Links to the previous rounds: 1, 2 and 3.
Gabriel Oxenstierna
The battle of climate hypotheses, Round 4:
The Green-house Gas Forcer vs. The Winter Gatekeeper
For the first time, the IPCC’s doctrine of CO2 as a ‘control knob’ in our climate faces a serious challenger in the form of a comprehensive hypothesis about what drives climate and its shifts. – This article is the fourth in a series evaluating this new hypothesis of natural climate variability, the so-called Winter Gate-keeper Hypothesis [WGH]. The basic concept of WGH is that natural variations in the polewards meridional transport of heat and moisture controls climate change.[1][2]
Alarmists, including the IPCC, love to speculate about tipping points. One of their favourites is that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), will shut down due to our emissions of greenhouse gases.[3][4]
The AMOC is an essential part of the global heat transport system. This is how bitterly cold the climate could get in parts of the North if it collapsed:[5]
Figure 1: Simulated outcome of an AMOC shutdown. Everything warms up significantly, except the North Atlantic and Northern Europe. Source: [7]
A collapsed AMOC would also lead to a host of knock-on effects due to ‘tele-connections’.We are warned that a weakening of AMOC would have severe impacts and increase the risk of “cascading problems” for other major Earth systems, “such as the Antarctic ice sheet, tropical monsoon systems and Amazon rainforest”.[6] Climate crise effects would occur in many other areas as well. Stormier weather, more floods, collapsed plankton production, and widespread oxygen death in the oceans (anoxia) are forecast, says the IPCC.[3] The issue of AMOC’s whereabouts is therefore of great interest.
The cold blob
The AMOC is like a giant conveyor belt of energy. It is primarily driven by the Denmark Strait overflow: warm and salty water from the northward extension of the Gulf Stream meets the cold ocean currents off south-east Greenland. There they sink to the bottom as a huge ‘waterfall’, with a drop of more than 3 000 meters (at the threshold of the Denmark Strait). The heavy, cold bottom water then flows south to the Southern Ocean, before turning north again.
A key part of the AMOC is the convection zone south of Iceland and Greenland, where we find the subpolar Atlantic gyre. The ocean current rotates counterclockwise around the so-called cold blob:
Figure 2. The thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic together with the surface water temperature trend from 1993 to 2021. Surrounding the cold spot with deep convection, the AMOC flows counterclockwise.
The cold blob is not only present at the surface but goes way down to the depths:[8]
Figure 3. Change in ocean heat for the top 2000 meters, from 1958-2023, [4] adapted from [8, fig 7]
The hypothesis that the AMOC is weakening is based on the existence of the cold blob as a long-term climate phenomenon in the North Atlantic, as the AMOC strength is strongly positively correlated with the cold blob temperature. A colder cold blob corresponds to a slower AMOC.[9][10]
The cold blob disappears!
However, it now appears that the feared slowdown of the AMOC isn’t happening at all. Deep-sea flow data show stable flows over the past 24 years. This was described in an article on WUWT, here.
In addition, the cold blob has more or less disappeared in recent years:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfKXLPJxDog
Figure 4: Animation of North Atlantic surface temperatures, annual anomalies for 2013-2023 compared to the average for the period 1979-2010. Monthly data show that it is mainly during summer and fall that the cold blob has disappeared measured as an anomaly, while it is still present during spring. Data: ECMWF ERA5
However, if we look at the long-term development of the sea surface temperature in the area, we find no significant trend, but that the development shown in the animation is part of an oscillation:
Figure 5. Sea surface temperature anomaly in the North Atlantic waters, (50N-65N; 50W-10W). Blue thick line is a Loess smooth. Climate shifts are marked with yellow, see a discussion of those here. Data source: NOAA ERSST V5
The cold blob comes and goes in multidecadal cycles. The 30 years from 1965-1995 were particularly cold. And this is not only true for the surface water, but equally so at depth: even the heat content at depth oscillates with the change in surface water temperature:
Figure 6. Heat content of deep water down to 1000 meters depth in the North Atlantic. The 1995-2005 climate shift is highlighted in yellow. Graph from the Met Office.
AMOC is known as a thermohaline circulation, where the word -haline means salt. AMOC is therefore not only about the transport of heat, but also about the transport of salt. The key to the circulation is the density of the water: the colder and saltier the water, the heavier it is. The saltiness comes from the AMOC passing through the tropics where evaporation is high, thus increasing the salinity in the Gulf Stream.
As the Gulf Stream (and its extension) flows northwards, cooling occurs by evaporation of the warm surface water and by heat being released to the colder surroundings. This increases salinity and thus the density of seawater in the area. Salinity determines the strength of the circulation: saltier water sinks faster to the bottom, thus driving it.
One could say that the AMOC circulates because the seawater in the North Atlantic is salty – and the water is salty precisely because the northward volume transport of the AMOC is so large. But there is also a negative feedback lurking here: when we periodically get increased freshwater inflows into the North Atlantic, the circulation of the AMOC is negatively affected. Fresh water is supplied as meltwater from Greenland and also from the Arctic as ice export through the Fram Strait.
Also the salinity shows oscillations. Observations show large-scale freshening events in the area of the cold blob:
Figure 7. Changes in salinity in the North Atlantic deep water measured as a freshwater volume anomaly (LFC). The 1995-2005 climate shift is highlighted in yellow. Source: [11]
The liquid freshwater content (‘LFC’ in figure 7) estimates demonstrate decade-long freshening events starting around 1965, 1980 and 2010. These events have been called ‘Great Salinity Anomalies’. They appear to be a natural mode of Arctic/Atlantic Ocean variability that have occurred for at least the last century.[11]
Increasing the influx of fresh water (which is less dense than saltier water) lowers the salinity of the upper layers, leading to a cold, fresh, light upper layer once cooled by the atmosphere, i.e. the cold blob. As a result, the AMOC is weakened.
However, there is a time lag in this pattern. The rate of warm to cold transformation of water masses at high latitudes is found to lead the observed AMOC at 45∘N by 5–6 years and to drive its strong, ongoing recovery as now seen in the vanishing cold blob.[12]
The climate system is characterized by oscillations
Oscillations in the Atlantic part of the Northern hemisphere are not limited to the cold blob, or the AMOC. Corresponding variations have been observed in the Arctic sea-ice cover, in the air up to the stratosphere, and in various climate indexes. The long-term variations in the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), or its close relative the Arctic oscillation, show similar turning points in their cumulatives. The oscillations of the cold blob and the NAO are e.g. closely linked on a multi-decadal scale.[9]
One example of these inter-dependent multi-decadal oscillations in the vicinity of the cold blob is the Arctic oscillation’s correspondence with the Arctic sea ice extent and solar cycle variations:
Figure 8. The Arctic Oscillation as a cumulative, detrended index over time is shown in blue (left scale, inverted). The sea ice extent at its minimum level in September in the Arctic is shown in brown (right scale, Mkm2). The minima of the 44-year solar cycle (2*22 years) are marked in yellow.[14] Ice extent is from satellite data from 1979, before that it is from the reconstruction in [15].
According to the WGH, these oscillations are linked to solar variations, and how they influence on the strength of the polar vortex, as well as the meridional transport (solar cycle variations are indicated with the yellow spots showing the solar cycle minima in figure 8). This is but one example. A whole range of similar oscillatory relationships are further described in figure 9 in the Appendix.
Summing up
According to the novel Winter Gate-keeper climate hypothesis, the main characteristic of the climate system is that it oscillates on different time scales. These oscillations control climate change via heat transport. The AMOC heat conveyor is a major part of the heat transport system that helps our climate to regulate itself.
The AMOC varies in irregular cycles. The cold blob is also a cyclical phenomenon in itself. This applies both to surface water temperature and salinity (Figures 5 and 7).
Advocates of climate tipping point events speculate that the climate functions as a quasi-linear system that reacts to radiative forcing coming from CO2 and other sources. The IPCC gives anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions the primary role in its speculations about AMOC developments, including suggested future tipping points.[3] The issue of natural variability is pertinent to all discussions on the AMOC, but remains unresolved.
Appendix: Multidecadal climate variability and meridional transport
Figure 9. Illustration of various multi-decadal oscillations and their connections with climate regimes and shifts. MT=Meridional transport. From figure 11.10 in [1].
a) Black line: Aleutian Low– Icelandic Low seesaw 25-year moving correlation as a proxy for polar vortex strength. Grey line: cumulative winter Arctic Oscillation index.
b) Black line: 4.5-year average of the AMO index. Grey line: cumulative 1870– 2020 detrended cold season (Nov– Apr average) NAO index.
c) Cumulative Pacific Decadal Oscillation, PDO. 1870– 2018 detrended annual average cumulative PDO index. Black dots mark the years 1925, 1946, 1976 and 1997 when PDO regime shifts took place.
d) Black line: zonal atmospheric circulation index, cumulative anomaly.
Grey line: 1900– 2020 inverted detrended annual ∆ Length Of Day.
e) Annual global surface average temperature, detrended. 10-year average.
f) Dashed line: 8.2– 16.6 years band-pass of the monthly mean total sunspot number. Grey line, 6.6– 11 years band-pass of the monthly AMO index. Black line: inverted 20-year running correlation of the band-pass sunspot and AMO data. Black dots as in c, showing their position with respect to solar minima.
References
[1] Vinós, Javier, Climate of the Past, Present and Future: A scientific debate, 2nd ed., Critical Science Press, 2022.
[2] Vinós, Javier. Solving the Climate Puzzle: The Sun’s Surprising Role, Critical Science Press, 2023.
[3] IPCC SROCC “Extremes, Abrupt Changes and Managing Risks”, Chapter 6.7, https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/3/2022/03/08_SROCC_Ch06_FINAL.pdf
[4] Is the Atlantic Overturning Circulation Approaching a Tipping Point?, Stefan Rahmstorf, Oceanography 2024, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2024.501
[5] Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, Ditlevsen, P., Ditlevsen, S., Nature 2023, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39810-w
[6] Overlooked possibility of a collapsed Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation in warming climate, Liu and 3 co-authors, Science 2017, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1601666
[7] Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points, Armstrong McKay and 5 co-authors, Science 2022, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7950
[8] Improved Quantification of the Rate of Ocean Warming, Cheng and 3 co-authors, AMS 2022, https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0895.1
[9] North Atlantic Oscillation contributes to the subpolar North Atlantic cooling in the past century, Fan and 3 co-authors, Clim Dyn 2023, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-023-06847-y
[10] Observed fingerprint of a weakening Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation, Caesar and 4 co-authors, Nature 2018, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0006-5
[11] Arctic freshwater impact on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: status and prospects, Thomas W. N. Haine, 2023
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2022.0185
[12] Surface predictor of overturning circulation and heat content change in the subpolar North Atlantic, Desbruyères and 3 co-authors, EGU Ocean Science 2019, https://doi.org/10.5194/os-15-809-2019
[13] Coupled stratosphere-troposphere-Atlantic multidecadal oscillation and its importance for near-future climate projection, Omrani and 6 co-authors, Nature 2022, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-022-00275-1
[14] Periodicities observed in the solar and geomagnetic indexes and in SABER thermospheric infrared power measurements, Nowak and 4 co-authors, Science 2024, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2024.106234
[15] On assessment of the relationship between changes of sea ice extent and climate in the Arctic, Alekseev and 2 co-authors, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.4550
Links to the previous rounds: 1, 2 and 3.
If a weakening of AMOC would plunge Europe into the cold, then a strengthening of AMOC will make it warmer. The observational fact is that Europe has become marginally warmer over the past half century, and everybody knows it. Hence the observational evidence and everyday experience tells us that even if the AMOC has changed it most certainly has not weakened, while atmospheric carbon dioxide content has increased by 40% since , say 1970.
Observational evidence also tells us that CO2 content is changing because of temperature.
See graph I posted below. 🙂
I think the graph should be displayed here, after LT3’s comment
I was look at one of LT3’s graph and it started me wondering…
So I got the Moana Loa CO2 data from 1979 onwards, and calculated the per annum changes.
I then took UAH Ocean data and graphed it on the same chart (scaled it x3+2 so they sort of aligned)..
… and got the following graph.
Looks to me that the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 is strongly linked to the ocean atmospheric temperature, lagged by a month or so.
Note.. I changed the colours so the ocean was blue.
What if you just looked at the UK, Ireland and Northern Europe? (To avoid averaging with the unAMOC Mediterranean area)
What impact did the clean air acts have in increasing Tmax owing to less cooling SO2?
I just love evidence that mikey is flagrantly wrong.
Related…
UK Summer Has Gone Missing…
The three hot days are about to start for some
Not global? / sarc
This can all be explained by a natural ~60 year Arctic oscillation based on the properties of water. WGH is unnecessary. Of course, AGW is also unnecessary.
Exactly which of the properties of water causes a 60 year oscillation?
The ~60 years is probably more related to the size of the Arctic basin. The properties of water have to do with freezing, insulating and floating ice.
When sea ice is frozen, floating and covering the Arctic it allows the air above to get very cold due to its insulating properties. This cold air then affects the lower latitudes via the polar vortex meandering. The sea ice also insulates the water beneath. Over time the water warms from the heat of the Earth. The sea ice prevents this energy from venting to the atmosphere.
This starts the 2nd phase. The warmer water eventually starts melting the sea ice. This allows energy to start venting to the atmosphere. Now there is not as much cold air which, relatively speaking, warms the adjacent parts of the NH. As this continues, the ocean water loses it’s heat and the sea ice once again starts to form.
Rinse and repeat.
A very simple process driven by sea ice and geography. This is likely what drives the AMO index aka the 60 year cycle.
With this cycle spinning over the millennial cycle (salinity driven) we now have a basis for the warming seen since the depths of the Little Ice Age.
Story Tip
Extinction Rebellion founder jailed for five yearsRoger Hallam handed record sentence after being found guilty of conspiring to block traffic on the M25
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/18/extinction-rebellion-founder-jailed-for-five-years/
Excellent!
The man is genuinely mentally deranged. I have watched him interviewed a few times and have seen saner people referred for psychiatric care.
HotScot,
I would not necessarily say that he needs professional help. It’s just that he (like many others at JSO) operate on a different belief system than we here at WUWT do. That is what happens when we allow ourselves to listen to the wrong people.
Yes, and the article goes on to say that…..
“Four other activists were given four-year sentences for the protests, in which demonstrators climbed the gantry above the motorway and displayed Just Stop Oil banners.
The court heard that each of the defendants had recruited activists over a Zoom call to take part in the demonstration, which the prosecution said had caused economic damage of nearly £750,000 and cost the police £1 million.
Daniel Shaw, 38, from Northampton, Lucia Whittaker De Abreu, 34, from Derby, Louise Lancaster, 58, from Cambridge, and Cressida Gethin, 22, from Hereford, were all sentenced to four years in prison.”
***********
The British court system comes through! I think I’m having a good Thursday.
That ought to serve as a little bit of deterrence.
How many “Just Stop Oil” activists want to go to jail? Probably not many, but it is a distnct possiblity now. Don’t do it! You’re on notice!
Perhaps… but ONLY if the other activists are made AWARE of these jail sentences. Push it!
Some justice for a change
The plot thickens – is Ms Gethin named Cressida after the Viz comic character Cressida Wright-Pratt of The Modern Parents? It would fit, both chronologically and psychiatrically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Modern_Parents#:~:text=4%20References-,Malcolm%20and%20Cressida,parents%20to%20Tarquin%20and%20Guinevere.
The paper describes several ocean oscillations occurring over periods of some decades. There are ocean currents that take up to 1,000 years to make a complete cycle. I suspect that there are many other very long term oscillations yet to be discovered.
“The AMOC is an essential part of the global heat transport system.”
Coining words to describe a process, reducing the words to an acronym, then using the acronym as a noun moves the conversation better but opens many doors to hand-waving.
The negative NAO regimes 1995-1999 and 2005-2012 caused a slowing of the MOC and a warming of the AMO, due to generally weaker solar wind states since 1995.
2013-2018 had a positive NAO regime, driving a slightly faster MOC, and the well known ‘cold blob’. Though there were also colder AMO anomalies around the previous sunspot cycle maximum 2000-2004, where the solar wind was also stronger at and for a couple of years after cycle maximum.
Since 2019 there has been a generally negative NAO regime, so the cold blob should have gone, but it should also return over the next few years.
The number of disruptions that have been occurring in the Stratosphere since around 2015 are astonishing.
In what way?
I have been trying to study the drop in aviation from the lockdown, but as you can see on the top graph Transmission recorded the effects from the multi-year period of large brushfires from Australia before the lockdown, which theoretically should have been causing cooling.
And then Hunga Tonga goes off, pushes the climate state the other direction, and I am like cool a grand radiative experiment by nature, (a gift from God to a scientist) H2O is causing warming, we have an estimate of H2O in the Stratosphere and a noticeable effect, all we have to do is observe the lapse right for a couple of years.
We warmed substantially last year, as physics demands, all we have to do is see how this year responds as last of the HT water vapor cycles out of the Stratosphere.
And then, notice on last 3 samples of Transmission show a significant drop, the largest Canadian Wildfire in recent times, which emitted a significant number of particulates into the Stratosphere, and now we are cooling much faster than the lapse rate of HT. There goes my lapse rate estimate.
And the duration of particulates is not long enough to get excited about, as far as an experiment in which new insight can be acquired.
Negative feedbacks are exploding all over the planet right now.
What’s next…
Also, on the Transmission graph you can see a linear segment throughout 2023, the fires in Hawaii caused damage to the Mauna Loa instrumentation and it was offline for over a year. Never a good time to lose a data feed, but over the duration of the warmest year we have ever lived, that sucketh.
Now we finally get to see the effects of HT start working on the North Pole.
Time to prepare for alarmist shrieking over fears of trace gasses again.
Charctic Interactive Sea Ice Graph | Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis (nsidc.org)
Ocean and Ice Services | Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut (dmi.dk)
Also, we are under the influence from the late 2023 Canadian massive forest fire particulates, in which that cloud is over the mid lats now, the Arctic is feeling it now as well as the blob.
The first few months of the year the arctic was balanced by the smoke particulates and the HT vapor.
Crazy dynamics right now, over the mid lats and equator we have particulates but not much HT water vapor. But the poles have highest concentrations of HT water vapor.
It is being expelled through the polar regions currently.
ESRL Global Monitoring Laboratory – Global Radiation and Aerosols (noaa.gov)
Can’t see anything untoward in Arctic sea ice.
We are just starting to see the effects on the Arctic, IMHO.
But I expect to see a lower than normal Arctic sea ice response this year, perhaps not as dramatic as the Antarctic response.
There were some undulations going on in Antarctic sea ice a few years before HT, but what else could be the cause of the last two years but a radiative process.
I have not really looked at the Antarctic ice issue, if the loss was not symmetrically distributed around the continent, there could be some other factors at play. But it is unprecedented in the dataset.
Sea ice is not a well-behaved metric because of the uncertainty of temperature vs wind fluctuations causing the perturbations. And the North and South pole with their sometimes inverted behavior leaves more questions than answers about climatic responses.
Ok, Yes the Antarctic sea ice certainly was affected last year, but looks like not as much year.
Let’s wait and see how the Arctic sea ice progresses 🙂
“but what else could be the cause of the last two years but a radiative process.”
A warmer ocean current, maybe ?
The Southern gyre goes straight passed HT and could feed warmer water into the Antarctic circulation. That would push the freeze point further south, decreasing the formation of sea ice.
I haven’t looked at any detail either, where was most of the Antarctic sea ice deficit last year ?
Here is a better way to look at the Arctic.
I have not brought this up yet, because I do not have a feeling if I am right. But the polar amplification phenomenon is easily explained by the fact that the jet lanes are much more active with progression toward the north.
If I plot from 1980 – 2020 every decade, you should be able to compute what arctic sea ice should be based on the amount of aviation water vapor that is emitted. Antartic sea ice should not, because there is insufficient aviation activity in the Southern Hemisphere.
In the plot below everything is spaced out accordingly except 1990 and 2000 do not have much separation. The Arctic has already been under the effect since the start of aviation.
That is why Antartica has been so stable for decades and now has pulled back a little.
That is also why there is an increased global warming gradient from South to North.
‘The battle of climate hypotheses, Round 4: The Green-house Gas Forcer vs. The Winter Gatekeeper’
Both hypotheses are wrong. Well actually, while the green-house gas forcer hypothesis is almost totally wrong, the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis, while essentially correct, is just a small part of the overall picture.
Firstly, it is ocean temperatures that control atmospheric temperatures, and not vice-versa. This is dictated by the following facts:
Secondly, variations in atmospheric climate are the result of variations in the ocean’s heat balance.
Thirdly, there is a fundamental flaw in the ‘green-house gas forcer’ theory.
Water vapor causes clouds which reduce solar energy in the ocean which is why cooling and heating are cyclical.
Yes, you are right, but only partially so.
The very high evaporation rates achieved at water temperatures > 28C are achieved not only due to the increased vapor pressure of water with increased temperature, but also due to increased wind and waves, which are a secondary effect of increased of evaporation (i.e. a self-reinforcing process).
The wind and waves take time to get wound up and take time to wind down. Thus excess evaporative cooling due to the wind and waves, in addition to the effect of clouds that you mention, will cause the ocean to over-shoot an equilibrium temperature during the cooling phase of the cooling and heating cycles. Likewise, in the warming phase, the time that it takes for the wind and waves to get wound up means that the water temperatures will over-shoot an equilibrium temperature in this direction as well.
Basically heating and cooling are cyclical because the temperature overshoots equilibrium in either direction due to the hysteresis between water evaporation and the secondary effects of water evaporation which are wind, waves and ‘clouds’.
To add to dh-mtl’s response:
High evaporation at water temperatures >28°C is only half the equation.
When that evaporation rides a rising column of air and condenses is when the clouds form.
Thanks for your comment, dh-mtl
The global circulation of the ocean and atmosphere is highly complex, with multiple modes of variability, oscillations, teleconnections, and modulations. At its core this complexity can be traced back to a simple underlying cause — the variable transport of energy from its point of entry to its point of exit. This fundamental climate variable is critical in determining the latitudinal temperature gradient and, ultimately, whether the planet is experiencing a glacial, interglacial, or hothouse period. This is what the WGH claims.
There are several chapters in Javier Vinos two books dedicated to showing why the atmosphere takes precedence over the ocean in climatic developments.
See e.g. ch 10.2 in [1]
or ch. 9 and 10 in [2]
I strongly recommend you to study his books to better understand the workings of the climate. The ‘puzzle’ book [2] is more accessible.
Yes, I have read several of Javier’s reports that refer to his work. And in the future, I will pay more attention to them.
However, I continue to believe that fundamentally atmospheric weather and climate is driven by three factors.
And as I have said in my original comment, the most important factor that constrains ocean surface temperatures, and thus global atmospheric temperatures, inspite of often significant variations in the ocean heat balance, is the extreme sensitivity of evaporative cooling to tropical ocean temperatures.
This is only partly correct. The energy flux at the ocean-atmosphere boundary is greatly controlled by the atmosphere through the action of wind. Wind is more important in determining the amount of evaporation than temperature, and wind is very important in determining how much subsurface heat makes it to the surface. El Niño and La Niña are the result of the action of trade winds in the Pacific equatorial region. When trade winds are strong La Niña conditions occur, and the opposite happens when trade winds are weak or invert.
The oceans provide inertia to the climate system. Currently they are soaking up a lot of heat reducing global warming. And they do this not because they are getting more energy from the Sun, but because they are releasing less heat to the atmosphere. If the planet was cooling the ocean would be releasing heat to reduce the cooling.
The ocean does not change the climate. It provides stability. The atmosphere is the climate changer.
You can read an excerpt from my book that includes a full chapter on how the ocean transports heat, and I am sure some of the things it contains will surprise you:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/375120132_Solving_the_Climate_Puzzle_The_Sun's_Surprising_Role
Javier,
Thanks for your reply to my comment.
I don’t think that there is anything in your reply that I would disagree with or which contradicts what I posted in my comment.
They only point that I would like to emphasize is that high rates of evaporation are themselves a cause of the winds, both as a result of the density differences of moist air versus dry air, and the effects of cloud cover. It is a self-reinforcing process, high water temperatures increase evaporation which drives wind which drives more evaporation which drives even more wind and waves which drives even more evaporation, until the ocean surface is over-cooled and can no longer support high rates of evaporation. This is the basic process that drives hurricanes, and ENSO as well.
dh-mtl, thank you for commenting.
Winds are complicated and we do not understand them. As the rest of the climate variables wind speeds present multidecadal trends and abrupt shifts. See for example:
Zeng, Z., et al., 2019. A reversal in global terrestrial stilling and its implications for wind energy production. Nature Climate Change, 9(12), pp.979-985.
Three processes control sea surface evaporation. Water temperature, air relative humidity, and wind speed. Of the three, wind speed is the most important because it brings unsaturated air in contact with water surface. This is forgotten when only the Clausius-Clapeyron relation is considered in climatic studies, assuming that wind is a constant. It is not. At the micro-scale it is Clausius-Clapeyron, but at the macro-scale it is the wind, as anybody who hangs cloths to dry knows well.
ENSO is driven by the trade winds in response to pressure differences at both sides of the Pacific. Wind changes come first, temperature differences are the consequence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ni%C3%B1o%E2%80%93Southern_Oscillation
This is why solar activity affects ENSO, through atmospheric changes that are imposed on the ocean resulting in temperature changes much bigger than the difference in solar energy could account for.
Slightly OT, but seems a good place to put it.
I was look at one of LT3’s graph and it started me wondering…
So I got the Moana Loa CO2 data from 1979 onwards, and calculated the per annum changes.
I then took UAH Ocean data and graphed it on the same chart (scaled it x3+2 so they sort of aligned)..
… and got the following graph.
Looks to me that the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 is strongly linked to the ocean atmospheric temperature, lagged by a month or so.
(disclaimer, its early morning and I haven’t had coffee yet)
Very nice.
By an inconvenient coincidence the “cold blob” ‘s disappearance come in the wake of the highest sea surface temperature anomaly and lowest summer ice extent thus far in the history of oceanography.
But who is the Oceanographer of the Navy to dispute the authority of a neurologist publishing in a pay to play journal?
“lowest summer ice extent thus far in the history of oceanography.”
Not according to NSIDC. Pick pretty much any year from 2007 onwards and there’s not a lot of difference in summer extent – sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less.
And what on earth does being Oceanographer of the Navy got to do with anything? The ideas presented in the above article stand or fall on their own merit – it matters not a jot what the academic background of the author is, nor where the ideas were published.
“ lowest summer ice extent thus far in the history of oceanography.”
NOT remotely.
Arctic sea ice is actually in the top 5% or so of the last 10,000 years.
Your last sentence is meaningless gibberish
That’s not true. Here’s the data:
And here’s the temperature record which it very much reflects.
How alarming…
A specious 1850-1900 global average temperature.
Equally specious squiggles without years global average temperature.
And the topper? A very specious 2023 and 2024 Global Average temperature.
All without the lower axis so days cannot be checked.
Don’t you just love graphs where the presenter chops off one axis?
Just 5 days ago, this was presented regarding Arctic Sea Ice:
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/NSIDC-June-2024-average-ice-extent_3-July-2024-jpeg.webp?resize=595%2C720&ssl=1
Where the Arctic Sea Ice is steadily increasing each year.
Or are you claiming the Antarctic sea ice has been plummeting as the Antarctic is deep in winter?
“neurologist publishing in a pay to play journal” – that’s not me, so who are you referring to, is it Javier Vinós? His books are published with a small publishing house, Critical Science Press.
Three sudden stratospheric warmings in the northern polar vortex during the past boreal winter and an unprecedented early one in the southern polar vortex during this austral winter require an explanation that the increase in CO₂ cannot provide. It seems I understand better what is going on than Gavin Schmidt and co.
My Ph.D. is in Science. It didn’t come with a list of disciplines I could not research. Coming from an experimental science i can see what a mess they have made with climate science. The scientific method is being thoroughly neglected.
Javier, there are tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journals in this world that do not charge to publish work disinterested reviewers think reproducible and scientifically sound
There are also hundreds that publish for money, some of which have earned the designation “predatory” , because while pre-internet vanity presses like Vantage never had any pretension to objectivity, neither did they sue those pointing to their mercenary business model.
There has been great progress in bibliometrics since then , and the one you have chosen over the majority in the here and now is both litigious and notorious in its own right.
As surely as one should not judge books by their covers, one can judge their novelty and appeal to scientific curiosity by the breadth of their sales, or the lack thereof. Just how many copies of yours were printed, how many climate journals have reviewed it and and how many libraries , public and academic, have bought it to put on their shelves/
Javier knows the publishing field much better than you suppose.
As a scientist, I know the academic publishing world well. The truth is that most scientific papers and books aren’t read by anyone.
This is true. A few papers are very popular and everyone cites them, and many more get a bunch of citations, but a huge number of papers get very few or no citations other than from their own authors in their next papers.
My first book is very cheap in e-book format, and can be downloaded for free from a number of places, including my Researchgate page. The number of copies distributed between free and paid is over 10,000. For a scientific book, this is a huge bestseller. Much, much better than if I had published it with Springer as I had originally planned. The price would have been $190 and nobody would have read it.
Writing a paper is a lot of work and time. Once published, it is usually ignored, unless the author belongs to a scientific circle where people cite and promote each other’s papers, which is not the case for an outsider skeptic like me.
Nevertheless, I am now writing a paper. The reason is that there are a number of mistakes in solar-climate research that have been repeated over and over again for decades, and I want to set them straight. Since it is a very small subfield where not many papers are published, I hope it will be read by the right people to correct these mistakes.
‘The number of copies distributed between free and paid is over 10,000. For a scientific book, this is a huge bestseller.’
Impressive! And well worth it, i would add.
“Gavin Schmidt and co.” are paid to not be honest about weather or climate science.
“Oceanographer of the Navy”
Oh!?
Sounds like an appointed position, not one gained by education and experience.
And that is in a Navy responding to leftists’ demanding the Navy address climate change.
Discussion lost on your part.
NOAA has published, several times, a scary graph the increase in ocean heat content temperature in joules.
Now, seeing the sub polar ocean heat content temperature graph in joules posted above, I am wondering if they’ve been cherry picking graph slopes for their alarmism?
Thankfully, Willis Eschenbach converted the joules back to degrees centigrade and identified the massive increase in ocean heat content identified by NOAA as converting to a tiny fraction of a degree centigrade per decade.
NOAA should be expected to tell us where the current ocean heat content rise went?
Figure 6. Heat content of deep water down to 1000 meters depth covers only the North Atlantic.
I believe the NOAA ocean heat content data can be trusted as they to a largre degree are measured in situ by ARGO boyeus.