Bishop Hill England, oh England
Feb 14, 2014 Climate: Oceans Environmentalists have been getting very excited by a paper by England et al. which claims to have unearthed the reasons for the pause. Anthony Watts covered it a few days ago.
The paper is published in Nature Climate Change:
Despite ongoing increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases, the Earth’s global average surface air temperature has remained more or less steady since 2001. A variety of mechanisms have been proposed to account for this slowdown in surface warming. A key component of the global hiatus that has been identified is cool eastern Pacific sea surface temperature, but it is unclear how the ocean has remained relatively cool there in spite of ongoing increases in radiative forcing. Here we show that a pronounced strengthening in Pacific trade winds over the past two decades—unprecedented in observations/reanalysis data and not captured by climate models—is sufficient to account for the cooling of the tropical Pacific and a substantial slowdown in surface warming through increased subsurface ocean heat uptake. The extra uptake has come about through increased subduction in the Pacific shallow overturning cells, enhancing heat convergence in the equatorial thermocline. At the same time, the accelerated trade winds have increased equatorial upwelling in the central and eastern Pacific, lowering sea surface temperature there, which drives further cooling in other regions. The net effect of these anomalous winds is a cooling in the 2012 global average surface air temperature of 0.1–0.2 °C, which can account for much of the hiatus in surface warming observed since 2001. This hiatus could persist for much of the present decade if the trade wind trends continue, however rapid warming is expected to resume once the anomalous wind trends abate.
Now, as Carl Wunsch points out, just because it's published by Nature, doesn't mean a paper is wrong, but in this case it turns out that there are indeed one or two problems with the results. Following a Guardian article hyping the story, Nic Lewis wrote to explain what was wrong. His contribution never appeared, so I'm reproducing it here.
Sir
May I point out an units error in your article "Global warming 'pause' caused by spike in speed of trade winds" (Guardian 10 February 2014) and a fundamental flaw in the research by Matthew England et al. that it highlights? A cooling effect of between 0.1C and 0.2C equates to 0.2F to 0.4F, not 32.2F and 32.4F – it is temperature changes that are referred to, not actual temperatures. [BH note: the article has now been corrected]
Matthew England's paper claims to show that the hiatus in global surface temperature since around 2001 is due to strengthening Pacific trade winds causing increased heat uptake by the global ocean, concentrated in the top 300 m and occurring mainly in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. But his study uses model-based ocean temperature "reanalyses", not measurements. A recent study by Lyman and Johnson of the US Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory shows, using actual measurements of sub-surface ocean temperatures (infilling data gaps using a representative mean), that ocean heat uptake has actually fallen heavily from around 2002, whether measured down to 100 m, 300 m, 700 m or 1800 m. Indeed, they show an exceptionally large 90% fall in the heat content trend for the top 300 m between the decades 1993–2002 and 2002–2011. Several other observational datasets for the more often cited top 700 m ocean heat content also show a substantial reduction in heat uptake between those periods. So, unfortunately, ocean temperature measurements completely contradict Matthew England's neat explanation for the warming hiatus.
Reader Comments (89)
@entropic.
The volume of the Greenland ice sheet is estimated at 2,850,000 cu km. That of the Antarctic 26,500,000. Losing 500 per annum (0.002%) is neither here nor there.
Please remind me why I should even notice, let alone think that somebody should do something about this trivial 'problem'.
Entropic man wrote:
My own informal forecast is for that El Nino to drive a new record global temperature to be set in 2015. Where will the pause be then?
Well, if you turn out to be right I hope we in Britain will get our fair share of global warming. Don't you think that is something to look forward to? Mind you, I hope you don't have any connection with the Met Office. We all know what happens when they predict a mild winter, as in 2010, or a cold winter, as they did this time, or a "barbecue summer," don't we?
Even Kevin Trenberth's new paper shows that the rate of change in ocean heat content has been decreasing since 2001, debunking his own claims that the oceans ate the missing heat
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2014/01/trenberth-debunks-himself-oceans-didnt.html
Apart from EM's always entertaining arm waving, the AGW believers have nothing to offer.
It is worth repeating what the first post to this blog pointed out:
The alarmists were using exactly the opposite claims about trade winds to explain the 'pause' (halt being a better term) just a few years ago.
The climate fear promoters are shabby, obvious con-artists when you get past the sciencey talk and posing.
Micky H Corbett
Put the value in context and you can constrain the uncertainty.
The two main sinks for that 0.6w are the melting ice and the ocean. Gravity measurements fro GRACE give rates of melting from ice sheets. Knowing the mass/volume and the latent heat of fusion one can calculate the energy required.
The ocean heat content increase can be approached from two directions.
Measure the temperature change from ARGO buoys, towed sensors etc. Knowing the average temperature change, the specific heat capacity and the volume one can calculate the energy required.
Starting with sea level rise, subtract the volume added from melting ice, etc. The residue is due to thermal expansion. Knowing the thermal expansion coefficient one can calculate the temperature change required and, once again, work back to the energy required.
Either way, the total energy required by the changes in ice and ocean matches the TOA imbalance. That's why I'm happy to accept the 0.6w mean figure. It fits the other data in the pattern better than other values within the confidence limits for the raw measurement.
I ran the numbers on this a year or so back. I can do them again if you like.
"enhancing heat convergence in the equatorial thermocline"
Gee I love that kind of sciency talk. Goosebumps. I can't help wondering, though. Doesn't the second law say that heat diverges?
Latimer Adler
Run the numbers and you will find that melting 360 cubic kilometres of ice produces a sea level rise of 1mm. The 500 cubic kilometres/year is equivalent to 1.38mm/year.
A full melt of the 29,350,000 cubic kilometres is unlikely. Melting 25% of it would produce the 20m rise seen in the Pliocene, along with a 4C temperature difference above the present.
Your belief that nothing is happening is no doubt comforting. My acceptance of the possibility that temperatures may rise 4C means that I also accept a 20m sea level rise as a long term possibility.
EM: there are so many other factors that you have not taken into account – infilling of the oceans by erosion for a start. How about tectonic movement? It is not just drifting around (which has submerged ports on Greek islands, and landlocked others), but moving vertically, too – indeed, much of the “rise” along the south coast is because of Great Britain tipping like a seesaw as Scotland continues to rise following the last ice age.
You seem determined to present to us the evidence that supports your own ideas; while others with opposing views are doing the same, most others on this site prefer to keep an open mind, and merely shake their heads in despair at those who leap to conclusions, as you do.
Funny that half of the alarmists still tell us we are all daft for believing warming has stopped and the other half are inventing a variety of contradictory excuses as to why it stopped.
EM
There are no accurate measurements of imbalance. So it could be
A) what you say
B) the Sun
C) the Fairies
D) no clue
E) anything
I'm sorry if you think it can be explained at the moment by AGW but for instance melting ice may be happening from some other perfectly natural and periodic process. The only way we differentiate is by better measurements.
You are extrapolating theory beyond its limits.
Radical Rodent
"The problem with having an open mind is that people come along and put things in it."
Michael Moncur
There is an optimum, non-zero, level of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. Too open and you become a gullible idiot. Too closed and you lose contact with reality.
A glance at today’s wind global map shows Britain circumvallated by a 360 degree wall of wind fit to scatter the Spanish Armada, or with better timing, to sail round Britain without touching the tiller .
http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/1000hPa/orthographic=-60.89,62.64,217
Comment by Russell — 14 Feb 2014 @ 9:12 PM
This is a poem I wrote when Trenberth first came out with his conjecture as to where the missing heat was hiding.
TRENBERTH LOSES HIS STRAWBERRIES
(See the courtroom scene in The Caine Mutiny)
As greenhouse gases still accrete
This captain of the climate wars
Is searching for the missing heat
That he believes the ocean stores
He'll prove to all humanity
That danger in the deep resides
The Kraken that he knows to be
That Davy Jones' Locker hides
The soul's more heavy than we think
A truth that everyone must face
And to what depths a soul may sink
Oh! To what dark and dismal place!
Does Captain Trenberth understand
That data offers no appeal?
He tumbles in his restless hand
Three clacking balls of stainless steel
MY GEOMETRIC LOGIC PROVES
HEAT TELEPORTS FROM PLACE TO PLACE
FROM SKIES INTO THE DEPTHS IT MOVES
AND IN BETWEEN IT LEAVES NO TRACE!
When silent faces stare at you
It's always best to shut your jaw
But Trenberth is without a clue
As he believes they stare in awe
Eugene WR Gallun
@entropic
Please remind me why a sea level rise of 13.8 cm (5.5 inches) per century is something I should even notice, let alone think that somebody should do anything about.
For comparison of scale, 5.5 inches is a bit less than the depth of two standard British housebricks laid with mortar. The tide at London Bridge has a range of 20 feet (240 inches) in six hours.
In the scheme of things, this is at worst an inconvenience, not a major problem.
Hi Latimer
What rate of sea level rise would cause you concern?
Entropic man
When did the sea level increase at the level you have given begin?
@richard betts
You ask
'What rate of sea level rise would cause you concern?'
And the true answer is one that was markedly quicker than our normal rate of infrastructure replacement.
If we know that the sealevel will be 6 inches higher in 100 years, and we are planning a building with a design life of 50 years, it is relatively easy for us to make due allowances.
You can see this anytime you walk through London (or any other port city). The whole place is built to accommodate huge sea/river level changes. 20 feet in 6 hours is 500,000 times faster than the case Entropic presents above. The point is not that sealevel changes...it is that we know it is going to and can plan for it.
And - just for fun - have you ever noticed that the guys in charge of sealevel measurements and prediction are based in Boulder, Colorado? Over a mile high in the Rockies and about as far from either ocean as can be imagined. The least likely guys to have real practical experience of very slow or very fast SLR. Ironic.
Richard Betts
Is sea level rise the real concern now? I ask because the "immediate problem" seems to change with the topical UK news agenda and I don't think you appreciate how bad an impression that sort of opportunism presents?
Not so long ago the "immediate problem" was heating of the surface of the planet, plain and simple. Not a string of complicated (sometimes implauible) second order consequences, including increased snowfall. Global warming looked serious: the resulting social and economic pressures would not be trivial (water conservation, for example).
Then, for a brief period, the "immediate problem" was acidification of the oceans with resulting ecological pressures (on the food chain, for example). This period coincided with a few years in which no global warming could be measured - it seemed opportunistic, but one went along with the concern.
Then along came another "immediate problem" - an increase in the incidence of extreme weather events (hurricanes, floods, droughts etc). At this point even people of good will in this debate can't help thinking this is all rather disreputable. The argument is invariable hedged; it is tied to local, not global, events; and the timescale is far too short to say anything at all rational. I work sometimes with statisical models and have been trying to think of mechanism that would increase the SD, but not alter the central tendency. There are many engineering examples. Are these now a property of the models? It would be nice to know what the mechanism is, even in outline form, because all the examples I can think of go along with high degrees of instability. Is that now a "canonical" property of the climate system?
My point is this. If, as you now imply, the "immediate problem" is sea level rise and if this is caused by emissions of CO2, what is the Met Office policy on adaptation? What's to be the response? Reductions in CO2 emissions in the UK will do nothing, because we contribute so little to the global budget. So far as I can see, talk of setting an example to others is not getting a hearing outside the UK. I read the Australian press, where it has been mentioned, and derided. I live in France and have never even heard a statement to the effect that France should or should not follow the UK's lead. It simply doesn't feature. My guess is it would be seen as ridiculous. Is your policy that we should drown, but feel good about it because we've done the right thing?
What, in practical terms, do you propose should be done about sea level rise as the "immediate problem"? The evidence suggests that green gestures on renewables in the UK will do nothing to affect sea level rise, although they would have a very negative impact on our economy. Other green gestures, as we know now, actually appear to make the problem of flooding worse. Can you explain what should be done, given your putative causal agent has already been released?
I wanted to get the question in before the next "immediate problem" comes along.
Richard is not asking for thoughtful answers, he wants to know what figures to concoct in next "We're All Going To Drown" met office report so that skeptics will be forced to join the doom crowd. /sarc
ps As things stand right now, I will be concerned by a 100-m sea level rise.
Alan Kennedy
excellent post Sir
If Richard Betts does return I would like to add to the discussion. Acknowledging that policy response is not necessarily Richard's field of expertise, we find ourselves in the UK in a position where our leaders see themselves as 'world leaders' setting an example for the rest of the world. Unfortunately, the example they are setting is not very compelling. We spend millions on renewable energy, paid for by all citizens irrespective of means, and to the great disadvantage of manufacturing and other commercial activity. We have effectively exported a small part of our emissions to the developing countries of the world whose so-called carbon footprint is massively greater and substantially more toxic than ours. We spend millions on academics whose so role in life is to come up with ever more laughable reasons why CO2 is guilty of the slightest misdemeanour that Nature in her wisdom throws our way.
All this against a background of 17 years of no global surface warming and, to the extent that the mythical climate sensitivity has any meaning, all recent evidence points to it being considerably lower than the alarmist activists that populate the IPCC led us to believe. As Alan points out surface warming is THE bogeyman. Global warming was the threat that was going to wipe out mankind. Idiot politicians stood before the cameras and told us we must hold temperatures to 2 degrees C by 2100. They did not tell us we had to stop the deep oceans warming by 0.0000000001 degrees by 2100.
The simple position is this: anyone looking at the UK from without must think we have lost our collective senses. Where are the benefits to this policy of self-flagellation?
On the question of what rate of sea level rise would cause concern, I would adopt the Shuckleburgh defence and suggest the question is ill-posed because it supposes that we can do something about it. We cant. If indeed CO2 is the climate control knob then the developing countries of the world are going to turn that knob on high for the next 25 years. That is a fact. It may be unpalatable to people like Richard but there is no point deluding yourself. If you do you will end up with the futile vanity policies that UK has adopted.
So, for me, the interesting point that this winter’s weather throws up is that it demonstrates the extent to which successive UK governments have failed their citizens by focusing resources on fighting an enemy that exists only in their fevered imaginations instead of building the defences to fight the enemy that is knocking on the door – Mother Nature in all her majestic glory.
As Latimer would say, time to put another brick on the sea wall
@headless chicken
More appropriate than you know. It was Roger *Waters* that wrote the lyrics to Another Brick in the Wall.
And McSteve called these futile gestures 'Acts of Petty Virtue'...more designed to make the gesturer feel good about themselves than actually doing anything about the supposed 'problem'. And our beloved CC Secretary, Ed Davey seems to need to do both.
Alan Kennedy
The immediate problem is to persuade a civilisation which runs on five year election cycles to reduce its CO2 emissions BEFORE the consequences you mention become obvious. By then, of course, it will be too late.
Latimer Adler
You may remember how the Abu Simbel temples were raised to keep them above Lake Nasser when the Aswan High Dam was built. Do you plan to do the same to Westminster Abbey?
An office block can be rebuilt inland; a cathedral or a nuclear power station is a harder problem.
On a more pragmatic level, how do you plan to feed a larger population on a smaller area of agricultural land?
If anybody had tried to move Abu Simbel upwards two centuries before the dam had been built, they'd have rightly been considered chronically and criminally insane
Entropic man
"The immediate problem is to persuade a civilisation which runs on five year election cycles to reduce its CO2 emissions BEFORE the consequences you mention become obvious. By then, of course, it will be too late."
But why would you want to do that? Changing UK emissions will have no effect at all on the consequences. It will merely have the effect of depriving the UK "civilisation" of the neccessary technological resources to combat whatever adverse consequences there are. Going down bravely when you could actually put up a fight, as it were.
Richard Betts et al.
I commend to you figure 3 of Jevrejeva et al. 2008, showing an apparent multi-decadal cycle superposed on a multi-centenary acceleration. To expect that, were some genie (magically) to maintain pCO2 at 280 ppmv, sea-level adaptation would no longer be an issue, seems over-simplistic.
EM (Feb 15, 2014 at 1:49 AM): that has to be one of the most vacuous things that has ever been quoted! You have to be aware that there is a truly HUGE difference between open-mindedness and gullibility… aren’t you?
You appear to be of the opinion that a theory holds until there is another theory to replace it; if there is no other theory, then the original theory HAS to be right. Wrong: if a theory is wrong, it is wrong –
HarryMicky H Corbett sums it up beautifully in the post above yours.You also seem to misinterpret Latimer Alder’s post as much as you insist on misreading his name; the rate of sea level rise being as it is means that it would be quite easy to plan for it and cope with it – as used happen in places such as Somerset and elsewhere for many, many centuries, until the EA marched in. And the Abu Simbel temples were not “raised”, they were stripped down and reconstructed elsewhere… Oh. Perhaps you meant “razed”?
There is a CO2 genie. Its name is negative feedback. It lives in the tundra and oceanic bicarbonate concentrations.
Jeverejeva et all was fascinating. I was particularly intrigued by Figure 4. The 20th century maximum increase in rate of sea level rise coincided with the pause in global temperature rise from 1940-1970. The 21st century maximum coincided with the "pause".
That's two separate correlations between high ocean expansion rate and low air temperature rise. More evidence that energy input continued throughout, but its destination varies.
Alan Kennedy
"Do as I say, not as I do" is never a persuasive argument. The UK plays a leading role in the science and should be seen to react to it. To expect larger players to reduce their emissions while we do nothing would be unreasonable and disingenuous.
EM
I perfectly understand your point - I just disagree. Your argument is used in other contexts (nuclear disarmament, for example). I happen to think that basing policy on setting a good example to others less enlightened than yourself probably only works in heaven.
Radical rodent
Remember that all theories are provisional. You keep testing them. When you find flaws you improve them and, if necessary, replace them.
Scientists rarely operate without at least a basic theory.That becomes their default world view until something better comes along. cAGW is not perfect, but has worked well for the climate scientists over the last 40 years and has been considerably developed over that time. If you want them to change, you will need to supply something to take its place which is a better fit to reality.
There were initial plans to raise the main Abu Simbal temple hydraulically in one piece. In the end it proved more practical to move it piecemeal and reassemble it.The method is less important than the principle. When the water starts flowing through Westminster Abbey would you move it or abandon it?
Alan Kennedy
That's very patronising. We happen to have a lot of scientifc climate change expertise. That has nothing to do with enlightenment.
China, for example, has had to use coal to power a rapid industrial revolution. They are now moving into nuclear, wind and solar at a rate which makes us look slow. They are convinced that there is a problem. They are also less constrained by naysayers and nimbies.
@Eugene
"MY GEOMETRIC LOGIC PROVES
HEAT TELEPORTS FROM PLACE TO PLACE
FROM SKIES INTO THE DEPTHS IT MOVES
AND IN BETWEEN IT LEAVES NO TRACE!"
Marvelous!
@entropic
If the real choice comes down to forcing 3 billion to live in perpetual energy poverty because a few Wester aesthete's quite like the look of Westminster Abbey, then sorry - the Abbey has to go ...or we have to find another way to preserve it.
Nuclear power stations have finite design lives. I guess - as along as we roughly know the rate of increase - we don't build them too close to the water's edge.
As to your rhetorical question about arable land, please remind us how much (absolute area, or percentage) would be lost by the various sealevel rises you envisage. I'm pretty certain that Iowa and Kansas would be unaffected by even a 10 foot rise.
"What rate of sea level rise would cause you concern?"
Well would we be concerned about the trend that existed prior to any envisaged "CO2 Effect" i.e. pre 1950?
Closing statement from AR5 3.7.4 Assessment of Evidence for Accelerations in Sea Level Rise
The UK is not unique in this respect. I've head the same wishful rhetoric in other countries - Denmark, Germany, Australia, even Norway.
It's not a statement of fact - just PR. Like the SNP simultaneously claiming that an independent Scotland will live off oil royalties and be a leader in "renewable" energy. Like the poor deluded souls who think that China is showing the way with renewables.
Sorry, after reading Entropic Man's latest post, they "will" show the way just as soon as they've industrialised with coal and oil. Another piece of hasty revisionism as reality slowly dawns.
So the heat which is missing, according to the computer models,
is being driven by increasing winds, according to the computer models
to warm the top layers of sea water.
Since these layers have been measured as cooling despite the computer models,
it must mean from computer models that the missing heat is going, by some unknown mechanism, down to warm the ocean depths where there are no reliable temperature records to disprove the computer models.
A striking example of the power of computer models.
According to the rigors of scientific discipline,no theory is worthy of any consideration unless it satisfies Karl Popper's falsifiability criterion,i,e.it must imply the sort of evidence that would prove it wrong.Predictions based on the theory are tested against the facts.How many anomalous results are sufficient to invalidate a proposition?to paraphrase Einstein... a mere one.Those who make post hoc explanations for the lack of warming argue that the heat is lurking in the deepest parts of the ocean,rising to the surface at some time in the future to bite us all.They have not made any predictions ergo they have not made a falsifiable prediction ergo their theory is absolutely useless from a scientific point of view.I have noticed that proponents of the CAGW theory are either unwilling or unable to state what event(either recent or in historical context) is inconsistent with their position on climate change.BTW,a sceptic is defined as one who will not accept or reject a proposition without prior critical rational analysis.It is derived from the Greek word meaning "to think".Under the circumstances,the more sceptics the better.