Notes on ocean “warming”

I don’t have much time for research or writing these days, more’s the pity. So I must make do with snippets when they’re available. My favourite oceanographer made a few comments the other day on the ocean “heating” being discussed in the blogosphere. I’d like to pass them on.

He made some interesting and helpful remarks for the benefit of those of us not intimately acquainted with oceanography. However, to quieten the discussion which was threatening to get out of control he said pointedly, “I don’t have time to waste on Skeptical Science distortions.” We must hope that doesn’t make John Cook feel too inadequate.

Anyway, this is what he had to say about warming between 700–2000 m in the oceans.

1. The data below 700 m is very sparse — even with the increase in ocean drifters such as Argo. Therefore, the extremely small change in temperature associated with the very small heat content change is not reliable.

2. The main thermocline in the oceans lies between 500 and 1500 m on average depending on latitude. This is where the steepest gradient in temperature occurs in the bulk of the ocean. Note that I said on average. The position of the thermocline does vary over time. Best known example is the changes associated with ENSO — La Nina, thermocline depressed; El Nino, thermocline rises across the equatorial Pacific. There is evidence of shifts associated with the PDO. Doesn’t take much of a shift to account for an apparent global change in the 700–2000 m depth as low latitudes have higher sampling density than high latitudes — a change in the frequency of El Nino and La Nina events could do it.

3. Warm water doesn’t need to sink vertically to reach depth when dealing with intermediate waters (those around the thermocline). It is easier to move sideways along a density boundary than down through it. The main density boundary (pycnocline) is associated with the steepest temperature gradient (thermocline). It is not a flat surface — it is bowl-shaped; shallower at high latitudes and equator, and deepest around the tropics. Water at high latitudes sinks (subducts) by sliding sideways along the pycnocline. So warming of the Southern Ocean and Bering Sea eventually appears at 700–2000 m depth in the Central Pacific. Two little things though (1) the warming is solar driven and (2) it takes time to move (we think the shallowest parts may be of the order 50–70 years = PDO, and the deeper parts 100–500 y). So it is most likely a reflection of solar heating decades to centuries ago.

This is all basic stuff we teach in the introductory oceanography course — we don’t tend to get many atmospheric chemists attending.

So it’s no surprise they don’t understand this stuff.

I would emphasise the general unreliability of ocean temperatures. We don’t know enough about them to make a case for anything much. Also the amazingly long periods required for energy to move through the oceans.

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129 Thoughts on “Notes on ocean “warming”

  1. Just comments on your “mystery” oceanographer’s claims:

    1. Yes, the data below 700 metres are less robust. It’s not like the oceanographic community doesn’t know about that. The data do, however, show strong warming in the layer 700-2000mtrs. The continued rise of global sea level is ample supporting evidence that this is indeed occurring. Your “oceanographer” is simply hand-waving here.

    2. I don’t know how your oceanographer friend thinks heats is going to get uniformly distributed around the oceans, both vertically and horizontally, through changes in ocean circulation. The pattern of observed warming is very smooth. See Sedlacek & Knutti (2012).
    Maybe an explanation from your unnamed oceanographer is in order. I’m interested in how the magic is supposed to work.

    The observed pattern of warming is, however, very consistent with the greenhouse gas forcing of the ocean’s cool-skin layer.

    3. I pity the students that may be led astray by your oceanographer friend, if the so-called reasoning highlighted above is any indication of his knowledge base. Is this person based in New Zealand?

    • Hi Rob, thanks for visiting.

      ” It’s not like the oceanographic community doesn’t know about that.” Hmm. One expects firm conclusions, especially radical or alarming conclusions, to be watered down according to the reliability of the data, but one sees no evidence of that from certain quarters. We’re being driven to despair by talk of rising seas which are actually deeply doubtful.

      “The data do, however, show strong warming in the layer 700-2000mtrs.” But they do not demonstrate it for the whole ocean.

      “The continued rise of global sea level is ample supporting evidence that this is indeed occurring.” No, it isn’t; it’s been rising monotonously for about 6000 years from natural causes.

      The pattern of warming might seem “smooth” – what does that mean? What does it matter? Can sparse data be relied on for an accurate picture?

      “The observed pattern of warming is, however, very consistent with the greenhouse gas forcing of the ocean’s cool-skin layer.” But does not demonstrate it. I have not heard a convincing explanation of how that can possibly occur. It must be magic.

      I don’t know Sedlacek & Knutti; I’ll take a look some time.

      Never mind who my friend is; just consider what he says. You don’t know who I am, either.

    • “Never mind who my friend is” – Oh how familiar – part of your anonymous “science team”, eh, Richard. Don’t say it’s Manfred? You seem to be just as ashamed of this person as you were of Manfred.

      Or, my guess it’s Mad Monckton. You have to be away with the birds to acknowledge him as a reference.

    • Bob D on 21/03/2013 at 1:48 pm said:

      Oh look, it’s Ken. We need some comic relief, methinks.

      Welcome back, although I should point out that if Richard was ashamed of me he does a good job of hiding it, what with all the beers we’ve shared down at the pub. Good pub too.

      That reminds me, RT, I’ve got some time free now, how about another pint or two?

    • Great idea. Check your txts.

    • Here’s a clue Ken

      This is all basic stuff we teach in the introductory oceanography course — we don’t tend to get many atmospheric chemists attending.

      So probably an academic?
      Rules out Monckton, and all us evil fossil fuel funded deniers.

    • Hi Ken. If you have nothing to say about the topic, I’ll delete this piece of nonsense, and any further pieces. I’ve lost patience with your pointless sniping — although I’m happy to leave it for long enough that people see the content of your mind. You really should open your parachute.

    • Richard Treadgold – I understand your friend’s desire to remain anonymous. Who’d really want to be publicly associated with such nonsense?

      ” We’re being driven to despair by talk of rising seas which are actually deeply doubtful.”

      Global sea level has risen by around 20 mm in less than two years. See the AVISO website. Much of this is due to the natural exchange of water between the land and ocean (ENSO-related). Nevertheless, it shows your comment to be a gross departure from reality.

      This is normally the point where a delusional person claims the actual sea level experts are either incompetent, or malfeasant. Why? Because they have no scientific argument to make.

      No, it isn’t; it’s been rising monotonously for about 6000 years from natural causes.

      Sorry Richard, the magical natural causes claim just doesn’t cut the mustard. That’s like saying “because!”. And it’s wrong anyway. You’re just further illustrating your ignorance here.

      The Holocene sea level highstand occurred thousands of years ago because sea level was static. With ocean volume no longer increasing, the subsidence of areas uplifted by the presence of the Great Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, and continental levering, siphoned water away from a broad swathe of ocean centred on the equator. This sea level fall created the stable platforms we call coral atolls.

      This trend reversed after the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Humans warmed the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and the oceans warmed too – increasing in volume through thermal expansion and the melting of land-based ice.

      Of course this is your blog Richard, and you and you locals are entitled to believe as many impossible things as you please. It just comes across as silly when you criticize actual experts, and all you have to offer up is a hodge-podge of contradictory ideas which are effectively refuted by the observations.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 11:36 pm said:

      >”Humans warmed the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels

      And this is a statement of fact because you stated it Rob? I think there’s a Latin term that Monckton uses a lot for this type of argument.

      >”…and the oceans warmed too…”

      They warmed sure but so did solar luminosity. But solar luminosity reached a peak and so did atmospheric warming. So too has ocean heat now. The fossil fuels are still burning however.

      >”…increasing in volume through thermal expansion and the melting of land-based ice”

      As they would from Grand Maximum solar levels.

      >”This is normally the point where a delusional person claims the actual sea level experts are either incompetent, or malfeasant. Why? Because they have no scientific argument to make.”

      Actually there are a number of contra-consensus scientific arguments being made Rob it is just that you deny their right to be heard in a rational manner. There will be no choice for you and the IPCC but to the longer the IPCC’s projections diverge from reality though.

      Not sure that quoting the results of a CO2-forced-model-based SSL projection accelerating out to 2100 and further conveys any sort of sea level expertise either. Especially given the performance of the models in the atmosphere to date.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 22/03/2013 at 2:00 am said:

      >”…and so did atmospheric warming”

      21st century atm standstill just being a negative phase of the 60 yr cycle coinciding with the end of the 1920 – 2012 solar Grand Max but that doesn’t alter the solar case at all, the vastly more important fall of bicentennial component from Grand Max levels having just kicked in.

    • Clarence on 22/03/2013 at 1:27 pm said:

      “Global sea level has risen by around 20 mm in less than two years.”

      Really? Well it obviously wasn’t caused by icemelt or other results of global warming – which hasn’t occurred at all this century.

      If the origin of this additional water is rivers, and the earlier origin of the river water was precipitation from the seas, then this is clearly part of the everlasting natural cycle.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 22/03/2013 at 1:39 pm said:

      What he didn’t say was that it went done before it went up:-

      2010.468238 5.651944e-02

      2011.364108 4.855022e-02 <=

      2013.047256 6.790903e-02

    • Mike Jowsey on 23/03/2013 at 6:28 pm said:

      Rob Painting – your Aviso graph you link to displays a trend over the last 20 years of 6cm sea level rise. Which equates to the expected 30cm rise per century that has been witnessed since records began. Wow – a whole foot of rise over a hundred years. Sell your beachfront property now, Rob!

      Your claim of 2cm rise over the past 2 years is called cherry picking.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 9:54 am said:

      Rob, you say:-

      >”The data do, however, show strong warming in the layer 700-2000mtrs.”

      But it’s not consistent in the 3 ocean basins is it?

      Over the last 7 years:-

      http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/basin_data.html

      Basin time series (Oct-Dec data ×10^22 Joules)
      – World: 0 – 2000 metres , 0 – 700 metres
      2005.875 , 12.637 , 7.849959
      2012.875 , 16.630 , 10.641594

      – Atlantic: 0 – 2000 metres , 0 – 700 metres
      2005.875 , 6.256 , 4.896
      2012.875 , 6.882 , 4.491

      – Pacific: 0 – 2000 metres , 0 – 700 metres
      2005.875 , 4.188 , 3.291
      2012.875 , 4.227 , 2.858

      – Indian: 0 – 2000 metres , 0 – 700 metres
      2005.875 , 2.194 , 1.094
      2012.875 , 5.520 , 3.923

      Over the last 7 years from mid October 2005 to mid October 2012, 70% (2.8×10^22 Joules) of the global 0 – 2000 meters ocean heat increase (4×10^22 J) was in the upper 700 m layer of the Indian Ocean and 12% (0.5×10^22 J) was in the 700 – 2000 m layer of the Indian Ocean which accounts for 82% of the total increase i.e. global ocean warming has been largely restricted to the Indian Ocean over the last 7 years. The bulk of the remaining increase was in the 700 – 2000 m layer of the Atlantic Ocean (0.6×10^22 J, 15.6%).

      For 700 – 2000, Pacific gain (0.04×10^22 J) represents only 1% of the total ocean gain. Atlantic 15.6% and Indian 12%. The “strong” warming was largely restricted to the Indian in total (82%) and the upper Indian in particular (70%).

      >”The continued rise of global sea level is ample supporting evidence that this is indeed occurring”

      Decelerating in the satellite era but again, OHC and SSL rise regionally is not consistent with the “global” aggregate.

      >,,,your oceanographer friend thinks heats is going to get uniformly distributed around the oceans, both vertically and horizontally, through changes in ocean circulation”

      He doesn’t say “uniformly” or “changes”. The only graphics of horizontal transport I can find are these and they are out of date but show the situation:-

      ‘Ocean Heat Transport in Petawatts’

      McDonald and Wunsch (now out of date),

      http://paoc2001.mit.edu/cmi/applications/images/heattransport.gif

      Ganachaud and Wunsch (improved estimates but also out of date),

      http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v408/n6811/images/408453aa.2.jpg

      The largest flow is across the Southern Ocean but rather than an anthropogenic forcing there, Shulz, Josey and Verein (2012) find “The observed annual mean net air-sea heat flux is a small net ocean heat loss of −10 Wm−2”. This rules out the IPCC’s “expected” anthropogenic “air-sea flux” (AR5 Chapter 10: Detection and Attribution SOD) causing heat gain in the Southern Ocean so they’ll have to look elsewhere:-

      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL052290/abstract

      >”The observed pattern of warming is, however, very consistent with the greenhouse gas forcing of the ocean’s cool-skin layer”

      Not in the Southern Ocean it isn’t (see Shulz, Josey and Verein (2012) above).

      AR5 Chapter 10 SOD does not make an anthropogenic attribution for the 21st century or for 0-2000m. It is impossible for them to make an anthropogenic attribution for the Pacific and Atlantic in the 21st century because OHC in the upper 0-700m has been falling in both oceans this century (see data above).

      >”..students that may be led astray by your oceanographer friend”

      Given current ocean warming (standstill in 0-700m last 4 years, peak levels in 0-2000m since 2011/12)) is completely consistent with maximum planetary enthalpy occurring at the end of the 1920 – 2012 solar Grand Maximum and RT’s friend says “(1) the warming is solar driven”, there’s no reason to think that students are being led astray is there?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 10:11 am said:

      >”He doesn’t say “uniformly” or “changes” ” – I mean in respect of one for the other. What he actually says is this:-

      “There is evidence of shifts associated with the PDO. Doesn’t take much of a shift to account for an apparent global change in the 700–2000 m depth as low latitudes have higher sampling density than high latitudes — a change in the frequency of El Nino and La Nina events could do it.”

      In other words, a regional change (“shift”) can give the impression of an “apparent global change”, the latter not being in any way “uniformly”.

    • Hi Richard Cumming. I’m glad you’ve moved on from your “magical undersea volcanoes are warming the ocean” idea.

      Some advice; rather than link-spamming entire threads with scientific papers that you don’t understand, how about translating these into clearer language. It does mean you have to actually comprehend what those scientists are discussing, but it might not prove quite so boring to the other resident climate science contrarians here.

    • Hi Rob,
      I hope you appreciate the links to SkS I have been providing
      🙂

    • Magoo on 22/03/2013 at 9:45 am said:

      Rob, I hope you appreciate my links to SKS as well as those by Andy. SKS proving there’s been no statistically significant warming for between 16-23 yrs – wonders never cease.

      http://skepticalscience.com/trend.php

    • Hi Magoo
      How do you drive that calculator? If I enter a date such as 1/1/1998 to 1/1/2010. i get “insufficient data”

      Note to SkS. Maybe put some date time pickers on the date textboxes?

    • Magoo on 22/03/2013 at 10:52 am said:

      Hey Andy. Just enter the years, not the days or months eg. 1980 and 2013. Tick the ‘advanced options’ below if you want to adjust the ‘autocorrelation’ dates to coincide with your chosen dates.

    • Hi Magoo
      Thanks

      Too simple for my puny cold ridden brain this morning

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 9:55 pm said:

      >”I’m glad you’ve moved on from your “magical undersea volcanoes are warming the ocean” idea.”

      Think you’re labouring (as is Rob Taylor) under the collective Hot Topic inability to differentiate between undersea volcanoes and hydrovents (I do have that entire thread saved to disk as a record Rob). But just out of interest, I’m curious as to why you think sea-floor seismic activity is “magical”? That’s the second time in this thread you’ve used that word to characterize what you disagree with (or is that don’t understand or just wish to misconstrue?), is it some sort of defense mechanism that kicks in?. And why don’t you think superheated water (up to 400 C) gushing up from around 2000 – 2500m depth has no introductory heat effect whatsoever? Seems reasonable to me. And how can exposed molten magma not transfer at least a little heat to sea water? Just curious. As for the odd undersea volcano that we hear about in the news (at least most people do, you don’t obviously – Taylor thinks they’re “undetectable”) I can’t think why that would have the lasting effect that you (scurrilously and erroneously) say I think it does.

      >”Some advice”

      Heh, I don’t need your advice Rob. And it might be wise to remember the maxim “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”

      >”..rather than link-spamming entire threads with scientific papers that you don’t understand,”

      Oh I understand them Rob, as do a good many others. That’s the difficulty you face isn’t it – too much understanding coming at you with too many awkward questions that can’t be answered at SkS and Hot Topic so you have to delete/snip/censure to cover your embarrassment (and yes there’s a growing record of that too).

      >”…how about translating these into clearer language.

      You mean dumb it down and spin it SkS/Hot Topic fashion? People outside of those enclaves do have the intellect to comprehend and critique them for themselves Rob.

      >”…it does mean you have to actually comprehend what those scientists are discussing,”

      But it’s not a prerequisite.

      >”..it might not prove quite so boring to the other resident climate science contrarians here”

      Well that’s up to them not you to decide isn’t it?

    • Richard Cumming – oceanographers do appreciate that the oceans exhibit short-term variability, as heat circulates around, but all ocean basins exhibit long-term warming due to the persistent nature of the greenhouse gas forcing of the cool-skin layer . Hence the observations and modelling in Sedlacek & Knutti (2012).

      Also note that there is a new paper just out on ocean heat, which affirms the findings of Nuccitelli (2012) of which I was a co-author. There has been a large increase in ocean heat in the layers below 700 mtrs. This tentatively supports the modelling in Meehl (2011) – ocean heat being funnelled down to the depths. The observations suggest this is occurring in the mid latitude ocean gyres, and is most likely driven by increased wind speeds.

      Anyway, I’ll leave you and your fellow contrarians to bask in each other delusions………

    • Bob D on 22/03/2013 at 8:37 am said:

      Rob Painting:

      …the findings of Nuccitelli (2012) of which I was a co-author.

      My understanding is that this “paper” was in fact just a Comment on someone else’s paper (Douglass and Knox, 2012) and was easily ‘debunked’ by the original authors here:
      http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~douglass/papers/DK_reply_PLA_2012.pdf

    • Richard C (NZ) on 22/03/2013 at 9:14 am said:

      >”….all ocean basins exhibit long-term warming due to the persistent nature of the greenhouse gas forcing of the cool-skin layer”

      Except that’s not the IPCC’s mechanism and as shown up-thread, there’s been no basin-specific and consistent basin-to-basin “persistent” warming (some cooling) especially over the last 7 yrs. This is not necessarily short-term variability and wholly consistent with solar change. If the atm/OHC standstills continue until AR5 release Sept 2014 or thereabouts it will be evident there’s a new climate regime in place (not predicted by the IPCC) and the awkward questions will only increase in number and volume.

      As for funneling, there’s an observational paper on this down-thread that studies some relatively tiny and sporadic occurrences in the Atlantic that are very much conditional on the right seasonal conditions occurring and non-anthropogenic. And again I point out that the 700-2000 gain in the planet’s largest ocean (the Pacific) is only 1% of total ocean gain and besides, the IPCC AR5 SOD makes the anthropogenic attribution to 0-700m-only and only for the 20th century.

      Ocean warming is not a globally consistent phenomenon, it is now (82%) largely confined to the Indian Ocean. SLR is similar, the AVISO map shows the last 20 yrs:-

      http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Map_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.png

      Significant rise north of Australia and thereabouts offsetting and more the falls in the east Pacific. And large lengths of coastline dwellers that need not be alarmed by non-existent or benign SLR.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 22/03/2013 at 9:39 am said:

      no basin-specific [except Indian] – should be.

    • Magoo on 22/03/2013 at 10:51 am said:

      Hey Andy. Just enter the years, not the days or months eg. 1980 and 2013. Tick the ‘advanced options’ below if you want to adjust the ‘autocorrelation’ dates to coincide with your chosen dates.

    • Bob D on 21/03/2013 at 10:52 am said:

      Hansen (2005, p1432):

      The observed annual mean rate of ocean heat gain between 1993 and mid-2003 was 0.86 ± 0.12 W/m2 per year for the 93.4% of the ocean that was analyzed. Assuming the same rate for the remaining 6.6% of the ocean yields a global mean heat storage rate of 0.7 x  0.86 = 0.60 ± 0.10 W/m2 per year or 6 ± 1 W year/m2 for 10 years, 0.7 being the ocean fraction of Earth’s surface. This agrees well with the 5.5 W year/m2 in the analysis of Levitus et al. for the upper 700 m that was based only on in situ data.

      On average for the five simulations, 85% of the ocean heat storage occurred above 750 m, with the range from 78 to 91%. The mean heat gain below 750 m was ~0.11 W/m2.

      So in 2005, Hansen & Co. were very happy to use just the top 700m of ocean to justify their hypothesis for 1993 to mid-2003, since the models and observations agreed well. Bear in mind that the period analysed was only ten years.

      However, since ARGO was deployed in 2003, the wheels have fallen off their bus. Suddenly instead of increasing, the warming effectively ceased in the top 700m for the next ten years, and even though previously they were happy to disregard the deeper ocean, now they are being forced into the ludicrous situation of having to claim that the deep ocean increase is actually ‘important’, while the lack of warming in the 0-700m range is not. Did we hear anyone discussing the deep ocean back in 2005? Of course not.

      As many observers have pointed out, there is no sensible mechanism for transporting the heat quickly down to those depths that won’t heat the 0-700m layer. It is entirely correct for our oceanographer to state that the deeper ocean temperatures are reflections of surface temperatures hundreds of years ago, this has long been the accepted wisdom.

      The only reason anyone would try to dispute that is pure desperation – after all, where else is any warming to be found? Atmosphere, No. Upper ocean, No.

      Yet they cling like drowning men to their catastrophic hypothesis, hoping against hope that it’s true. Why, for heaven’s sake? Surely they should be happy that it isn’t warming as predicted.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 12:21 pm said:

      Hansen et al (2005) Model Mean Trend vs Observations

      http://oi56.tinypic.com/9amivl.jpg

      Fail

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 12:41 pm said:

      >”…no sensible mechanism…”

      Magoo suggested “osmosis via Tardis”. Turns out that, as reported by SkS, Meehl et el (2011) modeled the process:-

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/The-Deep-Ocean-Warms-When-Global-Surface-Temperatures-Stall–.html

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 1:08 pm said:

      Follow-up:-

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/Ocean-Heat-Poised-To-Come-Back-And-Haunt-Us-.html

      “The vertical profile shows heat (the warm-coloured areas in figure 3) accumulating in the subsurface ocean during the hiatus periods. At the same time the ocean surface, particularly the top 100 metres, shows a cooling trend. It’s this La Niña-like cooling trend in the surface layers which stalls global surface temperatures, even though the layers underneath are gaining heat.”

      “In the warm-coloured oceanic regions, heat is converging in the surface layers, and is being forced down to the deep ocean. An example of this strong downwelling of heat in the model is shown, for the upper Pacific Ocean, in Figure 5 below:”

      Osmosis via Tardis it is.

    • Bob D on 21/03/2013 at 1:37 pm said:

      “…heat is converging in the surface layers, and is being forced down to the deep ocean.”
      Ah well, it’s the old ‘warm water sinks’ meme. Good to know.

      I note also that Meehl et al. assumes a priori that the TOA imbalance is 1W/m2. This result (as we’ve discussed previously) ultimately comes from Hansen’s models (he actually modelled 0.85W/m2 and Trenberth rounded it up).

      But in the meantime Hansen has modified his position to 0.75W/m2, then to 0.58W/m2 over recent times.

      Looks like the imbalance is reducing, not increasing as expected. Well well.

    • I sometimes wonder how many of these questions we could resolve by doing an actual physical experiment.

      For example, provide a source of longwave radiation shining onto a body of water, and measure the changes.

      Similarly, we are told that aerosols are a great unknown, and there are no satellites available to measure the parameters needed to get a better handle on the issue

    • Bob D on 21/03/2013 at 1:50 pm said:

      It seems to me that if there were huge masses of warm water sinking to the ocean depths we should have noticed it by now.

      If the science was settled, that is…

    • James Cameron has got a very impressive submarine, and he is “concerned” about climate change

      Can we get him to look for the heat?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 2:43 pm said:

      >”I sometimes wonder how many of these questions we could resolve by doing an actual physical experiment. For example, provide a source of longwave radiation shining onto a body of water……”

      ‘Optical Absorption of Water Compendium’,

      http://omlc.ogi.edu/spectra/water/abs/index.html

      Results from Hale and Querry (1973),

      http://omlc.ogi.edu/spectra/water/gif/hale73.gif

      >”….and measure the changes”

      Well yes, that would be the sensible thing to do. The changes would need to mimic DLR changes but they go up and down and I don’t think a tiny incremental change in intensity commensurate with anthropogenic forcing would make any difference to the spectroscopy results anyway (those commercial studies were for medical laser use). The anthropogenic component of DLR (if any) is miniscule as we can calculate from dF = 5.35 ln(C/Co) and completely gazumped by measured total DLR fluxes. And I think we can safely assume DLR is an ineffective heating agent otherwise solar collectors would be effective at night in proportion to DLR intensity wrt to solar in the day.

      The spectroscopy has been around since at least 1973 (H&Q73 now 2024 citations – seems to go up every week) but cutting-edge climate science hasn’t caught up with it yet, let alone progress it for climate application.

    • Richard C:

      The anthropogenic component of DLR (if any) is miniscule as we can calculate from dF = 5.35 ln(C/Co) and completely gazumped by measured total DLR fluxes

      There were comments about the 5.35 ln(C/Co) formula on BH a couple of days ago. Steven Mosher stated that this formula is well established by experiment. However, others claim otherwise and that McIntyre cannot find any reference to its origins

      Other than that, the other DLR fluxes are from water vapour, I presume?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 3:10 pm said:

      >”It seems to me that if there were huge masses of warm water sinking to the ocean depths we should have noticed it by now.”

      >”James Cameron has got a very impressive submarine, and he is “concerned” about climate change. Can we get him to look for the heat?”

      According to Meehl et al’s Tardis, the place to look is 30 Deg N in the Pacific:-

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/OHCMeehl2011-circulation.gif

      Not sure what longitude. Maybe it’s across the entire latitude which would make it easy although Rob P at SkS uses the term “funneling” so it might be some sort of vortex. I did look up “funneling” in the “Look up a term” facility but just got ” ‘funneling’ was not found in the dictionary of terms.”

    • RC – Sks has a page referencing the C/C0 formula with links to follow

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 3:45 pm said:

      >”There were comments about the 5.35 ln(C/Co) formula on BH a couple of days ago. Steven Mosher stated that this formula is well established by experiment. However, others claim otherwise and that McIntyre cannot find any reference to its origins”

      Vincent Gray documents the origin,

      https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gbvMIwQpRYMJ:http://www.john-daly.com/bull-121.htm%2BIPCC+forcing+formula+gray&hl=en-NZ&gbv=2&gs_l=heirloom-hp.12…1604.10181.0.12020.20.20.0.0.0.0.612.5356.5j4j0j6j2j3.20.0…0.0…1c.1.ina4iEqYZa0&ct=clnk

      Synopsis goes something like this – they took a log simplification of lower CO2 levels and extrapolated it to accommodate 2xCO2 but there was no experimental justification. Mosher is flat wrong. The IPCC version is a simplification of simplifications that WERE actually verified by experiment (I can dig out the paper from here at CCG proving that). Those original simplifications were by Hottel, Leckner and another I can’t remember but the important thing being they are log-log not log. This is the Eggert issue I bang on about from time to time:-

      http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/eggert-co2.png

      >”Other than that, the other DLR fluxes are from water vapour, I presume?”

      And clouds, and other GHGs, natural and anthropogenic. WV and clouds (“all sky”) being the larger components by far and cloudiness levels are the major determinant of dimming/brightening. Slayers say some specific instruments are just detecting warm air masses but I’m not convinced (yet).

      The thing is, CO2 is a steadily rising curve but DLR generally alternates positive-negative each succeeding decade and not necessarily in-sync regionally so how is there a relationship?

      There’s a factor (at The Hockey Schtick somewhere) that Hansen came up with to reduce 5.35 ln(C/Co) for forcing at the surface (divide by 3.7 or something). Gets silly when you do that though.

    • Magoo on 21/03/2013 at 3:47 pm said:

      ‘Funneling’ is term associated with Tardising. The effect can be seen in action here:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAcP0g-JeJA

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 4:03 pm said:

      EVALUATION OF EMISSIVITY CORRELATIONS FOR H20-C02-N2/AIR MIXTURES AND COUPLING WITH SOLUTION METHODS OF THE RADIATIVE TRANSFER EQUATION

      N. Lallemant*, A. Sayret and R. Weber
      1996

      http://www.ewp.rpi.edu/hartford/users/papers/engr/ernesto/brazw/Project/Other/Research/Soot/Lallemant_EmissivityCorrelations.pdf

      3. CORRELATIONS FOR PREDICTING THE TOTAL EMISSIVITY AND ABSORPTIVITY OF COMBUSTION GASES

      3.2. Polynomial Approximations

      The two most well-known and general total emissivity correlations using polynomials are those developed by L.eckne2 and Modak.3 Prior to these publications, Hadvig’ derived polynomial expressions to calculate the total emissivity of HzO-CO2 gas mixtures for pW/pC = 1 and pW/pC = 2. However, in view of the limited range of applicability of this model, it is excluded from the assessment in Section 4.

      4. ASSESSMENT OF THE ACCURACY OF SEVERAL TOTAL EMISSIVITY CORRELATIONS (HOMOGENOUS CALCULATIONS)
      4.1. Generalities
      In this section, the exponential wide band model (EWBM)25,26 is used to provide benchmark data to validate the total emissivity models developed by Johnson6 Leckner,2 Taylor and Foster,’ Modak,3 Smith et a1.,13 Coppale and Vervish14 and Steward and Kocaefe” (see Table 2).

      https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/un/ipcc-science/#comment-145449

    • Magoo on 21/03/2013 at 1:53 pm said:

      Aha! I knew I was onto something there.

  2. Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 5:35 pm said:

    Been trying to find a recent observational deep convection paper or lecture that might give us a lead on what the SkS “funneling” processes actually are in the real world, came up with this:-

    OPEN-OCEAN CONVECTION: OBSERVATIONS, THEORY, AND MODELS

    http://www.math.nyu.edu/caos_teaching/ocean_dynamics/reading/marshall_schott99.pdf

    1.1. Background and Scope
    The strong vertical density gradients of the thermocline
    of the ocean inhibit the vertical exchange of fluid
    and fluid properties between the surface and the abyss,
    insulating the deep ocean from variations in surface
    meteorology. However, in a few special regions (see
    Figure 1) characterized by weak stratification and, in
    winter, exposed to intense buoyancy loss to the atmosphere,
    violent and deep-reaching convection mixes surface
    waters to great depth, setting and maintaining the
    properties of the abyss. This paper reviews observational,
    modeling, laboratory, and theoretical studies that
    have elucidated the physics of the convective process
    and its effect on its larger-scale environment

    Figure 1. The major deep convection sites of the North Atlantic sector: the Labrador Sea (box a), the Greenland Sea (box b), and the western Mediterranean (box c). Detailed descriptions and discussions of the water mass transformation process occurring in the three “boxes” are reviewed here. To indicate the preconditioned state of early winter, the potential density at a depth of 100 m is shown for November from the climatological data of Levitus et al. [1994b] and Levitus and Boyer [1994]. Deep-reaching convection has been observed in the shaded regions.

    + + +

    Haven’t read it yet to see how much heat is actually sequestered or for how long the phenomenon lasts. Doesn’t seem to be a major ocean-wide vertical heat transport mechanism, the locations being relatively tiny. Presumably there’s similarly “a few special regions” in the Pacific but whether they are of the same magnitude and location as Meehl’s study is another matter.

    I did come across a University lecture that seems to corroborate the “magic” apparently being used to lead students astray (water sliding sideways rather than down vertically), see page 17:-

    http://atoc.colorado.edu/~dcn/ATOC1060/Members/Lectures/18_thermohaline.pdf

  3. So Myhre, G., E.J. Highwood, K. Shine and F. Stordal, 1998. New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases. Geophys Res Letters 25 (14) 2715-2718

    appears to be the definite (?) paper on the forcing parameters

    Climate sensitivity is a separate issue of course, which is the delta T for a given increase in forcing (from whatever source)

    • by which I mean, these are the starting points that the “consensus” is built upon

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 9:01 pm said:

      Yes, definitely what the consensus is built on, after a bit of tweaking.

      I think the issue though is, given the LBL results, what is the rationale for selection of that particular representative expression (irrespective of the evolution of it)? Eggert’s critique is here:-

      An Unsettling Look at the Settled Science of Global Warming
      Part 1: Scientific Discussion
      John Eggert P. Eng.

      http://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/agw-an-alternate-look-part-1-details-c.pdf

      Mosh says “this formula is well established by experiment” (or similar) but people did the establishing – not the (LBL) experiment. N. Lallemant, A. Sayret and R. Weber (1996) up-thread verified (established) some representative expressions too so I suppose it’s them against Myhre, G., E.J. Highwood, K. Shine and F. Stordal, (1998), combustion engineering vs climate science.

      I might be wrong but just intuitively the fact that the IPCC expression is a straight line on a log-log graph and the Eggert expressions are more nuanced curves indicates to me that the selection of combustion engineering’s representative expressions had a finer resolution (a more careful rationale). Keeping in mind too that the combustion engineering curves are applied to a far greater range of temperatures than climate science will ever deal with and that the application of them is critical immediately a process is fired so their representations are tested continually all over the world.

      But the climate science expression may even be adequate if say the solar forcing is represented realistically according to the luminosity downturn underway (CMIP5 had Grand Max levels out to 2100) and CO2 levels eventually stabilizing or even falling as a result of cooler oceans in a few decades. All moot then of course.

    • Nick on 21/03/2013 at 10:54 pm said:

      Except that the combustion engineering curves don’t go below 0C. Since most of the atmosphere is cooler than this I’m surprised that you and Eggert think they are appropriate.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 11:20 pm said:

      Eggert:-

      “A review of Leckner’s curves shows that in the range of temperatures of the atmosphere (293K to 216K) a single temperature will suffice for estimating emissivity. The temperature chosen was 273K. Note that the area below 273K is a projection beyond Leckner’s curves and may be in error.”

      Most of the forcing occurs near the surface Nick (Nichol08). That’s within 9 C at 2km:-

      http://www.real-science.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/temperature-profile-troposphere.png

      For what range of temperature is the IPCC’s 5.35 ln(C/Co) valid for Nick (citation and quote please)?

      You seem to be saying that what is a curve at O C on a log-log graph becomes a straight line at -1 C. What is the rationale for this?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 11:27 pm said:

      within 13/14/15 C at surface to 0 C at 2km should be

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 11:53 pm said:

      In other words, selection of 273K is a curve typical of 2 km altitude. That seems reasonable to me given the troposphere ranges in thickness from 8km at the poles to 16km over the equator but that CO2 forcing is greatest in the lower troposphere. Perhaps 286K would better represent the strongest forcing but you’re arguing for a figure less than 273K?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 22/03/2013 at 8:31 am said:

      O C corresponds to altitudes about 1.5 km polar, 4 km mid-latitude and 5.5 km in this graph:-

      http://www.geography.hunter.cuny.edu/~tbw/wc.notes/1.atmosphere/tropopause.height.differences.jpg

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/03/2013 at 7:53 pm said:

      Definitive for use as a simplified approximation for IPCC methodology – yes that would be it.

      Models have different implementations though from what I can gather. For example, NCAR’s CAM uses an out-sourced radiative transfer module (RTM) that was extensively verified and validated against observations and LBL calcs. The models are spun up with the historical GHG levels (Law Dome – Mauna Loa for CO2) to 2000 or so. There’s some latitude as to how much of the LD-ML series to use. Then the RCP concentration scenarios take over with specified levels for each year and each scenario when the simulation is run.

      Not sure though if those increasing RCP concentrations are then the input for that specific 5.35 ln(C/Co) formula. More likely the RTM has a massive look-up table or something that may even correspond to curves closer to Eggert’s than 5.35 ln(C/Co) for all I know.

      I might be wrong about the model aspect because it’s been a while since I’ve had my head in it but I don’t recall actually finding a model formula sheet that actually documents use of that formula in particular. It might be for Hansen’s GISS ModelE. Mosher would know that having trawled through the entire code. I got hold of the ModelE formula sheet but couldn’t see it – difficult because the symbols didn’t come across the internet. Can’t load the page at the moment but it was here:-

      http://aom.giss.nasa.gov/DOC4X3/ATMOC4X3.TXT

      The reason I’m unclear is that CAM has a sliding scale so that parameter settings can be “ramped” by %. That indicates to me that the forcing formula (whatever it is) is modified to facilitate each “ramping” level (in the above that would only be the “5.35ln” factor). Someone like Ed Hawkins might be able to shed some light on this. I never got around to asking anyone at NCAR but it wouldn’t be that difficult to contact someone. I lost interest after discovering that the V&V’d RTM seemed to get overridden by the non-V&V’d CAM it was embedded in.

      I’m now more interested in the Russian Academy of Science’s INM-CM4 given it actually mimics 21st century temperature. The only point-of-difference that I’ve found so far is that it has positive all-sky OLR sensitivity i.e. (I think) as temperature rises it releases more OLR to space not less, the dozen or so others in the comparison I saw had negative OLR sensitivity, Figure 2a here:-

      Stephens et al (2012) – ‘An Update on Earth’s energy balance in light of the latest global observations’

      https://www.dropbox.com/s/8gkbto14cy8ip2y/ngeo1580.pdf

      I’m inclined to think that some form of ramping might be involved too given the RAS institutional position that CO2 is not a major climate driver. INM-CM4 is the blue line just above UAH here:-

      http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/clip_image0042.jpg

  4. Richard C (NZ) on 23/03/2013 at 8:56 am said:

    Via email feed:-

    Author: Joanne Nova
    Comment:
    Mrs Nice, who is “we”? (Who are you? Still not confident enough to name yourself? Sorry to hear that.)

    Sure look, you might be right, lets use your “colder water at the bottom” logic. CO2 at 10,000m above the Earth is at what — minus 60C? And your theory is that it’s more likely to be heating the ocean from 700m – 2000m down (but not the layer above that). Right? Me, I’m thinking of hydrothermal vents at 400C (average depth 2100m), not to mention black smokers, chimneys, warm diffusing undersea ridges, and I wonder if they increased their activity by 0.01% whether they might affect the water directly around them?

    Good luck with your theory.

    See all comments on this post here:
    http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/man-made-global-warming-disproved/#comments

    • Richard C (NZ) on 23/03/2013 at 9:57 am said:

      Author: Nice One
      Comment:

      Mrs Nice, who is “we”? (Who are you? Still not confident enough to name yourself? Sorry to hear that.)

      Yeah, I’m not really wanting the attention of the type of men you attract on this forum. Thanks for understanding. You’re such a sweetie!

      CO2 at 10,000m above the Earth is at what – minus 60C? And your theory is that it’s more likely to be heating the ocean from 700m – 2000m down (but not the layer above that). Right?

      No I don’t suggest that top layer of the atmosphere is solely responsible for the warming. But the blanket of GHGs that is dispersed throughout the atmosphere does. Let me quote yourself:

      The point is that YES, obviously in the real world, blankets keep us warm. Pink batts “lift the temperature of your home in cold weather”. They don’t do it by supplying energy, they do it by blocking energy loss. The cooler item is not supplying a single new joule of energy, but there another mechanism of increasing an objects temperature. It’s called insulation. It’s a reality we all know and use every single day. Why deny it?

      Why deny it indeed! The trapping of heat by GHG is not really the point of controversy with AGW. As you know, climate sensitivity is the real area of uncertainty.

      There are several mechanisms for heat transfer in water and I’ve read no science to suggest that magically stops at the 700 meter mark.

      Me, I’m thinking of hydrothermal vents at 400C (average depth 2100m), not to mention black smokers, chimneys, warm diffusing undersea ridges, and I wonder if they increased their activity by 0.01% whether they might affect the water directly around them?

      I absolutely agree 100% that they will affect the water directly around them, but I very much doubt they affect. That’s vastly different to warming the entire ocean. Do you have any science showing:
      – why surface warming would magically stop at 700 meters.
      – evidence for increased activity of the vents? (a true skeptic might wonder has it decreased?)
      – why it’s occurring now, by coincidence, with increased GHG?
      – how the heat is being transferred thousands of kilometres from the source in all directions.
      – and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the maths to show how an increase in temperature of the vents (a tiny percentage of the ocean floor), converts to the Joules required to warm the mass of the 700-2000 meter layers of water GLOBALLY.

      Please answer these questions with science, not speculation.

      But what would I know?

      Exactly my point! As I’ve pointed out, there’s much you have no told us and I have good reason to believe it’s because you don’t know.

      Not knowing/understanding how heat got to below 700 meters is NOT good reason for ignoring it. That’s not good scientific practice, but then we know you don’t actually practice science. 😉

      Best of luck with your theory.

      AGW is not my theory. I accept the data and experts that are showing us how the oceans are warming. Whenever I encounter a “so called sceptical” argument – it always turns out to be based on some web blogger science rather than from the expert advice. Such is the case now with your idea of hydrothermal vents causing the warming. There is no evidence to support your case.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 23/03/2013 at 10:28 am said:

      Replying to Nice one, Popeye links to this article:-

      ‘DIY ocean heating’ by Mark Imisides, December 7, 2009

      Scarcely a day goes by without us being warned of coastal inundation by rising seas due to global warming.

      Carbon dioxide, we are told, traps heat that has been irradiated by the oceans, and this warms the oceans and melts the polar ice caps. While this seems a plausible proposition at first glance, when one actually examines it closely a major flaw emerges.

      In a nutshell, water takes a lot of energy to heat up, and air doesn’t contain much. In fact, on a volume/volume basis, the ratio of heat capacities is about 3300 to 1. This means that to heat 1 litre of water by 1˚C it would take 3300 litres of air that was 2˚C hotter, or 1 litre of air that was about 3300˚C hotter!

      This shouldn’t surprise anyone. If you ran a cold bath and then tried to heat it by putting a dozen heaters in the room, does anyone believe that the water would ever get hot?

      The problem gets even stickier when you consider the size of the ocean. Basically, there is too much water and not enough air.

      The ocean contains a colossal 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres of water! To heat it, even by a small amount, takes a staggering amount of energy. To heat it by a mere 1˚C, for example, an astonishing 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy are required.

      Let’s put this amount of energy in perspective. If we all turned off all our appliances and went and lived in caves, and then devoted every coal, nuclear, gas, hydro, wind and solar power plant to just heating the ocean, it would take a breathtaking 32,000 years to heat the ocean by just this 1˚C!

      In short, our influence on our climate, even if we really tried, is miniscule!

      So it makes sense to ask the question – if the ocean were to be heated by greenhouse warming of the atmosphere, how hot would the air have to get? If the entire ocean is heated by 1˚C, how much would the air have to be heated by to contain enough heat to do the job?

      Well, unfortunately for every ton of water there is only a kilogram of air. Taking into account the relative heat capacities and absolute masses, we arrive at the astonishing figure of 4,000˚C.

      That is, if we wanted to heat the entire ocean by 1˚C, and wanted to do it by heating the air above it, we’d have to heat the air to about 4,000˚C hotter than the water.

      And another problem is that air sits on top of water – how would hot air heat deep into the ocean? Even if the surface warmed, the warm water would just sit on top of the cold water.

      Thus, if the ocean were being heated by greenhouse heating of the air, we would see a system with enormous thermal lag – for the ocean to be only slightly warmer, the land would have to be substantially warmer, and the air much, much warmer (to create the temperature gradient that would facilitate the transfer of heat from the air to the water).

      Therefore any measurable warmth in the ocean would be accompanied by a huge and obvious anomaly in the air temperatures, and we would not have to bother looking at ocean temperatures at all.

      Continues>>>>>>>>

      Mark Imisides is an industrial chemist working in the private sector.

      http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/12/diy-ocean-heating

    • Richard C (NZ) on 23/03/2013 at 11:02 am said:

      Nice one’s reply to this article:-

      @Popeye, it’s not me measuring the heat, it’s the fleet of Argo buoys.

      Off the cuff I can spot several problems with your blogger science.
      – the heat goes in during the day and the heat flow from ocean to air is restricted by increased thermal layer of atmosphere redirecting the energy back down. And yes his dozens of heaters WILL result in water temperature that would higher than without heaters.
      – His calcs regardin “The ocean contains a colossal 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres of water!” are incorrect because we’re not suggesting that the entire ocean has increased by that much.
      – His “Let’s put this amount of energy in perspective.” comment seems pretty stupid given it’s not the energy from our homes heating the oceans, its sun.
      – His comment “Well, unfortunately for every ton of water there is only a kilogram of air. “. So what, we’re not extracting the energy from the air, the additional energy that would otherwise go back out to space is being redirected downwards by GHG.

      I’ll stop there because frankly thats enough wasting time on shit science.

      Come back when you have something credible to offer.

      [“redirects” indicates that Nice one thinks energy that has left the ocean (uninhibited by the Minnet/Real Climate/Skeptical Science/Rob Painting enhanced cool-skin insulation effect) is going back in via a DLR mechanism to accumulate there somehow even though nothing stopped it leaving in the first place or that she subscribes to the insulation effect in which case how did it leave in the first place?]

    • Richard C (NZ) on 23/03/2013 at 12:00 pm said:

      Original comment by Nice one is here (thread header #87):-

      http://joannenova.com.au/2012/10/man-made-global-warming-disproved/#comment-1238234

    • Richard C (NZ) on 23/03/2013 at 2:49 pm said:

      I’ve joined in but won’t copy any more of the JoNova thread to here.

      [Thanks Richard. – RT]

  5. Off topic, but has anyone noticed any references to Earth Hour recently? It seems to have gone off the radar a bit

  6. Rob Painting@March 21, 2013 at 8:00 pm,

    Thanks for your comments. I appreciate the trouble you went to. My apologies for the slow reply, but I had to research some things to understand them, and I’m also busy with other things. I believe you haven’t answered my questions and I disagree with some of your assertions. First, though, let me clear up a small misunderstanding. I said:

    ”We’re being driven to despair by talk of rising seas which are actually deeply doubtful.”

    You replied:

    “Global sea level has risen by around 20 mm in less than two years. See the AVISO website. Much of this is due to the natural exchange of water between the land and ocean (ENSO-related). Nevertheless, it shows your comment to be a gross departure from reality.”

    I should have said “future” rising seas – my mistake. Still, you employ blatant cherry-picking to refute my statement. The AVISO graph you cite http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Serie_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_GIA_Adjust.gif shows mean sea level falling maybe 9 mm before rising the 20 mm you claim (as Richard C refers to in comments above). Your claim that this is an observation of rising sea levels is deceptive, because you imply a comparison with the long-term mean of about 1.6–1.8 mm/yr for most of the twentieth century. Which makes this rise over the last two years look enormous and to make it worse you imply the rate will continue, which is about as far from scientific neutrality as dishonesty could be.

    The graph http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2013_rel2/sl_ns_global.png from the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado shows a linear trend over the last 20 years of 3.2 ± 0.4 mm/yr. No acceleration. A pronounced variability, with data points regularly ranging up to 10 mm above and below the linear trend. There’s nothing too remarkable about the latest “rise” you cite, as anyone can see that it’s immediately preceded by a large fall. It’s striking that you give no reason to support your insinuation that such an unusually high rate is likely to continue.

    My statement, which you describe as a “gross departure from reality” was quite fair, even though it omitted the word “future.” I simply expressed doubt about the magnitude of sea level rise.

    You ignore my questions, both overt and implied. I said: “The data do not demonstrate strong warming for the whole ocean” (because the data are sparse). You must explain why we should extrapolate it across the whole ocean.

    You said: “The continued rise of global sea level is ample supporting evidence that [strong warming] is indeed occurring.” I replied: “No, it isn’t; it’s been rising monotonously for about 6000 years from natural causes.” This was a mistake. You respond to the “natural causes” part below, which is fine, and I go on from there.

    But I should have said that warming by itself is no kind of evidence that humans are responsible for the warming. Nor is it acceptable simply to say that you can’t think of anything else that might cause warming. So you should explain why the warming has occurred — not to mention clarify the period of the warming you say has occurred!

    You mentioned a “pattern” for the warming and I asked what you mean. You have no answer. Finally, I asked for an explanation of the cool-skin effect, which is too hard for you. You respond to just two comments.

    You said:

    “I understand your friend’s desire to remain anonymous. Who’d really want to be publicly associated with such nonsense?”

    Nonsense? But you haven’t criticised a single thing he said! You obviously accept it all. I didn’t name him simply because I didn’t check with him before publishing his comments. After your provocative, nasty remarks, I probably never will ask him, just to annoy you. You said:

    “This is normally the point where a delusional person claims the actual sea level experts are either incompetent, or malfeasant. Why? Because they have no scientific argument to make.”

    This is merely insulting, Rob. Unimpressive, unpersuasive and illogical; it’s a sign of either anger or small-mindedness. You said:

    “Sorry Richard, the magical natural causes claim just doesn’t cut the mustard. That’s like saying ‘because!’.”

    Wow. You claim the last 6000 years’ sea level rise can’t be explained by natural causes? What was it then — our camp fires?

    “And it’s wrong anyway.”

    Now you tell me sea levels weren’t rising? Incredible.

    “You’re just further illustrating your ignorance here.”

    I’m the first to admit my ignorance, Rob, no problem with that. But providing information is more useful than just telling me I’m ignorant. Why else do we discuss things except to remove ignorance — either in ourselves or in others? Except that I wasn’t wrong, you were — to claim there was no sea level rise during the mid to late Holocene. This graph https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Holocene_Sea_Level.png, widely cited, shows a constant rise. It’s similar to one you cite yourself, from Peltier et al. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Sea-Level-Isnt-Level-Ocean-Siphoning-Levered-Continents-and-the-Holocene-Sea-Level-Highstand.html — although the Peltier curves are modelled output, not observations, and show mostly a decline since the first highstand at about 7000 YBP. Note that on the Wikimedia graph there’s just one period of some decline, from about 4000 to 3000 YBP. Is the Peltier paper the sole authority for your claim of no sea level rise in 6000 years?

    You said:

    “The Holocene sea level highstand occurred thousands of years ago because sea level was static. With ocean volume no longer increasing, the subsidence of areas uplifted by the presence of the Great Northern Hemisphere ice sheets, and continental levering, siphoned water away from a broad swathe of ocean centred on the equator. This sea level fall created the stable platforms we call coral atolls. This trend reversed after the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Humans warmed the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and the oceans warmed too – increasing in volume through thermal expansion and the melting of land-based ice.”

    Very interesting, thank you — although not all relevant. That sea level fall created coral atolls? Hardly — some are at least 180,000 years old, and other (extinct) atolls are dated at 50 million years old. “The highstand occurred because sea level was static” — yes, that’s what highstand or lowstand means, actually: sea level stasis.

    By “this trend” presumably you mean falling sea levels. This is the reverse of my understanding, which is that the sea has been rising since the last ice age, at first relatively precipitously, then more gently for the last 8000 years. You clearly disagree with this graph of post-glacial sea level from Wikipedia https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png? Of course, you’re allowed to disagree, Rob, but I have to ask why.

    “Humans warmed the atmosphere… and the oceans warmed too.” A non sequitur. Why did the oceans warm? You don’t say.

    “This trend reversed after the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.” How long after the dawn? You don’t say.

    “through the burning of fossil fuels.” By what mechanism? You don’t say. The IPCC cannot prove this occurs at a significant magnitude, so how do you?

    You said:

    “Of course this is your blog Richard, and you and you locals are entitled to believe as many impossible things as you please.”

    Thank you. Generous. We would expect you to explain why they are impossible but you haven’t even attempted it.

    “It just comes across as silly when you criticize actual experts,”

    When “actual experts” make wrong or nonsensical assertions they invite criticism. Like implying that sea levels will keep rising at 10 mm per year.

    “all you have to offer up is a hodge-podge of contradictory ideas which are effectively refuted by the observations.”

    You seem to be talking about someone else. Now, how does the “cool-skin” effect work, exactly? Especially, how does it interrupt in a statistically significant way the upward movement of energy from the ocean?

    • Mike Jowsey on 23/03/2013 at 6:46 pm said:

      Bravo. We await Rob Painting’s response with bated breath. Failing that, he is completely undone.

    • That’s right. Thanks, Mike.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 23/03/2013 at 8:55 pm said:

      Wow, comprehensive riposte and shameful to elbow in on it but the solar nerd in me saw this from you RT:-

      >”Nor is it acceptable simply to say that you can’t think of anything else that might cause warming”

      And this from Rob:-

      “This trend reversed after the dawn of the Industrial Revolution through the burning of fossil fuels.”

      I’ll assume that Rob means that the reversal coincided with the dawn of the industrial revolution (transition 1760 to some time between 1820 and 1840) and there was a continuous positive sea level trend “after” the reversal. I disagree entirely, the sea level reversal occurred prior to that at about 1600 to 1700:-

      http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/graphs/mwp/loehle-midieval-midieval-warming-period.gif

      The sea level reversal coincides with solar reversal at that time (Maunder Minimum),

      http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/its-the-sun-stupid-the-maunder-minimum.jpg

      Sea level 1700 – 1930 (rise-fall-rise) coincides with solar output over that period.

      At 1930 there was an inflexion in the sea level trend:-

      http://www.aip.org/history/climate/images/sea-level.jpg

      From John A. Church and Neil J. White, “20th Century Acceleration in Global Sea-Level Rise.” Geophysical Research Letters 33 (2006): L01602 [doi:10.1029/2005GL024826.]

      The 1930 sea level inflexion (not strictly an “acceleration” in physics terms) coincides with the onset of the modern solar Grand Maximum.

      So it’s not hard to think of some”thing” that “might cause [ocean] warming” and contribute significantly to sea level rise. Not only that but that some”thing” explains the 17th century sea level reversal far better than fossil fuel burning and also explains subsequent 18th, 19th and early 20th century sea level fluctuation better than fossil fuel burning does too.

      Most importantly that some”thing” explains the sea level “acceleration” that occurred post 1930 inflexion AND the lagged GHG “acceleration” at 1950:-

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/CO2_Emissions_Levels_Knorr.gif

      Game, set, and match I call it, and the winner is solar change.

    • I’m glad you’re on our side, Richard.

    • Me too, Richard. Me too.

    • Mike Jowsey on 23/03/2013 at 10:37 pm said:

      Yes, Ken, thanks (again) for the sniping troll-drive-by without any substance whatsoever. We get that you think this is an echo chamber for people on “our side”. Yes, thank you for pointing out that we should not be seen to agree with each other, but really Ken – if my parachute is as open as you would apparently exhort it to be, then I would be open to scientifically based rebuttal rather than troll drive-bys. Do you have any such scientific rebuttal, which we might rebut?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 23/03/2013 at 10:39 pm said:

      Dang, the Loehle graph is temperature not sea level, the graph I had in mind is this:-

      http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/clip_image002_thumb.gif?w=600&h=393

      Vividly shows the early 1700s sea level reversal and 1934 inflexion.

      From ‘Back-testing the Solar – Sea Level Relationship’ – by David Archibald

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/22/back-testing-the-solar-sea-level-relationship/

      Quoting:-

      “This is a little bit amusing. In February, I had a post on the solar – sea level relationship which quantified the sea level fall to come to the end of Solar Cycle 25:

      [links]

      The site “Skeptical Science” has to date carried two pieces in response to that February post:

      [links]

      My February post was 624 words and 6 figures. The Skeptical Science responses to date total 3,446 words and 17 figures. The relationship I found between solar activity and sea level is 0.045 mm per unit of annual sunspot number. The threshold between rising and falling seal level is a sunspot amplitude of 40. Below 40, sea level falls. Above that, it rises.

      So let’s apply that relationship to the know sunspot record back to the beginning of the Maunder Minimum and see what it tells us. This is the result:”

      Continues>>>>>>>>>>

    • Richard C (NZ) on 23/03/2013 at 11:00 pm said:

      The Archibald SL reconstruction derived from the solar correlation isn’t that great 1700 – 1930 compared to other SL reconstructions I have to admit.

      Archibald reconstruction,

      http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/clip_image006_thumb1.jpg?w=836&h=629

      SL reconstruction back to 1700 from Jevrejeva et al

      http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/clip_image006_thumb1.jpg?w=836&h=629

      Assuming Jevrejeva et al is the better that is.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 24/03/2013 at 12:15 am said:

      Dang again, wrong link to the Archibald SL reconst. Should be;-

      http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/clip_image002_thumb.gif?w=600&h=393

      SL reconstruction back to 1700 from Jevrejeva et al

      http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/clip_image006_thumb1.jpg?w=836&h=629

      SL reconstruction back to AD 200 from Jevrejeva et al

      http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c015433ac485d970c-pi

      Archibald’s reconstruction actually compares much better to the Jevrejeva et al AD 200 reconst than the two Jevrejeva et al graphs do to each other, and the AD 200 reconst shows the SL reversal began in the early part of 1700 at the same time as Archibald’s does. Definitely prior to Rob Painting’s (I assume) 1760 – 1820 “dawn” of the industrial period from which I would expect some time lag to SL response if that was the SL driver.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 24/03/2013 at 1:41 am said:

      The source of the AD 200 graph is Grinsted; Moberg et al 2005 and Jevrejeva 2006, obtained from a pdf at curryja.files (see source http link under the graph).

      The AD 200 reconst effectively kills the notion that fossil fuel emissions drive sea levels because it shows Medieval Warm Period sea levels much higher than present and both much higher than 1750. Whereas, CO2 levels were little changed MWP – MM (1200 – 1750) relative to present in the Law Dome CO2 series:-

      http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/images/lawdome.GIF

      But MWP TSI was much higher than MM:-

      http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/images/l3_nearabiansea.gif

      AD 200 SL again:-

      http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c015433ac485d970c-pi

      Solar explains sea level maximum and minimum over the last 1000 years but CO2 doesn’t.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 24/03/2013 at 9:50 am said:

      >”The source of the AD 200 graph is Grinsted; Moberg et al 2005 and Jevrejeva 2006, obtained from a pdf at curryja.files (see source http link under the graph).”

      ‘Historic variations in Sea Levels Part 1- from the Holocene to Romans’

      [by Judith Curry (???)]

      Introduction
      Due to a printing error, the information that puts modern sea level rise into its historic context was accidentally omitted from Chapter Five of AR4. The missing section-reproduced below should have been included in appendix 5a here;

      http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter5.pdf

      Alright a confession. This is the section that SHOULD have been there but wasn’t, so I have helpfully written it on the IPCC’s behalf. ‘Historic variations in sea levels’ is in three parts. Part 1 covers the Holocene to Roman times. Part 2 traces sea level changes to the Medieval Warm Period. Part 3-the modern age from 1700 to today.

      http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/document.pdf

      Can’t find Part 2 but it doesn’t matter. The AD 200 compilation is on page 24 and the source is linked:-

      ‘Sea level rise: what has happened so far’

      http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1240

      Figure 1. Global sea level from 200 A.D. to 2000, as reconstructed from proxy records of sea level by Moberg et al. 2005. The thick black line is reconstructed sea level using tide gauges (Jevrejeva, 2006). The lightest gray shading shows the 5 – 95% uncertainty in the estimates, and the medium gray shading denotes the one standard deviation error estimate. The highest global sea level of the past 110,000 years likely occurred during the Medieval Warm Period of 1100 – 1200 A.D., when warm conditions similar to today’s climate caused the sea level to rise 5 – 8″ (12 – 21 cm) higher than present.

      Image credit: Grinsted, A., J.C. Moore, and S. Jevrejeva, 2009, “Reconstructing sea level from paleo and projected temperatures 200 to 2100 AD”, Climate Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s00382-008-0507-2, 06 January 2009.

      http://icons.wunderground.com/data/climate_images/sealevel200-2000.png

      “Reconstructing sea level from paleo and projected temperatures 200 to 2100 AD”

      Grinsted, A., J.C. Moore, and S. Jevrejeva (2009)

      http://www.broward.org/NaturalResources/ClimateChange/Documents/grinstedclimdyn09sealevel200to2100ad.pdf

      See Figure 7, page 8

  7. I didn’t realise there had been such variation in sea level since the last glaciation. My impression previously had been of a fairly constant rise — varying, but rising. I heard not a whisper from any of the scientists I’ve read of any substantial decline. I should apologise to Rob Painting for not believing him, for sure.

    But if you don’t know a thing, and then you find out about it, you’re probably better off.

    So thanks again, Richard.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 24/03/2013 at 1:54 pm said:

      That Moberg/Grinsted reconstruction is probably not universally accepted RT (I don’t think the IPCC would have anything to do with it). I see in the Judith Curry (?) pdf this (quoting):-

      In private email correspondence that he has given me permission to reproduce, Dr Simon
      Holgate of Proudman Oceanographic Observatory refers to sea level reconstructions back to
      200AD-which covers several warm periods such as the Roman Optimum and MWP- and
      remarks;

      “It seems plausible that sea level would be higher in a warmer period (how warm and
      how much of the Earth was actually affected by the warm period is debated) but it isn’t
      clear how sea level would respond. So maybe it was higher than today, or maybe it
      wasn’t. We have no observations and we just don’t know. For me, there is far too much
      uncertainty in the ‘reconstructions’ of sea level for them to be very useful…Overall I
      would say that the evidence from the (Roman) fish tanks etc suggests that there has
      been no real change in the average height of sea level over the last c. 2000 years prior to
      the mid to late 1800s.”

      + + +

      Given that quote, it is even more bizarre that the guys that do compile a reconstruction with SL much higher in the MWP than present (Grinsted et al, 2009) and obviously no correlation with CO2 whatsoever (but consistent with solar), then turn around and wildly extrapolate “from IPCC temperature scenarios” (see Abstract) the 20th century out to 2100 in their Fig 7, page 8:-

      http://www.broward.org/NaturalResources/ClimateChange/Documents/grinstedclimdyn09sealevel200to2100ad.pdf

      I’m astounded by their completely irrational rationale. Archibald makes much more sense even though his SL peak was over a decade too early. We should see over the next year if the solar scenario is the correct one in terms of SSL now that solar activity is heading down in 2013 (so far). It’s already right for SST and OHC.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 24/03/2013 at 2:09 pm said:

      >”My impression previously had been of a fairly constant rise — varying, but rising”

      And you were right. The last 2000 years is just the “varying” bit at the end of this post-glacial series:-

      http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png

      The Moberg/Grinsted reconstruction is within 0 – 2000 years ago – barely a ripple on the top of a tidal wave.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 24/03/2013 at 3:00 pm said:

      The “varying” over the last 2000 years (and similar for the last 8000 years) is +/- 0.2 metres with at most a 2 – 5 metre rise over 6000 – 8000 years, The post-glacial rise is 120 metres:-

      http://icons.wunderground.com/data/climate_images/sealevel200-2000.png

      http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png

    • Richard C (NZ) on 24/03/2013 at 3:45 pm said:

      Here’s a better graphic for the last 8000 years:-

      http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/holocene_sea_level.png

      More “varying” than Moberg/Grinsted. Not really a steady rise either from 7000 but a rise nevertheless.

  8. Richard C (NZ) on 25/03/2013 at 10:01 am said:

    Meaningless OHC study by Balmaseda, Trenberth and Källén because they don’t analyze ocean basins individually and wrt each other (and nothing we didn’t know anyway):-

    ‘Missing Energy Claimed to be Found’

    A paper just out in GRL by Balmaseda, Trenberth and Källén claims to have affirmed the location of the “missing energy” in the climate system — it’s (as suspected) in the deep ocean (the 300-2000 m layer, and especially below 700 m).

    http://davidappell.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/missing-energy-claimed-to-be-found.html

    “…it’s been on “haitus” during the last decade…”

    • Richard C (NZ) on 25/03/2013 at 10:18 am said:

      700-2000m OHC World gain last 7 yrs 1.967×10^22 J (Oct – Dec data)

      Atlantic 1×10^22 (50.8%)

      Pacific 0.47×10^22 (23.9%)

      Indian 0.497×10^22 (25.26%)

      Apparently the Skydragon is forcing more than twice as much heat below 700m in the Atlantic as he/she is in the larger Pacific. Odd really because the Skydragon appears to live near New Guinea and rarely ventures over to the Atlantic to breathe fire into the ocean – and he hasn’t been across to the eastern Pacific for the last 20 years:-

      http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/fileadmin/images/news/indic/msl/MSL_Map_MERGED_Global_IB_RWT_NoGIA_Adjust.gif

      Either that or there’s other phenomena to consider.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 26/03/2013 at 9:40 am said:

      Rob Painting is spruiking the Balmaseda paper at HT and Nuccitelli’s starry-eyed non-critique at SKS. Apparently, global warming has “accelerated”:-

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/new-research-confirms-global-warming-has-accelerated.html

      >”The slowed surface air warming over the past decade has lulled many people into a false and unwarranted sense of security”

      No, we just understand the cycles operating.

      >”So what’s causing this transfer of heat to the deeper ocean layers? The authors suggest that it is a result of changes in winds related to the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and more frequent La Niña events.”

      Hmmm….. So the least amount of heat has gone below 700m in the Pacific (the largest) over the last 7 yrs and the most (more than twice as much) has been in the Atlantic, but Pacific conditions explain the Atlantic situation. I’m not sure that I follow this.

      >”So the slowed warming at the surface is only temporary, and consistent with the ‘hiatus decades’ described by Meehl et al. (2011).”

      “slowed warming”? “hiatus”? Both the upper Pacific and Atlantic are cooling in the ARGO era, the upper Indian warming significantly (but only to 4Q2010/3Q2011), the aggregate at standstill last 4 yrs:-

      http://bobtisdale.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/19-argo-era-ohc-atl-ind-pac.png?w=960&h=623

      http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/images/OHCA_curve_2012.png

      >”Perhaps the most important result of this paper is the confirmation that while many people wrongly believe global warming has stalled over the past 10–15 years, in reality that period is “the most sustained warming trend” in the past half century. Global warming has not paused, it has accelerated.”

      The ocean warming is peaking (not “accelerating”) consistent with maximum planetary enthalpy occurring at the end of solar Grand Maximum and not because of a fire breathing Skydragon – unless the Skydragon has taken up residence in the Indian Ocean.

  9. Pingback: Climate contrarians/deniers are cherry picking again | Open Parachute

    • Richard C (NZ) on 25/03/2013 at 3:56 pm said:

      “Huge patches of warm air over the Arctic” ?

      Weather for Barrow, Alaska
      ‎Sun, Mon, Tue, ‎Wed
      ‎-18° ‎-24°, ‎-21° ‎-27°,-18° -26°,-16° ‎-22°

      Weather for Oymyakon, Siberia
      ‎Mon,Tue, ‎Wed,Thu
      -8° ‎-16°,-5° -20°,‎-6° ‎-24°, ‎-9° ‎-32°

    • Richard C (NZ) on 25/03/2013 at 4:53 pm said:

      I’ve asked Ken if he knows what an “anomaly” is.

    • Andy on 25/03/2013 at 5:16 pm said:

      Ken, maybe you should fly over to the UK and stand on a street corner in Yoorkshire or Scotland where e people are without power and cannot move became of the snow. Tell them they are dishonest liars.

      See how long it is before you are lynched.

  10. Nick on 27/03/2013 at 10:51 am said:

    Hi Richard C,
    Just wondering if you could comment a bit more on why you think the sun is causing the current accelerating global warming when Total Solar Irradiance is declining?

    Perhaps you could address why the correlation between TSI and temperature has broken down over the last 30 years or so.

    http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm

    Illustrates what I’m talking about.

    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/abstract

    Shows continued accelerating warming once ocean heat content to 2000m is considered.

    http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022/pdf/1748-9326_6_4_044022.pdf

    Demonstrates that the effect of TSI is minor and currently negative which is the opposite of what would be expected if your theory is correct.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 12:55 pm said:

      >”if you could comment a bit more on why you think the sun is causing the current accelerating global warming when Total Solar Irradiance is declining?”

      Certainly, but what “accelerating global warming”? Atmospheric temperature is at a standstill (no acceleration) primarily due to the negative phase in the 60 yr climate cycle and the small decline in solar output since bicentennial peak just prior to 1990, the effects of which are lagged 8 to 20 years due to planetary thermal inertia so were still contributing to ocean heat accumulation up to 2012 after which the bicentennial component is going over a cliff. Solar output since 1990 here:-

      http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/tsixsa_eng.jpg

      http://nextgrandminimum.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/figure-2-tsi-variations.png?w=640&h=475

      There’s been little relative change from the peak level i.e. although output declined slightly it was still at similar elevated levels to 1990 up until 2012. The significant solar output change however, occurred around 1920 – 1830:-

      http://www.infiniteunknown.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/its-the-sun-stupid-the-maunder-minimum.jpg

      That corresponds to the inflexion in sea level at the same time:-

      http://www.aip.org/history/climate/images/sea-level.jpg

      The GHG inflexion however, didn’t occur until 1950.

      The SkS graph is of one of the highly contentious TSI composites from different and disconnected satellite series, the SkS example being PMOD and an outlier from ACRIM and IRMB. It is also too highly smoothed to be of any use (compare to the contiguous solar output graphs above that show the detail).

      Balmaseda et al is only a study of aggregate OHC. They do not analyze basin-by-basin. If they had done that they would discover that the upper Pacific and Atlantic have been cooling in the satellite era and that more than twice as much heat has accumulated in the Indian ocean below 700m as has in the same layer of the Pacific over the last 7 yrs i.e. there’s been basin-to-basin heat transfer by the circulatory heat transport currents, primarily from Pacific to Indian but the upper Pacific is not being replenished by solar heating (or GHGs obviously).

      BTW, even Balmaseda et al show no rise in the upper ocean since 2004, even in the aggregate. And 0-2000m peaked in 1Q2012 consistent with maximum planetary enthalpy occurring at the end of the solar Grand Maximum 2012. It may go a little higher but there’s no driver now for much more. What you see below 300m is just lagged solar input (thermal inertia and circulation of the oceanic heat sink).

      >”Demonstrates that the effect of TSI is minor and currently negative”

      And also what is known at Skeptical Science as the “single study syndrome”. Foster and Rahmstorf are being proved wrong by by the climate with every month that passes now but all the metrics are consistent with the scenarios from the much wider scientific community (includes astrophysics BTW). And TSI is only one of a number of solar influences anyway, the total effect includes feedbacks and the process is now going into reverse from 2013 and for about the next 30 years. Foster and Rahmstorf are irrelevant now.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 1:31 pm said:

      Correction – “but all the metrics are consistent with the [solar] scenarios from the much wider scientific community (includes astrophysics BTW)”

    • Nick on 27/03/2013 at 1:54 pm said:

      Hi Richard C,

      1 – How do you determine that the lag between TSI and atmospheric temperatures is 8-20 years? I would have figured it to be in days or weeks
      2 – How is it that TSI is able to heat the oceans unevenly but AGW is not?
      3 – What feedbacks are associated with TSI and are they the same as those for AGW?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 3:03 pm said:

      1 – How do you determine that the lag between TSI and atmospheric temperatures is 8-20 years? I would have figured it to be in days or weeks

      See the planetary inertia calculation in Abdussamatov (2012), also Scafetta in one of his papers. You obviously don’t understand the oceanic heat sink at all Nick.

      2 – How is it that TSI is able to heat the oceans unevenly but AGW is not?

      I didn’t say either. Read again:-

      “Balmaseda et al is only a study of aggregate OHC. They do not analyze basin-by-basin. If they had done that they would discover that the upper Pacific and Atlantic have been cooling in the satellite era and that more than twice as much heat has accumulated in the Indian ocean below 700m as has in the same layer of the Pacific over the last 7 yrs i.e. there’s been basin-to-basin heat transfer by the circulatory heat transport currents, primarily from Pacific to Indian but the upper Pacific is not being replenished by solar heating (or GHGs obviously).”

      I’m a bit wrong here. 70% of TOTAL gain has gone to the upper Indian Ocean (explained largely by the transfer current from the Pacific). The data derived from NODC for below 700m for the last 7 yrs is here:-

      700-2000m OHC World gain last 7 yrs 1.967×10^22 J (Oct – Dec data)

      Atlantic 1×10^22 (50.8%)

      Pacific 0.47×10^22 (23.9%)

      Indian 0.497×10^22 (25.26%)

      None of that is solar or GHG related but simply internal ocean propagation i.e. entirely natural circulatory processes.

      3 – What feedbacks are associated with TSI and are they the same as those for AGW?

      Not just TSI but see Abdussamatov (2012). And no re AGW. Obviously because all the big money has gone into AGW there hasn’t been much investigation of the solar aspects but there will heightened interest from now on now that the bicentennial solar effect is kicking in. New stuff coming out all the time, this in Germany’s flagship newspaper DIE WELT:-

      Flagship Daily DIE WELT Stuns Germany: “Scientists Warn Of Ice Age”, Cites New Peer-Reviewed Russian Study

      http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/25/flagship-daily-die-welt-stuns-germany-scientists-warn-of-ice-age-cites-new-peer-reviewed-russian-study/

      Two Biogeochemists.

    • Nick on 27/03/2013 at 3:30 pm said:

      Hi Richard C,
      1 – you misunderstand the question. TSI peaked in the 80s, why did atmospheric temperatures continue to increase?

      2 – How do changes in circulation result in an increase in energy? It has to come from somewhere

      3 – Abdussamatov lists CO2 as one of the feedback effects that will amplify TSI changes. It appears that he agrees that increasing CO2 will have a warming effect

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 5:24 pm said:

      1.TSI peaked in the 80s, why did atmospheric temperatures continue to increase?

      TSI peaked late 80’s, atm temp hasn’t risen statistically significantly for 16 – 23 yrs or from 1990 – 1997 (depending on series). TSI was still at elevated levels close to peak up until 2012, continuing to pump energy into the ocean thereby increasing planetary enthalpy to maximum at around that time (2012). Think of boiling water in a pot, you don’t have to keep turning up the element, just turn it up and leave it. The ocean heats the atmosphere via lagged solar output by 8 – 20 yrs so atmospheric temperatures 1994 – 2006 were a result of 1986 peak solar output (very roughly). But don’t forget, the major influence on the inflexion from 80s/90s rise to 2000’s and present temperature standstill was the change from positive to negative phase of the 60 yr cycle, not TSI. The major TSI influence is only just kicking in 2013 with the plunge in the quasi-200 yr solar cycle.

      Don’t forget too that atmospheric temperature has been falling slightly (not statistically of course) since about 2002:-

      http://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/rss-land/from:2002/plot/rss-land/from:2002/trend/plot/gistemp-dts/from:2002/plot/gistemp/from:2002/trend

      Not much hope for Foster and Rahmstorf’s trajectory upwards from 2010 now. GISS numbers for February, are back down to 0.49C, from 0.60C in January. The average for 2012 was 0.56C. GISS map for winter temperatures, i.e. Dec – Feb. The map shows the anomalies against the 1981-2010 baseline.

      [see map at link below]]

      The line at the top of the map shows that there is an anomaly of 0.10C – in other words, the Dec 2012 – Feb 2013 temperature is a mere 0.10C higher than the 1981-2010 baseline. This during a winter when ENSO conditions have been neutral,

      http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/giss-figures-out-for-february/

      2 – How do changes in circulation result in an increase in energy? It has to come from somewhere

      As I explained elsewhere, solar input has not gone away, it’s just that it has not been at a level in the 21st century sufficient to maintain upper Pacific and Atlantic levels AFTER circulatory losses to the Indian and below 700m (not “changes” either BTW, just normal circulation and conductive propagation)

      3 – Abdussamatov lists CO2 as one of the feedback effects that will amplify TSI changes. It appears that he agrees that increasing CO2 will have a warming effect.

      It’s a feedback sure (CO2 outgassing from warmer oceans – not anthropogenic) but whether it amplifies TSI (a positive feedback) is another matter entirely and yet to be resolved conclusively. But remember that a feedback acts in both directions on the initial process. If Abdussamaov is right then now that the initial process is reversing (TSI declining), the CO2 (positive) feedback should amplify cooling i.e. CO2 levels start to stabilize or even decline over the next 30 yrs sometime, cooler oceans mean less outgassing and perhaps uptake instead, atmospheric temperatures decline faster than without the (positive) feedback.

      I very much doubt CO2 at levels above 200ppm is a warming or cooling amplifier of TSI rising or falling worth consideration. Water vapour (and hydrological cycle) would be the greater amplifier by far. I think Abdussamatove said something like that too.

    • Nick on 27/03/2013 at 2:06 pm said:

      Richard C,
      Can you also please confirm the source of your data for TSI from 1600. The scale appears wildly different from this:

      http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 2:34 pm said:

      >”Can you also please confirm the source of your data for TSI from 1600″

      Abdussamatov (2012) [Bicentennial Decrease Of The Total Solar Irradiance Leads To Unbalanced Thermal Budget Of The Earth And The Little Ice Age, APPLIED PHYSICS RESEARCH, 4(1):178-184]

      Head of the Russian half of the International Space Station BTW and focussed very much on solar luminosity as is their mission.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 4:15 pm said:

      >”The scale appears wildly different from this:http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm

      4.2 Variations in total solar irradiance

      Figure 21View Imagea presents all existing satellite measurements of TSI and it is clear that significant uncertainties remain related to the calibration of the instruments and their degradation over time. For example, data from the newest instrument, the Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) on the SORCE satellite, is giving values approximately 5 Wm–2 lower than other contemporaneous instruments which disagree among themselves by a few Wm–2. This uncertainty is a serious problem underlying current solar-climate research. The variation in TSI over the past two 11-year cycles is known to greater accuracy showing approximately 0.08% (∼ 1.1 Wm–2) peak-to-peak over the solar cycle.

      http://solarphysics.livingreviews.org/open?pubNo=lrsp-2007-2&page=articlesu7.html

      New Total Solar Irradiation (TSI) baseline value [SORCE]

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/14/total-solar-irradiation-tsi-value-lower-in-2008/

      A new, lower value of total solar irradiance [SORCE]

      http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010GL045777/pdf

    • Nick on 27/03/2013 at 4:39 pm said:

      Hi Richard C, thanks for looking at this. I agree that there are likely some offset issues for the various data sets. What I don’t understand is why Abdussamatov shows over 6 W/m^2 between 1600s and today but http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm shows less than 2 W/m^2 variation over the same period.

      It is a pity that Abdussamatov is not clear about where his data is derived from (as far as I can tell)

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 6:19 pm said:

      >”What I don’t understand is why Abdussamatov shows over 6 W/m^2 between 1600s and today but http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm shows less than 2 W/m^2 variation over the same period.”

      TSI reconstructions are a moveable feast and I’m not clear on the disparity either. Neither are necessarily correct. I should point out that it is an evolving science and I don’t necessarily subscribe to Abdussamatov’s scenario which is at the extreme end of all the alternatives. The reason I consider Abdussamatov’s work to have at least some cred though is firstly the fact that Pulkovo Observatory where he works and the Russian side of the ISS that he heads both specialize in solar luminosity, and secondly the radical difference in climate conditions 1600 vs 1990, minimum vs maximum. I doubt 2 W/m^2 variation max to min would be enough for prevailing conditions such that the Bosporus freezes to a thickness that enables people to walk across at Constantinople as happened in the Maunder Minimum for example.

      >”It is a pity that Abdussamatov is not clear about where his data is derived from (as far as I can tell)”

      I agree with you again here too. I haven’t nailed down his data source but I suspect it’s a Pulkovo Observatory series given that’s where he works primarily.

      The SORCE/TIM derivation is an odd one too (magnetic proxy spliced to TSI by -4.8741 W/m^2 “offset”):-

      “This historical reconstruction of TSI is based on that of Wang, Lean, and Sheeley (The Astrophysical Journal, 625:522-538, 2005 May 20) using a flux transport model to simulate the Sun’s magnetic flux, with those annual values provided courtesy of J. Lean. The values from their model have been offset -4.8741 W/m^2 to match the SORCE/TIM measurements during years of overlap and then extended or replaced using SORCE/TIM annual averages from 2003 onward. This more recently accepted TSI absolute value is described by Kopp & Lean (Geophysical Research Letters, 38, L01706, doi:10.1029/2010GL045777, 2011) based on new calibration and diagnostic measurements. The historical reconstruction provided here was computed by G. Kopp using TIM V.12 data on Jan 19, 2012, and is updated annually as new TIM data are available. “

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 9:24 pm said:

      >”I doubt 2 W/m^2 variation max to min would be enough for prevailing conditions such that the Bosporus freezes to a thickness that enables people to walk across at Constantinople as happened in the Maunder Minimum for example”

      Wang, Lean, and Sheeley would have us believe that solar output only varied about 2 W/m^2 1600 – 1990 (on average 1990 level) but SC’s 21, 22, and 23 (late 1970s to late 2000s) varied by more than 1 W/m^2 in all TSI composites.

      ACRIM TSI composite:-

      file:///C:/DOCUME~1/User1/LOCALS~1/Temp/78999070.png

      Note the ACRIM composite does NOT have TSI peaking at 1986 but at 1996 and 2009 is higher than 1986 too.

      PMOD TSI composite (Skeptical Science and IPCC favourite – 1986 peak):-

      http://www.acrim.com/images/earth_obs_fig27.jpg

      IRMB TSI composite (Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium):-

      http://remotesensing.oma.be/meteo/download/en/3833255/image/scaletomax-516-516/composite_irmb_2009.png

      Note that IRMB does NOT have TSI peaking at 1986 but that 1997 and 2009 are fractionally higher on the same level.

      I don’t believe Wang, Lean, and Sheeley.

    • Nick on 27/03/2013 at 10:24 pm said:

      Abdusamatov believed Wang, Lean, and Sheeley in 2009

      http://www.gao.spb.ru/english/astrometr/abduss_nkj_2009.pdf

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/03/2013 at 8:37 am said:

      Different series from the same paper. It’s not the SORCE/TIM plot that you linked to up-thread. It has a greater variation (3 W/m2) with a (?).

      He didn’t “believe” Wang et al and he says nothing to indicate he does e.g. that plot appears in the ‘Inconstancy of the TSI’ section.

      Page 9:-

      “By the middle of this century the shortage of solar energy received may be on the order of 0.2% of its maximum average level in the 1980’s; thus, about 3 W/m2.”

      Note the word “may”. He’s moved on since 2009 obviously, his 2012 paper says 4.75 W/m2 or something. Not necessarily going to be Maunder conditions just because he says so of course but I’m inclined to think that 2 W/m2 1600 – 1990 (Wang et al’s latest) is too low given the 11 yr cycle varied over 1 W/m2 1970s – 2000s.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 1:45 pm said:

      Balmaseda et al omit the most recent 3 yrs of data:-

      “Here we present the time evolution of the global ocean heat content for 1958 through 2009”

      ://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50382/abstract

      By doing that they didn’t have to address the inconvenient 4 yr standstill in upper ocean OHC (“recent upper-ocean-warming hiatus” in their words), soon to be followed by a similar deep ocean standstill post 1Q2012.

    • Nick on 27/03/2013 at 2:13 pm said:

      Hi Richard C,
      Since total OHC has continued to increase post 2009 I don’t think the most recent data would change Balmaseda et al’s results significantly.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 3:28 pm said:

      >”Since total OHC has continued to increase post 2009 I don’t think the most recent data would change Balmaseda et al’s results significantly.”

      That’s the problem Nick, Balmaseda have missed the significant change in trajectory (to flat) occurring in the aggregate upper ocean since 2009. This is the same situation that caught out the climate scientists when atmospheric temperatures went flat. They’re just not applying the appropriate analysis required of the exercise so they’re behind everyone else that is. They are also oblivious to upper Pacific and Atlantic cooling since 2003 that everyone knows about except AGW-aligned climate science.

      And they miss the change in trajectory (to flat) below 700m occurring 1Q2012.

      If there’s no warming occurring in the upper layer of 2 of the 3 ocean basins, what is going on below 700m (or even 300m) is irrelevant because it cannot be either solar nor GHG related i.e. no anthro attribution can be made to ocean warming for the 21st century – which the IPCC don’t make anyway, their attribution is only to the 20th century.

      All that’s happening is that heat in the upper Pacific and Atlantic is propagating to the Indian and below 700m but in the Pacific and Atlantic the upper layer is not being replenished by ANY forcing – solar or fire breathing Skydragon – sufficient to maintain heat content to a constant level let alone increase it. Obviously energy is still going into those upper layers from solar source but not what there was at peak solar input, hence the losses in the upper Pacific and Atlantic.

    • Nick on 27/03/2013 at 3:42 pm said:

      Hi Richard C,
      In 2012 OHC was at it’s highest point ever measured. As indicated by Balmaseda et al wind has likely cause a redistribution in the energy causing deep ocean warming and slight surface cooling. Nonetheless total OHC has continued to increase. Where is this additional energy coming from given TSI is at it’s lowest point in 15 years?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 6:44 pm said:

      >”In 2012 OHC was at it’s highest point ever measured.”

      The aggregate peaked 1Q2012 (no rise since then) as I’ve pointed out elsewhere but due to 82% of the gain occurring in the Indian ocean.

      >””As indicated by Balmaseda et al wind has likely cause a redistribution in the energy causing deep ocean warming and slight surface cooling.

      Whaaaat? The upper Pacific and Atlantic have been cooling progressively since beginning of ARGO 2003. Did wind do that (why did it suddenly take effect and continue 9 yrs)? I don’t think so. Wind has an effect from time to time even overturning to depth but not a constant effect over that 9 yr period – weird. There’s plenty of other transport mechanisms

      >”Nonetheless total OHC has continued to increase.”

      Wrong again. I’ve explained this several times, it’s getting tiresome. The upper ocean aggregate has been at standstill for the last 4 yrs, 0-2000m peaked 1Q2012 (no increase since then and unlikely to anymore now for decades). The maximum planetary enthalpy coincided with the END of the modern solar Grand Maximum 1920/30 – 2012. Downhill from here.

      >”Where is this additional energy coming from given TSI is at it’s lowest point in 15 years?”

      I’ve explained this here:-

      https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2013/03/notes-on-ocean-warming/#comment-183582

      From now on Nick if you repeat the same question I’ll just link you to my earlier response so don’t bother repeating the same questions over and over.

    • Just wondering if you could comment a bit more on why you think the sun is causing the current accelerating global warming

      Excuse those of us living in the real world, planning trips to Europe and preparing to deal with the abundance of snow. I must have missed the memo about “accelerating global warming”

      Can someone provide some evidence for this, preferably other than from the tree hut guys at “Skeptical Science”?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 9:37 pm said:

      You’ll have to imagine the “accelerating global warming” unfortunately Andy.

      Imagine yourself in the ocean about 1000m deep – but before 2012.

      That should give you about the right warming mindset for your trip to snow-blanketed Europe.

    • Are there any sharks that deep that climate scientists can jump over?

  11. Nick on 27/03/2013 at 4:17 pm said:

    Hi Richard C,
    Do you have a graphic somewhere that puts TSI and atmospheric temperatures side by side to illustrate your point? The Skeptical Science graph shows that the two are diverging suggesting that TSI is not responsible for the recent warming but if you have a better graphic I would love to see it.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/03/2013 at 5:40 pm said:

      >”Do you have a graphic somewhere that puts TSI and atmospheric temperatures side by side to illustrate your point?”

      Yes I do, but remember elsewhere I pointed out that the 60 yr cycle was the influential effect over and above TSI in terms of the inflexion from 80s/90s trajectory to 2000s trajectory.

      Climate Modeling: Ocean Oscillations + Solar Activity R²=.96

      http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2010/01/climate-modeling-ocean-oscillations.html

      Sunspot integral being a proxy for solar activity.

    • Nick on 27/03/2013 at 9:38 pm said:

      Bob Tisdale at Watts Up claims that you cannot combine the ocean oscillations as has been done in the blog post you cite.

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/08/on-the-amopdo-dataset/

    • Nick on 27/03/2013 at 9:53 pm said:

      Hi Richard C,
      Are you saying that AMO is driving the recent surface warming but TSI is driving the current accelerating increase in total OHC? Do you have a graphic demonstrating the correlation between TSI and OHC?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/03/2013 at 9:00 am said:

      >”Are you saying that AMO is driving the recent surface warming but TSI is driving the current accelerating increase in total OHC? ”

      No (not sure where you got that idea from). I’ve already pointed out that Balmaseda et al stopped their aggregate analysis (not basin-by-basin) at 2009 therefore the “acceleration” is not “current”. Upper ocean OHC has been at standstill last 4 yrs and 0-2000m peaked 1Q2012.

      The influences of ocean oscillation on the global GAT metric are in descending order of ocean size PDO, AMO, NAO, AO etc. Obviously too, a local oscillation influnces local temperature the most e.g. AO and Arctic warming, and PDO in cold mode so Pacific SST is cooling.

      TSI and OHC are inextricably linked in the planetary energy system i.e. input -> heat sink -> output, and in terms of enthalpy and inertia i.e. lagged maximum enthalpy (2012) occurs at the end of maximum input (2012).

      >”Do you have a graphic demonstrating the correlation between TSI and OHC?”

      No, OHC only goes back to 1955, let alone 1600. Neither does OHC cover the onset of the modern solar maximum 1920 -1930. SLR does however and the SLR inflexion 1920 – 1930 correlates perfectly with TSI. The CO2 inflexion wasn’t until 1950 on the other hand.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/03/2013 at 10:01 am said:

      Update.

      >”0-2000m peaked 1Q2012″

      Not saying it wont go higher, in fact I think it already has. Just that with upper Pacific/Atlantic cooling there’s not much reason for below 700 to go much higher. Both upper and lower OHC metrics are being skewed by the Indian Ocean anyway.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/03/2013 at 10:14 am said:

      >”Both upper and lower OHC metrics are being skewed by the Indian Ocean anyway”

      Not quite right again, should be:-

      “The 0-2000m OHC metric is being skewed by the Indian Ocean anyway (70% of the gain is in the upper Indian over the last 7 yrs).”

  12. Nick on 28/03/2013 at 11:07 am said:

    TSI stopped increasing in 1980 but OHC continued to accelerate. If OHC lags TSI by 6-20 years as you suggest we would have expected to see OHC level off in 2000, why has this not happened?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/03/2013 at 11:51 am said:

      >”TSI stopped increasing in 1980″

      Only in PMOD, see the ACRIM/PMOD/IRMB comparison here:-

      https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2013/03/notes-on-ocean-warming/#comment-183636

      And clearly the level after 1986 was still at basically the same elevated level in all the composites. That’s where the analogy of boiling a pot of water comes in, all you do is turn it up full for a while and the water gradually gains heat. Even if you turn it down slightly (PMOD), the water will continue to gain heat.

      >”If OHC lags TSI by 6-20 years as you suggest we would have expected to see OHC level off in 2000, why has this not happened?”

      It has happened in the upper Pacific and Atlantic and more than just leveling off, both have cooled in the ARGO era (since 2003) consistent with thermal lag. Even the global aggregate stalled 2004:-

      http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/images/OHCA_curve_2012.png

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/03/2013 at 12:06 pm said:

      >”TSI stopped increasing in 1980″

      The peak is 1986 in PMOD, not 1980.

      >”…consistent with thermal lag [from peak input levels].”

    • Nick on 28/03/2013 at 12:16 pm said:

      Hi Richard C,
      If there is a 6-20 year lag then you would expect the output (temperature) to stabilise 8-20 years after the initial forcing (TSI) stabilised. The same will happen with your pot of water. If you turn up the heat the water will increase in temperature for a while but then stabilise.

      This is not what happened. TSI stabilised in the 80s relative to the sharp rise that preceded it yet total (0-2000m) OHC continued to rise post 2000. It doesn’t matter if there is local cooling, it is the net energy of the system that matters and this clearly continues to increase into at least 2012.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/03/2013 at 1:09 pm said:

      >”…total (0-2000m) OHC continued to rise post 2000″

      What you are seeing is largely the Indian Ocean (82% last 7 yrs). And as I pointed out before, the elevated solar level didn’t just go away, it’s just that the “acceleration” of total gain is now over i.e. OHC is stabilizing consistent with maximum enthalpy being attained at the end of the modern solar Grand Max 1920 – 2012.

      >”It doesn’t matter if there is local cooling”

      The upper Pacific and Atlantic is “local” cooling Nick? Get real.

      >”it is the net energy of the system that matters and this clearly continues to increase into at least 2012″

      But not for much longer now that max TSI has plummeted 2013. that will be the test of time over the next year or two. I wont be surprised if there’s some more increase but it wont be continued “acceleration” that’s for sure considering upper ocean OHC is at standstill (also in the Indian now).

      Last 4 yrs 0-2000m World:-

      2009-3,12.811517
      2009-6,12.374052
      2009-9,13.947054
      2009-12,15.183682
      2010-3,16.048752
      2010-6,13.671132
      2010-9,14.129639
      2010-12,15.070600
      2011-3,15.453777
      2011-6,14.812579
      2011-9,17.095699 <<<<<<<<<< near peak
      2011-12,14.983609
      2012-3,17.434353 <<<<<<<<<< most recent peak
      2012-6,15.622717
      2012-9,15.494756
      2012-12,16.831072 <<<<<<<<< near peak

      BTW Nick, why hasn't GHG forcing heated the upper Pacific and Atlantic over the last 9 years (actually cooled progressively over that time) but it has (as I assume you assert) heated below 700m in both oceans?

      How does that work?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/03/2013 at 12:15 pm said:

      >”OHC lags TSI by 6-20 years”

      The “6” comes from an Atlantic study. Abdussamatov calculates 14 yrs +/- 6 (8 – 20), Scafetta approx 12 yrs from memory.

  13. Richard C (NZ) on 29/03/2013 at 10:38 am said:

    Looks like the CO2 feedback effect against falling solar has already begun (Magoo I hope you see this).

    James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha and Makiko Sato (2013)

    “…the huge post-2000 increase of uptake by the carbon sinks implied by figure 3”

    “…the large increase of carbon uptake by the combined terrestrial and ocean carbon sinks”

    http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.nz/2013/03/hansens-mea-culpa-says-man-made-global.html

    Hansen attributes it to coal use of course.

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