Feature | June 13, 2017
NASA-MIT study evaluates efficiency of oceans as heat sink, atmospheric gases sponge
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
By Ellen Gray,
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
The world’s oceans are like brakes slowing down the full effects of greenhouse gas warming of the atmosphere. Over the last ten years, one-fourth of human-emissions of carbon dioxide as well as 90 percent of additional warming due to the greenhouse effect have been absorbed by the oceans. Acting like a massive sponge, the oceans pull from the atmosphere heat, carbon dioxide and other gases, such as chlorofluorocarbons, oxygen and nitrogen and store them in their depths for decades to centuries and millennia.
New NASA research is one of the first studies to estimate how much and how quickly the ocean absorbs atmospheric gases and contrast it with the efficiency of heat absorption. Using two computer models that simulate the ocean, NASA and MIT scientists found that gases are more easily absorbed over time than heat energy. In addition, they found that in scenarios where the ocean current slows down due to the addition of heat, the ocean absorbs less of both atmospheric gases and heat, though its ability to absorb heat is more greatly reduced. The results were published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
“As the ocean slows down, it will keep uptaking gases like carbon dioxide more efficiently, much more than it will keep uptaking heat. It will have a different behavior for chemistry than it has for temperature,” said Anastasia Romanou, lead author and climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University in New York City.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
She and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts used the NASA GISS ocean model and the MIT General Circulation Model to simulate one of the Atlantic’s major current systems that delivers absorbed heat and gases to the depths.
In the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf Stream is part of what’s called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a conveyor belt of ocean water that carries warm water from Florida to Greenland where it cools and sinks to 1000 meters (about 3281 feet) or more before traveling back down the coast to the tropics. On its northward journey, the water at the surface absorbs gases like carbon dioxide and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – the latter are, to a large extent, the gases responsible for the ozone hole over Antarctica – as well as excess heat from the atmosphere. When it sinks near Greenland, those dissolved gases and heat energy are effectively buried in the ocean for years to decades and longer. Removed from the atmosphere by the ocean, the impact of their warming on the climate has been dramatically reduced.
To understand and quantify the ocean’s sponge-like capabilities, the researchers used the two independent models of Atlantic Ocean currents together with shipboard observations of chlorofluorocarbons as a starting point. Chlorofluorocarbons are what’s called a passive tracer.
The red line on the map shows the Gulf Stream current, the surface portion of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Shown in shades of blue are the concentrations of CFCs at depth in the ocean. Nearer to the equator, the CFCs only occur at the surface. As the Gulf Stream current moves north, they begin to be drawn down to depth with the downward pull of the conveyor belt. Image credit: NASA/Jenny Hottle.
“I think of it as a colored dye,” said co-author John Marshall, a professor of oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If I have a bucket of water and just stir it around and put some food coloring in it, the dye goes down into the water, and it doesn’t influence the circulation of the water.”
In the real world as well as in the model, this allows scientists to “see” how much of the gas is absorbed from the atmosphere into the ocean and then follow it as it travels around the world in the currents. Adding heat to the ocean, in contrast, slows down the overturning circulation because ocean currents depend on temperature gradients – moving from warmer locations to cooler locations – that weaken under global warming as cooler waters heat up. This means that estimating how much heat the ocean absorbs by only using a tracer may not be accurate.
“The results show that we need to think differently about how the ocean responds to taking up heat and passive tracers or greenhouse gases. Then we need to study them in parallel but using different methods,” Romanou said.
These results from the computer models of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation are one of the many moving parts that come together in global climate models. By refining scientists’ understanding of how efficiently gases and heat are taken up, the finding will improve global climate model projections for future climate scenarios, said Marshall. This is especially true for projections that stretch tens or a hundred years into the future, when those tracers and other gases that behave similarly like carbon dioxide, as well as excess heat energy, reach the upward turn of the conveyor belt and return to the surface. When that happens some portion of them will return to the atmosphere after their long underwater journey around the planet.
“Most of the excess heat from climate change will go into the ocean eventually, we think,” Romanou said. “Most of the excess chemical pollutants and greenhouse gases will be buried in the ocean. But the truth is that the ocean recirculates that extra load and, at some point, will release some of it back to the atmosphere, where it will keep raising temperatures, even if future carbon dioxide emissions were to be much lower than they are now.”
This eventual release of buried gases and heat from the oceans is sometimes called the “warming in the pipeline” or “warming commitment” that people will eventually have to contend with, Romanou said.
Reference
Romanou, A., J. Marshall, M. Kelley, and J. Scott, 2017: Role of the ocean’s AMOC in setting the uptake efficiency of transient tracers. Geophys. Res. Lett., early on-line, doi:10.1002/2017gl072972.
Media contacts
Leslie McCarthy, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, N.Y., 212-678-5507, leslie.m.mccarthy@nasa.gov
Michael Cabbage, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, N.Y., 212-678-5516, mcabbage@nasa.gov
“New NASA research is one of the first studies to estimate how much and how quickly the ocean absorbs atmospheric gases..”
you mean based on actual data recorded from the oceans etc…?
Umm no, ….
“Using two computer models that simulate the ocean, NASA and MIT scientists found that gases are more easily absorbed over time than heat energy.”
and then the doozy
“These results from the computer models of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation are one of the many moving parts that come together in global climate models. By refining scientists’ understanding of how efficiently gases and heat are taken up, the finding will improve global climate model projections for future climate scenarios, ..” aparently says some turkey.
“Two computer models were used …….”. I do no believe a word of it. I have developed and used computer models. They can be instructive, but not determinative. That is, provided no garbage has been entered.
Heat transfer from the air to the oceans requires violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Garbage. There’s also the small problems arising from the 4:1 water:air specific heat capacity ratio and the water to air mass difference…
Female CAGW advocate to her significant other:
“Honey, does my stupid make my butt look bigger?”
“No honey, your incredible stupidity and your giant butt are completely unrelated”.
As the ocean slows down, it will keep uptaking gases like carbon dioxide more efficiently,
So, gas absorption by water, is a function of it’s speed of movement? Really? Temperature we know about but speed. Now I always thought that turbulence aided absorption but turbulence isn’t flow.
Moderators
I have posted a couple of comments but these have gone into moderation because I have mispelt my own name (vernney instead of verney). Please look out for them and post them with the correct spelling of my name. Thanks.
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Okay then. Will Do. Mod
It will take 500 years to raise the average ocean temperature by 1C and the water is absorbing CO2 so fast that it clearly has not reached saturation even for current CO2 levels. So as far as anthropogenic global warming is concerned, it won’t be returning “heat in the pipe” or degassing for a VERY long time. It is effectively a bottomless pit since we will likely have stopped burning coal long before any of the water comes back up and CO2 will have returned to close to normal levels, along with whatever temperature impacts are felt.
You call the preindustrial levels of CO2, which were among the lowest in the history of the Earth, normal?
Taking everything that we know regarding Earth history, levels of CO2 in the air through geologic time, the relationship between CO2 and the entire food chain of the terrestrial and oceanic biosphere, and the levels of CO2 which create optimum growth conditions in plants…I think it is fair to conclude that for life in general, CO2 levels of somewhere between 3 to 5 times present levels, or about 1200 to 2000 PPM of atmospheric CO2…would be normal, best, and most productive and thus healthiest for life on Earth…humans included.
Right now the biosphere is the functional equivalent of a person with severe kwashiorkor malnutrition who has had a few bites to eat and will not die today.
Lets make sure the biosphere has plenty to eat tomorrow and for all of the tomorrows.
By what mechanism is heat transferred to the ocean from the atmosphere?
The heat in the atmosphere can act as insulation to slow heat loss from the ocean, but by what means does atmospheric heat that only penetrates a millimeter or so into the surface of a turbulent, rough ocean surface warm the ocean?
This is the mechanism that is never explained by anyone (including the iPCC), yet we are expected to accept it without a method of how it’s supposed to happen. It sounds like an unsubstantiated, desperate attempt at fobbing off a lack of atmospheric warming for the past 2 decades more than anything else.
NASA is extending itself beyond parody, but this may still work
In itself it is no problem to use models to simulate changes which are difficult to know from reality, as long as the underlying physics are based on real life data. Unlike climate models, ocean data are relatively known, based on (currently) over three million ocean surface and less abundant deep ocean data, here for the CO2 uptake/release:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/exchange.shtml
The same ocean survey data include temperature, pH, DIC (total inorganic carbon), total alkalinity, sea salt content,…
See e.g. the longer series at Bermuda:
http://www.biogeosciences.net/9/2509/2012/bg-9-2509-2012.pdf
Thus I suppose that these two models are not so far off from reality as most climate models are. The latter have far more problems like clouds which are far below their resolution range…
Despite that, I have two main objections:
– The MOC/THC is not only dependent of temperature differences, it is also largely dependent of winds: at the pulling side: off-land winds in the East Pacific which pulls deep ocean waters up, to the joy of the fishermen of the Peruvian and Chilean coasts. El Niño is the main game breaker there. At the pushing side: the SW-NE winds which pushes the warm Gulf Stream along the North America coast to NE Europe. Thanks to the Himalaya plateau that pushes the normal West-East circulation northwards.
Thus even with less temperature differences, a large part of the MOC/THC would survive.
– Even if the average ocean temperature increases, the main temperature difference remains about the same: Tropical waters show their main variations during ENSO events, but the average tropical temperatures show the lowest change over history, as the top temperature is topped due to evaporation and hurricanes. The same for the sink side: mostly at the edge of the sea-ice, where temperatures are always near freezing and salinity is highest.
Is this a prelude to man-made ocean change? Over millennia?
This is such patent bullshit: “Acting like a massive sponge, the oceans pull from the atmosphere heat”
The oceans are warmer than the lower troposphere on average and the energy emitted by CO2 as a GH gas can not penetrate water, and cant therefore cause warming.
Many of the comments here clearly demonstrate the damage that climate models have done to scientific credibility.
Most scientific endeavors rely to some extent on models, particularly the the areas of Earth and Atmospheric sciences. Hypotheses are essentially models.
The utter and abject failure of climate models to demonstrate predictive skill has led many people to simply stop reading after the phrase “computer models.”
David you are correct. As soon as I read Mears uses climate models to make empirical adjustments to RSS, or the other recent study attempting to reconcile mode v analysis, adjusted model data and claimed bingo.
This is not only Climate science.
A NASA team sent quartz gyroscopes to space, and the experiment failed totally due to unforeseen influences on the ultra sensitive gyroscopes (that this was not foreseen was tragic science by the NASA team). After the actual experiment failed utterly, NASA team adjusted and changed the obs data for 5 years and then claimed success.
ugh UGH an elaborate Heidi Cullen “my dog ate global warming” nonsense.
Do these clowns even understand the way in which a heat sink works, the analogy is incorrect.
There are no heat sinks in the natural world.
unless anyone can tell me what nature does to deal with unwanted heat that is? 😀 There is no such thing as “unwanted heat” in the natural world
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/lappi/65_Myr_Climate_Change_Rev.jpg
I think most people do not understand that we are living IN an Ice Age.
and the common lie in response is the “rate of change”. << that is how Bill Nye among many other alarmists\propagandists resolves his own cognitive dissonance.
Climate Central Heidi Cullen are still trying to blame Larsen C on AGW 😀
Oceans are a “sink”? They’re the primary source of greenhouse gasses.
The oceans are not a heatsink. It’s more nonsense language from people at NASA.
Idiots DO work for that agency, regurgitated edu is not intelligence. Sadly many think it is
mairon62,
The oceans are more CO2 sink than source in the past near 60 years of measurements:
https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtml
David, maybe you can put a number, rough number on how much money NASA have blown in 50 years. I bet it would make one’s eyes pop from the sockets.
Eyeballing it, I’d say a little over $120 billion since 1993…
http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/670757.jpg
And it appears that almost every bureau, agency and administration of the alphabet soup have been involved…
http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/671057.jpg
http://www.gao.gov/key_issues/climate_change_funding_management/issue_summary
Drain the swamp!
JFC!!
Thanks for getting that info David, I had no clue wjere to start
Going by “heatsink” logic, the atmosphere would be the heatsink in a relationship between the ocean and air.
The oceans get almost all of their heat from the sun, but shhh
Back Radiation can’t heat the ocean.
Robert ….. this is my thought as well. I have always read that the transfer of heat is almost always from the ocean to the atmosphere, not the reverse. Energy input into the ocean is in the visible and below range where it is transformed into heat and radiated back to the atmosphere as IR. As such, I don’t see how they can say that the ocean is much of a heat absorber from the atmosphere at all. Further, wave action would tend to decrease penetration at the surface of short wave, thus calmer water would increase the overall absorption of energy into the ocean, though it sounds plausible that waves would increase the uptake of what minimal LW is striking the surface. But that amount is so small, it’s not worth mentioning.
This article is a bunch of propaganda that serves the agenda, and ignores all else.
Spot on, but we already know AGW warming the oceans to boiling was nothing but James Hansen science fiction.
https://moyhu.blogspot.co.uk/2010/10/can-downwelling-infrared-warm-ocean.html
Or, if you prefer …..
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/04/can-infrared-radiation-warm-a-water-body/
Problems?
How far back in time are CFCs measured/found in sea water? Only after man started making them?
There are 2 broad ways to look at gas dissolution/exsolution with water. One is the lab model, where small containers are used and the experiment continues until the liquid is fully mixed. Henry’s Law is derived this way.
The other way has a large container that is not even constrained at the sides and bottom. The ocean. Currents can bring new water to the test region, whose response is affected by continuous renewal with liquid whose composition reflects its generally unknown past. Henry’law is not immediately useful, except maybe to set some boundaries.
Climate work is dogged with a continuing impediment. A hard scientist would say of a study like this “We cannot report these results yet because we cannot correct for the many other variables, including unknown unknowns.” The Climate world approach more often is ” There are likely to be other unknowns but we will forget about them for the purpose of this investigation. Off to print now.”
Geoff
These people can’t seem to get it into their heads that nobody believes their COx/Greenhouse Gas modelistic schtick anymore.
Wow….basic physics as old as the universe are presented Disney style as valiant fighters being crippled by wicked humans. Humans so wicked, these cynical climate extremists claim, that we are going to ruin the ocean’s very current and circulation system.
What utterly corrupt nonsense the climate hypesters expect the rest of us to believe.
After decade-long alarmist prognostications big oil has never paid a dime back, but let’s see if Macron’s million euro check from the local taxpayers is in la poste already:
Sun cannot possibly have anything to do with the ocean temperature. It must be man-made hot gases forcing their way down from the troposphere sinking all the way to Mariana trench. And back up via volcanic eruptions revenging reproductive and other decadence of our ancestors over millennia.
No mechanism for thermalised energy in the air to penetrate into the ocean and heat the ocean. And why would they need one? Their ‘discoveries’ via ‘observation’ are in the model world that do not have to obey the laws of thermodynamics and the actual geophysic structure of the ocean Atmosphere interface.
Does the model show how thermalised energy first doesn’t rise from its point of thermalisation in the air, second is able to move downwards and navigate through the ocean’s Knudsen layer – that consumes thermalised energy immediately above the ocean to find vaporisation of water molecules -, thirdly how any remaining thermalised energy after navigating the Knudsen layer can penetrate into and through the ocean surface tension skin when the molecules at the very top of the skin in contact with Earth’s sea level atmospheric pressure are in a constant higher kinetic energy state than any thermalised energy in the air above the ocean – or anywhere in the atmosphere for that matter.
Of course the models do not recognise these basic first order principles, otherwise they can’t make the unphyduxal claims that they have here – that thermalised energy in the atmosphere can and does penetrate into the ocean from above the ocean. Can’t happen in the real world which is why these Pythagorean’s live in model world superimposed on the real physical world.
All these unvalidated models!! Somebody should say, “When a scientist creates a ‘study’ using unvalidated models, he crosses over into being an advocate. While every American has the right to advocate whatever they want, then they can’t try to pass themselves off as scientists – and they can’t work for GISS or any other (supposedly) scientific agency of the government.”
More fake science (I love throwing the liberal’s new catch words back at them). First, I don’t give a hoot about dissolved gases and their “impact”. Second, water has to be COLD (near freezing) to sink. Heat isn’t being “buried”, COLD is!
I think where they go wrong, is they seem to think that CO2 hangs on to that heat as it dissolves in the ocean, thus taking its heat with it as it magically defies physics and sinks. The truth is more likely that CO2 looses its additional energy immediately upon absorption, taking on the heat environment of the water, with the excess energy being used up in the process of evaporation.
To listen to these guys, every molecule of CO2 is a little floating nuclear power plant spewing heat out wherever it goes.