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New Study: Half The 2000-2019 Global Ocean Warming Has Been From Internal Fluxes, Not Surface Forcing

https://notrickszone.com/2022/05/12/new-study-half-the-2000-2019-global-ocean-warming-has-been-from-internal-fluxes-not-surface-forcing/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-study-half-the-2000-2019-global-ocean-warming-has-been-from-internal-fluxes-not-surface-forcing By Kenneth Richard Since 2000 there has been a natural reduction in net air-sea fluxes at the same time there has been rapid warming in the Indian Ocean. This affirms anthropogenic surface forcing cannot explain the recent warming in at least half the global ocean. The Indian Ocean covers approximately 20% of the ocean surface, but this basin accounts for one-half of the overall warming in the global ocean’s top 700 meters from 2000 to 2019 (McMonigal et al., 2022). The Atlantic and Pacific Ocean sectors have accumulated much less heat content in the last two decades. It is often assumed that increases in ocean heat content can be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas surface forcing. But scientists have pointed out that internal ocean processes and natural heat transport (circulation) can explain decadal-scale warming (and cooling) trends in the global ocean. For example, Large and Yeager (2012) determined that the global sea surface temperature (SST) warming trend during the 1984-2006 period can be predominantly explained by “diminished ocean cooling due to vertical ocean processes” rather than anthropogenic climate change. “A conclusion is that natural variability, rather than long-term climate change, dominates the SST and heat flux changes over this 23-yr period.” Image Source: Large and Yeager (2012) Likewise, McMonigal and colleagues have now determined the 0-700 m warming trend in the Indian Ocean “has been driven by significant changes in oceanic fluxes and not by surface forcing.” In other words, it is not the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration increases driving warming, but “the ocean has been driving a rapid increase in Indian Ocean heat content” because the “change must be due to the gyre circulation.” Image Source: McMonigal et al., 2022 And if natural processes in ocean heat transport can explain warming in the Indian Ocean, it is not a stretch to assume the same explanation can be applied for warming trends in the rest of the global ocean too.

Arctic Ocean Warming Began Already In Early 20th Century, Meaning Natural Factors Strongly At Play, Not CO2

https://notrickszone.com/2021/12/29/arctic-ocean-warming-began-already-in-early-20th-century-meaning-natural-factors-strongly-at-play-not-co2/?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=arctic-ocean-warming-began-already-in-early-20th-century-meaning-natural-factors-strongly-at-play-not-co2 By P Gosselin In a recent paper, scientists expressed their surprise that the Arctic had started warming already back in the early 20th century, 100 years ago. This, along with the obligatory CO2 climate warming lip service, is described in a Cambridge University press release. ================================== Arctic Ocean started getting warmer decades earlier than we thought, study finds by University of Cambridge An international group of researchers reconstructed the recent history of ocean warming at the gateway to the Arctic Ocean in a region called the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard, and found that the Arctic Ocean has been warming for much longer than earlier records have suggested. Credit: Sara Giansiracusa Natural oceanic currents The Arctic Ocean has been getting warmer since the beginning of the 20th century—decades earlier than records suggest—due to warmer water flowing into the delicate polar ecosystem from the Atlantic Ocean. An international group of researchers reconstructed the recent history of ocean warming at the gateway to the Arctic Ocean in a region called the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalbard. Atlantic waters flow into the Arctic Using the chemical signatures found in marine microorganisms, the researchers found that the Arctic Ocean began warming rapidly at the beginning of the last century as warmer and saltier waters flowed in from the Atlantic—a phenomenon called Atlantification—and that this change likely preceeded the warming documented by modern instrumental measurements. Since 1900, the ocean temperature has risen by approximately 2 degrees Celsius, while sea ice has retreated and salinity has increased. The results, reported in the journal Science Advances, provide the first historical perspective on Atlantification of the Arctic Ocean and reveal a connection with the North Atlantic that is much stronger than previously thought. The connection is capable of shaping Arctic climate variability, which could have important implications for sea-ice retreat and global sea level rise as the polar ice sheets continue to melt. Atlantification is one of the causes of warming in the Arctic, however instrumental records capable of monitoring this process, such as satellites, only go back about 40 years. Using the chemical signatures found in marine microorganisms, researchers have found that the Arctic Ocean began warming rapidly at the beginning of the last century as warmer and saltier waters flowed in from the Atlantic – a phenomenon called Atlantification. Credit: Sara Giansiracusa The researchers used geochemical and ecological data from ocean sediments to reconstruct the change in water column properties over the past 800 years. They precisely dated sediments using a combination of methods and looked for diagnostic signs of Atlantification, like change in temperature and salinity. “When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr. Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity—it really sticks out.” “The reason for this rapid Atlantification of at the gate of the Arctic Ocean is intriguing,” said Muschitiello. “We compared our results with the ocean circulation at lower latitudes and found there is a strong correlation with the slowdown of dense water formation in the Labrador Sea. In a future warming scenario, the deep circulation in this subpolar region is expected to further decrease because of the thawing of the Greenland ice sheet. Our results imply that we might expect further Arctic Atlantification in the future because of climate change.” The researchers say that their results also expose a possible flaw in climate models, because they do not reproduce this early Atlantification at the beginning of the last century. “Climate simulations generally do not reproduce this kind of warming in the Arctic Ocean, meaning there’s an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification,” said Tommaso. “We rely on these simulations to project future climate change, but the lack of any signs of an early warming in the Arctic Ocean is a missing piece of the puzzle.”

Geologic Heat Linked To East Coast Ocean Warming Trend

https://climatechangedispatch.com/geologic-heat-ocean-warming/ BY JAMES KAMIS, GUEST POST ON FEB 27, 2020. A well-defined ocean warming trend originating off the United States East Coast is likely from super-heated and methane-enriched fluids emitted from numerous seafloor hydrothermal vents/hot springs (see figure 1 after the jump). Supporting evidence: This trend has shown up on shallow Sea Surface (SST) maps since their advent in 1997 and has likely been present for thousands of years. The SST mapping system continuously measures worldwide ocean temperatures by integrating satellite and ocean buoy data. Every two or three days the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) posts this temperature data in map view. A review of SST data indicates that the East Coast ocean warming trend is the only very strong warming feature ever recorded along the entire East Coast. Figure 1. Shallow Sea Surface Temperature Map (SST Map) of oceans surrounding the United States of America (warmed ocean shaded red, map credit NOAA, labels J.Kamis). The “ocean floor heat source point” has never moved (Figure 1). It has maintained the same temperature scale since 1997. Integration then analysis of these characteristics and other information, primarily geological in nature, proves that the warm trend is the result of emissions from seafloor geological features such as a group of hydrothermal vents. Conversely, these characteristics and other information prove that the forces and situations listed below are not the root cause of the East Coast ocean warming trend. Uniform worldwide atmosphere warming as per the global warming theory. Uniform atmospheric warming would lead to the generation of other East Coast warming trends that have the same temperature magnitude. This is not the case. Similar ocean water depth. Similar ocean depths are present all along the East Coast and none of these depths are home to another high-magnitude temperature ocean trend. Gulf Stream ocean current. A review of all SST Maps indicates that the Gulf Stream ocean current, which circumvents the entire north and the central Atlantic Ocean, has never generated another warming trend with the temperature magnitude as per the East Coast trend. Human-generated warm fluids flushed into the Atlantic Ocean. The East Coast warming floor heat source point encompasses an area off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia. This source point is not positioned near a major metropolitan area. Additionally, other large metropolitan areas such as Miami, Baltimore, and New York City do not have significant ocean floor heat source points and high magnitude temperature warm trends associated with them. General evidence linking seafloor methane emissions to super-heated fluid emissions from hydrothermal vents is abundant and reliable per other information and the quote below. “Since the discovery of the first hydrothermal vents along the Galápagos Rift (major seafloor fault system) in 1977, scientists have puzzled over the origin of methane rising from these deep-sea hot springs. Regardless of differences in location, geology, and chemistry, all hydrothermal vents worldwide release at least some methane in varying amounts. Whether the gas comes from water-rock reactions during fluid circulation or preexists as pockets of methane stored in the crust, remains a controversial question” (see here). One of many specific examples that illustrate the connection between seafloor methane emissions and super-heated fluid emissions from seafloor hydrothermal vents is located northeast of Greenland, west of the Svalbard Islands in the Fram Strait (Figure 2). Figure 2. Long, linear trends of seafloor methane seeps are located northeast of Greenland and just southwest of the Svalbard Islands. Here methane seeps are aligned in a series of long linear trends that are parallel to well-documented faults associated with the northern extent of a 1,000-mile-long linear mountain chain of seafloor volcanoes, faults, and hydrothermal vents. These geological features are proven to emit large amounts of super-heated, methane-rich fluid into the overlying ocean. The mountain chain is referred to by many names. Here we use the name Jan Mayen Volcanic Complex (see here and here). Dag Rune Olsen of the University of Bergen led a research team that has investigated and mapped Jan Mayen for many years. He describes this volcanic complex as follows: “We probably know even less about the very deep seas and oceans then we know about the moon,” he said. The range extends from Jan Mayen island in the Greenland Sea to the Fram Strait between Svalbard and Greenland. It comprises hundreds of volcanos, some just 20m below the surface. The new discovery comprises hundreds of more volcanoes, some just 20m below the surface. … “We have found volcanoes at such a shallow level and they could break the surface at any time and form a new island. … We have long known that Iceland has both volcanic activity and hot springs, but we thought that we did not have anything like that in Norway. But we do, it was only underwater.” here). The above-information concerning the Fram Strait’s methane seeps is thought to be proof positive that they were generated and maintained by multiple strings of heat-emitting, methane-rich hydrothermal vents. Next, we discuss the implications of methane seeps whose seafloor geographic position perfectly matches the East Coast warming trend’s shallow sea surface origin point (Figure 3). Figure 3. Map of seafloor methane seeps that are positioned along two linear-intersecting straight lines. (map and labeling credit Mississippi State University and USGS, red lines by J. Kamis). Research by Mississippi State and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) discovered and mapped 570 seafloor methane seeps off the shores of North Carolina and Virginia (see here). They concluded that the methane was being emitted from geological features termed “cold seeps“. Cold Seeps emit much cooler seawater (140°F) than hydrothermal vents (867°F) and therefore in the author’s opinion do not have the capacity to generate the overlying East Coast ocean warming trend. The author believes that the two long, linear methane trends shown in Figure 3 are the result of long, linear seafloor faults (Figure 3). Faults that are home to a string of hydrothermal vents which emit huge amounts of methane-rich, super-heated fluids from a string of hydrothermal vents. Vents that are the root cause of the East Coast ocean warming trend. In summary, evidence substantiates that a well-defined, persistent and non-moving ocean warm trend originating off the East Coast of the United States is the result of super-heated and methane enriched fluids emitted from numerous seafloor hydrothermal vents/hot springs. This has far-reaching implications concerning the root cause of current worldwide ocean warming. Those advocating the global warming theory state that warming of Earth’s oceans is exclusively the result of atmospheric warming, which is induced by the Sun or human-induced emissions of CO2 emissions. They do not state that one other significant force that effects the warming of Earth’s oceans is heat flow from seafloor geological features. This is clearly an atmospheric bias. Many previous Climate Change Dispatch articles have shown that geologically heating of Earth’s oceans is the root cause of El Ninos, West Antarctic ocean warming, Arctic Sea Ice melting, end of Ice Ages, and so-called coral bleaching. Clearly it is time to allow funding, research and the freedom to discuss the effect seafloor geological features. James Edward Kamis is a retired professional Geologist with 42 years of experience, a B.S. in Geology from Northern Illinois University (1973), an M.S. in geology from Idaho State University (1977), and a longtime member of AAPG who has always been fascinated by the connection between Geology and Climate. More than 42 years of research/observation have convinced him that Geological forces, especially Earth’s Upper Mantle Convection Systems which drive the dynamics of outer crustal plates, are an important driver of the Earth’s climate as per his Plate Climatology Theory.

Debunking The Latest Ocean Warming Scare

https://climatechangedispatch.com/debunking-ocean-warming-scare/ Debunking The Latest Ocean Warming Scare Climate Change Dispatch / by Paul Homewood / 2d Willis Eschenbach over at WUWT has a good summary of the latest scare story about ocean warming: How much is a “Whole Little”? Well, it’s like a whole lot, only much, much smaller. There’s a new paper out. As usual, it has a whole bunch of authors, fourteen to be precise. My rule of thumb is that “The quality of research varies inversely with the square of the number of authors” … but I digress. In this case, they’re mostly Chinese, plus some familiar western hemisphere names like Kevin Trenberth and Michael Mann. Not sure why they’re along for the ride, but it’s all good. The paper is “Record-Setting Ocean Warmth Continued in 2019“. Here’s their money graph: Now, that would be fairly informative … except that it’s in zettajoules. I renew my protest against the use of zettajoules for displaying or communicating this kind of ocean analysis. It’s not that they are not accurate, they are. It’s that nobody has any idea what that actually means. Read the full post here. Willis makes a number of points: Firstly, when it is expressed in terms of temperature, we find that the oceans down to 2,000m have warmed by little more than 0.1C in half a century, hardly Armageddon: The idea that we can measure the temperature of the world’s deep oceans to such fine margins is, of course, twaddle. As Willis points out, even ARGO buoys, only operational since 2005, only cover less than one-third of the oceans. Prior to that, we were doing little more than guesswork. Although zettajoules sound impressive, the claimed increase is microscopic compared to the total amount of energy entering and leaving the ocean. How can we be sure that this tiny increase, even if it was real, is due to AGW, and not a myriad of natural causes, such as clouds, thunderstorms, ENSO, and other ocean cycles? I would add one further thought. As the map below shows, there is a huge variation in sea surface temperature anomalies across the world, with a range of about 6C. OK, these are just surface temperatures, and temperature anomalies at depth will be much less pronounced. Nevertheless, the natural factors causing these variations clearly dwarf the supposed impact of man-made warming. How then can we be sure that we are actually measuring the latter? Source Read more at Not A Lot Of People Know That See also Dr. Roy’s piece on Deep Ocean temperatures and this flawed report. SHAREVISIT WEBSITE

New UN IPCC report on ocean warming cites a flawed and retracted paper

By Anthony Watts / Via Retraction Watch: A major new report about the dramatic warming of the oceans cites a 2018 Nature paper on the topic that was retracted earlier this week — the same day, in fact, that the report dropped. But one of the authors of that paper tells Retraction Watch that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report, released September 25, must have meant to cite a different paper by the same authors. The report concluded that: It is virtually certain that the global ocean has warmed unabated since 1970 and has taken up more than 90% of the excess heat in the climate system (high confidence). Since 1993, the rate of ocean warming has more than doubled (likely). … What makes the flawed citation more remarkable is that researchers have been aware of errors in the analysis for more than 10 months. As we — and others — have reported, almost immediately after publication of the paper Nic Lewis blogged about his concerns with the analysis, concerns that eventually prompted the retraction. Full story at Retraction Watch The paper, Resplandy et al. has been well covered in WUWT since Nic Lewis first pointed out the fatal flaw in the “peer reviewed” paper. This latest blunder seems pretty par for the course with the IPCC, and as we’ve seen in the past they’ve not only used “grey literature” but travel brochures as references to “scientific” assessments. This latest blunder underscores the worthlessness of the IPCC to real science. What we can do though, is alert them with reports about this error. From their website: In case of a suspected error in an IPCC report, please send a mail to [email protected] containing the following information: Complete name, Telephone, Organization, Country, Publication, Chapter, Page, Line, and Comments. The IPCC Protocol for Addressing Possible Errors is here I suspect all we will get is what Retraction watch got – a form email. Doesn’t hurt to try, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

YET ANOTHER NEW OCEAN WARMING PAPER CONTAINS “FACTUAL ERRORS AND MISLEADING STATEMENTS”

https://www.thegwpf.com/new-ocean-warming-paper-contains-factual-errors-and-misleading-statements/ Global Warming Policy Forum Second ocean paper in three months is refuted by independent climate scientist Nicholas Lewis A scientific paper, published in Science magazine last week, led to widespread claims that the oceans were warming faster than previously thought, and received media attention around the world.   But less than a week after the headlines, an independent scientist, Nicholas Lewis, has found that team led by Lijing Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, had made what he calls important factual errors. Lewis also says that some of Cheng’s statements are “misleading” As Lewis explains: The headlines all said that the oceans were warming even faster than previously thought. Unfortunately, the authors seem to have made several quite important errors and inappropriate comparisons. Ocean warming appears to be very much in line with earlier IPCC estimates, when correctly calculated, and slower over the last decade or so than predicted by climate models” Lewis has become prominent in the climate debate because of his forensic reviews of important climate science results. Back in November, the authors of another much-publicised paper on the subject of ocean warming quickly admitted that Lewis had uncovered catastrophic errors in their results, although they have yet to formally withdraw their results. Lewis is now hoping that Cheng and his colleagues will also move swiftly to correct the record: The errors seem incontrovertible, so I hope they will set the record straight as soon as they can, so we can all move on”. Nicholas Lewis: Is ocean warming accelerating faster than thought? – An analysis of Cheng et al (2019), Science   Contact Nicholas Lewis e: [email protected]

Ocean Warming in Climate Models Varies Far More than Recent Study Suggests

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/01/ocean-warming-in-climate-models-varies-far-more-than-recent-study-suggests/  by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. I wanted to expand upon something that was mentioned in yesterday’s blog post about the recent Cheng et al. paper which was widely reported with headlines suggesting a newer estimate of the rate of ocean warming is 40% higher than old estimates from the IPCC AR5 report in 2013. I demonstrated that the new dataset was only only 11% warmer when compared to the AR5 best estimate of ocean warming during 1971-2010. The point I want to reemphasize today is the huge range in ocean warming between the 33 models included in that study. Here’s a plot based upon data from Cheng’s website which, for the period in question (1971-2010) shows a factor of 8 range between the model with the least ocean warming and the model with the most warming, based upon linear trends fitted to the model curves: Yearly ocean heat content (OHC) changes since 1971 in 33 models versus the recent Cheng reanalysis of XBT and Argo ocean temperature data for the surface to 2,000m layer. The vertical scale is in both ZettaJoules (10^21 Joules) and in deg. C (assuming an ocean area of 3.6 x 10^14 m^2). The Cheng et al. confidence interval has been inflated by 1.43 to account for the difference between the surface area of the Earth (Cheng et al. usage) and the actual ocean surface area. I have also included Cheng’s reanalysis of ocean heat content (OHC) data over the same period of time, showing how well it fits the *average* of all 33 models included in the study. Cheng’s OHC dataset is now the warmest of all reanalyzed OHC datasets, which means (mark my words) it will gain the greatest favor in the next IPCC report. Mark. My. Words. What is disconcerting is the huge (8x) range in ocean warming between models for the period 1971-2010. This is partly due to continuing uncertainty in climate sensitivity (ranging over a factor of ~3 according to the IPCC), but also due to uncertainties in how much aerosol forcing has occurred, especially in the first half of the period in question. The amount of climate system warming in models or in nature is a function of both forcing and the system response to that forcing. If models are based upon fundamental physical principles, as we are often told, how can they give such a wide range of results? The answer, of course, is that there are some physical processes which are not well known, for example how clouds and upper tropospheric water vapor change with warming. The devil is in the details. Dodgy Statistics One of the problems with the results in the Cheng et al. study is how the 90% confidence intervals are computed. Most people will simply assume they are related to how well the stated numbers are known. That is, how good the various observational and model estimates of ocean warming are. But they would be wrong. The confidence intervals given in the paper (we are told at the end of the Supplementary Materials section) simply refer to how well each time series of OHC (whether observations or models) is fit by a regression line. They have nothing to do with how good a certain OHC dataset is. In fact, they assume (as John Christy pointed out to me) each dataset is perfect! In the above plot I show the difference between the quoted 90% confidence interval in the paper for the models, and the 90% confidence interval I computed which represents the variability between the models warming trends, which is much more informative to most readers. The difference is huge. What Cheng et al. provided for confidence intervals isn’t “wrong”. It’s simply misleading for most readers who are trying to figure out how good these various observational OHC trends are, or how uncertain the climate model OHC trends are. Is the Average of the Climate Models Better than the Individual Models? Cheng et al. only deal with the 33-model average, and don’t mention the huge inter-model differences. One might claim that the average of the 33 models is probably better than the individual models, anyway. But I’m not so sure one can make such an argument. The various climate models cannot be viewed as some sort of “truth model” about which the various modeling groups around the world have added noise. If that were the case then, yes, the average of all the models would give the best result. Instead, each modeling group makes their own best estimate of a wide variety of forcings and physical processes in the models, and they get a wide variety of results. It is not clear which of them is closest to the truth. It could be an outlier model is best. For example, the model with the closest agreement with our (UAH) satellite tropospheric temperatures since 1979 is the Russian model, which wasn’t even included in the new study. The new OHC dataset might reduce uncertainty somewhat (although we still don’t know how accurate it is), but one also has to evaluate surface temperature trends, tropospheric temperature trends (which I believe are telling us water vapor feedback isn’t as strong as in the models), as well as uncertainties in forcings which, even if the models contained perfect physics, would still lead to different projected rates of warming. Given all of the uncertianties, I think we are still far from understanding just how much future warming will occur from increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.

Will media retract?! Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer: Media Reports of +40% Adjustment in Ocean Warming Were Greatly Exaggerated – Actually only up estimated 11%

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/01/media-reports-of-40-adjustment-in-ocean-warming-were-greatly-exaggerated/ by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D. Summary: The recently reported upward adjustment in the 1971-2010 Ocean Heat Content (OHC) increase compared to the last official estimate from the IPCC is actually 11%, not 40%. The 40% increase turns out to be relative to the average of various OHC estimates the IPCC addressed in their 2013 report, most of which were rejected. Curiously, the new estimate is almost identical to the average of 33 CMIP climate models, yet the models themselves range over a factor of 8 in their rates of ocean warming. Also curious is the warmth-enhancing nature of temperature adjustments over the years from surface thermometers, radiosondes, satellites, and now ocean heat content, with virtually all data adjustments leading to more warming rather than less. I’ve been trying to make sense out of the recent Science paper by Cheng et al.entitled How Fast are the Oceans Warming? The news headlines I saw which jumped out at me (and several others who asked me about them) were: World’s Oceans Warming 40% Faster than Previously Thought(EcoWatch.com), The oceans are heating up 40% faster than scientists realized which means we should prepare for more disastrous flooding and storms(businessinsider.com) For those who read the paper, let me warn you: The paper itself does not have enough information to figure out what the authors did, but the Supplementary Materials for the paper provide some of what is needed. I suspect this is due to editorial requirements by Science to make articles interesting without excessive fact mongering. One of the conclusions of the paper is that Ocean Heat Content (OHC) has been rising more rapidly in the last couple decades than in previous decades, but this is not a new finding, and I will not discuss it further here. Of more concern is the implication that this paper introduces some new OHC dataset that significantly increases our previous estimates of how much the oceans have been warming. As far as I can tell, this is not the case. Dazed and Confused Most of the paper deals with just how much the global oceans from the surface to 2,000 m depth warmed during the period 1971-2010 (40 years) which was also a key period in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5). And here’s where things get confusing, and I wasted hours figuring out how they got their numbers because the authors did not provide sufficient information. Part of the confusion comes from the insistence of the climate community on reporting ocean warming in energy content units of zettajoules (a zettajoule is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules, which is a billion trillion Joules… also a sextillion Joules, but male authors fear calling it that), rather than in what is actually measured (degrees). This leads to confusion because almost nowhere is it ever stated what assumed area of ocean was used in the computation of OHC (which is proportional to both temperature change and the volume of seawater involved in that temperature change). I’ve looked in this paper and other papers (including Levitus), and only in the 2013 IPCC report (AR5) did I find the value 3.6 x 10^14 square meters given for ocean area. (Just because we know the area of the global oceans doesn’t mean that is what is monitored, or what was used in the computation of OHC). Causing still further confusion is that Cheng et al. then take the ocean area, and normalize it by the entire area of the Earth, scaling all of their computed heat fluxes by 0.7. I have no idea why, since their paper does not deal with the small increase in heat content of the land areas. This is just plain sloppy, because it complicates and adds uncertainty when others try to replicate their work. It also raises the question of why energy content? We don’t do that for the atmosphere. Instead, we use what is measured — degrees. The only reason I can think of is that the ocean temperature changes involved are exceedingly tiny, either hundredths or thousandths of a degree C, depending upon what ocean layer is involved and over what time period. Such tiny changes would not generate the alarm that a billion-trillion Joules would (or the even scarier Hiroshima bomb-equivalents). But I digress. The Results I think I finally figured out what Cheng et al. did (thanks mostly to finding the supporting data posted at Cheng’s website). The “40%” headlines derive from this portion of the single figure in their paper, where I have added in red information which is either contained in the Supplementary Materials (3-letter dataset IDs from the authors’ names) or are my own annotations: The five different estimates of 40-year average ocean heating rates from the AR5 report (gray bars) are around 40% below the newer estimates (blue bars), but the AR5 report did not actually use these five in their estimation — they ended up using only the highest of these (Domingues et al., 2008). As Cheng mentions, the pertiment section of the IPCC report is the “Observations: Oceans” section of Working Group 1, specifically Box 3.1 which contains the numerical facts one can factmonger with. From the discussion in Box 3.1, one can compute that the AR5-estimated energy accumulation rate in the 0-2000 m ocean layer (NOT adjusted for total area of the Earth) during 1971-2010 corresponds to an energy flux of 0.50 Watts per sq. meter. This can then be compared to newer estimates computed from Cheng’s website data (which is stated to be the data used in the Science study) of 0.52 W/m2 (DOM), 0.51 W/m2 (ISH), and 0.555 W/m2 (CHG). Significantly, if we use the highest of these estimates (Cheng’s own dataset) we only get an 11% increase above what the IPCC claimed in 2013 — not 40%. Agreement Between Models and Observations Cheng’s website also contains the yearly 0-2000m OHC data from 33 CMIP5 models, from which I calculated the average warming rate, getting 0.549 W/m2 (again, not scaled by 0.7 to get a whole-Earth value). This is amazingly close to Cheng’s 0.555 W/m2 he gets from reanalysis of the deep-ocean temperature data. This is pointed to as evidence that observations support the climate models which, in turn, are of course the basis for proposed energy policy changes and CO2 emissions reduction. How good is that multi-model warming rate? Let me quote the Science article (again, these number are scaled by 0.7): “The ensemble average of the models has a linear ocean warming trend of 0.39 +/- 0.07 W/m2 for the upper 2000 m from 1971-2010 compared with recent observations ranging from 0.36 to 0.39 W/m2.” See that +/- 0.07 error bar on the model warming rate? That is not a confidence interval on the warming rate. It’s the estimated error in the fit of a regression line to the 33-model average warming trace during 1971-2010. It says nothing about how confident we are in the warming rate, or even the range of warming rates BETWEEN models. And that variation between the models is where things REALLY get interesting. Here’s what those 33 models’ OHC warming profiles look like, relative to the beginning of the period (1971), which shows they range over a factor of 8X (from 0.11 W/m2 to 0.92 W/m2) for the period 1971-2010! What do we make of a near-perfect level of agreement (between Cheng’s reanalysis of OHC warming from observational data, and the average of 33 climate models), when those models themselves disagree with each other by up to a factor of 8 (700%)? That is a remarkable stroke of luck. It’s Always Worse than We Thought It is also remarkable how virtually every observational dataset — whether (1) surface temperature from thermometers, (2) deep-ocean temperature measurements, atmospheric temperature from (3) satellites, and from (4) radiosondes, when reanalyzed for the same period, always ends up with more (not less) warming? What are the chances of this? It’s like flipping a coin and almost always getting heads. Again, a remarkable stroke of luck.

Scientist: Ocean Warming: Inadequate Data, Unknown Errors

Ocean Warming: Inadequate Data, Unknown Errors http://www.thegwpf.com/ocean-warming-inadequate-data-unknown-errors/ The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) Ocean Warming: Inadequate Data, Unknown Errors by David Whitehouse The oceans are warming, they have to be. If they were not then climate science would be in trouble. If ocean warming is not accelerating then climate science is also in trouble. The warming of the oceans is one of the key topics in climate change. The Earth’s climate system is responding to an energy imbalance. Any positive imbalance in the world’s energy budget is bound to show up in the oceans as a rise in temperature because the source of the excess energy – heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – overlies much more ocean than land. Reading some recent papers on ocean warming you might be forgiven for thinking they are behaving as predicted by some, warming more than expected, possibly with the warming accelerating. It has been said that we understand the oceans. For me this is premature. As we look ever closer at the oceans we are seeing more of what we don’t understand. One such paper is replete with encouraging words to support their stance in the face of difficulties expressed elsewhere but unmentioned in the paper. The data “resemble models,” and “models reliably predict,” even, it is becoming “increasingly clear.” That the oceans are warming is a conclusion of over a century of observations made in a variety of ways and connecting together these disparate datasets is difficult. Temperature measurements have been made from a variety of probes whose characteristics changed over time, or by different types of water inlets in ships, or by buckets and thermometers. They all give different results and have all been analysed and reanalysed and adjusted again and again and will certainly continue to do so in the future. Once their was a bump in ocean temperature during the 1940s, then it went away as it was an instrumental effect. The only way around this problem is to consider a more coherent dataset – the Argo array of 6,000 or so buoys that started being distributed in 2006. The problem with that empirical data is that it is not yet really long enough, and what we have doesn’t agree with the data obtained by other means. The inhomogeneity of the data before the Argo array is a major problem, and the jump seen in Ocean Heat Content (OHC) with the introduction of the Argo array is another. Measuring Ocean Heat Content is a subject struggling with inadequate data. It involves measuring the temperature of vast oceans (indeed reducing them to one temperature) to an accuracy at the limits of our ability to detect, in some cases a thousandth of a degree. Measurements that are made with no real understanding of the errors be they random or systematic. Another, unnecessary, problem is that researchers use different units and there is a case for journals imposing common standards among the papers they publish to save researchers having to convert between W m-1 (expressed either for the entire Earth’s surface of for the ocean only), temperature or energy increase (often expressed in ZetaJoules). Also, as is often the case in climate studies, proper error bars are often not used. Much of the heat, some claim, is stored deep in the ocean depths — but how did it get there? Timescales for ocean circulation are long, meaning that their depth have not yet seen what is happening at the surface. We do not understand centennial and millennial ocean circulation. We are seeing more references to cooling in the ocean depths. Some of our deep oceans appear to be still adjusting to the end of the Little Ice Age. Another significant finding is that the oceans appear to have absorbed as much heat in the early 20th century as in recent decades. Some simplify and then exaggerate OHC data, a very foolish thing to do considering that as far as the oceans are concerned there is uncertainty at every point of the compass. Feedback: [email protected] The post Ocean Warming: Inadequate Data, Unknown Errors appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

Watch: Morano on TV on media hyped ocean warming study with major error

https://www.therebel.media/media-climate-report-environment-news-rebel-marc-morano Media ignores huge error in alarmist climate report On last night’s episode of The Ezra Levant Show, Marc Morano of ClimateDepot.com joined me to discuss the latest volley in the “climate change” war, as researchers have been forced to “walk back” a report on the oceans heating up, after a mathematician found flaws in their study. The report was front page news when it was first published. You couldn’t go to any news outlet without seeing a feature article on how the rising tides would soon drown our cities. But now that the report has been debunked, those same outlets are silent. SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK

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