.
It’ll be interesting to compare the post-adjustment data Willis uses to Craig Loehle’s 2009 work which shows cooling from 2004 for the top 700m, not discussed in this post. I wonder if the folk at Colorado.edu have one leg shorter than the other. The sea level altimetry they output has a distinct tilt too.
I’ve been thinking about the Argo floats and the data they’ve collected. There are about 4,000 Argo floats in the ocean. Most of the time they are asleep, a thousand metres below the surface. Every 10 days they wake up and slowly rise to the surface, taking temperature measurements as they go. When they reach the surface, they radio their data back to headquarters, slip beneath the waves, sink down to a thousand metres and go back to sleep …
At this point, we have decent Argo data since about 2005. I’m using the Argo dataset 2005-2012, which has been gridded. Here, to open the bidding, are the ocean surface temperatures for the period.
Figure 1. Oceanic surface temperatures, 2005-2012. Argo data.
Dang, I like that … so what else can the Argo data show us?
View original post 327 more words
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
tallbloke says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 2, 2014 at 1:45 am
For some background on the many ‘adjustments’ to OHC data, the Guest post on WUWT by Craig Loehle in 2011 is worth a read:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/20/ocean-heat-content-adjustments-follow-up-and-more-missing-heat/
Here’s an old talkshop post well worth looking at.
Now that the warmista are abandoning surface air temperature as ‘the gold standard for mesuring climate change’ and relying increasingly on heat mysteriously subducted into the deep ocean, it’s important to keep up awareness of these issues.
Willis seems to be flushing all the controversy down the memory-hole. No discussion of discrepancies, alteration of the data, no link to sources or metadata, nothing. He’s been at the Kool-aid.
The Levitus dataset, which according to Roger Pielke Sr has dropped some cooling buoys if I understand him correctly.
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/3month/ohc2000m_levitus_climdash_seasonal.csv
Pielke Sr discussion of Levitus 2009 and Hansen’s model estimates
soarergtl says:
March 2, 2014 at 2:10 am
@Heber Rizzo
Let’s see what the Argo Team says:
“The global Argo dataset is not yet long enough to observe global change signals. Seasonal and interannual variability dominate the present 7-year globally-averaged time series. Sparse global sampling during 2004-2005 can lead to substantial differences in statistical analyses of ocean temperature and trend (or steric sea level and its trend, e.g. Leuliette and Miller, 2009). Analyses of decadal changes presently focus on comparison of Argo to sparse and sometimes inaccurate historical data. Argo’s greatest contributions to observing the global oceans are still in the future, but its global span is clearly transforming the capability to observe climate-related changes.”
They also have a lower number for the temp rise:
“This is consistent with the comparison by Roemmich and Gilson (2009) of Argo data with the global temperature time-series of Levitus et al (2005), finding a warming of the 0 – 2000 m ocean by 0.06°C since the (pre-XBT) early 1960′s.”
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/global_change_analysis.html
When I posted these facts on a Dana rant on The Groan it was not appreciated. 🙂
Good work Willis. Lovely diagrams.
A vitally important post to read when assessing the sign change in the post-adjustment ARGO data trend is this one from Peter Berenyi
I hope he’ll find the time to update his analysis and try to optimise the 2003 splice to obtain a better fit to the legacy XBT data.
This is going to become an important battleground in the war on science being conducted by the data adjusters. We need to be organised.
This is not the thread to ask this question but I don’t know where else to put it.
I read at space.com that the surface of the moon:
So, my question is how hot would it be on earth at the equator when the sun is directly overhead if there was no atmosphere at all. Can we know that for sure? Would it be any different from that of the moon? If so, why? (rotation speed?)
It looks to my untrained eye as if the sun would fry my butt if I stood on the equator with the sun overhead if there was no atmosphere. If that is true, then the atmosphere must be a cooling agent at the equator in the daytime. What am I missing here?
Hi Mark: You are correct. The first thing to realise is that if there we’re no atmosphere, there would be no air pressure, and the oceans would evaporate off into space. The Earth would then be the same as the Moon in terms of insolation. There would be no clouds to reflect away 30% of the Sun’s energy back into space, no ocean to absorb heat during the day and give it up again at night. No buffering of the system beyond the ground’s ability to absorb, store and release heat on a diurnal basis.
Since the Earth and Moon are at the same average distance form the Sun, they would both get the same amount of energy at the surface. The rotation rates wouldn’t make much difference. The Moon loses 90% of the difference between it’s max and min temps within a couple of days of sunset. Within 12 hours it would lose about 60%. But this wouldn’t change the amount of energy your body absorbed. You would cook pretty fast.
But you need to be careful with the ‘cooling agent’ idea. The atmosphere/ocean is more a combination of parasol (cloud albedo), refrigerator (ocean and damp ground’s evaporation and convection of water vapour), and capacitor (Mass ocean absorbing, retaining and later releasing energy).
@Tallbloke, thanks for the reply.
Sloppy language on my part. I meant that the atmosphere had a colling effect on me standing at the equator at high noon and I would not fry because there was an atmosphere.
With your reply I am thinking that the atmosphere, land, and oceans join together in a variety of ways to spread the heat from the sun over the whole of the planet and to also be a heat sink. I am starting to think that we have darn little need to call upon CO2 to help explain things in this matter. Perhaps CO2 does help a bit, but I am beginning to suspect that its effects are minuscule. Occam’s razor would tell me that there is little reason to add in the effects of a trace gas if I don’t need to in order to explain what we observe here on earth.
Would you see it that way at all?
Mark: Yes I do see it that way. The mainstream theory says we have to invoke greenhouse gases to explain around 33C of the ~80C warmer temperature compared to the average of the Lunar surface. They say this is because of theoretica consideration of the average insolation of 240W/m^2 only producing a temperature of 255K. But as you pointed out, during the daytime, insolation is much higher, and is capable of warming the ocean to a higher temperature.
The ocean has to lose as much heat/energy as it gains to be in equilibrium over the longer term, but it gains heat in 3D as sunlight penetrates to 100m, and can only lose it in 2D. So it has to rise in temperature until it is able to lose energy via the latent heat of evaporation and by radiation at the same rate it gains it.
This ‘hot water bottle effect’ is much larger than the ‘greenhouse effect’ of the atmosphere.
! have over 200 gallon glass jugs of water in my greenhouse to moderate the interior temperature. The daytime high is much reduced even in the California summer sun and the night temperature supported even in snowy winter cold. The greenhouse effect of the real “Green House Gas” H2O. pg
“This ‘hot water bottle effect’ is much larger than the ‘greenhouse effect’ of the atmosphere”
Thanks Rog:
http://www.newclimatemodel.com/the-hot-water-bottle-effect/
I also gave you credit for understanding in my post at WUWT:
“Figure 1 supports my contention that the thermostatic mechanism involves the entire global air circulation system as it constantly shifts latitudinally between the poles.
That is the basic climate principle that just does not seem to be grasped by either alarmists or sceptics (excluding Roger Tattersall) despite my having gone on about it for the past eight years.”
I
Stephen points out THE problem that vexes me as I have ploughed through the internet. How very few actually grasp the mechanism of the Earths weather/climate system. No matter how hard we try, most want to follow some minor hobby horse as “the cause” of changes. While they, don’t grasp the fundamentals. Stephen Wilde “Gets IT” and tries over and over to get it across to others that lurk and comment.
#1 Atmosphere under influence of gravity.
#2 Surface pressure on water.
#3 Phase changes of H2O.
#4 Solar Radiation effects.
#5 The cold of space.
Understand these things first! and then nit pick the details. 😡 pg
Thanks Stephen, although there are many at the talkshop who qualify for an exemption besides me. 🙂
Roger,
Fascinating video!
Are we not seeing the actions of a “pump”, an energy pump that pushes heat and movement energy from the tropics to the poles?
What we need is a NS and EW vertical videos of the same thing taken through the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean: with the view of surface motion above, and the view of vertical motion proposed, we could get a 3D view of where the waters are going and where the warm waters are going. It would falsify Trenberth’s claim to deep sequestration of surface (derived) heat.
What thinkest thou?
This is water modelling. I work in the oil and gas business and we use geomodelling routinely: divide a large block of producing formation, its rock, into different porosity and permeability units. These which are not connected horizontally as one might think even with an engineer’s background, through in initial pressures, then put in a great number of points [well bore perforations] of pressure drawdowns, and let the system run. Fluid flow is not what you’d naively think. And of course it doesn’t work out to reflect history, so now you fiddle with factors, get a hind cast that matches, tell everyone that since it fits it must be The One [the Unique Solution Syndrome here] and then change departments or companies before reality busts the bubble.
Sound familiar? Except for the running away before performance doesn’t match prediction.
NOTHING is absolutely certain or settled until the chickens have come home to roost. I forget which philosophyer – perhaps William James – noted that you have to BE something to actually understand something, i.e. if you want to understand what makes a table a table and not a stool, you have to be a table, and even then, you won’t understand it because you are now inside it and lack perspective. His point was that ALL understanding is an approximation, close at times but always an approximation, and it is best we remember that when taking a stand on anything. No matter how firm the stones beneath our feet feel, at their base is a layer of sand.
@ Stephen Wilde
I read the link and a link cited in that post. Good stuff, pretty much what my layman eyes and logic have been telling me all along. CO2 plays, at best, a minor role in the big show. And “man-made” CO2 is but a tiny fraction of the total amount of CO2.
Doug: It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma. If the various experimenters like Graeff and Q. Daniels are right, then gravity creates a thermal gradient in water as well as air. Now, warm water is less dense than cold water, and so it will be constantly rising back towards the surface, displacing colder water downwards. Then it’ll reach a point where it’s no warmer than the water above it and stop. The thermocline??
People get upset about this, saying it’s a proposal of a perpetual motion machine, so I’ve been trying to think of how the observations can be accommodated by thermodynamic theory. Perhaps we could think of the thermal gradient simply as an expression of the force of gravity in the same way we think of the acceleration it causes as being an expression of the force of gravity. In other words, as well as making masses close to each other accelerate faster towards each other as the distance diminishes, perhaps it also makes their constituent atoms or molecules vibrate faster, thus warming them… Still thinking…
“then gravity creates a thermal gradient in water as well as air.”
It would, were it not for density differentials caused by salinity and the fact that our oceans are heated from top down and not from bottom up as for an atmosphere.
The density of the atmosphere is graded from surface to the tropopause at a rate determined by the strength of the gravitational field and its varying composition (primarily from water vapour which is not evenly mixed).. Most of the mass is in that layer beneath the tropopause.
Unevenness in energy distribution in the troposphere is dealt with by convective overturning which can occur freely in a gaseous medium until one encounters a temperature inversion such as the tropopause. Convective overturning leads to horizontal winds as air moves from one convective cell to the next.
Additionally, the atmosphere is heated from below where the sun hits the solid surface. That encourages convective overturning.
In contrast the oceans are heated from above which inhibits convective overturning and allows the salinity differentials to cause persistent layering within the bulk ocean.
So, it is all about relative densities and the extent to which parcels of air or water with differing densities can move up against the gravitational field or downward with it.
Also, water being relatively incompressible as compared to air the thermal effect of rising or falling within the gravitational field is miniscule.
It is the extent to which density variations within fluid media try to distort the ideal lapse rate fixed by mass and gravity that then leads to movements within the fluid media so as to return the average net lapse rate from surface to space to that ideal rate.
If ever internal movements failed to allow the actual lapse rates at different locations and heights to net out to the ideal rate, then the atmosphere (or oceans) would be lost.
In the case of our oceans that top down heating and salinity layering would prevent the ideal lapse rate from ever being met if it were not for the pressure of a highly mobile atmosphere bearing down on the ocean surface and acting as a thermal buffer between sea surface and space.
The convective overturning within our atmosphere serves to net out the distortions from the ideal lapse rate caused by both oceans and air.
Oceans must be regarded as part of Earth’s atmosphere for the purposes of the mass induced greenhouse effect due to their huge thermal capacity.
Thermal unevenness within fluid media always involves uneven densities so the different densities must move around relative to one another until overall balance is regained.
Hence winds in the air and circulations in the oceans.
Climate is therefore density driven and not thermally driven which is why movement within a fluid medium will always work to negate the thermal consequences of varying radiative capability or any other disruptive forcing element other than mass, gravity or insolation.
Uneven density distribution is the elephant in the climate room and that uneven density arises because a rough surfaced rotating sphere is always heated unevenly.
Stephen: “Also, water being relatively incompressible as compared to air the thermal effect of rising or falling within the gravitational field is miniscule.”
Yes. The only problem is, observations say otherwise. Theory might have to be rejigged a bit. 🙂
It could be that the ionic soup that is seawater acts as an electrolyte and energy is shifted electrically. It used to eat the sacrificial anodes on my 20 ton wooden boat.
Some Argo buoys measured cold and were discounted. OK. How many measured too warm. None, you say? Odd, that.
TB: ” The first thing to realise is that if there we’re …”
Back away from the apostrophe key. Slowly, and keep your hands down, but in view.
Warmer or more energetic atoms/molecule occupy more volume then cool ones due to their stronger vibrations pushing against their neighbors. They are less dense, that is their volume is less dense then their cooler neighbors, they weigh less for the volume they occupy and therefore will rise to an area of volume density equilibrium. pg
Rog said:
“Yes. The only problem is, observations say otherwise. ”
Could you expand on that please ?
I think we may be at cross purposes somewhere.
Does a body of water cool as it rises against gravity and warm when it descends with gravity other than to a miniscule amount in each case ?
Surely other factors dominate, thus leading to the observed thermal structure of the oceans ?
Hi Stephen, agree other factors dominate, but the effect observed in small scale experiments isn’t miniscule. May help us understand vertical energy transfer.
Brian: oops. Another apostrophe catastrophe.
@Stephen Wilde: just for my understanding, bodies don’t get warmer when approaching each other, and also not warmer when distancing each other, but in both cases energy must be preserved and also invested. How can this be formulated for the case at hand, without breaking physical laws?
” the fact that our oceans are heated from top down and not from bottom up as for an atmosphere”
As long as this myth is kept alive understanding of our climate will not progress beyond its present sorry state.
Earth is a planet consisting of molten rock. It has a core of molten iron.
The DEEP oceans have been and still are heated from BELOW. Current geothermal flux is ~100 mW/m^2. This is enough to warm the average ocean column 1K every ~5000 years.
The warmed bottom water rises (convection) until it hits warmer water: the thermocline. It can not warm the surface layer, unless of course back conduction has been invented in the mean time.
Only place the deep oceans (< 1000M) can lose heat is at the surface when no warm surface layer AND no ice is present. This is perhaps as little as 1% of the total surface.
This means the heat loss there has to be 10 W/m^2 other wise the deep oceans will get warmer.
Since we have more ocean floor than surface, under water vents, magma erupting etc.etc. the heat loss is surely greater.
Still the deep oceans have been cooling down for the last ~84 million years. They lost ~18K in that period.
Reason for the very high deep ocean temperatures then?
Large magma eruptions. ao the Ontong Java plateau, 100 million km^3.
These large eruptions keep the temperature on earth in a pleasant range. They have been doing this since the oceans were created, and can thus solve the Faint young Sun paradox easily.
With the temperature of the DEEP oceans set by geothermal heat, the sun adding the last ~15K or so we have a solid explanation for the fact that the average surface temperature on earth is more than 90K higher than on our moon.
With the surface temperature explained, the role of the atmosphere is simply that of an isolation blanket, reducing the heat loss to space.
A planet without atmosphere and a temperature of 290K radiates ~400 W/m^2 to space.
Earth only loses 240 W/m^2 on average thanks to the atmosphere. The sun is just able to supply enough to cover for this loss: balanced energy budget.
Since the (ocean) surface warms the atmosphere, the nice lapse rate we observe with increasing altitude is simple to explain. No more heating of the surface by a cold atmosphere required.
And thus no greenhouse effect of course. Role of CO2 is probably a slightly cooling one.
Climate sensitivity for CO2: ~ 0K.(zero)
Ben Wouters.
There clearly is an energy flow from the Earth’s core, through the oceans and atmosphere to space.
However, it can be ignored for day to day purposes since the primary ebb and flow of energy in and out is from solar input at the top and about 200 metres down that solar input fades to near zero.
Chaeremon,
“bodies don’t get warmer when approaching each other, and also not warmer when distancing each other, but in both cases energy must be preserved and also invested. How can this be formulated for the case at hand, without breaking physical laws?”
The movement of molecules towards or away from each other is not what causes the thermal effect of density changes.
You have to start with an energy flow through the medium. If the molecules become closer together then there is more mass in a given space to react with the energy flowing through so more reactions give a higher temperature.
A greater density slows down the throughput of energy more than does a lesser density and it is the longer delay time that causes the higher temperature.
Thus it is a matter of mass causing conduction and convection that raises the temperature and not the radiative capability of that mass.
Rog:
http://water.usgs.gov/edu/compressibility.html
“squeeze hard enough and water will compress—shrink in size and become more dense … but not by very much. Envision the water a mile deep in the ocean. At that depth, the weight of the water above, pushing downwards, is about 150 times normal atmospheric pressure. Even with this much pressure, water only compresses less than one percent.”
My point was only to compare the compressibility of water with that of air rather than to deny water’s compressibility at all.
Ben W: Great comment, thanks. A step forward from previous discussions.
Stephen, I think you’re missing a point both Ben and I made about the thermocline. Also, the mechanism you describe for greater air density causing more energy to be absorbed, while I agree, I also think it’s not the only mechanism in play. Othrrwise incompressible water would not have the thermal gradient empirically observed.
Ok, Rog.
Can you direct me to something that I can think about ?
I’m not well up on internal ocean thermal gradients other then to have previously understood it was mostly about salinity differences.
“Can you direct me to something that I can think about ?”
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/ocean.html
The oceans are continuously heated by the geothermal flux, hot vents and small magma eruptions.
The cooling at high latitudes balances this warming almost, but not quite.
Fastest cooling rate for the deep ocean last 85 million years was roughly 1K / 2 million years.
Average over that period was 1k / 5 million years.
For day to day opration this SEEMS like a stable situation. Yet some 10 W/m^2 has to escape from the places were cooling is possible to maintain this balance.
Once a large magma eruption starts the balance tips to warming, with an average rate of about 1k / 3 million years.
The trick every one seems to be missing is that the sun maintains a warm surface layer in the first ~200 meters of the ocean. Conduction warms the layer below that, but is counteracted by convection. Depending on the temperature difference between surface layer and deep oceans the thermocline exists, effectively shielding the deep oceans from the atmosphere.
Below the thermocline the sun has no discernible influence on the temperature of the oceans.
The climaclowns who believe that a few CO2 molecules can warm the deep oceans are out of touch with reality and the most basic physical principles.
Ben,
I don’t disagree with any of that, nor do I find it inconsistent with what I said provided that my reference to ‘oceans’ is limited to the region above the thermocline which was my intent because I am aware that the oceans beneath that point are effectively insulated from the atmosphere.
There is some interplay, in specific locations, whereby upwelling and descent, between the layers above and below the thermocline is needed to maintain the thermohaline circulation but that is a circuit of 1000 to 1500 years and may have a link to solar variability as regards the water temperature and CO2 content of upwelling and downwelling water.
For climate purposes I don’t see much effect from gravitational compression or decompression of water as it flows around the circuit and nor do I see much climate significance in changes of 1K every 2 to 5 million years.
“nor do I see much climate significance in changes of 1K every 2 to 5 million years.”
How do you think the climate would look when the DEEP oceans were 18K warmer than they are now?
How do you propose the deep oceans got their temperature in the first place?
Deep ocean temperature is something like 275K. That is already ~80K above what the sun can do on the moon. Maybe, just maybe all that molten rock has something to do with that?
Early earth had probably a surface consisting of magma oceans. temperature perhaps 1000K or higher. Our oceans started probably as steam above that surface, waiting for a crust to form before they could rain down and start their life cooling down and heating up depending on the amount of magma flowing through the crust.
Two expert researchers agree on the very same thing, very good blog this is tallbloke 🙂
Ben and I don’t agree about everything, but I think we both recognise that the thermocline in the ocean is the balance point between the surface layer where solar heat is propagating downwards, and the deeper layer where terrestrial heat is propagating upwards. I suspect that the energy transfer through the seabed is actually more than Ben’s 100mW/m^2 because a) the seabed is thinner than the continental crust where that 100mW was determined, and b) the seabed is riven with fissures that water penetrates to a depth of 20km or so, percolating and convecting (in effect, watercooling the rock which is heated by magma below). On top of that, there is the vexed question of the thermal gradient observed in water column’s in labs, and whether they are due to experimental error, and if not, whether they exist ‘in the wild’.
Good puzzle 🙂
“How do you think the climate would look when the DEEP oceans were 18K warmer than they are now?”
Obviously very different but I don’t regard that timescale as relevant for current natural climate variability purposes.
“I think we both recognise that the thermocline in the ocean is the balance point between the surface layer where solar heat is propagating downwards, and the deeper layer where terrestrial heat is propagating upwards”
No dispute there.
The issue is whether there is enough variability from bottom up to affect natural climate variability in the air on time scales that are meaningful.
“the thermal gradient observed in water columns in labs”
I don’t know anything about that. Is it a consequence of gravity or something else?
The bottom of the thermocline is the deepest level in the oceans the sun does any warming.
Below that level no more solar influence. Water heated at the bottom will rise until it reaches a level were the density is lower. This is probably the bottom of the thermocline, or very close to it.
The actual amount of geothermal heating of the oceans is very difficult to establish. It is the total of geothermal flux, hot vents, magma eruptions etc.
But we have a long term temperature record, that shows the oceans cool at an average 1K/5 million years after a massive heating period. Reason for this slow cooling is the warm surface layer and the ice cover at high latitudes that block heat loss. The surface area of the oceans where the DEEP oceans can lose heat is very small indeed (0 – 5% ??)
I’ve sent Tim a PDF with some graphs. You may be interested.
“How do you think the climate would look when the DEEP oceans were 18K warmer than they are now?”
Obviously very different but I don’t regard that timescale as relevant for current natural climate variability purposes.
The reason we are presently in a period with alternating ice ages / interglacials is the simple fact that the deep oceans have cooled down below ~280K since their last serious heating.
This seems very relevant for our current climate imo.
To get out of this cold period the deep oceans have to warm at least 5-8K.
Will not happen in our live time 😉
Thanks Ben, we’ll put an article together with that and your comments. Please stick around.
“alternating ice ages / interglacials ”
I’m focusing on variability within a single interglacial.
The geo heating which the Earth provides to the oceans is miniscule. Why is anyone asserting otherwise?
Hunter: That miniscule heating is enough to warm the oceans eventually, because it has trouble escaping past the thermocline. New post on this from Ben imminently. Tim C is formatting the pdf into wordpress as we speak.
TB, does it have to actually ‘escape’ past the thermocline? I guess it depends on the numbers, but if the influx of cold polar water from below is fast enough, won’t it simply be pushed up into the mixed layer near the surface?