Big setback for the Global warming folks

[caneman]

http://www.weatherstreet.com/hurricane/ ... season.htm

[Steve]

caneman,

I think the title is pretty misleading. Whoever Weatherstreet is, the only blurb they have on global warming is:

Global Warming?
The slow hurricane season and the cooling sea surface temperatures might be somewhat surprising to the public. Media reports over the last year have suggested that, since global warming will only get worse, and last year's hurricane activity was supposedly due to global warming, this season might well be as bad as last season. But it appears that Mother Nature might have other plans.

So for the psychos who may have predicted a continuation of Category "6" storms to hit with more and more frequency (including this year), they may have a point. As to the whole debate, who knows? I'm not smart enough to take a side either pro or con. There's enough real evidence to show that the planet is undergoing fairly wild climate change. But the argument is over the causes and who is/should be responsible. That's as deep as I'm getting into it because as I said, I'm just not smart enough to take a side either way.

Steve

[KWT]

Hehehe, if TD4 beocmes a tropical storm then'll we'll just be above average again!

[caneman]

caneman,

I think the title is pretty misleading. Whoever Weatherstreet is, the only blurb they have on global warming is:

Global Warming?
The slow hurricane season and the cooling sea surface temperatures might be somewhat surprising to the public. Media reports over the last year have suggested that, since global warming will only get worse, and last year's hurricane activity was supposedly due to global warming, this season might well be as bad as last season. But it appears that Mother Nature might have other plans.

So for the psychos who may have predicted a continuation of Category "6" storms to hit with more and more frequency (including this year), they may have a point. As to the whole debate, who knows? I'm not smart enough to take a side either pro or con. There's enough real evidence to show that the planet is undergoing fairly wild climate change. But the argument is over the causes and who is/should be responsible. That's as deep as I'm getting into it because as I said, I'm just not smart enough to take a side either way.

Steve

You missed a part Steve.

The cooler SSTs in the Atlantic are not an isolated anomaly. In a research paper being published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists will show that between 2003 and 2005, globally averaged temperatures in the upper ocean cooled rather dramatically, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years

[curtadams]

The cooler SSTs in the Atlantic are not an isolated anomaly. In a research paper being published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists will show that between 2003 and 2005, globally averaged temperatures in the upper ocean cooled rather dramatically, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years

In other words - a dramatic cooling is equal to only 20% of 50 years of global warming. Sounds like global warming is pretty big stuff.

[caneman]

Not my intent to start a debate either but an erasure of 20% oceanic temperate gives credence to those who believe in cyclical events. Assuming this study is correct of course.

[HurricaneBill]

If x-y-no sees this, brace yourselves.

[cycloneye]

If x-y-no sees this, brace yourselves.

Oh oh,he is here now.

[Extremeweatherguy]

If x-y-no sees this, brace yourselves.

[x-y-no]

So what's the setback?

[caneman]

The cooler SSTs in the Atlantic are not an isolated anomaly. In a research paper being published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists will show that between 2003 and 2005, globally averaged temperatures in the upper ocean cooled rather dramatically, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years

In other words - a dramatic cooling is equal to only 20% of 50 years of global warming. Sounds like global warming is pretty big stuff.

.

Hmmmm, lets see. Oceanic heat content increases over 50 years but then decreased 20% in last 3 years so in another 12 years we should be back to normal. Contrar - A Cyclical event seems most likely

[x-y-no]

The cooler SSTs in the Atlantic are not an isolated anomaly. In a research paper being published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists will show that between 2003 and 2005, globally averaged temperatures in the upper ocean cooled rather dramatically, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years

Ah, OK. I've read about this research but haven't had time to read the published research yet. It's available here if anyone is interested.

There are some questions which immediately come to mind if this result genuinely shows a decline in ocean heat content in the last few years.

First and foremost is the fact that the sea level has continued to rise at the same rate it has been rising. If oceanic heat content really has gone down, one would have expected se level to go down as well. So either this result is wrong, or there's a very large new source for se-level rise (the only candidate being very rapid accelleration of the melting of land-bound ice, which wouldn't be particularly good news either).

I also wonder what kind of coverage their sensors have and if there's any possibility they're missing some shift in heat transport.

It's obviously an interesting and important result, but just as no single result proves the case for AGW, neither does any single result prove a case against it. Climate is a large, chaotic system and it's quite a challenge to accurately gauge what's happening in the whole system.

[curtadams]

Hmmmm, lets see. Oceanic heat content increases over 50 years but then decreased 20% in last 3 years so in another 12 years we should be back to normal. Contrar - A Cyclical event seems most likely

Not at all. I guarantee if you run the statistics that the increase over the past 50 years is highly significant. Plus the a priori expectation is for global warming since it's a well developed and well supported scientific model, while there isn't even a plausible published model for cyclical changes, never mind a supported one.

[caneman]

Well, I won't pretend to be as well versed in this as you two are. However, given this trend, I think its fair to say we should see if this trend continues for the next 5 to 10 years. While Hurricanes have undergone rather intense burst of activity in 20-50 year cycles. It seems plausible to me that oceanic temps could do same.

[x-y-no]

Here's an interesting item on the implications of this if it's accurate:

Introduction
Recently updated estimates based on in situ profile data show a decrease in
globally averaged, 0/750 m thermosteric sea level between 2003 and 2005 of
approximately 7 mm. The decrease in thermosteric sea level is due to a loss
of approximately 3.2 x 1022 J of heat from the upper-ocean during this period
(Lyman et al., 2006). Despite this decrease in thermosteric sea level, total
sea level as measured by altimeters and tide gauges continued to rise at
nearly the same rate during this period. If the altimeter measurements are
correct, this implies that either deep warming occurred that significantly
compensates the upper ocean cooling, or the rate of the freshwater input has
dramatically increased.

They conclude that to compensate for the observed decrease in heat content and still maintain the observed increase in sea level, influx of meltwater must have increased from 0.7 ± 1.0 mm/yr from 1993 to 1999 and 2.9 ± 1.1 mm/yr from 1999 to 2005.

[x-y-no]

And now that I actually go and read even the introduction of this paper (I had only bookmarked it before - didn't even glance at it) I wonder what the heck the big deal is about ...

Here's the intro:

1. Introduction
With over 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, the World Ocean is the
largest repository for changes in global heat content [Levitus et al., 2005]. Monitoring
ocean heat content is therefore fundamental to detecting and understanding changes in the
Earth’s heat balance. Past estimates of the global integral of ocean heat content anomaly
(OHCA) indicate an increase of 14.5 ´ 1022 J from 1955 to 1998 from the surface to 3000
m [Levitus et al., 2005] and 9.2 (± 1.3) ´ 1022 J from 1993 to 2003 in the upper (0 – 750
m) ocean [Willis et al. 2004]. These increases provide strong evidence of global
warming. Climate models exhibit similar rates of ocean warming, but only when forced
by anthropogenic influences [Gregory et al., 2004; Barnett et al., 2005; Church et al.,
2005; Hansen et al., 2005].
While there has been a general increase in the global integral of OHCA during the
last half century, there have also been substantial decadal fluctuations, including a short
period of rapid cooling (6 ´ 1022 J of heat lost in the 0–700 m layer) from 1980 to 1983
[Levitus et al., 2005]. Most climate models, however, do not contain unforced decadal
variability of this magnitude [Gregory et al., 2004; Barnett et al., 2005, their Figure S1;
Church et al., 2005; and Hansen et al., 2005] and it has been suggested that such
fluctuations in the observational record may be due to inadequate sampling of ocean
temperatures [Gregory et al., 2004]. We have detected a new cooling event that began in
2003 and is comparable in magnitude to the one in the early 1980s. Using highresolution
satellite data to estimate sampling error, we find that both the recent event and
the cooling of the early 1980s are significant with respect to these errors.

(emphasis mine)

So according to the researchers themselves, this isn't some startling departure from long-term trends, but merely another occurrence of a strong short-term variation as has been observed before.

The 1980's event involved the loss of 6 x 10^22 joules in three years. This episode to date involves the loss of just over half that.

Big deal. Call Senator Inhofe right now. I'm sure he'll want to hold hearings.

[curtadams]

Hmm. There was another case of scientific research being deliberately distorted (search down for Curt H Davis) to make a claim against global warming. (that one reported an increase in East Antarctic ice - true, but predicted by GW, and less than the loss in West Antarctica - all noted by the author in the paper.) I know you're acting in good faith, Caneman, but somewhere along the line where you got that reference is a unreliable, at best, source.

[x-y-no]

Hmm. There was another case of scientific research being deliberately distorted (search down for Curt H Davis) to make a claim against global warming. (that one reported an increase in East Antarctic ice - true, but predicted by GW, and less than the loss in West Antarctica - all noted by the author in the paper.) I know you're acting in good faith, Caneman, but somewhere along the line where you got that reference is a unreliable, at best, source.

We're maybe getting a bit afield from the topic of the thread here ...


It's not wrong, in my opinion, to point out that this result is a significant datum regarding AGW, especially since much was made of the rate of increase in ocean heat content over the preceding decade. But it's just one datum and hardly dispositive.

[MetroMike]

Well after 2 active years, science world wanted everyone to believe that over active tropical activity was to be the new normal for many years to come.

In my view they wanted more funding from the Federal government when they didn't fully understand the year to year variations that occur. Mother nature has a way of evening things out in the end.

[caneman]

Hmm. There was another case of scientific research being deliberately distorted (search down for Curt H Davis) to make a claim against global warming. (that one reported an increase in East Antarctic ice - true, but predicted by GW, and less than the loss in West Antarctica - all noted by the author in the paper.) I know you're acting in good faith, Caneman, but somewhere along the line where you got that reference is a unreliable, at best, source.

You both make some good points, however, I'm not buying right now. It would be like saying since we're in an active Hurrincane cycle now that every year we will have 27 storms, Cat. 6 Hurricanes, etc... I'll wait to view a much longer period to look at.