UPDATED: See the update at the end of the post about climate sensitivity.
# # #
Alternate title: Press Release Plus Mainstream Media & Blogosphere Responses to Resplandy et al. 2018
Before we get to the fun stuff, the paper being discussed in this post is Resplandy et al. 2018 Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition (paywalled). Its abstract reads (without footnotes):
The ocean is the main source of thermal inertia in the climate system. During recent decades, ocean heat uptake has been quantified by using hydrographic temperature measurements and data from the Argo float program, which expanded its coverage after 2007. However, these estimates all use the same imperfect ocean dataset and share additional uncertainties resulting from sparse coverage, especially before 2007.
Here we provide an independent estimate by using measurements of atmospheric oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2)—levels of which increase as the ocean warms and releases gases—as a whole-ocean thermometer. We show that the ocean gained 1.33 ± 0.20 × 1022 joules of heat per year between 1991 and 2016, equivalent to a planetary energy imbalance of 0.83 ± 0.11 watts per square metre of Earth’s surface. We also find that the ocean-warming effect that led to the outgassing of O2 and CO2 can be isolated from the direct effects of anthropogenic emissions and CO2 sinks.
Our result—which relies on high-precision O2 measurements dating back to 1991—suggests that ocean warming is at the high end of previous estimates, with implications for policy-relevant measurements of the Earth response to climate change, such as climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases and the thermal component of sea-level rise.
Basically, Resplandy et al. 2018 et al. are basing their estimates of the heat uptake for the “whole ocean” since 1991 on atmospheric measurements of oxygen and carbon dioxide as proxies, not on ocean temperature observations. Does one assume that “whole ocean” means from coast to coast and from ocean floor to surface? I believe so.
As far as I can tell, based on the abstract, this is not an examination of, or an attempt at correcting, global sea surface temperature records, which make up the ocean portion of the global surface temperature record. Considering that the definition of “climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases” is broadly defined by the IPCC as (my boldface) “the equilibrium global mean surface temperature change following a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration”, we must assume that the authors are referring to another definition of “climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases” in their abstract, not the broadly accepted one.
NOW FOR SOME FUN STUFF
The press release for the paper can be found at Eurekalert: Earth’s oceans have absorbed 60 percent more heat than previously thought. The first few paragraphs read (my boldface):
For each year during the past quarter century, the world’s oceans have absorbed an amount of heat energy that is 150 times the energy humans produce as electricity annually, according to a study led by researchers at Princeton and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego. The strong ocean warming the researchers found suggests that Earth is more sensitive to fossil-fuel emissions than previously thought.
The researchers reported in the journal Nature Nov. 1 that the world’s oceans took up more than 13 zettajoules — which is a joule, the standard unit of energy, followed by 21 zeroes — of heat energy each year between 1991 and 2016. The study was funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Princeton Environmental Institute.
First author Laure Resplandy, an assistant professor of geosciences and the Princeton Environmental Institute, said that her and her co-authors’ estimate is more than 60 percent higher than the figure in the 2014 Fifth Assessment Report on climate change from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“Imagine if the ocean was only 30 feet deep,” said Resplandy, who was a postdoctoral researcher at Scripps. “Our data show that it would have warmed by 6.5 degrees Celsius [11.7 degrees Fahrenheit] every decade since 1991. In comparison, the estimate of the last IPCC assessment report would correspond to a warming of only 4 degrees Celsius [7.2 degrees Fahrenheit] every decade.”
How silly can Laure Resplandy be? The oceans aren’t “only 30 feet deep”, and it’s a waste of time to imagine they’re “only 30 feet deep”. According to NOAA’s National Ocean Service webpage How deep is the ocean?, on average, the oceans are about 12,100 feet deep. So the heat uptake for the “whole ocean” is spread out to depths of 12,100 feet, not “only 30 feet”. I’ll let readers do the math for the assumed temperature change for the “whole ocean”. It’s nonsense like that that gives climate scientists/activists/fifteen-minutes-of-fame seekers their bad names, and make people with common sense question the results of their papers after reading the foolish quotes in the press releases. Why? you ask. It’s very obvious that Laure Resplandy was avoiding giving the actual temperature rise of the “whole ocean” since 1991, because it’s a miniscule change in temperature.
The press release continues with discussions of policy, also undermining their paper (my boldface):
Climate sensitivity is used to evaluate allowable emissions for mitigation strategies. Most climate scientists have agreed in the past decade that if global average temperatures exceed pre-industrial levels by 2? (3.6?), it is all but certain that society will face widespread and dangerous consequences of climate change.
The researchers’ findings suggest that if society is to prevent temperatures from rising above that mark, emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas produced by human activities, must be reduced by 25 percent compared to what was previously estimated, Resplandy said.
The “2? (3.6?)” suggests Eurekalert needs proofreaders, so if you need a job…just saying. Here’s the archived link to the press release, just in case they correct the typos.
Also, as noted earlier, this paper, according to its abstract, did not attempt to estimate sea surface temperature changes; it only dealt with ocean heat uptake for the “whole ocean”. So it did not address any component of the IPCC’s broad definition of climate sensitivity, which again is (my bold and brackets) “the equilibrium global mean surface temperature change [not ocean heat uptake] following a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration”. The policy discussion in the press release, therefore, does not appear warranted by the paper’s content.
AND NOW FOR SOME MORE FUN
The mainstream media and blogosphere have ramped up their pathetic alarmist proclamations in response to Resplandy et al. 2018. Headline examples (my boldface):
- The Washington Post: Startling new research finds large buildup of heat in the oceans, suggesting a faster rate of global warming Subtitle: The findings mean the world might have less time to curb carbon emissions.
- Scientific American: The Oceans Are Heating Up Faster Than Expected
- CNN: World’s oceans have absorbed 60% more heat than previously thought, study finds
- Daily Mail: Earth’s oceans ‘soak up 60% more heat than thought’ and it could mean the planet is warming FASTER than scientists predicted
- The New York Times: Taking the Oceans’ Temperature, Scientists Find Unexpected Heat
- New Zealand Herald: Ocean study’s climate change warning
- Los Angeles Times: Oceans warming faster than anticipated, giving even less time to stave off worst impacts of climate change, study finds
- Fortune: Earth’s Oceans Have Built up 60% More Heat Than Previously Thought, Researchers Say
- CBS News video through YouTube (Caution: 6+ minutes of yawn-inducing video): Oceans warming faster than previously thought, study finds
Only CNN and the Daily Mail were foolish enough to repeat the “Imagine if the ocean was only 30 feet deep…” quote in their articles.
Do the authors of the headlines realize that when they claim things like “faster than scientists predicted” and “scientists find unexpected heat” they’re actually pointing out flaws in climate science?
And now for the headline that takes the prize for alarmism. The use of the word “horrific” must come from the proximity to Halloween.
Newser: Ocean Study Has Horrific Implications for Climate Change Fight Subtitle: Heat is going into oceans, not space, researchers say
KEVIN TRENBERTH OF MISSING-HEAT FAME WAS A CO-AUTHOR
[UPDATE Correction: I misread the Scientific American article. Trenberth was not a co-author of Resplandy et al. 2018. Oops.]
Kevin Trenberth of NCAR wasn’t mentioned as a co-author in the press release, so it was an unexpected treat to find Kevin Missing-Heat Trenberth was part of the paper’s team. To add icing to the cake, Scientific American interviewed him for their article The Oceans Are Heating Up Faster Than Expected (My boldface):
Kevin Trenberth of NCAR, another of that study’s co-authors, noted that because the new research constitutes a novel approach, there are some uncertainties that still need to be resolved. But he said the results are generally compatible with those of his own research.
The findings “have implications, because the planet is clearly warming and at faster rates that previously appreciated, and the oceans are the main memory of the climate system (along with ice loss),” he told E&E News by email. “The oceans account for about 92% of the Earth’s energy imbalance. This is why we are having increased bouts of strong storms (hurricanes, typhoons) and flooding events.”
Hmmm, “generally compatible with those of his own research.” I believe “generally compatible” is as weasel-wordy as weasel-wordy gets.
What seems to have eluded the authors of the articles is that the oceans can only release heat to the atmosphere at their surfaces, and surface temperatures were not addressed by Resplandy et al. 2018.
THANKS
Many thanks to Larry Kummer of FabiusMaximus.com for alerting WUWT to the paper and the overreaction by the media, and as Larry noted in his original email:
Got to love how authors today are explicit about their results being “policy-relevant.” Although that reduces my confidence in their objectivity.
Thank you, oceans, for, as “they” say, absorbing most of (more than 90%) of the heat associated with human-induced global warming.
That’s all I’ve got. And to answer someone’s possible question, I have no intention of downloading and examining Resplandy et al. 2018.
And again, thank you, Larry.
STANDARD CLOSING REQUEST
Please purchase my recently published ebooks. As many of you know, this year I published 2 ebooks that are available through Amazon in Kindle format:
- Dad, Why Are You A Global Warming Denier? (For an overview, the blog post that introduced it is here.)
- Dad, Is Climate Getting Worse in the United States? (See the blog post here for an overview.)
To those of you who have purchased them, thank you. To those of you who will purchase them, thank you, too.
Regards,
Bob
[UPDATE: Added a bracketed correction in response to a comment.]
# # #
UPDATE 2 TO POST: I acquired a copy of the Resplandy et al. 2018 paper. So much for my intent not to examine it. Toward the end of the paper, the authors discuss how their new estimate of ocean heat uptake impacts estimates of climate sensitivity:
Ocean heat uptake, sea level and climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity has been estimated to fall within the range of +1.5 K to +4.5 K for a doubling of CO2 (ref. 1). The impact of an increase in the ocean heat uptake on the effective equilibrium climate sensitivity (the apparent equilibrium climate sensitivity diagnosed from nonequilibrium conditions) can be estimated using a cumulative approach on the Earth energy balance (see Fig. 2 in ref. 1):
N=F−αΔT (3)
where N is the global heat imbalance, which mostly consists of the ocean heat uptake; F is the radiative forcing (in W m−2); ΔT is the increase in surface temperature (in K) above a natural steady state; and α is the climate feedback parameter (in W m−2 K−1), which is inversely proportional to the effective equilibrium climate sensitivity1. All terms in equation (3) are time integrated over the period of interest.
Reference 1 = 1. IPCC. Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis (eds Stocker, T. F. et al.) (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2013).
And they continue on the topic of climate sensitivity:
The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report gives a ΔOHC of 0.80 × 1022 J yr−1 for 1993–2010, which is about 0.5 × 1022 J yr−1 lower than the ΔOHC that is compatible with both APO and hydrographic constraints. By applying equation (3)1 to surface temperature data over the period 1991–2016 (HadCrut4 version 4.5, ref. 64, with a 1860–1879 preindustrial baseline), we found that the upward revision of the global heat imbalance, N, by +0.5 × 1022 J yr−1 pushes up the lower bound of the equilibrium climate sensitivity from 1.5 K back to 2.0 K. An increase of the lower bound from 1.5 K to 2 K corresponds to a need to reduce maximum emissions by 25% to stay within the 2 °C global warming target (because of the almost linear relationship between warming and cumulative emissions; see Fig. SPM.10 in ref. 1). This corresponds to a reduction in maximum allowable cumulative CO2 emissions from 4,760 Gt CO2 to 3,570 Gt CO2.
I’ll let you readers comment. I’m done with Resplandy et al. 2018.
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“For each year during the past quarter century, the world’s oceans have absorbed an amount of heat energy that is 150 times the energy humans produce as electricity annually”
Phew that’s a relief! For a while there I thought we were going to have to give up electricity.
Coming so soon after the thread referrencing Dr Roy Spencer’s oh so sensible book on cloud cover this comes across as totally desperate unscientific nonsense.
Well if plant food doesn’t float your boat you can never be too careful with oxygen pollution as it’s heady stuff-
“Here we provide an independent estimate by using measurements of atmospheric oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2)—levels of which increase as the ocean warms and releases gases”
“How Deep is the Ocean”
Best recordings have been the ones by Sinatra in 1947 and 1960.
Mmmmm.
🙂
I wish I had the reference right at my fingertips, but I can still see (in my mind) Heidi Cullen, testifying before Congress, that the “heat” was hiding in the, ” … deep ocean … “. We can argue all day long about what constitutes ‘deep’ ocean, but it seems to me that any reasonable person is going to consider, let us say, more than 500 metres, and beyond, as being close to ‘deep’.
If memory serves (from watching the Hovmollers on the ENSO page, the floating buoys only go down to about 400 or 450 metres, so all of the “hidden heat” would have to be sequestered somewhere below that (thusly inventing the brand-new branch of Physics, called “Thermostatics”).
Let’s see: the warmer ocean water outgasses more carbon dioxide, but more carbon dioxide is going into the oceans making them acidic — — — oh wait! I forgot!!! Thermostatics is going to change the solubility ratio of the piping hot abyssal ocean water, or something like that … … …
Whew! So glad I put two and two together and got d/dx [e^(u + v) du/dx * dv/dx! I was SERIOUSLY worried there!
WHAT IS THE MECHANISM?
How are excited atmospheric CO2 molecules warming the ‘entire oceans’ without warming the atmosphere at all. The warming in the atmosphere came FROM the oceans in the form of super El Ninos. Outside of the El Nino bumps, the atmospheric temperature has been nearly flat for 20 years!
This line of insanity in the AGW meme is particularly galling, because these are the same people who entirely dismiss most natural climate variability (which we absolutely know exists) because WE DON’T COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND THE MECHANISM of how it works! Yet they have no trouble embracing he magical thinking that is required to even consider this concept of atmospheric warming ‘hiding’ in the oceans!
IF I HAD ANY HAIR ON MY HEAD, I WOULD HAVE TO TEAR IT OUT!
If you are upset, best to respond to all the commentators on Washington Post, etc. Don’t tell us; we know.
Some guidelines for commenting on mainstream media:
1. Don’t get upset. These people have been brainwashed. Your job is to talk common sense at as close to grade-school level as you can.
2. Don’t let name-calling bother you. Ad hominem attacks are favored by those who have a hard time thinking for themselves.
3. Don’t call names.
4. Don’t get upset. Be patient.
5. If it starts to get to you, stop. You’ve done something at least, so thanks.
Even if the insulters come out in force, it helps other people to see that there’s more than just one or two people who disagree with the consensus. In my experience, sometimes you can talk so much sense into them that they have no response. Rare, yes, but it happens. And then you get them to thinking ….
Want to help stop the BS? Get out there and fight on the mainstream media, as much as you can and as much as you can stomach. Just don’t sabotage your efforts by resorting to insults.
Don132
What I found striking is the authors’ assumption that the increase in atmospheric O2 (and CO2) MUST have come from the sea.
1. I thought the meme is that atmospheric CO2 comes totally from burning fossil fuels.
2. Wouldn’t you expect the “greening of the earth” (widely reported) due to increase atmospheric CO2) would result in MORE OXYGEN in the air as a result of increase photosynthesis (middle school biology lessons)? The authors seemed not to consider this.
My favorite part was them discarding the ARGO data in favor of their O2/CO2 proxy model results.
“the ocean gained 1.33 ± 0.20 × 1022 joules of heat per year ”
That’s about 1% of the margin of error on those measurements.
MarkW,
It gets worse than that! They state: “APO (O2+1.1×CO2) is computed using observed atmospheric O2/N2 molar ratios and CO2 molar fractions (see Methods)6,19. By design, APO is insensitive to exchanges with land ecosystems, which produce changes in O2 and CO2 that largely cancel in APO owing to their APPROXIMATE 1.1 O2/C oxidative ratio.” That is they are using an estimate with two significant figures in a calculation reporting a number with 5 significant figures (−243.70 ±10.10. Further, they show a 1 sigma uncertainty to two significant figures to the right of the decimal point. They should have reported “-240 ±10.” They are ignoring the rules about reporting precision.
Later, they state, ” From equation (1), we thereby find that ∆APO Climate = 23.20 ±12.20 per meg,…” That is, their 1 sigma uncertainty is ±52% of the calculated ∆APO Climate. It should really be reported as 23 ±12. They are kidding themselves the pretend that the digits beyond the decimal point have any meaning. Even the units column is questionable. But, it looks like maybe they know what they are doing.
I said, “But, it looks like maybe they know what they are doing.” I should have prefaced that with, “To the uninformed or gullible,”
Wait, wot?! Atmospheric O2 levels are decreasing, right? So this paper purports to take the
“measurements of atmospheric oxygen (O2) and carbon dioxide (CO2)—levels of which increase as the ocean warms and releases gases”
and reconstructs ocean heat content with that data? Using a formula with
“ΔT is the increase in surface temperature (in K) above a natural steady state” when delta T is change in temperature since 1991 and the temperature of Earth in 1991 is considered a natural steady state?
Climastrology is becoming so fictional that it is really hard to tell what they are doing here. How did they differentiate degassed CO2 from emitted CO2? Last I checked, Henry’s Law did not involve isotopes or “man-made” gas vs natural gases. How did they determine heat content for degased O2 when O2 has actually slightly decreased? How did they dream up heat content change per change in partial pressure of these gases in the atmosphere and how did they consider ocean oscillations which bring bottom waters to the surface which may have last been exposed to the surface 1,000 years ago?
Computers! Just sit at your desk and compasturbate until you get the answer you seek.
Submarines would be pretty much useless.
We are still waiting for a reply from the wise ones.
An energy imbalance of .83 watts +/- .11….wow…..I’m pretty sure you can achieve such accuracy in a laboratory, but not on any number of square meters you might pick on planet Earth’s mountains, plains, oceans, forests. You would be lucky if the standard deviation of the various readings was 20 watts/sq. meter. So declaring .83 to be the “answer” just means you believe your average is accurate to 1/10,000 of incoming solar and have forgotten reality.
Imagine…the oceans are only 3mm deep. They would have boiled off by now. SILLY. How can I get paid for silly?
Imagine taking a bath in 1 mm of water.
Imagine taking a shower with an eye-dropper.
Just trying to be as productive as a climate scientist.
This too shall pass……
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20SST-NorthAtlantic%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
http://climate4you.com/images/OceanTemp0-800mDepthAt59Nand30-0W.gif
..and at depth
http://climate4you.com/images/ArgoTimeSeriesTemp59N.JPG
Yes, climate4you is a very good site to visit.
From the scientific? paper, as quoted in the 2nd update:
[…] pushes up the lower bound of the equilibrium climate sensitivity from 1.5 K back to 2.0 K. An increase of the lower bound from 1.5 K to 2 K corresponds to a need to reduce maximum emissions by 25% to stay within the 2 °C global warming target (because of the almost linear relationship between warming and cumulative emissions; see Fig. SPM.10 in ref. 1)
It is absolutely amazing the feeling of total impunity that these guys must have to think that they couldn get away with something as ridiculous as this claim is which shows a totally false, disingenuous, understanding of how the maximum emissions were calculated in the first place (nothing to do with “lower bounds of equilibrium sensitivity”). And even more amazing that they did, indeed, get away with it. This shouldn’t pass any peer review. The system has been sooooo corrupted.
First thing I conclude from this is:
Previous statements about ocean heat content from this “settled” science must have been hopelessly inadequate
Second thing:
Across most of the planet the ocean surface temperature is lower than the temperature of the atmosphere directly above it = 0 heat transfer from ocean to atmosphere.
Third thing:
If the oceans have warmed that much ( they haven’t) then they must have expanded, meaning the sea level rise that also mostly isn’t real must not be from melting ice
Fourth thing:
More flow from an endless supply of high grade fertilizer.
Agreed: The odor of male bovine fecal material is strong from this one.
I stopped reading at the phrase, “whole-ocean thermometer”.
Well, I lied — I think I drudged on, til I got to the claim about being able to separate ocean CO2 outgassing from the human CO2 signal, or something like that, … at which point, I thought to myself, “Really — that’s quite a claim, and I doubt it.”
“Our result—which relies on high-precision O2 measurements dating back to 1991”
By how much does O2 and CO2 concentrations vary in the ocean?
I don’t know but know enough to know that almost every component making up the ocean has wide variation. So how does one establish meaningful means through high precision measurement over time? The instruments may be high precision but are the results?
Lay your money down.
M
Of course as another poster has pointed out they are using circular reasoning to wit: Oceans are putting more CO2 into atmosphere which is causing more heating of atmosphere which is somehow getting back to the oceans (mechanism not explained) which then transfers heat to atmosphere. Which is it ? Does CO2 cause heating or does heat cause more CO2 in the atmosphere? Under their scenario, mankind’s puny addition of 4% input of CO2 into the atmosphere wouldn’t matter. This is not even junk science. IT IS ALICE IN WONDERLAND STUFF.
Research sponsored by the Princeton Environmental Institute?
Hope you did not miss their featured speakers, Bill McKibben “Art, Activism and the Chance for Change” or “Journalist” Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” during the October “Art + Environment Series”.
https://environment.princeton.edu/news/pei-and-art-museum-host-art-environment-event-series
Perhaps “Resplandy et al.” is a work of art?
Measuring a part of the atmosphere to determine ocean values?
Have they not heard of the World Ocean Database?
I am definitely not endorsing the article, but if anyone wants to delve into more technical details of some of the procedures being applied, especially the use of Atmospheric Potential Oxygen (APO), I suggest the following earlier paper (also involving Ralph Keeling, not paywalled):
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1600-0889.2006.00175.x
See in particular Figure 3.
I take no reponsibility for you falling asleep, however.
According to Lord Monckton, the net anthropogenic forcing as of 2018 (according to the IPCC) = 2.85 W/m^2 (includes 2/3 of negative aerosol forcing added back in). Because this supposed excess of heat each year isnt really increasing the air temperatures very much, all the alarmist climate scientists are saying that the heat is going to the oceans and eventually will come back to bite us. Trenberth ‘s famous “missing heat comment comes to mind”. I wanted to check the amount of actual heat flux that the alarmists scientists say is actually hiding in the oceans all this time. The time scale will be 1955 to 1998 because that is when the period of data that was analyzed ; ended for the important study done in 2004 and published in 2005.
https://www.scribd.com/document/24701910/Ocean-Warming
with Levitus et al on Warming of the World’s Ocean 1955-2003. That study was the 1st one to actually numerate the total amount of extra forced heat flux that the atmosphere dissipated(because of global warming) to either the oceans, melting of continental glaciers, heat permanently absorbed by the troposphere, Antarctic melting, melting of mountain glaciers, melting of northern hemisphere sea ice, and melting of Arctic sea ice.
They give a figure detailing each of the above categories. The total of all categories is 17.3 x10^22 joules. By far the most important one
is the ocean absorbed heat. The authors state that it is 83.8% of the total or 14.5 X 10^22 joules for the Zero to 3000 metre depth. We will call this the OHC%. Ocean heat content % This amount came from the studies of ocean plankton!!!!!! used as a proxy for ocean temperatures. This data is apparently stored in the WORLD OCEAN DATABASE (Conkright et al 2002). In the study they state that the period of 1957 -1990 is used as a reference period for their estimates. They have had to use estmates of the linear trend for 6 ocean areas covering the globe, presumably because even though their plancton datbases contain over 2 million data points, even that is not enough to cover all 6 parts of the oceans. Of course they combine that with the old bucket and expendable bath thermograph measurements. These days all the researchers use the Argo buoy float data and the plancton based database seems to have been forgotten. It may be because of the following. I am not familiar with using plancton as a proxy for seawater temperatures as an after the fact historical measurement. However the following study says some very important things on the matter.
https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/spo/FishBull/70-4/eppley.pdf
“Temperature does not seem to be very important in the production of phytoplankton in the sea.”
Nevertheless the author presses on to find a maximum temperature that sets an upper limit on plancton growth rates. In the study the limit on temperature seems close to 40C. It is not saying that the temperature of the water cannot exceed 40C; only that the plancton growth curve levels off after that. Using this kind of proxy to estimate sea temperatures is fraught with huge error bars, but the important point is that the supposed total of 17.3 x10^22 joules that was the result of 50 years of imaginary forcing has not gone away. Present day climate scientists are still using the OHC% figures today and the media are going along with this of course. However it is curious that over the years, the OHC% figure has crept up from 83.8% to 93% . However since the invention of the Argo float buoy data, no one talks about plancton heat studies anymore. My contention is that I will prove that the accumulated heat that was found from these studies was bogus anyway. The result will be that even though the alarmists will argue that that heat will eventually cause CAGW, they have no credible source for the amount of heat that was hidden away and they are increasingly desperate ( because of the ARGO float buoy data) to show that any modern day heat is being hidden away in the deep oceans.
The 1st study mentioned above was where the breadcrumbs ended up in my search for the now often quoted “93% OHC% of the heat radiative imbalance in the atmosphere ends up in the ocean”. This is important for the following reason. When the UHA satellite temperature data set finally nails down that there is no atmospheric warming or very little, the alarmists will fall back on their 2nd line of defense “The oceans are warming because of CO2 back radiation and we will all die from this heat when it gets released to the atmosphere from its very long cycle of deep ocean currents and heat capacity”.
So a study that can prove that the oceans are warming is important. Unfortunately for the alarmists, the ARGO ocean buoys are increasingly showing that the amount of heat increase in the oceans is so minimal as to be laughable with estimates of 400- 600 years for a 1C rise. The buoys came into existence after the top study was finished. However the 80% figure has persisted and even increased in time and every study on ocean temperatures now always quote the OHC% figure. Even though the ARGO buoys are hard to argue against for the alarmists, the oceans are so vast and deep; that they will say that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean and will some day come back to haunt us. Most ARGO floats are good for depths down to 2000 metres but the newer ones are now measuring down to 4000 metres. Every time the data comes back that there is no increase in heat for certain depths, the alarmists say that the heat has sunk even further down. That is why we skeptics will never be able to prove that the oceans are not hiding the heat because it is a perfect deep umeasurable sink for their heat global warming meme. The big problem for the alarmists is that it conflicts with the “Climate Change has already happened meme and is causing all our extreme weather events.” However my purpose here; is to show that mostly based on the top study above, the alarmists position of total heat flux hiding in the deep ocean doesn’t add up. As usual with one lie built on top of a 1000 lies, the whole meme breaks down when you really look at the data. We skeptics have 2 things on our side 1) the truth 2) there is no central body of alarmist central office coordinating all the lies so that they can fit together as 1 credible thesis of global warming. Michael Mann tries to do this but even he cant keep up with 1000’s of researchers and 100’s of organizations that every once in a while let the truth slip out or else present stats to counter the global warming groupthink.
So Let us start from the beginning of my quest for the origin of the “80-93% of missing heat is in the oceans” figure and follow the breadcrumbs back to the top study. My quest began with a June 2017 released study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences called “Distinct global warming rates tied to multiple ocean surface temperature changes”. This was dealt with in a WUWT article on June 13, 2017. The bogus main graph of that study combines the plancton data mentioned above with computer generated data for the latest years along with Hadcrut4 data. This is the study that Anthony Banton is now referring to. The authors of that Chinese study DID NOT USE ARGO FLOAT DATA by itself. Instead they used the MET office Hadcrut 4 dataset which combines HADSST3 DATA(ARGO FLOAT DATA) WITH CRUTEM4 DATA. The CRUTEM4 data is land based data. This is preposterous. Since there are almost 4000 ARGO buoys floating in all the world’s oceans , why would you combine that data with land data to give you sea temperature data? One single reason.THE ARGO FLOAT BUOY DATA DO NOT SHOW THAT THE OCEANS ARE WARMING. The latest ARGO float data have shown that the oceans are warming in some places and cooling in others with the net result that
“After an upward bump in April 2017 due to the Tropics and NH, the May SSTs show the average declining slightly. Note the Tropics recorded a rise, but not enough to offset declines in both hemispheres and globally. SH is now two months into a cooling phase. The present readings compare closely with April 2015, but currently with no indication of an El Nino event any time soon.”
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2017/06/13/ocean-cooling-resumes/
The alarmists don’t like to mention the ARGO float data (Scripps dataset) because it contradicts their message. The Chinese study used computer simulations and land surface temperatures to analyze ocean temperatures????????????????????????????
I then switched my attention to a 2016 NCAR study by Trenberth himself and referred to by Anthony Banton as proof of ocean warming. In that study Trenberth attempts to show ocean heat content as increasing. However Trenberth uses 8 different datasets to try to prove this including reanalysis data simulated by models!!!!!!!!!!. The really important data are the data from the ARGO floats (Scripps dataset) which Trenberth tries to dismiss with comments like. ” Von Schuckmann et al. (2014) show how the omission of the Indonesian region in Argo analyses can miss as much as a 20% increase in global sea level. but the Argo analyses contain a lot of noise, thought to originate mainly from mesoscale eddies and details of the thermocline and its changes over time.”
What this has to do with ocean heat content is your guess. It is interesting that in Table 1 he gives the trends for the 8 different data sets except that the trend for the CERES data is missing. All in all even in the conclusions he says
“For this period, the energy imbalance is estimated to be 0.9 ± 0.3 W m−2. This includes small contributions from the non-ocean climate system components [0.04 W m−2 for 2004–08 by Trenberth (2009), 0.07 W m−2 in the 2000s increasing from about 0.03 W m−2 in the 1990s by Hansen et al. (2011), and 0.03 W m−2 from 1993 to 2008 by Church et al. (2011)] and from the deep ocean [0.07 W m−2 (Purkey and Johnson 2010)] (although ORAP5 included a 0.015 W m−2 contribution from below 2000 m). The global OHC component 0–2000 m is assessed to be 0.8 ± 0.2 W m−2. ”
So from the 8 data sets, 0.1 W /m^2 per year increase in ocean heat content is not something to worry about. Even more important is that the ARGO data set which shows the lowest overall warming over the 9 year period of 0.45W/m^2 +/- 0.1W/m^2 is dismissed because it contains a lot of noise. (See above). Don’t forget that this rate of increase of W/m^2 forcing is equivalent to 0.03C/ decade. It would be 10 times this amount if we were talking about the atmosphere but since this is the oceans a factor reduction of 10 seems more likely given the actual data for ocean warming. So a 1C increase will take 333.3 years. And that is only the top 2000 metres. The oceans can absorb much more heat in lower depths which can reach 6 miles in some places.
I then switched my attention to a 2016 NASA study that came out titled “Warming of the global Ocean : Spatial Structure and Water Mass trends”. I will dismiss that study by simply quoting from the study “To support the results from the observational datasets we analyze the Simple Ocean Data Assimilation reanalysis ……..SODA fills in the missing data by optimizing the model physics and forcing….”
Then I switched to a 2015 study by Roemmich that is titled “Unabated planetary warming and its ocean structure since 2006”. While the 2015 study is paywalled, reporters did mention a 93% OHC%. In the study the authors mention “Global mean SST has increased by about 0.1 [degrees Celsius per] decade since 1951 but has no significant trend for the period 1998-2013.” It is interesting to quote Trenberth on commenting on the 2015 study ” It is disappointing that they do not use our stuff (based on ocean reanalysis with a comprehensive model that inputs everything from SST, sea level, XBTs and Argo plus surface fluxes and winds) ” ……”It is a nice paper but sad that oceanographers are slow to utilize all of the available information to produce better estimates. They seem to take pride in… “exclusive use of Argo” data with no use of anything else, including sea level.”
So Trenberth believes that models will give a better estimate of sea water temperature than actual observations. Such is the sad state of climate alarmism today.
WUWT covered this topic in 2016 in an article criticizing another study called “15 years of ocean observations with the global Argo array”. In that 2016 study Riser claimed the 90% OHC% figure. I should also mention NASA’s contribution to this topic.
I ntracked down the report where the 93% OHC%(mentioned above) was used.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/beneath-the-waves-how-the-deep-oceans-have-continued-to-warm-over-the-past-decade
In the media article above; where Trenberth was quoted, it mentions his study in 2013. “Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content” Because of Trenberth’s penchant for using models I didnt bother reading much of his study. However he left an important breadcrumb. “Over the past 50 years, the oceans have absorbed about 90% of the total heat added to the climate system(Bindoff et al 2007).”
In Bindoff’s lead author contribution to the IPCC Assessment papers of 2007, Bindoff does not mention the OHC% content, but the other IPCC report by Lead authors Monika Rhein and Stephen Rintoul do. They say 93% again. and they left 3 more breadcrumbs 1) by Domingues 2008(for studies from 0 to 700 metres, 2) Levitus 2012 for depths from 700-2000 metres and 3) Purkey and Johnson 2010 for 2000 metres to the bottom.
Dominigues gives a total heat flux of 16+ or – 3 x 10^22 joules from 1961 to 2003 which is in the same ballpark of the 2004 Levitus study referenced in my 1st paragraph. But that figure only inculdes the top 700 metres.
Levitus 2012 was dealt with by Willis Eschenbach in a devastating critique on WUWT.
The Purkey and Johnson study left me another breadcrumb by saying ” Over the past few decades, roughly 80% of the energy resulting from this imbalance has gone into heating the oceans (Levitus et al. 2005)”
So now we have worked our way back to the study that I referenced in the 1st paragraph. The Levitus study was actually finished in 2004 but not published till January 2005.
So let us do the numbers . As you will recall in the 3rd paragraph above , the total heat content was 17.3 x10^22 joules. This a time period from 1955 to 1998. The total solar insolation assuming nearly constant of 340W/m^2 all during that time would be 2.35 x 10^26 joules based on a total earth surface of 5.1 x 10^14 m^2. This is 1358.38 times the amount of heat that got trapped ( according to the alarmists). or 3% per year. which works out to 10W/m^2 per year. Compare that to what Lord Monckton says is the present day alarmist figure of 2.85W/m^2 that is getting trapped , you can see that there is a big discrepancy. Since the total heat trapped figure was basically taken from plancton studies which are now all but forgotten because of their inaccuracies and modern day Argo buoys, it is no wonder that the alarmists do not tell you exactly how much heat is down in the Mariana trench (11000 metres deep) and elsewhere in the deep ocean hiding away. It is because they have no credible source for the amount.
As a skeptic, I dispute their present day figure of earth energy imbalance of 2.85 W/m^2 especially since the CERES data give an imbalance of 0.58 W/m^2 with an uncertainty of the total outgoing TOA of + or – 4W/m^2. I would like somebody to prove the earth energy balance equation with the parts that have had exact measurements and the parts that are only estimates. NASA figures give .5 or .6 W/m^2 which are pure fantasy based on their diagram. I accept the solar input figure of 340 W/m^2 and the atmosphere absorption of 77.1 W/m^2 and the evapotranspiration figure of 86.4 W/m^2. The outgoing figure of 240 W/m^2 is in the ballpark but impossible to say if it is balanced or not with the solar input. All other figures are only estimates or are bogus.
“Got to love how authors today are explicit about their results being ‘policy-relevant.’ Although that reduces my confidence in their objectivity.”
This is an important subject, which I have long wanted to write about. This points to a major weaknesses in current climate science – and why I suspect it eventually might be considered as the worst-affected by the replication crisis.
Climate science has a abundance of observational data, both instrumental and proxies. There are a fantastic array of statistical tools to manipulate this data (esp since few climate scientists are statisticians, and so can use them in ways that statisticians consider inappropriate).
They run countless “tests”. The ones with results that are deemed “policy relevant” are published. The others are discarded. This is guaranteed to produce a flood of invalid results. It is “data dredging”, aka “p-hacking.” It is climate science today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging
Thanks, Larry.
Enjoy the rest of your day.
Cheers,
Bob
Follow-up –
I asked a climate scientists why nobody wrote about the obvious rampant p-hacking in climate scientist.
Answer: It would not just be career suicide. He or she would be shunned, an outcast.
The missing heat also needs to evaporate more water before it can contribute to any (putative) feedback effects. It can’t evaporate water below the surface, it must heat the atmosphere first. It can’t skip the warming the atmosphere bit and hang out in the ocean to do its feedbacking at some later date when it staggers back out of the ocean.
And as others often point out, with the ocean warming the atmosphere, once the heat is in the ocean at a small increase ΔT in bulk temperature, you are not going to heat the atmosphere by say Δ2.0 °C with an oceanic change of Δ0.1 °C.
That’s a great comment, and worthy of real consideration. But, as so often, there is an escape clause ..
The difference between ocean and air temperatures is only an AVERAGE. Some places the atmosphere is warmer, some places cooler. The heat, and convective, exchanges in the arctic are way different to those in the tropics. Different mechanisms, and different net results, pertain to those different areas.
“The oceans account for about 92% of the Earth’s energy imbalance. This is why we are having increased bouts of strong storms (hurricanes, typhoons) and flooding events.”
Is Trenberth basing his comments on science? The overall number of tropical storms or hurricanes have decreased. So how does he defend saying that we are having increased bouts of such storms?
A google search displayed the following comment without attribution:
“…there is some indication from high resolution models of substantial increases in the numbers of the most intense hurricanes even if the overall number of tropical storms or hurricanes decreases. Jun 6, 2018”
So does Trenberth’s assertion of “increased bouts of strong storms” come from models rather than actual observations? Do observations show that the number of intense storms are actually increasing?