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Posted on 03/19/2008 8:21:29 AM PDT by westmichman
The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat by Richard Harris
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Stuart Westmorland Oceans hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. Corbis
Morning Edition, March 19, 2008 · Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."
In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it's also possible that something more mysterious is going on.
That becomes clear when you consider what's happening to global sea level. Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.
Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.
"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.
One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded — and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.
But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?
Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.
That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.
"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.
It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.
"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."
Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.
“The time for debate is over!!!!”
ping
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1988153/posts
Send the NPR link to Drudge folks.
He puts up stories like this. and this one is AWESOME!
So many admissions of incomplete understanding, conflicting data.
Agreed. Turn everything off, I’m going home.
I actually found this on Drudge.
Super!
Drudge is about the only way something like this gets national attention of anykind.
When all is said and done I think we will all be amazed at the immense amount of resources spent chasing after this scientific Kwaanza.
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Or it could be telling them that they were wrong all along, that we have been in a perfectly normal weather cycle.
Wondering how long before the Van Allen Belt catches fire, as in “Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea”
It could mean anything...
According to the equation for CO2 radiative forcing that the IPCC uses your statement is bulls%$t as it calls for a steady increase in POSITIVE radiative forcing!
5.35 * ln(C1/C0)
Where C1=CO2 today in ppm and C0=CO2 in 1750 in ppm.
So who is bullsh&^ting whom! Frikin' scam artists all of ya! The equation is BS! The warming is BS! But the HOAX is real!
Who you gonna’ believe, facts or Al Gore?
The weather channel founder needs to make good on his desire to sue the global warming scientists.
Listening to them admit they ommitted facts to form their politically correct conclusions might help to discourage other scientists from selling out their trade.
“Or it could be telling them that they were wrong all along, that we have been in a perfectly normal weather cycle.”
I just finished reading it after finding it on Drudge. The sinking desperation that has propelled these “scientists” to suggest that heat goes deep is unfathomable.
The scientific case for global warming grows weaker, but the theological case remains strong, more offerings and sacrifices are called for.
Or it may be that Global Warming is a total farce and you are trying to bend your research to match your preconceived political agenda!
Jerks!
One additional point is that the under water equipment and locations for measuring these temperatures are probably more accurate, better maintained and reliable than the ground equipment that can be located in physically bad places to measure heat.
Exactly. bttt
None of these “scientists” have talked about how much heat enters the ocean FROM THE BOTTOM. There are massive volcanoes and volcanic vents all along the mid-ocean ridges, which crisscross the globe like the seams on a baseball.
I think the author said we have global warming but can not find the heat, but we are getting warmer but nothing is heating up. Pefectly clear!!!/s
They have a hypothesis. Data doesn’t agree with hypothesis. They conclude the data must be wrong. And these people claim to be scientists.
See my post 25 and it will be perfectly clear. :)
My post 25 needs additonal clarification.
There are two types of people that preach global warming.
1. idiots
2. liars
and the subset of liars which are the con men and the far left wing, represented by Al Gore, he is both.
Shhh...the gigantic rotating molten core under Earth’s thin skin cannot possibly affect topside temperatures. No way. No non-man-made global temperature effects from this. Never.
You are right on the money to pick this up....
"Global Warming" due to CONSTANTLY increasing atmospheric CO2 by nature must mean the average global temperature is increasing on a constant basis.....
That is, unless there are other factors they don't want to admit. They don't want to admit these things because it shows that the sun is causing the warming resulting in higher atmospheric CO2.
That's a GOOD point! I haven't heard ANYONE say ANYTHING about the possibility of the oceans warming from within the earth!
It's ONLY a bazillion degrees in the center of the earth! (Well... Maybe not a bazillion, but it's pretty damn hot!)
Except that the establishment says that they have accounted for the sun's variable output. For example:
Solar variations do affect climate, but they are not the only factor. As there has been no positive trend in any solar index since the 1960s (and possibly a small negative trend), solar forcing cannot be responsible for the recent temperature trends. The difference between the solar minimum and solar maximum over the 11-year solar cycle is 10 times smaller than the effect of greenhouse gases over the same interval.
Thanks for the pings! I thought the science was settled?
(LOLOL!)
Massive volcanoes, mountains larger than Everest, lava flows, underwater explosions dwarfing anything terrestrial (short of nuclear), black smokers and hot vents, etc. -- all adding heat and CO2 to the ocean from underneath. Granted, the volume of cold water meeting that heat is far greater -- but still, the original point is that no Warmist scientist is even willing to mention this.
Idiots can still lie. They just don’t do it well.
And that's a stupid and fraudulent argument
It is the levels of solar activity, not whether they are going up or down slightly or staying level that effect warming. Solar activity jumped up to maximum levels in the 1950s and has stayed there.
Example, Solar Storms which indicate activity.
Notice how much higher solar activity is in the latter part of the 20th century than the early part.
There are of course many buffers on Earth to instant climate changes (most notable of course is the oceans which are heat sinks), so even if the sun peaked in the 1950's and held steady at high levels it's going take the Earth years and decades for the full changes to totally manifest themselves.
Solar activity doesn’t have to keep going up for warming to occur. Turn the gas burner under a pot of water to high and the water will continue to heat up. You don’t have to keep turning the heat up further and further to continue to raise the temperature of the water.
This happens every year, the sun is at the same angle & strength in March as it is in September, yet September is a much warmer month. The reason is because it takes time for the earth to warm.
If the sun high activity was responsible for the warming, what we would expect is the earth to slowly warm up, taking decades to peak out at a warm plateau.
And is that is exactly what we've seen. Because even though CO2 levels have continued to increase in the 21st century, the temperatures peaked in the 1990's and have since leveled off.
Thanks for the chart of solar storm activity. Link?
Do you have figures/charts for watt/sq.meter solar variance, as compared with claimed AGW solar forcing? Are those the right terms?
NASA's main Solar Storm page http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/ftpSSC.html
and the actual data in section 1b ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUDDEN_COMMENCEMENTS/SCYEAR
But yes all measurements of solar output/activity show this pattern
Do you have figures/charts for watt/sq.meter solar variance, as compared with claimed AGW solar forcing? Are those the right terms?
Not sure what you are asking
Jumkscience has Solar Irradiance vs Temp. We receive ~2 Watts/sq meter more in the latter part of the 20th century then the 19th. Which might not seem a lot but remember the earth has a lot of square meters and that adds up to a lot of extra energy.
But you can try something more in depth
http://members.shaw.ca/sch25/FOS/Climate_Change_Science.html
Thanks for your posts!
Thanks!
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