ENSO, PDO, and all that

[hilbert]

Pointers to basic information on these things would be appreciated.

My level of understanding is roughly:
If La Nina is releasing cold to the atmosphere, doesn't that mean that the ocean is absorbing heat?

Thanks,
hilbert

[kiwistonewall]

Mar 13, 2009 3:11:12 GMT hilbert said:

Pointers to basic information on these things would be appreciated.

My level of understanding is roughly:
If La Nina is releasing cold to the atmosphere, doesn't that mean that the ocean is absorbing heat?

Thanks,
hilbert

The ENSO is an index, not a cause. A state, not driving force - though I admit it is often spoken of a cause.

The cause of the ENSO state is complex.

[tallbloke]

bobtisdale.blogspot.com
climatechange1.wordpress.com

[dopeydog]

This should be required reading.

tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Includes/Documents/Publications/gray2009.pdf

[steve]

Mar 13, 2009 3:11:12 GMT hilbert said:

Pointers to basic information on these things would be appreciated.

My level of understanding is roughly:
If La Nina is releasing cold to the atmosphere, doesn't that mean that the ocean is absorbing heat?

Thanks,
hilbert

My 2p worth:

It makes physical sense that if ocean currents are bringing relatively cooler water to the surface, then that would increase the amount of heat it would tend to absorb.

But 1) the impact may not be noticeable because of the larger heat capacity of the water and 2) the various states of ocean currents have wider impacts on the weather which might be larger, or might counteract, the basic physical process.

Wrt William Gray's views, if you believe the various streams of data (eg. from ocean buoys and from satellite measurements of sea-level rise) that all indicate the ocean heat content is increasing at the same time as the warming is happening in the atmosphere, then Gray's hypothesis is falsified.

[magellan]

Mar 13, 2009 11:52:24 GMT steve said:

Mar 13, 2009 3:11:12 GMT hilbert said:

Pointers to basic information on these things would be appreciated.

My level of understanding is roughly:
If La Nina is releasing cold to the atmosphere, doesn't that mean that the ocean is absorbing heat?

Thanks,
hilbert

My 2p worth:

It makes physical sense that if ocean currents are bringing relatively cooler water to the surface, then that would increase the amount of heat it would tend to absorb.

But 1) the impact may not be noticeable because of the larger heat capacity of the water and 2) the various states of ocean currents have wider impacts on the weather which might be larger, or might counteract, the basic physical process.

Wrt William Gray's views, if you believe the various streams of data (eg. from ocean buoys and from satellite measurements of sea-level rise) that all indicate the ocean heat content is increasing at the same time as the warming is happening in the atmosphere, then Gray's hypothesis is falsified.

all indicate the ocean heat content is increasing at the same time as the warming is happening in the atmosphere,

Provide evidence for either please.

[nautonnier]

Mar 13, 2009 11:52:24 GMT steve said:

Mar 13, 2009 3:11:12 GMT hilbert said:

Pointers to basic information on these things would be appreciated.

My level of understanding is roughly:
If La Nina is releasing cold to the atmosphere, doesn't that mean that the ocean is absorbing heat?

Thanks,
hilbert

My 2p worth:

It makes physical sense that if ocean currents are bringing relatively cooler water to the surface, then that would increase the amount of heat it would tend to absorb.

But 1) the impact may not be noticeable because of the larger heat capacity of the water and 2) the various states of ocean currents have wider impacts on the weather which might be larger, or might counteract, the basic physical process.

Wrt William Gray's views, if you believe the various streams of data (eg. from ocean buoys and from satellite measurements of sea-level rise) that all indicate the ocean heat content is increasing at the same time as the warming is happening in the atmosphere, then Gray's hypothesis is falsified.

Steve,
References I have read state that OHC has been dropping since 2003. Perhaps your access to the Argo data stream is different - can you provide some recent data to support your statement.

[jpowell]

Posted by hilbert on Yesterday at 10:11pm
Pointers to basic information on these things would be appreciated.

My level of understanding is roughly:
If La Nina is releasing cold to the atmosphere, doesn't that mean that the ocean is absorbing heat?

In physics there is no such thing as “cold”, there is only the absence of heat.

[kenfeldman]

Steve,
References I have read state that OHC has been dropping since 2003. Perhaps your access to the Argo data stream is different - can you provide some recent data to support your statement.

Not true. There were errors with the old instruments used to measure temps at depths in the ocean, called XBTs. The XBTs read too warm. Also, about 300 (of the 3,000 or 10%) of the Argo floats, which currently collect that data, read cold. The net effect of this was to make the measurements seem to be higher before 2003 and lower in 2005, introducing a cooling trend that wasn't there (as shown by continued sea level rise and ice melt in Greenland and Antarctica).

The paper revising the results is freely available on the internet, I'm surprised you haven't seen it:

www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/heat_2006_1.pdf

Abstract. The recent cooling signal in the upper ocean reported by Lyman et al. [2006] is shown to be an artifact that was caused by a large cold bias discovered in a small fraction of Argo floats as well as a smaller but more prevalent warm bias in
eXpendable BathyThermograph (XBT) data. These biases are both substantially larger than sampling errors estimated in Lyman et al. [2006].

The revised results show that the ocean heat content hasn't changed much in the past few years, even though the sun's activity level as measured by sunspts, has nosedived.

[kenfeldman]

For the original poster, here is a website with some basic info on ENSO:

www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/faq.html

[kenfeldman]

If La Nina is releasing cold to the atmosphere, doesn't that mean that the ocean is absorbing heat?

Heat can be transferred from the oceans to the atmosphere, and vice versa, but "cold" cant really be transferred. Heat is energy, and it can be transferred through conduction (molecules vibrating against each other), convection (warm air rising), and radiation (photons of electromagnetic energy, basically in the infra-red portion of the spectrum).

Here's another description of the El Nino Southern Oscillation:

www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/el-nino-story.html

Note that ENSO, PDO and the other oscillations are just a redistribution of heat within the ocean - atmosphere system. They can't cause global warming or cooling by themselves.

[tacoman25]

Mar 14, 2009 6:37:27 GMT kenfeldman said:

If La Nina is releasing cold to the atmosphere, doesn't that mean that the ocean is absorbing heat?

Heat can be transferred from the oceans to the atmosphere, and vice versa, but "cold" cant really be transferred. Heat is energy, and it can be transferred through conduction (molecules vibrating against each other), convection (warm air rising), and radiation (photons of electromagnetic energy, basically in the infra-red portion of the spectrum).

Here's another description of the El Nino Southern Oscillation:

www.pmel.noaa.gov/tao/elnino/el-nino-story.html

Note that ENSO, PDO and the other oscillations are just a redistribution of heat within the ocean - atmosphere system. They can't cause global warming or cooling by themselves.

And yet we were told just a few years ago that AGW likely meant more and stronger El Ninos....care to explain?

[steve]

As Ken's link says, the evidence points to the upper layers of the oceans being warmer now than 15 years ago during a period when the atmosphere has also warmed.

This is supported by satellite measurements of sea-level rise over the same period which cannot be fully explained by melting of land ice.

So the oceans appear not to be the source of the atmosphere's warmth as hypothesised by Gray. I think he, as much as many other "AGW" scientists have fallen foul of making statements about speedups or slowdowns of the thermohaline circulation that turn out to be ill-founded due to lack of understanding of its variability.

[nautonnier]

Mar 14, 2009 13:07:27 GMT steve said:

As Ken's link says, the evidence points to the upper layers of the oceans being warmer now than 15 years ago during a period when the atmosphere has also warmed.

This is supported by satellite measurements of sea-level rise over the same period which cannot be fully explained by melting of land ice.

So the oceans appear not to be the source of the atmosphere's warmth as hypothesised by Gray. I think he, as much as many other "AGW" scientists have fallen foul of making statements about speedups or slowdowns of the thermohaline circulation that turn out to be ill-founded due to lack of understanding of its variability.

A nice straw man from both of you changing the period that I was querying - what I actually said was:

Steve,
References I have read state that OHC has been dropping since 2003. Perhaps your access to the Argo data stream is different - can you provide some recent data to support your statement.

So can you give me the Argo information that shows that in the last 5 years the ocean temperatures are rising?

[steve]

Nautonnier, what *I* said was:

Wrt William Gray's views, if you believe the various streams of data (eg. from ocean buoys and from satellite measurements of sea-level rise) that all indicate the ocean heat content is increasing at the same time as the warming is happening in the atmosphere, then Gray's hypothesis is falsified.

You brought up a limited period that doesn't test Gray's hypothesis because ocean and atmosphere temperature metrics don't seem to have gone anywhere much for a few years - they're just staying high.

I'm merely clarifying for you that the longer record showing ocean and atmosphere warming happening at the same time *does* appear to falsify Gray's hypothesis.