Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I kept reading that warming oceans around Antarctica are melting the ice shelves. However, I’ve also read that Antarctica hasn’t warmed in seven decades. Say what?
So I thought I’d take a look at the trends in ocean temperatures. As usual in climate, the results were not what I might have expected.
I used the Reynolds Optimally Interpolated sea surface temperature (SST) dataset. It is built on satellite and in-situ data, and starts in 1982. Here are the SST trends in that dataset.
Like I said … not what I expected. Cooling around almost all of Antarctica. Cooling in the Pacific clearly demarcated by the Equator. Cooling in the center of the North Atlantic.
About the only thing I did expect was that the La Nina Pump is working harder to keep the temperature stable. This is reflected in the eastern Pacific cooling, along with the warming where the La Nina pump moves the warmer water first westward and from there towards the North and South Poles.
But why the cooling in the center of the South Atlantic? Why the cooling north of Greenland, but not south of Greenland?
Gotta love “settled science” … mysteries are wonderful.
Best wishes to everyone, stay healthy, stay crazy …
w.
My Usual Request: I can defend my own words, as can most folks. But I can’t defend your interpretations of my own words. So when you comment, please quote the exact words you are discussing. If you don’t, I am likely to wax wroth …
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“the La Nina Pump is working harder to keep the temperature stable”
Don’t think so. When La Nina is working hard we get the opposite pattern, warming of the south and cooling of the north. No trace of heat being pumped north.
Image link is broken so I can’t comment.
w.
Sorry, hope I’m allowed to do this…
First page here:
https://virakkraft.com/GISSmap_zonal-warming.pdf
“the La Nina Pump is working harder to keep the temperature stable”
ENSO drives the largest inter-annual variability. It drives warming when the solar wind is weaker, and drives cooling when the solar wind is stronger, like the AMO does on longer scales.
Ulric, could you provide a link to the solar wind data that you say is related to ENSO?
Thanks,
w.
I use the OMNI data. The main point though is that ENSO and the AMO don’t keep the temperature stable, they drive the biggest variability, globally, and regionally.
LINK, PLEASE!!! That doesn’t help.
w.
It doesn’t help saying that ENSO keeps the temperature stable. It does act as a negative feedback, but amplified, so it has considerable overshoot.
“Overshoot” is a required feature for any thermoregulatory system governing a lagged variable … which surface temperature assuredly is.
When the surface water in the Eastern Pacific gets really hot, the La Nina pump moves that water first westwards, then polewards where it can radiate to space more freely. It also exposes a large area of cool water to cool the atmosphere.
It absolutely helps to cap Pacific temperatures.
w.
““Overshoot” is a required feature for any thermoregulatory system governing a lagged variable”
Why? A servo control of a system with inertia shouldn’t do motor-boating.
“When the surface water in the Eastern Pacific gets really hot..”
That’s the negative feedback in action, either due to weaker solar wind states, volcanic aerosols, or orbital forcing changes over millennia. El Nino was largely absent during the Holocene Thermal Optimum, and increased from about 5500 years ago, and during glacial maximum states there are near permanent El Nino conditions.
Increasing poleward heat transport increases the mean global surface temperature. And the warmer SST’s also reduce low cloud cover apart from in the central tropics and Arctic.
Ulric Lyons::
There is NO such thing as as a “La Nina heat pump”.
All La Ninas are caused by random volcaniic eruptions, at least up to the start of the Industrial Revolution. A few after then were caused by high levels of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution.
When the volcanic SO2 aerosols eventually settle out, they usually form a volcanic-induced El Nino.
Nonsense, volcanic eruptions cause El Nino conditions.
No. NOT nonsense.
El Ninos are caused by decreased levels of SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere, which results in increased insolation.
With respect to volcanoes, when their SO2 aerosols (fine droplets of H2SO4) settle out of the atmosphere, they coalesce with others in the atmosphere, flushing enough of them out to cause temperatures to rise enough to form an El Nino.
Applies to all VEI4 and higher eruptions, except those closely followed by another eruption.
No the solar dimming drives El Nino conditions. Study the literature.
Ulrich Lyons:
There have been FAR more El Ninos (at least 45 since 1850) than there ave been periods of “solar dimming”.since then.
Explain them, please.
there are FAR mor
Got once the weather data (but did not save the link, sorry) from the French base Dumont-d’Urville since 1956. Made the diagrams (attached). No warming except for winter months getting colder from 2005 on.
Like I said … not what I expected.
============
Examine your assumptions. Do you generally accept that increasing CO2 should lead to warming? In which case you will find a lack of warming unexpected.
This is not meant personally. From observation, WUWT for some time has generally appeared to be in the “lukewarm” camp. I believe this is a mistake. CO2 may lead to warming, cooling, or no effect and there is no person on earth that knows the answer.
The evidence? For 2 generations, tens of thousands of researchers, and hundreds of billions of dollars invested have not been able to improve the uncertainty in climate sensitivity. In mathematics, when you see something like this, it suggests that climate sensitivity is non-physical. In which case, to paraphrase Bertrand Russell, you can prove anything (and prove nothing).
In other words, the GHG theory is likely wrong. We already know that real greenhouses enhance warming by controlling convection, not by LW/SW filtering of radiation, contrary to long time error of belief. Likely the same error applies to the greenhouse model of earth.
Your finding is further evidence that the GHG theory of warming is not correct.
ferdberple April 24, 2021 10:35 am
Nope, I don’t accept that. So it appears that YOUR assumptions are incorrect.
Also, there isn’t a “lack of warming”. The warming is about a tenth of a degree per decade.
What I didn’t expect was the distribution of the locations of the cooling, as I thought I’d made clear. However, clarity from my side doesn’t always mean clarity from anyone else’s side …
w.
Ferderple:
“and there is no person on Earth that knows the answer”
Our climate is controlled solely by changing amounts of dimming SO2 aerosols circulating in our atmosphere, which affects the intensity of the sun’s rays striking the Earth’s surface..
CO2 has ZERO effect.
The detail is not enough to show what is going on in the little blob between Madeira and Portugal. Having seen a major (10,000+ sq miles) smooth in that area I’m interested in the reason. BTW, do the ocean warm blobs match the major gyres? As these could be concentrating floating pollution that might be an explanation.
JF
Quick notes: