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Tom Curtis at 16:21 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #11
wideEyedPupil @1, I have responded on a more appropriate thread.
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Tom Curtis at 16:20 PM on 17 March 2014Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
Elsewhere wideEyedPupil comments:
"Interested in comment from scientists on the Media watch story "AN ALARMING STORY" on 10 March about sea level rise, describing reportage of a 6 metre sea-level rise as alramist because they omitted the 4014 prediction-come-trueth date."
The Media Watch (ABC, Australia) show has several problems, but arguably that is not one of them. As can be seen from the main post above, expected sea level rises by the end of this century vary from 0.57 to 1.1 meters, depending on the scenario, with confidence intervals of 0.81 to 1.65 meters for the warmest scenario (table 1). Those values are from a single study, and are higher than the IPCC values, who give a likely range of 0.45 - 0.82 meters for the warmest scenario by 2081-2100. That is, its upper 66% confidence range almost coincides with the lower 95% confidence range of the study above. I have heard several times that scientist making emperical projections of sea level rise think the IPCC relied to heavilly on models, and gave too low a value, but only a few expect sea level rises above 2 meters as even an upper bound. Those few (best typified by Hansen), argue not that very high sea level rises are likely, but that they are possible, and sufficiently probable that they should be taken into account in establishing climate policy. For what it is worth, I disagree with those very few, but several SkS regulars agree with them.
Given that background, it is at minimum careless sensationalism to not mention the timescale involved, particularly given that a more or less specific time was given the the paper being reported on.
Having said that, the Media Watch article is rife with inaccuracies itself. To start with (and most germaine), the two thousand year interval in the study was chosen as a period in which equilibrium will have been reached. That means they are predicting the sea level rise will be reached by 4014 AD, but do not specify that it will not be reached before than. Potentially much before them. In fact, while I consider it unlikely that the full sea level rise will be reached by 2100, it is certainly possible that it could be reached by 2500, and probable that it will reached by 3000 AD. Indeed, technically the article does not preclude Hansen's worst fears being realized, and the full sea level rise being reached in as little as 150 to 200 years. So, if leaving out the date is careless sensationalism, not specifying that the paper is stating the latest possible date for the realization of sea level rise must be considered careless soft pedalling of a real threat.
Even worse, is Media Watch's describing a 6.9 Meter rise in Sea Level as "a worst case scenario". In fact, the paper in question mentions the number 6.9 exactly once. In table 1 it shows as the median (not worst case) percentage of the current population displaced by sea level rise with a temperature of 3 C (again, not the worst case examined). So it is neither a worst case, nor even a value for sea level rise.
The actual values for sea level rise used in the paper comes from another paper from the same authors plus others. That paper indicates a median sea level rise of 2.3 Meters per degree C increase in temperature. It does not specify the error, but it is shown in figure Figure 2 E:
The worst temperature case looked at in the original paper is a 5 C rise, and as can be seen, even with a 4 C rise, the worst case (95%) at even 4 C is well above 12 meters. Even the median case at 5 C is an 11.5 meter sea level rise, so that Media Watch has stated as a worst case a value 40% less than the median value of the highest temperature examined.
What is worse is that while 5 C is at the upper end of the likely range (66% confidence interval) for BAU (RCP 8.5) as given by the IPCC, that is just for warming until 2100. By 2400 warming could procede well beyond that point so that 5 C may be the worst case examined, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination a worse case scenario.
Consequently, while Media Watch's limited point is fair, in making it they have made far worse errors in the opposite direction - errors that in fact contradict the study they are reporting on rather than merely eliding ambiguous information.
(Having looked at this, I will be notifying Media Watch of these issues.)
Moderator Response:[RH] Tweaked image width.
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chriskoz at 15:52 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #11
wideEyedPupil@1,
Weekly Digest is the right place to raise any topic, so you don't need to be appologetic. However, this site is dedicated to discuss the science, not the primitive junk alarmism of the story you are pointing. It's a waste of time to dsicuss such junk so I bet no one will care.
The only exempt from this story worth discussing here is:
Yes, we’re talking [...] 2000 years away.
By which time the world could have far worse things to worry about.
(i.e. climate change impacts on industrial civilisation's tourism and entertainment industry in this case) but of course the assertion is lost (left unpursued) among junk.
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wideEyedPupil at 12:19 PM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #11
Interested in comment from scientists on the Media watch story "AN ALARMING STORY" on 10 March about sea level rise, describing reportage of a 6 metre sea-level rise as alramist because they omitted the 4014 prediction-come-trueth date.
Apart from completely ignoring the issue of the climatic tipping points (methane burps in polar regions etc) for such an occurance potentially being yesterday, tomorrow or in the next couple of decades, the certainty of 2000 years for 6m seemed a little over-cofident to me as a lay follower of claimte science (having passed my Climate Change Conversations introduction to CC course on Coursera last year ;-] run by UBC)
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s3960467.htm
Anyone care to discuss. I don't think it's possible for me to create my own thread on SkS hence this thread hyjack, apologies if I've broken etique.
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Klapper at 12:00 PM on 17 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
"In 2013 the Earth’s oceans accumulated energy at a rate of 12 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second"
An utterly irrelevant metric. From a dataset downloaded from this link:
...you can see that the delta ZJs for the world ocean between 1959 and 1960 are -8.7 - (-5.5) = 3.2ZJs or approximately 16 Hiroshima's per second. Please check my math, but even if it is wrong, the use of one year's data to show how serious global warming is verges on the absurd.
Moderator Response:[RH] Hotlinked URL that was breaking page formatting.
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Timothy Chase at 11:10 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Kevin C. wrote:
The quote you picked up refers to the Shindell paper. Shindell doesn't contest the lower aerosol forcing, but points out that the lower forcing is countered by the fact that the aerosols are being emitted in regions where they have a greater impact on temperature, which has the same impact on global mean temperatures as if the aerosol effect were stronger again.
From what I can see, Shindell is simply applying the concept of climate efficacy to industrial aerosols.
In the fourth IPCC assessment, efficacy is defined:
Efficacy (E) is defined as the ratio of the climate sensitivity parameter for a given forcing agent (λi) to the climate sensitivity parameter for CO2 changes, that is, Ei = λi / λCO2 (Joshi et al., 2003; Hansen and Nazarenko, 2004). Efficacy can then be used to define an effective RF (= EiRFi) (Joshi et al., 2003; Hansen et al., 2005).
Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis
2.8.5 Efficacy and Effective Radiative Forcing
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-8-5.htmlThe reason why different forcings have different efficacies is largely a matter of how the forcing is spatially distributed:
The efficacy primarily depends on the spatial structure of the forcings and the way they project onto the various different feedback mechanisms (Boer and Yu, 2003b).
Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis
2.8.5.1 Generic Understanding
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-8-5-1.htmlLatitude is particularly important:
Nearly all studies that examine it find that high-latitude forcings have higher efficacies than tropical forcings.
ibid.
... and this is precisely what Shindell has keyed in on with respect to anthropogenic reflective aerosols.
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Tom Curtis at 07:48 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
For the record, Tarawa has a minimum recent recorded temperature of 14 C, and several in the vicinity of 17C. I therefore have no grounds to reject the 13 C recorded in Kirimati as spurious. The 2 C and 0 C, on the other hand, are suspicious, having no analogue temperatures in nearby stations, nor any ready explanation (that I can think of).
Also, as an addendum to my prior post - the 2010 record temperature at Kirimati coincides with a day with zero cloud cover, very low humidity, and very low wind speeds - a combination that supports my hypothesis as to the cause, and that it is not spurious.
A further addendum - Russ R has not shifted the grounds of criticizing that falsifying data. He is no longer claiming a cherry pick as such, but has not apologized for his unwarranted accusation.
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Tom Curtis at 07:35 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R @86, the possibility that the reading was spurious occurred to me when I first saw it. However, to accept it as spurious we need to also treat the similar reading in 2005 as spurious, and the (at least) two readings of 40 C at Tarawa as spurious. In fact, for Tarawa, the highest recorded temperatures by month are:
Jan: 38 C
Feb: 34 C
Mar: 40 C
April: 34 C
May: 33 C
June: 38 C
July: 34 C
Aug: 34 C
Sep: 37C
Oct: 34 C
Nov: 34 C
Dec: 40 C
That's five out of twelve monthly records you will want to elliminate as spurious, plus two from Kirimati. You realy don't like data that contradicts your claims. Do you?
Further, all that is required for a very high land temperature on Kirrimati or Tarawa is a very still day, such that air over land has longer to heat up and ocean water warms rapidly at the surface due to decreased wind driven mixing (and lagoon water even more so due to shallow depth). I wonder, how could an Island that lies in the Inter Tropical Conergence Zone experience a day or two with little or no wind?
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Kevin C at 05:29 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Wili: The new scientist article is right, but there are several things going on at once.
Recent studies have generally show a reduced aerosol cooling effect. Which means a stronger total forcing. However to explain recent climate change from a stronger forcing means a lower sensitivity. So on the one hand we expect greater forcing, and on the other lower sensitivity. If aerosols were expected to grow in proportion to ghgs then projections would be unaffected.
However all the RCP scenarios show reduced aerosol emissions in the future, so the lower sensitivity leads to lower warming projections.
The quote you picked up refers to the Shindell paper. Shindell doesn't contest the lower aerosol forcing, but points out that the lower forcing is countered by the fact that the aerosols are being emitted in regions where they have a greater impact on temperature, which has the same impact on global mean temperatures as if the aerosol effect were stronger again.
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michael sweet at 01:58 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Following one of Tom's links I found this graph:
original site Interestingly, Russ's temperature graph was just above it (Russ does not link data).
Kiritimati is located just above the "d" in Trade Winds, approximately 3,000 miles from the warm pool. Tarawa is just below the "K" in Kirabati, approximately 500 miles from the warm pool and 1000 miles from the center of the warm pool. I note that the warm pool is not near any continents. Russ is trying to support his wild claim that ocean temperatures are limited by using data 3,000 miles from the hot locations of the Pacific ocean. It is impossible to support Russ's wild claim using this data. Data from warm areas must be used. Tom's explaination that the temperature is stable from thermal mass and current mixing completely explains the ocean temperatures at Kiritimati.
The temperatures Russ is currently arguing over are land temperatures. It is difficult to understand how land temperatures could possibly relate to a "wall" for ocean temperatures. It wastes our time when Russ makes these distracting arguments for arguments sake.
Russ has provided no citations to support his wild claim that ocean temperatures are limited. This would be in the peer reviewed literature if it was even a remote possibility. It is a waste of time for Russ to cite land temperatures 3,000 miles from the hottest ocean to support his wild claim.
It is sloganeering to continue to post unsupported arguments. At a scientific blog peer reviewed data is required. Russ should be required to support his arguments like everyone else.
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wili at 01:33 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Thanks for that explanation, link, and graph (and for ignoring my bone-headed punctuation and spelling errors!). If I can try your patience a bit further, what do those watts per meter squared measurments translate into in terms of degress C of warming that aerosols are responsible for temporarily blocking?
So given that Schmidt paper, am I right that the "How Much Hotter..." article was wrong when they said: "the latest findings show that the cooling effect of aerosol pollution from factories and fires has been underestimated." Do you suppose that they were unaware of that article and were just looking at earlier articles that showed an increased effect of aerosols? -
2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Have experienced the same problem as shoyemore, but it seems to be working now. Hopefully I’ll soon be able to update the Norwegian translation of The Big Picture.
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Russ R. at 01:16 AM on 17 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Tom Curtis,
Do you honestly believe that the 37C measurement you're pointing to is any more accurate or reliable than the 13C outlier in 2007 or the 2C reading in 2006?
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Micawber at 23:31 PM on 16 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
This excellent post points to a fundamental shift in global warming from the trivial 7% in air to the majority 93% in oceans. Indeed is heat captured over 70% of earth’s surface that includes the 8.5% in shelf seas <200m where most impacts are found.
Climatologists deal in anomalies in 30-year records as James Wright pointed out. Moreover, they rely on records collected by others and never go to sea to collect verification ground truth data. Their data at the surface are not to ocean standards that require >3,000 times more accuracy to account for the higher heat capacity (specific heat seawater: air). Moreover, salinity in the ocean surface has never been routinely collected. Seawater density is critically important because fresh warm water floats over saltier cool water.
The Levitus et al (2012) data incorporates the unverified SST data from 1955-1995 that has only sparse coverage as they show in their paper. It has only complete surface temperature coverage over rough degree grid where surface data is averaged over the top 100m from 1995.
The conclusion, that Earth is warming faster than ever before, is very securely based on ocean data. The huge heat capacity smoothes out the great swings in heating and cooling observed on land and in air. Moreover, as James states the main factor is greenhouse gas heat imbalance at the top of the atmosphere.
However, the 93% in the oceans is trapped by the almost completely unstudied top 2m of the ocean as was pointed out in a recent discussion paper (http://www.ocean-sci-discuss.net/11/C54/2014/osd-11-C54-2014-supplement.pdf).
Using rare daily timeseries, the authors quantify ocean warming as currently more than 1ºC in twenty years. This is strong confirmation of dangerously accelerating global warming.
Moreover, it is based on real ground truth data un-modified by models or statistics. They go on to show the post-1986 accelerated temperature rise coincides with a rapid decline in solar radiation. I suppose these are two hockey sticks in opposite directions. This strongly suggests that greenhouse gas contribution to heat imbalance now outweighs not only volcanic variations but also variations in solar activity from the Maunder Minimum to the modern 20th Solar High.
It also suggests that it masks all the global ocean indices such as ENSO, PDO, and NAO that are known to depend on the 22y Hale Cycle and the more familiar 11.6y sunspot cycles. This suggests that predictions, based on atmospheric statistical assumptions, of changes of El Nino/La Nina are unlikely to be accurate. ENSO cycles in the 21st century have been far less predictable. The ocean warming due to greenhouse gases is a good physics-based reason for the observed changes.
It will be very difficult to change climate deniers opinions.
As Alistair Fraser pointed out on his website on Bad Science “Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out.” Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, (1471-1530). (A. B. Fraser, (http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html)
Fraser also pointed out that evaporation does not depend on relative humidity as assumed in many ocean models, but on sea surface temperature. In practice that means evaporation increases by 7% per degree rise in temperature (Precipitation rises by 2-3%). The presence of air is not relevant to vapour pressure that determines evaporation (http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/people/babin/vapor/index.html).
The Matthews and Matthews (2014) discussion confirms and quantifies James Wright’s alarming findings. They present the first measurement of evaporation free from precipitation. They show evaporation and heat sequestration is critically dependent on salinity. The north Pacific ocean heat is trapped in the top 2m and is twice that of the southern ocean with salinity >35.5‰ (the authors use parts per thousand as appropriate at the surface). Moreover, they show from long-timeseries data that North Atlantic/Arctic heating has been buffered by basal icemelt in three phases. The post-1986 accelerating temperature rise they suggest is due to decreasing amounts of floating ice.
Indeed, they suggest, on the basis of real ground truth data and basic physics, that the warming will continue as long as we have the top of the atmosphere heat imbalance. It is not enough to stop adding greenhouse gases. Climatologists assume that if you do that, the heat balance will eventually be restored by back radiation. However, there is no back radiation from 2m below the sea surface. They point out that hurricanes can draw cooling water from below if they linger long enough. It is the storm’s speed over the ground that determines whether it grows into Hurricane Force 5 (fast moving), or is downgraded to tropical storm (slow moving). That could account for the first hurricanes seen in UK this spring.
Pacific warm pools have seen sustained temperatures of 32ºF from more normal 28ºC. That implies an increase in evaporation and precipitation of almost 30% above long-term averages. This is the likely explanation for excess precipitation in 2011 over SE Asia, Australia and S America that lowered global sealevels by 3mm. It could also explain why container shipping companies in the western Pacific now use two Beaufort classes above Hurricane force 12 to describe Pacific Typhoons.
James, you have presented a fundamental shift in our understanding of global warming.
There needs to be a major shift in funding to focus on the top 2m of ocean.
Unfortunately, the manned weatherships and other monitoring programs were discontinued just before the rapid warming began. Manned weatherships would have been very useful for seeing first hand what is really happening. They could be quickly deployed to help aircraft or ships in distress. Even if the aircraft turned off its tracking devices, I suspect weatherships could track them.
Manned ocean programs have been savagely cut in the everywhere including UK, US and Canada.
We need to lobby to get funding restored to counter the devastating cuts shown in this video:
Silence of the Labs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms45N_mc50Y.
Congratulations! You have made a major contribution to science of importance to all mankind. SKS has a great record in countering false arguments and bad science. You now have the mother of all battles to fight. No one has argued that we must actually reduce greenhouse gases to former stable levels. But that is what is demanded if ocean warming and acidification is to managed and mitigated. -
shoyemore at 21:27 PM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
Is anyone else having trouble with their login?
My (perfect valid (I thought) password no longer works.
On asking, I got sent another one, but the message seems to mean this is happening often.
Moderator Response:[DB] Check your email.
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DMarshall at 19:52 PM on 16 March 201430 US Senators Speak Up4Climate Science
Bernie Sanders not only made the "97% consensus argument" but alluded to the links between denialism of tobacco as a carcinogen & that of AGW.
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Bjorn10256 at 18:41 PM on 16 March 201430 US Senators Speak Up4Climate Science
For iPad and Android use the app "Photon". A web browser/flash player which allows you to watch Flash.
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Wol at 15:51 PM on 16 March 201430 US Senators Speak Up4Climate Science
>>It's probably a Flash problem, a "feature" of iPads. The video works on a PC in all browsers.<<
Didn't work for me either, on a PC.
However, I was not logged on: when I did log on it worked eventually, after I had refreshed it and clicked several times on the various "play" arrows. -
Steve L at 14:31 PM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
The Lawrence Torcello article on criminal negligence of the climate confusionists -- amusing to see commenters still obsessing about Mike Mann and "hide the decline". More relevantly, I think it would be very instructive to compare/contrast the criminality of fake climate skeptics to that of the tobacco producers who downplayed health risks and have been sued.
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wili at 10:21 AM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #11
From the "How Much Hotter..." article: "the latest findings show that the cooling effect of aerosol pollution from factories and fires has been underestimated"
I was under the impression the recent studies had actually shown that the cooling effect of aerosols had been _over_ -estimated, not underestimated. Am I missing something here. There was now study linked in the original article to support this contention.
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - there have been a number of research papers that have suggested global dimming in the early 21st century. For example - see this SkS post: Global Dimming in the Hottest Decade.
But more recently see Schmidt et al (2014), and note this image from their paper:
Reduced solar radiation, volcanic and industrial pollution aerosols appear to have contributed to a smaller-than-expected net forcing of the climate. Still an area of large uncertainty I'm afraid.
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Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Timothy Chase @ 36. Thanks again - lots of interesting reading there.
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Tom Curtis at 08:08 AM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R @82, I find it seriously offensive that mister "only studies which find low climate sensitivity are valid" should accuse me of cherry picking.
In this case, you are claiming that there is a wall on ocean temperatures at, or about 30 C. As already explained, that tropical ocean temperatures are very stable is hardly surprising. They are ocean temperatures, with a large thermal mass. They are tropical temperatures, with near contant insolation over the year. And they are smoothed (mixed) both vertically across the thermocline, and laterally by both currents and wind so that large excursions are unlikely. That smoothing was not enough for you. You presented as evidence of the "wall" data that was a multi-annual montly average. That is, you presented as evidence of an upper limit on temperatures data that had any excursions beyond that limit smoothed out.
As to my purported cherry pick, to falsify the claim that a temperture series never exceeds 32 C, I need present only one example of a record above 32 C. That you then accuse me of "cherry picking" because I focus on an instance that falsifies your claim shows cutzpah, I'll grant you. It does not show intellectual integrity. In fact it shows rather the opposite, in that you gloss over the fact that my supposedly "cherry picked" example is not the only example of such a high temperature in the data shown, or even the highest shown (see also 2005 which has a day with a maximum temperture higher than 37 C). It also glosses over the fact that I pointed to two monthly records for a nearby station of 40 C, and to the highest recorded SST which is well in excess of your "wall".
If you are going to accuse me of cherry picking for pointing to instances that falsify your claims, this discussion is over. If you want it to continue, I expect an apology. If that is not forthcoming, I have done more than enough to show that on the science of climate change you are ignorant, and in fact dismiss any data you find inconvenient from consideration.
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michael sweet at 08:01 AM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
While we are on the subject of "egregious cherry pick"s, I wonder why we are using sea temperatures from a Central Pacific island to illustrate maximun sea temperatures? Kirimati is one of the farthest east islands in the Pacific. Everyone knows that the highest temperatures in the Pacific are always in the Western Pacific. The trade winds push the hottest water west. The claim that it is desirable to get away from continental effects is not sufficient to choose an area strongly affected by upwelled cold water coming from the coast of South America. A location where sea temperatures are not artificialy lowered would be a much better location to use for this example. November in Rabul is already 30.2 average and 31.2 maximum.
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Timothy Chase at 05:03 AM on 16 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
BC, I have little doubt Rob Painting has more background in this area than I do, and would defer to him in this.
Personally, while I was aware of the existence of the gyres, I thought of their motion as being principally horizontal and hadn't considered their vertical effects. However, it makes sense that they would involve that as well, similar to hurricanes, the latter of which involve a vertical pumping action and are responsible for some of the poleward circulation of heat in both the atmosphere and ocean.
However, what I was refering to in terms of "quasi-stability" was simply the tendency of the system to chaotically move about a mean state where the mean state itself remains unchanged and the system has no overall trend. In this sense, I was refering to the system's tendency to regress towards the mean. When a trend is involved you would have regression towards the trend.
But typically the term gets used in climatology to refer to the tendency of the system to remain within any one of several states that are "stable" for only a finite time, typically according to a characteristic time scale. With ENSO the quasi-stable states would be the El Nino, La Nina and neutral states. Other oscillations may have only positive and negative quasi-stable states.
There is however one point that I would like to touch on, a potential misunderstanding, basically where I speak of constructive and destructive interference between ENSO, PDO and IPO. When one looks at how they overlap, one possibility that suggests itself is that they are essentially independent of one another, independent modes that are superimposed and simply additive in their effects.
However, one indication that this is not the case is that a correlation with lag-time exists between El Ninos and the the positive phase of PDO. The positive phase of PDO will often follow an El Nino within a matter of three to six months, thus the El Nino appears to act as a trigger for the PDO flipping states. The reason, it would seem, is that their existence and consequent interaction involves various feedbacks.
Anyway, you might find some value in a comment I made in an earlier thread several years ago that goes into things in more detail. It includes both references and links. Frankly, I do a better job there than I would be capable of at present without more review. However, at one point it refers to a piece by Atmoz that has since been taken down. This is still in the Wayback Machine.
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Russ R. at 02:23 AM on 16 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Tom Curtis @81,
No need to apologize for the tardy response.
What you should, however, be apologizing for is what amounts to the most egregious cherry pick I've ever seen.
You showed a daily high temperature at Kirimati on Oct 26, 2010 of 37C as evidence to counter my "wall" argument about tropical ocean temperatures.
Without further comment, here are the full daily records at that station back to 2000:
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014 (ytd)
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Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Timothy Chase at 32 and Moderator comment at 30. Thanks for the detailed response. It's obviously more complicated than I thought and pretty interesting too. What I hadn't realised was the idea of the quasi-stability with heat going in to oceans (IPO negative, La Nina) having to balance heat going out of oceans (IPO positive, El Nino) over time. That makes sense.
One further question/comment about 32. You mention the thermohaline effects but not the subtropical ocean gyres - see comment 34 from Rob Painting, who did a post on this topic a few months ago. I suspect I had this in mind when I made my comment at 30. Would this heat transfer and the strong warming of the 0-2000m layer be why the stability you mentioned is only quasi?
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Rob Painting at 16:13 PM on 15 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Barry - I think that pretty much sums up contrarians - they're not really interested in science, i.e. how the physical world really works, but simply jump from dataset to dataset in order to affirm their wishful thinking. As you point out, ocean heat content is a classic example - all the contrarians thought it the greatest thing since sliced bread when the 0-700 metre layer exhibited cooling in the mid 2000's.
Since then we've discovered that that was largely due to more heat being pumped down into the deep ocean via the subtropical ocean gyres, and that the 0-2000 metre layer has been warming strongly. With a longer record we have more confidence that the trend is robust, but contrarians have abandoned the ocean heat content data because it doesn't affirm what they'd like to believe. Hardly a surprise.
.....Meanwhile back in the real world the Earth continues to build up heat, and a return to the positive phase of the IPO (strong surface warming) draws ever closer.......
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barry1487 at 15:37 PM on 15 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Re OHC, I remembered that 5 or 6 years ago (or more) RP Snr was consistently saying that ocean heat content is a much better metric to measure global warming than surface temps (I agree). Around that time he was pointing out that OHC for 2003 - 2006 had not risen, and prior warming was not homogenous across the oceans. A few years later with more data, and we see OHC has continued to increase, so I wondered how RP Snr had interpreted that. I found a post citing him at WUWT, where he advises that the problematic OHC data is not robust enough to rely on.
I haven't followed RPS as much as I used, but I long respected him for being a qualified alternative voice on climate science, whether or not I agreed with him. Do I have the narrative right, here? Did he really promote OHC as the best metric, then use it to emphasise little or no warming (or cooling), and then when warming continued called the data into question?
Good post, BTW. Thanks.
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Tom Curtis at 10:53 AM on 15 March 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #7
Russ R @78 & 79, first, sorry for my very tardy response.
Second, thankyou for your agreement that the WV feedback increases in strength with rising temperature. As we are near a minimum for the ice albedo feedback, the implication is that we are at, or near a minimum climate sensitivity with respect to the current configuration of continents, and that increasing temperatures will increase climate sensitivity rather than decrease it.
Having said that, your agreement seems half hearted. You go on to say:
"I don't think it requires anything more than simple assertion to argue that the addition of heat to surface water causes it to evaporate, and rise, and then subsequently condense, and fall back to the surface."
Actually, that does require more than assertion. The tendency of rising water vapour to condense is a function of temperature. In an isothermal atmosphere, it would not condense as it rises, and as I recently learned, an atmosphere without greenhouse gases would be isothermal (or an immeasurably close approximation to isothermal). What you think you can claim by simple assertion is a contingent fact, depending on empirical conditions.
What is worse, it as a drastic oversimplification. As I have already discussed the potential impact of cloud top height, you know that your "simple assertion" glosses over a lot of relevant detail that can change the conclusions you seek. Another example is cloud droplet size. In optically thick clouds, increasing cloud droplet size decreases albedo. With more water vapour in the air, cloud droplet size is likely to increase (a fact evident everyday with the large, heavy droplets of rain found in the tropics). Consequently warming air will likely reduce cloud albedo per unit area, but may increase cloud area. You seem to be prepared to "simply assert" that the former effect is irrelevant, and only the later need be considered. Certainly you "rebutted" evidence that warmer temperatures will increase the GHE of clouds by your "simple assertion".
Frankly, in the face of these and other complexities, your simple assertion has all the logical elegance, and persuasiveness of (snip)
You also simply asserted that "... vertical heat transfer can occur by convection in addition to radiation,which your response ignores", which is odd given that none of my points relied on denying or ignoring that, and one (increased cloud height with increased temperature) directly relied on the fact that heat can be transferred by convection.
Your last simple assertion was that "...in any tropical ocean location, the surface temperature after an afternoon rainfall is lower, not higher, than before". That may be true, or not. I have seen, and you have provided no data on that fact. It is probable, IMO, in that tropical rainfall tends to start around 2-3 pm (ie, once the day starts cooling), and finish one to two hours later. Your imputation that the cooling is due to the rainfall is, therefore, very dubious. Rather, on nearly all afternoons in the marine tropics, it cools in the afternoon after about 1-2 pm, and that cooling may well result in precipitation. (I notice that you are carefull to cherry pick your assertion by limiting it to afternoon rainfall. Morning rainfall, I am sure, is accompanied on most occassions by a warming with time.)
Moving on, you continue to attempt to defend your claim of a wall in sea surface temperatures. This time you do so by showing that if you average an unspecified number of years data of averages of approximately 30 days data (monthly averages) the temperatures do not show extremes. That was, of course, obvious from the moment you took averages.
If instead of looking at averages, you look at daily temperatures you find things are more variable:
In this case, the daily temperatures are for 2010, Kiritimati, Kirribati. For Tarrawa, Kirribati, temperatures have reached as high as 40 C, both in March and December. What is more, maximum (and average) temperatures in Kirribati have been increasing. In the case of maximum temperatures, they have increased by 0.18 C per decade since 1950, or by 1.1 C over that period. Neither local maximum temperature records, nor the increase over time seem aware of the wall you are so confident in.
There are good physical reasons to think the very high maximum temperatures occassionally experienced in Kirribati are not perfectly reflected in SST. Indeed, had they been, they would have broken the world record SST of 36.67 C (Persian Gulf). But that record itself shows your wall to not exist. Likewise the higher SST in past eras determined by proxies show the wall to not exist. The "wall" is a figment of the imagination, having no physical basis, and stands refuted by actual temperature records from instruments and proxies.
Perhaps you will not shift the wall up to 36 C. If so, you will make the fallacy of the reasoning behind the wall plain to all. For any set of circumstances, there must be some SST which is not in fact exceded. What that temperature is is a function of the particular circumstances. The existence of a de facto limit in no way proves that it is an absolute limit, such that if circumstances change it will not be exceeded. Treating it as such is simple a non sequitor.
(More later)
Moderator Response:[PS] snipped portion unlikely to promote constructive debate,
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Pete Wirfs at 10:26 AM on 15 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Same here.
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Andy Skuce at 05:01 AM on 15 March 201430 US Senators Speak Up4Climate Science
People trying to read this post on an iPad may not be able to view the video, instead seeing a blank space between the second and third paragraphs. The video shows Senator Sanders citing the Cook et al consensus paper.
It's probably a Flash problem, a "feature" of iPads. The video works on a PC in all browsers.
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Timothy Chase at 04:45 AM on 15 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
BC, you write:
"And when the IPO inevitably shifts back into a warm phase, all the heat now being stored in the deep oceans will be released back into the atmosphere"
I would have thought that the heat going into the deep oceans will mix in and cause a miniscule increase in temperature to that massive body of water. When the IPO shifts back won't it be a case that the surface temperature rises will more stay at the surface with the consequent effects - higher global temperatures, the world wide effects of El Nino etc.
If I might add my two cents (not sure what the exchange rate is, though)....
I believe we may be thinking largely along the same lines, but I am not so sure about your first sentence:
I would have thought that the heat going into the deep oceans will mix in and cause a miniscule increase in temperature to that massive body of water.
If you look at the sea surface temperature distributions of ENSO (the El Nino Southern Oscillation), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) they are quite similar, each with North and South components, but with the ENSO being more pronounced near the equator, the PDO more pronounced in the North Pacific, and with the IPO being roughly equally pronounced in both areas.
Each of these have their atmospheric and oceanic components, where there will be changes in air pressure, winds, air temperature, water temperature and water salinity. However, I will focus principally on water temperature, and to a lesser extent, salinity.
With regard to water temperature, I don't have a comparison map for all three, but here are the PDO and ENSO:
In essence, they appear as standing waves, and they may constructively or deconstructively interfer with one another. And as such, when the IPO is in its positive phase El Ninos are more common and more pronounced, La Ninas less common and less pronounced, but this is reversed when the IPO is in its negative phase. So we can focus primarily on ENSO at this point.
ENSO is an oscillation associated with the thermohaline circulation, where what determines the density of water will be a product of both its temperature and salinity, and denser water sinks below that which is less dense. As such, warmer water may sink below cooler if the salinity of the warmer water is sufficiently greater than that of the cooler water.
Furthermore, while over the long-run, when the climate system is quasi-stable, heat going into the ocean must balance heat coming out of the ocean, over shorter timescales the net flow of heat will be into the ocean with a reduction in moist air convection due to cooler water being at the surface, warming the ocean, and at other times the net flow of heat will be into the atmosphere through greater moist air convection due to warmer water being at the surface, cooling the ocean.
Now you don't actually see that great a rise in global surface temperature during an El Nino. The rise in global surface actually occurs when the El Nino begins to dissipate. The reason is that "pool" of warmer water rises to the surface, spreads out as it begins to mix with the ocean surface, exposing a larger surface area over which moist air convection can take place, carrying more heat into the atmosphere.
Thus when the IPO is in its positive phase, this promotes stronger and more frequent El Ninos through constructive interference with ENSO and results in weaker and less frequent La Ninas through deconstructive interference. Consequently, during the positive phase, the net flow of heat will tend to be from the ocean to the atmosphere due to increased moist air convection, but during the negative phase the net flow of heat will tend to be from the atmosphere to the ocean due to reduced moist air convection.
Anyway, my apologies if this is more detail than you need, but it helps me to spell things out so that I have a better handle on what I am discussing.
Moderator Response:[RH] Reduced image width to preserve page formatting.
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Doug Cannon at 03:56 AM on 15 March 2014The Beginners Guide to Representative Concentration Pathways - Part 3
I'm having a problem with the Primary energy use graph for RCP2.6.
Your graph seems to match the IPCC report but my old copy of vanVuuren version of RCP2.6 shows significantly more renewable energy; 10-15% of total or about the same as bio-energy. IPCC and yours show only 5% or less of renewables. Was there a change made that I'm missing? Can we really expect to meet RCP2.6 goals with such low use of renewables.
Also, vanVuuren shows a significant amount of Carbon Capture and Storage; greater than 50% of total energy (for coal, oil and bio CCS). I can't find that IPCC emphasizes CCS at all.....although, admittedly, it's a difficult report to navigate through.
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Timothy Chase at 02:01 AM on 15 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
James, I understand my comment (21) was a bit long and for that reason you may be skipping over it. However, at the end of the comment I mention a bad link. You might want to correct that.
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JCMac1 at 01:44 AM on 15 March 2014Antarctica is gaining ice
I'm wondering about Transantarctic mountains, altitude, humidity, dehumidification, increased cloud cover and the creation of more Antarctic ice through this process. This is the process I'm thinking about and I want to know if it's possible or not. Can someone please tell me where this 'theory' goes right or wrong.
The warming earth causes the atmosphere to hold more moisture all the way from the North pole to the south pole. When this moisture reaches Antarctica it's forced to altitude by the Transantarctic mountains.
This rise of moist air across the cold altitudes of the Transantractic mountains causes whatever moisture that remains in the air to create clouds over the TransAntarctic mountains.
These clouds then spread out and reflect the sun dropping temperatures even further causeing even more cloud cover and increased percipitation in the cold zone.In other words, the TransAntractic mountains are acting as a giant dehumidifier thats causing clouds to further cool an Area of Antarctica along with increased ice creating snow.
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barry1487 at 00:42 AM on 15 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Same here.
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StBarnabas at 23:20 PM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
I for one have not seen part 6 and will await the official posting.
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Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
I wonder about the following statement, taken from the fifth last paragraph (the paragraph starting with "The “slowdown” of surface warming")
"And when the IPO inevitably shifts back into a warm phase, all the heat now being stored in the deep oceans will be released back into the atmosphere"
I would have thought that the heat going into the deep oceans will mix in and cause a miniscule increase in temperature to that massive body of water. When the IPO shifts back won't it be a case that the surface temperature rises will more stay at the surface with the consequent effects - higher global temperatures, the world wide effects of El Nino etc. It just doesn't seem plausible that the heat stored in the deep oceans will be released back into the atmosphere. But then I'm not a scientist so I'm interested in comments from people who know what they are talking about.
Moderator Response:Hmm, I guess that was a badly worded sentence. What I meant to say is that the heat that is in the oceans that would otherwise have been in the atmosphere will be released back into the atmosphere when the ocean cycles turn around. Obviously, not *all* the heat will go into the atmosphere. - James
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Tom Curtis at 16:55 PM on 14 March 2014CO2 lags temperature
Cedders @441, by coincidence, Real Climate has a related thread on past temperatures today, which provides a number of usefull references (if nothing else). Unfotunately the graphic they show for phanerozoic temperatures is that by Robert Rohdes, and is based on Viezer (2000)'s adjusted dO18 without pH adjustment. Ocean pH levels do make a substantial difference, that being the difference between Viezer (2000) and Royer et al (2004).
Also of interest is this temperature reconstruction over the last 3.5 billion years:
(Source)
Again, this is without pH adjustment, so temperatures in some periods should be higher. In particular, temperatures would be appreciably higher in the Archean (up to 2.5 billion years ago), and Proterozoic (2.5 - 0.55 billion years ago). Of course, this has an even lower temporal resolution than does Royer et al (2004), and there are at least two instances of near complete glaciation ("snow ball earth") in the immediate lead up to the phanerozoic, which the resolution is inadequate to capture.
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One Planet Only Forever at 14:25 PM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
An interesting 30 year average tid-bit.
In the NASA GISTemp global average surface land-sea data set, all of the monthly averages since November 1993 have been warmer than the monthly average 30 years earlier, except January 2011 which was very slight (0.07 C cooler) than January 1981.
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:52 PM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
This is another great presentation of the 'fuller story', the type of presentation of information that actually leads people to better understand what is actually going on. However, many in the skeptical side do not wish to consider the fuller story, or prticipate in developing the best understanding of what is going on.
I personally prefer to follow a rolling 30 year average of the global surface temperature (a new average every month), and I see no significant change in the rate of warming. The 30 year average in the NASA GISTemp data set is still rising. And the 30 years ending in January 2014 are 0.166 degrees warmer than the 30 years ending in January 2003.
A benefit of following 30 year averages is that the longer average is likely to include, by averaging in, the significant and random fluctuations of the global average surface temperature due to things like ENSO, volcanic particles and solar cycles.
However, when I discuss this with a skeptic I am clear about not waiting for another 30 years to find out if the trend continues. Though the presentation of the decades (1980s, 1990s, 2000s), makes a clear point, it can lead some skeptics to claim they need to wait until 2020 to be convinced...or 2030 to really be convinced...or 2040 to almost be certain to be convinced. The minds of many skeptics seem to be locked in an instinct to protect their maximum personally benefit which is threatened by better understanding this issue (or immorally try to obtain benefit by trying to keep others from better understanding this issue for the benefit of immoral wealthy benefactors). That instinct or motive leads them to another instinctive animalistic response, aggression when rationally cornered.
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Rob Honeycutt at 13:25 PM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Lucia... I actually have access to part 6 internally but was not participating in reviews because I was enjoying the suspense. But you pretty much ruined it.
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lucia at 12:36 PM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
[BL] Come on, Lucia, you can wait a few days for Part 6 to be published.
I didn't have to. Someone was running a google search and part 6 is there in google cache. It's still there.
Rob Honeycutt Lucia... So, the one comment you come here to make is a spoiler?I commented here on part I. We're discussing at my blog. I suspect you wouldn't be happy if I (or we) posted those comments here. But mostly, it's easier. Anyone can comment without registering and providing their 'personal details' to a site.
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Timothy Chase at 11:40 AM on 14 March 2014Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal
It should be noted that the same discussion about which hemisphere is experiencing more ocean warming and the role of aerosols in this is taking place in the comment section of Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up beginning with comment 23 by Hyperactive Hydrologist:
Is ocean heat content increasing faster in the southern hemisphere? If so would this add weight to the idea that the northern hemisphere is experiencing increased dampening due to aerosols?
and continuing as far as 27-28 by Tom Curtis where he states regarding a graph by Bob Tisdale:
... the SH is gaining heat 13 times faster than the NH per unit area, which would definitely seem to support Hyperactive Hydrologist's suggestion.. I suspect, however, that there are other major factors involved.... Tisdales graph only plots heat gain since mid-2005. That means he only plots it over a period in which the SOI has shown a distinct, and very strong trend towards record high levels (ie, from record high El Ninos to record low La Ninas). The tongue of water that is modulated by ENSO lies, primarilly, just south of the equator. Large changes in ENSO, therefore, may well have significantly different effects in either hemisphere, so that may be another major factor in the difference.
Regardless, it is an interesting question.
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Rob Honeycutt at 11:24 AM on 14 March 2014A Hack By Any Other Name — Part 5
Lucia... So, the one comment you come here to make is a spoiler?
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Timothy Chase at 10:32 AM on 14 March 2014Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal
Kevin C writes in 7:
StBarnabas: In this context, uniform heating means uniform between the northern and southern hemisphere,... Non-uniform heating involves the same total global heating, but more of it occuring in the southern hemisphere where it has less impact on temperatures.
Personally, I would still expect the northern hemisphere to warm more quickly than the south, both for the 20th century and for the period of modern global warming, from 1975 to present. There is more land than water in the northern hemisphere, and given that land has less thermal inertia, it has been able to warm more quickly. Then with the atmosphere as the intermediary, I would expect the land to drag the northern oceans along with it.
In any case, at least for the two hemispheres as a whole, the northern hemisphere warmed more quickly than the southern but was was more sensative to aerosols mid-century, with some cooling from 1940 to 1980, whereas there was only a single year of statistically significant cooling in the southern hemisphere.
Tamino states:
The cooling effect of man-made sulfates also helps explain the hemispheric asymmetry in temperature history. Most industrial activity is in the northern hemisphere, so most of the anthropogenic sulfate cooling should be there too. The northern hemisphere has warmed faster than the southern because there’s more land in the north than the south, and land has far less thermal inertia than ocean. But if sulfates are mostly in the northern hemisphere, that means that there should have been a stronger mid-century cooling effect in the north than in the south — and that’s exactly what we observe:
Anthropogenic Global Cooling
August 23, 2010
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/antrhopogenic-global-cooling -
Timothy Chase at 10:12 AM on 14 March 2014Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal
BaerbelW wrote in 4:
Re. RealClimate: not sure what's going on but when I try to go to realclimate.org I immediately get a "Forbidden - You don't have permission to access / on this server."
That sounds like a shutdown in response to attack, possibly due to an intrusion, similar to the Climategate upload. The details are more likely to be discussed in a less public forum.
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Timothy Chase at 10:06 AM on 14 March 2014Climate change and sensitivity: not all Watts are equal
Wili wrote in 1:
OT question: Has anyone else had trouble getting onto RealClimate recently? Are they shut down for maintanance, or under cyber attack?
Earlier this week I had trouble but was able to get through shortly after that. My assumption was a DDoS attack by someone incompetant. If it were down due to maintanence I would expect it to remain down for a bit rather than be available only half a minute or so later. So DDoS seemed a safer bet.
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Tom Curtis at 10:04 AM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
In addition to 27, Tisdales graph only plots heat gain since mid-2005. That means he only plots it over a period in which the SOI has shown a distinct, and very strong trend towards record high levels (ie, from record high El Ninos to record low La Ninas). The tongue of water that is modulated by ENSO lies, primarilly, just south of the equator. Large changes in ENSO, therefore, may well have significantly different effects in either hemisphere, so that may be another major factor in the difference.
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Tom Curtis at 09:58 AM on 14 March 2014Global warming not slowing - it's speeding up
Rob, Scaddenp, if you actually run the numbers, then based on the trends in the graph, the NH oceans are gaining energy at a rate of 21 million Joules per meter squared per decade. In contrast the SH oceans are gaining energy at 271 million Joules per meter squared per decade. That is, the SH is gaining heat 13 times faster than the NH per unit area, which would definitely seem to support Hyperactive Hydrologist's suggestion. I suspect, however, that there are other major factors involved. One such factor could be that the Indian Ocean is almost entirely a SH ocean, with heat gained in the NH portion of the Indian Ocean being directed to the SH be geography.
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