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dana1981 at 08:51 AM on 9 September 2010A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Whoops, this is the climate sensitivity article. In which case I suggest that eric re-read it. -
dana1981 at 08:49 AM on 9 September 2010A detailed look at climate sensitivity
On that note from scaddenp, I refer eric to my climate sensitivity article. -
Josie at 08:45 AM on 9 September 2010What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
I thought that the woman who said that she was convinced by the bathtub analogy was really saying (subtly) that she thought that Schneider was clearly the more reasonable one in the exchange with the GP who was aggressively accusing him of avoiding the question. In other words, the GP did not make his own side look good with his rudeness. By remaining calm under such provocation, Schneider looked a lot better and that impressed her. (I could be wrong). -
Albatross at 08:33 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Dr. Pielke, As for your beliefs on statistically significant trends in data, I think statisticians would err on my and others' understanding. You had better inform Lyman, von Shuckmann, Trenberth, and others to remove those trend lines then. As for your questions and references to GISS (yes, the traces over a short time window diverge, got it), this is not a test, and it is clearl that you are trying to move the goal posts and detract from the main issue here-- you making misleading statement in public on OHC (and sea level and Arctic ice, and SAT if you still support the CATO letter). Interesting, you are now saying @ 48 that: "this clearly shows the lack of substantial warming since 2004" That is most definitely not the same as saying: "This means that global warming halted on this time period." I can support the former statement made @48, not the latter for the reasons that I and other shave discussed ad nauseum. If you now believe the former is correct, please correct the record both on your blog and at WUWT, with the caveat that it is a short time interval and does not preclude an acceleration in warming in the future. Thank you. -
Albatross at 08:30 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Dr. Pielke, I did not paraphrase, I used quotation marks to cite verbatim what you stated in the paper. You support hypothesis 2a. On a related note, since you brought up the EOS paper, did you not openly support this petition from CATO? http://www.cato.org/special/climatechange/cato_climate.pdf Well, at least that is what your friend Anthony Watts claims here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/31/dr-roger-pielke-senior-support-for-cato-letter-and-advertisement/ In the petition they state: "Surface temperature changes over the past century have been episodic and modest and there has been no net global warming for over a decade now." That was in November 2008. Do you still support that assertion? -
RandyL at 08:18 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
I am a layman and claim absolutely no scientific expertise in these matters. That being said, I have to say that this thread of discussion has been almost enjoyable from the standpoint that there seems to be some actual 'dialogue' happening amongst some of the brightest and most respected scientists on this matter. Keeping it respectful is truly helpful. More importantly, in my opinion, is the fact that different views are being expressed and bantered about. This is what I feel is missing in the entire discussion around global warming and the many aspects of it. I feel that I must add a bit of "advice" to Dr. Pielke about the use of quotes attributed to him (whether intended or not on his part); most of which appear to be directly quoted. I honor your knowledge and your expertise greatly and I truly believe you have the best intentions in your comments. However, when other people of substantially less reputable nature and with extreme ideas and purposes take your comments and use them falsely, I feel it is then your responsibility to publicly critique and deny the usage of your comments. This I feel you have not done and I have no way of knowing why. This does not mean that you deserve to be treated disrespectfully. But as my father used to say, when you lay with pigs you surely will get dirty. I feel you should avoid your association with certain extreme anti-global warming skeptics and fanatics and publicly claim that global warming is occuring and that you many other respected scientists are working on answers to the cause and any possible solutions. Until then, if I were you, I would be prepared to suffer some name calling and grow a much thicker layer of skin. With all due respect.... -
Roger A Pielke Sr at 08:00 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Albatross - you write "You choose your hypothesis 2a which down plays the relative (is that better?) contribution/importance of long-lived GHGs on the climate system." We did not downplay anything. Your paraphrasing misstates what we wrote in our paper. We are elevating the other human climate forcings. In terms of CO2, we do not even need to discuss global warming to be concerned by uncontrolled increases in its atmospheric concentration. We see directly from observations of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 that humans are increasing its levels. If global warming were not occurring at all, we should still be concerned. -
Roger A Pielke Sr at 07:54 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Albatross - There does not need to be years of record to obtain statistically significant measures of upper ocean heat content. This is the point of using heat. We just need time slices with sufficient spatial data. A trend is unnecessary, and indeed can be misleading when the signal is substantially nonlinear. Moreover, if global annual average cooling occurs, such as from a major volcanic eruption, the global warming "clock" is reset regardless of the long term trend. With respect to the Lyman 2010 data presented in the orginal post on this weblog, this clearly shows the lack of substantial warming since 2004. The Von Schuckmann figure also shows small warming since 2004 which is when the Argo data became sufficient to provide a good estimate of the heat content (that is why Willis provided me data starting in 2004). Lets accept the Von Schuckmann data since 2004. What do you obtain as the heating rate in Watts per meter squared and how does this compare with the GISS predictions? What do you expect will be the magnitude of warming in the upper ocean in Joules through mid-2010 when the data is updated this Fall? -
Esop at 07:40 AM on 9 September 2010What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
Brilliant performance by Schneider. -
scaddenp at 07:13 AM on 9 September 2010A detailed look at climate sensitivity
Well eric, firstly I dont think you can have some local perturbations somehow messing an average. And would support that by noting the determinations of sensitivity from GCMs match rather well with estimates of sensitivity from empirical techniques such eruption response and LGM data. -
Rob Painting at 07:10 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
KL @ 14 - "I must admit that I was unimpressed by the story of the Willis 'Eureka' moment. Well, whatever your reaction may have been, I was intrigued by Willis & Lyman's ocean cooling paper, especially considering Willis' earlier work with Takmeng Wong. I particularly liked the quote “We let Josh know, diplomatically of course, that all signs were pointing toward his data,” says Wong. Kl @ - "Argo is not anywhere near a complete story for measuring OHC" Good to see you finally acknowledging that. No need to repeat that sorry saga with the MSU satellite data all over again. Kl @ - "but I would expect a helluva lot better than what preceded it (XBT etc). See my next post." Indeed, once all the teething problems are sorted out. -
Albatross at 06:49 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Re @44, Some good points. But in some cases the exact wording is critical, and it is not just a case of being pedantic. In a problem this importance one has to be very careful. And "skeptics" and those in denial about AGW have seized on Dr. Pielke's ill-thought out wording. That aside, the question of the amount of data required to obtain statistically sig. trends is unavoidable. I agree with what Riccardo said above @42. There are parts of the ocean (e.g., Labrador sea) where it is known that mixing occurs down to depths exceeding 2000 m. Trenberth wrote a piece in Nature in 2010 on this very OHC issue: http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/NatureNV10.pdf Please read it. If anyone on this planet wants to solve this riddle it is Trenberth. His track record on climate science is impeccable. So let us please not question his contributions to advancing climate science. If anything, IMHO, Dr. Pielke is distracting people (and scientists) from the pertinent issues by not choosing his words carefully and by making misleading comments. Scientists are well aware of the issues surrounding OHC and are working hard on it, regardless of what Pikele Snr may opine on the issue. -
cynicus at 06:48 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Albatros, agreed on "halted" and I too have problems with the statistical validity of the claim, hence Riddle Me This where Tamino argues to look at the whole dataset and delta sigma bandwidth before reading too much in small jiggles in the measurements. I went the same way as you to find the post, also without luck. I did a search and found an abstract showing deep convection (2000m) in the Mediterranean (of all places). This shows me that deep convection is probably happening in other places as well and possibly even deeper too, but perhaps not enough to account for the missing heat as Dr Pielke stated, I don't know. Anyway, I'd like to read more about it, so I would really appreciate a link to the paper showing how much vertical heat flux is moving down the column to below the Argos measuring range. I found a reference to J. K. Willis, D. P. Chambers, R. S. Nerem 2008, but that's about sea level rise afaik (and behind a paywall)... -
actually thoughtful at 06:32 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
I don't perceive this is as an argument over science, as much as an argument over presentation. For example: (all positions paraphrased_ Dr. Pielke Sr.: For a 4 year period the body that holds 90% of the earth's heat showed no notable increase in heat; we can therefore assume no notable global warming occurred during that period GPWayne: We can say nothing about long term climate trends from a 4 year period of data (questionable data at that). These two statements are NOT at odds with each other. That neither said it the "Mother may I" format the other desired does not change the fact that there is little-to-no real disagreement between the two positions. I personally find Dr. Pielke's voice very helpful (and I would even say useful) - you can point out to a so-called skeptic - this is what real skepticism looks like - you use the actual data and you draw conclusions. Whether there ought be climate papers written and published about a 4 year period of time is a question for the editors of those journals - those same editors whom most on this site laud as keepers of intellectual purity in most cases. Finally - we know that GHG and other forcings are a trend, not a monolithic march up and to the right on a given graph. So why can't it be true that for 4 years natural variability swamped the trend? At the level of intuition/common sense (and as someone who studies heat moving through water on a daily basis - but not a climate or oceanographic expert) - it is REALLY hard to imagine heat moving downwards in a body of water unless it is VERY well mixed. Are there any smaller bodies of water which are well studied in regards to vertical heat movement (ie ponds, lakes, etc.) OK - my REAL final point - Trenberth has noted the travesty and Pielke Sr is publishing papers - which do you think will motivate a faster drive for better OHC data? People on both sides of the debate should thank Dr. Pielke Sr for keeping attention focused on ~90% of the heat sink of the planet. -
Albatross at 06:19 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Dr. Pielke, You claim: "Thus to conclude that I have ever not been concerned about the addition of CO2 and how it affects the climate system misrepresents my perspective. I am particularly concerned with respect to the biogeochemical effects of added CO2." Hang on, but in your paper you state, and I quote: "We therefore conclude that hypothesis 2a is better supported than hypothesis 2b, which is a policy that focuses on modulating carbon emissions." You choose your hypothesis 2a which down plays the relative (is that better?) contribution/importance of long-lived GHGs on the climate system. So you are skeptical of the science presented in the IPCC assessments, and of the role of long-lived GHG forcing. In fact on your blog you say: "The 2007 IPCC failed to adequately consider anthropogenic land cover change in their assessment of how humans can alter the climate system on the regional and global scales. This serious oversight needs to be remedied in the next assessment." I think that I have fairly presented your position on this....and even defended you against others people's choice of a certain undesirable descriptor. What are your thoughts on the anthro cooling associated with widespread irrigation as discussed in this JGR paper by Puma and Cook (2010)? http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100907171644.htm Seems we humans can cool regions too..... -
Riccardo at 06:17 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
"With respect to OHC, the objective conclusion is that the annual average heating of the well sampled upper ocean halted for at least a 4 year time period." I find this sentence a bit disappointing. It makes the pair with the claim that summer arctic ice ice has recovered. Anyone doubts that 2008 showed more ice than 2007 and 2009 more than 2008? No, i guess. Does it mean the the decades of decreasing ice we've seen is over? No, we can't say that. It looks like we're playing with words. Take the 5 years from 2004 to 2008. Assuming that the measurements we have are "perfect" we can say that the upper ocean OHC didn't change. Ok. Than what? We can not claim that global warming halted, not even that the decades long OHC increase did. What we can say, and i'm sure we all agree, is that we still cannot explain climate variability. Following GISS, the temperature anomaly in 2008 and 2009 were 0.43 and 0.57 °C. The "objective conclusion" is that there has been a trend of 14 °C/century. A good laugh. So, let's not use these words so easily, we're trying to do science afterall. -
Albatross at 06:04 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Dr. Pielke, Thanks for your response. You state that "The EOS article is introduced to document that we have identified a wide range of human climate forcings, beyond the radiative forcing of CO2." That may be true, but is irrelevant to this discussion on OHC; sorry, but you are arguing straw men. You also state that "This does not mean that future global warming will not occur." Well, of course! That is what this is all about. You previously did NOT provide that critical caveat, nor did you provide the caveat that 4 years is way too short period to determine a statistically significant trend. Moreover, given the well-known uncertainty in the OHC measurements, making such assertive statements as you have done is especially irresponsible. So are you going to do the right thing and set the record straight and post a corrigendum on your blog? In fact, I am urging you to do just that. You also say "To refute this claim, present data for these 4 years that conflicts with this finding." GPWayne has provided you TWO sources which do just that-- von Shuckmann and Lyman et al. (2010). Yet you choose to ignore them. -
Roger A Pielke Sr at 05:48 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Cynicus - The statements that "global warming halted on this time period' and "global warming of upper ocean halted on this time period' both are correct, but the former requires an additional assumption. To heat lower levels of the ocean (below ~700m), heat would have to flow downward through the Argo network undetected. Such heat flow of a large enough value has not been observed, based on analyses discussed by Josh Willis on my weblog. Albatross - The EOS article is introduced to document that we have identified a wide range of human climate forcings, beyond the radiative forcing of CO2. The IPCC is too conservative at presenting these other forcings. These are in addition to the human caused CO2 forcing. Thus to conclude that I have ever not been concerned about the addition of CO2 and how it affects the climate system misrepresents my perspective. I am particularly concerned with respect to the biogeochemical effects of added CO2. With respect to OHC, the objective conclusion is that the annual average heating of the well sampled upper ocean halted for at least a 4 year time period. This is a science question and should be addressed that way. To refute this claim, present data for these 4 years that conflicts with this finding. This does not mean that future global warming will not occur. However, to better understand the climate system, we need to understand why this halt occurred. Moreover, we need to see if in the coming years the heating will be amplified so as to catch up to the model predictions. -
Albatross at 05:37 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Cynicus @38, IMHO, using the word "halted" is still highly misleading, it is very definitive and assertive, and says nothing about what will happen down the road-- the interpretation of that is going to be especially troublesome for someone who is not in the know. I can imagine people concluding this: "Did you hear that a famous scientists says that global warming has stopped, so what is the big deal?" And it still remains to be answered, so what if the increase in OHC slowed or even decreased slightly in that 5-year window? It is still way too short a time interval to make any statistically robust conclusions. The unfortunate part is that Dr. Pielke Snr knows that, yet opined publicly about it anyways, and from their it was echoed/trumpeted loudly by the denialosphere. IMHO, Dr. Peilke's public musings on such matters (in the manner he has chosen to do so thus far at least) is not unacceptable and not in keeping with proper scientific protocol. After Tamino's run in with a particularly hostile contrarian earlier this year, a number of pages on Tamino's blog have gone AWOL (I used the URL for the post in question but the page is now blank). I also tried the waybackmachine but had no luck. -
cynicus at 05:25 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Dr. Pielke, leaving all other issues aside, I humbly feel that your original claim: "This means that global warming halted on this time period." would probably need rephrasing to: "This means that global warming of upper ocean halted on this time period" based on your following statement: "However, the data is clear that for this period of time, global average annual upper ocean heating halted." (emphasis mine) Do I see that correctly? -
Albatross at 05:22 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Dr. Pielke, Instead of keep referring to your EOS paper, could please state here specifically which findings you believe to be relevant to this discussion on OHC [I have not been able to find anything pertinent]. Thank you. PS: GPWayne, if you read the EOS article it seems Dr. Pielke supports their stated hypothesis 2a. So, again, I agree with Pielke that associating him with those in denial about AGW/ACC is incorrect. That said, contrary to the majority of climate scientists, Dr. Pielke does NOT believe the following to be true: "Hypothesis 2b: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is CO2. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades." So if I interpret this correctly, he does seem skeptical of the importance/contribution of GHGs and the severity of the expected negative impacts associated with doubling CO2. Perhaps that is why he is latching onto short-term trends which indicate that things are perhaps not as bad as originally expected. Well, IMHO, doing so it simply deluding oneself and smacks of confirmation bias. It is worth mentioning that reputable scientists such as Dr. Schmidt have taken issue with how Pielke et al. (2009) framed the problem. -
Albatross at 04:55 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
People reading this may find this exchange with Pielke Snr of interest: http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/on-constructive-debate This is not the first time Pielke Snr has gotten into trouble for making misleading claims on climate science... -
Roger A Pielke Sr at 04:49 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
RSVP Thank you. You have actually very clearly framed the issue that is causing the misunderstanding in several of the above comments. You wrote "Another "dumb" or "naive" question... Why is oceans warming always published in Joules, while global warming is expressed in degrees Centigrade?" The reason is that heat involves mass and Joules includes mass. When global warming is expressed as a trend in degrees Centigrade, it is incomplete, as this is just part of the heat. Jim Hansen agrees that the monitoring the ocean heat change is the most appropriate reservoir to monitor global warming (as he stated at a National Research Council meeting on the 2005 report National Research Council, 2005: Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties. Committee on Radiative Forcing Effects on Climate Change, Climate Research Committee, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C., 208 pp. http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309095069/html/). The only relevant issues in the above comments that pertain to this metric are the short duration of the lack of heating and the sampling issue. With respect to the later, satellite altimetry data is used to complement the Argo network. Except for ice covered areas (which is only a small fraction of the ocean), since 2004 the coverage is accepted by oceanographers as being adequate to diagnosis heating and cooling, within observational uncertainties as illustrated by Josh Willis in my Physics Today article. The short duration of the lack of global average, annual cooling (4 years unless it extended beyond 2008) is correct. It may not have continued. However, the data is clear that for this period of time, global average annual upper ocean heating halted. It is important to emphasize, of course, that this observation says nothing about the role of humans within the climate system, nor of the importance and cocern with the continued increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. I note so far that none of the commenters have discussed the findings we presented in our paper Pielke Sr., R., K. Beven, G. Brasseur, J. Calvert, M. Chahine, R. Dickerson, D. Entekhabi, E. Foufoula-Georgiou, H. Gupta, V. Gupta, W. Krajewski, E. Philip Krider, W. K.M. Lau, J. McDonnell, W. Rossow, J. Schaake, J. Smith, S. Sorooshian, and E. Wood, 2009: Climate change: The need to consider human forcings besides greenhouse gases. Eos, Vol. 90, No. 45, 10 November 2009, 413. Copyright (2009) American Geophysical Union. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/12/r-354.pdf -
cynicus at 04:46 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
I think Tamino's "Riddle Me This" post would be most revealing in this discussion, but I can't find it. Anyone who has a link? -
Albatross at 04:26 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Dr. Pielke, With respect, I find your position on this issue and your refusal to acknowledge what you have recently stated concerning Arctic sea ice, sea-level rise and now OHC was (and is) highly misleading to be most troubling (and this is coming from a scientist who works in your field). As others have repeatedly pointed out to you (most recently KR), one cannot conclude that global warming has stopped based on only 5 years worth of data, and that fact is especially true when working with OHC data. Surely you understand that by applying your logic one could erroneously claim/conclude that global warming has "stopped" multiple times over the last century-- yet the long term trend (which IS statistically significant) remains positive (see Hansen et al. 2010 in press). I honestly thought it was only some lay people who mistakenly thought that AGW translated into a monotonic increase in global temperatures. Hansen (and others in the know) would also most certainly take issue with your claim that there is no lag in the climate system, especially when it comes to the oceans. From Hansen et al. (2008): "The lag of GHGs after temperature change is several hundred years (Fig. 6 of [6]), perhaps determined by the ocean overturning time" And "Let us consider climate change averaged over a few thousand years-- long enough to assure energy balance and minimize effects of ocean thermal response time and climate change leads/lags between hemispheres [22]" And "The deep ocean can carry a temperature change between hemispheres with little loss, but because of the ocean's thermal inertia there can be a hemispheric lag of up to a millenium" For more on lags in the climate system because of thermal inertia also see Meehl et al. (2005), Wigley et al.(2005), Friedlingstein and Solomon (2005), Hansen et al. (2005). There are, of course, many more examples in the literature as well which speak to lags in the climate system. The biosphere has been positive energy imbalance (e.g., Murphy et al. (2009) for many decades now because of increased levels of long-lived GHGs from human activities; why do I get the distinct feeling that you seem to have trouble accepting that fact and the associated consequences? I trust Dr. Trenberth on this file; as for trusting you, well after this fiasco, not so much, and that saddens me greatly. Had you been willing to concede your mistakes, then I might have felt very differently. -
Ian Forrester at 04:24 AM on 9 September 2010Ocean cooling: skeptic arguments drowned by data
Many posters have alluded to a lack of a mechanism for transporting surface heat to the abyssal depths. Here is my take on this problem, please let me know if I have gone off the rails on this. As cold water moves from the antarctic it warms. As it warms more water is evaporated thus causing an increase in salinity. Some of this evaporated water will rain out over land thus the salinity will not be reduced. As the water goes further north it warms even more and we experience an El Nino event. This warm water evaporates and becomes even more saline. Since the equator seems to act a a barrier to further movement of the water it remains at rest when it nears the equator (at least it will not go further north). It warms even more, more is evaporated and it becomes even more saline. The more saline it becomes the more dense it becomes. Eventually it become so dense that it begins to sink into the less dense (less saline) water below. When this happens the El Nino is over and the water is replaced by cooler less saline water from further south and we experience a La Nina. This warm, highly saline water eventually makes it to the abyssal depths where it remains for a long time. There are a number of papers coming out showing an increase in the temperature of the abyssal water but it is still spotty so it is difficult to measure the increased energy content of this part of the ocean. Hopefully more research will be forthcoming in this very relevant area. -
CBDunkerson at 04:21 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
RSVP, you could as easily ask why an expanded sample base couldn't be introducing a spurious 'cooling' effect (perhaps causing the leveling off since 2004). There is always the possibility of instrument errors... in either direction. Could the changing measurement methodologies be resulting in skewed OHC results? Yes. In fact, several such errors HAVE been found and adjustments made in an effort to correct them. It is an ongoing process. That said, even if we just take the earliest measurement tools and continue them through to present we get an increasing OHC trend. Ditto using just the latest / most accurate tools. Ditto proxies. Et cetera. Thus, the idea that the whole warming trend might be error induced is belied by multiple lines of evidence to the contrary. There is alot of uncertainty around the OHC data, but not so much that the multi-decadal warming trend is in doubt. As to joules vs degrees... most humans on the planet are very familiar with surface temperature readings in degrees (either C or F usually). Thus, it just makes sense to express warming as anomaly values on those units. How often do you hear about the ocean temperature at 1000 feet below the surface? Pretty much never. It would be a pretty strange way to express things as that water at 1000 feet down could be in a current which moves it away and replaces it with warmer or colder water quite quickly. Joules are a better measurement because they (theoretically) give the total amount of energy which has accumulated in the oceans... regardless of how that energy is distributed three dimensionally. -
RSVP at 03:48 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Another "dumb" or "naive" question... Why is oceans warming always published in Joules, while global warming is expressed in degrees Centigrade? Also, no one ever answered my other question on the original thread,... how could one know the difference between a real increase in Joules over the last 60 years vs. effects of improvements in data taking and an expanded sample base? Only asking because I am sure the sample base has always increased and the methodology has always been improving... -
J Bowers at 03:37 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
1. Humanity Rules -- "The NODC near realtime update of OHC shows that the oceans haven't been warming since 2004ish." Just as well your own graph goes all the way back to 1955 for a more meaningful look at the data, then. What do your own eyes tell you? -
Doug Bostrom at 03:32 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Dr. Pielke remarks indirectly on something we've noted here many times, namely the unfortunately inadequate instrumentation of the ocean basins. The true meaning of Trenberth's "missing heat" cannot be resolved without better measurement capability. The nature of "missing" is ambiguous without more information. Dr. Trenberth is also widely quoted thanks to his use of the word "travesty." The real travesty here is that amateurs and professionals alike agree the oceans are the bulk repository of whatever energy is accumulating on the planet thanks to anthropogenic warming but we've still got a huge gap in our data collecting ability. There'a an assumption operating here that thermally speaking the deep oceans are somehow disconnected from shallower waters, yet repeated measurements at sadly sparse stations in various ocean basins actually do seem to consistently hint at increasing heat content of the deep ocean. We could wish for a dynamic buoy system similar to ARGO but capable of deeper operations and indeed the folks running the ARGO network are trying to attack that problem. In the meantime, "simply" planting some instrumentation capable of logging temperatures at the deep ocean stations currently used for infrequent measurements would be a very beneficial thing. A few years of relatively continuous recordings at a few sites would go a long way to resolving the question of how heat is "missing." As well as engaging in argumentation about issues that cannot be settled without more data, let's also encourage folks such as Dr. Pielke Sr. to exert whatever leverage they can apply to improving our instrumentation of the oceans. -
RSVP at 03:23 AM on 9 September 2010Is climate science settled? Especially the important parts?
CBW If the science is "good enough", it should be able to quantify the trade offs and make clear exactly what action is needed. In fact, if the science is so advanced, peers should produce a chart that has "ocean rise cm" vs. "action", where "action" quantifies how much GHG needs to be cut back. If you are aware of this "recipe", please let me know. Thanks in advance. -
Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
To be even more clear on my last post, drawing unqualified conclusions on 5 years of data is statistically unsupportable. Making a qualified statement such as "The current data is not showing a warming trend, this may be statistically significant in a few years" would be entirely supportable. But absolute statements based on short time frames and noisy data? No. -
Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Dr. Pielke, thank you for your comments here. I believe, however, that gpwayne's point in this post still holds; that stating "...global warming halted on this time period" is simply not justified from the short period of time and the noise inherent in current measurements of ocean heat content. Looking at the data available, it appears that a 15-20 year period would be the absolutely shortest time frame from which to draw a definitive conclusion about trends. We absolutely need to improve our measurements, and the joules present in the ocean are an excellent metric, within our ability to measure them. Given the current measurement issues, sampling rates, calibration concerns, S/N ratio, etc., 5 years of data is not sufficient to draw any firm conclusions whatsoever. Gwayne's point (and with which I must agree) is that you have drawn such conclusions from a very short time frame, and, that such conclusions are not statistically supportable. -
Roger A Pielke Sr at 02:50 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
I have read the Reply [as Moderator] to my comment [I would appreciate if you could identify yourself. :-)] On the issues, you seem to be assuming that climate change is synonymous with global warming. Global warming, however, is a subset of climate change. "Global warming" occurs when Joules accumulate within the climate system, of which the oceans is the largest reservoir for heat changes within the climate system. I agree that other climate indices have changed (e.g. Arctic and Antarctic sea ice), but these are not direct measures of global warming. With respect to the quantitative accuracy of the upper ocean heat data, even Kevin Trenberth admits there is "missing heat" as discussed in the web posts that are in my Comment that I provided the links for earlier today. Josh Willis, also, places uncertainly bars around his data in his figure in my paper Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/r-334.pdf so the statement such as "there was no global average warming in the upper ocean from 2004 to 2008" are consistent with his analysis. If they find an error, of course, that would need to be changed, but until it is, it is a robust, peer-reviewed scientific finding. I still feel you are missing my main point. With all of the remaining unresolved uncertainties and systematic biases in the land surface portion of the multi-decadal global surface temperature trend, as we reported, for example, in Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/10/r-321.pdf and Klotzbach, P.J., R.A. Pielke Sr., R.A. Pielke Jr., J.R. Christy, and R.T. McNider, 2009: An alternative explanation for differential temperature trends at the surface and in the lower troposphere. J. Geophys. Res., 114, D21102, doi:10.1029/2009JD011841. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/files/2009/11/r-345.pdf we should move towards the more appropriate global warming metric of heat which is Joules, most of whose changes occur in the ocean. The ocean below 700m does not seem to be a major reservoir for this heat, as discussed in the web posts I sent in my first Comment. Even with the remaining issues with the quantitative accuracy of the ocean heat content measurements, it should become the primary metric to diagnose global warming and as a measure to compare with the IPCC models. Until about 2004, the comparisons between the GISS model and the upper ocean heat content changes, for instance, were quite good as I reported on in my post Update On Jim Hansen’s Forecast Of Global Warming As Diagnosed By The Upper Ocean Heat Content Change. http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2010/05/21/update-on-jim-hansens-forecast-of-the-global-radiative-imbalance-as-diagnosed-by-the-upper-ocean-heat-content-change/. Since 2004, however, the model predictions have not been as good. Perhaps, this is a short term effect associated with natural variability. If so, we should see a resumption of heating rates that were seen up to 2004. This comparison with models, as a test of their accuracy, is the basic scientific method of hypothesis testing. Why you chose to label me a skeptic or a denier, besides being completely incorrect in this labeling, obscures the actual scientific issues and valuable discussions that could take place on your weblog. -
Riccardo at 02:20 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Were we able to close the energy budget (i.e. better measurements) we could take advantage of the integral nature of OHC. Unfortunately we still can not. It is unfortunate that reputable scientists like Prof. Pielke Sr. have recently shown the attitude to downplay the need of decades long datasets to assess the trends. This tendency has led him to the highly unlikely, and for sure unproven, claims that global warming has stopped since 2004 or that there has been a recovery of the arctic ice since 2008. I'm with ProfMandia (#9) hoping for the always wellcome loyal opposition to any mainstream scientific theory. -
wynnray at 01:44 AM on 9 September 2010A detailed look at climate sensitivity
I teach chemistry at the university level. The Atmosphere is a chemical system in equilibrium with the chemical sytem of the oceans. Le Chatalier's principle states that a system in chemical equilibrium reacts to external stimulus to maintain that equilibrium. So the system may react to changes by maintaining it's equilibrium. What happens is this: the system changes very little until it's ability to react is overwhelmed, then changes are rapid and drastic. This is why climate scientists talk about a "tipping point" beyond which the Earth cannot comfortably recover. -
Rob Honeycutt at 01:35 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Simple question from a layman... If, what Dr Pielke claims is correct, that "global warming has stopped during this time" should there not be a corresponding measurement in the satellite record showing that incoming and outgoing radiation are in balance? Would that not be the smoking gun to prove the statement? Conversely, if we are still seeing an energy imbalance then shouldn't we be discussing where the heat is instead of saying there is no warming? -
cynicus at 01:04 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Eyeballing from the graph presented so authoritatively by HR and using short periods as approved by expert climate scientist Dr Pielke Sr I can firmly conclude that global warming did not happen in the periods: 1977 - 1982 1985 - 1990 1991 - 1996 1996 - 2001 2004 - 2009 So, there has been no global warming or it even cooled 25 of the 32 year period between 1975 and 2010! Shock..horror!!! Lots of ice has melted this year too as glaciers and Arctic sea ice shrunk which means the ocean is even cooler after 2010 (everyone knows that melting ice cools water). We must therefore conclude that a new ice age could be imminent. We need to burn more carbon quickly! -
Brendon at 00:58 AM on 9 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Can someone clue me in on how anyone can declare the ocean is adequately monitored enough to say that the warming has stopped? I find it strange that people draw conclusions about the Argo data when the Argo team themselves declare that there is not enough data to perform adequate analysis. This interesting video clip shows Argo floats as they travel around the ocean. At the 24 second mark, Jan 2004, there are just over 1000 floats deployed. Each float is on average measuring more than 1,000,000 cubic kilometres of ocean! They aren't evenly spread so there are huge pieces of ocean completely unmonitored. One section of the South Pacific greater than the size of Australia is completely free of a float. The floats spend most of their time drifting so they seem to be measuring the same section of water many times over. The Argo floats cannot measure under the sea ice, and they only go down to a maximum of 2,000 meters, in an ocean that has an average depth of about 3,730 meters. Is there a scientific paper that can tell me why definitive conclusions can be drawn from this data? I'm very skeptical. -
John Chapman at 00:58 AM on 9 September 2010What do you get when you put a climate scientist and 52 skeptics in a room?
On the weblink page, at the bottom, is a link to a Lateline transcript between George Monbiot and Ian Plimer. It's quite entertaining http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2009/s2772906.htm and Monbiot plus the presenter tackle Plimer on why he continues to use wrong (made-up) data and false interpretations. It's fascinating to see how Plimer evades the questions and no doubt he will trot out the same arguments if on stage tomorrow. Oh and on the Schneider program I thought the bank balance analogy was better than the bathtub one! -
Ned at 00:53 AM on 9 September 2010Climate and chaos
Not necessarily a very good analogy, BP, since the bird isn't just a statistical outlier from the same distribution as the rest of the heavy objects. Its behavior can be ascribed to obvious physical processes. Climate is very "noisy" at short spatial and temporal scales. Thus, one can almost always find some individual location that's abnormally cold at some particular point in time. Pointing to such areas may convey a misleading impression of long-term trends in global climate. I think my lengthy comment above provides a more useful framework for understanding things. -
Berényi Péter at 00:24 AM on 9 September 2010Climate and chaos
Or like claiming that because a birdie dropped from the leaning tower of Pisa flies away happily, dropping objects heavier than air does not necessarily make them fall down. -
Ned at 00:16 AM on 9 September 2010A detailed look at climate sensitivity
cruzn246 writes: Could anyone explain how it got almost 3C warmer than now prior to the last Ice age with lower CO2 levels? There are several contributing answers to this. First, the fluctuations you see in Fig. 1 took place over long periods of time -- by comparison, the modern CO2 & temperature increase is just getting started. Second, despite the caption to Fig. 1, it's not necessarily certain that global temperatures were that much warmer during the previous interglacial; the ice cores presumably weight temperatures in the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean more heavily than the rest of the globe. Third, as scaddenp and Tom Dayton note, there are other factors at play. As just one example, if we stopped emitting sulfate aerosols and let the atmosphere clear for a few months, we'd find that the radiative forcing from CO2 was being masked by aerosol cooling. Obviously, heavy industry was not quite as much of a factor 120,000 years ago! There's probably other points that I'm forgetting, too. The bottom line is that there's no one single answer to that question; it's a combination of multiple effects. -
Ned at 00:02 AM on 9 September 2010Climate and chaos
Did you actually read the article you linked to, BP? The existence of an anomalously cold winter in parts of South America is a fact, but there's actually a great deal of uncertainty about the specific event you're referring to and the relative importance of different causes. In any case, you apparently missed the point of my comment. Claiming that individual cold snaps in place X or place Y are somehow meaningful indicators of trends in climate is like claiming that individual cases of infant deaths here or there mean that we haven't made any progress on reducing infant mortality rates. Or like claiming that because your uncle Afred was a lifelong smoker and lived to be 92, smoking does not reduce life expectancy. Emotionalism isn't a very good substitute for reasoning, IMHO. -
Brendon at 23:52 PM on 8 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
HumanityRules writes The NODC near realtime update of OHC shows that the oceans haven't been warming since 2004ish. That's exactly the problem. You're picking out a specific year and saying there's no warming after that. We already know the data fluctuates quite a bit, look at the few years before that for an example. The ocean didn't warm that quickly, the data bounces around because we lack sufficient measurement of it. -
Ned at 23:44 PM on 8 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Ken says: So in answer to Ned - the oceans have a storage capacity at least 30 times that of all other combined sinks - thats about 96% - so I would think that what happens in the oceans is crucial to the whole AGW story. Yes, nobody disputes this. The questions are how do we interpret what is happening in the ocean, and how much weight do we give our interpretation of that vis-a-vis our understanding of other components of the climate system. You keep citing BP's remarks earlier, which seem to have impressed you greatly. Others, however, are less impressed. With a certain degree of trepidation lest I be misrepresenting something, I would characterize his argument as follows:(1) If we assume that individual year-to-year wiggles in the OHC data were valid representations of interannual variability in OHC, that would lead to physically unrealistic conclusions about the planetary radiative imbalance. (2) Therefore, there's no reliable evidence of long-term warming in the OHC data. (3) From this, we conclude there's no long-term warming in the ocean.
That is, at least, how BP's (and your) claims appear to me. But (1) is obviously a straw-man argument, (2) does not follow from (1), and (3) does not follow from (2). Again, Ken, I've seen you refer to this line of reasoning many times on this site, so clearly it seems convincing to you. I think there are serious flaws in it. We can't both be right; presumably, science will continue to progress and sooner or later the answer will be obvious to everybody, one way or another. -
Ned at 23:28 PM on 8 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
CBDunkerson writes: Darnit Ned... if you're always gonna say the same things I want to better than me then you need to type slower. :] Great minds think alike? Or folie à deux? Who can say... -
Berényi Péter at 23:22 PM on 8 September 2010Climate and chaos
#20 Ned at 22:33 PM on 8 September, 2010 In contrast, the occasional spatial or temporal cold anomalies (like parts of the US last winter) are best described as reminders of the climate we're leaving behind. They're not representative of what most places will feel like most of the time in 2020 or 2040 or 2060. Do you mean the recent cold spell in Bolivia, unprecedented in recorded history that emptied rivers there of fish and wreaked havoc on wildlife is supposed to be a reminder of the climate we're leaving behind?
Sounds funny.
-
Ned at 23:21 PM on 8 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
Ken Lambert writes: Although Dr Pielke puts his case a little clumsily, his basic point is right. If you can't find an increase in OHC between times T1 and T2, then as oceans are the main store of heat in the Earth system - there is no warming imbalance between T1 and T2. Just a word of caution, Ken. Our inability to find X does not mean that there is no X. Let's imagine that, through some remarkable case of short-sightedness, we had collected vast quantities of data about the climate system but had somehow neglected to ever measure the temperature of the ocean. Would that failure to record a rise in OHC somehow mean that the ocean could not be warming? Obviously not! In reality, of course, the problem is not that we haven't ever measured temperature in the ocean, but that there is a great deal of uncertainty in the measurements. For those of us who have been observing this field for a long time, the experience of the MSU data from the late 1990s is a cautionary tale. Satellite microwave data from MSU showed a cooling trend that was in direct conflict with both the predictions of climate models and the trends from other data sources. And people certainly argued -- with some validity -- that the MSU data ought to be a more objective and reliable source of information on the climate. Of course, we all know the history -- a series of corrections and improvements to the methods used for processing MSU data repeatedly brought those data into closer and closer correspondence with surface temperature trends, such that today the 1979-present trends from RSS, GISSTEMP, and NOAA NCDC are all within less than 0.01 C/decade of each other. The moral of this story is that we need to look at all the pieces of the puzzle, not just one. -
Ken Lambert at 23:04 PM on 8 September 2010Pielke Sr and scientific equivocation: don't beat around the bush, Roger
As I have suggested elsewhere, measurement of OHC changes needs a baseline viz. a snapshot of the 'tiled' oceans. The 'ideal' system would be a global array of tethered buoys measuring the same 'tile' at the same time. A tile might be 500m deep by 1 degree square to have enough resolution. The gold standard would be a snapshot of temperatures of each tile at time T1 and another snapshot at T2. A summation of each would give accurate changes in OHC for the whole. The Argo buoys are at present about 3500 in number covering on average a square of ocean 330km x 330km down to 2000m. The average ocean depth is 3700m. Not all the Argo buoys are measuring down to 2000m. How close the drifting Argo come to the 'ideal' is hard to determine. For sure, strong currents will tend to coagulate drifting buoys so that the same 'tile' of ocean might might not be measured at time T2 as was measured at T1. Two or more buoys might enter a tile of ocean and leave none where a prior measurement was taken. Now this might even itself out with some sort of statistical correction, but currents moving at 3-4 knots would move buoys and water out of a tile in a matter of hours, so it would seem a difficult problem to correct back to the 'ideal' measurement system of tethered buoys. Those more expert that I might explain how this is done. I suspect that the noisy and inconsistent nature of OHC reconstructions might be due to this problem.
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