reaf only being 8K years old, etc. Puzzling as usually when someone professes an interest in something you expect them to already know a lot of interesting details about their interest.
“Anyone who thinks learning stops after school didn’t learn the most important thing you should have learned, which is how to learn.”
Yes.
“Where is the heat redistributed in the ocean?” His premise is that during the hiatus the heat gas been getting redistributed to some hidden place. Sorry, that’s not science.
Since ALL GHG WARMING is predicated on the troposphere WARMING 20 % faster then the surface, and the tropghsphere WARMING is 70 percent MIA, then whatever is WARMING the surface or the oceans, ( confirmation bias mostly) it CANNOT be GHGs!
Using wrong models when your observations tell you that the heat from CO2 is MIA is, IMV, fraud.
Until the Argo Bouys past measurements are unreliable
“Climate change will have very long lasting consequences that we will be dealing with long after he is gone. Long after other issues like immigration, the economy, debt, jobs, terrorism, or new words like “covfefe” have passed from our minds, the implications of our climate effect will linger. Frankly, no challenge we are facing (except perhaps a potential nuclear war) presents the consequences that climate change does.
Climate change will have everlasting effects that we will have to deal with forever as the climate is always changing. Long after other issues like immigration, the economy, debt, jobs, terrorism, or new words like “covfefe” [which means “in the end, we win”] have passed from our minds, the always-changing effects of our climate will always be part of our lives. Frankly, no challenge we are facing (except the world-domination goals of the UN, the goals of socialists and liberals, the world domination goals of Islam and globalists) is so relatively slow in its changes that we cannot easily adapt to its challenges.
There, fixed it.
must say
I am skeptical of their findings
I am not sure how anyone can give a ‘global” ocean T with any type of assurance
therefore, I remain skeptical
My results say earth is cooling
I like this part of the quote
Sounds like he is indicating that man HAS/HAD/LOST control of the weather/climate back when CO2 was at 280PPM, Preindustrial levels and that If we just return to those levels, we will magically regain control
Isn’t the change in the ocean’s average temperature since 1950 barely large enough to be measurable?
Hard to know. Because of trade route sampling bias and inconsistent measurement (depth of engine water intake) there simply isn’t any quality data prior to ARGO. But yes, in terms of water temperature, the change is miniscule due to waters high heat capacity. A small difference in an uncertain measurement means the honest answer is dunno.
The Levitus OHC graph is based mostly on assumption driven models.
See graphic a couple of comments down.
It’s less than the sampling error on most of the instruments being used.
Argo is a nice effort, but they only seem to cover somewhat less than half the ocean’s volume (they go to 2000M).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(oceanography)
But based on Bill Illis’ graphic, the answer seems to be that our best guess is that the oceans as a whole warmed less than .1 degrees. Which makes sense, since they mass around 300 times what the atmosphere does.
And since they’re falling ever more out of equilibrium with the atmosphere, oceans should be absorbing ever more heat if you believe in the modern temperatures spike, but I doubt any model captures this very well.
Doesn’t matter. It’s the “hidden heat” which matters. Just because they can’t point to it doesn’t mean it’s not there. Geez. Not to mention, the hidden heat is “robust”.
BTW don’t know if anyone mentioned already, but it looks like most of the ocean’s volume is below 2000m.
You forgot to mention that J P Abraham’s specialist field in engineering is in fluid dynamics. That could lend insight to oceanic matters, but perhaps it’s a fact that didn’t advance your argument.
Jack
Agreed. Everything other than rock or sand is fluid dynamics.
Even air.
Exactly how would it lead to any insights regarding the ocean?
Umm, the ocean is composed of fluid which has a very complex dynamic behavior?
“Jack Davis June 30, 2017 at 1:38 pm”
And we fully understand this in relation to “climate”?
NODC Ocean temperature measurements below.
to 100 metres.
to 700 metres.
to 2000 metres.
Percentage of ocean coverage..
Before 2003, basically everything in the SH must have been FABRICATED (as per Phil Jones Climategate comments)
NH isn’t too flash, either.
I remember seeing a youtube somewhere showing that most data came from the shipping lanes in the North Atlantic… No wonder a 1960’s, 1970’s start point is used. 😉
And the problem with being a mechanical engineer is.
Or would it be easier to list the outstanding issues like sea ice, etc, still unresolved, and the wrong conclusions that scientists have made so far, the results of which we see here.
That’s right it’s a chaotic system, perhaps they just don’t understand the system.
Just saying
I saw a hot air balloon the other morning. It got me thinking about how it leverages the unrelenting force of heat to escape its surroundings. How can they be so certain that that heat won’t decide to go hide in the ocean?
I though AGW theory predicted atmospheric warming, not ocean warming.
AGW theory didn’t know of CO2’s (especially man’s) magical properties.
Bingo. First the troposphere is expected to warm, which creates a top down WARMING to the surface, expected to rise w0 percent less then the troposphere.And from there THEN the oceans.
However all GHG ocean- warming MUST come from trophspheric warming FIRST. It aint, therefore if the oceans warm, it is not from GHGs.
The warming is onto the surface that is where light energy is converted to heat, be it solid or liquid. It then transfers upwards quickly to the atmosphere. Water being transparent absorbs light to a greater depth than land so it retains the heat.
Ron, that is not how it works. At the surface GHG are somewhat irrelevant, as conduction (in the atmospheric dense surface) takes place very rapidly compared to radiative transfer. At elevation in the troposphere where radiation happens increased GHG warms that level. Back radiation is absorbed below this level but much of the warming comes from less conduction to this level as it is now warmer. ( However it is only warmer by about 1/3rd of what the models predicted)
Per CAGW IPCC theory, the troposphere as a whole MUST warm 20 percent MORE then the surface. (even more in the tropics, where again the hot spot is MIA) The oceans would ONLY warm from the surface warming SLOWING the cooling of the ocean surface and below – top down cascade. This is built into all the failed models.
Therefore the surface warming more then the troposphere CANNOT be an artifact of CO2. ( UHI, faulty adjustment, made up daily readings, confirmation bias etc… could all account for the surface warming, but not GHGs per IPCC theory. By logical extension the ocean warming as a result of perceived surface warming likewise CANNOT be a result of human caused increase in CO2.
Glacial cycles, as shown by Javier recently, are forced by obliquity oscillation with a 6,500 year lag:
Oceans do NOT warm rapidly except in the diseased imagination of journalists.
That’s right, oceans do not warm rapidly because water has a high specific heat. I don’t think the claim is that rapid heating is happening, just that the ocean is where a lot of the trapped heat has gone over decades.
“Our knowledge of the oceans is still fragmentary and inadequate. In the Pacific and Indian Ocean. large regions exist from which absolutely no information is available, and from most areas only general conditions in certain seasons of the year are known.” From “The Oceans”, Sverdrup, Johnson, and Fleming, 1942. Did they miss something?
Let’s see if I have my facts right. The planet is near the end of an 11,300 year inter-glacial period of nearly the highest temperatures in over 400,000 years, although not the highest, and, lo and behold, the ocean has warmed. As the planet enters the next ice age, in a few years or a few hundred years, what should one expect to happen? Like maybe the oceans will cool? Yeah, we should shovel more bucks to the UN to fund likely to fail attempts to measure the change in ocean temperatures to a one-hundredth degree C. Give me a break!
Tom Bjorklund
June 30, 2017 at 4:27 pm
“Let’s see if I have my facts right. The planet is near the end of an 11,300 year inter-glacial period”
——————–
I think the term Holocene confuses you.. 🙂
Turn the number 11,300 to a 15,000 and that makes that “fact” right I think.
cheers
I asked for it! Fact checkers are always welcome. Not to put too fine a point on the time period, but the Holocene began 11,700 years BP with the end of the last ice age. During a transition period of about 400 years, the average earth temperature increased about eight degrees C and has been oscillating above and below that initial increase about one degree C for the past 11.300 years. My comment was meant to reference that “warm period.”
My question is: How much money should be spent to increase the number of ocean temperature measurements and the number of significant decimals of the measurements to show that oceans are warming and cooling slightly during an inter-glacial period? How about doing a cost-benefit analysis before spending the research budget to collect data based on a whim? I doubt that a lifetime of data collection would prove to be worth the cost of the results. The shrimp-on-a-treadmill project comes mind. Maybe, better understanding the available data could be an alternative.
No, we should adopt sustainable energy practices – which are fast proving to be economically most sensible anyway. That way we stay in control no matter when the next cooling might or might not arrive. To push on as usual while the clear signals of planetary distress we have are all about us would be beyond foolish.
And those clear signs of planetary distress all around us are . . .
Chris, if you haven’t picked up on the signs yet you haven’t been paying attention – or paying attention with faulty antennae. You’re not likely to listen to me now.
The evidence is pretty convincing if you come to it with respect for science and for the tremendous investment in exploring our planet’s systems that society has made over very many years
No, we just don’t drink the kool-aid you mind numbed chicken little clowns do.
Thanks for that- that’s hilarious!
JRP – you’re welcome.
Jack, what signs? You sound religious, not scientific. As to facts, we have zero increase in the rate of SL rise, ( 2 mm per year for geo stationary tide guages) zero increase in hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, 30 years of antartica sea ice INCREASING ( until last year) ten years of flat arctic sea ice, likely to increase as the AMO goes negative, and plants worldwide growing about 20 percent more food, on the same amount of land with ZERO increase in water use, due to inreases atmospheric CO2!
So Jack, what signs?
David A – you’re not keeping up. Sea level rise-rate increase is probably the hardest to ascertain, but recent work indicates the rate increased 50% in the twenty years to 2013.
You must be watching the ends of a different planet to the one I’m watching, where this year the ice is under savage attack in both polar regions.
It comes down to who you believe – I choose to believe the scientists in the field and the evidence of my own scientifically educated senses.
Sorry Jack but you missed, ( 2 mm per year for geo stationary tide gauges) That is all tide gauges that are known not to be rising or falling. By far our most accurate SL measurements compared to greatly adjusted satellites affected by many factors including 18 year lunar cycles.
The southern oceans have been cooling for much of the past 30 years, and sea ice did increase there steadily over that period. I Guess you missed ( until last year) Do you imagine CO2 had no affect for 30 years, then suddenly was caused to a downward blip in SH sea ice, or were the rare and extreme storms outlined on WUWT the cause of that downturn, and how would your SUV have caused those storms? Did you miss the RECORD snow accumulation on Greenland this year?
BTW Jack, the ice is not under “savage attack” Your emotive is sad, but indicative of a highly non-scientific bias. The ten year trend since 2007 is quite flat. Your opinion on this is irrelevant. Starting NH sea ice trends in 1979, the peak of the ice age scare and ignoring the earlier satellite data showing much less ice is a un-scientific cherry pick.
Jack, I choose to understand what the peer review literature and national and international data basis say. (If they conflict I read both sides and make up my mind based on logic) As there are literally thousands of papers that support skepticism of CAGW, and those papers and observations are overwhelming in demonstrating a failed CAGW hypothesis, while all the benefits of CO2 continue to manifest in real world observation, I support skeptics as rational and logical.
Uh-huh David A – you choose to dismiss the satelite sea level data because it doesn’t fit your preconceptions and go with the deniers favorite red herring – manipulated tide gauge data. How silly of us to spend all that money on building the fabulously accurate orbital instruments when all they can do is produce readings you immediately recognise as wrong! We should have just asked you eh?
It’s a slow motion train crash mate. You will be proved wrong, but by then you and I may be gone, leaving the mess behind us.
I don’t blame you – your stance is in the normal range of human response, but so is mine.
I’m actually quite optimistic about the whole thing straightening out eventually – centuries on. It’s just a shame we have so many who fail to see what is happening and obstruct the path of best management of the difficult situation the planet finds itself in.
Cheers – I’m out.
“Jack Davis July 2, 2017 at 3:38 am
Uh-huh David A – you choose to dismiss the satelite sea level data because it doesn’t fit your preconceptions and go with the deniers favorite red herring – manipulated tide gauge data.
Tide gauges? How about Emsworth, southern England. Or Portsmouth, Gosport or Exeter? No show on the SL data. Been relatively static for a good few hundred years.
Only if you overlook the cooling oceans…..
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20SST-NorthAtlantic%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
“We say in science that a measurement not made is a measurement lost forever.”
Tell that to the tree ring people.
If the oceans are warming they will be outgassing CO2.
John P. Abraham seems to have enough integrity to underline his frank moments. Depending on the perspective this one may even be true: if the mann-made climate change challenge is a collapsing ponzi scheme, it’s unlikely to spare John P. Abraham from the consequences of his own choices.
I’m confused. The graphic shows the area of the Great Barrier Reef, being decimated by warming seas apparently, as being flat to cooling over those decades. Curious.
Regardless of what the oceans are doing, here in the USA there is something conspicuously absent. What happened to the hot summers where temperatures in the Midwest were well over 100 F for two or more continuous weeks? Instead of the hottest time of the year coming in July and early August, as it did during solar maximum, now the hottest month of the year is June, and it barely hits 100 F.
The paleo records do show that as North America cooled, equatorial regions warmed. But this type of climate behavior is consistent with ice ages, not anthropocentric CO2 global warming. With human induced global warming, the entire planet was forecast to become an easy bake oven on its way to joining Venus as a greenhouse planet.
The shift in climate should be a concern to humans, but CO2 proponents have everything backward. The planet is thawing from its last ice age and mechanisms are pushing the heat out of the Northern Hemisphere. We should be lucky if all we experience is an extended Maunder Minimum and not a full blown new (and sudden) advance of ice.
I’m a bit confused by the units of temperature: ‘W/m^2″.
How is this measured? Is there a translation to degrees Kelvin?
An anomaly of 1 W/m^2 in the above chart corresponds to how many degrees Kelvin?
What are the error bars?
These young post normal scientists must not have been exposed to ANY graduate level research statistics critique class. Else they would have been cognizant of type 1 errors that emanate from bias. Then again maybe they hope readers are ignorent.
Yes, I believe the latter. Most their adherents incline to a degree of ignorance I find charming. Alarming, but charming.