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Comments 85251 to 85300:

85251. Albatross at 02:31 AM on 20 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       CW @11, You do not have a terribly good history here at SkS with accurately relaying the science. And your latest missive is not doing much to alleviate that. In fact, some might point out the irony of you trotting out your own Gish Gallop and confused post to defend Carter's Gish Gallop and confusion. It also includes some fine examples of Cherry picking (e.g, the graph to support your claim that global precip declined from 1970 through 2000). What your strawman fails to address is that it is the increase in extreme/intense precipitation events and droughts which is at issue here-- some places are becoming wetter, others drier. Concerning stratospheric cooling. You might want to read Randel et al. (2009) in which they say: "Temperature changes in the lower stratosphere show cooling of ~0.5 K/decade over much of the globe for 1979-2007, with some differences in detail among the different radiosonde and satellite data sets." And, "Trends in the lower stratosphere derived from radiosonde data are also analyzed for a longer record (back to 1958); trends for the presatellite era (1958–1978) have a large range among the different homogenized data sets, implying large trend uncertainties." You might also wish to look at their Figures 4a and 14--they show a long-term downward trend in stratospheric temperatures. The step changes that you allude to do not account for the majority of the long-term cooling trend as you claim. Anyways, this is not worth my time addressing the other misinformation in your post-- having to do this is tiresome CW, very tiresome. Here is a great quote by John Adams that I think applies to 'skeptics', "lukewarmers", and those in denial about AGW on this thread (and in fact all threads): "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Ponder that.
85252. John Hartz at 02:23 AM on 20 May 2011
       Coral atolls and rising sea levels: That sinking feeling
       I'm confused. Is the above a "Rebuttal Argument" or a blog post?
       Response:

       [dana1981] It's SkS standard practice to publish a blog post to advertise when a new rebuttal is completed.  That's what this is.

85253. ClimateWatcher at 01:51 AM on 20 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       the upper atmosphere is cooling Yes. Particularly the mid to upper stratosphere. But we should note that much of the cooling trend is accounted for by 'step function' changes associated with the volcanic eruptions: ( -Long off-topic Gish Gallop snipped- ) But the evidence of the low rates of above put me squarely into the lukewarmer camp.
       Response:

       [DB] This thread is about the confused state of Bob Carter and his complete misunderstanding of climate science.

       I appreciate the deep care you put into your comment, but pick the one or two items you feel most strongly about & use the Search function to locate the most appropriate thread to put them on.

       Long comments touching upon a plenitude of areas within the panoply of climate science amount to a Gish Gallop when placed upon a thread with such a narrow focus as this.  And as such are typically deleted.

       Thanks for your understanding.

85254. Albatross at 01:34 AM on 20 May 2011
       Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
       Just quickly perused a paper by on of Dr. Scott Mandia's students and it includes this great quote by John Adams that I think applies to 'skeptics' and those in denial about AGW on this thread (and in fact all threads): "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." Dr. Richard Lindzen, I am also looking at you.
85255. Albatross at 01:18 AM on 20 May 2011
       Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
       Ken @118, This has been getting silly for some time Ken, mostly because of your recalcitrance and the shifting of goal posts. Additionally, you continue to misrepresent people (Chris in this case) when you say things like: "So your case relies on nearly all the heat being in the 700-2000m depth range" Re BP @117, you say: "BP #117 has an interesting point. The heat travelling to the poles in the surface currents is given up to the polar air, before densifying enough to go down." It may be an interesting point to you, but it is not novel, nor is it entirely correct. There are other processes at work too at high latitudes, including evaporation and brine exclusion, it is not called the thermo circulation, but the thermohaline circulation, although MOC is probably the best descriptor. It is odd that you and BP are arguing that the OHC can't be increasing below 700 m, but do not fully understand that there are mechanisms by which deep ocean heat uptake can occur. If you feel that you know better, please write a paper instead of playing the omniscient peanut gallery. But you might wish to read the references provided to you @115. You might also wish to take not of the following from Trenberth and Caron (2001): "Atmospheric transports adjusted for spurious subterranean transports over land areas are inferred and show that poleward ocean heat transports are dominant only between 0° and 17°N. At 35° latitude, at which the peak total poleward transport in each hemisphere occurs, the atmospheric transport accounts for 78% of the total in the Northern Hemisphere and 92% in the Southern Hemisphere. In general, a much greater portion of the required poleward transport is contributed by the atmosphere than the ocean, as compared with previous estimates." You ignored the information provided to you @115 by Chris and @116 concerning how heat uptake can occur in the deep ocean. And I'll add another, by Garrett and St. Laurent (2002). Do you deny that there are mechanisms in place that lead to deep ocean mixing and heat uptake there? And as shown above BP is arguing a strawman regarding the polar regions, also one reference that Chris provided talks about deep mixing on account of tropical storms. I am not going to engage you anymore if you continue with this charade. And I'll remind you yet again that you still continue to ignore this question: "And again, please provide some context--what the does this all have to do with Lindzen's illusion about the warming arising from internal variability? "
85256. Charlie A at 23:55 PM on 19 May 2011
       Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
       #27. A very reasonable model for hindcasting global average temperature is to simply multiply the net forcings by a constant, plus a lag term with time constant of about 4 years. The sensitivity that results from that fit (95% plus correlation coefficient) is about 1.5C/doubling of CO2. But that is the transient response, not the equilibrium sensitivity, and a transient response our 1 or 1.5C for a doubling of CO2 is not inconsistent with an equilibrium sensitivity of 3 or 4C/doubling CO2. The conversion from OHC to global radiative imbalance is not controversial. The conversion constant is straightforward going from watts (or joules per second) over number of seconds per year and roughly 511 million sq km of global surface area. There is some variance on the estimates of what fraction of the earth's heat capacity is in the ocean, with the lowest estimates being 80%, and the highest >95%. The Argo network has the same sort of importance to our understanding as the satellite network that we use to monitor the atmosphere. Now we can get serious about closing the energy and heat budgets. Aerosols still remain a major unknown, as is the net radiative effect of clouds, and how the net radiative effect of clouds changes with time. What we need next is a Glory satellite in orbit.
85257. Ken Lambert at 23:43 PM on 19 May 2011
       Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
       Chris #115 "That's silly Ken. There is one bit of evidence that shows that there may have been rather little heat gain in a very short period of 0-700m Argo data. The fact that that's been pointed out in non-science journals and house magazines (and crappy journals) doesn't constitute "5 or 6 other analyses". It's a single analysis covering a very short period that might or might not be completely correct" No its not silly Chris. Your derogation does not have any effect on me. Who are the 6 'Teams' contributing a curve each to the 0-700m Charts quoted here in Fig 1 and Fig 2: http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?p=2&t=78&&n=202 All show the 2001-03 step jump and subsequent flattening of OHC. Purkey & Johnson show only 0.1W/sq.m from the deep oceans. So your case relies on nearly all the heat being in the 700-2000m depth range, of which there is only the one bumpy spliced VS Argo analysis. BP #117 has an interesting point. The heat travelling to the poles in the surface currents is given up to the polar air, before densifying enough to go down. That is where I suspect you will find Dr Trenberth's missing heat - off to space over the polar regions.
85258. Berényi Péter at 23:15 PM on 19 May 2011
       Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
       #111 Ken Lambert at 23:20 PM on 18 May, 2011 I was listening to a radio interview with Josh Willis, and he made the point that most of the heat transfer action was in the top 10-20% of the oceans. With an average depth of 3700m - that puts it in the 0-700m layers. Prof. Rahmstorf's introduction to the thermohaline circulation and deep mixing is a profound one. Encyclopedia of Quaternary Sciences Edited by S. A. Elias. Elsevier, Amsterdam 2006. Thermohaline Ocean Circulation. by Stefan Rahmstorf Downwelling basically occurs in two regions of the world oceans, at the North Atlantic - Arctic Ocean boundary and at the Antarctic coast. It could also occur in the North Pacific, if salinity would be higher there, but currently it is in a switched-off state in that region. The total amount of heat transported to polar regions by surface currents feeding bottom water formation is ~1-1.5 PW globally, which corresponds to a global average flux of 2-3 W/m². However, this heat is not pulled down to the abyss, quite the contrary. Seawater, before going down, should get rid of it, otherwise it could not attain a sufficiently high density. Therefore this heat is deposited into polar air, in part by increasing its temperature, in part as latent heat of evaporation. Subsequently this heat is radiated out to space, as polar air is still damn cold, there is no other region colder than that where the excess heat could go (net heat transfer always happens from warmer to colder heat reservoirs, second law). Downwelling always happens to seawater whose temperature is close to freezing, its salinity is increased either by evaporation or brine exclusion (when part of the water freezes over - ice does not like salt). Now, that temperature is not determined by environmental factors, but the physical properties of seawater, therefore it is quite independent of climatic variations, at least as long as there is an ice margin. What can change is the location of downwelling. Not much in the Southern Ocean, where it is determined by the Antarctic coastline. However, in the North Atlantic there is a ridge running across the basin between Europe and Greenland that separates the Arctic basin from the rest. Currently the ice margin lies north of this line, so downwelling goes to the Arctic basin and subsequently to the Atlantic via overflows along the ridge. In glacial times, this entire area was covered by ice and downwelling happened south of the ridge, going directly to the deep Atlantic. That's a difference. However, under current conditions, whenever ice margin moves a bit, downwelling just follows it smoothly. To break the process, polar ice should be removed year round altogether, but that will not happen any time soon (not in the next few thousand years for sure). The talk about shutting down the THC by introducing a vast amount of fresh water into the Arctic basin is just that, talk. Unlike at he end of the last glacial, there is no fresh water body around comparable to Lake Agassiz. Anyway, this shutdown can only be temporary (spanning several centuries), as the MOC (Meridional Overturning Circulation, which THC is part of) is not driven by temperature and/or salinity differences, but by heat diffusion into the abyss elsewhere by turbulent mixing. As THC itself removes heat from the oceans (at a global rate of several W/m²), if one is interested in heat deposition at depth, should look elsewhere.
85259. Marcus at 22:11 PM on 19 May 2011
       National Academy of Sciences on Climate Risk Management
       So, Arkadiusz, it seems that you really do understand the function of the "Copy" & "Paste" keys on your computer. However, you clearly still fail to understand basic scientific principles.
85260. les at 21:03 PM on 19 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       8 - Arkadiusz Indeed Trenberth seems to have you nailed! "Performing cutting-edge climate science in public could easily lead to misinterpretation," ... "and such results can be misused. In fact — to offer one more prediction — I expect that they will be."
85261. Paul D at 20:23 PM on 19 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       I actually had a look at the Galileo movement site and had a lot of difficulty finding any useful science over there. Surely the mark of good science is the editing out of materials that can not be traced back to some original core and proven science. Yet the site references plenty of unscientific material, which is a bit ironic, since some criticism of the IPCC was the inclusion of some non-science material (due to poor editorial control or in sections that were about mitigation). Yet here we have critics of the IPCC failing to put into practice what they preach.
85262. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 19:07 PM on 19 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       More knowledge, less certainty, Kevin Trenberth, 2010.): „So here is my prediction: the uncertainty in AR5′s climate predictions and projections will be much greater than in previous IPCC reports ...” “Is it not a reasonable expectation that as knowledge and understanding increase over time, uncertainty should decrease? But while our knowledge of certain factors does increase, so does our understanding of factors we previously did not account for or even recognize.”
85263. Arkadiusz Semczyszak at 18:46 PM on 19 May 2011
       National Academy of Sciences on Climate Risk Management
       Well ... ... write the same words of other people - and otherwise. Let me quote the words Kevin Trenberth ( More knowledge, less certainty, 2010.): „So here is my prediction: the uncertainty in AR5′s climate predictions and projections will be much greater than in previous IPCC reports ...” “Is it not a reasonable expectation that as knowledge and understanding increase over time, uncertainty should decrease? But while our knowledge of certain factors does increase, so does our understanding of factors we previously did not account for or even recognize.” Trenberth repeats the arguments Earth System Models: The Next Generation, Meehl & Hibbard, 2006.: “However, these components will introduce new feedbacks that will need to be understood through the analysis of sparse observations related to our limited understanding of how these components function in the climate system. These could include, for example, aerosol/cloud/climate feedbacks, vegetation/ocean/biogeochemistry/climate feedbacks.” Of course I know that the interpretation (and explaining) the uncertainty must be based on the following recommendations ( The role of social and decision sciences in communicating uncertain climate risks, Pidgeon & Fischhoff, 2011.): “Atmospheric scientist Kevin Trenberth of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, has explicitly warned that unless such seemingly paradoxical results are communicated carefully, the more complex modelling being used in climate simulations for the upcoming fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may confuse both the public and decision-makers, thereby reducing their willingness to act. The discourse of scientists can be a further source of confusion. For example, scientists do not normally repeat facts that are widely accepted among them, focusing instead on the uncertainties that pose the most challenging problems. As a result, lay observers can get an exaggerated sense of scientific uncertainty and controversy, unless a special effort is made to remind them of the broad areas of scientific agreement. Even that may fail unless it is made clear how 'scientific consensus' (as represented in the IPCC process for assimilating and deliberating evidence) differs from that in everyday life.” “But understanding risk requires more than just knowing risk estimates People also need cognitive representations (or 'mental models') of the processes creating and controlling the risks, and thus causing uncertainty about them. For example, they may need to know how warmer oceans affect tropical storms, marine phytoplankton and winter precipitation, or how rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels lead to increased ocean acidification. Knowledge of such processes allows people to follow public debates and grasp the rationale for alternative policies. It protects (or 'inoculates') them from being 'blind-sided' by unfamiliar facts or perspectives. It affords them the warranted feelings of self-efficacy needed before acting.” In this work also presents an interesting "uncertainty. " It shows, however - by the way - how these uncertainties are large (including economic), and that does not relieve the researchers explain: „... 'blind-sided' by unfamiliar facts or perspectives.”, because only this will help policy makers make decisions.
85264. Chris S at 18:25 PM on 19 May 2011
       Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)
       With regards to the pink dolphin issue. The latest report from the research is here (pdf), it is unclear when the project started but from this document (pdf) it appears the methodology is from 2005 (Alfonso, Titled Thesis) though the PI on the project has been working in the area since 1984. David Horton states "there is little if any population ecology data available" this may be correct but this research looks pretty sound.
85265. MA Rodger at 17:30 PM on 19 May 2011
       Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
       (Apologies if this continues a thread that went off-topic early on. Redirection of enquiry would be a suitable outcome.) At comment #9 - The equating of OHC to global radiative imbalance is presumably a simple piece of arithmatic. Intriguingly it converts OHC into the same units as radiative forcing. At a very simplistic but very understandable level, would not (Average annual OHC converted to W/sqM) + (Global dimming in W/sqM) + ((Global Temp rise over period) / (Sensitivity)) lead to a very rough value for the warming component of Anthopogenic Forcing (assuming natural forcing as constant)?
85266. Philippe Chantreau at 17:03 PM on 19 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       The 100 billion charade is even more ironic considering that skeptics are the ones always claiming that there is too much uncertainty and that more research is needed. Nonetheless, it is a sad state of affairs when someone as scientifically incompetent and as dishonest as Monckton associates his name with that of Galileo. To anyone who feels like whining about my accusing Monckton, check the facts first. His incompetence and dishonesty are heavily documented, on this site and elsewhere. Even our resident "skeptics" don't bother defending the guy who tilts a graph to make it look like there is no increase.
85267. Chris G at 14:46 PM on 19 May 2011
       Lindzen Illusion #7: The Anti-Galileo
       I've followed most of the above, but only a couple things come to mind that others haven't said already. I made a WoodForTrees CO2, PMOD, and Temp graph that I think sums up their relationships, or lack thereof, pretty well. It struck me that climate change has already had its Galileo. His name was Arrhenius, he bucked the status quo about 100 years ago, and his position has grown to be held by the majority since then.
85268. Tom Curtis at 14:46 PM on 19 May 2011
       Oceans are cooling
       Charlie A, spatial distribution is important if there is reason to think the areas not covered are behaving significantly differently from the areas that are. As you seem to be suggesting the significant change in trend in the OHC of the upper 700 meters in 2003 as being an artifact of sampling, you are committed to the non-sampled areas behaving in a significantly different way from the sampled areas. At the very best, if you treat the entire southern ocean as being unsampled that means you require it to be loosing heat at around twice the rate the sampled areas are gaining heat over the 1990's and early 2000's. Well, what is your evidence of that? The available evidence suggests otherwise. And, of course, if there was no major cooling of the Southern Ocean, then the data taken elsewhere is representative so that while the trend may have been less than that recorded, it was still strongly positive. Finally, given that the trend in the Southern Ocean was unrecorded, it is as likely to be strongly positive as not. Indeed, given what we know about the trend elsewhere, and the trend in Southern Ocean SST, and the trend in the "ARGO era", it is more likely to be positive than negative, or even neutral. IN fact, with equal probability, had it recorded it could make the recorded trend stronger rather than weaker.
85269. Charlie A at 14:00 PM on 19 May 2011
       Oceans are cooling
       Tom Curtis, the spatial distribution is also important. You suggest that I go learn some statistics. You should also make that suggestion to those scientists that have published error estimates for OHC measurements which agree with my observation. 24 million samples aren't sufficient if there are large areas of the ocean without data. Look at the last few frames of the animated GIF and see how much of the ocean has no profiles over an entire year. If you choose to ignore that, then there is no use in further discussion.
85270. scaddenp at 13:16 PM on 19 May 2011
       Oceans are cooling
       Sorry, I am missing something. What's CharlieA's take on Hansen et al 2011? Not relevant till its published? Or rejecting von Schuckmann and Le Traon (2011)?
85271. Bern at 13:15 PM on 19 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       I see Bob Carter has now appeared on the list of "Independent Advisors" to the newly minted "Galileo Movement". Said list also includes such distinguished names as Singer, Lindzen, Plimer, Marohasy, Nova, Bolt, and Monckton, among others. It's a veritable picnic of denier arguments. They even repeat the "$100 billion spend on research" argument...
       Response:

       [dana1981] How ironic, the "Galileo movement" is made up of a bunch of anti-Galileos

85272. Albatross at 12:51 PM on 19 May 2011
       Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)
       Regarding the following (fallacious) claim made by a 'skeptic' on this thread: "no big differences in the greenness level [!] of these forests between drought and non-drought years." It seems the misguided commentator is referring to this 2007 Science paper by Saleska et al.. However, what the resident 'skeptic' forgot to tell people here is that the findings form that 2007 paper were based on contaminated satellite data. The paper they should be referring to, Samanta et al. (2010), paints a very different picture. "We find no evidence of large-scale greening of intact Amazon forests during the 2005 drought - approximately 11%–12% of these drought-stricken forests display greening, while, 28%–29% show browning or no-change, and for the rest, the data are not of sufficient quality to characterize any changes. These changes are also not unique - approximately similar changes are observed in non-drought years as well. Changes in surface solar irradiance are contrary to the speculation in the previously published report of enhanced sunlight availability during the 2005 drought. There was no co-relation between drought severity and greenness changes, which is contrary to the idea of drought-induced greening. Thus, we conclude that Amazon forests did not green-up during the 2005 drought." The opposite of what the "skeptics" are trying to trick you into believing. Interestingly, Terence Corcoran from the National Post (Solomon's colleague) decided to distort the science from the Samanta et al. paper. The National Post are quite the disinformers it seems. Here is what Dr. Simon Lewis had to say about the Saleska et al. (2007) and the Samanta et al. (2010) papers: "This is important new information, as in 2007, a paper using the satellite-based same method showed a strong 'greening-up' of the Amazon in 2005, suggesting tolerance to drought. The new study shows that those results were not reproducible, but also highlight the extreme caution that should be attached to satellite studies generally in this field, with instruments in space collecting data which is then used to infer subtle changes in the ecology of tropical forests. In contrast to the 2007 paper, Oliver Phillips, myself and others, published a paper in Science, using ground observations from across the Amazon, that while the 2005 drought did not dramatically change the growth of the trees compared to a normal year, as Samanta also show, but the deaths of trees did increase considerably. The new study of Samanta et al., supports the Phillips et al. study, which itself shows the Amazon is vulnerable to drought. The Phillips paper showed that remaining Amazon forests changed from absorbing nearly 2 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere a year, to being a massive committed source of over 3 billion tonnes, from tree mortality. The evidence for the possibility of a major die-back of the Amazon rainforest is due to two factors, 1) That climate change induced decreases in rainfall in the dry season occur, and 2) The trees cannot tolerate these reductions in rainfall. The Samanta paper does not directly address the first point, this is addressed using modelling. The second point is only addressed in a limited way. The critical question is how these forests respond to repeated droughts, not merely single-year droughts. The forests are of course able to withstand these single droughts (otherwise there would be no rainforest!) - it is their ability to survive an increased frequency of the most severe droughts that is critical to answer. Drought experiments, where a roof is built under the forest canopy, show that most forest trees survive a single year's intense drought, but can't persist with repeated years of drought. The Samanta study does not address this point at all. In conclusion the new study lends further weight to the emerging picture of the 2005 drought, that tree growth was relatively unaffected, but tree mortality increased, contributing to temporarily accelerating the rate of climate change, rather than as usual reducing it via additions of carbon to the atmosphere from the dead trees. Furthermore, the climate change model results suggesting decreasing rainfall in the dry season over Amazonia in the coming decades are unaffected by the new study, thus overall the conclusions in the IPCC 2007 Fourth Assessment Report are strengthened (because the anomalous result of the Saleska 2007 science paper appear to be at fault), not weakened, by the new study as the press release implies." And this is just one reason why the "skeptics" have no credibility.
85273. Tom Curtis at 12:18 PM on 19 May 2011
       Oceans are cooling
       Charlie A @60, if you want to claim the approximately 24,000 profiles per annum from around 1993 to 2001 (for 500 to 1000 meters) is insufficient to be a representative sample, may I suggest you go learn some statistics. Choosing to ignore the data from those approx 24,000 profiles is, however, still cherry picking.
85274. GaryB at 11:57 AM on 19 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       All of the fingerprints you listed would be true no matter what the ultimate cause for an increase in GHGs, so they really can't be used as specific evidence for an anthropogenic cause. Something that would be true only in the case of anthropogenic causes is needed, like the carbon isotope ratios. If the question is evidence for warming, then those signatures are sufficient.
       Response:

       [dana1981] Let's not pick nits here.  We're taking it as a given that the CO2 increase is anthropogenic.

85275. Charlie A at 11:27 AM on 19 May 2011
       Oceans are cooling
       The data source for the graphics above is the Climate Prediction Center of NOAA. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/GODAS/data_distribution.shtml The animated GIF is a combination of multiple images from the website, combined and resized, but otherwise unaltered. ---------------------------- The significance of OHC is that the average global net radiative imbalance over any period, no matter how short, can be estimated by taking the difference of the OHC between the start and end of that period. That has always been theoretically true. Over the last 6 to 8 years we have finally gotten the spatial and temporal density of sampling of ocean temperatures that is needed to put that into practice. The relatively slow addition of heat to the ocean, in the absence of significant volcanic activity creates a discrepancy between the expected heat content and the observed heat content. There are several possibilities ... the two main ones being that the 1) OHC measurements being in error, and 2) that we have erroneous values for forcings such as CO2, solar, and aerosols. Another possibility, but unlikely is that there is a large amount of heat being gained in other parts of the earth system, such as the land or atmosphere or into melting of ice. People that have looked at the numbers for global heat content find that ice melt and changes in atmospheric heat content are insignificant compared to the OHC. It is an interesting puzzle that will most certainly become a major area of study in the future.
85276. Charlie A at 11:16 AM on 19 May 2011
       Oceans are cooling
       @ Tom Curtis -- I provided the link for you to look at any other combination of depth and ocean basin. Here are a couple of plots of total number of temp profiles globally. They show the same very rapid rise of observations in 2003/2004. I only mentioned the South Pacific because that is the area that had the lowest level of sampling prior to Argo. The animated GIF is color coded. The blue is Argo, Red is XBT. The green is TAO, which has lots of observations but at only a few sites. I'll repeat that graph so others can see. On the plots of number of profiles, green is XBT and red is the fixed TAO buoys. Black is the total number of observations.
85277. SteveS at 10:53 AM on 19 May 2011
       Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
       "So you tell me how the heat is getting from the surface down to 2000m and below that." I'm certainly not an expert in this field, but this recent paper (Eddies Found to Be Deep, Powerful Modes of Ocean Transport Connecting Atmospheric Events and Deep Ocean) looked interesting as a possible method for transporting heat from the surface. That's not what they were looking at, so more study would be needed, but it shows that there is interaction between the ocean surface and the ocean floor.
85278. Daniel Bailey at 10:24 AM on 19 May 2011
       Oceans are cooling
       Speaking of cherry-less OHC data, here is some from Domingues 2008 (observations in black): [Source]
85279. Tom Curtis at 10:00 AM on 19 May 2011
       Oceans are cooling
       Charlie A (from elsewhere), the South Pacific below 30 South represents approximately 11% of the worlds total ocean surface. Therefore. if the gain in ocean heat content to a depth of 700 meters in the period 1980-2002 was essentially flat or declining, then the South Pacific must have been loosing heat at a rate almost ten times as fast as the rest of the worlds Oceans where gaining heat. Checking SST data, I notice that that the surface of the South Pacific was gaining heat at about the same rate as the rest of the world's oceans. Checking Schukman et al 2009 I see that the South Pacific has been gaining heat over the period 2003 to 2008, and if anything has been doing so faster the then rest of the world's oceans. In other words, based on readily available data there is no reason to think the South Pacific has behaved significantly different from the rest of the worlds oceans in terms of heat gain. Furthermore, although there have not been many probes into the South Pacific, there have certainly been some; and certainly sufficient to show it has been behaving in a very unusual manner compared to the rest of the world's oceans. Apparently what data there is from the South Pacific does not show any such unusual behaviour. So, I will take it that the South Pacific has not been cooling at a rate ten times greater than the rest of the oceans have been warming. Given that, the sampling of the other 90% of the worlds oceans which has been quite extensive represents a fair sample of the global heat content of the ocean. Therefore, excluding pre 2003 data is cherry picking, pure and simple.
85280. Stephen Baines at 09:39 AM on 19 May 2011
       Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
       Charlie A You're seriously off topic on thos thread, which is about the number of databases related to warming. I would post your discussion to a more relevant thread. I have a short response to you there.
       Response:

       [DB] Fixed link.

85281. Stephen Baines at 09:38 AM on 19 May 2011
       Oceans are cooling
       This is a response to Charlie A in another thread. There are three points. 1) Just because there is more data with better coverage does not mean there was no information prior to full deployment of Argos. It just takes more work to make those comparisons properly. That's what Lyman 2009 did. It's pointless to throw out data... 2) Your start date at 2003 is still arbitrary. By what standard are you claiming "global coverage" of Argos floats? Why not pick 2005 when the coverage was even better? Why not try several start and stop points and get a sense of the variability in your results? 3) As has been pointed out, the top 700m is not (by a long shot) the entire ocean. Even small and hard to measure leakages of heat into deeper waters could have a large impact on the budget. That was the point of Trenberth's comment...to argue for a better assessment such reservoirs of heat, because clearly, due to conservation of energy, they must be there. A lot of research has been finding exactly that (thank chris!!), though the mechanisms are unclear.
85282. chris at 08:59 AM on 19 May 2011
       Lindzen Illusion #5: Internal Variability
       Ken Lambert at 23:50 PM on 18 May, 2011 That's silly Ken. There is one bit of evidence that shows that there may have been rather little heat gain in a very short period of 0-700m Argo data. The fact that that's been pointed out in non-science journals and house magazines (and crappy journals) doesn't constitute "5 or 6 other analyses". It's a single analysis covering a very short period that might or might not be completely correct. It is worth highlighting the Douglass/Knox farragos. After all they seem to be the source for you information on this subject. There's a huge wealth of science that bears on this subject (e.g. see below) and yet you bring a truly dismal flawed analysis in support of your viewpoint. If you're not going to be skeptical, then we may as well point out the flaws in your sources. "So you tell me how the heat is getting from the surface down to 2000m and below that" Why not find out yourself? We know that the deep oceans are absorbing heat. There is simply too much evidence to discount that empirical observation (see also Purkey and Johnson (2010) and Song and Colberg (2011), who indicate that a substantial proportion of recent sea level rise may be due to deep ocean heating). I'm not an oceanographer, and so I don't have priviliged insight into the mechanisms of deep ocean heat transfer. In the meantime you could try, for example, Masuda et al (2010) who have identified pathways for deep ocean heat transfer in the North Pacific using simulations, or Kao et al (2010), who have shown that major tropical ocean storms, especially tropical cyclones can transfer surface warmth to the deep oceans. There's a large scientific literature on this. If you're interested you only have to look. Your style of "debate" is boring, since you plump for truly dismal analyses, and argue from there. What's the point? We know that the Earth is warming under the effect of a radiative imbalance (2005 and 2010 had record warmth in the GISS analysis during a period of an extended solar minimum, the largest cosmic ray flux directly recorded etc.), analysis of sea level rise indicates that the oceans continue to absorb heat, evidence supports significant deep sea thermal heat absorption... ..but there are uncertainties. The scientists that are expert in these arenas haven't fully accounted either for the recent short term sea level budget nor the budget in the radiative imbalance. It's very difficult to do so over very short periods of time. So what's the point of "debating"? What are you expecting to discover by "debate" that the scientists haven't already?
85283. Charlie A at 08:59 AM on 19 May 2011
       Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
       In comment #10, Bern asks "why pick 2003 as the start date for your comparison?". To which I replied in #11: "2003 is the first year that we had truly global coverage of ocean heat content measurement. Moderator DB jumped in and added into my comment, "[DB] Tamino shows clearly the nature of the "Cherry-pick" that is 2003:" Let's see what NOAA says about this. The Climate Prediction Center has a useful page on Data distribution of OHC measurements. Below I've abstracted a couple of representative plots. If you think I'm cherry picking, click on the link above and compare. It is particularly informative to look at monthly plots. Plot of 500m-1000m temp profiles in the South Pacific vs. year. Animated GIF showing temp profile coverage over an entire year. The plot starts with 2010, then backwards 2003/2003/2001, then for comparison, 1995. Note that the coverage in the South Pacific before 2003 is virtually non-existent. Go to the NOAA website if you want to look at other depths, or other years, but the evolution of sampling density is very similar. Note that a reasonable argument could be made that truly global coverage started in 2004, rather than 2003. But there is a qualitative change in both the type of system used to gather OHC content and in the spatial coverage, in the 2003/2004 timeframe.
       Response:

       [DB] Please see Stephen Baines' response to you on the Oceans Are Cooling thread.  Keep your responses there, which is a much more appropriate thread than here.  Thanks!

85284. KR at 05:24 AM on 19 May 2011
       Sea level rise is exaggerated
       e - I was discussing that in the light of Jay's claim that industrial energy was 1/10 that involved in the last peak interglacial sea levels, and that AGW provides energy 10x greater than that - 100x overall. Jay - Robert Laughlin's take on climate appears to be a mix of Climate's changed before and It's not bad. Both arguments are discussed here, and shown to be wrong, and Laughlin himself has been roundly criticized for his illogical stand on these matters. Personally, I would not rely on him as a climate expert.
       Response:

       [DB] Fixed text.

85285. e at 05:05 AM on 19 May 2011
       Sea level rise is exaggerated
       KR>Hence the greenhouse forcing is 10x what you describe in your post, more than sufficient to be an issue. Actually it's 100x more, sufficient indeed.
85286. e at 04:53 AM on 19 May 2011
       Sea level rise is exaggerated
       @Dr. Jay, Sea level rise is caused by increasing global temperatures and ice melt (which itself is caused by increasing global temperatures), so my comment is transitively relevant to global sea levels.
85287. KR at 04:52 AM on 19 May 2011
       Sea level rise is exaggerated
       Jay - That's what 'e' said. Note, however, that human energy use is 1% of the energy trapped by anthropogenic greenhouse gases - it's 2 orders of magnitude smaller. See the interminable waste heat thread for details. Hence the greenhouse forcing is 10x what you describe in your post, more than sufficient to be an issue. Nobody is predicting complete melt of the Antarctic ice caps, mind you. More appropriate comparisons are with peak Holocene or Eemian conditions: global temperatures ~2°C warmer, 4-6 meter higher sea levels, which would take quite some time to occur. And it looks like we're committing to an even higher temperature with AGW.
85288. Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 04:35 AM on 19 May 2011
       Sea level rise is exaggerated
       @e Did you mean the waste heat is too small to have an impact on "global sea level"?
85289. Philippe Chantreau at 03:35 AM on 19 May 2011
       Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)
       "you can have nothing of consequence above ground unless supported by solid root structures" What in the world is this supposed to mean and what is the relevance? The soils in tropical forests are thin and severely limit how deep the roots can go. Tropical trees have horizontally spread root structures and extensive butresses to account for that.
85290. e at 03:19 AM on 19 May 2011
       Sea level rise is exaggerated
       Dr. Jay >So we can conclude that our energy consumption is far too low to significantly impact sea levels. Your conclusion is invalid. The heat energy that drives global warming comes from the sun, not from human energy consumption. Humans emit CO2 which increases the amount of solar energy retained by the earth. The "waste heat" produced by humanity is indeed too small to have a significant effect on global temperatures, a topic that is covered in the waste heat post.
85291. Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd. at 03:06 AM on 19 May 2011
       Sea level rise is exaggerated
       Okay so that would be a 2% rise in average sea level, that is reasonable. I think Robert Laughlin's take on sea level is the most accurate, however. "the amount of water on the earth hasn’t changed significantly over geologic time, and that the rise and fall of the oceans is adequately accounted for by the waxing and waning of the polar ice sheets and slow changes in ocean basin volumes. The sea level has had a complex and interesting history, but it has never deviated more than 200 meters from its present value." Also "The last glacial melting, cross-dated at 15,000 years ago by the radiocarbon age of wood debris left by the glaciers as they retreated, occurred rapidly. The sea rose more than one centimeter per year for 10,000 years, then stopped. The extra heat required for this melting was 10 times the present energy consumption of civilization. The total melt­­water flow was the equivalent of two Amazons, or half the discharge of all the rivers in all the world." So we can conclude that our energy consumption is far too low to significantly impact sea levels.
85292. Stephen Baines at 02:38 AM on 19 May 2011
       Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
       Nando is now taking us down the Models are unreliable path. I don't see how a discussion of the difference between curve fitting and hindcasting as validation is relevant here.
       Moderator Response: Concur. Further discussion of that topic must be on that other, relevant, thread.
85293. arch stanton at 02:18 AM on 19 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       Some folks like to pretend that the majority of NASA’s budget is devoted to “proving” some aspect of climate change.
85294. Albatross at 02:12 AM on 19 May 2011
       Drought in the Amazon: A death spiral? (part 1:seasons)
       Arkadiusz @36, "Furthermore, please do not ignore the most important sentences - with my commentary: “... no big differences in the greenness level [!] of these forests between drought and non-drought years ...” I will address this confusion when I have some time. You are ignoring the die back issue....more later. Feeley was a field study, real world data-- so I have no idea what you are trying to say.
85295. Stephen Baines at 02:07 AM on 19 May 2011
       Sea level rise is exaggerated
       Jay, NSIDC says at least 70 meters. As others have pointed out, it was very easy to find. If you don't trust authority to do the calculation properly...a simplistic way to calculate it is to multiply the average depth of the ocean (3790m) by the ratio of the fraction of earths water crrently in land ice (0.02) vs seawater (0.97). You get about 70-80 m. It's a rounded estimate and doesn't account for thermal expansion, salinity effects on density, changes to shorelines etc, but it gets you in the ball park. It also says nothing about time scales of melting.
85296. arch stanton at 01:52 AM on 19 May 2011
       Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
       Doctor, I don’t see how the depth of the sea is relevant to your question unless of course you were going to include the effect of thermal expansion of sea water. A more relevant question would be the total volume of global land based ice (km^3) / (the total sea surface area (km^2) + whatever new sea surface area would be incorporated by the rising sea level)….I hated calculus.
85297. nanjo at 01:51 AM on 19 May 2011
       Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
       Michael Hauber at 09:41 AM on 18 May, 2011 My apologies. This is what i wrote: The graph you have shown was published in 2005. It uses data up until 2003. all the graph before 2003 is is not a forecast by any model. They were the data used in coming up with model(s) in that Hansen paper. This what I meant: The graph you have shown was published in 2005. It uses data up until 2003. all the graph before 2003 is is not a forecast by any model in that graph. They were the data used in coming up with model(s) in that Hansen paper. Remember a model includes not just the concepts and terms. but also the parameter values generated using the data that was incorporated in that study.
       Response:

       [DB] Please, no more all-caps.

85298. KR at 01:47 AM on 19 May 2011
       Another animated version of the Warming Indicators Powerpoint
       Jay - I have replied on the far more appropriate How much is sea level rising thread.
85299. nanjo at 01:47 AM on 19 May 2011
       Is the CRU the 'principal source' of climate change projections?
       dana1981 at 04:51 AM on 18 May, 2011 dana, Hindcasting is the way you develop/perfect/tailor a model. the R**2 value and deviation events ( eg. when the model is hopelessly off for a period indicates a large influence is not included in the model ) tells you how good the model is in fitting the past. but, because you do not ever know if all independent variables have been included in the model and you never know if the domain covered in the past is similar to the domain that is going to follow, you have no idea what you are going to see in the future. you have to be a bit humble when you are modeling. George E. Box is purported to have said "All models are wrong. Some are Useful". When I met the man, It was a breath of fresh air to see his humility. When pointed out of a small error, he said he will look into it. A few months later, my advisor got a letter thanking us!!! ( -Snip- ).
       Response:

       [DB] Inflammatory snipped.  Please keep it clean.  And no all-caps.

85300. sduford at 01:45 AM on 19 May 2011
       Carter Confusion #1: Anthropogenic Warming
       You didn't mention the isotope signature of the carbon in man-made CO2 vs naturally occurring CO2. I believe it is the main signature of anthropogenic climate change.
       Response:

       [dana1981] Only if you accept that CO2 is causing warming to start with

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