Today’s ocean models can only simulate less than 5% of the currents at 1,000-meter depth

The study hopes its observations will help the search for ways to ‘reduce the large and significant biases between models and observations’. The article refers to a ‘mismatch between scientific knowledge and the actual ocean environment’.
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Ocean motion plays a key role in the Earth’s energy and climate systems. In recent decades, ocean science has made great strides in providing general estimates of large-scale ocean motion, says Phys.org.

However, there are still many dynamic mechanisms that are not fully understood or resolved.

Prof. Su Fenzhen’s team at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their collaborators found that humans know less than 5% of the ocean currents at depths of 1,000 meters below the sea surface, with important implications for modeled predictions of climate change and carbon sequestration.

How seaweed has been misleading scientists about reef health

Coral reefs can have their ups and downs, due to various factors. Not for the first or last time, scientists have made the occupational hazard of erroneous assumptions.
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For decades, scientists have looked to seaweed as an indicator of the health of coral reefs lying underneath, says Phys.org.

But what if the seaweed was misleading them?

New UBC research reveals it was, and scientists need new ways to determine whether human activity is harming a particular reef.

Benzene and toluene in polar oceans have a biological origin, study finds

Natural aerosols, not ‘human pollution’. Another climate assumption gets blown out of the water.
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In addition to oxygen, nitrogen or carbon dioxide, the air we breathe contains small amounts of organic gases, such as benzene and toluene, says Phys.org.

These oxidize into small particles or aerosols that contribute to the condensation of water in the droplets that form clouds.

Now, a study by the Institut de Cièncias del Mar (ICM-CSIC), the Instituto de Química Física Rocasolano (IQFR-CSIC) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) stresses the importance of clouds, which filter solar radiation, for understanding past and future climate changes.

“If we don’t get the clouds right, we won’t get the climate right,” says Charel Wohl, ICM-CSIC researcher and lead author of the study. “We are just beginning to unveil the multiple ingredients that form cloud seeds,” he adds.

Desert dusts convert coral reefs into carbon storage

Australian coral [image credit: heraldsun.com.au]

Professor: “this study actually contributes to more accurate accounting of carbon around the globe.” Nature’s carbon cycle continues to surprise researchers.
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An international study comparing data from Heron Reef and the Middle East’s Gulf of Aqaba has disproved the long-held theory that coral reefs only have the capacity to emit CO2, reports Phys.org.

The first-of-its-kind discovery is the result of an international study led by The University of Queensland which found that dust blown in from nearby deserts can convert coral reefs into CO2 sinks.

Professor Hamish McGowan from UQ’s School of Earth and Environmental Sciences said the discovery was made after researchers observed a correlation between influxes of CO2 and periods of increased dust concentrations in the atmosphere around the reefs.

“We were surprised at how significant a role dust accumulation played in switching coral reefs from a CO2 source to a CO2 sink,” Professor McGowan said.

“This process was previously thought to be impossible, but our research proves otherwise.

“We found that the build-up of dust in the traditionally low-nutrient and low-chlorophyll waters of the Gulf of Aqaba actually fertilizes and improves coral-growing conditions and photosynthesis in reef ecosystems.”

Professor McGowan said the results will allow for the development of more accurate carbon budgets for the world’s oceans.

“The process we have identified in this study actually contributes to more accurate accounting of carbon around the globe,” Professor McGowan said.

“This informs predictions of the impact of atmospheric carbon on climate and climate sensitive ecosystems such as coral reefs.”
. . .
The research establishes the causal controls on reef water temperatures, as opposed to previous predictions which were more focused on the correlation of global warming and coral bleaching.

Professor Lensky said these findings will allow researchers to correctly attribute the cause of, for example, extreme high water temperature events that result in coral bleaching.

“Our research, which included analysis of data collected at Heron Reef on the Great Barrier Reef, has confirmed the crucial role of local meteorology and the prevailing weather patterns in determining reef water temperatures,” Professor Lensky said.

Full report here.
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Earlier research: Dust in Earth system can affect oceans, carbon cycle, temperatures, and health (2010) – ScienceDaily

N. Hemisphere Temps Set To Fall Over Next 25 Years, Say Top Intl. Scientists

Too much hot air

Predictions like this may or may not come true. Warmists may have to wheel out their standard ‘natural cooling masking human-caused warming’ excuse again.
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Whisper it quietly – and don’t tell Al ‘Boiling Oceans’ Gore – but the Northern Hemisphere may be entering a temperature cooling phase until the 2050s with a decline up to 0.3°C.

By extension, the rest of the globe will also be cooled, says Chris Morrison (via Climate Change Dispatch).

These sensational findings, ignored by the mainstream media, were released last year and are the work of six top international scientists led by Nour-Eddine Omrani of the Norwegian Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research.

A seismic climate connection?

As a starting point to the discussion, a graph is shown with a correlation between seismic activity and temperature over the last 40+ years. The author’s closing comment: ‘So the oceans are “boiling” and apparently Al Gore has a magic co2 fairy that is doing it.’
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I will be brief ( relatively), says meteorologist Joe Bastardi @ CFACT.

In a paper coming out, “Increased Mid-Ocean Seismic Activity: Fact or Artifact?” Dr. Arthur Viterito has confirmed my suspicions that geothermal input from the increased seismic activity is a leading cause of the warming, if not the almost total cause.

As much as the co2 crowd keeps pointing to the rise in temperature and increased emissions they ignore the fact that the air temperatures go virtually nowhere without the oceanic warming and the input of WV in the air.

The oceans are not warming via co2 feedback. Arguments about co2’s effect on the air ignore the oceanic warming.

So what is warming the ocean? Dr Viterito supplies the smoking gun to my suspicions.

Continued here.
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Al Gore WEF Meltdown: ‘Boiling the Oceans,’ ‘Rain Bombs,’ a Billion ‘Climate Refugees’ — Breitbart News

What Climate Crisis? A Primer On Earth’s Turbulent Climatic Past

Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica

Blinkered climate obsessives, from protesters to governments, need to wise up about their pet topic. Professor Ian Plimer offers some assistance to trace gas worriers.
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For more than 80 percent of the time, Earth has been a warm wet greenhouse planet with no ice, says Ian Plimer at Spectator AU (via Climate Change Dispatch.

We live in unusual times when ice occurs on continents. This did not happen overnight.

The great southern continent, Gondwanaland, formed about 550 million years ago. It occupied 20 percent of the area of our planet and included Antarctica, South America, Australia, South Africa, and the Indian subcontinent.

Gondwanaland was covered by ice when it drifted across the South Pole 360-255 million years ago. Evidence for this ice age is in the black coal districts of Australia, South Africa, and India.

Expert discusses La Niña and El Niño cycles effects on Australia

The last El Niño was 6-7 years ago, but elapsed time can’t on its own be a guarantee of one this year. Neutral ENSO conditions are another option. As usual an assertion about warming from greenhouse gases is thrown in, with no evidence to back it up.
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Climate models indicate La Niña is on the way out, with El Niño conditions expected later this year, claims Phys.org.

CSIRO Climate Scientist Dr. Wenju Cai explains what this means for Australia’s weather and how changing conditions will affect the country.

Is La Niña really on the way out? What do the climate models tell us?

We are in the mature season of the current three-consecutive La Niña years. During the three years, heat has been stored in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Arctic carbon conveyor belt discovered; ‘the surprise was great’

The ocean carbon cycle [credit: IAEA]

Nature’s carbon cycle works even better than was believed. The researchers say ‘it can be assumed that the global influence of this mechanism as a carbon sink is actually much greater’.
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Every year, the cross-shelf transport of carbon-rich particles from the Barents and Kara Seas could bind up to 3.6 million metric tons of CO2 in the Arctic deep sea for millennia, says Science Daily.

In this region alone, a previously unknown transport route uses the biological carbon pump and ocean currents to absorb atmospheric CO2 on the scale of Iceland’s total annual emissions, as researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and partner institutes report in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience.

Compared to other oceans, the biological productivity of the central Arctic Ocean is limited, since sunlight is often in short supply — either due to the Polar Night or to sea-ice cover — and the available nutrient sources are scarce.

Consequently, microalgae (phytoplankton) in the upper water layers have access to less energy than their counterparts in other waters.

The Galapagos Islands will be a cool refuge in a warming world, say climate scientists – and it’s getting cooler

Galapagos islands [image credit: BBC]

Does the claim here that ‘almost every part of the ocean is heating up’ stand up to scrutiny? The article appears to contradict itself when stating ‘this cooling is the product of upwelling caused by the collision of a deep ocean current’ and referring to an ‘icy current’. The researchers say ‘this cooling water is fighting a losing battle with a warming atmosphere’, but deep ocean currents are by definition a long way from the surface most of the time.
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A geological coincidence placed the Galapagos Islands in the line of an icy current that provides food and shelter in a warming ocean, says Hakai Magazine.

The good news might not last for long.

Pushed by climate change, almost every part of the ocean is heating up. But off the west coast of the Galapagos Islands, there is a patch of cold, nutrient-rich water. This prosperous patch feeds phytoplankton and breathes life into the archipelago.

Experts ‘explain slowing Atlantic ocean currents’ – or do they?

A portion of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) [image credit: R. Curry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution @ Wikipedia]

The article below links to another one which appears to contradict it. In ‘The threshold between natural Atlantic current system fluctuations and a climate change-driven evolution’ we’re told ‘natural variations are still dominant’ in the AMOC or “Gulf Stream System.” Then the key part:
‘According to the researchers, part of the North Atlantic is cooling—a striking contrast to the majority of ocean regions. All evaluations indicate that since the beginning of the 20th century, natural fluctuations have been the primary reason for this cooling. Nonetheless, the studies indicate that the AMOC has started to slow down in recent decades.’ If the slowdown occurred under cooling, why should future warming be likely to cause more of it?
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For decades, oceanographers have been measuring the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a large system of ocean currents that greatly influence Earth’s climate, says Phys.org.

In recent years, the data show it is weakening. But what does this mean?

“If this system of currents significantly slows down, this could change weather patterns in the tropics, with a detrimental effect on crop yields,” said Spencer Jones, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Oceanography at Texas A&M University.

Little Ice Age study ‘reveals’ North Atlantic reached tipping point

Icebergs in the North Atlantic [image credit:
maritime-executive.com]

Perhaps, but there’s plenty of ‘suggesting’ that something might possibly occur here. Plus of course the usual remarks about supposed human involvement in Earth’s climate. ‘An increased export of Arctic sea-ice into the subpolar North Atlantic’ is proposed as a driver of destabilisation (see study).
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Scientists have used centuries-old clam shells to see how the North Atlantic climate system reached a “tipping point” before the Little Ice Age, says Phys.org.

The Little Ice Age —a period of regional cooling, especially in the North Atlantic—lasted several centuries, ending in about 1850.

A long-standing theory suggests initial cooling in this period was sustained by “sea-ice to ocean feedbacks”—sea ice expanded and this slowed ocean currents which in turn reduced the flow of warm water from the south.

The new study, by the University of Exeter, used the shells of quahog clams—which can live for several hundred years—to understand how the ocean has evolved and responded to external changes over recent centuries.

ENSO update: La Niña continues

It could still be active into next spring, according to some forecasters. Unusual by its own historical (back to 1950) standards.
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La Niña continues! It’s likely that the La Niña three-peat will happen: the chance that the current La Niña will last through early winter is over 70%, says NOAA’s ENSO blog.

If it happens, this will be only the third time with three La Niña winters in a row in our 73-year record.

ENSO (El Niño/Southern Oscillation, the whole La Niña and El Niño system) has the greatest influence on weather and climate during the Northern Hemisphere cold season, so forecasters pay especially close attention when it looks like ENSO will be active in the winter.

Plankton will store more carbon as Earth’s climate warms, but ‘Twilight Zone’ uncertainties remain say researchers

CO2 is not pollution

The researchers are not going overboard with positivity, but seem clear that the Earth’s carbon cycle is still working much as expected. Unsurprisingly perhaps, they theorise problems might occur by 2100 if some presently unknown limit is approached, but say ‘the Twilight Zone region of the ocean’ needs more research. In short, so far so good.
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The amount of carbon stored by microscopic plankton will increase in the coming century, predict researchers at the University of Bristol and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC).

Using the latest IPCC models (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the team expects the “biological pump”—a process where microscopic plants, often called phytoplankton, take up carbon and then die and sink into the deep ocean where carbon is stored for hundreds of years—to account for between 5 and 17% of the total increase in carbon uptake by the oceans by 2100.

Their findings were published today in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), says Phys.org.

Lead author Dr. Jamie Wilson, of the University of Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, explained, “The biological pump stores roughly double the amount of carbon dioxide that is currently in our atmosphere in the deep ocean. Because plankton are sensitive to climate change, this carbon pool is likely to change in size, so we set out to understand how this would change in the future in response to climate change by looking at the latest future projections by IPCC models.”

Microscopic organisms called plankton, living in the sunlit surface of the ocean, use carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. When these plankton die, their remains rapidly sink down through the “Twilight Zone” of the ocean (200–1000m), where environmental factors, such as temperature and oxygen concentration, and ecological factors, such as being eaten by other plankton, control how much reaches the deep ocean where the carbon from their bodies is stored away from the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years.

Warming of the oceans slows down the circulation, increasing the time that carbon is stored in the deep ocean.

Contributing author Dr. Anna Katavouta, who worked alongside early-career scientist Dr. Chelsey Baker, both from the National Oceanography Centre, added, “Our research found a consistent increase in the carbon stored in the ocean by the biological carbon pump over the 21st century in the latest IPCC model projections. In contrast, we found a decline in the global export production (the amount of organic matter, such as dead plankton, sinking below the ocean surface), which suggests that export production may not be as accurate a metric for the biological carbon pump than previously thought. We demonstrated that the organic matter flux at 1000 meters is instead a better predictor of long-term carbon sequestration associated with the biological carbon pump. This outcome will help us to better understand the processes that control the biological carbon pump and to predict more reliably how much of the carbon released due to human activity will be stored in the ocean in the future.”

However, the IPCC models have no consistent representation of the environmental and ecological processes in the Twilight Zone. This leads to a large uncertainty in how much carbon dioxide originating from the atmosphere the biological pump will store beyond the end of the century.

In theory, after 2100, carbon storage by the biological pump could stall and instead may start acting as a source of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which could exacerbate climate change further.

Full article here.

The Moon’s climate influence detected by researchers

Image credit: interactivestars.com

Not exactly a new idea, but worth pursuing. Given the present feverish pursuit of supposedly climate-related policies that attempt to counter imagined human-caused effects, all known aspects of natural variation must be highlighted and included in models.
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New analysis suggests that the Moon might be an unappreciated factor in climate change and, according to researchers from the Universities of East Anglia and Reading, its influence “cannot be discounted as an important driver of multidecadal variability of global temperature.”

It’s a suggestion that is bound to prompt debate and a possible reassessment of the relative influence of human factors on climate change in the past and the future when the lunar effect is included, says Dr. David Whitehouse @ Net Zero Watch.

It arises from the so-called lunar nodal cycle of 18.6 years caused by variations in the angle of the Moon’s orbital plane. During this period the Moon’s orbit “wobbles” between plus or minus 5 degrees relative to the Earth’s equator.

Researchers reveal variations in Arctic amplification effect during past millennium

Arctic sea ice [image credit: cbc.ca]

The researchers find ‘a significantly declining AA effect on the millennial time scale’ — but then attempt to link that to anthropogenic forcing in recent times, according to the article at least. That seems illogical if the argument is that humans are playing a part. In any case if the effect has been shown to occur over at least a millennium, that in itself casts doubt on claims that humans must be the prime (or any) cause of the most recent observed changes.
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The recent amplified warming in the Arctic during the last decades has received much attention, says Phys.org.

But how Arctic amplification (AA) has varied on longer time scales and what drives these variations remain unclear.

Recently, a study has provided a new perspective on the AA effect during the past millennium based on the best available paleoclimate data and novel data assimilation methods.

Melting ice caps may not shut down ocean current, say researchers

A portion of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation [image credit: R. Curry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution @ Wikipedia]

Another supposed climate tipping point, popular with the alarm-loving media, floats away? A feature that’s “built into many models” was found not to work as advertised.
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Most simulations of our climate’s future may be overly sensitive to Arctic ice melt as a cause of abrupt changes in ocean circulation, according to new research led by scientists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Climate scientists count the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (or AMOC) among the biggest tipping points on the way to a planetary climate disaster, says Phys.org.

The Atlantic Ocean current acts like a conveyor belt carrying warm tropical surface water north and cooler, heavier deeper water south.

Met Office study discusses invisible Gulf Stream climate signal?

The signal that wasn’t found could be ‘masked’, researchers suggest. They expected ‘ongoing climate change’ to do something, but maybe it just wasn’t there? Cue more research.
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A new Met Office-led study – reviewing evidence from previous scientific papers and climate models – reveals natural patterns of weakening and strengthening of ocean currents which influence the UK’s weather and climate.

In the North Atlantic lies one of the world’s largest climate mechanisms: a system of currents transporting relatively warm water from the tropics to the poles, with return currents at depth transporting colder, denser water further south.

The transport of heat to the North Atlantic keeps the UK’s climate warmer than other locations at our latitude, says the Met Office.

Still No Global Warming, Cool February Land and Sea

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According to NOAA’s ENSO blog triple dip La Ninas are now on the menu of imminent possibilities.

Science Matters

The post below updates the UAH record of air temperatures over land and ocean.  But as an overview consider how recent rapid cooling has now completely overcome the warming from the last 3 El Ninos (1998, 2010 and 2016).  The UAH record shows that the effects of the last one were gone as of April 2021, again in November, 2021 and now in January and February 2022. (UAH baseline is now 1991-2020).

For reference I added an overlay of CO2 annual concentrations as measured at Mauna Loa.  While temperatures fluctuated up and down ending flat, CO2 went up steadily by ~55 ppm, a 15% increase.

Furthermore, going back to previous warmings prior to the satellite record shows that the entire rise of 0.8C since 1947 is due to oceanic, not human activity.

The animation is an update of a previous analysis from Dr. Murry Salby.  These graphs use Hadcrut4 and…

View original post 1,147 more words

Deep insights into the Arctic of tomorrow

Arctic sea ice [image credit: cbc.ca]

One finding was that snow cover variability was more ‘extreme’ than expected, pointing to the need for further research as well as improvements to climate models. Whether the recent Arctic weather/climate history is a reliable guide to future conditions remains to be seen.
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Hundreds of international researchers are currently analyzing observations from the one-year MOSAiC expedition, during which hundreds of environmental parameters were recorded with unprecedented accuracy and frequency over a full annual cycle in the Central Arctic Ocean, says Phys.org.

They have now published three overview articles on the MOSAiC atmosphere, snow and sea ice, and ocean programs in the journal Elementa, highlighting the importance of examining all components of the climate system together.

These results present the first complete picture of the climate processes in the central Arctic which is warming more than two times as fast as the rest of the planet—processes which affect weather and climate worldwide.