Roy hasn’t updated UAH. So, I thought I’d post a random graph showing how the temperature anomalies reported by NOAA, HadCrut and GISTemp compare to the “old” AR4 projections. After all, in the past the time periods was “too short” to test. So, presumably, at some point they will be “long enough”. As long as I have scripts, we can keep an eye out on this and review how temperatures are tracking from time to time:
As you know, I like starting in 2001, but it really make little difference with anomaly plots. What matters is how the temperature fall relative to the projections. Choices above are based on the historical choices in the AR4 which showed “uncertainty” based on the 1-σ spread of multi-model means and whose central tendency was the multi-model mean of all models in the ensemble. Also: recall the baseline in the AR4 was 1980-1999, so the average anomaly for each run was forced to agree during that baseline.
I have a to-do list on ENSO correcting, but since summer I’ve been less motivated than previously. Mostly just… sometimes need breaks. So, for now, these graphs are useful for open threads.
Does this
A) mean the HadCrut, NOAA, and GISTemp data are ‘false’,
B) mean the SRES guys are ‘confused’,
or
C) make Lucia ‘mendacious’ for putting the two together in a graph and showing it
?
It has been stated before by actual statisticians, but the plotting of confidence intervals on the graph is a gross violation of statistical theory and utterly meaningless, because the various models do not represent repeated measurements. This graph is an example of scientific illiteracy at least and possibly deliberate fraud.
The best that can be said from the graph is that the two or three models making the lowest predictions might possibly be true and might be deserving of further development. The other models are falsified and should be abandoned. That they are continuing to be in use is another example of scientific incompetence and dishonesty.
Lucia,
How dare you cherry pick the starting year of 2001? Tamino will be after you! OK, the IPCC AR3 was 2001. But still, couldn’t you choose a date that makes the models look better? 😉
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On a more serious note: I think that main stream climate scientists are beginning to accept that the ‘pause’ is real. They just aren’t ever going to let projections of warming through 2100 be influenced by ‘the pause’, no matter how long it is; too much danger of turning public energy policy away from the most draconian options. When global average temperatures in 2030 are close to 2010, they they will continue to hype extreme warming. De-funding much of climate ‘science’ (starting, of course, with the IPCC) is the only rational response to such politically motivated nonsense.
Re: SteveF (Nov 8 16:05),
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The climate science community can get by nicely between now and 2030 by pursuing a two-prong public relations strategy:
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1: All climate is local.
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Since many places on earth are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, local impacts of climate change will become ever-more severe regardless if global mean temperature remains flat.
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2: The ocean ate my joules.
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The excess heat energy absorbed by the oceans will return in the form of stronger storms and more extreme weather patterns. (Refute that, deniers!)
Lucia, do you have the same length, 12 years, for the hindcast?
I would like to know how much these first-principle modelers cheated the ‘training’.
perhaps you should offer a prize for the person who can predict the abuse that Tamino will wreak upon you…you might even get a visit from Steve Bloom about this flagrant breach of the CAGW norm.
SteveF (Comment #120785)
November 8th, 2013 at 4:05 pm
“On a more serious note: I think that main stream climate scientists are beginning to accept that the ‘pause’ is real. They just aren’t ever going to let projections of warming through 2100 be influenced by ‘the pause’, no matter how long it is; too much danger of turning public energy policy away from the most draconian options. When global average temperatures in 2030 are close to 2010, they they will continue to hype extreme warming. De-funding much of climate ‘science’ (starting, of course, with the IPCC) is the only rational response to such politically motivated nonsense.”
———————————-
The “pause” most certainly should give climate scientists pause – to better understand and more accurately predict the complex set of ocean-atmosphere heat transfers that introduce considerable noise into the atmospheric temperatures. The ‘pause’, however, is non-existent in the TOA energy imbalance associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect. Thus, the oceans continue to gain heat, with no measurable pause whatsoever. Because of the large difference in heat capacities, a readily measurable heating or cooling of the atmosphere would produce only an undetectable blip in OHC. I would suggest that at this time, for whatever reasons, the oceans are taking up ever so slightly more heat. When this will change I don’t know. And I don’t think you do either. Maybe not until 2030. Maybe not for centuries. Maybe the atmospheric heating will return with a vengeance in 2025.
Just as you object to crying catastrophe, I object to soothing assurances that everything will be OK.
bob sykes (Comment #120763) November 8th, 2013 at 1:43 pm
“It has been stated before by actual statisticians, but the plotting of confidence intervals on the graph is a gross violation of statistical theory and utterly meaningless, because the various models do not represent repeated measurements. This graph is an example of scientific illiteracy at least and possibly deliberate fraud.”
If you check at the bottom, the graph was made by Lucia. I think your criticism is excessive.
Looks like temperature trends are negative (but not statistically significantly so) and outside the +/-2 sigma bounds.
NASA noted cooling from 1940 -1970, but Hansen attributed it to volcanoes – Mt. Agung.
Now is this “reduced warming”/”cooling” from climate persistence via a natural oscillation (PDO/ENSO?) or random variation or volcano/aerosols, or solar cycle?
How about compare temperature trends from one cycle of the PDO (~60 years) ago (~1953).
Alternatively, considering predictions have been made for a future glaciation, a bet on when the GISS etc trends go statistically negative might be interesting.
Beta Blocker,
Of course that’s a hypothetical. But in that event, scientists could say whatever they wanted. But if the mean temperature really do remain flat until 2030, it’s going to be very difficult to convince the world in general that much of anything needs to be done. It’s hard enough to convince the people of the world in general that something needs to be done when temperatures do and are rising, it is (and should be) harder to convince them to do something to avoid future temperature rises when temperatures are not rising and have not done so for decades.
Anyway, among other things, if temperature stop rising for that long it’s going to be difficult to try to figure out “new” graphs that are show things “the right way”.
Re: lucia (Nov 9 08:32),
The Germans seem convinced. Unfortunately, they have recently discovered that getting 25% of their energy from renewables has resulted in increased CO2 emissions because the standby power is being generated by burning coal imported from the US. There’s also the problem of industries fleeing the country because the price of electricity is triple that in the US. Trying to get rid of coal and nuclear at the same time isn’t working for them.
Owen,
“Ever so slightly” more heat uptake just doesn’t explain a lack of warming. Levitus et al (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/) show that the rate of heat accumulation has not changed very much. Back-of-envelop calculations say the 0-2000M uptake is a bit under 0.5 watt/M^2 averaged globally… and that is probably a fair estimate of the current global TOA imbalance. We can compare this to the current best estimate of GHG forcing of ~3.15 Watts/M^2 to gain some perspective… the ocean uptake is ~16% of the current estimated GHG forcing. Sure, it is possible that the rate of heat uptake by the oceans could suddenly decline, but considering the historical data and the transfer process involved (turbulence-driven eddy mixing of heat into a very large thermal mass), really big changes in rate seem unlikely. If that rate of uptake were to suddenly drop by 50% (which seems to me so unlikely as to be just about impossible) the net surface forcing would increase by ~0.25 watt/M^2. How much that would increase surface temperatures depends on the true climate sensitivity, but if you accept the IPCC central estimate (~0.85C/watt/M^2… and I think it is much lower than that!), the corresponding short term increase in temperature would be a bit over 0.2C.
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So I’m not very worried about a drop in ocean heat uptake rate causing a sudden surge in surface temperatures. Which is not to say that pseudo-cyclical temperature variation is not causing “the pause”, at least in part… the historical temperature record is consistent with substantial pseudo-cyclical contributions to warming (ENSO, PDO, AMO, etc). I would not be surprised if there were another ~20 year period of more rapid warming, like the ~1980 to ~2000 period, starting in the mid-2030’s (of course, I am not going be around to see that warming happen 😉 ) You don’t need to have big swings in ocean heat uptake to explain substantial pseudo-cyclical surface temperature variation. The underlying secular warming trend (absent pseudo-cyclical variation) almost for sure is not zero, and is probably in the range of ~0.12C per decade; opposing cyclical contributions have generated a net of ~0 for a while. What is pretty certain is that the underlying trend is nothing like the model average of ~0.26C per decade. William of Ockham would say they have the sensitivity way too high.
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Prudent public energy policy (which IMO needs to center on fail-safe advanced nuclear power, improved energy efficiency, and natural gas via fracking) is both needed and possible, but is being held back by climate science continuing to insist on implausible sensitivity levels, and green activists continuing to insist on draconian reductions in energy use, along with substitution of economically impossible ‘green energy’ for conventional energy sources. Substantial reductions in CO2 emissions are indeed prudent (for lots of reasons, only one of which is warming), but green activists, among them many climate scientists, have to compromise on nuclear power and stop opposing obviously beneficial things like natural gas from fracking substituting for coal. A continuation of ‘the pause’ for a decade or more, which seems to me likely, means the activists’ dreams of forcing people to “fundamentally change the way they live” are going to remain just dreams. The very poor in many places around the world will continue to demand access to energy, and they will not be denied. Humanity will need a lot more energy in the coming decades, not less. I suggest climate science and green activists stop the climate hysteria and start compromising on economically practical energy supplies. IOW, stop dreaming and start dealing with reality.
DeWitt,
A shocking development that nobody could possibly have foreseen. Dumköpfes being led by wild eyed greens.
SteveF,
Regarding your calculations, I would say it this way: ocean heat uptake is ~93% of the TOA imbalance (and atmospheric uptake is ~2%). Roughly a 50:1 ratio. My back of a tiny matchbook estimate says that a small % increase in ocean heat uptake will produce a proportional cooling that will be magnified ~ 50 fold in the atmospheric temperatures. I’ll feel better about these numbers when I can do a more complete calculation.
The best estimate of the secular trend is the estimate taken over the longest time period, and neither the rapid escalation seen in the 1990’s, nor the flat period of the early 2000’s are particularly suitable. I don’t have too much trouble with your estimate of 0.12C/decade (I would go maybe a bit higher). However, over the land, which is most relevant to humans, that number is closer to 0.25C/decade (BEST data, last 40 years).
Regarding the climate scientist dreamers, I heard James Hansen speak Thursday evening at Dickinson College. He is most certainly concerned about the effects of continued heat uptake from rising CO2 levels, especially when world-wide fossil fuel use is increasing. He provided two solutions: (1) an urgent plea for nuclear power, he hit this issue hard both in the talk an in the question period (he may well be a dreamer on that one), and (2) what he called fee and dividend (a gradually-increasing, revenue-neutral US carbon tax with proceeds returned in their entirety to US citizens as an annual dividend).
Hansen struck me that evening as reasonable and pragmatic. Surely our approach cannot be to burn our valuable reduced carbon supplies until they are near-gone.
Are you sure you are not setting up wild-eyed straw men?
Owen,
40 years is too short a period to see an underlying trend clearly if there is a significant longer term pseudo-oscillation…. like 60 years.
“Regarding your calculations, I would say it this way: ocean heat uptake is ~93% of the TOA imbalance (and atmospheric uptake is ~2%). Roughly a 50:1 ratio. My back of a tiny matchbook estimate says that a small % increase in ocean heat uptake will produce a proportional cooling that will be magnified ~ 50 fold in the atmospheric temperatures. ”
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Makes absolutely no sense to me. Do a simple heat balance… that does make sense.
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” He provided two solutions: (1) an urgent plea for nuclear power, he hit this issue hard both in the talk an in the question period (he may well be a dreamer on that one), and (2) what he called fee and dividend (a gradually-increasing, revenue-neutral US carbon tax with proceeds returned in their entirety to US citizens as an annual dividend).”
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So Hansen has started to face reality. That is a good thing. He is still dreaming on the tax issue. 1) politicians never would go along with that (point to revenue neutral taxes that are working well, anywhere), and 2) voters would rebel, at least in most places. People want cheaper energy, not more expensive energy.
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As for straw men: I don’t think I have set up any straw men. I am pointing out that activists (and not just climate activists) rarely practice good judgement, and often behave in ways which are self-defeating. Activist climate scientists are obviously self defeating… to the detriment of the public.
Owen: “Thus, the oceans continue to gain heat, with no measurable pause whatsoever”
Or acceleration. CO2 hasn’t changed anything.
SteveF,
OK, I have done a more complete calculation. Assumptions: mass of atmosphere = 5E21 g, heat capacity of air = 1.01J/g/K, heat capacity of atmosphere = 5.0E21J/K, heating rate of atmosphere (secular trend) = 0.012K/yr, heating rate of ocean = 8.40E21 J/yr (from 2005-2013 ARGO data at http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/basin_data.html.)
The current atmospheric secular rate (0.012 K/yr) translates into an atmospheric heating rate of 6.0E19 J/yr. Now, if heat is transfered from the atmosphere to the ocean at a constant rate so as to produce a drop in the secular rate from 0.012 K/yr to 0.009 K/year ( a loss of 0.003 K/yr in the heating rate), that corresponds to a loss rate of 1.5E19 J/yr from the atmosphere to the ocean. The additional input of 1.5E19J/yr into the ocean makes it heating rate become 8.40E21 + 0.015E21 J/yr = 8.42E21 J/yr. Thus a 25 % reduction in atmospheric heating rate produces just a 0.2% change in ocean heating rate, which is not measurable.
Re: Owen (Nov 9 13:49),
That’s for dry air. Try calculating for moist air at constant RH. To do that right, you need to do it by zones as the specific humidity is an exponential function of temperature. At tropical temperatures, the ΔH from the heat of vaporization of water is much larger than the ΔH from heating the rest of the air.
>It has been stated before by actual statisticians, but the plotting of confidence intervals on the graph is a gross violation of statistical theory and utterly meaningless, because the various models do not represent repeated measurements.
Say what? Do the confidence intervals get calculate based on the differences between different models? I assumed it was different runs of the same model.
DeWitt,
The heat capacity of dry air is 1.005 J/g/K, the heat capacity of pure water vapor is 1.82 J/g/K (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/humid_heat). Even if we use the latter value as the heat capacity value for air, the calculation I did then results in a 0.3% change in ocean heating rate for a 25% change in atmospheric heating rate. Such a small change in dOHC/dt cannot be measured accurately given the noise in the system.
It has to be the case: we have a large heat reservoir with a high heat capacity exchanging with a much smaller reservoir with a lower heat capacity. The former will be affected less by the exchange and the latter more.
Owen
It doesn’t quite work that way because neither the ocean nor the atmosphere are fully mixed. Temperature varies with depth in the ocean and elevation in the atmosphere.
Re: Owen (Nov 9 14:30),
You’re not getting it. It’s not the heat capacity of the water vapor that’s already there. That’s trivial. It’s the heat of vaporization of the additional water. You need to calculate the extra energy needed to evaporate enough water to maintain constant relative humidity. The heat of vaporization of water is 2501 kJ/kg. See here for the details of the calculation:
So you need to calculate the total column increase in water vapor for a change in temperature at the surface, calculate the associated ΔH and add that to get the sum of latent and sensible heat. All you’re calculating is sensible heat.
And, of course, that assumes the lapse rate remains constant. The heat capacity of air varies with temperature as well.
Re: Owen (Nov 9 14:30),
Then there’s PΔV work as well because a warmer column of air will be taller too. And you’re neglecting the increased radiation to space from a warmer atmosphere.
A quick and dirty for the Tropical Atmosphere gives an approximately 6% increase in ΔH for the increase in specific humidity from a 1 C change in temperature. That’s less than I thought.
And finally, you can’t just warm the atmosphere all by itself. It’s closely coupled with the surface so the effective heat capacity is a lot higher than just the mass of the atmosphere.
Owen,
The issue is not to calculate how much an equivalent amount of heat would warm the atmosphere based on the relative heat capacities (which is essentially irrelevant), it is to calculate how much the surface and atmosphere would have to warm, as a result of less heat going into the ocean, for the rate of loss of heat to space to exactly match the hypothetical reduction in heat gain by the ocean. IOW, what is the expected surface temperature increase with that assumed heat balance? If half the current rate of uptake (about 0.25 watt/M^2) were suddenly no longer being taken up by the oceans, how much would the surface have to warm for that much extra heat to be lost to space? That is why you need to use an assumed climate sensitivity value to make a reasonable estimate. Even using a relatively high sensitivity (IPCC central estimate, 0.85C increase per watt/M^2 forcing), the expected warming from 0.25 watt/M^2 is modest. And as I said, cutting the rate of heat uptake by the oceans by half is, well, a bit far fetched on physical grounds.
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By the way, estimates of ocean heat uptake, due to warmer ocean surface temperatures, are closely related to estimates of CO2 uptake by the ocean due to rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations; the mixing mechanisms are similar. I know of nobody who suggests that absorption of CO2 by the oceans is suddenly going to change.
MikeN (Comment #120840),
Ya, well, I think whatever is estimated by pooling runs from different models, it is physically meaningless; I have said so from the first time a read about pooling runs from different models. It tells us nothing except maybe the range of unjustified aerosol kludges and speculative cloud feedbacks that different modeling groups have settled on to get their desired climate sensitivity level (in other words, high sensitivity).
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AFAICT, pooling models does nothing but artificially broaden the “uncertainty range” for the models, so that the uncertainty for the ‘pool’ of models (maybe a better description would be the ‘cesspool’ of models) is closer to encompassing reality. It is a ploy to make the models look better at predicting warming than they actually are, no matter how fast Ben Santer waves his arms while managing to keep a straight face. It is all just so incredibly silly and stooopid.
If heat trapped by CO2 goes into ocean instead of atmosphere it is spread over the heat capacity of the ocean, which 1000 times that of atmosphere. So if 2 C of atmosphere warming goes into the ocean it warms the ocean by 0.002 C. That makes an upper limit for how much that heat can then warm the atmosphere.
buck smith,
Heat added to the top of the ocean cannot immediately spread out over the whole ocean. Transport takes time. So, as a practical matter, heat added to the ocean is not spread out over the heat capacity of the entire ocean.
I seemed to have missed something!
The above discussion regarding calculating the heating of the oceans by the atmosphere is analogous to calculating the effects of heating a bath tub of cold water by a hair dryer.
If I want to heat the oceans, I would use short wave radiation and modulate the shortwave radiation by more or less clouds. The role of long wave radiation in heating the oceans, other than the first ocean surface atoms or so is negligible.
I would be happy if someone would point out to me how the the atmosphere is playing a large role in ocean heating.
RiHo08
It’s actually more complicated than that. All of the down welling radiation is either a) absorbed by the atmosphere, b) reflected by clouds, c) reflected by the ocean surface, or d) absorbed by the ocean surface (~50%).
Of the energy absorbed by the surface, roughly half is lost through evaporation, and another 10% or so is lost to the atmosphere, mostly at night.
So most of the heat absorbed by the ocean goes back to the atmosphere in some manner. Ocean heating is mostly a process of reduced heat loss to the atmosphere.
John Vetterling
If I am not mistaken, what you describe is the “greenhouse” effect; i.e. slowing the cooling of the oceans by greenhouse gases, the prime one being water.
What I thought Owens and others above were talking about was that the imbalance at TOA [energy in] was greater than [energy radiating out]. That this imbalance was related to atmosphere heating and the oceans were heating due to the atmosphere “adding” heat to the oceans, the oceans then storing heat energy into the depths. Hence my hair dryer analogy of heating a bath tub of cold water, which I find implausible.
Of course, I may have missed something along the way which is known to have happened at least once or twice before.
RiHo08 (Comment #120855),
“The role of long wave radiation in heating the oceans, other than the first ocean surface atoms or so is negligible.”
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Sorry, no. This statement is utterly wrong, even if routinely and loudly acclaimed as proof that IR ‘back-radiation’ from CO2 can’t warm the ocean at blogs like WUWT. It is pure nonsense.
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The atmosphere does not play much of a role in warming the ocean (it in fact cools the ocean surface almost everywhere due to evaporation). As you suggest in your comment, most heating of the ocean takes place due to a range of solar wavelengths, with penetration depths of microns (infrared wavelengths) to 200+ meters (violet to near UV). In most places, a well mixed layer forms due to physical surface mixing (waves) and convective overturning (more dense liquid above less dense liquid). Most solar energy is absorbed in the well mixed layer, which averages about 60 meters in depth, but which can reach >150 meters in some places (like the West Pacific warm pool).
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WRT surface warming from infrared: the ocean is not static. It has lots of waves and and convective surface mixing. Any increase in infrared radiation on the surface (solar or other source) will change the energy balance at the surface, and make a warmer surface skin. The combination of lots of solar energy being absorbed well below the surface and mainly evaporative cooling of the surface normally makes the actual surface (‘skin’) of the ocean a bit cooler than the underlying well mixed layer, and this causes convective overturning, especially if waves are not strong enough to cause lots of physical surface mixing. The convection takes the form of convective mixing cells and makes visible patterns of floating seaweed/debris on the ocean surface (visible if the wind/waves are not too strong!). I have seen these patterns of convective cells many times. Increased infrared radiation, from any source, changes the surface energy balance, so that the surface is warmer (and slightly lower in density) than it would have been if that infrared radiation were not impinging on the surface. A warmer surface skin means slightly lower surface density and less convective overturning. A warmer surface skin means mixing by waves is mixing a somewhat warmer surface skin (but still cooler than the underlying water) into the well mixed layer.
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So the underlying water in the well mixed layer (warmed every day by absorbing shorter solar wavelengths) MUST warm to re-establish the same level of heat transfer to the atmosphere and so return to energy balance. That is, infrared radiation, from any source, must indeed warm the ocean.
Steve F
Thank you for the reply.
“most heating of the ocean takes place due to a range of solar wavelengths, with penetration depths of microns (infrared wavelengths)…..”
This last piece I believe: “with penetration depths of microns (infrared wavelengths)” is the same as my saying “long wave radiation” and that long wave radiation’s impact is on the ocean’s skin . As the skin is involved in water evaporation, then, to my way of thinking, the skin’s temperature (really heat) is not available to very much wave action or residual convection to be curled back into the ocean depths, rather subjected to evaporation. That is why I was saying that ocean warming is through short wave radiation penetrating to depth as reflected in the “well mixed” layer of 60 meters or so.
I regard “long wave radiation, down welling radiation, back radiation, etc. as the same.” a rose by any other name. Atmospheric green house gases radiating in all directions including towards the surface, and for the oceans, absorbed and re-radiated by a couple of ocean surface atoms whose long wave radiation photons won’t penetrate downward and add heat to the well mixed layer.
“So the underlying water in the well mixed layer (warmed every day by absorbing shorter solar wavelengths) MUST warm to re-establish the same level of heat transfer to the atmosphere and so return to energy balance.”
If the atmosphere is cooler than the oceans, I don’t understand how there could be an energy balance. The temperatures of oceans and atmosphere appears to have a gradient, which may have a steady state, but not a balance: i.e. heat work [in] = heat work [out].
From what I understand, the reasons for the current discussions is that TOA {energy in} > TOA {energy out}. Then the issue of recent escalating atmospheric concentrations of CO2 not being accompanied by a lock step escalation of surface temperatures is reflected in Lucia’s graph above, prompting more discussions of a “pause.”
RiHo08,
You have a host of serious physical misconceptions, each of which would take quite a lot of discussion to explain… and I rather suspect you would not be inclined to accept those explanations even if someone were inclined to spend the required time to explain. So I withdraw my earlier comment (120865) and request that you not think any further about its content.
A deus.
SteveF, “Any increase in infrared radiation on the surface (solar or other source) will change the energy balance at the surface, and make a warmer surface skin.”
I was quite sure CO2 blocked infrared? How much less infrared would reach the ocean after a 290ppm to 400ppm increase in CO2?
Bruce,
Assuming that is a serious question (and that is not at all clear):
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CO2 absorbs mainly at ~15 microns wavelength, and simultaneously emits in all directions at that same wavelength. (The sun has very little emission at ~15 microns, if that is your concern.)
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When you add a GHG to the atmosphere it does not ‘keep radiation from reaching the surface’. It makes the escape of radiation to space from the surface less than it would have been in the absence of that GHG. The influence shows up at the surface as ‘back radiation’ at ~15 microns (for CO2), but that just means the GHG absorbed and re-emits in all directions (including back toward the surface). Cooling by loss of heat to space requires a net upward flow of radiation; adding GHG reduces the net upward flow for the same temperature (due to ‘back-radiation’)… so for the same net flow of radiation the surface temperature has to increase.
Bruce (Comment #120894
“I was quite sure CO2 blocked infrared”
Most of the sun’s radiation is toward the short, violet, UV, and of the spectrum. Relatively little in the infrared spectrum. This is a result of the black body temp of the sun.
The earth, having a much lower temp, radiates relatively more long wave spectrum. More toward the red, infrared end. As a result CO2 block the earth’s outbound radiation more than the sun’s inbound radiation. Look up the Wien displacement law.
SteveF, “It makes the escape of radiation to space from the surface less than it would have been in the absence of that GHG.”
But would that also not do the opposite? Any incoming IR from the sun would be lessened and less would strike the ocean.
I recently read: “At 15 microns the sun produces 180 times as much energy as the earth.”
The Sun is pretty big. Over 50% of its energy is IR.
Bruce (#120894) –
CO2 does not block the entire infrared region. With some crude calculations, one can estimate that about 1% of solar radiation is in the CO2 absorption region.
Lucia,
Thanks for the clarification. The obvious question is what is the time constant for mixing, conducting and convecting the heat around a larger volume. I have a hard time believing it takes more than a year for the heat to spread over a volume that is 10% of ocean volume. In which case my argument still holds. If 2 degrees K of warming goes into the ocean instead of atmosphere the ocean is warmed by 0.02 K. And that is the most that heat can rewarm the atmosphere.
HaroldW (Comment #120908),
Thanks, I really didn’t want to do that calculation to show Bruce that adding CO2 restricts loss of radiant heat from Earth much more than it reduces gain of radiant heat from the sun.
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buck smith (Comment #120909),
You may have a hard time believing it, but it takes a very long time for heat to migrate into the ocean. The time constant for the top 100 meters (~2.5% of the volume) is on the order of 5 years, and it is much slower for deeper water. The overall average time constant is for sure well over 100 years (probably more like 350 years or more).
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BTW, the notion of “2C of warming going into the ocean” is not a reasonable description of what is happening. Warming of the surface due to an applied forcing causes a shift in temperature over a range of times. There is an initial relatively fast warming due to the low heat capacity of the atmosphere and land areas, which allows a fairly rapid response equal to a modest fraction of the equilibrium value, but uptake by the ocean means the approach to a true equilibrium takes a very long time, and follows roughly an exponential approach to equilibrium. If a step change in forcing would produce an equilibrium temperature change of 2C, then it would take on the order of ~40 years to reach ~60-70% of the equilibrium value.
Re: buck smith (Nov 11 07:40),
To add to SteveF’s comment, see this reference on the Marine Radiocarbon Reservoir Effect:
[emphasis added]
HaroldW “about 1% of solar radiation”
That would be 13W/m^2 … right?
How much of that would be blocked by CO2 going from 290ppm to 400ppm?
DeWitt Payne (Comment #120920) ,
Wow, and all this time I thought the clams I was eating were just really old. 😉
buck
You are right that the time it takes to spread is the question. But why do you have a hard time believing it takes more than a year for heat to spread over a volume that is 10% of the ocean? Is your difficulty based on having done any sort of bounding calculation involving any sort of physics? I’m curious because many climate models peg the response time of the of the ocean at thousands of years. (See for example “Time Scales of Climate Response
RONALD J. STOUFFER NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey” whose abstract reads
http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/rjs0401.pdf‎
I know you are only talking about the upper 10%, not the mid ocean, but they are connected (just as the surface of the ocean is connected to the atmosphere.)
The mixing layer is averages 20 to 200 meters, so lets say the average is 80 meters. Average ocean depth is 3800 meters. So I will assume that your data is correct and all heat stays in the mixed layer, i.e about 2.5% of total ocean volume. That 2.5% has 25 times the heat capacity of the whole atmosphere. Energy is conserved, right?
So instead of diving temperature increase by 100 we divide by 25 and the point still holds. Thermal energy can not move against the gradient. If global warming goes into the Ocean we can effectively subtract that energy from sensitivity factor.
sorry for my autocorrect typo. it should read – So instead of dividing temperature increase by 100 we divide by 25 and the point still holds…
buck
You can’t subtract it from an estimate of CS if ocean heat uptake was already accounted for when estimating the climate sensitivity based on response to increased GHGs. That is: whatever the uptake is estimated to be it should be accounted for once and only once.
I’m also not entirely sure what point you are trying to make (probably because I’d have to scroll way back?). If you are trying to say that in the long run, after we the radiative properties of the atmosphere and ocean have equilibrated, the heat content of the ocean will have increased much more than that of the atmosphere: yes. Or if you want to say the Joules->temperature relationship for the whole ocean v. atmosphere of the atmosphere and ocean are such that the ocean needs many more Joules to result in a temperature rise: yes. want to estimate the change in the temperature of the ocean and the atmosphere In the long run once one gets to quasi-steady state for both the ocean and the atmosphere, you don’t do that based on heat capacity.
Or if you are saying that even if recently heat uptake to the ocean was larger than average, it will be difficult for that heat to “jump out” of the ocean and heat the air because the ocean only warmed a tiny amount in temperature, so basically that heat is to some extent ‘trapped’– kinda sorta yes. But I think those pushing for the “it went into the ocean” notion would merely say that they aren’t really claiming the heat is going to come out of the ocean, but that we would revert to a circulation pattern where it no longer got sucked down and the temperature for the surface went back to rising rapidly. (After which we might revert to periods were heat got sucked up by the ocean and then it rose rapidly and so on.)
One big difficulty with the “it’s gone into the ocean” claim is — at least as far as I’ve read which isn’t necessarily much– is that it it’s not necessarily fully fleshed out.
Lucia,
Thanks, I get your point. I can imagine that there would be circulation pattern where heat no longer got sucked down as you put it. Physical processes like gravity, GH gases, precipitation, cosmic rays and Solar weather could affect this, I guess.
My point is that if GHG energy flux raises the ocean 0.2 degree, then 0.2 C is the most that heat can ever raise the atmosphere temperature. Unless Maxwell’s demons get involved thermal energy always travels from higher temperature to lower temperature. And as the temperatures equilibrate the heat fluxes drop rapidly to zero when temperatures are equal. There are no thermal oscillators that are driven by their own thermal energy. Lumped parameter dynamic models of heat transfer can have capacitive and resistive/conductive elements but no inductors. So no overshoot, right?
One perspective I believe on these climate models is – What ever the sensitivity and forcing CO2 makes on global climate, it is no match for other naturally occurring forcings which have repeatedly driven the earth into ice ages from periods of higher temperature/ higher CO2.
Re: buck smith (Nov 11 18:32),
The atmosphere isn’t isothermal and most of it, in terms of mass, is a lot colder than the surface. A decrease in the lapse rate caused by higher humidity, for example, could increase the heat content of the atmosphere a lot without affecting surface temperature, initially at least, at all. It would change the radiative balance, though. There’s also polar amplification where a small change of temperature in the tropics is related to a much larger change at high latitudes. Changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation could, by making the latitudinal temperature distribution flatter, change the global average temperature without changing the total system heat content significantly. That’s, after all, what ENSO does.
DeWitt Payne (#120964):
“Changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation could, by making the latitudinal temperature distribution flatter, change the global average temperature without changing the total system heat content significantly. That’s, after all, what ENSO does.”
My naive question is, why do you think that ENSO only changes the heat distribution but does not affect heat content? I’m not taking a contrary position, but wondering what evidence there is for the proposition. It seems to me that ENSO has the potential to change system heat content — not because ENSO represents an energy source, but because it can affect insolation and/or radiative balance. E.g., if ENSO causes the tropical TOA temperature to increase, that would increase radiative emissions from the (terrestrial) system.
Are ensembles a legitimate method? The ensemble of models is starting to strike me as a ploy. I want to ask which of the models is doing best and why might that be, but the thinking seems to be that an ensemble of different runs on different models gives the truest picture. I’ve seen justifications of the method that make a comparison between model runs and golf drives. It seems that the game of golf is designed around an inherently imprecise way of moving a ball. This strikes me as an admission that models are as poor an instrument as a long club smacking a small ball. Allowing me the metaphor, I think it is now fair to say that the ball seems to be going down the wrong fairway. Do the models all have something in common that is making them all wrong in roughly the same way? They now seem to be agreeing with one another more than they agree with reality. Are they all missing some factor such as clouds or convective cooling or Kevin Trenberth’s ocean heat or do they all carry some grossly incorrect factor? Is there a way of comparing individual factors in the model with real world data other than temperature? It seems that any good model should produce not just future temperatures but also future rainfall, humidity, cloud cover, etc. It seems we need to know more about how the models actually work rather that just holding them out as some kind of portent. One rarely finds much to read (on a nontechnical level) about who the model makers are and how they go about what they do.
Hank
I don’t really know why you are asking this in this context. In the AR4 the authors made a graph. On that graph, the projection showed the multi-model mean and ±1σ values. Whether the method is “valid” or “not valid” (by whose definition of ‘valid’) or reasonable or contrived, it was a method. A graph was created. And we can plot the projection and the data and see how things are going.
We are currently told that eventually the temperature are going to begin to rise and I think many of us here think they probably will begin to rise. But at the same time, many wonder whether they will ever rise above the multi-model mean, stay outside and below the 1 sigma and so on. The only way to see that is to watch over time.
Harold, Lucia,
Thanks for you ideas and input. The climate system does not operate at equilibrium, far from it. With all the various modes of convection, flow and transport, my point may only be valid over very long time frames. I would like to look at or working up some enthalpy entropy diagrams or temperature entropy diagrams, but there is the day job, the family, yoga, golf etc.