Oceans Make Climate | Science Matters

September 2023 Ocean Warming Crests, Solar Coincidence?

Posted on October 17, 2023 by Ron Clutz

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
Major El Ninos have been the dominant climate feature in recent years.

HadSST is generally regarded as the best of the global SST data sets, and so the temperature story here comes from that source. Previously I used HadSST3 for these reports, but Hadley Centre has made HadSST4 the priority, and v.3 will no longer be updated. HadSST4 is the same as v.3, except that the older data from ship water intake was re-estimated to be generally lower temperatures than shown in v.3. The effect is that v.4 has lower average anomalies for the baseline period 1961-1990, thereby showing higher current anomalies than v.3. This analysis concerns more recent time periods and depends on very similar differentials as those from v.3 despite higher absolute anomaly values in v.4. More on what distinguishes HadSST3 and 4 from other SST products at the end. The user guide for HadSST4 is here.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through August 2023. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016.

Note that in 2015-2016 the Tropics and SH peaked in between two summer NH spikes. That pattern repeated in 2019-2020 with a lesser Tropics peak and SH bump, but with higher NH spikes. By end of 2020, cooler SSTs in all regions took the Global anomaly well below the mean for this period. In 2021 the summer NH summer spike was joined by warming in the Tropics but offset by a drop in SH SSTs, which raised the Global anomaly slightly over the mean.

Then in 2022, another strong NH summer spike peaked in August, but this time both the Tropic and SH were countervailing, resulting in only slight Global warming, later receding to the mean. Oct./Nov. temps dropped in NH and the Tropics took the Global anomaly below the average for this period. After an uptick in December, temps in January 2023 dropped everywhere, strongest in NH, with the Global anomaly further below the mean since 2015.

Now comes El Nino as shown by the upward spike in the Tropics since January, the anomaly nearly tripling from 0.38C to 1.06C. In August 2023, all regions rose, especially NH up from 0.70C to 1.37C, pulling up the global anomaly to a new high for this period. September shows a new peak for NH at 1.41, but both SH and the Tropics cooled enough to bring the Global anomaly back down.

Comment:

The climatists have seized on this unusual warming as proof of their Zero Carbon agenda, without addressing how impossible it would be for CO2 warming the air to raise ocean temperatures. It is the ocean that warms the air, not the other way around. Recently Steven Koonin had this to say about the phonomenon confirmed in the graph above:

El Nino is a phenomenon in the climate system that happens once every four or five years. Heat builds up in the equatorial Pacific to the west of Indonesia and so on. Then when enough of it builds up it surges across the Pacific and changes the currents and the winds. As it surges toward South America it was discovered and named in the 19th century It is well understood at this point that the phenomenon has nothing to do with CO2.

Now people talk about changes in that phenomena as a result of CO2 but it’s there in the climate system already and when it happens it influences weather all over the world. We feel it when it gets rainier in Southern California for example. So for the last 3 years we have been in the opposite of an El Nino, a La Nina, part of the reason people think the West Coast has been in drought.

It has now shifted in the last months to an El Nino condition that warms the globe and is thought to contribute to this Spike we have seen. But there are other contributions as well. One of the most surprising ones is that back in January of 2022 an enormous underwater volcano went off in Tonga and it put up a lot of water vapor into the upper atmosphere. It increased the upper atmosphere of water vapor by about 10 percent, and that’s a warming effect, and it may be that is contributing to why the spike is so high.

A longer view of SSTs

To enlarge, open image in new tab.

The graph above is noisy, but the density is needed to see the seasonal patterns in the oceanic fluctuations. Previous posts focused on the rise and fall of the last El Nino starting in 2015. This post adds a longer view, encompassing the significant 1998 El Nino and since. The color schemes are retained for Global, Tropics, NH and SH anomalies. Despite the longer time frame, I have kept the monthly data (rather than yearly averages) because of interesting shifts between January and July.1995 is a reasonable (ENSO neutral) starting point prior to the first El Nino.

The sharp Tropical rise peaking in 1998 is dominant in the record, starting Jan. ’97 to pull up SSTs uniformly before returning to the same level Jan. ’99. There were strong cool periods before and after the 1998 El Nino event. Then SSTs in all regions returned to the mean in 2001-2.

SSTS fluctuate around the mean until 2007, when another, smaller ENSO event occurs. There is cooling 2007-8, a lower peak warming in 2009-10, following by cooling in 2011-12. Again SSTs are average 2013-14.

Now a different pattern appears. The Tropics cooled sharply to Jan 11, then rise steadily for 4 years to Jan 15, at which point the most recent major El Nino takes off. But this time in contrast to ’97-’99, the Northern Hemisphere produces peaks every summer pulling up the Global average. In fact, these NH peaks appear every July starting in 2003, growing stronger to produce 3 massive highs in 2014, 15 and 16. NH July 2017 was only slightly lower, and a fifth NH peak still lower in Sept. 2018.

The highest summer NH peaks came in 2019 and 2020, only this time the Tropics and SH were offsetting rather adding to the warming. (Note: these are high anomalies on top of the highest absolute temps in the NH.) Since 2014 SH has played a moderating role, offsetting the NH warming pulses. After September 2020 temps dropped off down until February 2021. In 2021-22 there were again summer NH spikes, but in 2022 moderated first by cooling Tropics and SH SSTs, then in October to January 2023 by deeper cooling in NH and Tropics.

Now in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH has produced a summer peak with August higher than any previous year. In fact, the summer warming peaks in NH have occurred in August or September, so this number is likely the crest.

What to make of all this? The patterns suggest that in addition to El Ninos in the Pacific driving the Tropic SSTs, something else is going on in the NH. The obvious culprit is the North Atlantic, since I have seen this sort of pulsing before. After reading some papers by David Dilley, I confirmed his observation of Atlantic pulses into the Arctic every 8 to 10 years.

Contemporary AMO Observations

Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future. So I find that ERSSTv5 AMO dataset has data through August. It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic. “ERSST5 AMO follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.” So the values represent sst anomaly differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.

The chart above confirms what Kaplan also showed. As August is the hottest month for the N. Atlantic, its varibility, high and low, drives the annual results for this basin. Note also the peaks in 2010, lows after 2014, and a rise in 2021. Now in 2023 the peak is holding at 1.4C. An annual chart below is informative:

Note the difference between blue/green years, beige/brown, and purple/red years. 2010, 2021, 2022 all peaked strongly in August or September. 1998 and 2007 were mildly warm. 2016 and 2018 were matching or cooler than the global average. 2023 started out slightly warm, then in May and June spiked to match 2010. Now there is a peak in July, with August and September only slightly lower.

The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.

The purple line is the average anomaly 1980-1996 inclusive, value 0.18. The orange line the average 1980-202306, value 0.38, also for the period 1997-2012. The red line is 2013-202306, value 0.64. As noted above, these rising stages are driven by the combined warming in the Tropics and NH, including both Pacific and Atlantic basins.

Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?

The news about our current solar cycle 25 is that the solar activity is hitting peak numbers now and higher than expected 1-2 years in the future. As livescience put it: Solar maximum could hit us harder and sooner than we thought. How dangerous will the sun’s chaotic peak be? Some charts from spaceweatherlive look familar to these sea surface temperature charts.

Summary

The oceans are driving the warming this century. SSTs took a step up with the 1998 El Nino and have stayed there with help from the North Atlantic, and more recently the Pacific northern “Blob.” The ocean surfaces are releasing a lot of energy, warming the air, but eventually will have a cooling effect. The decline after 1937 was rapid by comparison, so one wonders: How long can the oceans keep this up? And is the sun adding forcing to this process?

Space weather impacts the ionosphere in this animation. Credits: NASA/GSFC/CIL/Krystofer Kim

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

HadSST is distinguished from other SST products because HadCRU (Hadley Climatic Research Unit) does not engage in SST interpolation, i.e. infilling estimated anomalies into grid cells lacking sufficient sampling in a given month. From reading the documentation and from queries to Met Office, this is their procedure.

HadSST4 imports data from gridcells containing ocean, excluding land cells. From past records, they have calculated daily and monthly average readings for each grid cell for the period 1961 to 1990. Those temperatures form the baseline from which anomalies are calculated.

In a given month, each gridcell with sufficient sampling is averaged for the month and then the baseline value for that cell and that month is subtracted, resulting in the monthly anomaly for that cell. All cells with monthly anomalies are averaged to produce global, hemispheric and tropical anomalies for the month, based on the cells in those locations. For example, Tropics averages include ocean grid cells lying between latitudes 20N and 20S.

Gridcells lacking sufficient sampling that month are left out of the averaging, and the uncertainty from such missing data is estimated. IMO that is more reasonable than inventing data to infill. And it seems that the Global Drifter Array displayed in the top image is providing more uniform coverage of the oceans than in the past.

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

Ocean Warming Crest August 2023, Solar Coincidence?

Posted on September 15, 2023 by Ron Clutz

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
Major El Ninos have been the dominant climate feature in recent years.

The Current Context

Now comes El Nino as shown by the upward spike in the Tropics since January, the anomaly nearly tripling from 0.38C to 1.06C. Now in August 2023, all regions rose, especially NH up from 0.70C to now 1.37C, pulling up the global anomaly to a new high for this period.

Comment:

A longer view of SSTs

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

Contemporary AMO Observations

The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.

Curiosity: Solar Coincidence?

Summary

Space weather impacts the ionosphere in this animation. Credits: NASA/GSFC/CIL/Krystofer Kim

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

History Shows Today’s Ocean at Cool End of Range

Posted on September 5, 2023 by Ron Clutz

You may have heard claims recently that the ocean is now “boiling”. Fortunately, a world expert in ocean heat uptake provides a deep dive into oceanic temperature history, thereby putting that fear to rest.

Geoffrey Gebbie of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has published an highly informative study Combining Modern and Paleoceanographic Perspectives on Ocean Heat Uptake in Annual Review of Marine Science (2021). H/T Kenneth Richard. Below are the main findings, along with some excerpts in italics with my bolds, explaining some oceanography for the rest of us.

The large climatic shifts that started with the melting of the great ice sheets have
involved significant ocean heat uptake that was sustained over centuries and millennia,
and modern-ocean heat content changes are small by comparison.

Abstract

Monitoring Earth’s energy imbalance requires monitoring changes in the heat content of the ocean. Recent observational estimates indicate that ocean heat uptake is accelerating in the twenty-first century. Examination of estimates of ocean heat uptake over the industrial era, the Common Era of the last 2,000 years, and the period since the Last Glacial Maximum, 20,000 years ago, permits a wide perspective on modern-day warming rates. In addition, this longer-term focus illustrates how the dynamics of the deep ocean and the cryosphere were active in the past and are still active today. The large climatic shifts that started with the melting of the great ice sheets have involved significant ocean heat uptake that was sustained over centuries and millennia, and modern-ocean heat content changes are small by comparison.

Objective

This review seeks to put the most recent ocean heat uptake estimates of 0.5–0.7 W m−2 into the context of longer (multidecadal to millennial) timescales. Such timescales put a wider perspective on present-day heat uptake. In addition, the dynamics of these longer timescales may still have some expression today. This research direction leads to the long temperature time series of paleoceanographic proxies that predate the instrumental record. Ocean heat uptake over the last deglaciation (∼20,000–10,000 years ago) and the Common Era (previous two millennia) will serve as examples to explore the longer-timescale dynamics of ocean heat uptake.

Common Era Evolution of Mean Ocean Temperature

The Ocean2k global-mean SST compilation is derived from 57 marine proxy records that, in aggregate, show a statistically significant cooling trend from 700 to 1700 CE over the MCA–LIA transition (Medieval Climate Anomaly, Little Ice Age). The data compilation contains a time series of 200-year averages that have been nondimensionalized. Here, we dimensionalize the values with the recommended values of McGregor et al. (2015) to obtain temperature anomalies, and the inferred global-mean surface cooling over the MCA–LIA transition is near the high end of the expected 0.4–0.6°C range (Figure 4a).

Figure 4 The Common Era. (a) The evolution of Ocean2k SST (blue circles, with σ/2 error bars) and mean ocean temperature, , as inferred from noble-gas measurements (red circles, with σ/2 error bars), the Gebbie & Huybers (2019) Common Era inversion (red line), and a power-law estimate (black line, with 2σ error shown in gray), referenced to global-mean SST in 1870. (b,c) Average ocean heat uptake over a running 50-year interval (panel b) and a 500-year interval (panel c) plotted from the Gebbie & Huybers (2019) inversion (red line) and a power-law estimate (black line, with 1σ error shown in gray). Heat uptake is expressed in terms of an equivalent planetary energy imbalance. Abbreviation: SST, sea-surface temperature.

One realization of the Common Era was produced by an inversion that attempted to reconstruct the three-dimensional evolution of oceanic temperature anomalies over the last 2,000 years (Gebbie & Huybers 2019). The inversion fits an empirical ocean circulation model to modern-day tracer observations, historical temperature observations from the HMS Challenger expedition of 1872–1876 (Murray 1895), and the global-mean Ocean2k SST. The resulting ocean temperature evolution is dominated by the propagation of surface climate anomalies from the MCA and LIA into the subsurface ocean, where the propagation is coherent for several centuries (red line in Figure 4a). Although the Gebbie & Huybers (2019) inversion was not constrained with oceanic power laws, the resulting mean ocean temperature is consistent with a power-law estimate over the Common Era.

Early-twenty-first-century SST may already be warmer than MCA SST, but it is
less likely that modern mean ocean temperature has surpassed MCA values.

From the Gebbie & Huybers (2019) inversion, it was inferred that the MCA ocean stored 1,000 ZJ more than the ocean of the year 2000, and that the ∼500 ZJ of heat uptake during the modern warming era is just one-third of what is required to reach MCA levels. Amplification of the high-latitude SST signal relative to the global mean can produce a greater MCA–LIA mean ocean cooling, which explains the greater MCA heat content relative to the present day. When considering the range of Common Era scenarios consistent with a power law, however, some cases are admitted where the MCA and the present day have similar oceanic heat content.

Deep-Ocean Heat Uptake During Modern Warming

Figure 6 Ocean heat uptake below 2,000-m depth, in terms of a planetary energy imbalance, for 50-year averages given by Zanna et al. (2019) (blue line), Gebbie & Huybers (2019) (red line), and the power-law estimate from this review (black line, with 2σ error in gray). An observational estimate (purple, with 2σ error bar) for 1990–2010 is also included (Purkey & Johnson 2010).

The confidence in upper-ocean heat content during the modern warming era starkly contrasts with the remaining uncertainties in heat content below 2,000-m depth (Figure 6). Observational estimates have indicated a deep-ocean heat uptake of 68 ± 61 mW m−2 (2σ) when differencing hydrographic sections between 1990 and 2010 (Purkey & Johnson 2010, Desbruyères et al. 2017). Estimation of deep-ocean heat uptake over the entire instrumental era relies to a greater extent on circulation models. Simulations of modern warming that are initialized from equilibrium in 1870 suggest that heat penetrates downward (Gregory 2000) and that average deep-ocean heat uptake is small over 50-year time intervals (Zanna et al. 2019). These estimates would not capture ongoing trends from the earlier Common Era, if any existed. An inversion that accounts for the LIA found a deep-ocean heat loss of 80 mW m−2 early in the modern warming era (Gebbie & Huybers 2019), and our power-law estimate suggests that an even greater cooling is possible, although the uncertainties are large. These discrepancies highlight the ongoing effect that Common Era variability could play in the modern-day ocean. Unfortunately, recent observations do not appear to be sufficient to distinguish between these scenarios, as they all suggest a weak deep-ocean heat uptake in the early twenty-first century.

Deep-ocean cooling could exist as the result of
disequilibrium between the upper and deep ocean.

Oceanic disequilibrium exists at a range of spatial and temporal scales, from local, short-term variability to longer-term changes that are anticipated to generally have greater spatial extent. Oceanic disequilibrium has been anticipated as a result of the 1815 Tambora (Stenchikov et al. 2009) and 1883 Krakatoa (Gleckler et al. 2006) volcanic eruptions and their lingering effects on energy imbalance. More generally, ocean disequilibrium can result from the differing adjustment times of the interior ocean to surface forcing, where the deep-ocean response may take longer than 1,000 years (e.g., Wunsch & Heimbach 2008). Accordingly, some influence of changes in surface climate over the last millennium is potentially present today. The most isolated waters of the mid-depth Pacific, for example, should still be adjusting to the MCA–LIA transition. In this scenario, these deep waters are cooling, but they are anomalously warm due to the residual influence of the MCA.

The degree to which the ocean’s long memory affects today’s ocean is uncertain due to difficulties in integrating state-of-the-art circulation models over the entire Common Era. An accurate assessment may also require a model that can skillfully predict ocean circulation changes in both the past and the future. The climate history of the Common Era should also be better constrained by recovering additional observations, such as historical subsurface temperature observations and paleoceanographic data. Proper inference of climate sensitivity depends on the past oceanic heat uptake, which this review suggests is tied to the long timescale of deep-ocean dynamics.

Do notice the scale on the left axis. As though we can measure the whole ocean (71% of earth surface) to 0.05 C. It’s a formula converting zettajoules to temp change.

Sun and Water Drive Climate, Not Us

Posted on August 26, 2023 by Ron Clutz

One year time lapse of precipitable water (amount of water in the atmosphere)
from Jan 1, 2016 to Dec 31, 2016, as modeled by the GFS.The Pacific
ocean rotates into view just as the tropical cyclone season picks up steam.

Lately the media refers increasingly to how important is the water cycle in our climate system. Unfortunately, as usual, the headlines confuse cause and effect. For example, Climate change has a dramatic impact on the global water cycle, say researchers. from phys.org. How perverse to position climate change as an agent rather than the effect from water fluxes in the ocean and atmosphere. The headline misleads entirely (written by scientists or journos?) as the beginning texts shows (in italics with my bolds).

For Christoph Schär, ETH Zurich’s Professor of Climate and Water Cycle, “global warming” is not quite accurate when it comes to describing the driver of climate change. “A better term would be ‘climate humidification,'” he explains. “Most of the solar energy that reaches the Earth serves to evaporate water and thereby drives the hydrological cycle.” Properly accounting for the implications of this is the most challenging task of all for climate modelers.

In order to build a global climate model, grid points spaced around 50 to 100 kilometers apart are used. This scale is too coarse to map small-scale, local thunderstorm cells. Yet it is precisely these thunderstorm cells—and where they occur—that drive atmospheric circulation, especially in the tropics, where solar radiation is highest.

The workaround, at present, is to add extra parameters to the model in order to map clouds. “But predicting future climate change is still pretty imprecise,” Schär says. “If we don’t know how many clouds are forming in the tropics, then we don’t know how much sunlight is hitting the earth’s surface—and hence we don’t know the actual size of the global energy balance.”

Even worse from NewScientist How we broke the water cycle and can no longer rely on rain to fall. What hubris and how preposterous to claim our puny CO2 emissions have upset hydrology. The lack of correlation is obvious to those who care to look:

The climatist paradigm is myopic and lopsided. A previous post below provides a cure for those whose vision is impaired by the IPCC consensus view of climate reality.

Curing Radiation Myopia Regarding Climate

E.M. Smith provides an helpful critique of a recent incomplete theory of earth’s climate functioning in his Chiefio blog post So Close–Missing Convection and Homeostasis. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

It is Soooo easy to get things just a little bit off and miss reality. Especially in complex systems and even more so when folks raking in $Millions are interested in misleading for profit. Sigh.

Sabine Hosenfelder does a wonderful series of videos ‘explaining’ all sorts of interesting things in and about actual science and how the universe works. She is quite smart and generally “knows her stuff”. But… It looks like she has gotten trapped into the Radiative Model of Globull Warming.

The whole mythology of Global Warming depends on having you NOT think about anything but radiative processes and physics. To trap you into the Radiative Model. But the Earth is more complex than that. Much more complex. Then there’s the fact that you DO have some essential Radiative Physics to deal with, so the bait is there. However…

It is absolutely essential to pay attention to convection in the lower atmosphere
and to the “feedback loops” or homeostasis in the system.

The system acts to restore its original state. There is NO “runaway greenhouse” or we would have never evolved into being since the early earth had astoundingly high levels of CO2 and we would have baked to death before getting out of our slime beds as microbes.

Figure 16. The geological history of CO2 level and temperature proxy for the past 400 million years. CO2 levels now are ~ 400ppm. Source: Davis, W. J. (2017).

OK, I’ll show you her video. It is quite good even with the “swing and a miss” at the end. She does 3 levels of The Greenhouse Gas Mythology so you can see the process evolving from grammar school to high school to college level of mythology. But then she doesn’t quite make it to Post-Doc Reality.

Where’s she wrong? (Well, not really wrong, but lacking…)

I see 2 major issues. First off, she talks about the “lower atmosphere warming”. Well, yes and no. It doesn’t “warm” in the sense of getting hotter, but it does speed up convection to move the added heat flow.

In English “heating” has 2 different meanings. Increasing temperature.
Increasing heat flow at a temperature.

We see this in “warm up the TV dinner in the microwave” meaning to heat it up from frozen to edible; and in the part where the frozen dinner is defrosting at a constant temperature as it absorbs heat but turns it into the heat of fusion of water. So you can “warm it up” by melting at a constant temperature of frozen water (but adding a LOT of thermal energy – “heat”) then later as increasing temperature once the ice is melted. It is very important to keep in mind that there are 2 kinds of “heating”. NOT just “increasing temperature”.

In the lower atmosphere, the CO2 window / Infrared Window is already firmly slammed shut. Sabine “gets that”. Yay! One BIG point for her! No amount of “greenhouse gas” is going to shut that IR window any more. As she points out, you get about 20 meters of transmission and then it is back to molecular vibrations (aka “heat”).

So what’s an atmosphere to do? It has heat to move! Well, it convects. It evaporates water.

Those 2 things dominate by orders of magnitude any sort of Radiative Model Physics. Yes, you have radiation of light bringing energy in, but then it goes into the ocean and into the dirt and the plants and even warms your skin on a sunny day. And it sits there. It does NOT re-radiate to any significant degree. Once “warmed” by absorption, heat trying to leave as IR hits a slammed shut window.

The hydrological cycle. Estimates of the observed main water reservoirs (black numbers in 10^3 km3 ) and the flow of moisture through the system (red numbers, in 10^3 km3 yr À1 ). Adjusted from Trenberth et al. [2007a] for the period 2002-2008 as in Trenberth et al. [2011].

So what does happen? Look around, what do you see? Clouds. Rain. Snow. (sleet hail fog etc. etc.)

Our planet is a Water Planet. It moves that energy (vibrations of atoms, NOT radiation) by having water evaporate into the atmosphere. (Yes, there are a few very dry deserts where you get some radiative effects and can get quite cold at night via radiation through very dry air, but our planet is 70% or so oceans, so those areas are minor side bars on the dominant processes). This water vapor makes the IR window even more closed (less distance to absorption). It isn’t CO2 that matters, it is the global water vapor.

What happens next?

Well, water holds a LOT of heat (vibration of atoms and NOT “temperature”) as the heat of vaporization. About 540 calories per gram (compared to 80 for melting “heat of fusion” and 1 for specific heat of a gram of water). Compare those numbers again. 1 for a gram of water. 80 for melting a gram of ice. 540 for evaporating a gram of water. It’s dramatically the case that evaporation of water matters a lot more than melting ice, and both of them make “warming water” look like an irrelevant thing.

Warming water is 1/80 as important as melting ice, and it is 1/540 th as important as evaporation of the surface of the water. Warming air is another order of magnitude less important to heat content.

So to have clue, one MUST look at the evaporation of water from the oceans as everything else is in the small change.

Look at any photo of the Earth from space. The Blue Marble covered in clouds. Water and clouds. The product of evaporation, convection, and condensation. Physical flows carrying all that heat (“vibration of atoms” and NOT temperature, remember). IF you add more heat energy, you can speed up the flows, but it will not cause a huge increase in temperature (and mostly none at all). It is mass flow that changes. The number of vibrating molecules at a temperature, not the temperature of each.

In the end, a lot of mass flow happens, lofting all that water vapor with all that heat of vaporization way up toward the Stratosphere. This is why we have a troposphere, a tropopause (where it runs out of steam… literally…) and a stratosphere.

What happens when it gets to the stratosphere boundary? Well, along the way that water vapor turns into water liquid very tiny drops (clouds) and eventually condenses to big drops of water (rain) and some of it even freezes (hail, snow, etc.). Now think about that for a minute. That’s 540 calories per gram of heat (molecular vibration NOT temperature, remember) being “dumped” way up high in the top of the troposphere as it condenses, and another 80 / gram if if freezes. 620 total. That’s just huge.

This is WHY we have a globe covered with rain, snow, hail, etc. etc. THAT is all that heat moving. NOT any IR Radiation from the surface. Let that sink in a minute. Fix it in your mind. WATER and ICE and Water Vapor are what moves the heat, not radiation. We ski on it, swim in it, have it water our crops and flood the land. That’s huge and it is ALL evidence of heat flows via heat of vaporization and fusion of water.

It is all those giga-tons of water cycling to snow, ice and rain, then falling back to be lofted again as evaporation in the next cycle. That’s what moves the heat to the stratosphere where CO2 then radiates it to space (after all, radiation toward the surface hits that closed IR window and stops.) At most, more CO2 can let the Stratosphere radiate (and “cool”) better. It can not make the Troposphere any less convective and non-radiative.

Then any more energy “trapped” at the surface would just run the mass transport water cycle faster. It would not increase the temperature.

More molecules would move, but at a limit on temperature. Homeostasis wins. We can see this already in the Sub-Tropics. As the seasons move to fall and winter, water flows slow dramatically. I have to water my Florida lawn and garden. As the seasons move to spring and summer, the mass flow picks up dramatically. Eventually reaching hurricane size. Dumping up to FEET of condensed water (that all started as warm water vapor evaporating from the ocean). It is presently headed for about 72 F today (and no rain). At the peak of hurricane season, we get to about 84 or 85 F ocean surface temperature as the water vapor cycle is running full blast and we get “frog strangler” levels of rain. That’s the difference. Slow water cycle or fast.

IF (and it is only an “if”, not a when) you could manage to increase the heat at the surface of the planet in, say, Alaska: At most you would get a bit more rain in summer, a bit more snow in winter, and MAYBE only a slight possible, of one or two days that are rain which could have been snow or sleet.

Then there’s the fact that natural cycles swamp all of that CO2 fantasy anyway. The Sun, as just one example, had a large change of IR / UV levels with both the Great Pacific Climate Shift (about 1975) and then back again in about 2000. Planetary tilt, wobble, eccentricity of the orbit and more put us in ice ages (as we ARE right now, but in an “interglacial” in this ice age… a nice period of warmth that WILL end) and pulls us out of them. Glacials and interglacials come and go on various cycles (100,000 years, 40,000 years, and 12,000 year interglacials – ours ending now, but slowly). The simple fact is that Nature Dominates, and we are just not relevant. To think we are is hubris of the highest order.

Figure 9: Two contrasting views of the effects of how the continuous intensification of deep cumulus convection would act to alter radiation flux to space. The top (bottom) diagram represents a net increase (decrease) in radiation to space

Footnote

There are two main reasons why investigators are skeptical of AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarm. This post intends to be an antidote to myopic and lop-sided understandings of our climate system.

CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.

Myopia is a failure of perception by focusing on one near thing to the exclusion of the other realities present, thus missing the big picture. For example: “Not seeing the forest for the trees.” AKA “tunnel vision.”

2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.

Lopsided

Lop-sided refers to a failure in judging values, whereby someone lacking in sense of proportion, places great weight on a factor which actually has a minor influence compared to other forces. For example: “Making a mountain out of a mole hill.”

World’s Oceans Warming July 2023

Posted on August 25, 2023 by Ron Clutz

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
Major El Ninos have been the dominant climate feature in recent years.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through July 2023. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016.

Now comes El Nino as shown by the upward spike in the Tropics since January, the anomaly more than doubling from 0.38C to 0.94C. Now in July 2023, all regions rose, especially NH up from 0.7C to now 1.3C, pulling up the global anomaly to a new high for this period.

Comment:

A longer view of SSTs

Open image in new tab to enlarge.

Now in 2023 the Tropics flipped from below to well above average, while NH has produced a summer peak with July higher than any previous year. In fact, the summer warming peaks in NH have occurred in August or September, so this July number is likely to go even higher.

Contemporary AMO Observations

Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future. So I find only the Hadsst AMO dataset has data through April. It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic. “Hadsst AMO follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.” So the values represent differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.

The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.

Summary

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

Ocean Warming Mystery: Two Natural Factors

Posted on July 30, 2023 by Ron Clutz

Many have seen the media news splash of ocean warming. For example, from Washington Post Scientists are baffled why the oceans are warming so fast. The image above comes from that article, excerpts below with my added bolds.

A steady and remarkable rise in average global ocean temperatures this year is now outpacing anything seen in four decades of satellite observations, causing many scientists to suddenly blare alarm over the risks and realities of climate change. But even those typically aligned on climate science can’t agree on what, exactly, triggered such rapid warming and how alarmed they should be.

Some climate researchers suspect that a drastic reduction in air pollution from ships has allowed more sunlight to radiate into oceans, a conclusion others vigorously criticize. Meteorologists also say a weakening of Atlantic winds may be encouraging warming; normally these winds help cool waters and carry sun-blocking plumes of Saharan dust.

Scientists nonetheless agree on this: Conditions are ever ripening for extreme heat waves, droughts, floods and storms, all of which have proven links to ocean warming.

In the Pacific Ocean, warming temperatures are to be expected during El Niño — its impacts on weather around the world stem from warmer-than-normal surface waters along the equatorial Pacific. But the extreme warmth extends beyond the Pacific. Record warmth is also occurring in the equatorial and northern Atlantic — and in the tropics, where hurricanes form.

“This is totally bonkers and people who look at this stuff routinely can’t believe their eyes,” Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, wrote on Twitter. “Something very weird is happening.”

Antarctic sea ice concentration on June 27, 2023, with white representing solid ice and dark blue representing open ocean. The median ice edge for 1981–2010 is drawn in orange. (Credit: Map by NOAA Climate.gov, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center)

And of course there is the added warning about Antarctic sea ice not freezing as rapidly as usual in SH winter. The media always refers to “climate change” as the causal factor, which is code for rising CO2 and humans to blame. For a more reasonable discussion, see Antarctic Sea Ice Varies, It’s Complicated.

What About Natural Factors?

Because the power, glory and money comes from CO2 hysteria and taking over the energy industry, the theories are all about the atmosphere. Realists know that Oceans Make Climate, and look for more direct means by which sea temperatures can warm.

The HadSST4 AMO dataset was finally updated and showed dramatic 2023 warming in the North Atlantic. Let’s consider two possibilities.

1. The Ocean Warming Could Be Bottom Up

An article from CICOS explains the importance of hydrothermal action on the ocean floor. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. Scientists Discover Three New Hydrothermal Vent Fields on Mid-Atlantic Ridge

An international team of scientists led by CICOES researcher David Butterfield
work together to rapidly find and explore large hydrothermal vents
on the world’s longest mountain range.

Sometimes Mid-Atlantic ridge is called the “40,000-mile Volcano”

Scientists have discovered three new hydrothermal vent fields over a 434-mile-long stretch of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge during the first scientific expedition aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s recently launched research vessel Falkor (too).

The multidisciplinary science team representing 11 institutions from the United States, Canada, and France used advanced ocean technologies to make the discovery. Scientists used autonomous and remotely operated underwater vehicles resulting in 65 square miles (170 square kilometers) of seafloor mapped at one-meter scale resolution, an area approximately the size of Manhattan Island.

The discovery of the active hydrothermal vents is the first on this section of the world’s longest underwater mountain range, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, in more than 40 years. One of the discovered vent fields was located at the Puy des Folles volcano and has five active sites over 6.95 square miles (18 square kilometers). High-temperature ‘black smoker’ vents were also found at the Grappe Deux vent system and Kane Fracture Zone.

This discovery of new hydrothermal vents under the Atlantic ocean reminds of hundreds of thousands of sea mounts active on the ocean floor, with a high concentration in the North Atlantic For a more complete discussion of bottom up ocean warming, See Post:

Overview: Seafloor Eruptions and Ocean Warming

2. It May Be the Aftermath of Hunga Tonga Eruption 2022

Khaykin et al. (2023) explan the climate impact in their article Global perturbation of stratospheric water and aerosol burden by Hunga eruption. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The eruption of the submarine Hunga volcano in January 2022 was associated with a powerful blast that injected volcanic material to altitudes up to 58 km. From a combination of various types of satellite and ground-based observations supported by transport modeling, we show evidence for an unprecedented increase in the global stratospheric water mass by 13% relative to climatological levels, and a 5-fold increase of stratospheric aerosol load, the highest in the last three decades. Owing to the extreme injection altitude, the volcanic plume circumnavigated the Earth in only 1 week and dispersed nearly pole-to-pole in three months.The unique nature and magnitude of the global stratospheric perturbation by the Hunga eruption ranks it among the most remarkable climatic events in the modern observation era, with a range of potential long-lasting repercussions for stratospheric composition and climate.

The perturbation of stratospheric water vapour burden by 13% is tremendous and has no frame of comparison in the entire observation record dating back to 1985. As there are no efficient sinks of water vapour in the stratosphere, this perturbation is expected to last over several years. Indeed, in 9 months since the eruption, the water vapour mass anomaly has gradually decreased only by 2.5% (4.3 ± 0.1% annual rate), which should lead to the perturbation timescale of over 3 years, assuming the further linear decay trend. The persistent stratospheric moist anomaly may lead to changes in atmospheric radiative balance; stratospheric dynamics as well as amplification of the polar ozone depletion through wider occurrence of polar stratospheric clouds. The ability to assess the longer-term impacts of the HT eruption on stratospheric chemistry will depend strongly on the quality and availability of global satellite observations such as MLS in the coming years.

In addition to blasting seawater to the stratosphere, the event shook the ocean floor worldwide.

The massive volcanic blast in the Pacific last year was felt 18,000km away on the other side of the world, on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The cataclysmic eruption of Hunga-Tonga Hunga-Ha’apai on 15 January 2022 sent pressure waves through Earth’s atmosphere that connected with the sea surface and triggered 50 highly sensitive seismometers placed 5,000m under water on the seabed. It was one of a number of intriguing phenomena picked up by the instrument network in the Azores-Madeira-Canary Islands region. Source: BBC

Summary

Let’s stop pretending we can alter nature by spending trillions of dollars “fighting climate change.” Better to solve actual problems we are causing and can fix, rather than obsessing over imaginary ones.

Antarctic Sea Ice Varies, It’s Complicated

Posted on July 26, 2023 by Ron Clutz

One of the more measured current reports of Antarctic sea ice is at Discover Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches a “Record-Smashing Low”. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The sea ice extent is nearly a million square miles
below the long-term average for late June.

Some scientists believe that what we’ve seen since 2022 may be signaling a significant and potentially long-lasting change. As Ted Maksym, a climate scientist and polar oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, put it in a recent story in Wired:

“Now there’s this question about: Have we got into a regime shift? A few of us are sort of speculating that that may be true, where the variability in Antarctic sea ice has changed and we might see these low sea ice extents for some time.”

But Maksym also says he and his colleagues are “watching with bated breath” to see if things will return to normal — and they could. Scientists just don’t know.

That’s because the Antarctic is a very different environment than the Arctic — in a way that complicates drawing firm conclusions. The latter consists of an ocean surrounded by land, whereas the former is a giant landmass surrounded by oceans.

Sea ice around Antarctica is affected by a host of complex factors,
including shifts in ocean currents and sea and air temperatures.

Given how remote, forbidding and large Antarctica is, observations of these factors have been relatively sparse. Moreover, the record of satellite observations of sea ice dates only to 1979, making it difficult to separate out a human-caused signal from natural variability. And the sparseness of data, and the complexity of myriad factors, have made modeling of Antarctic sea ice very challenging.

Bottom line: Scientists haven’t seen anything like what’s been happening to Antarctic sea ice in the past two years. But it will take time to know whether a dramatic shift truly has occurred, and more research to tease out the role of anthropogenic climate change in what’s happening.

Background Annual Cycle of Antarctic Sea Ice

Firstly, the annual minimum average is ~2.5 M km2 vs. an average maximum of ~17.5 M km2. So the sea ice extent each year nearly disappears. Secondly, since 2010, some years were well above the 1981-2010 average, and obviously there were likely many prior years below average. Which suggests this may be a return to the mean, or not, as the experts say.

Previously, Antarctic Sea Ice Grew Steadily

Robot Sub Finds Surprisingly Thick Antarctic Sea Ice Nov. 24, 2014

Antarctica’s ice paradox has yet another puzzling layer. Not only is the amount of sea ice increasing each year, but an underwater robot now shows the ice is also much thicker than was previously thought, a new study reports.

The discovery adds to the ongoing mystery of Antarctica’s expanding sea ice. According to climate models, the region’s sea ice should be shrinking each year because of global warming. Instead, satellite observations show the ice is expanding, and the continent’s sea ice has set new records for the past three winters. At the same time, Antarctica’s ice sheet (the glacial ice on land) is melting and retreating.

Measuring sea ice thickness is a crucial step in understanding what’s driving the growth of sea ice, said study co-author Ted Maksym, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Climate scientists need to know if the sea ice expansion also includes underwater thickening.

“If we don’t know how much ice is there is, we can’t validate the models we use to understand the global climate,” Maksym told Live Science. “It looks like there are significant areas of thick ice that are probably not accounted for.”

The Antarctic sunlight illuminates the surface of the sea ice, intensifying the effect of the fracture lines, Oct. 2003. (NSIDC, University of Colorado)

Theory: Climate Change Increases Antarctic Sea Ice Extent

From AP Oct. 10, 2012 Increase in Antarctic ice may be sign of climate change. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

While the Arctic is open ocean encircled by land, the Antarctic — about 1.5 times the size of the U.S. — is land circled by ocean, leaving more room for sea ice to spread. That geography makes a dramatic difference in the two polar climates.

The Arctic ice responds more directly to warmth. In the Antarctic, the main driver is wind, Maksym and other scientists say. Changes in the strength and motion of winds are now pushing the ice farther north, extending its reach.

Those changes in wind are tied in a complicated way to climate change from greenhouse gases, Maksym and Scambos say. Climate change has created essentially a wall of wind that keeps cool weather bottled up in Antarctica, NASA’s Abdalati says.

And the wind works in combination with the ozone hole, the huge gap in Earth’s protective ozone layer that usually appears over the South Pole. It’s bigger than North America.

It’s caused by man-made pollutants chlorine and bromine, which are different from the fossil fuel emissions that cause global warming. The hole makes Antarctica even cooler this time of year because the ozone layer usually absorbs solar radiation, working like a blanket to keep the Earth warm.

And that cooling effect makes the winds near the ground stronger and steadier,
pushing the ice outward, Scambos says.

University of Colorado researcher Katherine Leonard, who is on board the ship with Maksym, says in an email that the Antarctic sea ice is also getting snowier because climate change has allowed the air to carry more moisture.

Does Sea Ice Growth or Decline Negate or Confirm Climate Change? No.

From LA Times August 29, 2014 Does Antarctic sea ice growth negate climate change? Scientists say no. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

This year, Antarctic sea ice has expanded its frigid reach with unprecedented speed, setting records in June and July. By the time spring punctures the long Antarctic night, 2014 stands a decent chance of topping 2012 and 2013, which each broke records of maximum total ice extent.

In fact, since scientists started making satellite observations in the late 1970s, they have watched winter sea ice around Antarctica swell slowly but indisputably, despite predictions that it should shrink.

This poses a puzzle that climate scientists struggle to explain:
How can sea ice grow in a warming world?

Climate skeptics have pounced on this apparent discrepancy, citing it as proof that climate change isn’t real, or at least that scientists don’t completely understand it. But those who study Antarctic sea ice say their curious observations shouldn’t shake anyone’s confidence. Dramatic changes in temperature, sea level and extreme weather around the world are proof enough the planet is warming, they say; the only question is how these changes affect the Antarctic as they ripple through the climate system.

“Climate is a complicated thing,” said Ted Maksym, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. “Understanding how these kinds of changes play out in different regions is tricky business.”

The westerly winds blow fierce and constant around Antarctica, isolating the continent in a kind of permanent polar vortex. Scientists think they exert the most direct control over the state of Antarctic sea ice.

Ice requires cold temperatures to form, and winds help it grow by blowing it around the polar ocean. When the ice moves, new water is exposed to the chilly air, creating an opportunity to make more ice.

But it’s not quite as simple as more wind, more ice.

“It makes no sense to talk about a circumpolar average,” Stammerjohn said. “There’s so much regional variability.”

The Ross Sea, which faces New Zealand, has seen a dramatic increase in peak ice extent and 80 more days of ice cover since 1979, when satellites began tracking changes. But along the Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches toward the tip of South America, the ice-covered season in the Bellingshausen Sea is three months shorter than it was 35 years ago.

Scientists say sea ice and continental ice are probably responding to the same forces — namely, changes in ocean circulation and winds. However, they also influence each other. Sea ice helps buffer ice shelves, the floating tongues of glacial ice that dam the ice sheets and keep them from spilling irreversibly into the sea. It also keeps warm ocean waters trapped beneath a frozen lid, insulating the ice sheet from their destructive heat.

In the long run, however, scientists expect Antarctic sea ice to decline everywhere.
That it hasn’t done so yet suggests there’s still much to learn about the region.

Antarctic Sea Ice Grows to All-Time Record High: NSIDC October 09, 2014

North Atlantic Warming June 2023

Posted on July 19, 2023 by Ron Clutz

The best context for understanding decadal temperature changes comes from the world’s sea surface temperatures (SST), for several reasons:

The ocean covers 71% of the globe and drives average temperatures;
SSTs have a constant water content, (unlike air temperatures), so give a better reading of heat content variations;
A major El Nino was the dominant climate feature in recent years.

The Current Context

The chart below shows SST monthly anomalies as reported in HadSST4 starting in 2015 through June 2023. A global cooling pattern is seen clearly in the Tropics since its peak in 2016, joined by NH and SH cycling downward since 2016.

Now comes El Nino as shown by the upward spike in the Tropics since January, the anomaly doubling from 0.38C to now at 0.87C. Now in June 2023, all regions rose, especially NH up from 0.7C to now 1.1C, pulling up the global anomaly to a new high for this period.

A longer view of SSTs

Now in 2023 the Tropics flip from below to above average, and NH starts building up for a summer peak with June already comparable to previous years. In fact, the summer warming peaks in NH have occurred in August or September, so this June number is likely to go higher, perhaps the highest of all.

Contemporary AMO Observations

Through January 2023 I depended on the Kaplan AMO Index (not smoothed, not detrended) for N. Atlantic observations. But it is no longer being updated, and NOAA says they don’t know its future. So I find only the Hadsst AMO dataset has data through April. It differs from Kaplan, which reported average absolute temps measured in N. Atlantic. “Hadsst AMO follows Trenberth and Shea (2006) proposal to use the NA region EQ-60°N, 0°-80°W and subtract the global rise of SST 60°S-60°N to obtain a measure of the internal variability, arguing that the effect of external forcing on the North Atlantic should be similar to the effect on the other oceans.” So the values represent differences between the N. Atlantic and the Global ocean.

The pattern suggests the ocean may be demonstrating a stairstep pattern like that we have also seen in HadCRUT4.

Summary

Footnote: Why Rely on HadSST4

uss-pearl-harbor-deploys-global-drifter-buoys-in-pacific-ocean

USS Pearl Harbor deploys Global Drifter Buoys in Pacific Ocean

Sabine’s Video Myopic on GHG Climate Role

Posted on June 25, 2023 by Ron Clutz

E.M. Smith explains Curing Radiation Myopia Regarding Climate

It is Soooo easy to get things just a little bit off and miss reality. Especially in complex systems and even more so when folks raking in $Millions are interested in misleading for profit. Sigh.

It is absolutely essential to pay attention to convection in the lower atmosphere
and to the “feedback loops” or homeostasis in the system.

Figure 16. The geological history of CO2 level and temperature proxy for the past 400 million years. CO2 levels now are ~ 400ppm. Source: Davis, W. J. (2017).

Where’s she wrong? (Well, not really wrong, but lacking…)

In English “heating” has 2 different meanings. Increasing temperature.
Increasing heat flow at a temperature.

So what’s an atmosphere to do? It has heat to move! Well, it convects. It evaporates water.

So what does happen? Look around, what do you see? Clouds. Rain. Snow. (sleet hail fog etc. etc.)

What happens next?

So to have clue, one MUST look at the evaporation of water from the oceans as everything else is in the small change.

Then any more energy “trapped” at the surface would just run the mass transport water cycle faster. It would not increase the temperature.

Footnote

CO2 Alarm is Myopic: Claiming CO2 causes dangerous global warming is too simplistic. CO2 is but one factor among many other forces and processes interacting to make weather and climate.

2. CO2 Alarm is Lopsided: CO2 forcing is too small to have the overblown effect claimed for it. Other factors are orders of magnitude larger than the potential of CO2 to influence the climate system.

Lopsided

Empirical Proof Sun Driving Climate (Scafetta 2023)

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Ron Clutz

On June 14, 2023 Nicola Scafetta published at Science Direct Empirical assessment of the role of the Sun in climate change using balanced multi-proxy solar records. Excerpts in italics with my bolds with exhibits from the study.

By design, climate models exclude solar forcing of earth’s climate,
and perform poorly without it.

Scafetta (2023) Highlights

• The role of the Sun in climate change is hotly debated with diverse models.

• The Earth’s climate is likely influenced by the Sun through a variety of physical mechanisms.

• Balanced multi-proxy solar records were created and their climate effect assessed.

• Factors other than direct TSI forcing account for around 80% of the solar influence on the climate.

• Important solar-climate mechanisms must be investigated before developing reliable GCMs.

Abstract

The role of the Sun in climate change is hotly debated. Some studies suggest its impact is significant, while others suggest it is minimal. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports the latter view and suggests that nearly 100% of the observed surface warming from 1850–1900 to 2020 is due to anthropogenic emissions.

However, the IPCC’s conclusions are based solely on computer simulations made with global climate models (GCMs) forced with a total solar irradiance (TSI) record showing a low multi-decadal and secular variability. The same models also assume that the Sun affects the climate system only through radiative forcing – such as TSI – even though the climate could also be affected by other solar processes.

In this paper I propose three “balanced” multi-proxy models of total solar activity (TSA) that consider all main solar proxies proposed in scientific literature. Their optimal signature on global and sea surface temperature records is assessed together with those produced by the anthropogenic and volcanic radiative forcing functions adopted by the CMIP6 GCMs. This is done by using a basic energy balance model calibrated with a differential multi-linear regression methodology, which allows the climate system to respond to the solar input differently than to radiative forcings alone, and to evaluate the climate’s characteristic time-response as well.

The proposed methodology reproduces the results of the CMIP6 GCMs when their original forcing functions are applied under similar physical conditions, indicating that, in such a scenario, the likely range of the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) could be 1.4 °C to 2.8 °C, with a mean of 2.1 °C (using the HadCRUT5 temperature record), which is compatible with the low-ECS CMIP6 GCM group.

However, if the proposed solar records are used as TSA proxies and the climatic sensitivity to them is allowed to differ from the climatic sensitivity to radiative forcings, a much greater solar impact on climate change is found, along with a significantly reduced radiative effect. In this case, the ECS is found to be 0.9-1.8 °C, with a mean of around 1.3 °C. Lower ECS ranges (up to 20%) are found using HadSST4, HadCRUT4, and HadSST3.

The result also suggests that about 80% of the solar influence on the climate may not be induced by TSI forcing alone, but rather by other Sun-climate processes (e.g., by a solar magnetic modulation of cosmic ray and other particle fluxes, and/or others), which must be thoroughly investigated and physically understood before trustworthy GCMs can be created. This result explains why empirical studies often found that the solar contribution to climate changes throughout the Holocene has been significant, whereas GCM-based studies, which only adopt radiative forcings, suggest that the Sun plays a relatively modest role. The appendix includes the proposed TSA records.

Comparative Analysis

Figure 5. (A) Anthropogenic (blue) and volcanic (orange) effective radiative forcing functions adopted by the CMIP6 GCMs (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2021). (B) Comparison between the solar effective radiative forcing function from Table Annex III of the IPCC-AR6 (green) (after Masson-Delmotte et al., 2021) and the three TSI forcing functions deduced from the TSI records shown in Fig. 4. All records are anomalies relative to their values in 1850.

The solar forcing functions depicted in Fig. 5B differ in several respects. Just a very modest secular trend can be seen for the solar forcing function used by the CMIP6 GCMs, which has remained nearly constant for about 200 years. Although not depicted in Fig. 5B, the TSI forcing adopted by the CMIP6 GCMs is so flat that even the 1790–1830 Dalton grand solar minimum almost coincides with the 1890–1910 solar minimum and the 2019 solar cycle minimum (Supplementary Data Table S5). Furthermore, because this record is also based on SATIRE and the PMOD TSI satellite composite, its solar effective forcing function decreased progressively from 1970 to 2020. Thus, by using this TSI record, the CMIP6 GCMs could only conclude that solar forcing did not account for almost any of the warming observed after the pre-industrial period (1850–1900), and, particularly, from 1980 to 2020. (Masson-Delmotte et al., 2021).

On the contrary, the other three TSI records reveal a multidecadal oscillation as well as a clear increasing secular trend from the Dalton solar minimum to 2000. More specifically, the TSI forcing significantly increased from the Dalton minimum (1810–1815) to around 1870–1876, then declined until around 1890–1905; it increased rapidly between 1910 and the 1940s, and declined again between 1950 and 1975. The TSI forcing then increased again until 2000, when it began to gradually fall until 2022. This oscillating pattern is especially noteworthy because, as demonstrated below, it is closely correlated with the changes observed in total surface temperature records, which show a very similar increasing trend and multi-decadal modulation (cf.: Scafetta et al., 2004, Scafetta and West, 2006, Scafetta and West, 2008, Scafetta, 2009, Scafetta, 2010, Scafetta, 2012b, Scafetta, 2013a, Scafetta, 2021b).

Figure 8. (A) HadCRUT5 global surface temperature versus the CMIP6 GCM ensemble average; (A’) the two records are detrended with the function f(t) = a (x-1850)2. (B) HadCRUT5 global surface temperature versus the energy balance model (Eq. (16)) using the TSI proxy model #2; (B’) the same as above. The green curves in Fig. 8A and B are sketches that highlight the different multi-decadal modulation of the red curves in Fig. 8A (monotonically increasing, like the anthropogenic forcing function) and in Fig. 8B (oscillating, like the temperature records).

Fig. 8 compares the HadCRUT5 global surface temperature record to (A) the CMIP6 GCM ensemble mean record and (B) the energy balance model (Eq. (16)) using the proposed TSI proxy model #2, which does not use the GCMs’ low secular-variability TSI record. The GCM simulation depicted in Fig.8A monotonically warms up, although occasional volcanic eruptions momentarily cause cold spikes; the monotonic warming trend produced by the model is simulated by the green curve. On the contrary, the model provided in Fig. 8B indicates an oscillating pattern developing around a warming trend. The global surface temperature record shows a similar growing trend, regulated by an approximately 60-year oscillation: the period 1880–1910 experienced a global cooling; the period 1910–1940 was characterized by considerable warming; and the period 1940–1970 experienced another global cooling. From 1880 to 1970, the model in Fig. 8B reproduces this oscillating pattern more precisely (corr. coeff. r = 0.79) than the CMIP6 GCM ensemble average simulation depicted in Fig. 8A (corr. coeff. r = 0.74). Thus, Fig. 8 illustrates that the suggested model (red curve, Fig. 8B) exhibits a multidecadal modulation that correlates significantly better with the temperature record (blue curve) than the GCM ensemble average simulation (red curve, Fig. 8A).

The different performance of the CMIP6 GCM ensemble average simulation and of the proposed regression model in reproducing the temperature pattern from 1850 to 1950 becomes more evident if a quadratic upward trend is detrended from the records. The correlation coefficient is r = 0.45 using the GCM ensemble average simulation (Fig. 8A’), and r = 0.55 using the proposed regression model (Fig. 8B’).

This result suggests that the observed multi-decadal modulation of the
temperature records could have been mostly determined by solar forcings,
and not by chaotic internal oscillations of the climate system.

Conclusion

The IPCC (Solomon and et al., 2007; Stocker and et al., 2014; Masson-Delmotte et al., 2021) conclusion that the Sun’s role in climate change has been negligible since the pre-industrial period (1850–1900) derives from the fact that this organization only consider the solar climatic signature produced by the present-day GCMs. These models, however, are computer programs that can only employ equations describing physical mechanisms that are already well known. Anything unknown or ambiguous cannot be included in the GCM software. If the climatic influence of neglected physical processes is significant, the reductionist approach employed in the GCMs for assessing climate change attributions may be completely inappropriate for the task.

The CMIP6 GCMs appear to greatly underestimate the Sun’s role in climate change because of two major limitations:

(i) erroneous solar forcings have likely been integrated into the models; and
(ii) TSI alone appears to likely be not the most important solar forcing.

Additional solar-magnetism related forcings and associated mechanisms are not included in the GCMs because they are currently poorly understood, despite the fact that there are several empirical indications that they might sufficiently modulate the cloud cover system (by 5% or less) to explain a significant component of the observed climatic changes (Svensmark and Friis-Christensen, 1997, Shaviv, 2002, Svensmark et al., 2016, Easterbrook, 2019, Svensmark, 2022; ). In fact, Table 1 shows that the actual climate sensitivity to TSA variations, which is expressed by kS, can be 4-7 times greater than the climate sensitivity to radiative forcing alone, which was denoted by kA.

Thus, about 80% of the solar influence on the climate could be generated

by processes other than direct TSI forcing. If this result is correct,

several solar-climate mechanisms must be thoroughly investigated

and fully understood before reliable GCMs can be developed.

The Sun Rules, and Warming from CO2 is Impossible

A complement to Scafetta’s study is a Quadrant article by Mark Imisides explaining the geophysical realities ruling out global warming from CO2. DIY ocean heating (Hint: It’s the water, isn’t it?) Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Scarcely a day goes by without us being warned of coastal inundation by rising seas due to global warming.

Carbon dioxide, we are told, traps heat that has been irradiated by the oceans,
and this warms the oceans and melts the polar ice caps.

While this seems a plausible proposition at first glance, when one actually examines it closely a major flaw emerges. In a nutshell, water takes a lot of energy to heat up, and air doesn’t contain much. In fact, on a volume/volume basis, the ratio of heat capacities is about 3300 to 1.

This means that to heat 1 litre of water by 1˚C it would take 3300 litres of air
that was 2˚C hotter, or 1 litre of air that was about 3300˚C hotter!

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. If you ran a cold bath and then tried to heat it by putting a dozen heaters in the room, does anyone believe that the water would ever get hot?

The problem gets even stickier when you consider the size of the ocean.
Basically, there is too much water and not enough air.

The ocean contains a colossal 1,500,000,000,000,000,000,000 litres of water! To heat it, even by a small amount, takes a staggering amount of energy. To heat it by a mere 1˚C, for example, an astonishing 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy are required.

Let’s put this amount of energy in perspective. If we all turned off all our appliances and went and lived in caves, and then devoted every coal, nuclear, gas, hydro, wind and solar power plant to just heating the ocean, it would take a breathtaking 32,000 years to heat the ocean by just this 1˚C!

In short, our influence on our climate, even if we really tried, is miniscule!

So it makes sense to ask the question – if the ocean were to be heated by greenhouse warming of the atmosphere, how hot would the air have to get? If the entire ocean is heated by 1˚C, how much would the air have to be heated by to contain enough heat to do the job?

Well, unfortunately for every ton of water there is only a kilogram of air. Taking into account the relative heat capacities and absolute masses, we arrive at the astonishing figure of 4,000˚C.

That is, if we wanted to heat the entire ocean by 1˚C,
and wanted to do it by heating the air above it,
we’d have to heat the air to about 4,000˚C hotter than the water.

And another problem is that air sits on top of water – how would hot air heat deep into the ocean? Even if the surface warmed, the warm water would just sit on top of the cold water.

Thus, if the ocean were being heated by greenhouse heating of the air, we would see a system with enormous thermal lag – for the ocean to be only slightly warmer, the land would have to be substantially warmer, and the air much, much warmer (to create the temperature gradient that would facilitate the transfer of heat from the air to the water).

Therefore any measurable warmth in the ocean would be accompanied by a huge and obvious anomaly in the air temperatures, and we would not have to bother looking at ocean temperatures at all.

So if the air doesn’t contain enough energy to heat
the oceans or melt the ice caps, what does?

The earth is tilted on its axis, and this gives us our seasons. When the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun, we have more direct sunlight and more of it (longer days). When it is tilted away from the sun, we have less direct sunlight and less of it (shorter days).

The direct result of this is that in summer it is hot and in winter it is cold. In winter we run the heaters in our cars, and in summer the air conditioners. In winter the polar caps freeze over and in summer 60-70% of them melt (about ten million square kilometres). In summer the water is warmer and winter it is cooler (ask any surfer).

All of these changes are directly determined
by the amount of sunlight that we get.

When the clouds clear and bathe us in sunlight, we don’t take off our jumper because of greenhouse heating of the atmosphere, but because of the direct heat caused by the sunlight on our body. The sun’s influence is direct, obvious, and instantaneous.

If the enormous influence of the sun on our climate is so obvious, then, by what act of madness do we look at a variation of a fraction of a percent in any of these variables, and not look to the sun as the cause?

Why on earth (pun intended) do we attribute any heating of the oceans to carbon dioxide, when there is a far more obvious culprit, and when such a straightforward examination of the thermodynamics render it impossible.

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