There is an old saying..what goes up, must come down...
I am MUCH more concerned about global cooling than global warming. We are at about the highest temperatures ever observed but we can be a LOT colder.
Posted on 09/29/2006 3:19:10 PM PDT by blam
Mystery of the Missing Heat: Upper ocean has cooled slightly in recent years, despite warming climate
Sid Perkins
Between 2003 and 2005, the top layers of the world's oceans cooled slightly, but scientists aren't sure where the heat went.
According to climate data gathered worldwide, 2003, 2004, and 2005 are three of the five warmest years since reliable record keeping of global air temperatures began more than a century ago. However, oceanographic surveys suggest that on average, the upper 750 meters of the world's ice-free oceans cooled about 0.03°C during that 3-year period.
This cooling reverses an oceanic-warming trend observed since the 1950s, oceanographer John M. Lyman and his colleagues report in the Sept. 28 Geophysical Research Letters. Between 1993 and 2003, the average temperature of the upper layers of the icefree ocean rose about 0.09°C, they note.
The newly documented cooling occurred throughout the top 750 m of ocean and seems to have extended to deeper waters as well, says study coauthor Josh K. Willis, an oceanographer now at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Data used in the new analysis were gathered by buoys tethered in deep water, instruments towed by or dropped from ships, and an armada of robotic probes, says Lyman, who's at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laboratory in Seattle.
While the top layers of the ocean have cooled slightly overall, some limited areas have warmed, says coauthor Gregory C. Johnson, also of NOAA in Seattle. The cooling trend, as well as its patchiness, probably results from variations in climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, he notes.
"Even within a long-term warming trend, you can have short-term drops in [ocean] temperature due to year-to-year variability," says Lyman.
Scientists are working to identify where the heat went. One possibility: It may have moved to the deepest layers of the ocean. The cooling of surface waters would cause them to contract, triggering a small drop in sea level, says Willis. But satellite data suggest that sea level is still rising. So, the missing heat may have gone deep, causing waters there to expand and prevent a decline in sea level. However, "it's hard to envision a way to put that much heat down deep so quickly," says Willis.
In another scenario under consideration, the missing heat may have radiated into space. However, satellite observations don't support that notion, says Bruce A. Wielicki, a physicist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Yet another possibility is that the heat warmed some of the waters in polar regions and promoted melting of the ice cover there, he notes.
"We have a few more pieces to unravel" about where the heat has gone, comments Sarah T. Gille, an oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. "It's a real conundrum."
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You will be able to find somebody who says this cooling is caused by global warming.
Noooooooo! This can't be! What about man-made global warming melting all the icecaps and increasing the ocean's temperature to BOILING, which we know is what's going to happen?!?!?
Ahh, but algore tells us that the scurge of global warming is upon us!
I predict in two weeks we'll see a report from Hansen at NASA. Noting worldwide glaciers are both retreating and advancing, and both can be attributed to global warming, he will prove with graphs and selected proxies that oceans are cooling from the cool water of retreating glaicers AND the ice from advancing glaciers breaking off and cooling the oceans like ice cubes in your glass.
Proven, global warming causes global ocean cooling.
It seems to me that global warming (if it ever really happens) is a much easier problem to solve scientifically than global cooling and another ice age. Global warming could be solved by a number of methods that simply reflect some sunlight back into space. Installation of snow-making equipment in some fairly large areas that have cold winters but not much snow could solve the problem right there. Snow pack reflects sunlight back into space. On the other hand, there's not a single thing we can do to stop global cooling: just bundle up, stay indoors and try to survive the cold weather and high food prices.
Melting polar ice cooling the water?
"We have a few more pieces to unravel"
Someone please post the "Damn, Just Damn" photo
The missing heat is all of that hot air coming out of Algore's mouth.
"You will be able to find somebody who says this cooling is caused by global warming."
See my #6.
How about rising ocean levels lead to increased surface area, which in turn leads to increased evaporation and cooling.
The oceans have a very complex pattern of shallow and deep currents. Three years is an eye blink. Some cold slow deep currents hold water for thousands of years.
And don't forget that today AlGore announced that smoking cigarettes and cigars also adds to global warming.
I have always found that particular chart to be quite frightening.
He actually already did. He said it's now the warmest in 1M years. The report was slapped together as if by a madman. Maybe he has truly lost it.
"Rove!!!!!!"
Lower incident solar flux due to dust and aerosols produced by the PRC, lower solar output, and more heat sent into space by tropical thunderstorms.
Algore stole it.
Manbearpig!
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