Study suggests that in the last 60 years up to half the observed warming and associated sea level rise in low- and mid- latitudes of the Atlantic Ocean is due to changes in ocean circulation.
Over the past century, increased greenhouse gas emissions have given rise to an excess of energy in the Earth system. More than 90% of this excess energy has been absorbed by the ocean, leading to increased ocean temperatures and associated sea level rise, while moderating surface warming.
The multi-disciplinary team of scientists have published estimates in PNAS, that global warming of the oceans of 436 x 1021 Joules has occurred from 1871 to present (roughly 1000 times annual worldwide human primary energy consumption) and that comparable warming happened over the periods 1920-1945 and 1990-2015.
The estimates support evidence that the oceans are absorbing most of the excess energy in the climate system arising from greenhouse gases emitted by human activities.
Prof Laure Zanna (Physics), who led the international team of researchers said: ‘Our reconstruction is in line with other direct estimates and provides evidence for ocean warming before the 1950s.’
The researchers’ technique to reconstruct ocean warming is based on a mathematical approach originally developed by Prof Samar Khatiwala (Earth Sciences) to reconstruct manmade CO2 uptake by the ocean.
Prof Khatiwala said: ‘Our approach is akin to “painting” different bits of the ocean surface with dyes of different colors and monitoring how they spread into the interior over time. We can then apply that information to anything else – for example manmade carbon or heat anomalies – that is transported by ocean circulation. If we know what the sea surface temperature anomaly was in 1870 in the North Atlantic Ocean we can figure out how much it contributes to the warming in, say, the deep Indian Ocean in 2018. The idea goes back nearly 200 years to the English mathematician George Green.’
The new estimate suggests that in the last 60 years up to half the observed warming and associated sea level rise in low- and mid- latitudes of the Atlantic Ocean is due to changes in ocean circulation. During this period, more heat has accumulated at lower latitudes than would have if circulation were not changing.
While a change in ocean circulation is identified, the researchers cannot attribute it solely to human-induced changes.
Much work remains to be done to validate the method and provide a better uncertainty estimate, particularly in the earlier part of the reconstruction. However the consistency of the new estimate with direct temperature measurements gives the team confidence in their approach.
Prof Zanna said: ‘Strictly speaking, the technique is only applicable to tracers like manmade carbon that are passively transported by ocean circulation. However, heat does not behave in this manner as it affects circulation by changing the density of seawater. We were pleasantly surprised how well the approach works. It opens up an exciting new way to study ocean warming in addition to using direct measurements.’
This work offers an answer to an important gap in knowledge of ocean warming, but is only a first step. It is important to understand the cause of the ocean circulation changes to help predict future patterns of warming and sea level rise.
###
Via Eurekalert
Full paper title: Zanna, L., Khatiwala, S., Gregory, J., Ison, J. and Heimbach, P. (2019) Global reconstruction of historical ocean heat storage and transport. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS); doi/10.1073/pnas.1808838115
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/01/04/1808838115
(open access)
Abstract:
Most of the excess energy stored in the climate system due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has been taken up by the oceans, leading to thermal expansion and sea level rise. The oceans thus have an important role in the Earth’s energy imbalance. Observational constraints on future anthropogenic warming critically depend on accurate estimates of past ocean heat content (OHC) change. We present a novel reconstruction of OHC since 1871, with global coverage of the full ocean depth. Our estimates combine timeseries of observed sea surface temperatures, with much longer historical coverage than those in the ocean interior, together with a representation (a Green’s function) of time-independent ocean transport processes. For 1955-2017, our estimates are comparable to direct estimates made by infilling the available 3D time-dependent ocean temperature observations. We find that the global ocean absorbed heat during this period at a rate of 0.30 ± 0.06 W/m2 in the upper 2000 m and 0.028 ± 0.026 W/m2 below 2000 m, with large decadal fluctuations. The total OHC change since 1871 is estimated at 436 ±91 × 1021 J, with an increase during 1921-1946 (145 ± 62× 1021 J) that is as large as during 1990-2015. By comparing with direct estimates, we also infer that, during 1955-2017, up to half of the Atlantic Ocean warming and thermosteric sea level rise at low-to-mid latitudes emerged due to heat convergence from changes in ocean transport.
Cumulative heat uptake from 1871 to 2017 (joules per year) shown for each patch (numbered here and shown in SI Appendix, Fig. S1), contributing to the integrated passive heat storage (A) globally and (B) in the Atlantic Ocean. Note the different scales for the two panels.
Of the many effects on sea level since c. AD 1690, the Maunder Minimum depths of the LIA, a fourth molecule of plant food per 10,000 dry air molecules is the least of them, as in, not to any measurable extent at all.
As evinced by among other demonstrations, no acceleration in MSL rise since CO2 started rising steadily after WWII, ie 74 years ago.
So, the source of excess emissions has been an unnatural increase of water vapor from warming oceans and melting glaciers.
Very cool
“Observational constraints on future anthropogenic warming critically depend on accurate estimates of past ocean heat content (OHC) change. We present a reconstruction of OHC since 1871, with global coverage of the full ocean depth. ”
One of the large uncertainties in ECS estimates is the uncertainty surrounding OHC in the early record.
It will be fun to see what Nic Lewis makes of this
..and these guys just found out the deep ocean is getting colder….so where’s the hear hiding now?
Historical cooling periods are still playing out in the deep Pacific
“The researchers then compared the HMS Challenger data to the modern observations and found warming in most parts of the global ocean, as would be expected due to the warming planet over the 20th Century, but cooling in the deep Pacific at a depth of around two kilometers.”
“But Gebbie and Huybers estimate that the deep Pacific cooling trend leads to a downward revision of heat absorbed over the 20th century by about 30 percent.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190104121426.htm
,,you know that “heat” right…LOL
I thought it was ‘where’s the Bear hiding now?’
Yep… very cool… just like real science.
Although, someone already identified the early 20th century OHC rise… 6 years ago.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/11/03/frankenstorm-itis-five-degrees-of-separation-from-reality-and-eleventy-gazillion-joules-under-the-sea/
Interesting what you see and don’t see. You have chosen to circle the rising temperature segment from 1910 to 1940. Could be the greenhouse effect if it wasn’t for those zillions of joules. And then you just ignore the cooling section from 1840 to 1910. Are you blind? That cooling section simply kills any chance of greenhouse or any other green warming scheme, It is obvious that the temperature measurements were taken from a moving vessel and the cool section is were caused by sailing through chilly weather. Such unexpected temperature changes are caused by sailing through large wind patterns. One such pattern is the Westerlies, the originator of El Ninos and cross ocean transporter of same. Think wind patterns and other changes, dump the greenhouse effect. Armo Arrak
How do estimates support evidence?
What exactly are they claiming is the actual evidence?
It’s (sea) turtles all the way down …..
well increased CO2 disolved in seawater does tend to make their shells softer making it harder for them to support the weight of the earth
The estimates support evidence that the oceans are absorbing most of the excess energy in the climate system arising from greenhouse gases emitted by human activities.
Prof Laure Zanna (Physics), who led the international team of researchers said: ‘Our reconstruction is in line with other direct estimates and provides evidence for ocean warming before the 1950s.’
More to my point, this is how I perceive what she said:
“Our make believe is similar to other direct make believe, and this is evidence because…. We said so?”
in the Earth’s energy imbalance. ”
Ah, the next narrative after co2 is finally and officially killed off as the evil villain.
Iirc, Alan Tomalty mentioned this goal post moving horse hockey some time back.
Also, reconstruction… They are once again fiddling with the past. Boy oh boy was Orwell prophetic
EurekAlert!
Say no more.
There is yet another misnomer … “Man Made Carbon” … Man didn’t make it, Nature made it. Man simply located it, made use of it’s energy potential and reliberated it back into it’s ntural environment
I think they might be referring to radiogenic 13C from atmospheric nuclear tests. At least, I hope that’s what they mean. If not, then the sentence is devoid of meaning.
14C is radiogenic and was made in nuclear testing, not 13C, which is stable.
And naturally from radioactive decay.
Who says the earth has excess thermal energy. They make the flawed assumption that the heat energy budget in 1871 is the proper one for the earth. It’s just hard to get scientist who actually think.
There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. The AGW conjecture is based on only partial science and is full of holes. For example, the AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect caused by trace gases in the Earth’s atmosphere with LWIR absorption bands. Such a radiant greenhouse effect has not been observed in a real greenhouse, in the Earth’s atmosphere, or anywhere else in the solar system. The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction so hence the AGW conjecture is science fiction as well. References to CO2 based warming are science fiction.
“If we know what the sea surface temperature anomaly was in 1870 in the North Atlantic Ocean we can figure out how much it contributes to the warming in, say, the deep Indian Ocean in 2018. ”
Unfortunately we don’t know that….
http://oi48.tinypic.com/2i7spwy.jpg
That was SST. I’m wondering what the 100% record equates to in uncertainty of the temperature for a grid. Regardless, the graphs show that records for SST were only good for shipping channels. Highly unlikely that they measured temperatures to any great depth so you do need to wonder if the same criteria were applied to temperatures to 700 metres if there would be a white map with a little light blue around Iceland and the far North Pacific from 1960-1988.
Prof Zanna said: ‘Strictly speaking, the technique is only applicable to tracers like manmade carbon that are passively transported by ocean circulation. How do they differentiate “manmade carbon” from natural and are is Prof Zanna talking about carbon or carbon dioxide?
Strike out “are” comment was made from my mobile phone didn’t notice the error when posting.
Jack Miller asked:
Jack, there is both a naturally occurring CO2 molecule and a hybrid CO2 molecule that has a different physical property, an H-pyron. The new hybrid CO2 molecule with its H-pyron permits one to distinguish it from the naturally occurring CO2 molecules.
The H-pyron or Human-pyron is only attached to and/or can only be detected in CO2 molecules that have been created as a result of human (anthropogenic) activity. Said H-pyron has a Specific Heat Capacity of one (1) GWC or 1 Global Warming Calorie that is equal to 69 x 10 -37th kJ/kg K or something close to that or maybe farther away. 😊
Careful, some foaming-at-the-mouth Eco-Nazi will link to your post as “proof” of the “human fingerprint.”
😊 😊
Freon compounds, SF6, rare or exclusively manmade compounds are all used as tracers. Freons are serendipitous tracers, with a 30-50 year pulse between wide scale distribution and being supplanted. SF6 is mostly found in industrial waste water from China, with a couple deliberately planted sources in other ocean basins. There is a technique for correlating Buckyballs with trapped noble gas atoms with specific meteor strikes, which could also be used to label and track releases in the oceans. I assume he is referencing Freon, and perhaps some of the more unusual industrial chemicals.
Best of all, SF6 is carbon free.
So the 1921-1946 heat was natural and the 1990-2015 heat was due to human CO2 emissions? They can’t be relating both periods to AGW – if they are, then their reasoning is totally out of line.
And then this:
0.028 ± 0.026? i.e. somewhere between nothing and not much. It’s hard to trust an estimate when the error bar is as large as the quantity being estimated.
It’s a great idea, using “old” water to estimate past changes in OHC, but I suspect they need a few more data .points
“It’s hard to trust an estimate when the error bar is as large as the quantity being estimated.”
I ran a half-marathon yesterday – or perhaps is was a full marathon, or maybe I stayed at home.
“It opens up an exciting new way to study ocean warming in addition to using direct measurements.”
Huhh?
SR
You’re not excited? Another degree of freedom in making stuff up and mining grant money.
Climate science already estimated that about 40% of recent total sea level rise was caused by thermal expansion of oceans due to warming. And detailed interpretations of sea level data had indicated ocean warming over ~1920-50 and post ~1980.
In the mean time, the “summer Southern Ocean” was so “hot” in June 2014 that just the Antarctic Sea Ice Anomaly alone was greater than the entire area of Greenland.
Couldn’t have that result stay. So the University of Illinois Cryosphere retired out its primary sea ice research team in 2015-2016. Antarctic sea ice extents promptly returned to politically acceptable low levels the latter half of 2016, 2017, and 2018!
3,080,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lbs wtr in the oceans
11,660,000,000,000,000,000 lbs air in the atm
264,151 wtr to air by wt
1 btu/lb F specific ht of water
0.24 btu/lb F specific ht of air
1 F dT
3,080,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 btu ocean capacitance for dT
2,798,400,000,000,000,000 btu atm cap for dT
1,100,629 water to air by heat cap
How much heat has the ocean soaked up due to CO2?
I’m pretty sure the heat capacity of the oceans is roughly 1,000 times that of the air, not 1,000,000.
Atmosphere is 10 tonnes per square meter
And if averaged ocean it would about 2700 meter deep or 2700 tonnes per square meter
and water has about 4.1 times more specific heat per kg or tonne compared to air
2700 times 4.1 = 11070 vs 10 tonnes
So yeah, about 1100 times more
“Study suggests that in the last 60 years up to half the observed warming and associated sea level rise in low- and mid- latitudes of the Atlantic Ocean is due to changes in ocean circulation.”
CO2 cause ocean circulation changes. Picture (Movie) at 11.
…except the man-made CO2 emissions are less than the uncertainty of the natural sinks and sources. So you can’t even be sure the rise in atmospheric CO2 is our fault. But even more importantly, I still haven’t seen the experiment that proves an increase in atmospheric CO2 results in an increase of atmospheric heat. Actual evidence shows CO2 rising pretty much continuously for the last 70 years, while temperatures go up, they go down, they go sideways, and no one will actually measure the actual heat content of the actual air, for heaven’s sake that might actually prove something, and we couldn’t actually have that now could we?
The model of ocean circulation might actually be somewhat accurate and tell us a thing or two about the transport of CO2, maybe even the transport of heat, but when they introduce it with three falsehoods/sentence, it kinda blows their credibility all to hell.
Not science..just mythological story telling
“Over the past century, increased greenhouse gas emissions have given rise to an excess of energy in the Earth system. More than 90% of this excess energy has been absorbed by the ocean, leading to increased ocean temperatures and associated sea level rise, while moderating surface warming”
This heat balance may contain circular reasoning in the attribution of changes in ocean heat content
https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/10/06/ohc/
I’m not sure if my back of envelope is correct but doesn’t ±0.1°C uncertainty in global average temperature anomaly for 5×10^8 cubic kilometers of ocean correspond to error bars of 200 ZJ?
The difference in 2005 GISS LOTI and 2015 version is almost 0.4°C of warming from 1900 to 2005. The record for ocean temperatures at depth would much worse than for the surface but according to their plots, the global anomaly is more precise than those for the troposphere measured by satellite recently.
And to make it worse, there is no valid justification for that low of an uncertainty in the global average temperature anomaly. The best instruments used have an accuracy of only +/-0.1C and the worst are probably no better than +/-1.0C, so the composite must be in that range (depending on the exact mix of instruments across all stations and times). It can’t be at either extreme, but is probably closer to the high end than the lower.
Phew!
What a relief!
I always suspected that we lived in a water cooled planet.
Oh! And Meiggs, …”1,100,629 water to air by heat cap”
according to my slide rule ( two decimal places) specific heat capacity of Oceans to Atmosphere is 3 orders of magnitude (base 10). Maybe time to recalibrate your computer?!
Cheers
Mike
Yes, exactly my thoughts about water cooled planet.
I was thinking along the lines of how my car radiator cools the engine. What do you suppose is the ratio of heat expelled to heat retained by the coolant? Once the coolant is up to a stable operating temperature, that ratio must approach infinity. For a given ambient air temperature and waste heat generation rate, the system can run indefinitely at the same coolant temperature. If you increase the waste heat generation rate a bit, by revving the engine, while maintaining ambient air temperature, the coolant will warm slightly to adjust the gradient to the new boundary conditions, but nearly all of the additional heat will be expelled rather than warming the coolant and boiling over.
This is a model of the ocean circulation from the tropics (engine) to the radiator (poles) along the surface, and back to the tropics via the deep ocean. Convection and subsequent radiation to space in the polar regions is analogous to the turbulent heat transfer through the car radiator. A small increase in the rate of heat generation as could be postulated from additional greenhouse gases is analogous to revving the engine. The constant cold of outer space is analogous to a constant ambient air temperature. The slight increase in coolant temperature is analogous to the observed 0.01C ocean warming. If this model holds, nearly all of the extra heat added to the atmosphere-ocean system by GHG warming would be radiated away at the poles.
“Prof Khatiwala said: ‘Our approach is akin to “painting” different bits of the ocean surface with dyes of different colors and monitoring how they spread into the interior over time. We can then apply that information to anything else – for example manmade carbon or heat anomalies – that is transported by ocean circulation. ”
__________________________________________________
So Prof Khatiwala said: ‘Our approach is …
– for example manmade carbon or heat anomalies
– that is transported by ocean circulation.
__________________________________________________
When Prof Khatiwala says
Man makes Carbon
and that is ocean transported with heat
than he as other tricks up his sleeves.
” ‘Our approach is akin to “painting” different bits of the ocean surface with dyes of different colors “
Ahh… back to kindergarten we go !! 🙂
I wonder if their minds ever left there. !
So where to start?
Let’s start with this gem:
“comparable warming happened over the periods 1920-1945 and 1990-2015.”
But according to climate science, we must consider the CO2 forcing as function of increase over baseline natural CO2 level.
1850 285 ppm (reference baseline)
1920 305 ppm : ln (305/285) = 0.07
1945 320 ppm : ln (320/285) = 0.12
1990 354 ppm : ln (354/285) = 0.22
2015 400 ppm: ln (400/285) = 0.34
From those numbers it is clear that the forcing increase due to CO2 increase from 1990-2015 (0.12) was more than double that of 1920-1945 (0.05), yet the oceans warmed comparably.
hmmm?
And then there’s this gem:
“We can then apply that information to anything else – for example manmade carbon or heat anomalies – that is transported by ocean circulation.”
So her “manmade carbon” is different as a tracer somehow from natural carbon in tracking it through the oceans?
Maybe she meant, “Mann-made carbon”, since we know that like Mann-made tree-rings, they have magical statistical properties when properly tortured with dubious statistical methods.
And then to top it off, she begins her Abstract with this sentence,
“Most of the excess energy stored in the climate system due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has been taken up by the oceans, leading to thermal expansion and sea level rise.”
And then “finds” from the study, “We find that the global ocean absorbed heat during this period at a rate of 0.30 ± 0.06 W/m2 in the upper 2000 m and 0.028 ± 0.026 W/m2 below 2000 m,…””
So she states as fact (or an assumption) that which she sets out to determine. And she even attributes it to anthropogenic gas emissions, the most of which we know were emitted after 1950, and comparably little before that could have warmed the oceans as they report.
There is name for that kind of science she practices. And it’s not good… and it’s not science.
Joel, your first two paragraphs are a powerful refutation of IPCC attribution. Lindzen made the same point explained slightly differently. And, it is contained but not explained in IPCC AR4 SPM figure 4, so ‘official’.
“Most of the excess energy stored in the climate system due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has been taken up by the oceans, leading to thermal expansion and sea level rise. ”
WR: The higher SST that have led to figure 2 could have been caused by less wind over the oceans. There is a high variability in wind speed / wind stress over the oceans. Less wind results in less mixing of the upper layers (warming) and in less deep oceanic upwelling (less cooling of the surface, also resulting in warming).
In that case the assumption that “Most of the excess energy stored in the climate system [is] due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions ” is wrong. Then more stored energy would be due to warmer surface waters that were caused by less wind. Not anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
And possibly there would not have been an extra energy uptake at all. After all no mechanism is known by which energy from above the surface could be taken up by the oceans.
The whole study could be a construct of assumptions.
They start off assuming what they will study, and then (magically) they find what they assumed was true.
It’s pure pseudoscience taken to an art form.
Hey, after 1960, aka “The Magic Year,” anything can happen. After all, in 1960, treemometers magically turned into NOT treemometers. How does that even happen? No one knows. It’s magic.
And it’s not just 1960. The same thing happens at the beginning and end of glaciation cycles. Something magical occurs 600-1000 years after the switch from glaciation to inter-glacial, something I’ll call FsubU, which stops whatever it was doing that caused those first few centuries of melting, and then mysteriously and lazily thing turns over the job of melting the rest of the ice (and there’s still a lot of it) to CO2. FsubU then simply vanishes! poof, like a pot of Leprechaun’s gold. What (or WHO) is/was FsubU? Where did FsubU go? No one knows. It’s a little frickin’ miracle. Then, thousands of years later, the ice is gone, nature is kicking along just fine in a nice warm world with lots of land not covered by ice, and then just as mysteriously, FsubU magically winks back into existence, has a cup of coffee and turns OFF the ability of CO2 to keep things warm, because while CO2 is at or near it’s highest peak, FsubU (or his cousin) makes the temperature start going down again even with much CO2 in the air! The ice starts coming back. I didn’t even think it was possible. How can a greenhouse gas NOT keep the planet warm when it already melted all that ice for centuries (minus 800 yrs) ? Color me amazed. Whatever this FsubU magical force is, it clearly has some PoWerZ that I don’t understand. It may even haz SKILLZ! It’s either very long-lived or more probably, immortal. Maybe it’s God? Maybe it’s Brian? Maybe it’s The Dude, since it was sort of lazy to force CO2 to do all those thousands of years of hard work, while it was taking a nap or gallivanting around the Universe doing whatever. It’s a real mystery. Want to know more? Ask the high priests at RealClimate to tell you. But don’t tell them you don’t believe in magic. Don’t them them that an effect cannot precede it’s cause. That just shows how weak in the ways of science you are. After all, it’s after 1960, so anything is possible.
Agreed! Not the least of which is that Green’s theorem, which applies only to circulation expressible as an analytic function, can explain the vagaries of real-world turbulent flow. There’s no end to what rank oceanographic novices imagine is happening in the oceans.
First of all, relatively accurate and comprehensive coverage of ocean temperature data wasn’t available until ARGO ocean buoy data went online in 2007…
Prior to ARGO data, ocean temperature data of the roughly 1.35 BILLION KM^3 of the world’s ocean volume was near zero%…
Second, there are many ocean warming factors other than CO2 to account for any ocean warming we’ve enjoyed following the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850: LIA recovery, El Nino events, PDO/AMO/NAO 30-year warm cycles, the 1933~1996 Grand Solar Maximum (strongest in 11,400 years), natural variation, natural changes of ocean currents, etc.
Third, oceans are one gigantic 1.35 billion KM^3 heat sink. According to Levitus et al 2011, the top 2,000 meters of oceans have only increased 0.09C between 1950~2010…. Oh, the humanity…
I’m sick and tired of CAGW alarmists using gigajoules to measure OHC to make the minuscule amount of actual ocean warming look catastrophic..
To assume CO2 is the ONLY major cause of ocean warming is simply the logical fallacies of argumentum petitio principii, and post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Let’s see what happens to ocean temps after 2021 when: The PDO/AMO/NAO are all in their respective 30-year ocean cool cycles, and when a 50-year Grand Solar Minimum event starts…
Can’t we just wait 5 years to see what changes these natural cooling phenomena have on global atmospheric and ocean temperatures before wasting $122 Trillion (2018 IPCC estimate) on this stupid CAGW hoax?
B-B-But by then it will be too late and we’re all DOOMED! You know, just like the last three times we have only “had [x number of] years to ACT to prevent [the human-induced climate catastrophe that never develops even though we DON’T “do” what they say we “must”/”save” the planet].
Prof Humlum @ climate4you->clouds->oceans shows how a reduction in cloud cover over the tropics (15N – 15S, that is mostly ocean) from 1983 – 2000 of about 5% is inversely correlated to the topical sea surface temperature and global surface temperature.
When you must resort to models and guess work you do not ‘know’ in any meaningful way.
And the author’s the advantage and problem when it comes to oceans is the same thing, given it scale there is very little actual measurements so a great deal can be claimed to ‘hidden’ in it, such has cities, space ships or heat , without fear of other others showing its not there at all.
Fiddling around with a duff hypothesis and a wish list of assumptions can hardly be considered productive. Mind you – Rich pickings in the grant area.
These scientists are destroying scientific reputation.
“More than 90% of this excess energy has been absorbed by the ocean,”
So all od the excess energy over the ocean drops down into the ocean, plus 20% of the excess energy over land travels sideways to the ocean, then drops down into the ocean.
Only 10% of the excess energy goes up. I didn’t know that about heat.
“Our reconstruction, which agrees with other estimates for the well-observed period, demonstrates that the ocean absorbed as much heat during 1921–1946 as during 1990–2015.”
AMO driven reductions in low cloud cover. And the AMO is normally warm during a solar minimum. Nice negative feedback.