Compo and Sardeshmukh: Oceans a main driver of climate variability - it’s the heat AND the humidity.

Compo and Sardeshmukh: Oceans a main driver of climate variability - it’s the heat AND the humidity.

23 07 2008

Illustration only: not part of the paper

This paper has been out for a few days, and several people have alerted me to it. This new paper by Compo,G.P., and P.D. Sardeshmukh, 2008: Oceanic influences on recent continental warming. in the journal Climate Dynamics, is now in press. See the PDF here

This paper makes some significant claims regarding what is driving the observed climate changes. The emphasis is on the ocean as the main driving component, and the authors recognize that “a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences” may be at work. While they point to the oceans as a significant driver, they don’t offer much to explain what is driving the oceanic change.

Even so, this is a significant work, and I urge my visitors to read it, because it shows that GHG forcing is not the only occupant of the drivers seat. It also clearly illustrates the need to examine such cyclic ocean influences as the PDO and AMO more closely, and to consider them in projections of temperature.

Abstract:

“Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land. Atmospheric model simulations of the last half-century with prescribed observed ocean temperature changes, but without prescribed GHG changes, account for most of the land warming. The oceanic influence has occurred through hydrodynamic-radiative teleconnections, primarily by moistening and warming the air over land and increasing the downward longwave radiation at the surface. The oceans may themselves have warmed from a combination of natural and anthropogenic influences.”

Beck on CO2 and Temperature: Oceans are the “dominant CO2 store”

Beck on CO2 and Temperature: Oceans are the “dominant CO2 store”

25 07 2008

Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 20th century
Geo-Ecological Seminar University of Bayreuth, 17th July 2008 (see here)
Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol

Click for larger image with interactive popup links

Summary of the presentation (printable PDF available here)

In 1958 the modern NDIR spectroscopic method was introduced to measure CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere [Beck 2007]. In the preceding period, these measurements were taken with the old wet chemical method. From this period, starting from 1857, more than 90,000 reliable CO2 measurements are available, with an accuracy within ± 3 %. They had been taken near ground level, sea surface and as high as the stratosphere, mostly in the northern hemisphere. Comparison of these measurements on the basis of old wet chemical methods with the new physical method (NDIR) on sea and land reveals a systematic analysis difference of about minus 10 ppm.

Wet chemical analyses indicate three atmospheric CO2 maxima in the northern hemisphere up to approx. 400 ppm over land and sea since about 1812. The measured atmospheric CO2 concentrations since 1920 –1950 prove to be strongly correlated (more than 80 %) with the arctic sea surface temperature (SST).

A detailed analysis of the Atlantic Ocean water during the arctic warming since 1918 – 1939 by Wattenberg (southern Atlantic ocean) and Buch (northern Atlantic ocean) indicates a very similar state of the Atlantic Ocean (pH, salinity, CO2 in water and air over sea etc.) These data show the characteristics of the warm ocean currents (part of global conveyor belt) at that time, indicating a strong CO2 degassing from the Atlantic Sea, especially in the area of Greenland/Iceland and Spitsbergen. More than 360 ppm had been measured over the sea surface.

In 2004 Polyakov published evidence for a multi-decadal oscillation of the ocean currents in the arctic circle, showing a warm phase (strong arctic warming during 1918 –1940 with high temperatures in the Iceland/Spitsbergen area) similar to the current situation, and a cold phase (around 1900 and 1960). Today the Iceland/Spitsbergen area is known for a strong absorption of CO2.

This multi-decadal heating of the oceanic CO2 absorption area and larger parts of the Northern Atlantic Ocean was followed by an increase of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to approx. 400 ppm during the 30s and approx. 390 ppm today. The abundance of plankton (13C) and other biota supports this view.

Who knew? Rachel Carson - climate change expert

Who knew? Rachel Carson - climate change expert

25 07 2008

NOTE: For those of you who don’t know, Rachel Carson has often been hailed as the “mother of the environmental movement” due to her book, Silent Spring, which is said to have resulted in the banning of the pesticide, DDT, worldwide. Before that book, she wrote another, The Sea Around Us, in which she proposes mechanisms for climate change.

What is most interesting is that, unlike with DDT, there is no placing blame on climate change to human influence. The mechanisms she proposes are all natural, all cyclic variation. No human created chemical influence (CO2) is mentioned. I wonder what she’d say today? Would she flip-flop and go with the flow of the current CO2 movement?

From Ed Sanders website, with some slight editing for readability and removal of the maddening glowing red background. (h/t to Steve McIntyre for the link) - Anthony

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From the book, The Sea Around Us.

Copyright 1950, 1951, by Rachel Carson.

Reprinted by permission of Oxford- University Press, Inc.

The old-timers are right–winters aren’t what they were. And the reason may be gigantic tides deep under the sea that apparently change the climate of the whole earth.

The ocean comes alive in one of this year’s most fascinating books. This article is condensed from The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson. A lilelong student of nature, Miss Carson is editor-in-chief of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Day by day and season by season, the ocean dominates the world’s climate. Can it also be an agent in bringing about the long-period swings of climatic change that we know have occurred throughout the long history of the earth-the alternating periods of heat and cold, of drought and flood? There is a fascinating theory that it can.

This theory links events in the deep, hidden places of the ocean with the cyclic changes of eliminate and their effects on human history. It was developed by the distinguished Swedish oceanographer, Otto Pettersson, whose almost century-long life closed in 1941.

Shifting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from its warm mode to cool mode assures global cooling for the next three decades.

Foreword: Don J. Easterbrook sent me this essay on Friday for publication here, but with the dustup over Monckton’s paper and the APS, I decided to hold off publishing it for a bit. For background, see Easterbrook’s web page here. - Anthony

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Shifting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation from its warm mode to cool mode assures global cooling for the next three decades.

Don J. Easterbrook, Dept. of Geology, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA

Addressing the Washington Policymakers in Seattle, WA, Dr. Don Easterbrook said that shifting of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) from its warm mode to its cool mode virtually assures global cooling for the next 25-30 years and means that the global warming of the past 30 years is over. The announcement by NASA that the (PDO) had shifted from its warm mode to its cool mode (Fig. 1) is right on schedule as predicted by past climate and PDO changes (Easterbrook, 2001, 2006, 2007) and is not an oddity superimposed upon and masking the predicted severe warming by the IPCC. This has significant implications for the future and indicates that the IPCC climate models were wrong in their prediction of global temperatures soaring 1°F per decade for the rest of the century.

Figure 1. Cooling of the Pacific Ocean and setting up of the cool-mode PDO. Sea surface temperature anomaly in the Pacific Ocean from April 14-21, 2008. The anomaly compares the recent temperatures measured by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite with an average of data collected by the NOAA Pathfinder satellites from 1985-1997. Places where the Pacific was cooler than normal are blue, places where temperatures were average are white, and places where the ocean was warmer than normal are red. The cool water anomaly in the center of the image shows the lingering effect of the year-old La Niña. However, the much broader area of cooler-than-average water off the coast of North America from Alaska (top center) to the equator is a classic feature of the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The cool waters wrap in a horseshoe shape around a core of warmer-than-average water. (In the warm phase, the pattern is reversed). Unlike El Niño and La Niña, which may occur every 3 to 7 years and last from 6 to 18 months, the PDO can remain in the same phase for 20 to 30 years. (NASA image by Jesse Allen, AMSR-E data processed and provided by Chelle Gentemann and Frank Wentz, Remote Sensing Systems. Caption by Rebecca Lindsey, adapted from a press release from NASA JPL).

Instead of a rise of 1°F during the first decade of this century as predicted by IPCC climate models (Fig 2), global temperatures cooled slightly for the past nine years and cooled more than 1°F this year (Fig 3). Global cooling over the past decade appears to be due to a global cooling trend set up by the PDO cool mode and a similar shift in the Atlantic. The IPCC’s prediction of a 1° F warming by 2011, will require warming of about 1° F in the next three years and unless that happens, the IPCC models will be proven invalid.

Figure 2. IPCC predicted warming.

Figure 3. Measured cooling.

As shown by the historic pattern of PDOs over the past century (Fig. 4) and by corresponding global warming and cooling, the pattern is part of ongoing warm/cool cycles that last 25-30 years. Each time the PDO mode has shifted from warm to cool or cool to warm, the global climate has changed accordingly. In 1977, the PDO shifted from cool mode to warm mode (Fig. 4) and set off the global warming from 1977 to 1998, often referred to as the “Great Climate Shift.” The recent shift from PDO warm mode to cool mode is similar to the shift that occurred in the mid-1940’s and resulted in 30 years of global cooling (Fig. 4). The global warming from ~1915 to ~1945 was also brought on by a mode shift in the PDO (Fig. 4). Every indication points continuation of the PDO patterns of the past century and global cooling for the next 30 years (Fig. 4). Thus, the global warming the Earth has experienced since 1977 appears to be over!

Figure 4. PDO indices, 1900-2008 with predictions to 2040.

Global Warming Out, Global Cooling In

Four scientists: Global Warming Out, Global Cooling In

12 07 2008

Alan Lammey, Texas Energy Analyst, Houston

Four scientists, four scenarios, four more or less similar conclusions without actually saying it outright — the global warming trend is done, and a cooling trend is about to kick in. The implication: Future energy price response is likely to be significant.

Late last month, some leading climatologists and meteorologists met in New York at the Energy Business Watch Climate and Hurricane Forum. The theme of the forum strongly suggested that a period of global cooling is about emerge, though possible concerns for a political backlash kept it from being spelled out.

However, the message was loud and clear, a cyclical global warming trend may be coming to an end for a variety of reasons, and a new cooling cycle could impact the energy markets in a big way.

Words like “highly possible,” “likely” or “reasonably convincing” about what may soon occur were used frequently. Then there were other words like “mass pattern shift” and “wholesale change in anomalies” and “changes in global circulation.”

Noted presenters, such as William Gray, Harry van Loon, Rol Madden and Dave Melita, signaled in the strongest terms that huge climate changes are afoot. Each weather guru, from a different angle, suggested that global warming is part of a cycle that is nearing an end. All agreed the earth is in a warm cycle right now, and has been for a while, but that is about to change significantly.

However, amid all of the highly suggestive rhetoric, none of the weather and climate pundits said outright that a global cooling trend is about to replace the global warming trend in a shift that could begin as early as next year.

Van Loon spoke about his theories of solar storms and how, combined with, or because of these storms, the Earth has been on a relative roller coaster of climate cycles. For the past 250 years, he said, global climate highs and lows have followed the broad pattern of low and high solar activity. And shorter 11-year sunspot cycles are even more easily correlated to global temperatures.

It was cooler from 1883 to 1928 when there was low solar activity, he said, and it has been warmer since 1947 with increased solar activity.

“We are on our way out of the latest (warming) cycle, and are headed for a new cycle of low (solar) activity,” van Loon said. “There is a change coming. We may see 180-degree changes in anomalies during high and low sunspot periods. There were three global climate changes in the last century, there is a change coming now.”

Meanwhile, Madden noted that while temperature forecasts longer than one to two weeks out has improved, “what has really gotten much better is climate forecasting … predicting the change in the mean,” he said.

And the drivers impacting climate suggest a shift to cooler sea surface temperatures, he said.

Perhaps the best known speaker was Colorado State University’s Gray, founder of the school’s famed hurricane research team. Gray spoke about multi-decade periods of warming and cooling and how global climate flux has been the norm for as long as there have been records.

Gray has taken quite a bit of political heat for insistence that global warming is not a man-made condition. Man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is negligible, he said, compared to the amount of CO2 Mother Nature makes and disposes of each day or century.

“We’ve reached the top of the heat cycle,” he said. “The next 10 years will be hardly any warmer than the last 10 years.”

Finally, climate scientist Melita spoke of a new phase in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

“I’m looking at a new, cold-negative phase, though it won’t effect this summer, fall or winter ‘08,” he said.

Conference host, analyst and forecaster Andy Weissman closed the conference by addressing how natural gas prices and policy debates would be impacted by a possible climate shift that could leave the market short gas.

This would be especially problematic if gas use for power generation were substantially increased at the expense of better alternatives.

“If we’re about to shift into another natural climate cycle, we can’t do it without coal-fired generation. So the policy debate has to change,” he said. “Coal has to be back on the table if we’re ever going to meet our energy needs.”

As for natural gas: “Next year, may see a bit of price softening,” Weissman said. “After that, fogetaboutit!”.

Northwest Passage: still impassable

Image rotated- click for source image. Credit: Terra/MODIS true color

Some reference views to help you get your bearings, here is what the area would be like if “ice free” as some folks are predicting to happen this summer:
impassable

im·pass·a·ble [im-pas-uh-buhl]

–adjective
1. not passable; not allowing passage over, through, along, etc.: Heavy snow made the roads impassable.

2. unable to be surmounted: an impassable obstacle to further negotiations.

There has been a lot of hype this year citing data which is suggesting that we’ll be able to navigate the Northwest Passage and some even so bold as to suggest a completely ice free Arctic Sea. You could say: “A picture is always worth 1000 data points.”

I’d say “impassable” fits this picture pretty well:

Phytoplankton surprisingly destroys a lot of ozone

Dr Katie Read and fifteen mostly U.K. and U.S. co-authors have studied the mechanisms destroying ozone (O₃) in the lower atmosphere above the ocean:
Extensive halogen-mediated ozone destruction over the tropical Atlantic Ocean (scientific paper in Nature, abstract)
Recall that ozone in the lower atmosphere is a highly potent greenhouse gas. Despite its small amount, it is responsible for almost 2/3 of the effect we attribute to CO₂. (The absolute size of the effect remains uncertain, mostly due to unknown feedbacks, but most of these feedbacks are universal multiplicative factors for all greenhouse gases.) When you divide the "shared absorption" in between the overlapping different gases, the percentages of the total greenhouse effect are as follows (source):

67%+ H₂O (water)
15% CO₂ (carbon dioxide)
10% O₃ (ozone)
3% CH₄ (methane)
3% N₂O (nitrous oxide)
Water itself would be able to cause a much higher percentage of the effect than 67% but some of the spectral lines are absorbed - and attributed to - the competitors. At any rate, you see that O₃ and CH₄, when added together, are almost as important as CO₂, so we should care about them.

Is ozone good? The popular cliché is that the lower-atmosphere ozone is a health hazard while higher-atmosphere ozone is helpful to protect us against ultraviolet radiation
There are all kinds of processes that create and destroy ozone. Dr Katie Read et al., the authors of the present peer-reviewed paper, spectroscopically observed the gases at the Cape Verde Observatory (Atlantic Ocean islands, 500 miles West from Senegal in West Africa).
See also: Other lab problems facing the mainstream theory of the ozone cycle
They found out that phytoplankton apparently creates a lot bromine monoxide and iodine monoxide. These compounds subsequently destroy a lot of ozone and lead to additional products that destroy some methane, too.

The existing conventional mainstream models of Earth's chemistry completely neglect halogens (Fl, Cl, Br, I, At). That's why they end up with a wrong figure expressing how much ozone is destroyed above the ocean - i.e. a wrong figure for the concentration of an important greenhouse gas. The authors decide that the actual amount of ozone destroyed in this way is 50% higher than the models would lead you to believe.

I want to say that the rates of the (halogen-dominated) reactions they are proposing to explain the spectroscopic observations are generally increased by man-made (or other) CO₂ production and by "global warming". Remember that e.g. coccolithophores, a brand of phytoplankton, thrive when the CO₂ levels increase. Also, higher temperatures lead (or would lead) to increased water vapor above the ocean that helps the halogen oxides to escape from the ocean. All these relationships are examples of Le Chatelier's principle i.e. Nature's natural ability to self-regulate. Negative feedbacks always win at the end.

A pseudoscientific reaction from RealClimate.ORG

RealClimate.ORG's Gavin Schmidt clearly doesn't like the fact that the findings show another mildly serious problem with the contemporary climate models. So he spreads some fog. The most breathtaking demonstration of his incompetence (or zeal) is the following quote:
... Yet this is completely misleading since neither climate sensitivity nor CO₂ driven future warming will be at all affected by any revisions in ozone chemistry - mainly for the reason that most climate models don't consider ozone chemistry at all. Precisely zero of the IPCC AR4 model simulations (discussed here for instance) used an interactive ozone module in doing the projections into the future.
Wow! He seems to be so proud that their models neglect virtually everything. So if a mechanism happens to destroy another greenhouse gas that is as important as CO₂, partially as a result of the presence of CO₂ itself, the sensitivity will not be affected "at all"! Who could have thought? Has Mr Schmidt ever heard of feedbacks? Or does he think that there is no interaction (or causal relationship) between the concentration of different chemical compounds (and between temperature, too)? Has he ever heard of the so-called chemical reactions?

What he says is so flagrant denial of basics of science that I believe that most people who have heard some science at the elementary school will know what's wrong with his opinions.

Political activists like him love to talk about positive feedbacks all the time - especially the production of water vapor indirectly caused by CO₂-induced warming - but when it comes to negative feedbacks such as the destruction of other greenhouse gases such as O₃ and CH₄, they shouldn't be looked at "at all"! Is it what you call science and how you want to obtain correct (...) answers, Mr Schmidt? I am stunned.

The climate models that try to emulate the greenhouse effect but that don't reproduce the correct chemistry are simply wrong models because the chemistry that involves the greenhouse gases on either side of the formulae is completely crucial for the greenhouse effect. Because O₃ and CH₄ are also greenhouse gases, it is damn important to know whether they exist in the atmosphere and whether they are being destroyed and whether they will be destroyed in the future (and how much). So Schmidt's statement
Precisely zero of the IPCC AR4 model simulations (discussed here for instance) used an interactive ozone module in doing the projections into the future.
implies that you should now throw precisely all IPCC AR4 models to the trash bin or, to say the same thing more moderately, to work very hard to correct the bug and to introduce the previously neglected important effect that was pointed out by Dr Katie Read et al.

Many similar problems with the models have been found in the past and many more will be found in the future. Science listens - and has to listen - to all these new insights, otherwise it would be no science and it could make no progress. Looking at new data and insights and the elimination (or adjustment) of existing theories is what scientists are really paid for.

Mr Schmidt's own attitude to the error-correcting procedures is clarified by the last sentence of his text:
But it seems that the "climate models will have to be adjusted" meme is just too good not to use - regardless of the context.
Very good. More precisely, what an astonishingly misguided person.

So Mr Schmidt finds error correction in science too good and prefers not to use it and not to correct errors in the climate models. In fact, he even prefers not to talk about adjustments at all because it could indicate that science and models are not the infallible and eternally valid verses from the Holy Scripture that he knows, believes, and uses to evangelize. Instead, they could become temporary insights that could be influenced (or even refuted!?) by every new observation or a new scientific paper - and that would be nothing short of hell! :-)

I happen to use the word "science" for this "hell".

Well, this approach of Mr Schmidt might be one of the reasons why his personal opinions about the climate and the opinions of his comrades at RealClimate.ORG are scientifically worthless piles of crap. The more science will know about Nature, the more crappy the opinions of similar zealots who are not ready to adjust their opinions will be. If you try to quantify how much this particular paper changes the numbers relevant for the climate sensitivity, it is fair to say that 5-10 papers like that are able to change the numbers by something of order 100%. In a year or two, our understanding may be very different if we're doing things right. It's therefore damn important for climate science to (critically) read and (rationally) process such papers!

People like Schmidt are neither willing nor able to correct mistakes in their models and theories. Fortunately for them and unfortunately for the society, they are being paid for something completely different - for a blind promotion of wrong theories and politically convenient conclusions that are irrationally extracted from these wrong, never-updated, obsolete theories.

See also Science Daily, Nude Socialist, and Discover Magazine.