Fast forward 25 years, and Trenberth still sees changes in ocean temperature as key to understanding the ups and downs of global climate. That includes the current plateau in global temperature.
Trenberth says, in fact, the planet has continued to warm during this time — but the heat has been flowing into the oceans, which have a vast capacity to absorb it.
Kevin Trenberth: Ocean will eat global warming for next 20 years | JunkScience.com
In other words, he will be retired in 25 years and won’t need to make up idiotic excuses any more.
Worse than the alleged capacity of our oceans to absorb heat, is the legislated capacity of our ‘educational system’ to instill idiocy.
IMHO, it is all over but the shouting. God help us.
Have we found Trenberth’s missing heat?
No one bothers to ask him WHY the oceans suddenly began doing this, or WHY it will suddenly end.
Because pre-2000 water is rejecting heat and leaves it in the atmosphere and post-2000 water is absorbing it because it changes its mind. It also is smuggling it down to the depths without anyone noticing.
So did the oceans cause the recent rise of global surface temperatures? Trenberth can’t have it both ways.
Soon to be known as a new class of logical failure, we expect the Trenberthian Fallacy to become well understood. It occurs when a scientist makes claims that are unprovable to explain how his failed hypothesis still should be taken seriously. “The results aren’t what we expected, but we find that this in fact further strengthens our theory. The heat went where we can’t measure it” See: The dog ate my homework.
Steve, do you think DMI’s Arctic ice product is behaving strangely? The old plot had a steep ~1 day plunge then recovery earlier in the month, and the new plot has a steep linear drop for several days now. There appears to be no variation in the data, almost as if fitting a straight line using least squares. I wonder what type of averaging they’re using. Both use the same satellite.
I wrote on that earlier today. It seems off to me. http://suyts.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/not-sure-what-to-make-of-dmis-improved-methods/
Maybe it wasn’t ready for primetime and they’ve got some bugs to work out.
I was in elementary school when I learned that cold sinks and heat rises, that less dense things rise and things that are more dense sink.
Air is less dense than water, and hot air is even less dense than cool water. I’ve never been able to get a hot air balloon to go into my pool. How does Trenberth expect the oceans are absorbing heat?
Methinks the heat is dissipating; it is escaping into space as it always has. It isn’t going for a swim.
Methinks Trenberth needs to go back to elementary school.
No?
+1 … they are definitely FOS. Your hypothesis is the best I have read on the subject of AGW and where the heat is heading. 😉
The whole hilarity of this nonsense is that they’re now telling us the temp graphs don’t count! You know, those ones that showed alarming warming in the 80s and 90s! …… Never mind about them.
You would think that like the train to Long Island, you would see that much heat go by at shallow but well monitored depths. Something he is sure of is wrong.
The heat never entered the system. It was managed / reflected by active H2O phase change temperature suppression. Aka, negative feedback.
For a “real climatologist” to claim otherwise proves in my opinion that there is no science being done anymore at all. It has effectively hit a political induced brick wall.
First he acknowledges that the atmosphere, sea surface, and according to the argo float system the top half mile of the ocean shows no heat
being absorbed..Therefore it must be below the top one half mile of the ocean.
The first question is of course, by what bizarre and scientifically illogical method did the heat get down there. Secondly, there should be so many forces causing the heat to move upward, why would it stay there.
But the question which never gets asked is if there was a movement of heat energy downward, why was this movement undetected by the argo float system.
Did Scottie simply beam it down there??
Trenberth says:
“They probably can’t go on much for much longer than maybe 20 years”.
I interpret that as meaning 20 years in total.
But the headline says “the next 20 years”.
Since the current hiatus has been going on for about 15 years, isn’t Trenberth saying that it will only last another 5 years approximately?
We shall see.
Yes, and if you compensate for Pinatubo it has already been 20 years.
Trenberth is toast.
It doesn’t sound like Trenberth just made those words up on the spur of moment. …
Wait, actually it does. Like he just put some random words together without having any basis for it in fact or theory or evidence or rational thought. Trenberth has got to take the cake for talking like an imbecile.
How does the “downwelling IR” from the enhanced CO2 greenhouse effect get in to the deep ocean? A good question when you consider that IR radiation can only penetrate 1m(3ft) of seawater.
John,
Actually the “downwelling back radiation IR” can only penetrate ~ 10 millionths of a meter.
Here’s a simplified explanation w/evidence that “downwelling IR” can’t add any appreciable heat to the oceans:
1) “downwelling IR” is long wavelength, >~8 microns (http://bit.ly/1dcN8yN)
2) that long wavelength energy cannot penetrate beyond ~10 ?m deep. All its energy is absorbed by the time it reaches that depth (http://bit.ly/133RtMo), so any “heating” would have to raise the temperature of that “sea surface interface layer. “The interface SST, SSTint, is the temperature of an infinitely thin layer at the exact air-sea interface. It represents the temperature at the top of the SSTskin temperature gradient (layer)”- Donlon2001
3) The next layer is the ‘skin’ layer: “The skin SST, SSTskin, is a temperature measured at some depth, within a thin water layer (~500um) at the air-sea interface where conductive and diffusive heat transfer processes dominate. A strong temperature gradient is characteristically maintained in this thin layer sustained by the magnitude and direction of the ocean-atmosphere heat flux.”-Donlon2001
4) Note that the skin temp is many times deeper than the penetration level of “downwelling IR”. Here is an image from Donlon2001 schematically representing this: (http://bit.ly/14sjyR5).
5) As Donlon states, the magnitude & direction of the ocean-atmosphere heat flux is controlled by the difference between SSTskin & SSTdepth. Everyone admits that the shorter wavelength solar energy provides the bulk of ocean warming because it penetrates & warms down to ~200m. The fundamental thermodynamics/heat transfer principle that heat flows from high temperature to low temperature dictates that heat is added to the ocean when the SSTskin is greater than the SSTdepth, thus transfering heat into the oceans. This occurs during the daytime/sunlight hours as depicted in Donlon’s Fig.1(b). Heat flows of the ocean at night or in windy conditions when SSTskin is lower than SSTdepth, as depicted in Donlon’s Fig.1(a).
6) Now the important thing to recognize from Donlon’s Fig.1 is that the SSTinterface temperature at the top of the ocean skin layer is always lower than the SSTskin temperature. Basic thermodynamics thus says that heat flow within the skin layer, is always upwards (out of the ocean) from the SSTskin (~500?m depth) toward the SSTinterface (<~10?m). The lower SSTinterface is because a major transfer of heat from the oceans occurs due to evaporation. The conversion of water from liquid to vapor phase, requires heat (latent heat of vaporization) and thus cools the water remaining on the surface, thus the cooler SSTinterface. The "downwelling IR" energy is immediately lost back to the atmosphere in evaporation & re-emission as longwave IR, and adds no appreciable heat the the SSTinterface layer, as it is always cooler that the SSTskin below it. Both evaporation & IR emission cause heat to flow out of the ocean during the daytime too, even though the net heat flow is usually into the ocean. Of course this varies with latitude with most of the heat added in low latitudes nearer the equator where the incidence of the sunlight is more direct.
For "downwelling IR" to heat the ocean, even by 'slowing' heat loss, the SSTinterface layer would have to transfer heat & warm the SSTskin so that the SSTskin:SSTdepth difference would be reduced, thus impeding heat loss. But the SSTinterface layer doesn't do that because it is always at a lower temperature than the SSTskin.
If anyone tries to argue against this, ask them to quantify 1) the alleged SSTinterface temperature rise & 2) the alleged additional ocean heat content (OHC) specifically due to higher SSTinterface, from empirical data. I don't believe they will have an answer.
The purveyors of warming primarily due to CO2 came up with 'the heat has gone into the oceans' because the atmosphere has stopped warming. Previously their "it's just physics" said that the ghgs warmed the atmosphere. They are just making excuses in order to avoid admitting their CO2 is the primary driver of warming hypothesis is being proved wrong by the continual increase in CO2 with no corresponding increase in atmospheric temperature over the last 10-15yrs.
If someone claims this is just "blog science", refer them to Clark2010:
"Energy transfer at the Earth’s surface is examined from first principles… increases in downward long wave infrared (LWIR) flux due to a 100 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration are considered in detail… These numbers are derived from radiative transfer calculations using the HITRAN database… It is also straightforward to show that a 1.7 W.m?2 increase in downward LWIR flux at the ocean surface cannot cause measurable changes in ocean temperatures… Water is almost completely opaque to LWIR radiation.¹? The LWIR absorption/emission depth is less than 1 mm… This heats the surface layer… The ocean responds by RAPIDLY increasing the surface EVAPORATION rate… It is therefore impossible for an increase in downward atmospheric LWIR flux of 1.7 W.m?2 to heat the ocean."
What I’m wondering is what physical processes occur which suddenly sends heat that was once warming the atmosphere to start heating the deep oceans without any further warming of the atmosphere since it takes a LOT more heat to warm water than air. Seems odd that such a vast amount of heat needed to warm many millions of cubic miles of deep ocean water would somehow skip warming the much easier to warm atmosphere relative to the ocean.
I exposed Trenberth’s clear incompetence (and that of all climate scientists) back in October 2010, here. I would be surprised at how long it is taking others to catch on to the fact, except that I have had a lot of experience with the reality of the situation: a tattered, hard-of-hearing, intellectual climate, fraudulently overrun by incompetent “experts” at all points in, and on both sides of, the debates. It is hard to be heard, and believed, especially when you bill yourself as just a competent physicist; but that is what it boils down to–competent vs. incompetent, and the “consensus” the most incompetent, and falsest, of all.
Trenberth is now in the same class of Stuck On Stupid as Mann.
And that is Big Stupid.
He’s not psycho like the rest, so he’s in coal mine canary meltdown.
Next twenty years, seems somewhat conveniently coincident with the PDO cycle, it having gone negative about ten years ago. As there looks to be a preponderance of La Ninas during the negative part of the cycle which if I have it correct does limit oceanic heat release hence some increased storage when compared with a series of El Nino events then there might be something to the statement that the oceans are retaining heat albeit naturally. So is this another example of the faithful linking “a could be” to a natural event/cycle?