June 25, 2019
by Kevin Krajick, Columbia University
The tropical Pacific Ocean (Australia and South America in gray, left and right). Top map shows what climate models say sea-surface temperatures should be doing in response to rising greenhouse gases, including pronounced warming of waters along the equator. Bottom map shows what the waters are actually doing; the equatorial waters are remaining relatively cool. Credit: Seager et al., Nature Climate Change 2019
State-of-the-art climate models predict that as a result of human-induced climate change, the surface of the Pacific Ocean should be warming—some parts more, some less, but all warming nonetheless. Indeed, most regions are acting as expected, with one key exception: what scientists call the equatorial cold tongue. This is a strip of relatively cool water stretching along the equator from Peru into the western Pacific, across quarter of the earth’s circumference. It is produced by equatorial trade winds that blow from east to west, piling up warm surface water in the west Pacific, and also pushing surface water away from the equator itself. This makes way for colder waters to well up from the depths, creating the cold tongue.
Climate models of global warming—computerized simulations of what various parts of the earth are expected to do in reaction to rising greenhouse gases—say that the equatorial cold tongue, along with other regions, should have started warming decades ago, and should still be warming now. But the cold tongue has remained stubbornly cold.
This troubles many scientists, because the cold tongue plays a key role in global climate. For example, it affects the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a natural cyclic strengthening and weakening of the trade winds that causes cooling and warming of the eastern Pacific surface every two to seven years. ENSO is the world’s master weather maker; depending on which part of the cycle it is in, its echoes in the atmosphere may bring heavy rains or drought across much of the Americas, east Asia and east Africa. Whether the cold tongue warms will likely affect weather across huge regions. Resulting shifts could affect world food supplies and outbreaks of dangerous weather. But our predictions of those shifts rest on climate models.
HT/Willis E
I can visualize Willis E sitting on his nice stone patio chuckling too himself.
Timely article.
The ENSO is “rolling over” and the Spotless Days Count just accomplished a rare 35-Day run.
Worthwhile comments from the informed.
Even those from the true believers are informative.
Alternative headline for this item:
“Scientist licks models with cold tongue”
That’ll bring in the tabloid readers.
The more I think about the ocean’s role in heat control, the more I wonder how the Earth can warm much more than it already has.
If the atmosphere heats up (for whatever reason), it has to be transferring some of that heat to the surface of the ocean. This increases water evaporation, which should increase convection, which increase heat transfer into the upper atmosphere, which lowers the temperature.
As long as you have significant water, there has to be a temperature cap that the warming atmosphere can approach but never exceed. You can make the Earth overall more moderate in temperature, but I do not see how you can exceed the temperature cap. Eventually there would be so much cloud formation as to reflect most sunlight directly back into space, so again, another temperature cap. You can make a rainy world, but not a hot world.
This would nicely explain why parts of the world used to be forested or grasslands, and is now desert or tundra.
Must be something wrong with the data. Couldn’t be models or the underlying theories behind them.
Are you suggesting the models don’t understand long cycles or have averaged them out to zero or small values (solar) when the science and records for these long cycles are not well established. That includes amplitude, cycle length, and cycle influences on other systems.
Herewith….
http://climate4you.com/images/PDO%20MonthlyIndexSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/images/AMO%20GlobalAnnualIndexSince1856%20With11yearRunningAverage.gif
And that grouped cycles have not been considered in the case of solar cycles, such as SC 12-16?
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
Does that make equatorial wind a denier…that must be ignored?
Maybe reality isn’t matching what the models predict because the models are wrong in their assumptions. Real science says that you observe a certain behavior, you come up with a theory to explain the behavior, you design a model to test the theory, then check the model results against observations to validate the theory. If the model forecasts don’t match the observations, then no matter how elegant the model and theory are, you reject the theory and model and work to develop a new theory and model to explain the observations. You don’t modify the data to fit the model forecasts, your don’t change your predictions of what will happen midstream to fit the data, and you don’t demonize people who have legitimate arguments against your model or have their own models that do a better job of predicting future and past observations of the behavior.
It is evidence like this that demonstrates modeling climates is beyond our human ability. How many more anomalies exist in the world that we have not even discovered? It is worth the effort to continue studying the climate but attempting to mandate massive changes to our way of life trying to alter future climate is foolish at best and could be disastous if extreme measures are taken.
If rising CO2 can’t heat up Neptune’s equatorial cold tongue – then how could anyone possibly expect it to heat up all of Mother Earth’s ? How many times must a hypothesis be licked by contradictory evidence before it is deemed unworthy of the pedestal position where many a pundit of ill – repute have placed her ?
Is there a problem with this post?
‘Bottom map shows what the waters are actually doing; the equatorial waters are remaining relatively cool.’
But I see only one map?! Where is the second map?
Loydo June 26, 2019 at 10:34 pm
“The climate computer models are worthless nonsense…”
Excerpt – this is important:
Completely false, they help billions of people every day
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Loydon how come you’re fantasising climate models helping people everyday when it’s weather forecasts based on real world day to day observation that help billions of people every day.
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The difference:
Climate is a coupled system of nonlinear functions with chaotic behaviour.
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&ei=mScaXde3Cun3qwH2pZbQBg&q=is+a+coupled+system+of+nonlinear+functions+witch+chaotic+behaviour&oq=is+a+coupled+system+of+nonlinear+functions+witch+chaotic+behaviour&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-serp.
– which helps no-one till today.