D.M.
After long observation, some of it literally nausea inducing, it’s likely nothing more complicated than a desperate need for attention, especially from a woman of substance, which is to say the kind of woman who’d have nothing to do with him in real life.
I too have wondered, and asked the same questions.
How do we know the ocean wasn’t taking in heat, moderating surface warming, in the past?
How do we know the ocean won’t continue taking in heat, moderating surface warming, in the future?
How do we know, if this is so, at what point the oceans will have taken in sufficient heat that they will fail to do so in the future?
If the oceans are in some fashion heat sinks, that would account for surface temps remaining in a relatively stable range for a very long time. It would also allow for a lag where an increase in surface heat rises and falls as the mechanism (whatever it may be) for transport of heat to the deeper oceans takes place. For that process to stop, there would seem to have to be some saturation point, at which the oceans no longer moderate surface climate to the same extent.
How will that happen, and when?
Those are the questions that “finding the missing heat” in the oceans raise for me.
The more we learn, the more we realize how little we know, if we have any humility at all.
I would like to see it graphically, like an onion, showing the amount of IR being thermalized at 280 ppm, at 560 ppm without water amplification and at 560 ppm with water amplification. I would prefer a 1:30 in the afternoon and 5:30 in the morning pair of figures.
“Disclaimer. There is large uncertainty in the ocean reanalysis products (especially in the transports), difficult to quantify. These web pages are aimed at the research community. Any outstanding climate feature should be investigated futher and not taken as truth.”
The treachery of images,Ceci n’est pas une pipe! ie the map is not the territory.
Geo, apparently the heat transfer mechanism has been identified: “sloshing”.
“The next big step for many is to realize that surface trends and OHC are both just proxies for changes in the energy content of the climate system, with sensible surface heat being the weaker and less reliable of the two.”
That is a complaint I have been making around here for a long time. The only way to know if there is an energy imbalance is to know with reasonable accuracy and precision what the average temp/heat content of the entire system is. We aren’t close to that.
Adjusted inferred averages of proxies of adjusted inferred averages of proxies (eg. tree rings as proxies of surface air temp as proxies of global climate heat content; or temp anomalies as proxies of average temperatures as proxies of global climate heat content), might sound good on paper to those who think they already know the truth.
But the lack of fundamental knowledge of our climate just becomes clearer with each new development, to those of a genuinely skeptical bent.
“freeHat
The 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn’t seem to relate to the main issue of the missing heat. The heat could make it’s way down to the bottom and that’s the point.”
May I ask why the heats hasn’t made its way to the bottom already?
You do know that the bottom is refreshed constantly by sinking brines at the poles.
A better question is does AGW slow the rate at which cold, dense, brines flow into the bottom of the oceans, and as a supplementary, is apparent warming due to the normal polar downwelling brines being less dense than normal and are being injected at 700-2000m rather than lower down.
Speculatively, anyone care to hazard a guess (in joules or Hiroshimas) what the maximum heat carrying capacity of the World’s oceans is?
True, true in addition to refusing to go along with Kyoto, George Bush prevented Herr Al Gore from marching the country off a cliff.
New Truths That Only One Can See
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/science/new-truths-that-only-one-can-see.html?_r=0
Can it be?. The Scientism crowd will be upset. The mere concept of “Limits to Science” will be considered heresy. : )
“The question is, is “forcing” from CO2 driving the TOA imbalance, or is the TOA imbalance simply the result of heat flow to the abyss caused by other factors?”
Both external forcing and internal variability jointly influence the magnitude of the TOA imbalance over short term periods. That’s because the upwelling of cold water associated with La Nina episodes or the cool phase of the PDO, for instance, delay the Planck response to an increase in external forcing and hence help maintain the TOA imbalance and help drive the ocean heat gain. Conversely, El Nino episodes temporarily drive surface temperatures higher and thereby reduce the externally driven imbalance. If there were no (or little) externally driven TOA imbalance to start with, then internal variability (cool PDO, etc.) could also create such a temporary imbalance on its own and thereby cause some amount of sea level rise (although land flooding resulting from La Nina episodes might have a larger compensating temporary effect over the short run). What are telling observations against the hypothesis of a largely internally driven imbalance are, on the one hand, the fact the sea level variations are relentlessly positive, irrespective the phase of the PDO, and, on the second hand, the fact that the rate of warming over land is larger than it is over sea (and also that the shallow (0-700m) ocean layer never actually cools).
Good point – will cheap out this milarky. It seems that me and him are almost on the same page.
JC concludes: “I don’t see a very convincing case for deep ocean sequestration of heat. [... ] it is very difficult to imagine how this heat could reappear at the surface in light of the 2nd law of thermodynamics”.
Well I would like to listen how Mr. Mann can explain to JC (and to the rest of us) that “science”. Furthermore, can any of the lads from the IPCC explain that “science”?. I named it: “science fiction”; but I could be wrong. So, please, IPCC experts post that explanation.
@Pierre-Normand…
The Planck response applies to a radiating body with a single distinct surface. The Earth’s “radiating surface” is over 50Km thick, much of it full of cloudy air which reflects some always varying fraction of the incoming shortwave.
What are telling observations against the hypothesis of a largely internally driven imbalance are, on the one hand, the fact the sea level variations are relentlessly positive, irrespective the phase of the PDO
If heat flow into the deeper ocean (under 300m) is driven independently of Global Average Surface temperature or the “greenhouse” effect, then we have no reason to suppose that the latter produces any “global warming” at all. Hasn’t the sea-level rise been “relentlessly positive” since the end of the LIA?
OK Web, just for you.
Take depth as a series of layers, 100m thick.
The top layer, layer (1) has a Temp of T and the bottom layer is in steady state with the bottom layer, layer (21), that is at T-15.
Now the overall heat flux is always from layer (1) to layer 21.
Now perturb the system by the addition of heat to layer one, raising its temperature. In pre-steady state there will initially be a rise in temperature, and heat content, in layer (1), then heat will begin to probe the lower levels; the profile, for a constant rise in surface temp, will have an exponential.
At steady state the layers near the surface will have a larger change in heat content than those at the bottom.
If we set layer 21, >2000m, as a true heat sink, then its temperature will be unchanged. If we define ‘unchanged’ as less than 1% of the heat change in the surface layer we get an exponent of 0.2 layer-1.
Therefore heat contents of layers are
0-300 =1
0-700 =1.6
0-2000 =2
and so 300-700m =0.6
Therefore the ratio of 0-300:0-700 is 1:1.6.
The 0-300m heat content should be almost exactly half of the 0-2000m heat content.
However, this is the steady state approximation, in pre steady states the ratios will always be lower, so
0-300:0-700 is 1:<1.6
0-300:0-2000 is 1:<2
If we take the figure that Judy has placed at the top of the tread, from 2000 until the end of the graph, trying to get the biggest 0-300 and smallest 0-2000, we get;
0-300m = 5.2 * (10^22J)
0-700m = 9.6 * (10^22J)
0-2000m = 13.2 * (10^22J)
0-300:0-700 is 1:1.84 compared with 1:<1.6
0-300:0-2000 is 1:2.53 compared with 1:<2
Your lines do not match the data for the 0-300 and 0-700, you had to cheat by making your 0-300m overshoot and the 0-700m undershoot.
I do not know that Michael Mann has ever commented on the “missing heat”. But RealClimate quickly accepted the ARGO analyses as they came out and the work on the energy imbalance and announced there was no additional missing heat, as did GISS and James Hansen.
Also, Gavin Schmidt instantly said that energy sequestered in the deep oceans essentially would not come back out until the earth’s energy balance was distinctly in the other direction: more energy out than energy in.
When asked what Trenberth meant, Gavin said people should ask Trenberth.
So eventually I did.
“Hasn’t the sea-level rise been “relentlessly positive” since the end of the LIA?”
Maybe so. But the rate sharply increased. The average rate of sea level has been about 0.1 to 0.2mm/year over the last three millennia, and decelerating. It likely was negative for a few centuries leading up to the LIA. It then accelerated to an average 1.4mm/year over the 20th century and 3mm/year over the last 20 years. This evolution in sea level is roughly proportionate, within uncertainties, to the variation in anthropogenic forcing (ln(CO2 forcing) – aerosol forcing) over the last two centuries.
