by Javier Vinós & Andy May
“No philosopher has been able with his own strength to lift this veil stretched by nature over all the first principles of things. Men argue, nature acts.” Voltaire (1764)
6.1 Introduction
Climate is a thermodynamic process determined by the energy flux from its entry point, mostly at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) of the tropics on the day side of the planet, to its exit point distributed across the TOA of the entire planet. The Earth’s infrared emission depends on the absolute temperature scale, and on this scale the planet’s surface temperatures occupy a narrow range. The average outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) emission of the planet is c. 240 W/m2 and the all-sky average for most of the surface is in a relatively narrow 200–280 W/m2 range (Dewitte & Clerbaux 2018). OLR is determined more by the irregular distribution of atmospheric water (clouds, humidity) than by surface temperature. The cloud effect on OLR can reach –80 W/m2 (negative values mean cooling) in some equatorial areas. Thus, while 62 % of the energy enters the climate system over 25 % of the Earth’s TOA area (the 30°N-S daytime side), its exit is much more evenly distributed over the entire TOA area.
From a thermodynamic point of view, the main feature of Earth’s climate is the transport of energy. Energy transport is the cause of all weather. Most of the solar energy that is not reflected is stored in the oceans, where most of the climate system energy resides. But the oceans are not good at transporting energy (see Fig. 3.4). Differences in water temperature tend to cause vertical movements through altered buoyancy, not lateral movements, and the oceans are temperature stratified, seriously limiting vertical energy transport. Most of the energy in the climate system is transported by the atmosphere, and even a great part of the energy transported by surface ocean currents is wind driven, as ocean circulation is primarily not thermally, but mechanically driven (Huang 2004). The flux of non-solar energy at the atmospheric-ocean boundary (including across sea-ice) is almost always, almost everywhere, from the ocean to the atmosphere (Yu & Weller 2007; Schmitt 2018).
In a simplified form, the climate can be understood as solar energy being received and stored by the ocean, and then transferred to the atmosphere for transport and ultimately discharged to space. This energy transfer powers the water cycle creating clouds, rain, snow, storms, and all weather phenomena. The system is never in equilibrium, nor can it be expected to be. Over the course of a year, the Earth’s surface warms by c. 3.8 °C and cools by c. 3.8 °C (see Fig. 3.1), with a variability from year to year of about 0.1–0.2 °C. So, the Earth is constantly warming or cooling at all timescales.
Thermodynamically, climate change involves changes in energy gain, energy loss, or both. A change in the energy partition within the climate system can also be a cause for climate change, and it has been known to happen in the past under special circumstances, like the abrupt release of meltwater from the Lake Agassiz outburst 8,200 years ago (Lewis et al. 2012), or the Dansgaard-Oeschger events, when ocean-stored energy was abruptly released to the atmosphere in the Nordic Seas basin during the last glacial period (Dokken et al. 2013). These changes were temporary because climate can only change long-term through a change in the energy budget of the system.
The modern theory of climate change understands climate thermodynamics but fails to understand the role of energy redistribution. When studying climate variables, scientists normally work with what are called “anomalies;” they are the residual of subtracting the “climatology,” or the average changes over 24-hour days and seasons in the variables studied. This point of view magnifies the small interannual variability, but conceals the much larger seasonal changes. The result is that the important seasonal changes in atmospheric and oceanic energy redistribution are usually ignored. The error is compounded because net energy transport within the climate system, if integrated for the entire planet, is zero (energy lost at one place is gained at other). Redistribution of energy by transport processes doesn’t matter to most scientists in terms of changing the global climate. To them, the TOA over the dark pole in winter is no different than the daylight tropical TOA, except in the absolute magnitude of the annually averaged energy flux. This narrow view obstructs a proper understanding of climate change.
Changes in atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs) alter TOA energy fluxes and constitute one cause of climate change. Conceptually, climate change is assumed to be due either to an external cause (forcing), or to internal variability. Fig. 6.1 shows a schematic representation of the climate system with many important subsystems and processes. Anything that is not affected by Earth’s climate system is considered external, although the distinction is not absolute. For example, volcanoes are often external to the climate system, however it is known that their frequency responds to changes in sea level and icesheet unloading during deglaciations (Huybers & Langmuir 2009). Forcings cause climate change, and feedbacks can cause the amplitude of the changes to increase or decrease. If the feedback amplifies the forcing effect it is positive, if it dampens the climate change, it is negative. It becomes confusing because the same factor can be both a feedback, if produced naturally in response to climate change, and simultaneously a forcing if produced by humans. Several GHGs are like that.
Fig. 6.1. Simplified schematic representation of Earth’s climate system. Different subsystems are shown with different background colors. Climatic phenomena and processes affecting climate are in white boxes. Subsystems and phenomena within the central pearl-colored box are generally considered internal to the climate system. Everything else is normally not affected by climate (with some exceptions), is considered external. Some important properties or phenomena at the interface between subsystems are placed in outside boxes. The Latitudinal (Equator-to-Pole) Temperature Gradient is a central property of the climate system that changes continuously and defines the thermal state of the planet (Scotese 2016). For simplification, lines joining related boxes have been omitted. Bold names in red are variables affecting the radiative budget and are almost exclusively responsible for Modern Global Warming according to the IPCC. From Vinós 2022.
The most important GHG due to its abundance is water vapor. Unlike CO2 or methane, water vapor is a condensing GHG and it is not well mixed. Water vapor is very unevenly distributed around the planet, and its distribution changes with time. The lowest concentration of water vapor occurs in the polar regions during winter. The radiative properties of different regions of the planet cannot be the same if their GHG content is different. It follows that transporting energy from a higher GHG-content region to a lower one increases outgoing radiation efficiency, and therefore, changes in transport must alter the global energy flux budget at the TOA and, as a result, cause climate change. At present that cause is not being considered. Evidence suggests it is the main cause for climate change at all timescales from decades to millions of years. Planetary thermodynamics requires that energy transport is mostly from the equatorial region toward both poles in the direction of the meridians, so the flow is termed meridional transport (MT).
6.2 Meridional transport is geographically determined and gradient powered
The energy that the atmosphere gains from the oceans is mainly in the form of latent heat. Longwave radiation transfer is roughly half as large, and sensible heat flux is an order of magnitude less (Schmitt 2018). Atmospheric transport of that energy is greatly diminished by the presence of continents and mountain ranges through precipitation and wind speed reduction. As a result, MT takes place mainly over the ocean basins and is, therefore, geographically determined. This has huge implications for weather, climate, and climate change.
In the physical universe processes tend to happen spontaneously along gradients, whether they are gradients in mass, energy, or any manifestation of them, like gravity, pressure, or temperature. The gradient that powers MT is the latitudinal temperature gradient (LTG), its primary cause. The LTG is a product of the latitudinal insolation gradient (LIG, the unequal distribution of incident solar radiation by latitude), modulated by the effect of geographic and climate determinants. The LTG is steeper towards the South Pole (see Fig. 3.3b), despite an annually symmetrical LIG with respect to the equator. Antarctica’s unique geographic and climatic conditions, and the large area covered by the Southern Hemisphere oceans, make the southern LTG steeper than the northern. Cionco et al. (2020a; 2020b) discuss neglected changes to the LIG at different latitudes during the Holocene, and high frequency variations in LIG due to the 18.63-yr lunal nodal cycle that are likely to affect climate.
Milanković’s 1920 proposal that the climate of the Earth is altered by orbital changes has its basis in differences in the amount of energy received by the planet (eccentricity), but more importantly on differences in the latitudinal and seasonal distribution of the energy (obliquity and precession). These changes in the distribution of the energy alter the LIG, which changes the LTG, which changes the MT of energy. It has long been debated how the obliquity signal that paces interglacials (Huybers & Wunsch 2005), affects the tropics (Rossignol-Strick 1985; Liu et al. 2015) where the energy changes due to obliquity are very small. The answer appears to be that obliquity-induced changes in the LIG (Bosmans et al. 2015) affect MT.
Summer LIG is affected by changes to Earth’s axial tilt caused by the 41 kyr obliquity cycle and by the 18.6 yr lunar cycle. The winter LIG varies with the level of insolation falling on low latitudes, since high latitude insolation, near the winter pole, is minimal (Davis & Brewer 2011). The changes in the level of insolation at low latitudes are due to Earth’s wobble (21 kyr precession cycle), the distance to the sun (95 and 125 kyr eccentricity cycles) and by changes in solar activity (11 yr and longer solar cycles). Davis and Brewer (2011) have shown that the LTG is very sensitive to changes in the LIG. It is unknown why this hypersensitivity exists. The authors discuss the Kleidon and Lorenz (2005) proposal that MT adjusts itself to produce maximum entropy (Fig. 6.2).
Fig. 6.2. Proposition that meridional transport adjusts itself to produce maximum entropy. The latitudinal temperature gradient, resulting from the difference between tropical (continuous line) and polar (dashed line) temperatures is represented by the gray area. Entropy production (dotted line) is minimal when there is no transport of energy (left side of abscissa), or when transport is so efficient that there is no temperature difference (right side of abscissa), and maximal at some point in between. After Kleidon and Lorenz (2005).
Kleidon and Lorenz (2005) claim that MT dependence on maximum entropy production has been confirmed by simulations with general circulation models. They are obviously wrong, as computer models only constitute scientific evidence of human programming skills. That MT adjusts automatically to maximum entropy production requires a very large number of degrees of freedom (possible outcomes), and as reviewed in part V (Sec. 5.2) MT is modulated by multiple factors that are not well represented in computer models, which reduces the degrees of freedom. It is very likely that the adjustment of the LTG to the LIG is driven in part by entropy, but the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis (WGK-h; see part V) explains how the LIG can affect the LTG by directly acting on MT. It is important to keep in mind that if the LTG can change MT, the opposite must also happen, so the causality of the changes might be difficult to determine.
The WGK-h provides an explanation for the hypersensitivity of the LTG to changes in the LIG due to changes in solar activity, but not by other causes such as lunar or orbital changes. Within the evidence that the LIG responds to the lunar 18-yr cycle and the solar 11-yr cycle (Davis & Brewer 2011), it is interesting to see that the stadium-wave multidecadal oscillation in MT could be pulsating at the rhythm marked by the interference between the lunar 9-yr half-cycle and the solar 11-yr cycle (Vinós 2022; see Fig. 4.8f). If real, changes in the LIG resulting from this interference provide a mechanism by which the stadium-wave period and strength are determined, i.e., the changes in the LIG result in changes in MT that ultimately shape the stadium-wave.
While the LIG determines the distribution of the energy input to the climate system at the TOA, 29 % of that energy is returned to space by atmospheric and surface albedo. Reflected solar energy is highest during Jan-Mar due to SH cloud albedo, while OLR is highest Jun-Aug due to higher emission during NH summer (Fig. 6.3). The result of these differences is that the planet is colder during the boreal winter, when it is closest to the sun and receiving 6.9 % more energy (see Sect. 3.1 & Fig. 3.1).
There are very important differences between the hemispheres regarding climate energy and transport. As figure 6.3a shows, outside the tropics OLR essentially follows temperature. Within the tropics OLR and temperature show inverse correlation, as higher temperature leads to increased cloud cover and less emission. According to the modern theory of climate change the increase in GHGs results in the same IR emission to space taking place from a higher, colder altitude, requiring surface warming to maintain the energy balance. The Earth must emit the same energy it receives, not more, unless it is cooling. Under this model inter-annual OLR from the TOA should not change unless there is a change in incoming solar energy or in albedo. Albedo has been very constant since we have been able to measure it with sufficient precision, with an inter-annual variability of 0.2 Wm–2 (0.2 %; Stephens et al. 2015), and solar energy, termed the solar constant, varies by only 0.1 % (Lean 2017). Yet, OLR inter-annual changes are ten times higher than GHG radiative forcing changes. What is worse, the inter-annual changes in OLR are neither global, nor follow temperature changes (Fig. 6.3b). While extratropical SH OLR shows no trend over the last four decades, and tropical OLR shows a small and insignificant trend, the extratropical NH OLR displays a very strong increase. Is this increase due to the higher warming experienced by the NH? According to the data it is not, because during the 1980s and 90s when accelerated warming took place OLR did not increase significantly, while between 1997-2007, when the Pause was taking place, extratropical NH OLR underwent most of the increase of the past four decades (Fig. 6.3b grey area). It logically follows that the negative anomaly in extratropical NH OLR before 2000 contributed to the warming, while the positive anomaly afterwards contributed to the Pause. Obviously, the increase in GHGs cannot explain any of this, but the changes in MT that took place at the 1997-98 climate shift have no problem explaining the coincident changes in OLR at the extratropical NH (see Part IV).
Fig. 6.3. Outgoing longwave radiation yearly and inter-annual changes. a) Yearly changes in TSI (dotted orange curve without scale); data from Carlson et al. 2019. Yearly changes in temperature (red curves, left scale); global (thick continuous red curve), NH (thin continuous red curve), and SH (thin dashed red curve) temperature changes; data from Jones et al. 1999. Yearly changes in OLR (black curves, right scale); global (thick continuous black curve), 30–90°N (thin continuous black curve), 30–90°S (thin dashed black curve), 30°S–30°N (thin dotted black curve) OLR changes; data from KNMI explorer (http://climexp.knmi.nl/select.cgi?field=noaa_olr). Grey area, NH winter period. b) 1979–2021 changes in OLR anomaly for the 30–90°N (thick continuous black curve), 30–90°S (thick dashed black curve), and 30°S–30°N (thick dotted black curve) regions. Corresponding thin lines are their least-squares trends. Grey area corresponds to the 1997–2006 period that displayed accelerated Arctic climate change (see Sect. 4.5). Data from KNMI explorer NOAA OLR.
One of the most puzzling aspects of climate is that, despite very different land, ocean, and snow/ice surface extensions, both hemispheres have essentially the same albedo. This phenomenon is known as hemispheric albedo symmetry (Datseris & Stevens 2021). Models fail to reproduce such a crucial aspect of the climate, because nobody knows how it is produced and maintained (Stephens et al. 2015). Datseris & Stevens (2021) have identified cloud asymmetries over extratropical storm tracks as the compensating factor of the surface albedo asymmetries. Storm tracks are MT highways over already MT-favored oceanic basins. Storms are the product of baroclinic instability along the LTG and transport a great amount of energy as latent heat. They are also responsible for a significant part of global cloudiness, linking MT to cloud cover. Changes in MT must necessarily result in changes in cloudiness, altering the climate. If the albedo of the Earth is kept symmetrical by changes in storm track cloudiness, albedo is probably another fundamental climate property linked to the strength of MT.
6.3 ENSO: The tropical ocean control center
The climate system is composed of the oceans, land surface, biosphere, cryosphere, and atmosphere (Fig. 6.1). These different components exchange mass and energy, but for the climate system as a whole, energy gains and loses take place at the TOA. Parts of the TOA where the energy gain/loss ratio is positive, mainly above the tropics, constitute an energy source for the climate system, while the rest of the TOA acts as an energy sink. The biggest energy sink is the TOA above the winter pole. On average, energy enters the system at the source and is passed from climate component to climate component as it is transported towards the sink. The flux of energy through the climate system is characterized by both temporal and spatial variability. As a result, the amount of energy in transit through any element of the transport system changes over time, altering the enthalpy (total “heat” content) of the element, often observed as a change in temperature. We infer the regulation of MT by certain control centers that constitute energy gateways into and out of the climate system. These MT control centers are the polar vortex (PV), ENSO system, and the ozone layer. Their conditions change in response to changes in the main modulators of MT, resulting in changes in global energy transport.
The absorption of solar energy in the tropics is spectrally differentiated. The 200–315 nm part of the spectrum is absorbed in the stratospheric ozone layer, while the 320–700 nm part is mainly absorbed in the photic layer of the tropical oceans. The energy absorbed by the ocean is transported poleward in three different ways (Fig. 6.4). Part of it reaches the stratosphere through convection and constitutes the ascending branch of the Brewer-Dobson circulation, another part is transported in the troposphere by the Hadley circulation, and the last part is transported by the ocean. The ENSO state dictates the relative distribution of the energy to be transported. La Niña favors oceanic transport, while ENSO Neutral increases atmospheric transport. At certain times the amount of energy to be transported exceeds capacity and an El Niño is triggered.
El Niño directs a great amount of energy towards the stratosphere and troposphere, extracting it from the ocean and warming the surface of the planet in the process. During the Holocene Climatic Optimum (9–5.5 ka) the planet was warmer, MT was reduced as a consequence, and it resulted in a very reduced frequency of Los Niños (Moy et al. 2002). During the Neoglacial Period (since 5.2 ka) the frequency and intensity of Los Niños increased. In periods of planetary cooling, more energy must be transported poleward as part of the cooling process, which explains the increase in Los Niños from 1000–1400 AD as the world descended into the Little Ice Age (LIA; Moy et al. 2002). Over the past two centuries El Niño frequency has been low and trending lower because the planet is warming, and this is accomplished by reduced MT. At present El Niño conditions are produced by accumulation of subsurface warm water (the main El Niño predictor, see Fig. 2.4c) or by a decrease in the Brewer Dobson circulation in response to a stronger PV during the first boreal winter after tropical or NH stratospheric-reaching volcanic eruptions (Kodera 1995; Stenchikov et al. 2002; Liu et al. 2018).
Fig. 6.4. Northern Hemisphere winter meridional transport outline. Energy gain/loss ratio at the TOA determines the maximal energy source at the tropical band and the maximal energy sink at the Arctic in winter. Incoming solar energy is distributed in the stratosphere and troposphere/surface where it is subjected to different transport modulation. Energy (white arrows) ascends from the surface to the stratosphere at the tropical pipe (left dashed line) and is transported towards the polar vortex (right dashed line) by the Brewer–Dobson circulation. Stratospheric transport is determined by UV heating at the tropical ozone layer, that establishes a temperature gradient affecting zonal wind strength through thermal wind balance, and by the QBO. This double control determines the behavior of planetary waves (black arrows) and determines if the polar vortex undergoes a biennial coupling with the QBO (BO). At the tropical ocean mixed-layer ENSO is the main energy distribution modulator. While the Hadley cell participates in energy transport and responds to its intensity by expanding or contracting, most energy transport in the tropics is done by the ocean. Changes in transport intensity result in the main modes of variability, the AMO and PDO. Outside the tropics most of the energy is transferred to the troposphere, where synoptic transport by eddies along storm tracks are responsible for the bulk of the transport to high latitudes. The strength of the polar vortex determines the high latitudes winter climate regime. A weak vortex promotes a warm Arctic/ cold continents winter regime, where more energy enters the Arctic exchanged by cold air masses moving out. Jet streams (PJS, polar; TJS, tropical; PNJ, polar night) constitute the boundaries and limit transport. From Vinós 2022.
It is clear that ENSO strongly affects the MT of energy. It is therefore surprising that it is considered a climate fluctuation (Timmermann et al. 2018). Its location at the entry point of most of the energy into the climate system makes it a control center for MT that is modulated by solar activity (see Fig. 2.4). It is well known that ENSO responds to stratospheric conditions (e.g., volcanic eruptions) and subsurface conditions (warm water volume), thus linking MT at different levels. Paleoclimatology shows it responds to planetary thermodynamics, i.e., it is related to how the planet warms and cools. As Moy et al. (2002) say: “We observe that Bond events tend to occur during periods of low ENSO activity immediately following a period of high ENSO activity, which suggests that some link may exist between the two systems.” Bond events are century-long cold periods, like the LIA, that are brought about in part by strongly increasing ENSO activity (frequent, strong Niños). After the planet stops cooling ENSO activity decreases.
6.4 Ozone: The tropical stratosphere control center
The 200–315 nm part of the solar energy spectrum is absorbed in the stratospheric ozone layer, where it has a large effect on temperature and circulation. Although the energy at that wavelength range only amounts to slightly over 1 % of the total (Lean 2017), it varies with solar activity ten times more than the >320 nm range and is responsible for the radiative and dynamic changes that take place in the stratosphere during the solar cycle. UV energy absorption in the stratosphere is on average 3.85 W/m2 (Eddy et al. 2003; one fourth of 15.4 W/m2). This is not a small amount. It constitutes 5 % of the solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere (Wild et al. 2019). The ozone control center handles a significant part of the energy received by the climate, despite being just the UV energy portion.
The stratosphere is c. 5 times larger than the troposphere and contains c. 5 times less mass. With a density over an order of magnitude lower, the effect of the absorbed solar energy on stratospheric temperature is huge. Without ozone the stratosphere would be 50 K colder and the tropopause would not exist (Reck 1976). The ozone layer is a peculiarity of the Earth, as a result of atmospheric oxygenation, that probably developed during the Ediacaran or Cambrian, some 600–480 Ma.
Ozone absorption of solar energy in the stratosphere allows the formation of a stratospheric LTG that depends on UV energy, ozone amount, and ozone distribution. The gradient forms through shortwave heating of ozone and radiative longwave transfer involving mainly CO2 and ozone. Along this gradient the zonal wind circulation is established by the balance between the pressure gradient and the Coriolis factor (geostrophic balance). As a result, stratospheric circulation is opposite in both hemispheres, with the winter hemispheric circulation characterized by westerly winds and the formation of a polar vortex (see Fig. 3.7).
Planetary waves generated at the troposphere can only propagate upwards when stratospheric winds are westerly and of a certain velocity range (Charney-Drazin criterion). These conditions are present in winter, and as a result winter stratospheric circulation is more perturbed (Haynes 2005), resulting in higher MT. Planetary waves are generated more efficiently by orography and land/ocean contrasts, they are more frequent in the boreal winter. Planetary waves deposit energy and momentum in the stratosphere when they break, and occasionally are deflected downward towards the troposphere affecting circulation there. Their effect in the stratosphere is to drive meridional circulation, reduce westerly circulation, and weaken the polar vortex. As a result, stratospheric MT, known as the Brewer Dobson circulation, depends on the wave flux. In extreme cases planetary waves reduce winter westerly circulation so much as to make the zonal circulation easterly, causing sudden stratospheric warming as air is forced down and warms adiabatically, while the vortex splits or is displaced away from the pole. This happens about every other year in the NH, but rarely in the SH, and has great repercussions for tropospheric weather. Changes that take place in the winter stratosphere affect weather on the surface on a longer timescale due to stratospheric-tropospheric downward coupling. Unambiguous observations of stratospheric variability affecting the surface show up in the Arctic Oscillation (Northern Annular Mode), North Atlantic sea-level pressures, extreme weather events, the frequency of winter cold spells, the position of the tropospheric mid-latitude jet, and low frequency variations in the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (Baldwin et al. 2019). Stratospheric variability partly controls the tropospheric heat flux into the Arctic (Baldwin et al. 2019), showing that ozone response to solar radiation in the stratosphere acts as a major control center for MT.
Stratospheric circulation and variability are the result of ozone and its response to solar energy. Furthermore, the stratosphere, itself, is the result of ozone. Solar UV energy has two separate roles in the stratosphere. Through photolysis of oxygen and ozone it regulates the amount of ozone, and through radiative heating it regulates the stratospheric LTG which sets up stratospheric circulation and its response to planetary wave flux. The effect of wave flux on the Brewer Dobson circulation (i.e., stratospheric MT) has been termed the “extratropical pump” (Haynes 2005). As a result, the ozone control center participates in the modulation of MT of energy and is sensitive to changes in solar activity through photolysis and shortwave radiative heating rates (Bednarz et al. 2019). The body of evidence on the impact of solar variability on tropospheric climate through changes in the state of the stratosphere has significantly grown in the last few decades (Haigh 2010).
6.5 The polar vortex control center
Together with sea-ice, the PV constitutes a negative feedback to planetary cooling. It forms due to strong cooling in the polar autumn because of very low insolation and sea-ice formation. Atmospheric cooling increases air density, and as the cold air sinks it creates a low-pressure center with cyclonic (counterclockwise in the NH) circulation around the pole. As the westerly winds become stronger, they isolate the interior of the vortex where radiative cooling continues. The strong winter temperature contrast drives the zonal wind circulation that stabilizes the vortex until the sun returns. Without a PV (and sea-ice) the planet would lose a lot more energy every winter. It is thus trivially evident that a strong PV favors planetary warming, and a weak PV favors planetary cooling. The PV is a product of winter zonal circulation. Since, MT is driven by meridional circulation that takes place at the expense of zonal circulation, the PV constitutes one of the main MT control centers. It regulates energy access to the biggest energy sink in the planet, the winter polar TOA (see Fig. 3.2).
The discovery of the PV response to the equatorial Quasi-Biennial Oscillation (QBO; Holton & Tan 1980) shows that the PV is not solely the result of high latitude atmospheric conditions. It was later found that PV conditions also responded to the solar cycle (Labitzke 1987), even though the sun doesn’t shine above the pole in winter. After the Pinatubo eruption it became clear that the PV was also affected by stratosphere-reaching volcanic eruptions (Stenchikov et al. 2002; Azoulay et al. 2021), resulting in volcanic winter warming at mid-high latitudes instead of the expected cooling due to solar energy reduction from stratospheric aerosols. It is clear now that the PV responds to changes in the stratospheric LTG and to changes in the propagation of planetary waves in the stratosphere. Planetary waves deposit energy and momentum close to the vortex in the winter stratosphere which weakens the strong potential vorticity gradient of the vortex. Vortex dynamics cause wave perturbations to travel downwards making the vortex more susceptible to successive lower altitude waves and propagating the effect to the troposphere (Scott & Dritschel 2005). This provides an explanation for the stratosphere-troposphere downward coupling at high latitudes.
Thus, PV strength is the result of equatorial-polar gradients in temperature, zonal wind speed and potential vorticity that determine planetary wave effect on the zonal flow (Monier & Weare 2011). PV strength also depends on upward wave activity (Lawrence et al. 2020). As we have seen (Sects. 4.7 & 5.4; Christiansen 2010), PV strength experiences inter-annual and multidecadal oscillations that affect the Arctic Oscillation and surface weather events, like the frequency of severe winter cold air outbreaks (Huang et al. 2021).
Multidecadal changes in PV strength have confused atmospheric scientists for a long time (Wallace 2000). Multidecadal periods when the polar vortex is stronger than average result in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific sectors behaving as a true Northern Annular Mode (NAM; Fig. 6.5a & c), with a seesaw relationship between the Aleutian and Icelandic Lows (Shi & Nakamura 2014), restricting heat and moisture transport into the Arctic. In contrast, multidecadal periods when the polar vortex is weaker than average result in a situation best described by the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO; Fig. 6.5b), with weak Aleutian Low interannual variability and less restricted Arctic transport. The scientific literature discussions about whether the NAO or the NAM paradigms better describe the main NH extra-tropical atmospheric mode of variability (Wallace 2000), appear to ignore that its changing nature is linked to climate regime shifts (see Part IV) that characterize climate change.
Fig. 6.5. The shifting nature of the Northern Annular Mode/North Atlantic Oscillation. The three maps are the first empirical orthogonal function of winter-mean SLP anomalies over the extratropical Northern Hemisphere (poleward of 20°N) for three 25-yr periods, whose central years are noted above the maps. Color interval is for 1.5 hPa (positive in red), and zero lines are omitted. The polarity corresponds to the positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation. A true northern annular mode requires the coordination of the three centers of action, otherwise it can be better described as a North Atlantic Oscillation. After Shi and Nakamura 2014.
The PV regulates the exchange of air masses, moisture, and energy between the mid-latitudes and the polar latitudes. It responds to tropospheric climate shifts and to stratospheric conditions, and is affected by the propagation and reflection/absorption of planetary waves. It is modulated by solar activity, ENSO, the QBO, and volcanic eruptions, constituting a control center for MT.
6.6 Multidecadal modes: The state of Meridional transport
Nearly all the energy and all the moisture transported poleward takes place in the troposphere and upper ocean. As the intensity of this transport varies geographically over time it gives rise to what has been termed modes of climate variability. These modes of variability have fluctuated in the 20th century with a c. 65-yr multidecadal oscillation that produced the observed shifts in climate regimes. This oscillation, termed here the stadium-wave (Wyatt & Curry 2014), was detected in global sea-surface temperature (SST), and has been observed in North Atlantic sea level pressure and winds (Kushnir 1994), North Pacific and North American temperature (Minobe 1997), length of day and core angular momentum (Hide et al. 2000), fish populations (Mantua et al. 1997; Klyashtorin 2001), Arctic temperature and sea ice extent (Polyakov et al. 2004), the relative frequency of ENSO events (Verdon & Franks 2006), and global mean sea level (Jevrejeva et al. 2008).
The stadium-wave reflects global MT system variability. The oscillation mostly affects the two ocean basins that communicate directly with both poles, particularly from the equator (ENSO) to the NH high latitudes, and it affects the rotation of the Earth through changes in the angular momentum of the atmosphere (Hide et al. 2000; Klyashtorin & Lyubushin 2007), showing the coupled response of the ocean and the atmosphere. The multidecadal oscillations in SST (Atlantic multidecadal and Pacific decadal oscillations, AMO and PDO) are simply a reflection of the energy flux of MT through these elements. Since the amount of energy entering the climate system on an annual basis is nearly constant, the warm phase in the AMO or PDO reflects a slowdown in MT causing an energy “jam.” More energy resides at that time in those elements, perhaps due to a reduced ocean-atmosphere flux caused by a predominantly zonal wind pattern in the mid-latitudes. The spatial pattern of the AMO, obtained by regression of North Atlantic SST anomalies after subtracting the global SST anomalies, reveals that the AMO is the Atlantic portion of a global MT system that moves heat poleward. The global system also includes the Pacific and Indian basins (Fig. 6.6). It shows that the NH SST oscillation of the AMO is phase-locked with other global SST oscillations, reflecting coordinated changes in the global MT system.
Fig. 6.6. Atlantic multidecadal oscillation spatial pattern. Unitless (°C/°C) regression pattern of monthly SST anomalies (HadISST 1870–2008), after subtracting the global mean anomaly from the North Atlantic SST anomaly. It displays the °C of SST change per °C of AMO index. Besides displaying the AMO pattern, it shows that AMO is linked to the global surface MT system that extracts heat from the tropics in the main ocean basins. After Deser et al. 2010.
This global MT system is the complex result of the geographically determined coupled atmosphere-ocean circulation in a rotating planet with its axis tilted in relation to the ecliptic, that receives most of its energy in the tropics. Since the transport intensity varies through time and space, authors typically focus on describing its regional variability, and talk about teleconnections and atmospheric bridges to try and explain what are, in essence, elements of a single very complex process (Fig. 6.7). The importance of MT for the planet’s climate cannot be overstated and multidecadal changes in MT are an important and overlooked factor in climate change. It is a common assumption that the sum of multidecadal variability effects over time trends to zero. Studies on the change in the AMO amplitude over the past six centuries (Moore et al. 2017) show this assumption is ill-conceived.
Fig. 6.7. Meridional transport is the overlooked climate factor. Meridional transport is both the elephant in the room that everybody ignores as an explanation for climate change, and the elephant from the Indian tale that blind people describe as a different animal when touching different parts of it.
The stadium-wave has a period long enough to have made an important contribution to Modern Global Warming. According to Chylek et al. (2014) one third of the post-1975 global warming is due to the positive phase of the AMO, and models overestimate GHG warming but compensate for it by overestimating aerosol cooling. Regardless of the evidence, the IPCC does not consider that internal variability has contributed significantly to climate change between 1951– 2010 (see Fig. 5.1). An alternative view is that a combination of solar activity and a 65-yr oscillation, if allowed an unconstrained contribution, can explain a great part of the increase in the global warming rate over the 20th century, with residual changes attributable to the CO2 increase and volcanic activity. That view requires the admission that our current estimate of climate sensitivity, to the different known forcings, is erroneous, a possibility supported by dynamical systems identification (de Larminat 2016).
As shown in the Fig. 5.2 flow diagram, solar activity affects stratospheric transport directly, and tropospheric transport indirectly. The stadium-wave governs tropospheric transport as an emergent resonant phenomenon. When both act in the same direction the effect is maximal, as happened during the 1976–1997 period when both worked to reduce MT and warm the globe. During the 1890–1924 period both worked to enhance MT, which caused global cooling. But at times they are out of step and in these periods the stadium-wave has a bigger effect because tropospheric transport is much stronger. During the 1924–1935 period, solar activity was low, but the stadium-wave was on the warming portion of its cycle, resulting in the early 20th century warming. During the 1945–1976 period, solar activity was high, but the stadium-wave was set on cooling, and cooling resulted due to high MT. In those periods where solar activity and the stadium-wave have an opposite effect, the stadium-wave effect predominates because it is larger, but the effect isn’t as strong as when they cooperate in increasing or decreasing MT. MT is the real “control knob” of climate change.
During the 20th century, the stadium wave 65-year oscillation had two warming periods, for a total of about 65 years in the warm mode. Solar activity displayed the c. 70-year long Modern Solar Maximum (1935–2005). This means that both natural forcing and internal variability spent most of the century contributing to the observed warming. The unusual coincidence of such long periods of natural contribution helps explain why the early 20th century warmed in the absence of significant GHG emissions, and why so much warming was observed that century as to raise the alarms. The natural contribution to the observed warming comes at the expense of reducing the anthropogenic contribution.
6.7 Meridional transport as the main climate change driver
The search for the solar effect on climate leads us to an unexpected conclusion about how the climate changes. For solar variations to influence climate change, it is necessary that the climate control knob be MT. The two gigantic polar cooling radiators of the Earth are fed energy through MT. As a result, MT is responsible for most climate change at all timescales. The drivers of MT change depending upon the time frame being considered.
- At the inter-annual scale, the noise is high, but change is governed by ENSO and short-term phenomena like volcanic eruptions through their effect on PV strength and MT.
- At the multidecadal scale climate change is governed by the stadium-wave and all its parts, causing climate regime shifts in MT.
- The centennial to millennial scale is the solar realm. The sun reigns in climate change through its secular cycles in solar activity, acting through long-term changes in MT, particularly during SGM, but also during extended maxima like the MSM.
- In the multi-millennial scale Milankovitch rules. The orbitally induced changes in the LIG cause changes in MT. As obliquity decreases, it increases insolation in the tropics and decreases it at the poles. This steepens the LIG during the summers, increasing MT, which drives the required heightened moisture to the high latitudes. The moisture will remain locked there, as ice and snow, until the process reverses. This is how the necessary moisture reaches the high latitudes during glaciations (Masson-Delmotte et al. 2005). Later, when obliquity increases, MT becomes more restricted, contributing to the mid-latitudes warming during deglaciations. Obliquity’s strong climatic signature in the tropics has been linked to meridional transport (Bosmans et al. 2015).
- At the largest time scale, it is plate tectonics that governs climate change by facilitating or restricting tropical heat access to the two polar radiators. Multi-million-year Earth cooling results when ocean-atmosphere meridional circulation is favored, and zonal circulation is restricted. Zonal wind restrictions are caused by the position of continents, ocean gateways, and mountain ranges, that increase poleward (meridional) heat transport. Multi-million-year Earth warming results when the opposite happens.
It is generally accepted that MT keeps the poles warmer than they should be otherwise. Without MT the poles would be 100 °C colder than the equator on average, instead of 40 °C (Lindzen 1994). But in part III (Sec. 3.2) we reviewed the “low gradient paradox,” and said a possible solution would be offered in this part. This paradox arises from the climate of the early Eocene, the Cretaceous, and early Paleogene, characterized by a warm world with a reduced LTG and low seasonality (Huber & Caballero 2011). Such equable climates cannot be explained by modern climate theory without resorting to extreme CO2 levels and implaussibly high tropical temperatures. At the root of the equable climate problem lies the low gradient paradox (Huber & Caballero 2011). For the poles to be warm all year around more energy from the tropics was required, yet since the poles were warm all year around then, the LTG was very flat resulting in less energy transport.
The paradox is only apparent because, as we have seen in parts III to V, the more energy directed toward the poles the colder the planet gets, so it was actually the low gradient that kept the planet and the poles warm during equable climate eras. The planet has been in the Late Cenozoic Ice Age for the past 34 Ma because it is hemorrhaging heat at the winter pole from two gigantic cooling radiators. In the early Eocene, heat loss at the winter pole was limited by an intense cloud-, fog-, and water vapor-GHE during the polar night. Warm polar conditions were not the result of more heat transported from the tropical band. The transition from the early Eocene equable climate to the Pleistocene icehouse climate can be explained by changes in MT and the amount of energy directed towards the poles.
At the early Eocene (52 Ma) the world geography was very favorable to zonal circulation. There was a well-developed circumglobal seaway formed by the Tethys Sea, the Panama Gateway, and the Indonesian Passage (Fig. 6.8a). Connections to the Arctic were through shallow water seaways and across continents which severely restricted MT towards a warm Arctic above freezing all year around. MT towards Antarctica was unimpeded, but it was free of ice and covered by vegetation, with a stronger GHE due to abundant water vapor and clouds, due to global warm conditions.
The Arctic Gateway (between the North Atlantic and the Arctic oceans) began opening about 55 Ma allowing increased MT toward the North Pole (Fig. 6.8c; Lyle et al. 2008). This opening has been proposed as the cause of the long Eocene cooling (Vahlenkamp et al. 2018). As the planet cooled the LTG deepened, driving more energy towards both poles, and acting as a positive feedback to global cooling. The Tasman Gateway opened between 36 and 30 Ma. At 34 Ma several low amplitude obliquity oscillations coincided in a very unusual configuration (Fig. 6.8d, box) promoting cool summers for 200 kyr. Antarctica had already developed several ice sheets at higher elevations. A tipping point was reached when low eccentricity promoted ice growth at a time when low obliquity amplitude facilitated summer ice survival, triggering Antarctic glaciation in just 80 kyr (Coxall et al. 2005). The glaciation was completed 400 kyr later during another period of low eccentricity (Fig. 6.8d, grey bands).
Antarctica had an extensive ice sheet for most of the Oligocene, but after the Mid-Oligocene Glacial Interval c. 26 Ma, and until the end of the Mid-Miocene Climatic Optimum at c. 14 Ma (a 12 Myr interval) the planet entered a warm period that apparently nobody can explain. At the time CO2 levels collapsed, according to proxies (Beerling and Royer 2011), from 450 to 200 ppm (Fig. 6.8c, blue triangle), and remained very low for the entire period except during the time of the Columbia River Flood Basalt flows (peak CO2: 16–15 Ma). So, during the Late Oligocene to the Mid-Miocene warm period, CO2 changes do not explain temperature changes. Recent research suggests most of this period was characterized by a strongly reduced LTG (Guitián et al. 2019), indicative of reduced MT.
The Drake passage opened around the beginning of that warm period, between 30 and 20 Ma (Lyle et al. 2008), allowing the development of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Southern Annular Mode. The climatic isolation of Antarctica must have hindered MT of heat from the tropics causing regional cooling, yet globally the planet was warming due to reduced MT, and although Antarctica ice sheet continued to exist, it entered a long period when it waxed and waned following orbital changes (Liebrand et al. 2017). So as the planet warmed, isolated Antarctica developed a warmer and more variable state than during the Middle Oligocene. MT changes can explain the multimillion‐year Late Oligocene to Mid-Miocene warming within the long‐term Cenozoic cooling.
Fig. 6.8. Meridional transport as the main determinant for climate evolution. a) Mountain ranges and ocean gateways affecting meridional transport in the Cenozoic. Black boxes indicate active, well-developed geological features affecting meridional transport. Red boxes indicate features undergoing development. The Arctic Gateway began opening about 55 Ma. The Tasman Gateway opened between 36 and 30 Ma, while the Drake Passage opened either at 30 Ma or around 20 Ma. Vertical arrows indicate meridional transport (global cooling) is favored, and horizontal arrows zonal transport (global warming) is favored. b) The world in the Pleistocene has developed significant geological features that favor meridional transport. The Himalayas reached modern elevation by about 15 Ma. The Indonesian Passage is still open, but significant restrictions developed about 11 Ma. The Bering Strait began its existence about 5.3 Ma, while the Panama Gateway completely closed around 3 Ma. After Lyle et al. 2008. Red boxes indicate geological changes affecting meridional transport. c) Black curve, global deep-sea δ18O data as a temperature and continental ice proxy. Upper full bar represents ice volume >50% of present, and the dashed bar ≤50%. After Zachos et al. 2001. Red curve, average CO2 data after Beerling & Royer 2011. Blue triangle, 14 Myr of warming and decreasing CO2 levels. d) High resolution δ18O changes in benthic foraminiferal calcite show that Antarctic glaciation took place faster than previously thought in two steps. Box marks a period of low obliquity amplitude oscillations. Grey bars, periods of low eccentricity during Antarctica glaciation. After Coxall et al. 2005.
Changes to the global MT state can easily explain the climate changes that took place from the Early Eocene to the late Pliocene, that CO2 changes cannot. The isolation of Antarctica with the opening of the Tasman and Drake passages was bad for Antarctica but good for the planet, as it limited the loss of energy at the South Pole by creating a strongly zonal circulation around Antarctica. As a result, the planet warmed. Even today less energy is lost at the South Polar region, despite much colder temperatures and a steeper LTG, than at the Arctic (Peixoto & Oort 1992). From the Early-Miocene a series of events took place driving the planet towards its present severe icehouse climate. The Arctic Gateway continued opening and in c. 17.5 Ma the Fram Strait deepened enough to allow deep-water circulation (Jakobsson et al. 2007). The Himalayas reached modern elevation by about 15 Ma, the Indonesian Passage underwent significant restrictions 11 Ma, the Bering Strait appeared about 5.3 Ma, and the Panama Gateway closed around 3 Ma (Lyle et al. 2008). The result was a transformation from a planet characterized by zonal circulation (Fig. 6.8a) into one characterized by meridional circulation (Fig. 6.8b), where more energy is lost from the poles.
6.8 Epilogue
Climate is one of the most complex phenomena to become a subject of popular scientific debate. Feynman (1981) once said of science that: “we don’t know what’s true, we’re trying to find out, everything is possibly wrong.” This is especially true for climate science, a very long-term phenomenon, and where a great deal of the critical data is only available for a few decades. The immaturity of climate data is demonstrated by the periodic changes to temperature datasets, that invariably increase the registered warming over time, despite being based on the same original data.
As an example, Fig. 6.9 shows three different releases of the Met Office Hadley Centre global surface temperature datasets over the past 10 years (HadCRUT 3, 4 & 5) for the period 1997-2014 (13-month averaged). While HadCRUT 3 showed no increasing trend, each iteration displayed a bigger trend, and the changes have resulted in almost 0.2 °C of additional warming in just 17 years. It adds a new meaning to anthropogenic warming. At the end of that period the older datasets are outside the confidence limits of the newest and, therefore, no confidence can be placed on those limits. We don’t know how much the planet has warmed even over such a short modern period, much less over the past century. Scientific studies done with that data expire the moment the old data is periodically superseded and deprecated. This is a situation without precedent in science, a systematic enterprise that builds on solid, not fluid, data. The reliance of climate science on computer models produces a similar effect, as they also expire and are depreciated every time a new “improved” model is released. Once the new models come out, the old projections and some of the “findings” they supported become invalid.
Fig. 6.9. Dataset evolution from the same temperature data. 13-month centered average of monthly global average surface temperature anomaly from three datasets for the July 1996–May 2014 period. HadCRUT 3 data (thick continuous curve) and least-squares trend (thin continuous line); HadCRUT 4.6 data (thick dashed curve) and least-squares trend (thin dashed line); HadCRUT 5.0 data (thick dotted curve) and least-squares trend (thin dotted line). Data from Met Office Hadley Centre.
No doubt the situation keeps climate scientists employed as the studies need to be done over and over again with new data and computer models. The constantly evolving models and ever-increasing temperature trends do nothing to improve the standing of climate studies among the more serious sciences, where repeating experiments of the past produce the same result.
Modern climate science has allowed itself to be contaminated by activism without protest. Activist climate scientists are doing a great disservice to science by abandoning Popper’s goal of objective knowledge and allowing themselves to get emotionally involved with their subject and married to a chosen result. The history of science is not kind to scientists that allow themselves to become misguided servants of social or political goals. Lysenkoism and eugenics come to mind as dark examples. As Joel Hildebrand (1957) said of the scientific method, “there are no rules, only the principles of integrity and objectivity, with a complete rejection of all authority except that of fact.” The question is: Does research in climate science meet the standards of scientific objectivity? This is increasingly important in framing public debates about science and science policy (Tsou et al. 2015).
Over this series, we have presented some of the evidence that solar activity has an outsized effect on climate change, together with a proposed explanation for the observed effect. The scientific literature is full of additional evidence for a solar effect on climate. To deny that evidence can only delay progress in climate science. The search for a solar-climate effect has had the unexpected result of showing that modern climate theory is missing a crucial component. Changes in the poleward transport of energy cause the planet to change its climate state. It appears to be the main climate change driver.
Opposite of what is generally believed, when less energy is transported poleward the planet gets warmer. The planet warmed after 1850 from a a reduction in MT, followed by the increase in GHGs since the mid-20th century. While global warming is likely to continue over most of the 21st century, the rate is unlikely to increase, and might even decrease, disproving nearly every climate projection. Recent warming appears multicausal, caused by changes in solar activity and MT, besides GHGs. It is thus very unlikely that the decarbonization of the economy will have any significant effect on climate, although it could have a great effect on the transfer of wealth from some agents in the global economy to others, even if its total effect on wealth creation is negative.
Note:
The book “Climate of the Past, Present and Future: A scientific debate, 2nd ed.” by Javier Vinós will be published on September 20th, and it is now available for pre-orders. Kobo has a preview inside the eBook. At the time of this writing, both Barnes & Noble and Amazon offer the eBook at the discounted price of $2.99.
As usual,
Bibliography:
https://judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/VinosMay-Bibliography.pdf
Abbreviations-Glossary:
https://judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/VinosMay-AbbrevGlossary.pdf
‘We are living in a world driven out of equilibrium. Energy is constantly delivered from the sun to the earth. Some of the energy is converted chemically, while most of it is radiated back into space, or drives complex dissipative structures, with our weather being the best known example. We also find regular structures on much smaller scales, like the ripples in the windblown sand, the intricate structure of animal coats, the beautiful pattern of mollusks or even in the propagation of electrical signals in the heart muscle. It is the goal of pattern formation to understand nonequilibrium systems in which the nonlinearities conspire to generate spatio-temporal structures or pattern. Many of these systems can be described by coupled nonlinear partial differential equations, and one could argue that the field of pattern formation is trying to find unifying concepts underlying these equations.’ https://www.ds.mpg.de/LFPB/chaos
Shifting spatiotemporal chaotic patterns is a conceptual foundation of hydrodynamics with enormous significance for future climate.
‘In the late 1950s, a group in Chicago carried out tabletop “dishpan” experiments using a rotating fluid to simulate the circulation of the atmosphere. They found that a circulation pattern could flip between distinct modes. If the actual atmospheric circulation did that, weather patterns in many regions would change almost instantly. On a still larger scale, in the early 1960s a few scientists created crude but robust mathematical models that suggested that global climate really could change to an enormous extent in a relatively short time, thanks to feedbacks in the amount of snow cover and the like.(22)’ https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm
One of those crude models is discussed here – https://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
The governing equation for Earth system fluid flow is Navier-Stokes. A partial differential equation expressed as vector equations in 3 dimensions. It is a nonlinear set of equations that suggests the potential for shifts in patterns – i.e. the 1998/2001 climate shift – with small changes in state variables.
The Pacific Ocean matters because that’s where most of the extra energy enters the system with a positive cloud cover/sst correlation. Warm Pacific states have a lower domain albedo that cool.
e.g. https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62
It’s about half of warming in the past 40 years.
e.g. https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62
Javier is looking for amplification of a faint UV signal through terrestrial pathways. A nonlinear feedback. But he has missed what that says about the nature of the Earth system.
“…c. 70-year long Modern Solar Maximum (1935–2005)”
fyi, 1935-2005 is 71 years. The 70y Solar Modern Maximum is from 1935-2004.
Proof: https://i.postimg.cc/nhGXxg8t/70-vs-71-years.png
As well, the v2 SN (sunspot number) average for 1935-2004 was 108.5 vs 107.6 for 1935-2005. The year 2005 should not be included in the Solar Modern Maximum for the reason that the 2005 SN average was just 45.8, ~20 fewer SN than in 2004.
“They are obviously wrong, as computer models only constitute scientific evidence of human programming skills.“
This statement does not contain any technical information and so does not add to the discussions. The focus on ‘programming skills’, which generally refers solely to the computer software domain, does not begin to be a useful characterization of computer models. It is instead an exceedingly over-simplified, bumper-sticker-grade characterization. Importantly, the statement fails to even mention any of the technical aspects in the statement that precedes it. As it stands, the statement implies that computer models cannot lead to deeper understanding of any known physical phenomena or to discovery and understanding of new phenomena and processes.
Generally, computer models are based on the current understanding of the physical phenomena and processes of interest, the mathematical descriptions of these in the continuous-equation domain, with a focus on the response function(s) of interest in the physical domain. The discrete approximations of the continuous equations, and numerical solution methods employed to solve these introduce a large number of other important considerations. Correctness of the coding in the software domain is of course an important consideration, and ‘programming skills’ enter those aspects. Other considerations in the software domain include accessibility, understandability, maintainability, and extension-ability to accommodate new and improved versions of all aspects of computer models.
Ultimately, scientific and engineering software is required that the numerical methods and coding be Verified in the mathematical domain, and the continuous equations Validated to correctly describe the response function(s) on interest in the physical domain.
I suggest the statement be removed, or modified to address specific aspects of the statement that precedes it.
I beg to disagree.
“Scientific evidence is evidence that serves to either support or counter a scientific theory or hypothesis, although scientists also use evidence in other ways, such as when applying theories to practical problems. Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpretable in accordance with scientific methods.
Wikipedia.”
The output of a computer program is the result of a thought experiment based on current imperfect knowledge, and therefore it does not constitute scientific evidence. At most it can be considered a theoretical consideration. Only nature knows what the result of an experiment must be and only nature produces scientific evidence.
It is the hubris of thinking we can adequately reproduce climate inside a computer that is driving climate science to the ground.
Javier, all models are thought experiments. Computer models are models with computations to provide numerical results that can be used, for example, to design buildings or aircraft, or to compare with data. You disparage computer models and then present a model without computation and expect it to be accepted.
“and expect it to be accepted.”
The only thing that should be accepted is the evidence. All the rest is contingent and liable to change.
“that can be used, for example, to design buildings or aircraft”
I didn’t say models aren’t useful. I said they do not provide evidence. Models about things we understand are more useful than models about things we don’t. Given our understanding of climate, its models are not very useful despite their high price tag.
Von Neumann says the article is correct – models need too many parameters to be useful.
Dan,
You say that [climate] models must be “Validated to correctly describe the response function(s) o[f] interest in the physical domain.” Yet they have not been validated in the critical tropical troposphere, as shown by McKitrick and Christy, 2018 and 2020.
The only validation of a model is to make a risky prediction that is later observed. I’ve not seen that occur in the tropical troposphere using any of the IPCC models.
Clearly the models have serious problems.
‘Atmospheric and oceanic computational simulation models often successfully depict chaotic space–time patterns, flow phenomena, dynamical balances, and equilibrium distributions that mimic nature. This success is accomplished through necessary but nonunique choices for discrete algorithms, parameterizations, and
coupled contributing processes that introduce structural instability
into the model. Therefore, we should expect a degree of irreducible
imprecision in quantitative correspondences with nature, even
with plausibly formulated models and careful calibration (tuning) to several empirical measures. Where precision is an issue (e.g., in a climate forecast), only simulation ensembles made across systematically designed model families allow an estimate of the level of relevant irreducible imprecision.’ https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.0702971104
Sensitive dependence and structural instability are humbling twin properties for chaotic dynamical systems, indicating limits about which kinds of questions are theoretically answerable. They echo other famous limitations on scientist’s expectations, namely the
undecidability of some propositions within axiomatic mathematical systems (Godel’s theorem) and the uncomputability of some algorithms due to excessive size of the
calculation (see ref. 26).’ op. cit
Climate modelling has made great strides in a few decades. Understanding how models work should be a prerequisite to pontificating on them.
Robert,
You write:
“Where precision is an issue (e.g., in a climate forecast), only simulation ensembles made across systematically designed model families allow an estimate of the level of relevant irreducible imprecision.”
The only check on a model is another model??
Models are thought experiments and only validated by matching observations.
“Essentially, all models are wrong, but some models are useful.” – George Box
Have you forgotten?
Javier many thanks for your great compilation ,however ,in section 5 you say
” The negative correlation between long-term solar activity and Arctic winter temperature is clear (Fig. 5.5).
The correlation as shown in your Fig 5.5 is simply wrong a – Figment of your imagination . Because of the thermal inertia of the oceans there is a 12/13 year delay between the solar activity driver changes and the correlative temperature change- see Fig.2 and the quotations from my Blog
http://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/820570527003668244/3260744859689736991
“Short term deviations from the Millennial trends are driven by ENSO events and volcanic activity.
“Fig 2 The correlation of the last 5 Oulu neutron cycles and trends with the Hadsst3 temperature trends and the 300 mb Specific Humidity. (28,29)
The Oulu Cosmic Ray count shows the decrease in solar activity since the 1991/92 Millennial Solar Activity Turning Point and peak There is a significant secular drop to a lower solar activity base level post 2007+/- and a new solar activity minimum late in 2009.The MSATP at 1991/2 correlates with the MTTP at 2003/4 with a 12/13 +/- year delay. In Figure 2(5) short term temperature spikes are colored orange and are closely correlated to El Ninos. The hadsst3gl temperature anomaly at 2037 is forecast to be + 0.05. ”
Your are right in identifying the MTTP at 2003/4 and the controlling basic MT concept.
I would suggest that readers would find that reading the entire Blog post would be useful before. replying. Best Regards Norman
Norman J Page | September 2, 2022 at 4:33 pm | Reply
norpag1@gmail.com
What a brilliant article. It explains so much, and in particular it shows why GCMs can never predict climate.
One of the things that I would like explained a bit more is:
“In periods of planetary cooling, more energy must be transported poleward as part of the cooling process, which explains the increase in Los Niños from 1000–1400 AD as the world descended into the Little Ice Age (LIA; Moy et al. 2002).”.
What is it that demands more poleward transport? Yes there must be more poleward transport to achieve cooling, but that puts cause and effect the other way round. Something must cause the greater poleward transport which in turn gives global cooling. Similarly, i don’t see why cooling causes more El Ninos but I do see why El Ninos cool (by sending energy into the atmosphere and hence eventually into space).
(Apologies if anglicised ‘El Ninos’ offends).
True, true- could as easily say El Niño’s cause La Niñas and vice versa…
I find this statement in the fourth paragraph of Section 6.1 a bit confusing: “The result is that the important seasonal changes in atmospheric and oceanic energy redistribution are usually ignored.” Don’t the spatial meshes of global circulation models require time steps much shorter than one day? Consequently, wouldn’t they account for both daily and seasonal events? Displays of results may present average anomalies over some period of time, but that is not the same as ignoring seasonal events that affect those averages.
There is a clear tendency to disregard seasonal changes in climate variables. When I found out that the average surface temperature was changing seasonally by 3.8ºC, I had it very hard to find bibliographic support. There are many thousands of papers on interannual changes in temperature, and after a very long search I could find one showing the seasonal changes.
Meridional transport has a very strong seasonal component. A lot more energy is directed towards the winter pole, and as a result it is seasonally oscillating and altering the rotation of the Earth. If you only work with an annual global average you miss most of the action. And meridional transport has the problem that it is not adequately measured and it is not adequately understood, so much of what is said about meridional transport is just suppositions.
My point is that GCMs work with sub-day time scales and, consequently, do not ignore seasonal changes. You seem to object to the way results are displayed, not to the way they are computed.
I don’t criticize what goes on inside computer climate models. They aren’t worth my time. I criticize what goes on in the scientific literature, which is supposed to be a fair representation of scientific advance.
There is a new generation of Earth system models that have been in development for a considerable time.
‘The accurate representation of this continuum of variability in numerical models is, consequently, a challenging but essential goal. Fundamental barriers to advancing weather and climate prediction on time scales from days to years, as well as long-standing systematic errors in weather and climate models, are partly attributable to our limited understanding of and capability for simulating the complex, multiscale interactions intrinsic to atmospheric, oceanic, and cryospheric fluid motions. The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the research questions and challenges that are raised by the movement toward a more unified modeling framework that provides for the hierarchical treatment of forecast and cli-mate phenomena that span a wide range of space and time scales. This has sometimes been referred to as the “seamless prediction” of weather and cli-mate (WCRP 2005; Palmer et al. 2008; Shapiro et al. 2009, manuscript submitted to BAMS; Brunet et al. 2009, manuscript submitted to BAMS). The central unifying theme is that all climate system predic-tions, regardless of time scale, share processes and mechanisms that consequently could benefit from the initialization of coupled general circulation models with best estimates of the observed state of the climate (e.g., Smith et al. 2007; Keenlyside et al. 2008; Pohlmann et al. 2009).
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/90/12/2009bams2752_1.xml?tab_body=pdf
The new models are initialised, assimilate data and use machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyse and predict patterns. Early days but it is ultimately the only way to get a handle on globally coupled fluid flow – e.g. the stadium wave – and energy dynamics. It simply can’t be done by eyeballing graphs and with simple schematics. Javier loves his little rules but they cannot possibility capture the state of the system as it evolves chaotically.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/data-driven-model.png
Maximum entropy in a nonequilibrium thermodynamic system – btw – is when energy out equals energy in. It’s an idea that hasn’t proved all that useful.
Excellent articles, Javier. A lot of it was too complicated for me to take in but, overall, it made more sense to me than blaming all climate change solely on Carbon Dioxide.
I particularly liked the line:
“It adds a new meaning to anthropogenic warming.”
Judith and Javier: Thank you both!
An important milepost.
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I appreciate how your mechanism of MT variability explains a number of behaviors including a couple that CO2 GHG does not. But I am unclear, as I think you are, as to the mechanism and amount whereby solar variability can drive the variability in MT. Or whether GHG could be most of the culprit.
Do you have a guess and confidence intervals for climate the rest of the century based on your mechanism? Do you have a list of ideas for further research to see if any linkage can be found between MT and the sun in the past 40 years? (Perhaps I overlooked this in a previous post).
I do appreciate the many references to previous studies and hope
this stimulates new research.
GHGs cannot be most of the culprit because the warming started c. 1850, and when GHGs started to increase rapidly from 1950 cooling took place.
I accept GHGs play a role in 20th century warming, but it must be a second order role.
In the multidecadal time frame, MT responds primarily to the stadium-wave and secondarily to solar activity. But the stadium-wave also appears to respond to solar activity, so it is beyond my capabilities to even guess the respective amounts of warming.
If you think before calculation, your calculations actually might have a chance being right.
“He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense”
The greatest ideas don’t come with numbers attached. I don’t remember any arithmetic in Charles Darwin’s “On the origin of species by means of natural selection.” Others did a lot of numbers afterwards and confirmed he was right.
In fairness, Darwin is not far from Galileo in the world of fruit fly specialists.
Willard,
Perhaps it’s fruit flies all the way down and Javier is in fact the new Lorenz…
“If the flap of a fruit fly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, it can equally well be instrumental in preventing a tornado.”
“it is interesting to see that the stadium-wave multidecadal oscillation in MT could be pulsating at the rhythm marked by the interference between the lunar 9-yr half-cycle and the solar 11-yr cycle”
Only if you imagine that solar cycle lengths don’t vary.
“Is this increase due to the higher warming experienced by the NH? According to the data it is not, because during the 1980s and 90s when accelerated warming took place OLR did not increase significantly, while between 1997-2007, when the Pause was taking place, extratropical NH OLR underwent most of the increase of the past four decades”
Warming accelerated from the mid 1990’s before the pause with the warming of the AMO which reduced low cloud cover.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/uah6/plot/uah6/to:1994/trend/plot/uah6/from:1994/to:2003/trend
Ulric,
“Only if you imagine that solar cycle lengths don’t vary.”
This makes no sense. Of course, the solar cycle varies in length and so does the stadium wave. You need to clearly say what you object to.
Your next comment is equally confusing.
“This makes no sense. Of course, the solar cycle varies in length and so does the stadium wave. You need to clearly say what you object to.”
Sorry it was rather brief. A similar coherence between sunspot cycles and AMO anomalies never being colder around sunspot minimum occurs in the AMO warm phases of the late 1800’s and through 1930-1960. But the latter period has shorter sunspot cycles.
It’s the not solar cycle length which makes the AMO warmer during each centennial solar minimum.
https://www.woodfortrees.org/graph/esrl-amo/mean:11/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1855/normalise
“Your next comment is equally confusing.”
You need to clearly state what you object to. Warming from the mid 1990’s until the 2002-2014 pause was definitely faster than in the 1980’s. Which is when the AMO rapidly warmed, driving a decline in low cloud cover, which will alter the OLR rates as well as upper OHC warming rates.
“A small forcing can cause a small [climate] change or a huge one.”
— National Academy of Sciences, 2002.
Tipping points are the dominant climate science paradigm. Endorsed by Judith if there are any lingering doubts. It is after all state of the art climate science.
At the land surface energy is partitioned between sensible and latent heat – the balance is a function of soil moisture. Thermometers measure sensible heat.
Satellites measure sensible heat in the troposphere – including heat released when water vapor condenses. Data is available from 1979 – which is convenient as that’s when emissions took off.
Despite the 1998/2001 climate tipping point – the atmosphere continues to warm.
https://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
Climate science has missed nothing and the world must move on.
“Tipping points are the dominant climate science paradigm.”
Tipping points are a fudge factor to explain climate shifts, and the only evidence presented to their existence is the existence of climate shifts. In my book that is circular reasoning.
I agree that circular reasoning is the dominant climate science paradigm.
Being 50 years behind the curve and seemingly unable or unwilling to do anything but insist that you are absolutely right – you are again wrong – and the world is leaving behind increasingly marginalised voices such as yours.
https://watertechbyrie.com/2014/06/23/the-unstable-math-of-michael-ghils-climate-sensitivity/
Tipping points are very real, only they seem invisible in this field of science.
Javier below says “It is possible to speed up or slow down the passage of energy through the climate system by changes in the transport. As a result the planet warms or cools.”
Precisely, that change is a tipping point, or better, resulting from a tipping point, and alters the dynamic of heat transport. In other fields (planet dynamics) that change is abrupt, though the global effect – thermal, biological, weather,,, and add geological change at times, – can build up over several decades.
‘You can see spatio-temporal chaos if you look at a fast mountain river. There will be vortexes of different sizes at different places at different times. But if you observe patiently, you will notice that there are places where there almost always are vortexes and they almost always have similar sizes – these are the quasi standing waves of the spatio-temporal chaos governing the river. If you perturb the flow, many quasi standing waves may disappear. Or very few. It depends.’ https://judithcurry.com/2011/02/10/spatio-temporal-chaos/
Hydrodynamics of turbulent flows are the key to understanding why oscillatory modes (quasi standing wavs) emerge in the Earth system. These are the major modes of global climate variability.
https://stateoftheocean.osmc.noaa.gov/all/
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Changes in the poleward transport of energy cause the planet to change its climate state. It appears to be the main climate change driver.
The first sentence is well-known already – but transport is not the MAIN climate change driver.
The main driver is the sun- equatorial ocean response, followed by transport-related responses, ie secondary effects.
https://i.postimg.cc/nhXWr5GN/Ocean-Indices-lag-Eq-OHC.png
How do you explain the well known and recorded 1920s to mid-1930s Early Twentieth Century Warming, when solar activity was below average? Did the planet warm in preparation for the solar maximum, as an example of the effect preceding the cause?
The same as from 1995, weaker solar wind states causing negative NAO conditions, driving a warmer AMO. Associating a colder AMO with lower sunspot numbers like in the 1970’s is daft, as the last two centennial minima have seen warmer AMO phases. The 1970’s had the strongest solar wind states since 1964.
I don`t buy those sunspot variations as an explanation of climate change.
Cloud cover has had two regime shifts the last 70 years. From about 1950 to 1980 a global dimming, and from around 1983 a global brightening. Cloud cover reduction in combination with increased climate gases resulting in increased heat uptake of 0,5W per m2 per decennium. CO2 playing a smaller part, as seen from CERES data. One explanation of the Early Twentieth Century Warming could also be a cloud cover regime shift about 1915.
I think we can learn much of the climate “pattern effect” from Javier and May.
Javier your first question is a good question, something I gave a lot of thought to many years ago. The answer is the ocean is super-sensitive to solar activity. What does that mean?
The first rule of solar super-sensitivity is the ocean warms from high activity solar cycles & cools from decreasing solar cycles
For example, the image below, bottom panel, indicates after SC#14, the Ocean Temperature Anomaly (1880-2016) trend went positive, following the negative trend that ensued after stronger cycles #8-11 were followed by weaker cycles 12-14.
https://i.postimg.cc/NjJRCZgd/2018-AGU-Fig-17-Solar-Driven-Climate-Change.png
You know your second question is just baseless snark.
@nobodysknowledge
Clouds are not an independent variable!
Clouds follow sunspot activity. The solar minimum effect is fewer clouds, the solar max effect is more clouds. Higher activity cycles produce more clouds, such as SC #21-23, versus less clouds after 2002 when sunspot activity was less during the last half .
http://climate4you.com/images/CloudCover_monthly_CM-SAF.gif
“The answer is the ocean is super-sensitive to solar activity.”
That’s the type of answer that can explain anything, and the moment when a hypothesis stops being falsifiable and scientific.
I wasn’t born skeptic, but I became one. I don’t buy your hypothesis for a second. You will have the same problem with anybody with a modicum of thermodynamics knowledge.
Javier your response was pure snark.
My work came years after David Stockwell, who coined the phrases I use, solar super-sensitivity and solar accumulation.
Accumulation of Solar Irradiance Anomaly as a Mechanism for Global Temperature Dynamics
His website was once listed on the WUWT blogroll.
Speaking of WUWT, why did two of my comments today not get posted there (1) (2)? Why the censorship?
That wouldn’t be difficult to explain given all the unknowns but it also wouldn’t be falsifiable so stuck we are says Yoda
Javier: This early 20th warming was primarily caused by four American business recessions, where idled factories, etc. decreased the amount of dimming SO2 aerosols spewed into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise.
There were also two periods (38 and 42 months) where there were no volcanic eruptions, contributing to the warming)
Very good articles.
I have understood much of the warming the last 40 years as a result of reduced cloud cover. And most of that reduction can be explained from the reduction of relative humidity.
Perhaps the MT could be e mechanism behind that.
Cloud cover changes show a clear association with meridional transport changes (see part IV), and this makes sense as a stronger transport of energy includes a stronger moisture transport, so in essence more clouds are being produced and transported.
I would not go as far as saying that all cloud changes reflect changes in transport, as clearly other causes might contribute.
However I am hesitant to assign climate change to cloud cover change because the evidence on albedo changes is weak. The evidence for OLR changes in the Arctic is, however, strong, and since on a hemispheric extent OLR changes do not follow temperature changes, it is a clear candidate for climate change.
“However I am hesitant to assign climate change to cloud cover change because the evidence on albedo changes is weak.”
It is not only albedo change but also the (statistically) preferred position of clouds that makes a difference. For example, widening of the Hadley Cell will shift the mid latitude cloud band polwards. This leads to less clouds in the lower latitudes, where clouds tend to have a cooling effect. And more clouds in higher latitudes, where they tend to have a warming effect.
“As shown in the Fig. 5.2 flow diagram, solar activity affects stratospheric transport directly, and tropospheric transport indirectly. The stadium-wave governs tropospheric transport as an emergent resonant phenomenon. When both act in the same direction the effect is maximal, as happened during the 1976–1997 period when both worked to reduce MT and warm the globe. During the 1890–1924 period both worked to enhance MT, which caused global cooling. But at times they are out of step and in these periods the stadium-wave has a bigger effect because tropospheric transport is much stronger. During the 1924–1935 period, solar activity was low, but the stadium-wave was on the warming portion of its cycle, resulting in the early 20th century warming. During the 1945–1976 period, solar activity was high, but the stadium-wave was set on cooling, and cooling resulted due to high MT.”
There was a slight decline in the solar wind temperature 1976-1995, but a much faster decline from 1995, from when the AMO warmed strongly. 1890–1924 starts in a warm AMO phase, the AMO cooling from the very early 1900’s would be due to stronger solar wind states and not lower sunspot numbers. The lower sunspot numbers of solar cycle 20 often gets associated with the colder AMO, but the mid 1970’s had the strongest solar wind states since 1964.
Solar plasma temperature and pressure:
https://snipboard.io/98bEAF.jpg
“Since the amount of energy entering the climate system on an annual basis is nearly constant, the warm phase in the AMO or PDO reflects a slowdown in MT causing an energy “jam.” More energy resides at that time in those elements, perhaps due to a reduced ocean-atmosphere flux caused by a predominantly zonal wind pattern in the mid-latitudes.”
Negative NAO (meridional circulation pattern) transports more warm moist air to the Arctic, and the negative NAO drives a warmer AMO, which is an increase in poleward ocean heat transport.
> The modern theory of climate change understands
Theories do not understand.
So let me get this straight – all this to posit that it is possible to create energy by transporting it?
“So let me get this straight – all this to posit that it is possible to create energy by transporting it?”
You’ll have to make those neurons work harder.
It is possible to speed up or slow down the passage of energy through the climate system by changes in the transport. As a result the planet warms or cools.
*Yes* would have been shorter, Javier.
Here is what I thought was is a climate driver:
‘
https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/glossary/
Without being connected to a grid, your CD transport will not play music. And nowadays it does not even come with a DAC.
According to that definition, changes in meridional transport constitute a (neglected) driver of climate change, as shown in figure 4.7.
https://i0.wp.com/judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Fig-4.7-1.png
The net flux at the TOA is altered.
Speaking of neglect, Javier, that was not a definition of climate driver but of radiative forcing, climate scientists know about the MT since a long while (e.g. Masuda 1998, whom I do not believe you cite), and the quote you just served me does not come from this page, which means your summary lacks an important piece.
If your wordology does not cohere with the IPCC’s, then so much the worse for your wordology.
Willard,
You keep to the words, and I’ll keep to the science. To each one, what each one does best.
Javier,
You would do better science if you did not reinvent the wheel to call it the rotation on an axis hypothesis.
Cheers.
“So let me get this straight – all this to posit that it is possible to create energy by transporting it?”
Explicitly identify the specific aspects of the analyses given in all the VI parts that require creation of energy.
Failure to provide these aspects negates the question.
Check the cartoon, Dan.
You are welcome.
Umm, no. Next question, please?
Javier & Andy … fantastic job! Be patient with the storms coming your way. And, enjoy them as they are an indication of your success.
‘This study examines changes in Earth’s energy budget during and after the global warming “pause” (or “hiatus”) using observations from the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System. We find a marked 0.83 ± 0.41 Wm−2 reduction in global mean reflected shortwave (SW) top-of-atmosphere (TOA) flux during the three years following the hiatus that results in an increase in net energy into the climate system. A partial radiative perturbation analysis reveals that decreases in low cloud cover are the primary driver of the decrease in SW TOA flux. The regional distribution of the SW TOA flux changes associated with the decreases in low cloud cover closely matches that of sea-surface temperature warming, which shows a pattern typical of the positive phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Large reductions in clear-sky SW TOA flux are also found over much of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans in the northern hemisphere. These are associated with a reduction in aerosol optical depth consistent with stricter pollution controls in China and North America. A simple energy budget framework is used to show that TOA radiation (particularly in the SW) likely played a dominant role in driving the marked increase in temperature tendency during the post-hiatus period.’ https://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/3/62
There are a few confounding factors – but much global energy variability comes from a sea surface temperature/ marine boundary layer stratocumulus feedback in the eastern Pacific.
Handwaving at meridional transport doesn’t cut the mustard.
Javier, this is the most comprehensive picture of sorting and fitting of all the pieces to the puzzle I have seen. I have a few questions.
1) Have you attempted to compare the radiative dynamics of your model to Argo data of OHC dynamics? For example, on years where your model shows there should be high total OLR and albedo is there a relational drop in OHC?
2) What approximate correlation in your model is the GMST related to the OLR in rough terms?
3) What approximate percentage of the energy budget is accounted for by negative feedback caused by increased cloud formation in response to tropical ocean heating?
4) Seeing that OLR is related to T(4) at the TOA does your model show more OLR at the poles than the tropics or just more in relation to incoming SW radiation? It is hard to imagine the TOA at the poles being anywhere near as warm as the tropics, though I realize the TOA is about twice as high in the tropics.
Ron, I haven’t entered into actual calculations. There is no drop in OHC. According to Dewitte et al. 2019, the time derivative of OHC stopped increasing and started decreasing at the time OLR increased, as figure 4.5h shows.
https://i0.wp.com/judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Fig-4.5.png
I consider the problem of estimating relative contributions to the observed warming unsolvable by current science, as enthalpy does not have a tag of origin. The fact that MT changes can stop global warming on its track indicates it is a first order factor, and probably more important than changes in GHG content.
OLR is obviously lower at the poles. The thing is that OLR increased quite abruptely during the Arctic shift years, while surface temperature has been increasing more progresively. It cannot be assumed that OLR is a direct function of surface temperature, particularly in the Arctic, where due to temperature inversions OLR is actually lower from the surface quite often.
The simple fact that the Earth has been cooling for the last 10,000 years makes it impossible for a scientific skeptic to believe global warming does not exist. That America is responsible for global warming is nothing more than political lunacy that works for the Left- AGW is political science not natural science.
Javier/Andy … I have a very important question that’s supremely relevant to this whole inquiry.
Why didn’t you label who the blind characters are in Figure 6.7?
How about we have a contest to guess who they are? The winner gets a signed copy of your book.
I’ll say at the start, I think this series is wonderful, and a lot of what you say I agree with completely! And given the length, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to gloss over parts where they’re standard, or covered elsewhere.
But because of that, there are a number of statements in there that I didn’t think were obvious, and would benefit from more discussion.
—
“The Earth’s infrared emission depends on the absolute temperature scale, and on this scale the planet’s surface temperatures occupy a narrow range.”
The infrared emission depends on the absolute temperature *raised to the fourth power*, so the range of emission is proportionately wider than the range of temperatures.
Raising absolute temperature from (arbitrarily) 273 K to 283 K, the black body radiation goes up from 315 W/m^2 to 364 W/m^2. 10/273 = 3.7% increase in temperature. 49/315 = 15% increase in emissions. I’m not persuaded that this can be neglected.
And infrared radiation to space doen’t all occur from the surface. The average is something like 5 km up, where the temperature is a lot lower.
—
“The radiative properties of different regions of the planet cannot be the same if their GHG content is different. It follows that transporting energy from a higher GHG-content region to a lower one increases outgoing radiation efficiency, and therefore, changes in transport must alter the global energy flux budget at the TOA and, as a result, cause climate change.”
I don’t understand how that follows. The radiative properties being *different* doesn’t say anything about which way the effect goes. I’m not clear on what you mean by “radiation efficiency”. And I don’t see how it follows that it must change the global energy flux at the TOA. (It probably does, but it doesn’t follow from what has been said here.)
One simplified viewpoint is that GHGs raise the average altitude of IR emission to space. The energy radiated depends on the temperature at the emission altitude; the temperature at the surface is related to that by the moist adiabatic lapse rate. The energy radiated is also determined by the net heat flow in/out of the region. The temperature reaches equilibrium when the energy radiated equals the energy flowing in. When GHGs are increased, the initial effect is that radiation occurs from a higher, cooler part of the atmosphere and radiation falls. The upper atmosphere warms until it is once again radiating as much as before. So at the new equilibrium, you get exactly the same amount of radiation to space for a given amount of heat transported in from outside. The equilibrium temperature at the emission altitude is also the same, only the temperature at the surface is higher, due to the lapse rate. So has the “efficiency” changed?
I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying it hasn’t been explained, and isn’t obvious.
—
“According to the modern theory of climate change the increase in GHGs results in the same IR emission to space taking place from a higher, colder altitude, requiring surface warming to maintain the energy balance. The Earth must emit the same energy it receives, not more, unless it is cooling. Under this model inter-annual OLR from the TOA should not change unless there is a change in incoming solar energy or in albedo.”
There is certainly a simplified model used in textbooks for explaining the greenhouse effect where horizontal transport is ignored, and global/annual averages are used. But I don’t think it is asserted or required that horizontal transport has no effect.
—
“Albedo has been very constant since we have been able to measure it with sufficient precision, with an inter-annual variability of 0.2 Wm–2 (0.2 %; Stephens et al. 2015), and solar energy, termed the solar constant, varies by only 0.1 % (Lean 2017). Yet, OLR inter-annual changes are ten times higher than GHG radiative forcing changes. What is worse, the inter-annual changes in OLR are neither global, nor follow temperature changes (Fig. 6.3b).”
I always thought these ‘TOA forcing’ numbers (if that’s what they are?) weren’t referring to the actual net energy imbalance, but some related concept; like the imbalance prior to the atmosphere’s readjustment back to the equilibrium. To get the net energy imbalance, you had to do something like multiply the forcing by the readjustment time. I’ve never been very clear on exactly what they were, though.
Suppose we have a net 1 W/m^2 heat input into some patch of ocean. That’s about 31 MJ/year. Water has a specific heat capacity of 4.2 kJ/kg.K, so that’s enough to heat 1000 kg of water (1 metre depth) by 31E6/4.2E3*1E3 = 7.5 K per year. If we say the top 10 metres of the ocean are warmed uniformly, that’s still 0.75 K/year or 75 K/century. Is that realistic? After 10 or 20 years of that, I think people would notice!
The actual energy imbalance associated with global warming is tiny, and I believe unmeasurable. The massive differences in heat flow day to day and month to month are easily measurable, and cause correspondingly massive diurnal and seasonal changes in temperature – the sea can warm or cool 5-10 C in a matter of months, and the land can easily vary more than 5 C from day to night. The rate-per-century is a huge number! The observed long-term warming of something on the order of 1-2 C/century has got to be from heat flows several orders of magnitude smaller, surely?
Many thanks.
Thank you for a very good comment NiV,
“The infrared emission depends on the absolute temperature *raised to the fourth power*, so the range of emission is proportionately wider than the range of temperatures.”
Yes. My point is that OLR does not vary nearly as much as SWR. The average net surface emission changes with latitude between c. 80-40 W/m^2, and the emission goes on day and night. Surface average net absorbed SWR goes in January from c. 200 W/m^2 at the equator to zero c. 65-70ºN, and it only takes place during the day. That’s figure 10.9 in my book. So we have a planet were energy enters very unequally distributed, but exits a lot more equally distributed. If transport is not passive, but actively regulated then it is likely to be the most important climate determinant.
“I don’t understand how that follows. The radiative properties being *different* doesn’t say anything about which way the effect goes.”
Let’s imagine two twin planets receiving the same energy from the Sun. One with a lot of GHGs in its atmosphere, the other with very little. The first is a lot warmer despite both having the same emission, because a lot more energy resides inside its climate system. Now we connect the planets so energy (but not GHGs) can freely move, obviously (net) from the warm planet to the cool one. What should initially happen? The cooler planet has no way to retain that extra energy, so the joint emission should initially increase and the average temperature of the binary system should decrease.
“But I don’t think it is asserted or required that horizontal transport has no effect.”
If it is considered that it does have an effect, then why does it not appear in any of the IPCC figures? If it is considered a forcing it must be included into natural variability, and we know the IPCC considers that natural variability has a zero effect on the observed warming. The IPCC does not have to say that transport has no effect, it is enough that it considers so.
“The actual energy imbalance associated with global warming is tiny, and I believe unmeasurable.”
Correct again, the small imbalance is deducible from the warming observation. It is assumed that it is due to the increase in GHGs (mainly CO2) and their feedbacks. By definition the radiative forcing is the change in the energy balance. Energy in is only solar minus albedo. Energy out is only OLR. Solar is very constant. Albedo is more debatable but also appears very constant. If the energy balance model is correct OLR should be also very constant and change only due to the GHG and aerosols radiative forcings, which are the only ones found significant by the IPCC. The evidence shows this model incorrect, as large changes in OLR are found that can account for the transition from the high warming 1980s-90s period to the lower warming 2000s pause.
“Yes. My point is that OLR does not vary nearly as much as SWR.”
Thanks. That clarifies it perfectly.
—
“Let’s imagine two twin planets receiving the same energy from the Sun. One with a lot of GHGs in its atmosphere, the other with very little. The first is a lot warmer despite both having the same emission, because a lot more energy resides inside its climate system.”
OK. Let’s say they both receive 232 W/m^2 and so the surface emitting to space equilibrates at 253 K or -20 C. Planet A has lots of GHGs so emits from a surface at 5 km altitude, with a lapse rate of 6.5 C/km, its surface is at an average 285.5 K or 12.5 C. Planet B has no GHGs, emits from the surface, which is at -20 C. The average temperature is (285.5+253)/2 = 269.25 K = -3.75 C.
“Now we connect the planets so energy (but not GHGs) can freely move, obviously (net) from the warm planet to the cool one. What should initially happen? The cooler planet has no way to retain that extra energy, so the joint emission should initially increase and the average temperature of the binary system should decrease.”
To keep it simple, suppose the heat conduction is at surface level and instantaneous, so the surface temperatures are constrained to be identical. (Not realistic, obviously. Heat transport faces resistance, and is generally at altitude.) Planet A cools and Planet B warms. The question is, which effect is greater?
sigma (T_toaA^4 + T_surfB^4)/2 = 232 W/m^2
T_surfA – T_toaA = 5*6.5 K
T_surfA = T_surfB
T_toaA drops to 235 K, T_surfA drops to 267.5 K or -5.5 C, which is the same as the surface of Planet B. Planet A cools 18 C, Planet B warms 14.5 C, the average temperature of the binary system decreases 1.75 C.
Radiation to space has dropped on Planet A to 173 W/m^2, and risen on Planet B to 290 W/m^2. Most of the heat (63%) is emitted from where the GHGs are not present. The total energy emitted to space (bar rounding errors), and thus “the global energy flux budget” is unchanged.
Do you see what I mean? Confirming the direction of the effect requires a bit of maths, and invokes the mechanisms of both the greenhouse effect and the non-linearity of the Stefan-Boltzman law. It’s not obvious. (At least, not to me.)
With the extra detail, some more questions become apparent. First thing I noticed was that the effect on global mean temperature looks surprisingly small, considering we’re taking an extreme case of half the planet having no GHGs at all! And with the extra detail we can start to worry about the assumptions that the transport acts at surface level rather than throughout the lower tropophere, that there is no thermal resistance, that the level of GHGs (especially water vapour) is unchanged by massive changes in temperature, that clouds/albedo are unchanged, that the altitude of emission to space and the moist adiabatic lapse rate remain unchanged. How do these affect the answer?
—
“If it is considered that it does have an effect, then why does it not appear in any of the IPCC figures?”
The IPCC have an irritating tendency to not explain how their models and theories actually work. We’ve had this argument in the past. The classic example is the mechanism of the greenhouse effect itself. There is this explanation circulating everywhere, including from the IPCC, about “back radiation” from GHGs in the atmophere emitting IR downwards and warming the surface. They do, but that’s not how the greenhouse effect actually works, it’s not how the climate models model it, and climate science has known this since the 1960s. (At least as far back as Manabe and Strickler 1964.) It was annoying because everyone wasted a huge amount of time debating “back radiation” when it had nothing to do with how the models really worked, and no impact on the validity of the projections.
They build all sorts of stuff into the climate models, and then treat them as black boxes with a bunch of levers to pull. Change the forcings (pull the lever) and observe the effect. It may well be implementing complex horizontal heat transport effects internally, and these might change and shift around in complicated ways because of the forcing, but they don’t particularly want to discuss that. So just because it’s not in the IPCC reports doesn’t mean they don’t consider it. They’re just not open about it.
In IPCC terms, the incoming solar ultraviolet is the forcing, here. You ought to be able to change the solar ultraviolet lever on the GCMs and have them implement the changes in circulation you describe to determine the resulting climate sensitivity. The fact that they don’t just means the GCMs are incomplete/inaccurate. But it doesn’t mean they’re not considering effects of horizontal heat transport at all. It just means they’re doing it wrongly, and not discussing it.
—
“The evidence shows this model incorrect, as large changes in OLR are found that can account for the transition from the high warming 1980s-90s period to the lower warming 2000s pause.”
Yes, but my issue is with the *size* of the numbers you show, which seems far too *big*. Stored heat (and thus, roughly, temperature) is the result of *integrating* the net heat flow over time. If you integrate a global 1 W/m^2 heat flow over 10 years, the oceans would warm about 10 C. (Most of the Earth’s heat capacity is in the oceans, which cover only 2/3rds of the planet, so it’s a bit bigger than that 7.5 C.) It would be very noticeable! We wouldn’t be having this debate if global warming was that obvious. And your plot is showing values of double that size! So I suspect the numbers are being misinterpreted somehow, or you have missed out part of your argument connecting these numbers to temperatures, or else I’ve misunderstood something completely.
When climate scientists talk about TOA forcing, they seem to assume a fixed sensitivity of surface temperature to forcing. Something like a constant 14 W/m^2 flux imbalance equals a constant 1 C temperature increase (I don’t remember the correct figure). Given that temperature is the *integral* of heat flux, this makes no sense. I can only make sense of it if this heat flux is part of a balance, and the increase in both directions changes the temperature at which the new equilibrium settles. Something else must be changing to cancel most of it out.
If that’s the case, then your conclusion still works. Although we have to be careful with assigning causation in cases like this. Changes to OLR might be driving temperatures, or changes to temperatures might be driving OLR.
—
I need to think some more about this! I’ll look forward to seeing your new paper when it comes out. Many thanks.
Ok NiV, now imagine planet B has no insolation for six months of the year, during which obviously it continues emitting OLR. As it becomes colder it draws even more energy from planet A, yet the Sun cannot compensate for that loss, because the energy arriving to planet A is the same.
The key to the changes in planet A is the amount of energy being transfered from planet A to B. Low transfer and planet A warms, high transfer and planet A cools. Since planet A is the only one inhabited their population freaks out every time the temperature changes are important. And since their only way to predict the future is by extrapolating the present they freak out even more as the cyclical nature of the changes escapes them given the cycle periods are longer than their lives and memories.
A few years ago it took me some time to figure out how the GHE works, as most explanations are actually false. I hope I got it right in the book. IPCC does not explain how the theory actually works, but models have reconstructed climate evolution since 1850 and declared that changes in MT have not contributed to the observed warming. I have this same discussion in the comments and was shown an article were the authors believed changes in the transport distribution between the atmosphere and the ocean could be exaggerated to the point of causing climate change. But that is very different from accepting that it may have played a role in modern warming, which the IPCC clearly does not.
Half of CMIP5 GCMs didn’t have any kind of stratosphere, and even today the stratosphere is extremely poorly done by models. They struggle with the troposphere, and the stratosphere is much larger. Some things can be seen in the models and a lot more in reanalysis, but it is still a pale shadow of what it is really happening.
“Yes, but my issue is with the *size* of the numbers you show, which seems far too *big*. Stored heat (and thus, roughly, temperature) is the result of *integrating* the net heat flow over time.”
As a result of transport changes, OLR is not changing over the entire surface of the planet. The 30-90ºN region shown in figure 6.3 is 25% of the planet, and the part showing the biggest change, 70-90ºN is much less. The global change in OLR is clearly a fraction of a W/m^2, and we cannot discount that more heat is coming out of the ocean. In fact that is what the theory predicts, as increased transport comes with increased wind speed and increased evaporation. The data on wind speed and evaporation confirms this. See for example:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/20/21/2007jcli1714.1.xml
that was brought to my attention today by Andy May. The trends in wind speed and evaporation are the trends in MT.
“Changes to OLR might be driving temperatures, or changes to temperatures might be driving OLR.”
Of course, causality is always a problem in climate studies. However the directionality of the solar effect on the Earth’s speed of rotation, and therefore the changes in zonal circulation cannot be doubted.
Javier, the key novelty in your hypothesis seems to be less with meridional currents and their fluctuation, which has been acknowledged by climate science in ENSO, PDO and AMO, and more with the claim that the poles, particularly the northern one, radiate OLR more efficiently in relation to surface temperature. In other words the temperature at TOA at the pole is more sensitive to MT than the temperature down at the surface at the pole.
NIV’s point, which I agree with, is that all else being equal an increase in transfer of energy from the equatorial TOA to the colder polar TOA comes at cost of raising the total Earth average TOA temperature since undistributed heat emits much more efficiently and dissipated heat. In a T^4 relationship the higher the differential between two temperatures the higher the average OLR for a given average T.
So my view before reading your article is that the CO2 enhanced greenhouse effect is amplified at the poles, being they had the lowest amount of GHG (being devoid of water vapor) as compared to the vapor rich tropics. Also, the poles are in cooling mode more often than the tropics. And since the EGHE impedes cooling it would have an amplified effect on the poles. The mystery to me has not been why the arctic has warmed several times as much as the tropics, it’s why the Antarctic has not.
Javier, your model may be able to explain the dichotomy of behavior of the two poles in regards to surface temperature anomaly as well as the global warming and cooling prior to fossil fuel burning. The key in my mind is for your hypothesis to show a fluctuating dynamic in the relationship between surface temperature and TOA temperature, and the difference in model between the OLR and temperature at the surface (tos and tas) for each, the tropics, the north pole and south.
Refining to the central questions: Is the TOA and surface temperature locked in its offset? Or, does it fluctuate in time and location? If the later do the models need to be reprogramed?
“It is a common assumption that the sum of multidecadal variability effects over time trends to zero. Studies on the change in the AMO amplitude over the past six centuries (Moore et al. 2017) show this assumption is ill-conceived.”
The Argo data on OHC (2005-present) could be used to determine whether the variability is internal fluctuations in OHC or in OLR. If one could prove the 65-year oscillation is not internal that would put storm in modern climate science. Diddo if your model can reproduce the glacial cycle and explain events since the last glacial maximum, like the polar see-saw, Younger Dryas, HO and neoglacial. You guys would deserve a Nobel Prize. They might even have to ask some others to return theirs.
Yes, better data in the amount of energy residing in the different parts of the climate system at different times is key to solving the climate question.
Science is very resiliant to change. As Alexander von Humboldt said referring to the discovery of the (then called) ice ages:
“There are three stages of scientific discovery: first people deny it is true; then they deny it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.”
> Science is very resiliant to change. As Alexander von Humboldt said referring to the discovery of the (then called) ice ages:
“There are three stages of scientific discovery: first people deny it is true; then they deny it is important; finally they credit the wrong person.”
Reverse engineering based on that axiom is rather sub-optimal, ergo: The moon is made of green cheese.
‘The global-mean temperature trends associated with GSW are as large as 0.3 °C per 40 years, and so are capable of doubling, nullifying or even reversing the forced global warming trends on that timescale.’ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-018-0044-6
GSW is the global stadium wave. The result uses models compared to reanalysis product. The latter being ground truthed computer models. interesting to see how it evolves in reanalysis product. And note that these natural variations have been investigated for a century as part of Earth science – with more recent efforts to incorporate them into models. Having run hydrodynamic models for decades – I am an old dog.
e.g. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL086705https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL086705
Interesting as well that models can reproduce TOA power flux when forced with observed sea ice and sea surface temperature. I’ll quote the abstract in case Javier can’t be bothered clicking on it because it’s models.
‘We compare top-of-atmosphere (TOA) radiative fluxes observed by the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES) and simulated by seven general circulation models forced with observed sea-surface temperature (SST) and sea-ice boundary conditions. In response to increased SSTs along the equator and over the eastern Pacific (EP) following the so-called global warming “hiatus” of the early 21st century, simulated TOA flux changes are remarkably similar to CERES. Both show outgoing shortwave and longwave TOA flux changes that largely cancel over the west and central tropical Pacific, and large reductions in shortwave flux for EP low-cloud regions. A model’s ability to represent changes in the relationship between global mean net TOA flux and surface temperature depends upon how well it represents shortwave flux changes in low-cloud regions, with most showing too little sensitivity to EP SST changes, suggesting a “pattern effect” that may be too weak compared to observations.’ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL086705
We have as well a good oceanic handle on recent energy imbalances at TOA.
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/2013/2020/essd-12-2013-2020-f08-thumb.png
https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/12/2013/2020/
And on recent atmospheric warming – the most relevant period for which there is much better data. Please tell me there is an inflection point around 1998/2001 – and not just interannual ENSO related cloud feedback variations.
https://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html
VTG is correct – in such a hyper complex – indeed spatiotemporal chaotic – system unless you are talking state of the art Earth system data you are talking nonsense.
Not sure how the link to these very interesting climate scientists got messed up. Sorry.
https://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/jhurrell/docs/hurrell.modeling_approach.bams10.pdf
The north of the planet is warming more strongly than the south. Energy emerges from oceans and dissipates in storminess blown every which way. Statistical drift poleward is entropy in action.
https://images.remss.com/msu/msu_data_monthly.html?type=trend&channel=2
Robert I Ellison: in such a hyper complex – indeed spatiotemporal chaotic – system unless you are talking state of the art Earth system data you are talking nonsense.
Javier: Yes, better data in the amount of energy residing in the different parts of the climate system at different times is key to solving the climate question.
By all means, literally, continue to assemble and incorporate the best data possible.
Data from many sources assimilated into a near real-time model for weather and climate forecasting at seasonal and sub-decadal scales. Contemporary sources have finer detail and a broader coverage than was possible earlier.
The most comprehensive work on climate science – thank’s a lot for this!
Regarding the “low gradient paradox”: wouldn’t your hypothesis require that MT is stronger during the ice ages, while poles where frozen. How can this be compatible?
Isn’t the solution to the paradox, that with stronger MT the tropical thunderstorms form less frequently / travel further poleward and therefore more energy is kept inside the system / more solar energy is absorbed by reduced tropical cloud cover?
“wouldn’t your hypothesis require that MT is stronger during the ice ages, while poles where frozen. How can this be compatible?”
When glacial inception takes place, transport towards the poles increases, bringing more moisture there that is locked as ice, and increasing the amount of energy lost through radiative cooling at the poles. As the planet cools the latitudinal temperature gradient steepens increasing the transport.
Regarding mid-latitude storms, a part of science knows that cold periods display increased storminess, while the rest of science ignores that knowledge. Evidence supports that storminess is decreasing with warming as it should, but the occasional storm is used to raise climate alarm.
Stronger MT means more moisture transport, more clouds and more storms. My hypothesis is that a stronger MT increases energy loss at the poles and cools the planet. I have some evidence for that and some support from bibliography. Whether I am correct or not will be determined by others, but a very good sign is that my hypothesis has a lot of explaining power for many aspects of climate and doesn’t require fudge factors.
“ Whether I am correct or not will be determined by others, but a very good sign is that my hypothesis has a lot of explaining power for many aspects of climate and doesn’t require fudge factors.”
I don’t know if you are correct, either. But you have advanced the ball, and given much to think about. That is what science is supposed to be.
I contrast that view with those with their head in the sand, thinking only what they have been told to think and believing an infinitely complex subject can be reduced to simple arithmetic.
That anyone can believe climate science can be reduced to a few equations just boggles the mind.
“When glacial inception takes place, transport towards the poles increases, bringing more moisture there that is locked as ice, and increasing the amount of energy lost through radiative cooling at the poles.”
Javier, I would say the this paleoclimate theory aspect is the most novel contribution by you and Andy. Meridional transport otherwise simply fluctuates the rate of diffusion of energy along the Earth’s temperature gradient. It’s not a driver, just an oscillating response. Yet when combined with the positive feedback cycle of NH albedo change, the fluctuations are like strokes of a pump — they are memorialized in the ice, which then do their own pumping of SWR energy.
Under this same mechanism an asteroid strike or massive volcanic eruption would even more rapidly affect irreversible cooling. Do you think that such events were the past triggers to interglacial terminations? If so, would it not meet the precautionary principle to have a little warming reserve rather than being back in the Little Ice Age, teetering on the edge?
In this view then our technology should be looking to solve polar ice melt by a controlled means of temporarily increasing albedo rather than permanently increasing OLR by CO2 capture (and reducing crop yields.)
“Do you think that such events were the past triggers to interglacial terminations?”
Milankovitch theory, properly understood (Huybers 2006), together with the multiple-state climate model of Didier Paillard (1998), can explain very well all glacial and interglacial periods of the past 800,000 years. No need for catastrophic events.
“our technology should be looking to solve polar ice melt by a controlled means of temporarily increasing albedo”
I wouldn’t mess with something so big as climate, that we don’t properly understand.
Carbon capture is expending money on a negative return. Not very wise. But, who said humans as a species are wise?
“I wouldn’t mess with something so big as climate, that we don’t properly understand.”
Who is the “we”? I see great progress. And I don’t always wait for perfect understanding before considering actions, though do require a lot more than Leonardo DiCaprio or Taylor Swift.
Humanity would have a problem with sea level rise and tropical cyclones whether or not humanity is exacerbating them.
M-cycles “…can explain very well all glacial and interglacial periods of the past 800,000 years. No need for catastrophic events.”
M-cycles are gradual; transitions are abrupt (not go off topic).
I agree Ron – glacials are caused by ice runaway sheet feedbacks. And that isn’t catastrophic? Eh!
We are geoengineering on a vast scale with little understanding of consequences. We can’t stop but we can make tremendous and positive progress.
“Who is the “we”?”
Naked apes.
“Humanity would have a problem with sea level rise and tropical cyclones whether or not humanity is exacerbating them.”
Climate predictions are hazardous, especially about the future. Tropical cyclones are not exacerbating. See Ryan Maue ACE graphs.
Sooner or later the warming will end, as it always happens. The warmer it is, the more difficult it becomes to warm further.
“M-cycles are gradual; transitions are abrupt”
It depends what you consider abrupt. Deglaciations take about 5,000 years, glaciations about 15,000 years. My watch doesn’t consider that abrupt. D-O events are quite abrupt (decades), but they are a particularity with strict requirements, not a general case. Chapter 3 in my book deals with them.
hm. When there is more ice in the polar region how can that increase the energy loss? That seems contradicting to me.
“Stronger MT means more moisture transport, more clouds and more storms.”
not in the tropics. When more energy is transported away from the tropical convection zones, it is less likely to produce thunderstorms.
Surely you are familiar with Willis Eschenbach’s “Tropical Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis”.
Another counter-intuitive result he described in his article “Drying the Sky” is that increased tropical convection reduces moisture transport and clouds elsewhere (as it increases the convection and produces more rainfall locally)
It seems to me that changing MT is the key to climate variability, but it is more complex then just increased transport to the poles.
It is the stronger transport that increases the energy loss, but the ice growth contributes as it increases surface albedo.
The tropics don’t change their temperature very much. A lot of information shows tropical temperatures vary very little despite big changes to the planet’s temperature. See:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christopher-Scotese/publication/275277369/figure/fig6/AS:614234891231243@1523456418674/Pole—to—Pole-Temperature-Gradients-for-Hothouse-Greenhouse-and-Icehouse-Worlds.png
“Surely you are familiar with Willis Eschenbach’s “Tropical Thunderstorm Thermostat Hypothesis”.
I am. There are quite a few emergent phenomena that act as negative feedback to the planet changing its temperature and partly explain thermal homeostasis. However, they don’t explain climate change.
“it is more complex then just increased transport to the poles.”
Maybe, or maybe not. The planet has in both poles two gigantic cooling radiators. As with any heat engine, directing heat to radiators keeps the engine cooler.
I am not sure about “It is the stronger transport that increases the energy loss”. If the transport is linear (I have no idea if this is the case or not), then the T^4 factor of heat loss from the planet would actually be less under a more uniform temperature than one where there is no transport. I suspect that the transport is not linear as that would be consistent with your statement that “The tropics don’t change their temperature very much”. However, do you know how the transport takes place mathematically?
“do you know how the transport takes place mathematically?”
Nobody does. Models cannot reproduce meridional transport, because no scientist can define it mathematically and reproduce how it takes place.
“As with any heat engine, directing heat to radiators keeps the engine cooler.”
Agreed. But the tropical convection zones are the radiators. See this graph from Willis Eschenbach: https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Correlation-Temperature-surf-absorb-720×639.png
Any additional energy that goes into the blue areas only increases convection and leads to cooling by evaporation, cloud formation, all the way up to thunderstorms. Directing heat away from those blue areas towards the read areas would warm the system.
“But the tropical convection zones are the radiators. See this graph from Willis Eschenbach:”
No they aren’t. That’s a mechanism to limit surface warming by directing heat to the atmosphere. The transfer is due to deep convection, a phenomenon well studied since the 1960s that Willis thinks he has discovered because he doesn’t read scientific literature.
“Directing heat away from those blue areas towards the read areas would warm the system.”
Obviously not. That’s energy redistribution by increasing transport, mainly through the Hadley cells. The system only changes its total energy at the TOA. Increasing transport increases OLR outside the deep tropics, so directing heat away from those blue areas cools the system.
“Increasing transport increases OLR outside the deep tropics, so directing heat away from those blue areas cools the system.”
I think this needs some more investigation.
It comes down to the question in which region an increase in heat energy results in the most increase in overall TOA imbalance/energy loss to space.
To me it seems plausible that the main radiators are the tropical convection zones, in particular the areas of highest ocean surface heat, around 30°C. Any further increase in energy would escalate in evaporation up to thunderstorms. This warms the (upper) atmosphere, yes, but also shadows the sunlight and increases both, short wave and long wave loss to space. It probably cools far more efficient than directing the energy to the poles (or anywhere else).
This seems also supported by the LTG of Hothouse versus Icehouse. The more energy is directed away from the tropical convection zones, the warmer the rest of the planet (while the tropical convection zones keep their temperature constant), and vice versa.
It can’t be. There is a known inverse relationship between temperature and OLR at the tropics, past certain temperature. This can be seen in the data in figure 6.3a above. For the months of July and August, when the Earth is warmest, 30ºS-N OLR actually decreases slightly (dotted curve), when it should increase to keep the temperature-OLR relationship.
The tropics are the heat source that keeps the engine warm even during glacial periods. They do not refrigerate the Earth. Whoever thinks they do, like Willis, is wrong.
Javier, I would suggest that you highlight early and often that your theory centers on OLR variance outside the tropics, in contrast to the common image of the global OLR acting evenly.
From my understanding your concept is that since the tropics have a thicker atmosphere and more constant incoming radiation profile the OLR there is both impeded and dampened. But outside the tropics the atmosphere lower and thinner and the temperature variances much greater, and thus act as governors of OLR. IOW, changes in MT affect the tropical temp at the surface but not so much at the TOA. Whereas MT affects the extra-tropical (ET) temp both at the surface and the TOA and thus affecting global OLR. Also, the ET surface is warmed less than at the TOA because much of the MT is in the form of latent heat which gets released in the atmosphere, nearer the TOA, as sensible heat during precipitation. Do I have in right in a nutshell?
I suppose your proof would be in showing that all the bumps in the energy imbalance are associated with poor MT and troughs with increased MT.
Here is a plot of the last 20 years from the European Space Agency using CERES, ARGO and GRACE.
https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr/fileadmin/images/data/Products/indic/OHC_EEI/v3.0_eei_global_aviso_3y.png
Done, Ron. That was easy.
https://i.imgur.com/1kKta8m.png
The Earth Energy imbalance follows Arctic winter temperature.
How can that be explained? Well, Arctic winter temperature depends enterely on transport as no energy is received from the Sun. This demonstrates, as we said in figure 4.5h,
https://i0.wp.com/judithcurry.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Fig-4.5.png
that the Earth Energy imbalance depends mainly on meridional transport, and therefore partially on solar activity.
Why is the graph you pointed inverted to the graph of Dewitte et al. 2019? I have no idea. Somebody is making a mistake. Evidence supports the mistake is from the European Space Agency, as it is difficult to reconcile an increasingly positive energy imbalance with the Pause.
In any case the correlation between meridional transport and the energy budget of the planet is clear, as we have defended.
“…30ºS-N OLR actually decreases slightly (dotted curve), when it should increase to keep the temperature-OLR relationship.”
In the tropical convection zone that’s clear, as clouds form and move upwards, getting colder, resulting in less OLR locally. However the heat is transferred meridionally over the Hadley cells. Which warms the upper troposphere. And increases OLR.
“The tropics are the heat source that keeps the engine warm even during glacial periods. They do not refrigerate the Earth.”
Yes, it keeps it warm, if the heat is distributed over the surface. But not so much if the heat is kept locally and lost by convection (and finally radiation).
I think there is a straight forward solution to this.
Increased meridional air mass transport increases the tropical convection. As the converging trade winds concentrate the warm surface waters, help the evaporation/convection, and narrow it to a thin band.
The warm air masses converge in the tropical convections zone and convects vertically away from the surface.
The air mass is then transported meridionally within the Hadley Cell at the upper troposphere. But loses most of its heat by radiation to space before it sinks back to the surface.
That means, the more mass is transferred meridionally, the less heat is transferred meridionally (i.e., towards the poles).
The whole series is so long winded, hubristic and devoid of any clear hypothesis let alone quantification it’s impossible to take remotely seriously.
But let’s take what *seems* to be the central claim; that climate is driven by a “stadium wave” linked to MT all of which is linked to the sun in some mysterious way (Javier, if this isn’t the claim, by all means give a clear, simple explanation of whatever your claim actually is).
The “stadium wave” was introduced here in 2013:
“The stadium wave signal predicts that the current pause in global warming could extend into the 2030s,” Wyatt said, the paper’s lead author.
Curry added, “This prediction is in contrast to the recently released IPCC AR5 Report that projects an imminent resumption of the warming, likely to be in the range of a 0.3 to 0.7 degree Celsius rise in global mean surface temperature from 2016 to 2035.” Curry is the chair of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
That seems to make a testable assertion – that there was a hiatus in warming between 1998-2013 (1998 is the standard start for this, see AR5) and that it would continue until 2030.
Well, here’s the data:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/
No, no sign of a hiatus in the trend at all, let alone one continuing to the 2030s.
Trend from 1998 to today from the smoothed GISS data… 0.2 degrees/ decade.
As far as this series of well tossed word salads makes any testable predictions at all, they seem to been already well on the way to being proved false, if not already the case.
For being somebody keen on mathematical analysis you are doing a very poor job with the temperature analysis.
https://i.imgur.com/vqBSLC0.png
This is a figure from Schlesinger & Ramankutty 1994 Nature paper figure 1. Over it I have overlaid in red the 15-yr centered moving average rate of warming. It shows as physics demands that the changes in the rate of warming precede the changes in temperature, as the temperature becomes constant when the rate of warming becomes zero.
But we have a problem. As figure 12.11 in my book shows, the 15-yr rate of warming has been decreasing since about 1995 (1987.5 to 2002.5), while the rate of CO2 change has not decreased.
https://i.imgur.com/nfOHzZ9.png
The slowing down of the warming rate, despite the 2015-6 El Niño, explains the first part of the Pause (1998-2014), and the second part of the Pause (2016-ongoing). Only warming in 21st century took place in 2015-2016.
This slowing down in the 15-yr rate of warming shown in figure 12.11 is unexplainable by the CO2 hypothesis, but it can be explained by the Winter Gatekeeper hypothesis through the 1997 shift in meridional transport.
Moreover, the changes in meridional transport also explain the Early Twentieth Century Warming, that the CO2 hypothesis can’t.
The only hypothesis falsified by evidence is the CO2 hypothesis. Too much warming took place before CO2 increased in earnest, and too little warming is taking place in the 21st century.
> The only hypothesis falsified by evidence is the CO2 hypothesis.
IIRC, Judith once said that no one in the room listens (or a close facsimile thereof) to someone who makes a statement such as that.
I guess she’s chanced her mind?
Waffle followed by a dubious curve for to a superceded data set.
Your central hypothesis (as far as one can be ascertained in the ramblings) is already false.
Can you state what your hypothesis actually is, simply?
“Can you state what your hypothesis actually is, simply?”
As simple as a simple graph.
https://i.imgur.com/IFn7PPL.png
You cannot hide your hypothesis behind a graph, Javier.
You are supposed to be a man of science.
(Notwithstanding the last sentence of your piece and some jabs here and there.)
State it.
Also, how you interpret ROC (a standard technical indicator) is suspect, as what is above 0 has momentum. Which means you are stuck in your old misconception of what Da Paws means:
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2019/02/17/only-connect/
The best way to cook an egg is at lower heat.
Hello Willard …
> as what is above 0 has momentum
Just from common sense (heaven forbid), then why can’t:
– what is below 0 has momentum
– what passes in either direction through zero has momentum
– what reaches equilibrium at any value has no momentum
Just curious …
“You are supposed to be a man of science.”
I’ve written a peer-reviewed academic book about it. Read it.
Good question, Bill.
A rate of change can indeed go under zero, i.e. negative momentum. If you are into short selling, that’s your entry signal. If you bought the stock based on trendology, you should be out of the trade before that happens.
I did not consider that case for it’s been a while since it applied to global temperatures:
https://showyourstripes.info/s/globe
As you can see, the stripes get from blue to red. Contrarians can try as many statistical shenanigans to egg their pudding (ask yourself why Javier uses a 15-year instead of a 20-year window) that it won’t change that fact.
In any event, it’s important not to fight the underlying trend. It is everyone’s friend, including those who buy on pullbacks. Fighting against it is like climbing up a mountain and pretending you’re into a descent because your GPS tells you that your last step was a bit down.
(H/T Very Tall for that last one.)
“Pay me and I will.”
With such mercenary interest in science, why should I explain anything to you for free?
“Why lie? It just makes you seem ridiculous.”
You are the only one making a fool of himself here, as usual.
> With such mercenary interest in science, why should I explain anything to you for free?
Wait, Javier.
Are you saying that your book is open source?
Be careful, Willard. The trend is everyone’s friend till it’s over. I’m not a short seller, by any means. It’s not in my DNA. And if it’s also not in yours, apparently, so we need to be careful with the cognitive dissonance that will certainly come our way. :-)
As to Javier, specifically, I think you’re being a bit ungracious, which is your right. Your claims of graph parameters, or hiding behind them, doesn’t critique his thesis, which even I rudimentally understand. He, and Andy, have put forth an interesting hypothesis built on available knowledge in the literature. Are there a few bricks in their wall that could use a bit more mortar? No doubt about it. But I wouldn’t short him just yet.
“Are you saying that your book is open source?”
My book is CC BY-NC 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Anybody that wants to read it will be able to do so. Scientific progress is a human endeavor and the knowledge it produces should be shared.
Great!
You could drop your book on b-ok.cc and be done with it.
Better would be a real science notebook, e.g.:
https://jupyter.org/
“you are stuck in your old misconception of what Da Paws means”
The pause is very noticeable in the data, marked in the below figure with a red circle:
https://i.imgur.com/nfOHzZ9.png
It is not an “ad hoc” definition. There is no interpretation of where it starts or ends. It is only a misconception for those who want to disparage the evidence.
Bill,
A thesis would indeed be a good idea. Verbose armwaving does not make one. Javier is not the first to appeal to natural variability. He will not be the last.
Back in my days, being a climate driver meant something different than shuffling energy around within a system. If I read a title and can spot the trick right from the start, there is no need to go further. Same for the previous episode, when the confusion around the notion of acceleration was clear as day.
So in the end it is not a matter of being gracious, but a matter of economy.
Cheers.
The pause from 1997 to 2012 was real and a great cause of concern to Willard.
His analogy on trends would be a lot better if he looked at actual baselines instead of noise.
Despite this he and others continue to blather and ignore an important phenomenon which nearly derailed the warmist theories.
Fact.
All trend changes start from the present and extend back.
A pause, a rise, a fall as a change can only be detected in the data by working backwards from the data we currently have.
For a pause or change to be significant the significance rests in how long it goes for how much correct data we have.
Sadly that is very limited in terms of years for satellites and thermometers.
We currently have a new pause occurring in connection with a common triple La Nina.
How far would it go with a common quintuple La Nina?
If we are lucky we may find out in the next 3 years.
Would this be worthy of writing off as an aberration of coldness caused by global warming?
Would Global warming be ascribed to a small 50 year period of multiple El Nino’s?
Silly questions, really on patterns and trends that occur naturally over hundred year periods.
angech commented:
The pause from 1997 to 2012 was real
It was simply an artifact of a very large El Nino in 1997-98 and a predominance of La Ninas (cp El Ninos) after.
Global warming, i.e. radiative forcing, due to anthropogenic GHGs certainly did not stop during that time, nor stop increasing.
NOAA’s graph shows how easily one can “eyeball” a flat period from 1997-2012. It’s not interesting if you’re interested in the decadal picture of global warming.
https://www.climate.gov/media/12885
What Paws, Doc? A Paws in what?
You always forget that bit.
Javier,
It appears, almost without doubt, that transport of energy/latent heat to the poles, particularly the North Pole in it’s winter, is the way the planet cools. And it looks (to me) that the sun definitely plays a role in climate change.
But what evidence do you have for the solar effect on MT? Is there any data that shows a correlation between solar cycles/activity and a change to the MT? Because, if there is conclusive evidence of this, the Winter Gatekeeper Hypothesis must be the biggest advance in climate science for hundreds of years. (Perhaps I missed this when reading through all the pages that you have written, and if so, I apologize.)
There is quite a lot of evidence. The most crucial one is the effect of solar activity on the speed of rotation of the Earth, whose changes are linked to changes in the angular momentum of the atmosphere due to changes in zonal circulation (see Part II).
Equally important is that solar activity does not correlate with surface temperature, as most people look for and is used as an argument against a solar effect. Solar activity anti-correlates to Arctic winter temperature. This anti-correlation is not just a coincidence from this latest years from 1979 since we have good data on that. The anti-correlation has been shown for the past 1600 years using proxies and ice-cores in the following article:
Kobashi, T., Box, J.E., Vinther, B.M., Goto‐Azuma, K., Blunier, T., White, J.W.C., Nakaegawa, T. and Andresen, C.S., 2015. Modern solar maximum forced late twentieth century Greenland cooling. Geophysical Research Letters, 42(14), pp.5992-5999.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2015GL064764
There is a host of other evidence, like the correlation between solar activity and polar vortex strength and its relation with the QBO, or the correlation of solar activity with the NAO, stormtracks, and blocking conditions over the North Atlantic.
The hypothesis is well supported by dozens, perhaps hundreds of papers involving the solar effect on climate that are systematically ignored by the IPCC.
Thanks for the link to the pdf, Javier.
I’m a simpleton in these matters, and have slogged my way through all six chapters trying to build a basic, simplified, understanding of what Javier is saying.
In chapters 7 & 8 of “Doubt and uncertainty in climate change” Alan Longhurst describes physical cycles and processes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and in parts relates (e.g.) early 20th century warning and cooling to meriodonal (?) movements in certain fish stocks, moving north or south as appropriate as sea temperatures rise and fall, all carefully documented at the time by the authorities of Icelandic and other fishing nations.
The cycles and changes described by Alan do not fit comfortably, so far as I understand, with the “Standard Models” of climate change, but do seem to me to be a convincing demonstration of real world effects of Meriodonal Transportation and Marcia Wyatt’s Stadium Wave as described by Javier.
An amazing series of articles, Javier. Thank you very much, and good luck.
Manabe wrote that global warming would lead to reduced merdional transport ( by mass ).
If global average sensible and latent heat per unit air mass increases, less mass must be exchange to resolve the polar deficit.
The result, he modeled, would be reduced kinetic energy and reduced temperature variability.
https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/sm8002.pdf
“Manabe wrote that global warming would lead to reduced merdional transport”
And he got it backwards. Reduced meridional transport would lead (has led) to global warming.
I guess that is my main contribution, to invert that equation. Besides solving the solar riddle if I am correct.
Javier’s hypothesis was falsified before he started work on it. Somehow I can’t see him on a Nobel Prize shortlist.
https://judithcurry.com/2022/09/04/the-sun-climate-effect-the-winter-gatekeeper-hypothesis-vi-meridional-transport-as-the-main-climate-change-driver/#comment-979624
“If they were true, he would be able to reference the publication and its peer review process. He cannot.”
The peer-reviews are included in the book. Buy it, and you will be able to read them. Judith knows that, so she doesn’t like you publicly insulting me on false grounds.
As I said, you are the only one making a fool of himself, as usual.
“What was the peer review process Javier”
So you can go from your book is not peer-reviewed to I don’t like your book peer-review?
Stop being a jerk.
You’re trying to redefine “peer review” to “read by a friend”.
You won’t say what the peer review process was, because there wasn’t one that meets any normal understanding of the words.
What exactly was the “peer review” prices for your book, Javier?. Why so coy?
“You’re trying to redefine “peer review” to “read by a friend”.”
I told you to stop being a jerk, but clearly you can’t.
I did not previously know personally, nor corresponded with, any of the reviewers. To this date one of them remains anonymous to me and his review was not particularly kind. The ones that chose to make their names public express their scientific opinion freely. That you believe no scientist should think my book is worthy of publication speaks volumes of your distorted view of the peer-review process.
You are as wrong in your climate beliefs as with respect to the peer-review of my book. Eat crow!
Should read “process” not “prices”. No implication of pecuniary irregularities intended.
Javier Vinós & Andy May, thank you again for this series of essays. If I may be permitted to recommend more work: assemble them into a single document, and add an appendix that includes and addresses what you think are the best critiques. See if you can get an academic publisher like Springer to publish it as a (slim) stand-alone volume; or get a highly-ranked review journal to publish it. If it gets rejected, you can post it someplace along with the reviewers’ comments, and your responses to those comments.
If worse comes to worst, you can share it with the technical staffs of some Senators and Representatives.
Dang it, I have to get more intense and involved with your papers. Your stuff is EXCELLENT but just very difficult for me to read (which is my fault, not yours). I greatly admire your honesty. I know I don’t have to say this, but please, please keep your papers coming. I will get more dedicated to your information.
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Javier Vinós & Andy May write:
Modern climate science has allowed itself to be contaminated by activism without protest. Activist climate scientists are doing a great disservice to science by abandoning Popper’s goal of objective knowledge and allowing themselves to get emotionally involved with their subject and married to a chosen result. The history of science is not kind to scientists that allow themselves to become misguided servants of social or political goals.
So you want the science you’ve presented here to be taken seriously, but some other scientists are “married to a chosen result.” That is, they didn’t arrive at that result via scientific methodology, they chose it for “social or political goals.” About the worst insult you can make to any scientist.
Here you are doing the very thing you just complained about – dismissing an idea (global warming via greenhouse gases), not because you’re shown the science to be wrong, but simply because you’ve chosen to dismiss it. To reject science developed by a large group of dedicated scientists over more than a century and that has been accepted by every national academy of sciences in the world.
If you expect to be respected in science, you have to give respect. Writing paragraphs like this will get you immediately dismissed and ignored by the scientific community. This shows why you deserve that.
David, irrespective of respect, truth will out. Whatever it turns out to be.
JoeF: truth has outed. Science determines facts. Global warming from the buildup of atmospheric CO2 is a fact.
For science to advance, the consensus must be wrong now.
“If you expect to be respected in science, you have to give respect.”
I care not about respect or people’s feelings. I care only about science being truthful. If I am wrong, I expect to be ignored. If I am right, I expect to be attacked, but as Joe says, truth will out.
Javier wrote:
For science to advance, the consensus must be wrong now.
What??
Would you say this about any other consensus science? Newton’s three laws? The laws of thermodynamics? Planck’s law? Special relativity? Quantum electrodynamics?
You don’t know what you are talking about.
Mr Appell writes “So you want the science you’ve presented here to be taken seriously, but some other scientists are “married to a chosen result.” That is, they didn’t arrive at that result via scientific methodology, they chose it for “social or political goals.” About the worst insult you can make to any scientist.”
It would only be an insult if it were untrue but we know there are numbers on ‘your’ side of the fence who have been caught telling porky pies to suit their agenda and very publicly so. How insulting is that to other scientists or the population as a whole or does it only count when sceptics break the rules, whatever you claim them to be?
Here is a repeat of my comment of Sept 4th above:
Norman J Page | September 4, 2022 at 5:07 pm | Reply
Javier many thanks for your great compilation ,however ,in section 5 you say
” The negative correlation between long-term solar activity and Arctic winter temperature is clear (Fig. 5.5).
The correlation as shown in your Fig 5.5 is simply wrong a – Figment of your imagination . Because of the thermal inertia of the oceans there is a 12/13 year delay between the solar activity driver changes and the correlative temperature change- see Fig.2 and the quotations from my Blog
http://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/820570527003668244/3260744859689736991
“Short term deviations from the Millennial trends are driven by ENSO events and volcanic activity.
“Fig 2 The correlation of the last 5 Oulu neutron cycles and trends with the Hadsst3 temperature trends and the 300 mb Specific Humidity. (28,29)
The Oulu Cosmic Ray count shows the decrease in solar activity since the 1991/92 Millennial Solar Activity Turning Point and peak There is a significant secular drop to a lower solar activity base level post 2007+/- and a new solar activity minimum late in 2009.The MSATP at 1991/2 correlates with the MTTP at 2003/4 with a 12/13 +/- year delay. In Figure 2(5) short term temperature spikes are colored orange and are closely correlated to El Ninos. The hadsst3gl temperature anomaly at 2037 is forecast to be + 0.05. ”
Your are right in identifying the MTTP at 2003/4 and the controlling basic MT concept.
I would suggest that readers would find that reading the entire Blog post would be useful before. replying. Best Regards Norman
Norman J Page | September 2, 2022 at 4:33 pm | Reply
norpag1@gmail.com ”
As of the UAH August 2022 data There has been no net NH warming for the last 18 years. – 2003/12 – 2022/8
“The correlation as shown in your Fig 5.5 is simply wrong a – Figment of your imagination”
Kobashi, T., Box, J.E., Vinther, B.M., Goto‐Azuma, K., Blunier, T., White, J.W.C., Nakaegawa, T. and Andresen, C.S., 2015. Modern solar maximum forced late twentieth century Greenland cooling. Geophysical Research Letters, 42(14), pp.5992-5999.
They are some of the best experts on Greenland climate and they agree with me, not with you. The correlation is correct for the past 2100 years.
Your hypothesis is wrong, Norman. Don’t worry. You are not alone. Most hypotheses are wrong, including IPCC’s.
! agree that there is a lag between solar “activity” as measured by the Oulu cosmic ray neutron count and global temperatures. You seem to ignore this in your correlations. It would advance our discussion if you would comment on the 12/13 year delay between solar activity /temperature correlations shown and discussed in Fig 2 at https://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/
See also Figs 5 and 6 (scroll down a long way)
As a side note it looks like we are at a millennial sea level peak/ in Jan 2022 – the delay here is 30 years from the solar activity peak at 1991/2
If you introduce a lag in the solar effect on climate you have to explain how it happens, because the effect of solar radiation is near instantaneous. And then you have to show evidence for the explanation. A correlation means little without evidence for a causal effect.
Have you even looked at the Fig.2.? The Fig illustrates the correlation i.e the explanation. It is exactly as you yourself say. Solar Energy from the intra-tropical conversion zone is transported to the Arctic by atmospheric and ocean currents . All I am doing is estimating and showing the lag in the process. For temperature it is 12/13 years – obviously not instantaneous..
Understanding climate is very simple and obvious except to the current climate “consensus” politically correct academic scientists, the BBC,MSM etc who make their living by claiming it is complicated. When solar activity is high it is warmer and wetter. Crops and civilization flourish see The Roman and Mediaeval and Modern warm periods. When solar activity is low we get the Dark ages and the Little ice age.
These trends are often obscured by short term fluctuations caused by ENSO events and volcanic activity and variations in space caused by the distribution of mountains and river basins.
You and I are very close to being on the same page. Regards.
Global warming is a slow orbitally forced process.
Global warming is slowing and is reaching now its culmination point.
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This will continue for about a millennium, and then a slow gradual Global cooling process will occur.
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https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Science is preferably quantified.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-07/climate-forcing-figure2-2016.png
So we have some warming from greenhouse gas emissions in a system characterised by abrupt changes in state as a result of internal feedbacks. How do you all miss that?
This is not eyeballing graphs and calling it correlation. It is core data on climate dynamics.
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/ceres-sw-e1653253951861.png
https://watertechbyrie.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/ceres-lw-e1653253878464.png
‘Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) is a relatively small (presently ∼0.3%) difference between global mean solar radiation absorbed and thermal infrared radiation emitted to space. EEI is set by natural and anthropogenic climate forcings and the climate system’s response to those forcings. It is also influenced by internal variations within the climate system. Most of EEI warms the ocean; the remainder heats the land, melts ice, and warms the atmosphere. We show that independent satellite and in situ observations each yield statistically indistinguishable decadal increases in EEI from mid-2005 to mid-2019 of 0.50 ± 0.47 W m^2/decade (5%–95% confidence interval). This trend is primarily due to an increase in absorbed solar radiation associated with decreased reflection by clouds and sea-ice and a decrease in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) due to increases in trace gases and water vapor. These changes combined exceed a positive trend in OLR due to increasing global mean temperatures.’ https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021GL093047
“So we have some warming from greenhouse gas emissions in a system characterised by abrupt changes in state as a result of internal feedbacks. How do you all miss that?”
I don’t miss any of that. You miss external and internal natural forcing by changes in meridional transport, changes in solar activity and by changes in the luni-solar gravitational pull. It is you who has a more limited (and wrong) view of climate change.
They are just words Javier. Throw them around and you may fool others.
Javier, the key to selling your hypothesis (or any climate one) is highlighting where the data better matches your physics than the conventional view. The variation in meridional transport is not in itself counter to the accepted model. It’s that MT’s variation has profound effect on the efficiency of dissipation of outgoing longwave radiation.
Your key evidence would be to show that contrary to the common view, the Earth’s energy imbalance is less correlated with global mean surface temperature than it is to MT.
If you can get the best EEI charts and the best reanalysis on MT and show a 95% confidence of this I will start a petition to the Nobel committee. Do you agree Robert?
‘This trend is primarily due to an increase in absorbed solar radiation associated with decreased reflection by clouds and sea-ice and a decrease in outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) due to increases in trace gases and water vapor.’ op. cit.
The first thing is to understand what the most modern data is telling us. The extra energy in from a decrease in albedo was larger than the decrease in OLR. Hence global warming. Then you follow the clues. The existence of climate tipping points – or climate shifts to use a less triggering term – is a big one.
Earth’s atmosphere is very thin to have any measurable greenhouse warming effect on the surface temperature.
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https://www.cristos-vournas.com
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-07/climate-forcing-figure2-2016.png
Robert, what you mention has an infinitesimal influence on Earth’s surface temperature.
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Global warming is a slow orbitally forced process.
Global warming is slowing and is reaching now its culmination point.
–
This will continue for about a millennium, and then a slow gradual Global cooling process will occur.
–
https://www.cristos-vournas.com
Your words fool no one Christos.
Are you, Robert, familiar with what Gary Novak says:
https://nov79.com/gbwm/sbc.html#top
No but it did make me laugh.
Christos Vournas wrote:
Global warming is a slow orbitally forced process.
An ignorant statement.
Please calculate the change in radiative forcing from orbital processes, and tell us what it is, and its expected rate of warming.
I doubt you can do even this basic piece of science to support your claim.
About ocean heat transport – here’s an interesting new paper on image analysis methodology for assessing over large spatial scales (I.e. entire ocean basins) ocean currents. This is an improvement on “current” methods:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33031-3
Interesting what this methodology will show up in terms of ocean heat movement.
Interesting Fig. 5. Very little kinetic energy above 45ºN latitude.
I guess north of 45N oceans are land bounded and get shallower. But earth gets smaller with latitude also so enough warm Gulf Stream transport to warm the Arctic and all Europe.
Down south it’s a different story (same figure 5) – massive kinetic energy in the Southern ocean circumpolar current, accounting for most of the global oceanic kinetic energy.
If we were to consider most other objects in the same orbit of the moon.
Lets take a meter round metal sphere or a rock.
Then it is obvious that the surface temperature of said object would be warmer by 6.9% more energy in December solstice [temperature would be warmer but by a lot less than a 6.9% change due to the SB law] and coldest in June.
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Javier, yourself and others equate that to the land mass being larger.
Try as he may the fact is,
“It is like two workers receiving different salaries. The one receiving the bigger salary is the one having more money.”
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The unanswered question is still why when the earth is receiving more energy the measured surface temperature is lower?
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Looking at it logically If the earth was all water we would not be having this problem and the earth surface temperature would be warmer in December and colder in June.
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Temperature is a measure of the energy being emitted to space by any object.
Instead of space you could put in, or to a thermometer.
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A thermometer can only measure what uninterrupted energy it receives, in space or on the ground.
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Therefore are the thermometers on land reading a true level of energy from the sun, surface and atmosphere dynamic which is adding to and overcoming the sun , ocean surface and atmosphere dynamic when combined?
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The land surface is 68% in the northern hemisphere 32% in the south.
Conversely the ocean areas are 5/9ths of the North and 7/9ths in the South.
Somehow it seems more important to me to consider the energy distribution effects on larger amount of the surface rather than the smaller [just saying].
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Why would a surface change in the amount of water to land cause such a vast disparity in the temperatures at the opposite times of the year.
Without a mechanism one would have to say that our definition of what a surface is, particularly of the earth with 2/3 water, is where the problem lies.
Remember.
If the earth was all water we would not be having this problem and the earth surface temperature would be warmer in December and colder in June.
0
Reply
angech
October 25, 2022 11:28 pm
Initial thoughts are that the oceans have the highest GHG concentrations over them hence the layers of IR back radiation are much closer to each other over the oceans.
This means that the atmosphere over the oceans is capable of having more IR passing through it per second than the atmosphere over land.
This means that IR from the side with more water is spread more horizontally as it goes out and thus heats up more of the rest of the worlds atmosphere while not going up in temperature as much itself [SB].
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Problem solved.
I hope Javier likes it.
It is the opposite of that world spinning faster spreads the energy coming in resulting
in a slightly higher surface temperature than the stationary world.
In this case the larger volume of water in the south leads to a lower average surface temperature than the smaller volume in the north.
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Only initial thoughts mind you.
angech:
“Temperature is a measure of the energy being emitted to space by any object.”
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Please look at Moon – Mars mean surface temperature (Tmean) comparison.
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For Moon Tmean = 220K
Moon’s Albedo a = 0,11
For Mars Tmean = 210K
Mars’ Albedo a = 0,25
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It can be shown for the same Albedo, Moon and Mars would have had the same mean surface temperature (Tmean).
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Moon is 1 AU (Astronomical Unit) away from sun.
Mars is 1,53 AU away from sun.
When applying the distance square inverse law, Mars receives 2,32 times less solar energy than Moon does.
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Moon and Mars have the same Tmean temperature. Mars receives and emits 2,32 times less energy to space than Moon.
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https://www.cristos-vournas.com