By Andy May
My last post on the AMO and HadCRUT5 generated some interest and some criticism. As I explained, there are two common methods of computing the AMO index. One is to fit a least squares line to the AMO SSTs (sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic) and use the line to detrend the AMO, creating an index. This was the original methodology as described by Enfield, et al. and Gray, et al. It is the method I prefer because it makes no assumptions about the origin of the increasing SSTs in the North Atlantic.
The other method, recommended by Trenberth & Shea, is to subtract the GMST (global mean surface temperature anomaly) from the AMO temperature anomaly. They believe this is better because the GMST warming is due to “anthropogenic changes” which mask the natural AMO oscillation. Thus, they assume global warming is entirely man-made and can “fix” the AMO by subtracting it. After subtracting the GMST, there is still an oscillation, but it is reduced in amplitude (Trenberth & Shea, 2006).
Trenberth and Shea further criticize the original AMO index as having no physical meaning. While this is true, it is also unbiased and not tainted with unwarranted assumptions about the cause of global warming. In this post we will show that the long-term trend evident in the raw North Atlantic sea surface temperature record can also be removed using the well-documented Bray Solar Cycle. The long-term signal observed since the Little Ice Age ended in 1850 may be due to increasing solar activity, at least in part. I am not saying that the Bray Solar Cycle is the cause of the long-term warming within the raw AMO region SST data, I’m just saying it could be. This invalidates Trenberth and Shea’s assumption that human activities are the cause. It is their assumption that is in question.
In May & Crok (download the final submitted version here), we used the common NOAA/Kaplan AMO region unsmoothed actual AMO temperature record before detrending. Figure 1 shows the raw and unsmoothed ERSST v5 data for the AMO North Atlantic region (equator to 70N), the ERSST record for the AMO region is similar to the NOAA/Kaplan record. The HadSST 4.1 is different because it is not infilled and has gaps that jump around with time (see figure 3 here).
James Bray first described the Bray climate cycle in a classic paper in Nature in 1968. For more complete discussions of the Bray climate and solar cycle see here and here. He used fossil evidence of glacial advances and retreats around the world to show there was a distinct pattern of changes that was around 2500 years in length. He speculated, based on sunspot and auroral records that a matching solar cycle existed. Much later Ilya Usoskin established the Hallstatt or Bray solar cycle using 14C and 10Be cosmogenic isotope records that reflect solar activity. Usoskin found that the most likely recent Bray cycle low periods were centered about 1510AD and 810BC. We used these dates and a cosine function to create the Bray trend shown in figure 1. A plot showing both “Bray low” cold periods and more of the Bray solar cycle is shown in figure 2. Figure 2 is very oversimplified, figure 2 here provides more detail.
The computed trend hits its low points near Usoskin’s dates (±20 years) and is arbitrarily scaled from -1 to 1. We are not saying that all multi-century climate trends are due to the Bray Cycle or that it acts alone, long-term climate changes involve many complex factors (see here). This post is simply contesting Trenberth and Shea’s anthropogenic assumption and offers a simple, but plausible alternative. Trenberth and Shea did not consider that changes in the Sun may have contributed to recent warming.
In figure 3 we show the ERSST v5 AMO region SSTs detrended using the light blue dotted least squares line shown in figure 1.
In figure 4 we detrended the ERSST v5 AMO region SSTs with the Bray solar cycle line shown in orange in figure 1. The result is very similar to that shown in figure 3. They are not exactly the same and some of the difference between the two may be due to human activities or emissions, but the main point is that there is no reason to assume global warming is 100% human caused. Changes in solar activity that have been documented by James Bray and Ilya Usoskin and their colleagues could have caused some of the longer-term warming evident in the raw North Atlantic SSTs shown in figure 1.
Conclusions
The Bray Solar cycle trend shown is dimensionless and not a proper trend to use in detrending the AMO region, but thermometers did not exist in 1520AD in the depths of the Little Ice Age or in 810BC at the end of the Greek Dark Age so there is little we can do about that. The main point is that the Bray climate and solar cycles are well established and because of them a natural long-term warming trend is expected today. There are other long solar cycles, such as the 1,000-year Eddy cycle (see the yellow bars in figures 1, 2 & 5 here), but the Bray cycle is the strongest. The Eddy cycle is increasing currently as well and may be a factor in the current longer-term warming.
The Trenberth & Shea assumption that all global warming today is human-caused and should be removed from AMO index is unsubstantiated. It is just as likely that part of the longer-term warming trend is natural and due to increasing solar activity. Solar radiation can penetrate the ocean surface and warm the Atlantic to a depth of 100 meters or more. Greenhouse gas radiation cannot penetrate the ocean surface and causes much less warming of the ocean surface as a result. Thus, Watt per Watt, solar radiation is more effective, by a factor of 4 to 7 times according to Judith Lean, at warming the North Atlantic, a point often missed by the climate “consensus.”
Works Cited
Bray, J. R. (1968). Glaciation and Solar Activity since the Fifth Century BC and the solar cycle. Nature, 220. Retrieved from https://www.nature.com/articles/220672a0
Enfield, D., Mestas-Nunez, A. M., & Trimble, P. (2001). The Atlantic multidecadal oscillation and its relation to rainfall and river flows in the continental U.S. Geophysical Research Letters, 28(10). Retrieved from https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1029/2000GL012745
Gray, S. T., Graumlich, L. J., Betancourt, J. L., & Pederson, G. T. (2004). A tree-ring based reconstruction of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation since 1567 A.D. Geophys. Res. Lett., 31. doi:10.1029/2004GL019932
May, A., & Crok, M. (2024, May 29). Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1-15. doi:10.1111/ajes.12579
Trenberth, K., & Shea, D. (2006). Atlantic hurricanes and natural variability in 2005. Geophysical Research Letters, 33. Retrieved from https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2006GL026894
Usoskin, I. G., Gallet, Y., Lopes, F., Kovaltsov, G. A., & Hulot, G. (2016). Solar activity during the Holocene: the Hallstatt cycle and its consequence for grand minima and maxima. Astronomy and Astrophysics, 587. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201527295
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There is a great desire among “climate scientists” to eliminate any possible non anthropogenic influences on climate. The blatant example is Michael Mann and MBH 98 with his notorious “hockey stick”.
I consider the IPCC embracing that as their
definite shift to outright advocacy, ratherthan than keeping up a pretense of science.
The original charter of the IPCC (or its predecessor) was to study the climate for both natural and anthropogenic signals. In the first report scientists and researchers wrote there was no human signature. A senior official in the Clinton-Gore administration went and rewrote the section and claimed the human signature was clear. The scientists were unsurprisingly upset.
The following session changed scope to determine the effects of CO2 on the climate. The rules were also changed that if the science reports do not concur with the policy summary, the science reports were to be emended to agree. Some of this is presented elsewhere in WUWT. Internet searches find nothing, indicating those earlier reports have been suppressed.
One of the notable reports that can no longer be found is in the mid-1970s during the coming ice age worries, a UN official was quoted saying words to the effect that we do not know if CO2 is the cause but it is something we can quantify and tax. Subsequent public statements from various UN and related officials clearly stated that the effort was not about the environment but rather to change the world’s economies.
The goal is One World Order with command, socialist economies.
“You will have nothing and you will be happy.”
-WEF
My personal working theory (a loosely held belief that somewhat informs my opinion) is the climate is influenced by many cyclical processes. When the processes are in synch for warming, we get warming. When the processes are in synch for cooling, we get cooling. In between, some of the processes negate the others and we get a relatively stable climate.
Or not.
I agree. The many cycles are not in sync, so we must estimate where they are and add algebraically as regards warming and cooling.
Concur. The climate models treat the sun as a constant and the orbit as circular.
The Bray Solar cycle is relevant.
Solar energy cycles and magnetic fields reversing are also relevant.
The earth orbit is an eccentric ellipse with the eccentricity changing by the orbits of all the other planets, etc., in orbit around the Bray point (gravitational center of the solar system). Using a mean earth orbit radius is bogus.
Don’t the models also treat the Earth as a sphere?
Yes
It’s beyond a doubt that natural forcings play a large part in decadal temperature trends. With 8.25 billion technolically advanced humans on the planet, I’m not suggesting that we don’t have at least a little influence, too. But, with over eight billion and ~150 years since the Industrial Revolution, if we were going to see any kind of climate doomsday, we would have seen it by now.
Johnesm:
No, that is NOT true!.
The actual control knob for our climate is the amount of SO2 aerosols in our atmosphere, primarily from volcanic eruptions, but since the industrial revolution, also from industrial SO2 aerosol pollution.
The earlier warm periods were due to periods of very few volcanic eruptions, and the earlier cold periods were due to periods of increased volcanic activity, which excludes other explanations for the cyclic .behavior of our climate.
Between 1955 and 1980, Industrial SO2 aerosols increased from 56 million tons to 141 million tons, and there were fears of a new ice age because of the decreased temperatures.
After 1980, temperatures warmed up because of prior “Clean Air” legislation and later “NetZero” activities that reduced the amount of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution of our troposphere.
SO, all warming since then can be attributed to anthropogenic activities, and unless they are halted, our temperatures will become hotter and hotter and probably surpass those of the earlier warm periods, which were TERRIBLE times for humanity.
I don’t know whether any of the above helps with our understanding of the AMO, but there were also other periods where temperatures that waxed and waned due to changing levels of SO2 aerosol pollution..
.
The only climate control knob worth mentioning is solar radiation,
everything else is trivial including human impacts. Climate has been doing its thing for 4000 million years; it is hubris to believe we are causing any significant weather events. It’s akin to a religious totem especially when the planet or humanity is considered at risk, this is pure unscientific nonsense.
bobclose:
“The only climate control knob worth mentioning is solar radiation”
No, the REAL control knob is the amount of atmospheric aerosol pollution that dims the incoming solar radiation.
The misquote Clinton, “It’s the sun, stupid!”
SO2 levels high enough to do that would mean the air we breathe would smell really bad….
DMacKenzie:
NO, it is normally just a haze, high in the troposphere. See attached image
DMackenzie:
I neglected to point out that SO2 aerosols are actually micron-sized droplets of Sulfuric Acid, H2SO4, and have no sulfurous odor.
SO2 has an effect, but it is not the control knob, nor is there a control knob at all. It is more akin to opening and closing an umbrella.
The climate is a thermal engine (multiple, actually). The ocean is the heat sink/source for the engine. Water vapor, especially clouds is the governor.
You are incorrect. During those historical warm periods, humanity flourished. It was during the cold eras that were terrible times for humanity.
The fears of an impending ice age between 1955 and 1980 were partially attributed to the reflective properties of SO2, but particulate carbon (a major component of smog) had much more to do with that.
The real point is, pointing at a single parameter and claiming ahah is akin to picking up a single jig saw puzzle piece and with just that one piece claiming to know all the details of the full picture.
Sparta Nova:
You say that the effect of changing levels of SO2 aerosol pollution is more akin to opening and closing an umbrella, which makes it THE control knob of our temperatures!
You also say that during the warm periods, humanity flourished.
This is a common misconception, which can be disproven by examination of the effects of the strong El Nino of 1873-79, where droughts affected much of China, Asia, South America, and 50 million people reportedly died of starvation, etc. .
More recently, the 2014-2016 El Nino event “affected millions of people around the world, including Africa, Central America, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific islands. Over 60 million people faced hunger and malnutrition in 2016 due to drought effects, with Africa the worst hit”
Read the Wikipedia article “2014-2016 El Nino Event”
You also wrongly attribute most of the cooling between 1955 and 1980 due to black carbon. During that period, industrial SO2 aerosol levels increased by 85 million tons,–what was the tonnage increase of black carbon, and why did it increase?
Volcanic SO2 aerosols are always very effective in causing temperatures to decrease, and they don’t produce any black carbon.
With respect to SO2 aerosols, I have never found ANY example of a detectable temperature change that was not attributable to a change in atmospheric SO2 aerosol levels.
Sure looks like the “Control Knob” to me!
You obviously do not know what a control knob is.
You also do not understand the effects of particulate carbon in the atmosphere.
You are conflating transient weather phenomena with long term climate. 2 years is not climate. Warm period are the 150 years (Medieval Optimum) and the multi-decadal Roman Optimum. During these times, humanity flourished.
Volcanoes produce black carbon and a whole lot of other gasses. SO2 does not produce black carbon.. The fires started by volcanoes also produce particulate carbon.
Wikipedia is not a useful site for accurate information on climate and many political topics.
The climate does not have a control knob and it is extreme hubris to assert that humans can control the weather.
As far as your research into SO2 and temperature. No comment.
Sparta Nova;;
You still maintain that humanity flourished during the earlier warm periods. This I have already proven is a lie.
They were all periods of very few volcanic eruptions, so that there were essentially no SO2 aerosols in the atmosphere, and the Earth baked under the undimmed solar radiation, causing global droughts, starvation. many floods, and the demise of earlier cultures, such as those in our Southwest. and Central America, during the MWP.
The Wikipedia article is simply a listing of the climate-related disasters that occurred during that period. Compare it with Britannica.
“and it is extreme hubris to assert that humans can control the weather”
It is NOT hubris to recognize that human-made SO2 aerosols will cause temperatures to decrease, and that their removal by decreasing their levels will cause temperatures to increase. as we have been doing since 1980
You conflated short term weather with long term climate eras. You proved nothing.
It has not been proven SO2 causes temperature effects. Correlation is not causation. SO2 is a factor in cloud formation and clouds are much more reflective than low level ppm of SO2.
You might want to apply for a job with BBC.
Sparta Nova:
It is common knowledge that the SO2 from large volcanic eruptions will cool the Earth for 2-3 years before they eventually settle out. How can you say that SO2 has not been proven to have any temperature effects?
Yes, SO2 is a factor in cloud formation. The SO2 aerosol, H2SO4, is a strong attractant for moisture, and it provides strong nucleation sites for the formation of clouds.
However, decreasing SO2 aerosol levels result in fewer moisture nucleation sites, fewer clouds, and higher temperatures.
The attached image shows the volcanic SO2 aerosol levels for the Pinatubo eruption of June 15, 1991, after they have circled the globe.
SO2 aerosols reflect the incoming solar radiation and cool the lower atmosphere and the Earth’s surface. The Pinatubo cooling was stated to have been 0.5 deg. C., and it lasted for about 2.5 years.
The is no control knob. Control knob was introduce by the climate apocalypse syndicate to brainwash people into thinking the weather could be controlled that everything could be made to be constant forever.
Energy is both input and output of the system. Everything else is one of a multitude of transfer functions.
Sparta Nova:
Sigh. You just can’t fix stupid!.
I know. I give up on you.
Wow.
12 down votes..
Certainly a lot of dim bulbs on his thread!
The dim bulbs are those who think they know more than people who have studied Thermodynamics and physics.
Jim Masterson:
Actually, mastering Thermodynamics and Physics is of NO help in understanding climate change.
What IS needed is an empirical understanding of the actual CAUSES of our changing climate.
The attached graph is a WoodForTrees.org plot of our average anomalous global temperatures from 1850 to 2020.
Each of the temperature increases with a black dot and a date at top are due to American business recessions, where temperatures temporarily increased due to decreased industrial SO2 aerosol pollution from idled foundries, factories, etc.
This shows how SENSITIVE our climate is to changing levels of atmospheric SO2 aerosol pollution, making them THE Control Knob of our climate.
So, who is the dim bulb?
Mr. Henry, I thought acid rain was caused by SO2, but that was a big nothing burger. Then you show me a graph of increasing temperatures. Don’t they say burning fossil fuels creates more SO2 which in turn decreases temperatures?
The weather, and by extension the climate, are non-linear chaotic systems. Claiming one value as the control knob is nonsense.
Most of us normal dim-bulbs appreciate the warmer weather. Apparently you activists don’t like non-freezing weather.
There are two definitions of temperature in physics: thermodynamics and the kinetic theory of gases. Unfortunately, many mis-state the kinetic theory of gases definition and think it applies to thermodynamics too.
Jim Masterson:
Yes, Acid rain is caused by SO2, which resulted in the Clean Air legislation of the 1970’s.
I showed you the graph to show you how sensitive our temperatures are to the amount of SO2 in the atmosphere.
The increasing temperature trend shown is because of the REDUCTION in the amount of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution removed from the atmosphere because of the “Clean Air” legislation, and Net-Zero activities, not due to burning more fossil fuels, as you suggest, but fewer.
Like it or not, SO2 aerosols ARE the control knob of our climate
I am not an activist, just someone who is trying to warn the world that the cleaner our air becomes, the HOTTER it will get, rising to levels that much of humanity will not be able to tolerate!
We have abundant evidence of such happenings, as I posted earlier.
So we are doomed if we do, and doomed if we don’t. It’s complete nonsense.
Jim Masterson:
Good comment, Jim. I am still LOL!
However, we are now past the point of no return, without some geo-engineering, unless we get a VEI4 or larger volcanic eruption to temporarily cool things down.
I had written an article, back in 2022, titled “Net-zero catastrophe beginning?” So far, it is right on track.
https://doi.org/10.30574/wjarr.2022.16.1.1035
You do not know what a control knob is.
SO2 is a transfer function.
The control knob is what increases or decrease the flow of SO2 (or anything else) into the atmosphere.
Sparta Nova 4:
Since 1980, then, the Control Knob has been the reduction in the amount of industrial SO2 aerosol pollution due to anthropogenic activity.
“Solar radiation can penetrate the ocean surface and warm the Atlantic to a depth of 100 meters or more. Greenhouse gas radiation cannot penetrate the ocean surface and causes much less warming of the ocean surface as a result.”
A very common fallacy here, many times refuted, but OK, here we go again.
Depth of penetration is irrelevant, because if it penetrates, it has to come out again (where else?). The key is surface flux balance (cons en). Outgoing fluxes, radiation, evap, conduction, all increase with surface temperature. Incoming fluxes (solar, GHG) do not. So the surface temperature settles to a level where outgoing match incoming. All fluxes are equal in this balance.
Nick,
Again with this fallacy. Consider, a bullet penetrates my skull. It has a much more significant impact on me than a bullet that grazes my skull and does not penetrate it.
Another significant factor. If solar radiation is absorbed 100 meters in the ocean, it has a much longer residence time than if it is absorbed in the top mm of the ocean. Warming is not only a function of incident radiation, it is also a function of energy residence time. This simple fact seems to elude all the “consensus,” which obviously includes you.
The residence time factor is a function of convection and the frequency of the incident radiation. There is no refutation of these simple facts.
More here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2024/03/03/climate-model-bias-3-solar-input/
“significant impact on me”
Maybe, but we are talking about the ongoing environment here. There are only so many bullets your skull can absorb.
There is no reason why residence time should increase warming. If you heat the concrete slab under your house, there is a long residence time. But the heating cost is about the same.
You can’t even say what residence time is. SW heat goes in; a balancing flux comes out. Was it the same heat? Heat can’t be labelled.
“There is no reason why residence time should increase warming.”
Where did you take physics? If radiation is absorbed by the ocean and it is immediately emitted or transported away via evaporation, it has no effect on the ocean temperature, if some is absorbed it raises the temperature until it is emitted. How can you not know this?
Andy,
Here is a partial list of my scientific journal papers on heat transfer. Everywhere I use the standard technique of energy balance at surfaces. You really need to get to understand it.
AS I said, the notion of residence time makes no sense. You can’t label heat particles. There is just an inflow and an outflow.
Yes. And strangely enough, quantum electrodynamic experiments show that photons do know the temperature of the matter which emitted them, the temperature of the matter on which they impinge, the direction from which they came, and the direction in which they are supposed to proceed. Not only that, they know whether they are part of the 0 to 16% reflected from normal incidence on a transparent medium like glass, for example.
Newton observed this phenomenon, and knew that several explanations offered were wrong, because he ground his lenses and mirrors himself!
Heaven forbid that any “climate scientist” would soil his fingers with such lowly pursuits. He might learn the difference between fantasy and fact.
Cynical? You be the judge.
Lol and Nick invalidated the AGW in one sentence and doesn’t even realize it!!!
Nick isn’t wrong. Consider heat capacity given by ΔT = ΔE/(mc) and the 1LOT given by ΔE = Ein – Eout. That means a body’s temperature behavior is given by ΔT = (Ein – Eout) / (mc). There is no time component involved. At least not directly.
What you might hypothesize is that longwave radiation results in a higher Eout component as compared to shortwave radiation due to some process that causes the energy to convert into Eout before it conducts downward. If that’s what you mean by residence time then okay.
The problem is that according to [Wong & Minnett 2018] who studied the microphysics of shortwave and longwave radiation uptake the longwave uptake caused a change in the profile of the TSL that actually suppresses Eout by reducing the transfer of heat from the subskin up and through the TSL. In other words shortwave radiation causes warming by increasing Ein whereas longwave radiation causes warming by decreasing Eout.
“Nick isn’t wrong.”
He’s wrong about averaging intensive properties.
So your definitions are wrong too. The definition of heat capacity is:
C = δQ/dT
Where Q is heat and T is temperature. Notice that this is similar to the Clausius definition of entropy for a reversible process:
dS = δQ/T
where S is entropy, Q is heat, and T is temperature. Both entropy and heat capacity have the same units: energy divided by temperature or joules per kelvin.
The first law of thermodynamics in simple differential form using the Clausius standard (chemists use a slightly different standard) is:
dU = δQ – δW
where U is internal energy, Q is heat, and W is work. The total derivatives of U and S indicate that these are state variables. The squiggly d’s in front of Q and W indicates that they are path variables.
Sometimes you will see the first law written as follows:
dU = TdS – PdV
where U is internal energy, T is temperature, S is entropy, P is pressure, and V is volume.
Andy doesn’t seem to have a problem with it at least in this post. But it is funny you mentioned it since Andy has criticized it in the past. I suspect this is one of those cases where it is fine if he does it but no one else. Either way I’m going to let you pick this fight with Andy on your own this time round.
No they aren’t. It is an unequivocal and indisputable fact that ΔT = ΔE/(mc) and ΔE = Ein – Eout.
My guess is this yet another knee jerk “nuh-uh” responses because you so desperately want to prove me wrong that you couldn’t be bothered to spend the small amount of time required to think about how I’m rearranging and substituting variables from the canonical forms to better express a salient point.
And don’t think the irony of having a person who blatantly rejected the fact that bodies can hold, retain, or trap heat (Q) such that ΔU > 0 when Q > 0 without violating the 1LOT is lecturing me about the laws of physics.
And just so you know I neither have the time nor the motivation to yet again defend the 1LOT right now. So you can have the last word on this topic at least in this thread. I’m more interested in staying on point with Andy’s comments.
P.S. For the gaslighters chomping at the bit…yes…I’m fully aware of the enthalpy of fusion and vaporization. I just don’t think it’s directly relevant to Andy’s point so I haven’t mentioned equations related to those topics…yet. I’m more than happy to extend the discussion in that domain if the need arises though.
“No they aren’t.”
Yes they are.
It’s not yet Pantomime Season.
Lol again! what is different about this argument then the argument about the atmosphere? I can tell you, the ocean doesn’t overturn like the atmosphere does this makes a huge difference there is huge time lag in the heat transfer to the surface. IR excites the top molecules of the ocean surface and increase the rate of evaporation with essential zero time lag.
you and Nick are invalidating AGW theory and contradicting every argument you have ever made in its defense with every word you write.
Does it matter?
You said –
Well, gee. The surface gets hotter during the day, cools at night, losing all the heat of the day. How can you not know this? Where did you take physics?
Nick seems right here. IR light striking the surface of water will thermally excite water molecules, even if it’s only in the top fraction of a millimeter. Just as an IR heat lamp warms your body, even though the IR doesn’t penetrate to your bones.
Visible light that penetrates deep into the water does not heat the water until it collides with and excites a water molecule. Light that makes it 100 meters down, didn’t heat anything on the way down, because it didn’t collide with anything.
But none of this changes Andy’s main point. More solar activity probably still means more heat is entering the ocean, and the energy in back radiation from the GHE is very small compared to solar radiation on a clear day.
I don’t see the point of de-trending the AMO data. It is what it is.
However, Andy’s demonstration that the increasing trend could be due to a solar cycle, and not to an enhanced greenhouse effect, seems plausible.
“Just as an IR heat lamp warms your body,”
Shining an IR lamp on water makes absolutely zero difference to the temperature a mm or so below the surface.
If anything, it speeds up evaporation from the first nm or so of the surface.
Ir doesn’t “heat” those molecules they evaporate almost immediately. They transfer no “heat” to the body of water.
We can consider it. But if you want us to affirm a disjunct and erroneously assume that all physical processes therefore must result in more significant impacts when penetration depth increases then no thank you.
Nick, this is not the site where you should be sharing the advice you get on those “adult relationships / intimacy techniques” apps.
Teslacle’s Deviant to Fudd’s Law: Half of what goes in here must come out there.”
[Firesign Theater]
About 50% of sunlight is visible light and it can be eventually absorbed at varying depths by solid matter in the ocean ranging from microbes to soil dust particles and recently by the many millions tons of plastic and micro plastic particles. There is also ash and dust from volcanoes and soil dust and rock particles from continental erosion. The absorbed sunlight is converted to heat.
Consider this: Since 1900, where have the many, many billion tons of rubber particles and dust from tires gone? The answer is: anywhere and everywhere? Then there is soot from wildfires and cargo ships.
“The absorbed sunlight is converted to heat.”
Yes, of course. And then what?
Cyclicality comes cyclical.input
Nick, any matter heated to above the temperature of its environment cools – by radiating energy, unless it receives enough energy to overcome the loss.
In the case of the Earth, four and a half billion years of sunlight, plus an immense amount of internal radiogenic heat production, has been insufficient to prevent the Earth cooling.
Man-made heat keeps the present surface temperature somewhat higher than it would be in the absence of that heat. I’m sure you would agree.
Over the span of days, weeks, years, decades and more that “heat” slowly works its way out of the system. Energy from IR never enters the system to become “heat”
Eunice Foote discovered EM and heat are different forms of energy back in the mid 1800s.
And Planck quantified it.
No, not necessarily “come out” to any significant degree over a reasonable time period.
To the extent that some of the incoming solar radiation is absorbed as increased enthalpy of ocean water (temperature increase over some undefined depth), that energy will mostly remain as a slight increase in total ocean thermal content. This explains why ocean surface waters warmed during the Holocene Thermal Maximum
(reference https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379125000721 ).
Also, please note that whenever the near-surface air temperature is warmer than ocean surface temperatures (commonly occurring in tropical and temperate latitudes during daylight) the air heats the ocean waters directly by conduction and convection, and even to some extent by radiation (even if offset somewhat by evaporation). This heating is in additional to the heat input due to water absorption of incoming solar energy.
An incident 240 W/m2 SW over a year can heat the top 10 m sea by 180°C. That isn’t happening, so the heat has to go somewhere. It isn’t going down – temperature at depth is stable. It can only return to the surface, where it enters into the surface flux balance.
A blackbody has a constant temperature because all incident radiation is immediately emitted. When energy is absorbed and retained, its temperature goes up and it is no longer a blackbody.
Earth’s oceans absorb most incident solar radiation and almost no GHG radiation. The control on ocean temperature is how fast the absorbed energy is taken from the oceans by evaporation, convection, and emissions or conduction to the overlying atmosphere. The control on the energy leaving is mostly wind speed and direction. Thus, convection controls local climate because it controls residence time.
Climatic conditions over the North Atlantic control the AMO, what creates those conditions is unknown, but it is the real cause of climate change.
“The control on ocean temperature is how fast the absorbed energy is taken from the oceans by evaporation, convection, and emissions or conduction to the overlying atmosphere.”
Those are controls on the surface temperature. And it isn’t just absorbed SW, but all energy arriving (so including down IR). It all goes into the surface flux balance.
Nick
it is amazing how you twist your thoughts in to every type of pretzel. I wish I had the time to search all your quotes in the past about the atmosphere that would “refute” every word you are posting here
This is an assumption with no proof.
How did the CO2 over the ocean obtain the “heat” that is reradiated back toward the water in the ocean?
How did CO2 become warm enough to transfer “heat” from the atmosphere to the water in the ocean?
Let me point out that hot water rises. Anyone who has loaded hay wagons all day long, and dives into a farm pond can attest that the surface is warmer than the bottom.
I also point out that water molecules can absorb IR without showing a temperature rise. That is called latent heat and causes evaporation. Evaporation is a cooling event. As a result of this, any IR that CO2 can emit and be absorbed by the water is carried away by evaporation.
The end result is that several microns below the surface temperature is controlled by the sun’s radiation, not CO2 “back radiation”.
Thermodynamics teaches that heat flows across a boundary defined by a temperature gradient. The amount of heat is defined by the temperature differential and is always in one direction, hot to cold. Water is pretty unique in that it can store a lot of internal energy without showing a temperature rise. That is energy that is removed from the radiation system. It must be accounted for in any analysis. Simply cherry picking some general equations to bolster an argument isn’t sufficient.
Say what? That is grossly incorrect. Water so greedily absorbs infrared radiation that it is entirely absorbed right on the skin. Almost all of the GHG radiation is in the infrared bands.
Absolutely. And promptly cools at night, by emitting radiation to a cooler environment – outer space (the rate of cooling is slowed a little by the atmosphere).
As Fourier said, the Earth loses to space all the radiation it receives from the sun, plus a little of its interior heat – currently 44 TW or so.
I hope you aren’t trying to imply that the oceans have suddenly started heating up due to the sun, because that would be silly, wouldn’t it?
It’s doesn’t wait until night time, IR excited the top layer causing evaporation with little or no time lag. Cooling starts immediately. If cooling waited until night time there would be no such thing as pop up thunder storms over the ocean. I would suggest reading Willis’s articles on emergent phenomena.
Do you mean that the surface temperature is constantly dropping, or that evaporation is continuous?
Evaporation does not necessarily result in cooling. Boiling water is evaporating furiously – no cooling. Calm ocean or lake water can get very hot in the top few centimeters in the Sun. Heating, not cooling.
You can see why your comment is confusing, I hope.
The oceans are not frozen in most places.
No ocean at all is frozen right through.
True
Absorbed at the first um or so, causing evaporation.
There was an experiment done once that showed this actually cooled the layer below.
So now it’s back to back radiation does warm the atmosphere. Can you and Nick please get your arguments straight.
Really? What is the temperature of this black body? Somewhere between absolute zero and infinity?
It is correct. You really need to do a deep dive.
A black body, which is an ideal zero thickness surface that absorbs all incident EM radiation of all frequencies achieves a temperature that creates equilibrium between incident and emitted radiation.
Thermal energy transfers are not part of the black body model.
However, Kirchhoff’s Law must be obeyed.
OK, I just asked what the “temperature that creates equilibrium” is. You can’t say, can you?
If your black body emits all the radiation incident upon it, then it cannot have a temperature – otherwise it would be emitting more radiation than it received.
Here – 1 W incident, 1 W emitted. You see? Your “black body” cannot have a temperature, otherwise it would be emitting radiation according to its temperature. How many extra Watts would that be?
Do I really? Why is that?
This statement just isn’t true. A black body emits at its own temperature. To emit the same as an adjoining body means they both have the same temperature.
You may have meant to say that there is a zero degree temperature difference which would be true.
As I asked before, what is its temperature when it absorbs and emits 1 Watt?
Like most, you are confused between theoretical black body and black body temperature spectrum.
Two different things.
I did not wish to give credibility to your nonsense by calculating the temperature for a 1 W in 1 W out example.
Besides, its joules, not Watts. Or, if you prefer W/m²-sec.
A Watt is a joule per second. If your black body is receiving 1 joule per second, and emitting 1 joule per second, what is its temperature?
You have no clue do you?
Wow, this is like the 4 blind (wise?) men describing an elephant based on which part of the elephant they are holding….
Nick,
Observations show you are wrong.
“Evidence that Bob Irvine’s hypothesis is correct includes the change in ocean temperatures over the course of one approximately 11-year solar cycle. The shallow ocean heat storage above the 22°C isotherm, increases almost an order of magnitude more than the direct effect of the solar cycle radiation increase. Further, this change is in phase with the solar cycle. Small changes in the Sun’s output can accumulate over time, increasing their effect on total climate system heat storage.
Wigley and Raper calculated that for a change in solar output of about 1.1 W/m2, roughly the change over one solar cycle, the direct change in Earth’s surface temperature should theoretically be in the range of 0.014°C to 0.025°C, which is undetectable. However Judith Lean shows the observed surface temperature change, due to the increase in solar activity is about 0.1°C, 4 to 7 times what is expected and the increase in the upper atmosphere is 0.3°C, more than an order of magnitude more than expected from the change in radiation delivered to Earth.”
Bob Irvine’s idea is explained here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/12/20/a-thought-experiment-simplifying-the-climate-riddle/
The quote is from here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2024/03/03/climate-model-bias-3-solar-input/
Andy
if what Nick is trying to push here were true ocean temperatures would be at equilibrium all the time and only go up if there was forcing from green house gases. It’s just another ridiculous attempt to say that the environment is stable unless man intervenes. Like trying to wipe out the LIA and the MWP or just flat ignoring billions of years of evidence. It’s a cult not a science to him.
“Observations show you are wrong.”
Nonsense! The 240 W/m² average SW incident on the oceans is enough to increase the temperature of the entire ocean, top to bottom, by 0.5°C per year, or 50°C/century. Observations show that that isn’t happening. The 240 W/m² is not disappearing into the depths. It is returned to the surface, which it warms, and eventually returns to space.
Bob Irvine’s “idea” is nuts, and just puts your nutty idea about residence time in sharp relief. He says:
“Solar radiation better penetrates a matt black steel ball and consequently remains within the ball for longer than it would in a shiny and reflective silver steel ball.”
But of course that isn’t true. Solar radiation does not penetrate a matt black steel ball at all (although it does warm it better than a shiny one).
Nick, It was either you or bad wax job who cited the formula for heat capacity and stated time was not in it, point being that residence time does not matter. But that is a misapplication of heat capacity and an oversimplification of the problem. The actual quantities that matter are thermal diffusivity and thermal inertia, time is a very important element of both. They describe how long it takes absorbed thermal energy to escape a substance.
I discuss these quantities, well known in my petrophysical world, a bit here. Lots of helpful links are in the post if you are unfamiliar with these concepts.
I recall a couple of years ago when there was a scare down in S. Florida.
An ocean thermal sensor went way up causing the boiling ocean and corral die off news frenzy.
As it turns out, the reading was made at noon during low tide. It was in an inlet that was roughly 6 feet deep and had a black muck bottom. At low tide, the sensor was in proximity if not penetrating the muck. The temperature anomaly was short lived and the air temperature above the surface was within reason for that time of day/year.
The point? The sun penetrated and warmed the muck. Further, in shallow waters, the muck retains heat as does the water.
There is very little about the earth energy systems that achieve and sustain equilibrium.
“Temperature at depth is stable”
LOL!!!! There goes the missing heat is in the ocean trope. Nick you are a treasure.
That’s a very simplistic limit-case statement (why am I not surprised!) with no basis in reality because it ignores the simultaneous ongoing processes of:
— ocean evaporation removing heat from the ocean
— ocean LWIR radiation to the atmosphere and deep space removing heat from the ocean
— ocean surface-to-air (whenever the air is cooler than the water surface) conduction and convection removing heat from the ocean
— ocean upper layer circulation (convection currents down to approximately the depth of the thermocline, or about 500-1000 m globally) removing heat from the “top 10 m sea”
Yes, the heat energy is conserved and the above indicates the various regions to which it can be dispersed.
Of course. That is my point. All that you list involves the SW heat coming back to the surface, where it adds to downwelling IR to make all those removing fluxes possible.
Planck doesn’t agree with your adding fluxes.
Read Section 7 of his Theory of Heat Radiation. With Bodies A, B, and C with A hotter than B and C cooler than B, A warms B to equilibrium while C cools body B. At some point they will all be at the same temperature, i.e. equilibrium.
Remember, a body radiates at its temperature. Adjoining bodies do not change that.
Really? I guess you missed reading or understanding my fourth item:
“— ocean upper layer circulation (convection currents down to approximately the depth of the thermocline, or about 500-1000 m globally) removing heat from the “top 10 m sea”
With one hand tied behind my back, Nick . . . with one hand tied behind my back.
I think there is something wrong with ICOADS, which is used by both the Hadley Centre and NOAA to compute SST.
The longest measured SST dataset that I know of (Charles Darwin Research Centre at Puerto Ayora) shows absolutely no trend from 1964 to 2024, whereas HadISST shows a trend over the same time period for the Lat/Long cell centred on the site, of 0.135DegC/decade. [I took the raw daily Puerto Ayora data and deducted the day-of-year cycle prior to determining trend.]
SST data for sites along the Great Barrier Reef of up to 30 years duration show no trend either.
And Nick, there are at least five (from memory) high-frequency simultaneous sea surface and air temperature datasets along the GBR north from Square Rocks near Rockhampton, that support your point. Increased heat at the surface, results in evaporation, which removes latent heat from the surface, which cools and in-turn, moderates the temperature of the air above.
So Andy, where is all this trend if it is not detectable in data, and how come HadISST (and ERSST), show trend when data do not?
Yours sincerely,
Dr Bill Johnston
http://www.bomwatch.com.au
I’m not familiar with the locations you refer to, are they in Australia? If so, they do not affect the AMO, it is only in the North Atlantic. The AMO correlates very well with temperatures in Ireland, Iceland, and many other areas around the North Atlantic. The Southern Hemisphere marches to its own drummer, and in any case Southern Hemisphere SSTs are not changing much. As I showed in my last post, global warming is controlled by the Northern Hemisphere. Temperatures outside the NH don’t change much. See figures 1 & 2 here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2025/05/26/musings-on-the-amo/
I was not referring to the AMO, I was referring to the SST dataset on which the post is based.
Puerto Ayora is a town in Santa Cruz Island, Ecuador, about 1deg south of the Equator.
The Great Barrier Reef is adjacent to the Queensland coast, Australia.
Cheers,
Bill
I’ve written about problems with ICOADS, especially in the Southern Hemisphere here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2025/04/08/what-is-the-global-average-sst/
But that is not the subject of this post.
IR radiation energy from CO2 simply conducts back into the atmosphere or leads to increased evaporation which cools the surface. No warming occurs. The reason this energy conducts so easily is because it is absorbed by the surface skin, that is, the penetration is minimal.
[don’t harass Nick with this stuff-mod]
Measurements show that atmospheric CO2 actually DECREASES the DLWR in the CO2 frequency range. The distance range of that frequency is around 10-20m in the lower atmosphere.
Warming by CO2 back radiation is a totally unscientific concept.
Heat transfer by radiation between emitting bodies is K(Thot^4 – Tcold^4)
Back radiation is the K(-Tcold^4) part of the equation.
Admittedly, CO2 is a fraction of H2O IR back radiation…and a quite small fraction of incoming solar SW….But where does the “totally unscientific” part come in ?
Presumably because believers in the mythical GHE (for which no consistent and unambiguous description exists) refuse to accept that the atmosphere (including CO2, H2O, and all the rest), reduce the amount of insolation by about 30%, resulting in reduced, rather than increased, maximum surface temperatures.
Or maybe that some people erroneously think that adding CO2 to,air makes it hotter?
Or possibly because some deranged individuals believe that a colder body can increase the temperature of a hotter one without losing any energy and becoming even colder?
You wouldn’t be deluded enough to be in any of those categories, would you?
Therefore, the heat flow direction is from hot to cold. Tcold can not raise the temperature of the hot body. People forgot that you are dealing with a constant source to a hot body, the sun, a warm body reservoir, the water, and a cold body, the atmosphere. It is a three body problem.
All fluxes are equal in this balance
Minus the downward flux that is not zero
The fact that the oceans warm and cool pretty much proves CO2 isn’t the cause of the warming.
1) Backradiation from CO2, 15 micron LWIR, won’t penetrate or warm the oceans.
2) CO2 is transparent to the IR being emitted from the oceans which must be above 0.00 Degree C (approx.)
3) Visible radiation, 0.4 to 0.7 is what warms the oceans
4) Cloud cover determines how much visible radiation reaches the oceans
5) The clean air act allows more warming radiation to reach the oceans
Want to understand the causes of climate change, study what is warming the oceans, and it isn’t more CO2.
This video covers the backradiation
https://app.screencast.com/OWq7twX7ELhEa
Maybe you are referring to a thin surface layer at the top of the water, which heats during the day, and cools at night?
The oceans as a whole are gently warmed from beneath, resulting in convection, and oddities like deep ocean currents flowing at 180° to each other.
Hopefully, you accept this fact.
Go down 6 to 20 feet and you will not find a gently warming ocean.
The ocean is gently warmed from beneath. If you prefer to believe that water at 10000 m is warmed by the Sun, or CO2 or pixie dust, you are free to do so.
Well, the above article’s attempt to match a least-squares fit of the AMO to a portion of the roughly 2,400 year period of the Bray (Hallstatt) solar cycle is certainly interesting . . . it implies previous characterizations of the AMO as having a period of 60-90 years had it all wrong, by a factor of about 30!
Two different things, the long-term warming can be seen in figure 1. The oscillation (the “60-90” year oscillation) is what is seen after detrending, figures 3 & 4.
Well, with reference to Figure 1, your text states
“Figure 1 shows the raw and unsmoothed ERSST v5 data for the AMO North Atlantic region (equator to 70N)”
and the graph itself makes repeated references “ERSST AMO actual”.
To me, the oscillation is apparent in Figure 1 without any need for detrending to see it.
So, I’m still unclear on why the linear fit for the AMO is being compared particularly to the Bray cycle, as compared to ,say, Devries or Eddy solar cycles.
I am answering the criticism of the best fit detrending method in Trenberth and Shea. This criticism has been repeated by Hausfather and others here and on X.
https://x.com/hausfath/status/1927485439809867998
This post is in answer to those criticisms.
OK, Andy, I’ll accept that.
I was just confused by this last sentence in your firstt paragraph:
“It is the method I prefer because it makes no assumptions about the origin of the increasing SSTs in the North Atlantic.”
and then your Figure 1 making a comparison of least squares linear fits.
It’s the wrong answer as the AMO is not unforced internal variability, it is warmer when weaker solar wind states cause negative North Atlantic Oscillation regimes. Rising CO2 forcing since 1970 should have been increasing positive NAO states, which can only drive a colder AMO.
Your graph is confusing. I thought that after the Roman warm period there was the Dark Ages cool period, followed by the Medieval warm period, then the Little Ice Age, and finally the Modern warm period.
As noted in the post see this post for the details:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2024/12/02/climate-change-over-the-past-4000-years/
Figure 2 is oversimplified. The major features of the past 4000 years are shown in figure 2, the Medieval Warm Period is actually fairly minor and so is the Modern Warm Period. But they are illustrated in the post above.
I’ll stick with not detrended with all the questionable handling of this long cycle issue.
I actually agree, you can still see the oscillation in the raw data, plus you see the secular trend. Much more informative.
Can you point us to an experiment where shortwave radiation is more effective at causing a body of water to warm vs longwave radiation?
The best reference is Judith Lean’s article:
Lean, J. (2017). Sun-climate Connections. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Oxford. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.013.9
https://oxfordre.com/climatescience/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228620.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228620-e-9
But, there are many others. The fundamental evidence is that oceans warm between 4 and 7 times more over a solar cycle than they should due to the extra radiation received at the peak of the cycle. The upper atmosphere warms a full order of magnitude more than it should.
See here also:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2024/03/03/climate-model-bias-3-solar-input/
Unfortunately that publication is paywalled and I cannot find a free copy anywhere so I’m only able to read the summary. The summary makes no mention of the efficacy of shortwave vs longwave warming of water.
The summary did catch my attention for other reasons though. For example, it says. “Were the Sun’s activity to become anomalously low, declining during the next century to levels of the Maunder Minimum (from 1645 to 1715), the expected global surface temperature cooling is less than a few tenths oC. In contrast, a scenario of moderate greenhouse gas increase with climate forcing of 2.6 W m−2 over the next century is expected to warm the globe 1.5 to 1.9oC, an order of magnitude more than the hypothesized solar-induced cooling over the same period.”
Furthermore Dr. Lean’s work in general in part helped scientists falsify Sun-dominant hypothesis for the contemporary warming period so citing this specific scientist’s work is somewhat surprising to me.
Did you mean to cite Dr. Lean and/or this specific publication?
There are literally hundreds of publications that show that the Sun has an outsized influence on climate and warming Watt per Watt. I assume you’ve read Climate Model Bias #3 cited above. Also see here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2022/08/01/the-sun-climate-effect-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-i-the-search-for-a-solar-signal/
Look at the bibliographies, esp Gray, et al., 2010 and Joanna Haigh, 1996.
I have no doubt that solar radiation, Watt per Watt is many times more powerful than GHG radiation due to its higher frequency content.
Neither [Gray et al. 2010] nor [Haigh 1996] suggest that watt-for-watt solar radiation is more effective at warming the ocean as compared to GHG radiation. All they say is that the Sun has an influence. And in the case of Gray et al. 2010 they say it is similar except that GHG forcing causes opposite effects in the stratosphere and troposphere which isn’t the case for solar forcing. And in terms of the magnitude of the effect solar forcing is minimal compared to anthropogenic forcing. Haigh 1996 doesn’t make any comparisons at all, but tracking through her other publications and statements it is clear that her position is that anthropogenic forcing is the dominant cause of warming today.
You’ve had me look at 3 citations from 17 authors. Skimming the works of these authors I see no indication that any of them support the claim that solar radiation is more effective than GHG radiation watt-for-watt. And in the context of the total magnitude of the effects they are all firmly in the anthropogenic-dominant camp and would likely be considered “alarmists” by the standards that seem to prevail here on WUWT. So I’m struggling to understand why you are pointing me to these specific papers and authors.
BTW…these publications are authors use modeling extensively. Are you okay with this?
BTW…something that caught my attention in the [Gray et al. 2010] publication is that they divide S by 4 because S is “averaged over the surface area of the Earth sphere”. Over here we had a conversation in which you claimed the [Benestad 2017] S/4 model was a flat Earth model that is “divorced from reality” yet you didn’t seem to have a problem when Gray et al. 2010 used the same model.
bdgwx,
Picking at nits, as usual. The idea that solar energy has a larger effect than GHG radiation, Watt per Watt is obvious and the data that proves it is in the articles I cited. I do not agree with these authors on their conclusions about anthropogenic warming, and they are not the first authors to present data that points one way and conclude something completely different. I cited them because they establish the necessary data about how much more effective solar radiation is than GHG radiation. Think about it for a minute.
The idea that energy residence time matters I got from Bob Irvine. The idea that solar energy is “Watt per Watt” more effective than GHG radiation is also from Bob Irvine here. I’m sure others have recognized this obvious fact, but no one else comes to mind right now. It is obvious from the data uncovered by Judith Lean, and others. I can’t help it if they did not recognize the obvious.
Well, considering that the only external source of energy to a cooling Earth is the Sun, you are right.
GHGs provide no heat at all. In the absence of the Sun, they would not even be gases, but frozen layers on a 35 K or so surface.
Andy essentially fled the interview after that round.
Sorry Andy, but writing “than they should” or “than it should” is just pseudoscientific wishful thinking, isn’t it?
Maybe you don’t agree with Fourier who said that the Earth loses to space all the heat it receives from the sun, but it is not possible to “store” or “accumulate” heat. There is no “hidden heat” in the oceans.
All of these supposed “oscillations” are due to chaos operating in the aquasphere, and have no predictive utility whatsoever. Interesting, but of as much use as the stock market “oscillations” and “waves” marketed to ignorant and gullible investors.
Sorry Michael, you are way off base here. Earth’s surface stores more heat than the surface of Venus, but has a much lower surface temperature. The variation of Earth’s temperature over one solar cycle shows the Sun’s outsized influence.
See figure 2.2 here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2022/08/08/the-sun-climate-effect-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-ii-solar-activity-unexplained-ignored-effects-on-climate/
Sorry Andy, as Fourier said, the Earth returns to space all the heat of the Sun (plus a little internal heat). The fact that four and a half billion years of continuous sunlight has not resulted in any stored or accumulated heat, or any increase in temperature, leads me to accept that Fourier knew something about heat when he authored Fourier’s Heat Law.
The effect of the Sun’s heat is imperceptible at further than about 10 m into the crust – on any scale.
No GHE.
If the earth did not sore or accumulate thermal energy, while are the oceans water, not ice and how is it we can grow crops?
In point of fact, the earth has been an ice ball in the past.
Typo: store
Rubbish. The Earth is more than 99% glowing hot, and has cooled down over the past four and a half billion years.
The “ice ball Earth” is a fantasy believed by people like Carl Sagan.
The oceans are water because the surface cooled below 100 C, allowing liquid water to form. Even where the air above the surface is well below the freezing point, the deep ocean remains unfrozen – warmed gently from beneath.
Michael Flynn:
Ribbish!
Burl Henry:
And a highly polished, and brightly shining ribbish to you!
May you enjoy it in good health.
“The “ice ball Earth” is a fantasy believed by people like Carl Sagan.”
Still, you need to explain how the Earth wasn’t frozen when the Sun was new. It’s called the “Faint young Sun paradox.” Main sequence stars are cooler when first formed and gain in intensity during their main sequence life.
As far as I know, the Earth was created in a molten state. That’s why it’s roughly spherical. If you agree, that makes Sagan’s implication pretty stupid, doesn’t it?
If you believe the Earth was created cold, and has since heated up so that the interior is glowing hot, that’s up to you.
In theory, planets become spherical when their gravity is large enough to make them form a spherical shape. There is also the giant impact theory–a Mars sized planet collided with the Earth that formed the Moon. Any cooling would have been reversed due to the collision and explains the rapid rotation of the Earth.
I never claimed earth was created cold.
It has cycled between cold and hot multiple times.
In the early formation era, it was quite hot.
Nonsense. Physically impossible
There is proof the earth was an ice ball on more than one occasion.
Nonsense. You are making stuff up.
Sorry.
There’s another explanation for the long term warming and cooling which does not involve the sun. It is the speed of the overturning ocean conveyor belt (MOC). I call it Milankovitch aftereffects.
At the end of the last glaciation there was a massive insertion of cold, fresh water into the oceans. This brought the MOC to a halt with warm saltier water on the surface. It also led to the Holocene Optimum as most of the cold water undercut the warm upper layers. Without any upwelling cold water and less evaporation the climate warmed.
This lasted for a few millennia before the natural forces which drive the MOC started to take over again. The currents started slowly leading to alternating warm and cold periods which we see in proxies such as GISP2. As the speed has increased, the warm/cold phases of the cycle have gotten shorter.
The rest of your claims are still valid.
Geological changes, due in part by plate tectonics (aka continental drift) do play a part on epic geological time scales. The world was different when it was a single continent and again when it was two and again the the isthmus of Panama closed.
A most interesting article. I think you are on the right track and have been for some time.
The attached from China is most interesting. It is based on their recording of temperatures over the last 4,000 years. They record a much greater range of about 4.5 to 5.0C suggesting that there is another 2.5C to go before the current rise tops out.
The other aspect of note is that your Fig 3 forms a loose correlation with the Chinese graph over identical periods.
The simple conclusion from both your paper and from the Chinese article from 2013 is that temperature variations have little or nothing to do with human activity.
http://www.scmp.com/article/700638/china-gives-history-lesson-warming
So, the lesson to be learned: Barbarians prefer winter sports.
I had no idea the Chinese had thermometers that far back.
[this is what I meant by spam-mod]
I thought we had got rid of cycles and epicycles with Galileo…
I want to point out two assumptions you are making, just so you are clear that they are assumptions.
Whilst it is true that any time variant quantity can be analysed using Fourier analysis into multiple frequencies of sine waves, that doesn’t mean there is a magic God behind the scenes pumping in all these sine waves. It’s just a model.
It is also true that any complex system of time variant parameters governed by overall negative feedback can exhibit behaviour that ranges from stable, through sinusoidal periodic fluctuations to chaotic yet still bounded behaviour, to ultimately unstable behaviour,
.
It is very important to identify into which category climate falls
The warmunists, (and you) being simple bears of little brain, place it in the stable category.
That is: Earth’s climate is stable except for perturbations induced by external inputs.
They claim it’s CO2. You claim it’s solar fluctuations.
Not because its true, but because its easy to analyse. and gets the desired result.
No one claims it’s unstable. Because even the warmunists have to admit that the climate has been around a long time. Although they come pretty close with their tipping points and other such drivel.
As far as behaving as a quasi stable sinusoidal oscillator, if the climate is exhibiting this, its so complex as to be not useful in analysis at all. Yes we can see various ‘oscillations’ like the PDO and the NAO etc that appear to almost follow a sinusoidal patterns but then we see El Niño/La Niña events occurring with a repetitive but definitely non sinusoidal pattern.
So ultimately the best model of the climate is that of a bounded dynamic system with overall strong negative feedback – strong enough to keep it bounded,but complex and delayed enough to make it overall a quasi stable chaotic system that moves between attractors like the El Niño/La Niña events, ice ages and interstadials and so on.
This model explains climate variation better than any other, and most climatologists of any intelligence and integrity know this, but they keep their mouths shut, because overall the name of the climate science game – and you are playing it too – is to come up with a model that predicts the future more or less accurately.
And with a chaotic system, that cannot be done.
What studying the climate reveals ultimately is that it is by and large a complex dynamic system with multiple non-linear feedback paths and strong overall negative feedback supplied by Stefan-Boltzmann’s law of black body radiation.
As such it exhibits quasi stable chaotic variation. That is, although it is subject to externalities like solar radiation variation, by far and away the most dominant factor in its variability is its own internal non linear feedback loops.
And because these are chaotic, they are ipso facto unpredictable with any mathematics or computers we have at our disposal..
That is, climate scientists are simply wasting their time. The answer to ‘what will the worlds climate be like in 100 years time?’ is “I have no idea, can have no idea, and until we have better mathematics never will have any idea”.
At best we can say that it probably won’t be more than 9°C warmer or colder than it is now, because since life evolved, it never has been. But a decent asteroid strike could tip it into a global ice age easily. And any wandering planetoid from the Oort cloud that pushed us into an orbit closer to the sun could render all life practically extinct through REAL global warming.
Don’t fall for the climate nonsense by using the same assumptions the warmunists use to ‘prove’ that the climate is going this way or that way.
Their assumptions are simply wrong.
No one has a clue. And the mathematics to analyse bounded chaotic systems simply does not exist. I went looking for it. Nothing.
Climate science is on the edge of what science actually is. It certainly isn’t as hard edged or predictable as physics or chemistry.
You speak like an accomplished Systems Engineer.
I don’t disagree with you. I would just point out that in my post I am very clear that I am not proposing a model of climate. What I did was show that there was a plausible alternative to the IPCC model that all recent global warming is anthropogenic and thus all recent global warming should be subtracted from the AMO to reveal its true natural component. That was my only point, I have not joined the consensus.
That said, I do believe that Earth’s climate is basically stable, which means most climate feedbacks are negative. That is why life has lived on Earth for over 600 million years. Some external force is required for it to change significantly, such as Earth’s orbit, continental drift, bolide strikes, or solar output. Most of these variations are cyclic, but not all.
“The Middle Europe oak dendroclimatology demonstrates that the Little Ice Age (1500–1800 yr. AD), the Hallstattzeit cold epoch (750–400 yr. BC) and the earlier cold epoch (3200–2800 yr. BC) are separated by 2200–2500 years”
Grand solar minima series occur every 863 years, they picked every third one, amazing how they missed the frost rings on the ones that they skipped.
The AMO is always warmer during centennial solar minima, so an increase in solar activity from the postulated Bray cycle won’t be driving a warmer AMO.
Interesting idea, but I don’t think I agree. The longer Bray and Eddy cycles are very powerful and will override the Centennial cycle. I think the weaker centennial cycle sits on top of a more powerful trend. This is also what the data shows.
The centennial minimum cycle is produced by the first synodic cycle of Venus-Earth versus Jupiter-Uranus. The cycle has a slight slip which causes a cyclic variation in the lengths of the centennial minima through an 863 year cycle. There isn’t anything that can override the centennial cycle, grand solar minima series are intrinsic to it, it doesn’t require an additional cycle.
The Eddy cycle at 980 or 1000 years is too long, and has no theoretical origin. There is no Bray cycle in solar activity, and none of it happens in long sine wave trends, though it is common to believe that such things should happen in sine waves. The little ice age wasn’t a sine wave, there were several hot European periods between the grand solar minimums. The late 1300’s, the early 1500’s, the 1610’s, 1630’s, and 1650’s. The Medieval Warm Period had short centennial minima as cold as Sporer or Maunder, as in the 1120’s. Tracking back every 863 years from 1615 coincides with series of hot periods all through the Holocene. Periodic event series yes, but not sine waves.
Further to my first comment, one of the most notable Holocene aridity events is known as the 4.2 kyr event. Starting with a super (grand) centennial solar minimum from 2225 BC, and two centennial cycles later from 2000 BC is also noted as an arid period, also with population displacements and civilisation collapses. That’s right at the high peak of the Bray cycle, and the best proof that the Bray cycle does not exist, let alone override anything.
In fact the next peak in your Bray cycle chart at 350 AD was also a grand solar minimum, known as the Early Antique Little Ice Age, and is when the Western Roman Empire began to decline.
Nice article Andy. I respect your conclusion that natural cycles can not be dismissed in favor of anthropogenic only causes. It shows in no uncertain terms that more research is needed to obtain the attribution of various factors.
This is the problem with the current GCM’s, they are not designed to derive a functional relationship, but only to meet someone’s expectation of what is occurring.
Regarding Scafetta’s planetary cycle ideas. The grand cycle of all four gas giants is 4627 years, a good reference is 3322 BC and 1306 AD when all four were in inferior conjunction. Either side of the middle of the cycle separated by 179 years, are a pair of close but not exact analogues at 1098 BC and 919 BC. Someone looking only at this half cycle may think it is 2224 years long, or 2403 years long, depending on which analogue they choose. If the orbits were circular, the series of Jovian configurations through the first half of the 4627 year cycle, would be mirrored in the second half.
This cycle cannot order grand solar minima, as it does not include Earth and Venus, but it may modulate them.
Change date as required (minus sign for BC dates), increase size to say 800, and click ‘update’
https://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/Solar
Thanks Ulric, very nice website. I will use it.
It does not constitute a 4627 year or a 2224/2403 year long envelope or sine wave though. It is a sequence of colder and hotter events occurring at syzygies and quadratures of the gas giants, changing roughly every 1-3 years.
“ Greenhouse gas radiation cannot penetrate the ocean surface and causes much less warming of the ocean surface as a result.”
Not true, IR radiation does penetrate the ocean surface and is absorbed very rapidly.