It's the ocean

It's the ocean

Many effects may be lagged. One reason is the vast reservoir of heat, CO2 and much else that girdles the earth: the ocean. It takes some time for a surface temperature variation to show up in the amount of heat stored in the ocean (source: Greenie Watch)

Comments 1 to 10:

1. GMB at 12:29 PM on 28 December, 2007
   "If the ocean was feeding atmospheric warming, the oceans would be cooling."
   
   Thats very weird thinking. The transmission goes like this:
   
   1. Increased solar activity leads to oceanic warming. Leads to more water vapour, leads to atmospheric warming.
   
   2. Increased solar activity leads to less invasion of cosmic rays, leads to less cloud cover, leads to greater oceanic warming, leads to water vapour, leads to atmospheric warming.
   
   3. Increased solar activity, leads to greater momentum in oceanic currents, leads to greater imbedded energy in the oceans via the Stefan-Boltzmann's law.
   
   With regards to point 3. Were there some basic change to the "resistance to circulation". If some change in oceanic currents led to a better circulation or less resistance to circulation then you would expect the oceans to accrue more energy and that would eventually have the side effect of greater average global temperatures.
2. Quietman at 11:05 AM on 17 May, 2008
   John
   In keeping with this thread, you may be interested in a paper from Nature: AMO will stop warming until 2020. This seems to coincide with SSC24 as well. I added two links dealing with the AMO, PDO and ENSO cycles in Is Pacific Decadal Oscillation the Smoking Gun? as well as the ENSO related posts in It's volcanoes (or lack thereof)
   about the cause of El Nino/La Nina.
3. Quietman at 04:03 AM on 16 September, 2008
   Looking at the maps you will note that the warming occurs along ridge lines. This is NOT coincidental, nor is it caused by AGW but quite the opposite. Refer to comment 13 in the volcano thread linked above.
4. chris at 20:21 PM on 10 October, 2008
   Re #3 Quietman
   
   which maps are you referring to (in relation to your statement about warming on ridge lines)?
5. Quietman at 04:25 AM on 27 November, 2008
   chris
   Compare the charts of "hot spots" to a good map of the ocean floor such as Nat. Geo. maps. Also see post 115 in the volcano thread.
6. Quietman at 10:49 AM on 13 May, 2009
   [In 2005 James Hansen, Josh Willis, and Gavin Schmidt of NASA coauthored a significant article (in collaboration with twelve other scientists), on the “Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications” (Science, 3 June 2005, 1431-35). This paper affirmed the critical role of ocean heat as a robust metric for AGW. “Confirmation of the planetary energy imbalance,” they maintained, “can be obtained by measuring the heat content of the ocean, which must be the principal reservoir for excess energy” (1432).
   ...
   In 2007 Roger Pielke, Sr. suggested that ocean heat should be used not just to monitor the energy imbalance in the climate system, but as a “litmus test” for falsifying the IPCC’s AGW hypothesis (Pielke, “A Litmus Test…”, climatesci.org, April 4, 2007). Dr. Pielke is a Senior Research Scientist in CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences), at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Professor Emeritus of the Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins. One of the world’s foremost atmospheric scientists, he has published nearly 350 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 50 chapters in books, and co-edited 9 books.]
   
   The Global Warming Hypothesis and Ocean Heat
   
   I think that this was an excellent point.
7. tallbloke at 00:54 AM on 15 October, 2009
   "What the science says...
   Oceans are warming across the globe."
   
   This is incorrect, although you might get away with saying they are warming on a six year average, for a little while anyway.
   
   Cazenave et al 2008 concludes that the steric sea level has been falling since 2006.
   The ARGO data shows that there has been a recent swift fall in ocean heat content globally. (Oct 2009 prelim data)
8. h-j-m at 01:14 AM on 16 August, 2010
   If the oceans are warming in response to increased atmospheric warming due to anthropogenic green house gases then undoubtedly there has to be a mechanism (physical or chemical) resulting in a net heat transfer from atmosphere to ocean. So far I completely failed to find such a mechanism mentioned. By contrast, most ocean-atmosphere interactions mentioned (el Nino, Gulf stream, fueling extreme weather events) constitute a net heat transfer the other way round.
   
   Further more, the quote provided by Quietman "the ocean, which must be the principal reservoir for excess energy”, clearly rules out any knowledge of a mechanism resulting in a net heat flux from atmosphere to ocean.
   
   But unless such a mechanism is found and sufficiently supported by evidence a warming of the oceans seems far more likely to cause global warming than anthropogenic increase in green house gases.
   Response: The mechanism of transferring heat from the atmosphere to the ocean is an increase in the amount of downward infrared radiation. Normally a certain amount of infrared radiation escapes out to space. But with greenhouse gases increasing in the atmosphere, this extra gas both absorbs and scatters the outgoing radiation and some of it returns to the Earth's surface.
   
   There are various independent lines of empirical evidence that this is happening. A series of papers analysing different satellite data find less infrared radiation escaping to space. Similarly, a number of different papers find more infrared radiation returning to the Earth's surface. So we have a mechanism for warming the oceans and evidence that this mechanism is indeed at play.
   
   For the record, I'm actually planning a post that specifically looks at the pattern of ocean warming and how it indicates human influence on climate - but just haven't had the time to write it yet.
   
9. Tom Dayton at 02:36 AM on 16 August, 2010
   h-j-m, you can conduct your own experiment to demonstrate that the atmosphere transfers energy to the ocean:
   Step 1: Chill beer.
   Step 2: Pour beer into glass.
   Step 3: Sip beer, noticimg its temperature.
   Step 4: Wait three minutes.
   Step 5: Go to Step 3.
10. h-j-m at 22:03 PM on 16 August, 2010
    Seemingly some more explanation is necessary. It is obvious that atmospheric infrared radiation hits the oceans. But if and to which extend that results in a warming of the ocean is a completely different question.
    
    For example it is quite obvious that one of the results will be an increase of evaporation which can result in a net cooling.
    
    Then there is the question of penetration i. e. how far can infrared radiation penetrate the water to warm it. As some reports claim a warming of the oceans down to 700 meters this quite clearly can hardly be explained by exposure of the surface to increased infrared radiation.
    
    Anyway I see the main weakness of this theory in the missing attempt to rule out alternative causes.
    
    Tom Dayton: Your experiment needs some more elaboration.
    1. How to make sure that the only source of heat comes from the atmosphere above as I doubt that a glass provides enough insulation for that.
    2. How to sip some of that beer (assuming that to be an adequate measurement method) without inducing currents within the liquid which will scramble up and disturb the current heat distribution.

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