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One Planet Only Forever at 11:43 AM on 11 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
Klapper,
You created the 'opening for my response' with your 'concluding statement about your question regarding filling gaps'.
How you might have deemed such a question to be worth repeating needed to be questioned.
Though this is indeed a site for discussing the details of the science, there seem to be times when the motivation behind persistent questions that have plausibly already been answered needs to be considered.
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scaddenp at 11:23 AM on 11 February 20142014 SkS News Bulletin #1: Keystone XL Pipeline
Being a little more careful with tone will help with getting a respectful debate.
One small quibble with numbers (I am not in American continent and thus have little interest or knowledge of keystone), but the 60% absorbtion is not a fixed number and will slowly decrease. At a certain point, warming oceans will emit CO2 though this isnt expected any time soon.
However, as far as I can see, the biggest objection to any new FF infrastructure like keystone is that it delays the transition to non-FF energy structures. Investment would be better in alternatives. I would agree that it is better to kill FF by reducing demand rather than constricting supply, but constriction of supply forces raises prices which has same effect. Of course the money from this increased carbon price goes to the remaining suppliers rather than everyone as it would under a pigovian tax, but it seems such a tax is politically impossible at the moment.
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Russ R. at 11:07 AM on 11 February 20142014 SkS News Bulletin #1: Keystone XL Pipeline
Basic math shows that when it comes to climate change, the Keystone XL pipeline is meaningless.
First, to avoid getting tangled up in endless debate over the sensitivity of the climate to greenhouse gases, let’s just assume the climate alarmists are right. They say that each doubling of CO2 warms the planet by 3°C (http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/mains2-3.html). More recent empirical studies have placed this number at or below 2°C (http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v6/n6/pdf/ngeo1836.pdf), but rather than argue, let’s just be generous and go with the 3°C value.
Let’s start with the expected state of the atmosphere, regardless of whether or not Keystone XL is built. Atmospheric CO2 is currently around 400ppm (http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/), and is expected to rise to at least 550 ppm in 100 years (http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-spm.pdf).
What else do we know about how carbon dioxide emissions affect the atmosphere? We know that 60% of the carbon emitted doesn’t actually stay in the atmosphere, being instead recaptured by the oceans and biosphere (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/faq.html#Q7). We know it takes 2.13 gigatons of carbon emissions add one additional ppmv of CO2 in the atmosphere (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/faq.html#Q6). And we know from the molecular mass of carbon dioxide that 3.664 units of CO2 is equivalent to 1 unit of carbon. (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/faq.html#Q9)
Turning our attention to the proposed pipeline’s payload, we know that heavy oil from tar sands is more energy intensive to extract and refine. On a “well to wheels” basis Canadian bitumen contributes around more emissions than conventional light crude. To be precise, 559.6 vs. 438.6 kg CO2 / bbl. (http://www.api.org/aboutoilgas/oilsands/upload/cera_oil_sands_ghgs_us_oil_supply.pdf) But let’s be generous and assume that this isn’t a question of burning heavy oil instead of light oil... let’s assume it’s a question of heavy oil or no oil. (i.e. if the pipeline isn’t built, Americans will just do without the oil rather than replace it with some other source of oil.) Ridiculous I know, since Americans are already importing oil from Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela, but never mind that… we’re being generous.
Let’s be even more generous and assume that if the pipeline isn’t built, that the oil won’t be transported south by rail, or piped to the west coast and shipped to Asia. Let’s assume it’ll just stay in the ground. Even more ridiculous, since it’s already being transported by railcar, but again... we’re being ridiculously generous.
So we’re assuming that every barrel of oil that flows through the pipeline will either be emitted into the atmosphere or stay safely in the tar sands. We’ll also make the impossible assumption that the pipeline will run at 100% of capacity, every minute, of every hour, 365 days of every year, for the next hundred years. This makes it easy to calculate the impact on the atmosphere and the climate over the next century, since we know the planned capacity of the Keystone XL pipeline is 830,000 bbl/day. (http://keystone-xl.com/about/the-project/)
From here, there’s nothing left to do but some simple math:
• 830,000 bbl/day capacity x .5596 tCO2/bbl = 464,468 tCO2/day
• 464,468 tCO2/day x 36,524 days/century = 16,964,229,232 tCO2/century
• 16,964,229,232 tCO2/century ÷ 3.664 C/CO2 = 4,626,607,972 tC/century
• 4,626,607,972 tC/century / 1,000,000,000 GtC/tC = 4.627 GtC/century
• 4.627 GtC/century x (1-60%) = 1.851 GtC /century
• 1.851 GtC/century ÷ 2.13GtC/ppmv = 0.869 ppmv/centurySo, if we assume that the pipeline runs at 100% of capacity, every minute of every day of every year, for the next hundred years, it would increase the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere by 0.869 ppmv.
And what impact would that have on temperature? It would raise the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration from 550 ppmv to 550.869ppmv.
• ln((550.869)/550)/ln(2) = 0.00228 doublings of CO2/century,
• 0.00228 doublings/century x 3°C per doubling = 0.00683°C/centuryYes… that’s less than one one-hundredth of a degree Celsius per century. Looked at another way, even under ridiculously generous assumptions, the Keystone XL pipeline would have to run continuously at full capacity for 14,637 years in order to raise the planet’s temperature by a single degree Celsius.
But don’t take my word for it… do the math for yourself, and no matter what assumptions you make, you’ll come to the conclusion that the Keystone XL pipeline will have no measurable impact on the earth’s climate.
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wili at 10:27 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Why are the trade winds getting stronger? Is this itself a response to warming? Does this amount to a (temporary) negative feedback? What might reverse it?
I have a feeling that there are all sorts of other important mechanisms (existent and potential) of circulation in air and ocean that we still have little to no clue about.
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Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Klapper #2:
If the surface warming from the late 1970's to about 2000 was mostly caused by release of ocean heat trapped between 1940 and 1970, then the global surface temperature would have changed more or less like the blue curve here.
If there really was more heat accumulation in the oceans between 1940 and 1970, something else must have prevented the surface temperature from dropping during that period, just like something has prevented the surface temperature from dropping in the 2000's despite record high heat accumulation in the oceans in recent years.
That "something" is certainly not the sun, which had its highest recorded activity more than 50 years ago
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Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
KR #8:
BojanD and Klapper have a point regarding direct measurements of the TOA radiation – they are not accurate enough to tell us about the global energy balance, as Gavin states here.
The only direct evidence for a positive energy imbalance is the increase of the heat content in the climate system, most notably in the oceans. (and that has been significant!)
Figure 2 in your link (change in spectrum from 1970 to 1996) proves that the greenhouse effect has in fact increased, but it covers far from all of the Earth’s OLR.
A blackbody calculator reveals that the radiation in the range from 700 cm-1 to 1400 cm-1 only constitutes about 37% of all radiation from a body at 255 K (Earth’s temperature as "seen" from space). In theory, increased OLR on other frequencies could have offset the decrease in the range shown here.BTW, I don’t like the unit on the Y-axis (brightness temperature) because it exaggerates the impact of methane vs. CO2. The spectral radiance (W/m²/cm-1) at 255 K is over 4 times higher at 700 cm-1 than at 1300 cm-1, so a 1 K change in brightness temperature counts much more in the CO2 part of the spectrum than in the methane part.
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Markoh at 08:37 AM on 11 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
One Planet. You state acceptability of emerging economies to use fossil fuels and then transition to renewables. However once the costly infrastructure to burn fossil fuels is built, there is a very long period to pay back this infrastructure, usually a minimum of 20 years. We already see with China that the installed capacity of coal fired power stations still increases year on year. The turning point has not been reached and China is now a major polluter.
Moderator Response:[PS] Okay, this is starting to wander off-topic. Perhaps continue the discussion here.
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scaddenp at 07:52 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
BojanD - what is the your problem with the OHC method of estimating TOA? Seems a pretty good way to do it to me.
Also, when you are talking about the global energy fluxs (which have to take into account both temporal and spatial sampling issues), the line between direct measurement and inferrred is somewhat blurred. However, for all the detail, the place to start is the Trenberth 2009 paper from which the diagram is drawn.
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Bob Loblaw at 07:08 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Magma: "Zonal wind stress trends (x10-1 N m-2/20 yr) is not a metric that that leaps intuitively to mind"
No, I'm sure it isn't, and I'm sure you're not the only one. If you don't make a living measuring turbulent energy transfer in the atmosphere, you're probably used to thinking of wind in terms of speed. Speed, however, is not a good indicator of the energy in the wind, due to several factors:
- it changes with height; roughly log-linear, meaning wind speed increases with height, proportional to the log of height (i.e., rate of change is greatest close to the surface). Normal meteorological procedure is to standardize measurements at 10m for reporting "surface" winds.
- the profile of wind speed depends (in part) on how rough the surface is (in addition to how hard the wind is blowing).
As a result, it is customary to express the effects of wind in terms of shear stress, which is a property that is roughly conserved over small vertical distances. For wind, the force exerted on the surface in a horizontal direction is a shear stress - a force that is trying to drag the earth in a horizontal direction. (Conversely, you can think of the earth as exerting a drag on the wind.) The lowest layer of the atmosphere is also subject to a shear stress from the moving air above it, and so on for each increase in height. Thus shear stress is a good indicator of the effects of wind. THe shear force, created by the circulation that makes the wind blow, is transferred downward to the surface through the lower atmosphere.
As analogy, think of a block sitting on the ground, with a rope attached. The weight of the block exerts a downward force, which is measured in Newtons (N). This downward force translates to a horizontal force, via friction - when we try to drag the block with the rope. The horizontal force is {weight X coefficient of friction}, but we need to account for the area of the block, too, so the term we really want is weight per unit area, or N/m2. This is the shear stress between the block and the ground (when we pull it), and the wind's shear stress has exactly the same effect.
So that explains the units. As for the negative sign: I suspect, but I am not sure (and the full article doesn't help)that the reason is as follows. One custom in measuring turbulent atmospheric motion is to make all fluxes directed away from the surface to be positive. Examples of such that make sense are thermal energy transfer (within the turbulently-mixed air) and the movement of water vapour away from the surface (AKA evaporation). For shear stress (also known as "momentum transfer"), the actual direction is from the top down: the air is dragging on the earth and transferring momentum from the atmosphere to the surface. So, being downward-directed, it ends up with a negative sign, and more negative means stronger forces.
As a last tangent, although pressure is also "force per unit area" and for pressure the units of N/m2 become Pascals (Pa), it is not correct to change the units of shear stress to Pa. Pressure is a non-directional force, whereas shear stress has a direction. Thus, the habit is to use N/m2.
Hope that helps.
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dana1981 at 06:17 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
John H @14 - deep ocean is usually defined as below 700m (that's the definition I use).
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BojanD at 06:04 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
We can measure relative changes at TOA, but not absolute not so well.
@Klapper, exactly my point and it was very explicitly stated by Gavin.
It would be very interesting to read an article showing which values in Trenberth's famous energy flow chart are directly measured and which ones are inferred, like energy imbalance.
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John Hartz at 05:42 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
@Dana: What is your working definition of "deep ocean"?
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Bob Lacatena at 05:35 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Klapper,
The absolute numbers are very, very clear, because we are able to fairly accurately measure ocean heat content and other values which represent a gain in energy of the system. Then you divide that by time.
See KR's statement.
Basically, we know there is an imbalance at TOA, and the earth is accumulating energy, but due to the difficulty of precise measurements it is difficult to use that method to determine "how much".
But we can measure the temperature of the ocean, atmosphere and land, and the volume of ice that is permanently melting, and from that compute the change in heat content over the span of years. That tells us very accurately how much heat the planet is gaining over time (look at the widget in the upper right corner of the page).
There is no doubt here, and it is not assumptions, it is reliable measurements with well-defined and understood error bars. The earth climate system is gaining heat at an alarming rate. That is an incontrovertible fact. GHG theory predicts exactly such an accumulation of heat. All natural sources of warming are currently negative (i.e. point to cooling) and so cannot be contributing.The end result is that all warming (not some, not most, all) must be due to anthropogenic sources. The only argument we can have is one of land use versus greenhouse gases.
There is no magical heat source in the oceans that is confusing the issue.
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scaddenp at 05:29 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
On the other hand, the Argo network determination of OHC does allow for absolute estimate of energy imbalance (though obviously with error limits) eg see Trenberth 2014.
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scaddenp at 05:22 AM on 11 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
Actually, they use kriging methods to determine how closely spaced the drillholes should be. These days, you would of course test for spatial dependence rather than assume it, especially with ore grades.
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Klapper at 04:31 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
@ CDBunkerson #6:
"...Ergo, we know that extra energy is accumulating..."
I agree with BojanD. We can measure relative changes at TOA, but not absolute not so well. The instruments are precise but not necessarily accurate. Look at Figure 1 in Loeb et al 2012. Note the baseline changes between satellites/instruments measuring these parameters. Obviously we make adjustments to create a smooth continuous record and from that we can track trends but again the absolute numbers are not so clear as you seem to assume.
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stone at 04:30 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
To my mind, whilst it is important to keep track of what is currently going on in the climate (as discussed in this post), it is also vital to conclusively resolve the controversy over whether catastrophic climate change would result from burning all of our known reserves of fossil fuels. Basically we need to not get sidetracked into squables about whether we are already seeing an effect from a 40% rise in CO2 when what really matters is that we are on track to increase CO2 levels several fold over comming decades. Hansen has warned that the worst case scenario could be an 8x increase in CO2 and a 20 oC increase in surface temperatures on land. Everything depends on whether Hansen type warnings are verifiable. It is a question as important as whether an asteroid is going to miss or collide with the earth. In my view, the big mistake is to think that peer review is enough for such a gigantic warning. I think the best way to ensure that we get a chance to do the right thing is if there is a second level of scrutiny from a one off investigation with rigorous, formal, "outsider review" and a strict focus on the narrow question of whether burning all known recoverable reserves of fossil fuels would cause catastrophic climate change. I had a go at suggestions for such an "outsider review" process in a blog post: http://directeconomicdemocracy.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/could-this-be-a-way-to-scrutinize-climate-science-enough-for-the-skeptics/
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Klapper at 04:17 AM on 11 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
@ One Planet #60:
"Are you trying to find a way to say that human burning of fossil fuels is not a proven concern...."
You're deviating off the topic. I'll reiterate an earlier point. People don't plan mines on widely spaced drillholes on the grounds they don't need more drillholes since they have used a sophisticated geostatistical technique called "kriging". Neither should public policy be formed by data with large holes filled by the same technique, on the ground we now "know" how fast it is really warming.
This is a technical issue. It's not like the social issues that divide us. So yes the technical details are important and you're getting way off topic discussing the profit motive, at least on this post, probably on this blog.
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Klapper at 03:58 AM on 11 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
@ Esop #59:
I can't check UAH TLT v5.6, but I can confirm that S70 UAH TLT v5.5, with or without land mask is nowhere near that kind of anomaly. Against a baseline of 1981 to 2010 the KNMI data explorer export shows 2013 to have an anomaly of +0.6 or 1/2 of Spencer's number.
There is a huge amount of noise in the monthly records, however which means 1 year is not a useful metric. The standard deviation for monthly anomaly data over the last three years is a rather large +/-1.3. Note that in 2013 an all time global cold temperature record was also set in Antarctica, but how meaningful is that?
The longer term for Antarctica is no warming. The TLT record (v5.5) shows 0.02C/decade since the start of the record. Since the standard export of UAH data to text has a column called "SoPol" I can compare the trends between v5.5 and v5.6 for that zone. v5.5 is 0.00C/decade for the last 35 years and v5.6 is -0.01C/decade essentially the same thing.
The data are extremely noisy but keep in mind the above trends are certainly long enough to be statistically significant even so and both versions of UAH TLT show zero warming south of 60S over the last 35 years.
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Magma at 03:58 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
I hope I'm not the only one having a hard time grasping a key graph in the paper (a full version of which I haven't obtained yet).
Zonal wind stress trends (x10-1 N m-2/20 yr) is not a metric that that leaps intuitively to mind, particularly since the values shown are negative and declining. -
Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
BojanD - See the discussion of spectral changes at the top of the atmosphere such as in Harries 2001 and other papers, direct evidence of reductions in Earth IR emissivity leading to an imbalance.
This has been confirmed by the changes in ocean heat content (such as in Balmaseda et al 2013) provide direct evidence for the rate of longer term changes in climate heat content and the level of imbalance, putting more certain numbers to the imbalance, but the total radiation measures while less accurate do provide such evidence.
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BojanD at 02:13 AM on 11 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
For example, by measuring incoming and outgoing total radiation (via sattelites) we know that there is currently an imbalance... more energy coming in then going out.
Not sure that is true. Energy imbalance is measured indirectly via changes in heat content.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:11 AM on 11 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
Klapper @ 56,
Your 'conclusion concerns me'.
"In summary, you're not really answering the question of why a dataset which fills big holes is better than a dataset with actual data. Using the UAH v5.5 dataset I find at least the "hybrid" version of C&W appears to run hot for Antarctica."
It is 'likely' that determining a trend from a sampling of the surface temperature that excludes a large percentage of the surface in some regions will be inaccurate. And I am using the term 'likely' in a colloquial manner, not in the 'defined manner' it is used in the IPCC Reports.
Are you trying to find a way to say that human burning of fossil fuels is not a proven concern needing to be acted upon urgently to dramatically reduce such activity by the already fortunate?
Fine-tuning aspects of the investigation into better understanding a larger issue like "the acceptability of continuing the fundamentally unsustainable and clearly damaging pursuit of benefit from the burning of fossil fuels", is important. But many appear to seek opportunity to claim 'uncertainty about that clearly certain matter' by finding a way to raise a question about the minutia to create the impressions of 'significant uncertainty about something there is no uncertainty about'.
The extraction and burning of fossil fuels cannot be continued for very much longer, and humanity has billions of years to look forward to on this amazing planet. And there are many damaging impacts of the activity, including the impacts of the accumulation of excess CO2 (in the atmosphere and the oceans). There is also major harm cause by the conflict between powerful people fighting to get more of the potential benefit for themselves. Burning fossil fuels is an incredibly damaging activity ‘all things considered’.
An acceptable use of an unsustainable and damaging activity would be to address an ‘emergency’. I would accept that ‘emerging’ economies should be allowed to use the burning of fossil fuels to more rapidly transition their entire population into sustainable economic activity. However, this would have to be a brief transient phase. After all, activity relying on burning fossil fuels is ultimately a dead end. Those economic activities simply cannot have sustained growth. And since the objective is to ‘lift the least fortunate into a sustainable better way of living’ the only ones benefiting from the burning of fossil fuels should be those who are the least fortunate. The same goes for any other unsustainable and damaging activity like the use of harmful chemicals or using up (consuming) other non-renewable resources. Everyone already ‘more fortunate’ should be ‘getting by with sustainable virtually damage free ways of living’. That is the only viable future for humanity. Anything else would be unsustainable and unacceptable.
This ‘required development to sustainable activity model’ is challenged by the fact that sustainable activities will always be less profitable and less desired than the more damaging or less sustainable activities that ‘can be gotten away with because of popular support’. The ‘profit motive’ and ‘potential popularity’ clearly cannot be allowed to determine what is acceptable…because they clearly haven’t and won’t.
So I hope you are ‘not of the opinion’ that fine-tuning the data on this small aspect of the larger issue of global warming and climate change alters any of the facts of the larger issue of the unacceptability of burning fossil fuels, or reduces the urgency to develop the most fortunate beyond the ‘popular and profitable in the moment’ unsustainable and damaging activity they have ‘grown fond of getting away with benefiting from’.
The increased understanding among the global population of the unacceptable and significant impacts of excess CO2 is just one of the ways to help raise awareness of the fundamentally unsustainable and damaging ways that many among the most fortunate ‘strive to get away with for as long a they can get away with’. Discussing and debating details needs to be clearly understood to not reduce the urgency of ‘changing the minds, attitudes and actions’ of the population so that humanity actually develops a sustainable better future for all life on this amazing planet.
That is my opinion.
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johncl at 00:48 AM on 11 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
I sense a bit of trolling from topal, but I'll pretend he is sincere. A lot of people are thinking the way you are, that somehow the ENSO is creating the global warming - that the heat is coming from the planets core through underground vulcanism or something. But this is certainly not the case. As many have pointed to, the oceans absorb more than 90% of the incoming radiation including whatever is re-radiated from CO2 insulation. Oceans have an immense capacity to store heat and the best way to see this is by a simple experiment which you can find several youtube videos on where you put fire under a balloon with some water inside it. Many people still think they are watching a magic trick, while its just physics in action - physics that our brains often have difficulty grasping, just like climate science really.
The planet acts just like any other physical body absorbing and re-radiating heat. If the heat escapes the body completely (into space) then its gone. As long as the body is receiving the same amount of heat as is radiated out, the system is at equilibrum. If you modify the composition of greenhouse gases around this body then some of that heat will be re-radiated into the body again and the temperature of the body will rise gradually until it radiates out the same amount that its getting from both the source (sun) and the greenhouse gas re-radiation. This simple fact is really all you need to know in order to understand where the heat is coming from, where its stored and where it disappears. Any variations on top of this is just noise really. One mecanism of earths ability to expel heat is through Equatorial currents that gives us El Ninõ's. This is often referred as the energy imbalance, and considering that the atmosphere contains some 40% more CO2 compared to pre industrial times there will be an energy imbalance for a very long time and we can expect continued warming no matter what the ENSO does as the CO2 persists and will keep on doing "its job" according to the laws of physics. If anything we have managed to mask out some of the warming by adding aerosols through increased use of coal this past decade, which reflects some of the incoming radiation in the atmosphere. The past decade has certainly seen a lot of the heat going into the Arctic region as we can see from rapid sea ice decline (even in the middle of winter, its now close to its lowest according to Cryosphere) and massive temperature anomalies. C&W study certainly shows that its wrong to ignore this when looking at global temperatures and that the warming is still stronger than ever perfectly following the trend that we know to be true from the physical facts I just talked about.
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CBDunkerson at 23:14 PM on 10 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Klapper, the primary problem is that you're only looking at one line of evidence. Your idea that the models assume too much warming is only possible if you don't consider other known facts. For example, by measuring incoming and outgoing total radiation (via sattelites) we know that there is currently an imbalance... more energy coming in then going out. Ergo, we know that extra energy is accumulating in the climate system... rather than a fixed amount of energy just moving around (i.e from oceans to atmosphere as you suggest). Similarly, if we calculate the amount of energy that the measured increase in greenhouse gases should cause to be retained we get results in line with the sattelite measurements.
Could decreased accumulation of heat in the oceans have been part of the 80s atmospheric warming? It likely was. However, that doesn't mean the models are showing too much warming... again, we know how much the climate is warming. The tricky part is figuring out where all the extra heat is going to be at any given time. Overall, the flux of heat between the atmosphere and oceans only seems sufficient to drive the warming rate slightly higher (e.g. the 80s and 90s) or slightly lower (the 00s) than the projected trend... averaging out to no change at all.
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Yvan Dutil at 22:53 PM on 10 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Since climate is cahotic, it is pretty obvious that such slowdown is expected.
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Yvan Dutil at 22:51 PM on 10 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
#2 IPO was much smaller in the past. Hence, you do not expect that it explain previous slowdown.
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Bob Lacatena at 22:44 PM on 10 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
Klapper,
Your hypothethesis lacks physical support. Heat does not just rise out of the oceans, coming from nowhere (or undersea volcanos, or hidden heat sinks beneath the waves). It has to get there somehow to begin with.
You seem to be standing reality on its head. The oceans do not periodically warm the earth, as the IPO cycle shifts. Instead, other (physically explicable) mechanisms warm the earth as a whole, and the IPO either "helps" to bury that heat in the oceans, or it doesn't.
The warming you see is entirely anthropogenic. All other physical mechanisms have been negative. The only thing that is natural is the tendency of the system to temporarily obscure heat build up by burying heat in unexpected places (the Arctic, the deep oceans) where it is difficult to observe.
Mind you, to, the models are not in any way "tuned," as you suggest. They replicate physical processes and so generate physically comparable results. In this case, the study points to a detail in the models that may not be well implemented in the physics, and so is not well reflected in the results. The solution is not to "tune" the models colder, but simply to improve / amend the logic which handles this situation in the models -- that is, to make the physics in the models more accurate.
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Esop at 21:53 PM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
# (57 Klapper):
Looks like I was wrong: the 2013 anomaly for Antarctica wasn't 1.2C as I wrote above, it was actually more than 1.4C.
The 2013 Antarctic temp info comes straight from Dr. Spencer:
”The warmest areas during the year
were over the North Pacific and the Antarctic, where
temperatures for the year averaged more than 1.4 C (more
than 2.5 degrees Fahenheit) warmer than normal.”
http://nsstc.uah.edu/climate/2013/december/dec2013GTR.pdf -
Klapper at 21:26 PM on 10 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
This same effect could be part of the reason for the rapid warming post 1975. If you run a 30 year rolling linear regression trend on the Church & White tide gauge sea level dataset you find sea level rise peaked ending in about 1965 at a sea level rise rate actually above the trend ending at 2010 (end of the dataset). Yet SAT was stagnent from 1945 to 1975.
You have very sparse data coverage for heat content down to 2000 m during this period (actually pretty much every period up to ARGO), maybe a handfull of measurements per year in the south Pacific during the 60's so you're left with sea level as your best guess at possible heat gain in the deep ocean.
The implication of that possible heat gain in the -IPO between '45 and '65 is that it's subsequent release in the 80's and 90's is some part of the warming of that period, which would mean the warming of this period was certainly not all anthropogenic.
I'm one of those skeptics who believes in an anthropogenic component to warming, but that the projections of future temperature rise have been exaggerated by the models. The information in this post points to a possible reason the models are "tuned" too hot; they have failed to account for the heat "burp" from the ocean in the '80's, and have based the warming in this period solely on radiative forcing and feedbacks to radiative forcing.
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michael sweet at 21:19 PM on 10 February 2014Warming oceans consistent with rising sea level & global energy imbalance
Elmwood,
You got the sign wrong. The Bearing Sea is recording record warm temperatures this year. The past couple of years were slightly cold, but that changed this year. Perhaps it is due to natural variation. See this graph (unfortunately it is only a one day graph, the NOAA web site was having some problem today with the longer term graphs). This Canada Sea Ice graph (one week old), shows Barrow as 13C above average for a week (that is 23F for the whole week). Can you provide data to support your wild claim of record cold? It is record warm in all of Alaska.
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Kevin C at 20:19 PM on 10 February 2014Unprecedented trade wind strength is shifting global warming to the oceans, but for how much longer?
As a protonope I find the second figure almost impossible to read. Here's a version with just the CGCM lines:
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scaddenp at 19:05 PM on 10 February 2014Warming oceans consistent with rising sea level & global energy imbalance
Even if PDO stayed negative (highly unlikely given our understanding of ENSO), how does it create a negative feedback? If you draw a trendline through only the La Nina years, then you get trend pretty much same as average long term trend.
The deep ocean can only absorb more heat if you can dream up a mechanism that will transport heat from surface to the deep somewhat faster than mechanisms at work today - and that would only be temporary. This would still result in sealevel rise (from expansion of water as it warms) and hasten the point at which oceans reach limit for absorbing CO2 and outgas CO2 (currently probably hundreds of years away).
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Elmwood at 18:51 PM on 10 February 2014Warming oceans consistent with rising sea level & global energy imbalance
How do we know how long this negative PDO phase will last or what causes it? Maybe global warming has messed up the PDO cycles and has shifted them permanently negative, effectively creating a negative feedback to increasing global surface temperatures. The Bering Sea is experiencing unprecedented record cold temperatures. Couldn't the deep oceans absorb all the increased heating from future AGW?
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barry1487 at 18:20 PM on 10 February 2014Australia’s hottest year was no freak event: humans caused it
Yes, I'm still monitoring. You've changed the subject.
The page you directed me to sorts mean minimum, mean maximum, and others highs and lows for monthly/annual, but not mean temperatures.
First place I looked was my home town, Sydney, at Observatory Hill, where I know temp records extend back to the mid 19th century.
I checked mean minimum annual data. The last few decades are definitely the hottest.Then I checked mean maximum annual. Same story.
So I checked the town where I was born, but made it a rural site to avoid any UHI contamination - Mt Barker weather station, which is remote from urban build up. Mean min and mean max - Mean max temps have increased very slightly (0.2C from 23-year periods earliest and latest in the record), but the minimum temps have increased by 1C.
Those were the first two I looked at. I fully expect to find some locations where temperatures are hotter in the late 19th century than present. This will be true for many individual locations around the world. However, for the Australian record, data is too sparse back then to determine a national average. I would be curious about, though not convinced by, any attempts you know of that have simply averaged out the data available prior to the 20th century. While it wouldn't give much insight, it would be a step up from selecting a couple of stations.
Why the change of topic?
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sidd at 14:50 PM on 10 February 20142014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #6
Re;Sea WallsThat is one race they will lose. Don't get me wrong, they will try very hard ... but they will lose. -
Klapper at 13:45 PM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
@Kevin C #54:
To further check my trend calculations, I found a link to UAH TLT data v5.6 at Roy Spencers site. However, that only allows me to analyze what Roy has prepackaged in the ascii file which is a column called SoPol, which is -60S not -70. However, comparing 5.6 to 5.5 versions of TLT I get no significant difference. So I don't think there is a big difference between my use of 5.5 and your use of 5.6.
I think maybe a better test comparison for these noisy S70 data is a longer period than 16 years and close the latitude to -75S to capture the place where I think the TLT correlates with SAT the best, over the high plateau. I think you're going to find that the C&W dataset is still running too hot, at least the hybrid version. I know it already runs hot compared to the 30 year global trend for UAH, and I suspect it runs really hot in the places it purports to fill in SAT data holes.
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Klapper at 12:12 PM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
@ Esop #55:
What baseline are you using? The UAH v5.5 TLT only shows an anomaly of 0.53 against a baseline of the compete record.
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Klapper at 11:59 AM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
@ #54 Kevin C:
I can see I've been trumped on the Antarctic. I did I rolling 10, 15 and 20 year trends, which is a way to either optimize cherry picking or avoid it depending on how you use the results but didn't get your number of .58C/decade from UAH. Nor did using your exact time frame give the same number. However since I'm extracting data using the KNMI data explorer I have to use v5.5 not v5.6.
Using v5.5, the numbers are not so close. UAH TLT 70S v5.5 gives only a warming rate of 0.45C/decade 1998 to 2012 inclusive which is below both your C&W trends, and significantly below the "hybrid" version. The rolling 15 year does give some high warming rates in the range of 0.6C/decade, but that was trends ending in 2007 and the warming rate south of 70 has been declining since.
Without access to either C&W datasets (hopefully this will show up on KNMI data explorer) I can't comment on shorter or longer trends comparing TLT to C&W surface, however I certainly can comment on how sensitive 15 year trends are for this area. If I had picked a 15 year trend ending in September 2012 not December, the trend would be 0.27C/decade so I think 15 years for these kind of data are probably not enough.
Which brings up the question of why you chose a 16 year period? Looking at your graph it appears the C&W data have been smoothed but the inflection point appears to be around 2000 for Antarctica for very steep warming
As for your comment on the contamination of the TLT data by the surface, Roy Spencer recently did a post re: the record low Antarctica temperature and noted that actually the microwave emissivity is pretty constant from the surface in Antarctica (and much less of a challenge then areas with sea ice like the Arctic.
In summary, you're not really answering the question of why a dataset which fills big holes is better than a dataset with actual data. Using the UAH v5.5 dataset I find at least the "hybrid" version of C&W appears to run hot for Antarctica.
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Esop at 10:18 AM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
Klapper (#52):
You might be right that the 0.6C figure for Antarctica is wrong. According to UAH, Antarctica was on average 1.2C warmer than normal during 2013, so 0.6C for the past 10 years could thus be too low. Good observation.
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Kevin C at 10:07 AM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
Kapper@52: That assumes temporal homogeneity in the AMSU data, an assumption we are unwilling to make on the basis of the divergenece between UAH, RSS and STAR (also RSS doesn't cover Antarctica). Also you cannot assume that TLT temperatures reflect SATs at altitude because of surface contamination issues.
So I have grave doubts about the validity of your test. However, for what it is worth, here are the trends on 1997/01-2012/12 for 90S-70S:
- UAH v5.6 0.581C/decade
- CW v2 krig 0.467C/decade
- CW v2 hybrid 0.699C/decade
UAH falls almost exactly between these two reconstructions.
Validation against independent data sources provides a far more challenging and informative test of the reconstructions - this is one of the things we are working on at the moment. I'm afraid the backlog of results to write up is rather long though.
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Ken in Oz at 08:53 AM on 10 February 2014Establishing consensus is vital for climate action
Widespread agreement that the problem is serious and deserves community wide effort is a kind of prerequisite. I think we have seen a kind of 'commerce and business grass roots' opposition to action on climate because businesses weigh things up in terms of cost, competitiveness and profitability, not on the validity of the science.
Because commerce and industry is the part of society that does stuff, it quite rightly deserves to have it's concerns taken seriously and , however PR, lobbying and tankthink are considered stock in trade means to influence public opinion as well as government policy, and these do not come with an innate ethical requirement for truth or balance; on the contrary they are about changing opinions in ways that are most beneficial in terms of costs, competitiveness and profitability.
The problem is not necessarily the innate amorality of commerce and industry when it comes to promoting it's/their interests - that should be taken as given; minimising costs in order to maximise profits is normal and necessary. They will - even if reluctantly - operate within the regulatory framework that goverments set, even as they use the tools they have to influence the formulation of that framework. It's at governement level, in that formulation process, where the broader ethical decisions reach the branching decision point. It breaks down with those elected and appointed to positions of trust and responsibility to the community/polity as a whole, who duck and dodge that responsibility and give precedence to the obligations and agreements to those who support and vote for them over things like science based information and advice.
To what extent political parties successfully 'frame' the climate issue and become part of the PR, tankthink process that changes public opinion, and to what extent they simply reflect the opinion that exists is always a question, but in this case I think we are seeing too much willingness within the political system to put those obligations to their 'partners' and backers and the stance they find most advantageous ahead of the greater obligation to be well informed, cognizant of the bigger picture for the broader constituency they act on behalf of.
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scaddenp at 07:26 AM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
I haven't followed this closely, but I thought Loeb 2012 showed slight increase in cloudiness with increased TOA (and hence increased albedo), but that doesnt necessarily mean negative feedback. Dessler and Loeb 2013 show slight positive feedback from cloudiness. Either way, effect appears to be small.
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Klapper at 07:22 AM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
@Kevin C #49:
I studied Kriging in a 500 level geostatistics university course many years ago. It's a technique developed in South Africa to interpolate gold grades. It's certainly more sophisticated than inverse distance squared. However you would be crazy as an investor to think because you have interpolated your grade using kriging you can drill your exploration holes 1 kilometre apart.
You didn't need to show me the graph for me to guess the C&W warming trend for the arctic was pretty extreme. However, I am surprised at the steep trend in the Antarctic for the last 10 year or 12 years. It looks like by the dark blue line it was warmed about 0.6C in the last 10 years. That seems wrong.
You do have a good cross-check against it however. Due to the elevation of the continent, the TLT trend should be very close to the SAT trend since the TLT sampling zone overlaps the SAT zone. If the C&W warming trend is substantially above the TLT trend for either or both datasets (RSS or UAH) then it is probably wrong. Which begs the question: Why would you use C&W as opposed to the TLT sets for the last 34 years?
After all having actual data should trump filling in gaps with interpolation techniques every time.
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Klapper at 06:15 AM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
@ Tom Curtis #36:
"...Therefore any widespread net change in surface temperatures would be expected to result in further changes in the same direction globally as a result of feedbacks..."
Loeb et al 2012 pretty clearly shows that changes to net TOA radiation act as negative feedbacks to ENSO events, not positive.
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scaddenp at 04:57 AM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
Michael. Not true. For details on this I highly recommend the series at Science of Doom on "Does Back Radiation warm the ocean" and the follow up.
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Bob Lacatena at 03:33 AM on 10 February 2014Establishing consensus is vital for climate action
ubrew12,
Part of the issue is that (1) nobody has the title "Climatologist, and (2) scientists don't look at things in such oversimplified terms.
Dr. Daniel Nepstad studies the Amazon, and the extreme droughts that have threatened that region in the past decade.
Dr. Jennifer Francis studies Arctic sea ice and environs.
Dr. Andrew Dessler studies atmospheric water vapor.
The list goes on and on. They're not, individually, "climatologists," but they variously study different facets of climate change. The point is not that if they all get together, they'll all agree on statement X about climate change. The point is that Dr. Nepstad says something like "whoa, look down here at the Amazon, this is unusual and bad," while Dr. Francis says something like "hey, hold it, look up here in the Arctic, this is really bad," and Dr. Dessler says "yikes, look here in the atmosphere, this looks like everything else is going to get even worse."
The consensus is not some simplistic agreement with a simple statement of fact. The consensus is a culmination of thousands of investigations into thousands of branches of science, from measurements and observations of impacts to attributions of cause to the physics that both explains what we see and tries to predict what we will see.
In the end, the consensus is neither (IMO) served by nor able to be represented by some simple statement and a poll as to its veracity. The consensus is far more nuanced, multidimensional and deeper than that.
And that is what people really need to understand, and is perhaps the real value of The Consensus Project. Dismissives want to express everything as an either/or, and whittle it down to numbers they can argue about. What TCP really shows is that the consensus permeates every field of modern science which even tangentially crosses into climate science.
The consensus is so pervasive and complete that it is, at this point, irrefutable.
As the original post says, we shouldn't even be discussing it. It's there. Arguing about how to clarify its existence is of tantamount importance in getting the debate to move from "if" to "what's next" and "what to do," but I don't think there's a much better way to do it than the methods which have already been tried.
The results are in. There are just a lot of people who refuse to accept them, and that's what needs to be changed.
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Kevin C at 03:11 AM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
Klapper:
The fact that the CW datasets (all versions, i.e. UAH, kriging or a new hybrid to be released this week) produce trends which diverge from HadCRUT4 from about 1998 is both expected, and in fact inevitable for any global temperature series. Take a look at this figure from GISS and you will see why:
(Hint: Look at the Arctic and the Antarctic lines, the main regions missing from HadCRUT4.)
You get the same result if you look at GISTEMP, UAH, NCEP/NCAR, ERA-i, or MERRA.
The much more intriguing question is why our trends are higher than GISTEMP. We will be addressing that question in a month or two, and the answers are looking very interesting indeed.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:30 AM on 10 February 20142013 was the second-hottest year on record without an El Niño
Klapper,
I am aware that a warmer global surface generally means a higher rate of radiation emissions (but all feedbacks including added capture of energy due to more water vapour need to be considered). That is why the norm of the global average is trending up. It needs to reach a new balance norm with the higher rate of energy capture due to added greenhouse gases and feedback effects resulting from the added CO2 like added water vapour.
As you note, and I am aware, when an El Nino is occurring the bump in the global average can send more heat out than is coming in, but it is only noise in the trend line of global average surface temperature. When the La Nina occurs, more heat energy gets captured into the oceans as the planet stores up more heat energy because the surface is not as warm, not emitting as much.
As for the satellite data values of the troposphere, those are a completely different way of tracking the changes of energy of the planet. The NASA/GISS data set also show 2013 to be 'as warm as 1998'. The satellite values are not 'comparable to the global average surface temperature data set'. They are just another measure of things that is 'trending up' as expected. It is improper to claim that a difference between the satellite and surface data sets proves that one or the other is inaccurate. However, the clear difference of the HadCRUT4 with other surface data sets did ‘beg an explanation’.
Which brings us to C&W. They pointed out the 'siginificant gap' in the method of determining global averages in the HadCRUT4 data (large areas of the planet are not accounted for leading to a presumption that the areas not accounted for are trending just like the areas that are accounted for...which they aren't). Their algorithm filled the gap in a rigorous manner that resulted in 'correcting' the 'global average' in the data set (producing what you refer to as ‘magic’), resulting in trends that were more in line with the other surface data sets. This shows how ‘using HadCRUT4 exclusively as the basis for the IPCC AR5 report statements about warming since the late 1990s' was not necessarily producing an accurate representation of the changes. This is not ‘magic’ it is science.
These are indeed complicated issues to develop a clear understanding of, but it can be harder to develop the understanding if you are tempted to not want to ‘change your mind’ as you strive to better understand things. And on this issue there is a very powerful motivation for many people to ‘not want to change their mind’. Their desire to benefit more in their moment from the unsustainable and damaging burning fossil fuels becomes less acceptable as they better understand this issue.
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jsam at 02:26 AM on 10 February 2014The History of Climate Science
Typo alert, "climatologist Hubert Lamb among others, that the uncertainties included a failure to explain previous temperture fluctuations". Temperture?
Moderator Response:[DB] Fixed; thanks!
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