Where's the Heat, Cooling Oceans

[glc]

How do you come up with statements like that?

You mentioned thermal lag. I say there is no lag if previous "solar correlations" hold. The HMF (Heliospheric Magnetic Flux) hit a minimum in ~1912. According to your statement (see below) there was a temperature minimum in ~1911, so temperatures began to rise either slightly before, during or immediatley after the HMF minimum, i.e. THERE WAS NO LAG.

Fact is according to Hadcrut there was .604 cooling in the 33 years from 1878 to 1911. Thats comparable to the recent warming we have seen over the past 33 years (.694).

You have simply selected 2 years here and subtracted the difference between them. This does not calculate the trend nor does it tells how much it has cooled (or warmed) . The HadCrut OLS (ordinary least squares) trend for the period between 1878 and 1911 gives a total cooling of ~0.3 degrees. The OLS trend for the past 33 years gives a total warming of ~0.58 deg.

If we were to use your "trick" we could show that it had warmed more than a degree since 1911, i.e. in the last 100 years. The OLS trend since 1911 is actally ~0.065 deg per decade (or ~0.65 deg in total)

Is up always down for you? And down up depending upon your angle?

I don't know what you mean. You asked about lags then started banging on about the temperature between 1878 and 1911.

[socold]

Apr 18, 2010 5:48:27 GMT Pooh said:

Socold posted in Re: Where's the Heat, Cooling Oceans « Reply #16 Yesterday (4/17/10) at 9:31am »

"Take HadCRUT3 since 1970 and add a blue exponential curve. The curve is engineered to reflect a rise that will reach about 3C by 2100. Overall the fit is quite good, the temperature data may indeed be following an exponential curve."

I have become reluctant to credit graphs beginning in 1850 and 1970 as indication of global warming trends, linear or exponential.

What my plot suggests is that global temperature data is consistent with a background exponentially increasing warming trend with ENSO and solar cycle variation over the top, including the past 5 years. There's is also a prediction in there that we should see a warming step change in temperature in the next few years.

[icefisher]

Apr 18, 2010 21:36:52 GMT glc said:

How do you come up with statements like that?

You mentioned thermal lag. I say there is no lag if previous "solar correlations" hold. The HMF (Heliospheric Magnetic Flux) hit a minimum in ~1912. According to your statement (see below) there was a temperature minimum in ~1911, so temperatures began to rise either slightly before, during or immediatley after the HMF minimum, i.e. THERE WAS NO LAG.

Fact is according to Hadcrut there was .604 cooling in the 33 years from 1878 to 1911. Thats comparable to the recent warming we have seen over the past 33 years (.694).

You have simply selected 2 years here and subtracted the difference between them. This does not calculate the trend nor does it tells how much it has cooled (or warmed) . The HadCrut OLS (ordinary least squares) trend for the period between 1878 and 1911 gives a total cooling of ~0.3 degrees. The OLS trend for the past 33 years gives a total warming of ~0.58 deg.

So your argument now is ~0.3 degrees of cooling is evidence the "warming has already underway?" LOL! You guys can twist it anyway you want huh? Up is down, down is up! You are proving my point.

Lets face it GLC natural change today is sufficient to wash out AGW and AGW has 10 times the forcing it had in 1911.

Where you keep fouling up is in your consistent and everlasting oversight of the fact that there are more than one variable that affects global annual temperatures and more than one of these variables likely are strong enough to override AGW even today.

One can easily calculate warming curves from a given "surface" realized forcing if one assumes an ocean mixing scenario. Bottom line is the kind of weak forcings we have seen in our climate record it would take a long long time to heat the entire ocean.

And I can assure you that there is extensive ocean mixing on centennial scales. But the truth is the pattern of warming is very poorly understood because the processes of ocean mixing is very poorly understood thus it is pure guess work to run around kaboshing this and kaboshing that on the assumption there are absolutely no response lags (which is absolutely wrong). And really bad form when something is timed a couple of years off, amounts to less than a 1/10th of a degree (well inside error bars) and a basic ordinary run of the mill ENSO event provides an explanation for.

Perhaps you could try running that theory of why we should be at 1900 back at us again. The first sighting was identified as a hot air balloon drifting powerlessly by.

[glc]

So your argument now is ~0.3 degrees of cooling is evidence the "warming has already underway?" LOL! You guys can twist it anyway you want huh? Up is down, down is up! You are proving my point.

What are you on about??

1. The minimum temperatures occurred in 1911 - according to you.
2. The HMF minimum occurred in 1912-13.
3. Temperatures rose from 1911.

What does this mean???

IF the solar flux drives temperature - It means that the temperature response is immediate. i.e. THERE IS NO LAG . If there was a lag of, say 10 years, then temperatures would not start rising until ~1921.

This is my point - what's yours??

[magellan]

Apr 18, 2010 22:19:27 GMT socold said:

Apr 18, 2010 5:48:27 GMT Pooh said:

Socold posted in Re: Where's the Heat, Cooling Oceans « Reply #16 Yesterday (4/17/10) at 9:31am »
I have become reluctant to credit graphs beginning in 1850 and 1970 as indication of global warming trends, linear or exponential.

What my plot suggests is that global temperature data is consistent with a background exponentially increasing warming trend with ENSO and solar cycle variation over the top, including the past 5 years. There's is also a prediction in there that we should see a warming step change in temperature in the next few years.

There's is also a prediction in there that we should see a warming step change in temperature in the next few years.

Cite it. IPCC AR4? What?

[icefisher]

Apr 19, 2010 0:06:55 GMT glc said:

So your argument now is ~0.3 degrees of cooling is evidence the "warming has already underway?" LOL! You guys can twist it anyway you want huh? Up is down, down is up! You are proving my point.

What are you on about??

1. The minimum temperatures occurred in 1911 - according to you.
2. The HMF minimum occurred in 1912-13.
3. Temperatures rose from 1911.

What does this mean???

IF the solar flux drives temperature - It means that the temperature response is immediate. i.e. THERE IS NO LAG . If there was a lag of, say 10 years, then temperatures would not start rising until ~1921.

This is my point - what's yours??

My point is that your point that solar forcing should be instantaneous in its temperature effect ("we should be at 1900") is flawed in every way possible.

One can effectively argue that a forcing has some kind of impact instantaneously but how much is dependent upon a lot of processes, oceans, clouds, wind patterns that we have no models for that we can claim that replicates the real world.

In support for my proposition (that you are all wet) I offered the IPCC projections for future warming from forcings already in place. (thats taking some support from your idealogical group). I also provided some details of why it might take a while to heat up the atmosphere. One can turn a heater on in house and get warm air into the house if a few minutes but the house is still going to be quite cold because of the lack of heat in the walls, floors, ceilings and structures within the house requiring more time to actually heat up the house.

In fact if you could set your heater so that continuously provided one tenth of a watt more than it lost in heat, it could take 30 years to warm up your house.

Secondly, I pointed out that there are other cyclical forcings to reckon with. ENSO and ocean oscillations are two. These are very powerful oscillations that dump heat or stop dumping heat into the atmosphere in major cycles varying between a year or two to multiple decades.

These powerful forces can mask change, make change appear late, or make change appear early. The shorter of these oscillations do not appear to be in tight sync with solar activity perhaps because they operate with huge amounts of momentum from other forces.

The larger oscillations do appear to be roughly in sync but sometimes delayed perhaps by the short term ENSO and ENSO-like effects.

The net effect of this is make nitpicker points look a lot more like the nitpicking it is.

Does that clarify the point for you some?

[Pooh]

Apr 18, 2010 14:58:32 GMT hunter said:

Pooh,
The most significant thing about the start dates of the graphs the AGW promoters create the believers use is that when you look at actual climate-scale periods of a few thousand years, the current period no matter the start date is unremarkable.

Agreed. But in addition to that, I was trying to make the point that judicious selection of start and end points can produce an attention-getting trend line, even on a sine wave with and average value of zero.
Especially if one hides the decline. ;D

[Pooh]

Apr 18, 2010 22:19:27 GMT socold said:

[quote author=billalexander board=globalwarming thread=1169

post=45313 time=1271569707]Socold posted in Re: Where's the Heat, Cooling Oceans « Reply #16 Yesterday (4/17/10) at 9:31am »
I have become reluctant to credit graphs beginning in 1850 and 1970 as indication of global warming

trends, linear or exponential.

What my plot suggests is that global temperature data is consistent with a background exponentially

increasing warming trend with ENSO and solar cycle variation over the top, including the past 5 years. There's is also a prediction in there that we should see a warming step change in temperature in the next few years.[/quote]
We can engineer a curve to be consistent with almost anything we wish to show. I chose the dates for a specific reason:
1970: Anonymous. “Another Ice Age? (1974).” Time, June 24, 1974. www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,944914,00.html
1850: Generally accepted end of the Little Ice Age

We also have predictions of a cooling change in temperature:
Archibald, David. “Dalton Minimum Repeat goes mainstream.” ICECAP, n.d.
icecap.us/images/uploads/DaltonMinimumRepeatgoesmainstream.pdf
End of Solar Grand Maximum & start of next Dalton Minimum?

Two of the papers presented had interesting observations with implications for climate. First of all Solanki came to the conclusion that the Sun is leaving its fifty to sixty year long grand maximum of the second half of the 20th century. He had said previously that the Sun was more active in the second half of the 20th century than in the previous 8,000 years.
While he states that it is his opinion alone and not necessarily held by his co-authors, he comes to the conclusion that a repeat of the Dalton Minimum is the most likely thing to happen next.

And:
Chang, Kenneth. “Is the Sun Missing Its Spots?.” News. The New York Times, July 21, 2009. www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/space/21sunspot.html?_r=2&pagewanted=print

"Still, something like the Dalton Minimum — two solar cycles in the early 1800s that peaked at about an average of 50 sunspots — lies in the realm of the possible, Dr. Hathaway said. (The minimums are named after scientists who helped identify them: Edward W. Maunder and John Dalton.)"

[glc]

My point is that your point that solar forcing should be instantaneous in its temperature effect ("we should be at 1900") is flawed in every way possible.

Let's start from the beginning.

Do you believe there is a solar-climate correlation.
If so what is the lag?

One can effectively argue that a forcing has some kind of impact instantaneously but how much is dependent upon a lot of processes, oceans, clouds, wind patterns that we have no models for that we can claim that replicates the real world.

Quite - then presumably you cannot show there is a solar-climate correlation.

Let me be clear. I don't think there is a correlation. I think there may be times when both solar activity and temperatures appear to be in synch but equally there are times when they are clearly not. If there was a definite correlation the lag you keep banging on about would be obvious. However as the lag is clearly not obvious then it raises questions about the supposed correlation.

I showed you that in 1911 temperatures hit a low. In 1912-13
solar magnetic flux hit a low. Are the 2 connected? Both began to rise after ~1911 (for temperatures) and ~1913 (for solar flux). .

Is this what you mean by the correlation. If so then it suggests there is no lag.

In fact if you could set your heater so that continuously provided one tenth of a watt more than it lost in heat, it could take 30 years to warm up your house.

That doesn't mean there is a lag. The warming will start immediately. It will just be very slow.

So just to be clear let me repeat my questions.

If there is a solar-temperature link. What is it? Does temperature rise immediately following solar activity. Is it 5 years later? 10 years later? What does the correlation tell us?

PS To help you decide on the precise nature of the correlation, here's a link which shows Craig Loehle's temperature reconstruction (top) and TSI (middle) over the same period. I hope it wouldn't be considered "nit-picking" to suggest that there is no obvious relationship.

[jurinko]

Where oh where has my little heat gone?
Oh where oh where can it be?

climate4you.com/CentralEnglandTemperatureSince1659.htm

Until the ancient astrology® called climate science explains, what warmed the CET record between 1695-1735 from depth of Maunder minimum to present temperatures in mere 40 years at a rate 3-4 times higher than 1950-2005 warming, there is nothing to discuss.

Back to the drawing board, and some to Dartmoor.

[steve]

Seems to me that high-level arguments about a solar link are misplaced in this thread, since the same arguments apply to the solar claim as to the CO2 claim.

Namely that the top of atmosphere energy budget (the net amount of energy absorbed by the earth as measured by satellites) seems to disagree with the earth system energy budget (calculated by measuring the energy in the oceans and atmosphere, and the energy from melting ice).

To put my 2p in, it seems that there is a lot of evidence that says there is no, or not much heat "hiding" in the oceans, which suggests that the TOA energy budget calculation is wrong. Ie. the TOA energy budget has actually been well-balanced for the past 5 years.

If that is the correct point of view, then the lower amount of detected warming does not imply that there will be a "catch up" period of rapid atmospheric warming as the "hidden" heat reappears.

Therefore, since the forcing from CO2 has continued to increase in this time, there must have been a matching change in some other element of the climate. eg. cloud albedo rising, or upper atmosphere water vapour levels falling. Depending on the actual cause, it may revert to normal (resulting in a possible rapid resurgence of warming) or it may eventually stabilise (meaning that "normal" warming will resume at some point).

Or it could be the fabled negative feedback...but given that negative feedbacks have never happened in the past, I doubt that of course.

[glc]

Until the ancient astrology® called climate science explains, what warmed the CET record between 1695-1735 from depth of Maunder minimum to present temperatures in mere 40 years at a rate 3-4 times higher than 1950-2005 warming, there is nothing to discuss.

But the CET record is just a local regional record. That's what everyone on this blog keeps telling me anyway. I used the CET to show that there was no cooling during the Dalton minimum and that the lowest temperatures between 1750 and 1820 were in the 1780s, i.e. before the Dalton minimum started and when solar activity was high. Northsphinx responded by telling me that I was wrong to use the CET record.

I see now that's it's ok to use it if it can be used against the modern ghg warming theory.

[icefisher]

Apr 19, 2010 7:50:01 GMT glc said:

My point is that your point that solar forcing should be instantaneous in its temperature effect ("we should be at 1900") is flawed in every way possible.

Let's start from the beginning.

Do you believe there is a solar-climate correlation.
If so what is the lag?

I would suggest that if say (to pick a mechanism) cloud formation was slightly reduced due to a more active sun that resulted in a few tenths of a watt less heat reaching the surface it would have a very small step change impact on average air temperature because 80 to 85% of it would be absorbed and not be available for warming the atmosphere.

Thus the maximum potential step change should be on the order of 15 to 20% of the total impact of that step change.

Your suggestion that we should be back at 1900 implies just the opposite that we should have felt 80-85% of the change already.

In addition to that natural delay brought solely about by the static nature of the planet (being mostly water and absorbing heat). There are temporary dynamic processes as well that can mask or even override the step change.

The increase in heat content will be there (thus measuring heat content is a better metric than temperature) but the air temperature effect of that increase in heat content might be delayed years or even perhaps for decades as oceans go through their ENSOs and oscillations with forcings on the climate that are far more powerful than the forcing that will bring about longterm change. (call it ocean weather if you will).

The lag may be purely an artifact of measuring the wrong thing. Clearly before 2003 we were not measuring heat content. And today we might only have a year or two data on sufficient heat content measurements to detect what is happening without a lag.

K. Von Schuckmann jumped the gun on that and assumed we have a sufficient record extending back. No one can criticize her work because here data and methods have not been released. But we do know that others demurred on doing that work because of poor sampling rates. Thus at a minimum the reliability of the Von Schuckmann work is questionable. Provided the ARGO program does not succumb to equipment problems it seems likely that within a decade we should have something reliable to go on for measuring heat content and we can get away from this nitpicking about what year we should be at temperature wise from a given small forcing.

Apr 19, 2010 7:50:01 GMT glc said:

One can effectively argue that a forcing has some kind of impact instantaneously but how much is dependent upon a lot of processes, oceans, clouds, wind patterns that we have no models for that we can claim that replicates the real world.

Quite - then presumably you cannot show there is a solar-climate correlation.

Oh that is not correct! Correlation is a technical term. There are statistical methods of dealing with the problems of indirect measurement and actually while CO2 allegedly failed the test solar allegedly passed the correlation test though the work detailing that has not been made available. Thus it remains a mere claim. However, the fact is there are statistical tests that deal with these issues.

Apr 19, 2010 7:50:01 GMT glc said:

Let me be clear. I don't think there is a correlation. I think there may be times when both solar activity and temperatures appear to be in synch but equally there are times when they are clearly not. If there was a definite correlation the lag you keep banging on about would be obvious. However as the lag is clearly not obvious then it raises questions about the supposed correlation.

You are entitled to your opinion on that matter. However, the correlation visually is quite strong. Its my opinion, that the kinds of variances you are talking about result in relatively minor divergences. ENSO is the only really strong one that has been identified though there are probably other important ones. ENSO clearly has major impacts on precipitation patterns around the world.

You have made a lot of posts dealing only with divergences within the ENSO-like oscillation window of 2 to 3 years.

Apr 19, 2010 7:50:01 GMT glc said:

showed you that in 1911 temperatures hit a low. In 1912-13
solar magnetic flux hit a low. Are the 2 connected? Both began to rise after ~1911 (for temperatures) and ~1913 (for solar flux). .

Is this what you mean by the correlation. If so then it suggests there is no lag.

Unfortunately we did not have the ocean monitoring system in place back in 1913 we have now thus there is no way of reliably identifying ENSO events and such.

The US only began a permanent naval command in the Pacific after WWI and thus we are left with tree rings to try to deduce what the Pacific ocean was doing back then. And tree ring data might not be worth the paper they could make.

So I would not be deducing anything from small windows of time in our climate history. Better to look at there being a correlation with direction of forcing that begins within that decade. With the other natural processes going on there is no real reason to expect to always see the initial step change tightly correlated in time.

Our understandings of the various processes is still too limited for such depth of perception but today we can see that there are forces at work that create perceptions of lags that might not exist in fact.

Apr 19, 2010 7:50:01 GMT glc said:

In fact if you could set your heater so that continuously provided one tenth of a watt more than it lost in heat, it could take 30 years to warm up your house.

That doesn't mean there is a lag. The warming will start immediately. It will just be very slow.

The warming may not start immediately GLC. An hour after turning the heater on you may discover the back door is open, or that the air conditioner was left running.

Apr 19, 2010 7:50:01 GMT glc said:

So just to be clear let me repeat my questions.

If there is a solar-temperature link. What is it? Does temperature rise immediately following solar activity. Is it 5 years later? 10 years later? What does the correlation tell us?

I think I answered that above. In summary temperature is the wrong metric. Heat content is the right metric under the assumption that most of the masking and lags in perceiving change is due to internal processes that affect temperature but do not affect heat content sufficiently to create a lag.

Apr 19, 2010 7:50:01 GMT glc said:

PS To help you decide on the precise nature of the correlation, here's a link which shows Craig Loehle's temeprature reconstruction (top) and TSI (middle) over the same period. I hope it wouldn't be considered "nit-picking" to suggest that there is no obvious relationship.

I hope it isn't nitpicking to note there is no link?

[icefisher]

Apr 19, 2010 10:40:42 GMT steve said:

Seems to me that high-level arguments about a solar link are misplaced in this thread, since the same arguments apply to the solar claim as to the CO2 claim.

Namely that the top of atmosphere energy budget (the net amount of energy absorbed by the earth as measured by satellites) seems to disagree with the earth system energy budget (calculated by measuring the energy in the oceans and atmosphere, and the energy from melting ice).

To put my 2p in, it seems that there is a lot of evidence that says there is no, or not much heat "hiding" in the oceans, which suggests that the TOA energy budget calculation is wrong. Ie. the TOA energy budget has actually been well-balanced for the past 5 years.

If that is the correct point of view, then the lower amount of detected warming does not imply that there will be a "catch up" period of rapid atmospheric warming as the "hidden" heat reappears.

Therefore, since the forcing from CO2 has continued to increase in this time, there must have been a matching change in some other element of the climate. eg. cloud albedo rising, or upper atmosphere water vapour levels falling. Depending on the actual cause, it may revert to normal (resulting in a possible rapid resurgence of warming) or it may eventually stabilise (meaning that "normal" warming will resume at some point).

Or it could be the fabled negative feedback...but given that negative feedbacks have never happened in the past, I doubt that of course.

Good post Steve!

If the atmosphere changes responsible for a lack of increasing heat content is not negative feedback then what is causing it?

Seems to me those CERN guys had some success in nucleating potential cloud starter particles in their little chamber.

[Pooh]

Apr 19, 2010 10:40:42 GMT steve said:

Seems to me that high-level arguments about a solar link are misplaced in this thread, since the same arguments apply to the solar claim as to the CO2 claim.
....
Or it could be the fabled negative feedback...but given that negative feedbacks have never happened in the past, I doubt that of course.

Negative feedbacks are happening now as well as the past, according to the observations referenced below. Please note they are not addressing feedbacks equal to or less than -1.0. However, certain prominent AGW spokespersons do claim that positive feedbacks exist equal to or greater than +1.0: runaway warming, the fabled "tipping point".

Gregory, Ken. “Why Climate Models Fail.” Blog Summaries. ICECAP, December 27, 2008.
icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/why_climate_models_fail/

Lindzen, , Ph.D., Richard, and Yong-Sang Choi. “On the determination of climate feedbacks from ERBE data.” Geophysical Research Letters 36, no. 16705 (August 26, 2009): 6. www.leif.org/EOS/2009GL039628-pip.pdf

Climate feedbacks are estimated from fluctuations in the outgoing radiation budget from the latest version of Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) nonscanner data. It appears, for the entire tropics, the observed outgoing radiation fluxes increase with the increase in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). The observed behavior of radiation fluxes implies negative feedback processes associated with relatively low climate sensitivity. This is the opposite of the behavior of 11 atmospheric models forced by the same SSTs. Therefore, the models display much higher climate sensitivity than is inferred from ERBE, though it is difficult to pin down such high sensitivities with any precision. Results also show, the feedback in ERBE is mostly from shortwave radiation while the feedback in the models is mostly from longwave radiation. Although such a test does not distinguish the mechanisms, this is important since the inconsistency of climate feedbacks constitutes a very fundamental problem in climate prediction.

Lindzen, , Ph.D., Richard, Anthony Watts, and Yong-Sang Choi. “New paper from Lindzen demonstrates low climate sensitivity with observational data.” Watts Up With That?, n.d.
wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/23/new-paper-from-lindzen/

Lindzen, Richard, PhD. “Lindzen on negative climate feedback (with updates).” Blog. Watts Up With That?, March 30, 2009. wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/30/lindzen-on-negative-climate-feedback/

The Bottom Line: The earth’s climate (in contrast to the climate in current climate GCMs) is dominated by a strong net negative feedback. Climate sensitivity is on the order of 0.3°C, and such warming as may arise from increasing greenhouse gases will be indistinguishable from the fluctuations in climate that occur naturally from processes internal to the climate system itself.

McIntyre, Steve. “A Peek behind the Curtain.” Blog. Climate Audit, March 4, 2009. www.climateaudit.org/?p=5416

Spencer, Ph.D., Roy W. “What About the Clouds, Andy?.” Blog. Global Warming (drroyspencer.com), February 21, 2009. www.drroyspencer.com/2009/02/what-about-the-clouds-andy/

But I found from the CERES data a strongly negative SW feedback during 2002-2007. When added to the LW feedback, this resulted in a total (SW+LW) feedback that is strongly negative.

Spencer, Ph.D., Roy W. “Statement To The Committee On Oversight And Government Reform Of The United States House Of Representatives.” Governmental. United States House Of Representatives, March 19, 2007.
oversight.house.gov/documents/20070320152338-19776.pdf

Watts, Anthony. “Negative feedback in climate - empirical or emotional?.” Watts Up With That?, March 5, 2009. wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/05/negative-feedback-in-climate-empirical-or-emotional/