[asa] Re: Secular Albedo changes.

The pictures referred to below are:

1. The graph of sea surface temperatures. http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2007/dec/glob-jan-dec-pg.gif
2. The heat graph is http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TippingPointsNear_20080623.pdf
, slide 15.

It was not my intent to ridicule Glenn. I apologize for that. As for
taking him out of context I will content myself with letting the
readers see by looking at the graphs above. See for yourself if the
first graph proves ocean cooling or not or whether the second one
proves warming. Much of what Glenn has been providing me is evidence
why he distrusts land temperature measurements and I did mention that
below. Notice I did not anywhere make any judgments on that argument
because without the graphics the argument cannot fairly be assessed. I
did not imply anything about any of his arguments nor should anything
be inferred. The focus of the post was on the narrow point of whether
the ocean is currently cooling or warming and whether *I* had made the
point adequately or was instead being evasive. In both cases the
source of the graphics was me. I presented the first graphic which
Glenn countered showed ocean cooling. I responded with the second.

On Jun 25, 2008, at 8:03 PM, Glenn Morton wrote:

> I am so bloody mad at you Rich because by posting only one of my
> posts without any of the pictures in the many emails I have sent
> y’all you are stilting the argument and chosing to SELECTIVELY post
> my information. This is unfair, this is a violation of Netiquette,
> This was a private email conversation between us 4 not a public thing.
>
> Secondly one can’t post pictures on the ASA. If you feel gratified
> by trying to hold someone who isn’t there up for ridicule then you
> are not much of a person. As I said, you disgust me with this. It
> is unfair, you didn’t ask my opinion, and as of now, I am through
> ever discussing anything with you. You are untrustworthy.
>
> From: Rich Blinne [mailto:rich.blinne@gmail.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 8:13 AM
> To: Glenn Morton; Randy Isaac
> Cc: Jack; David Campbell; asa
> Subject: Re: Secular Albedo changes.
>
>
> On Jun 24, 2008, at 7:45 PM, Glenn Morton wrote:
>
>
>
> Now, I will answer your question. You say the ocean cooling is pure
> bs. Maybe. But you foisted off a chart that showed oceanic cooling
> and now when called upon it you go article shopping to find one that
> supports your view. This is from the very latest Nature, and I was
> reading that issue but hadn’t yet gotten to that article. Your
> procedure is what I did when I was a YEC. I try not to do it
> anymore. You thought that picture of land and oceanic
> temperatures, put out by NASA, was good enough to show that I was
> wrong, but what it shows is that you didn’t even look closely at the
> data you were resting your argument upon.
>
> Let’s look at your data. It seems you are confusing heat content
> with temperature. The two are not the same thing at all. And this is
> another case of grabbing anything at had, even if it is irrelevant
> to my claim that the oceanic temperatures are cooling. The first
> picture is NOT of oceanic surface temperature, but of heat content.
> Since the ocean bottom waters have a temperature of 4 deg C or so,
> warming them even a tiny bit would increase the heat content of the
> oceans significantly. So, answer the question, why do the NASA
> TEMPERATURES show that the oceans are cooling? Remember heat content
> of the oceans isn’t the same as surface temperature.
>
>
>
> I am throwing this one back on the ASA list because the point above
> betrays a very common misunderstanding about climate and allows for
> important pedagogical points that would be of general benefit to the
> list. First some context for the list. For a wide variety of reasons
> Glenn distrusts the land temperature measurements so we were
> discussing sea surface temperatures instead. During the Winter of
> 2007 and Spring of 2008 we had a La Niña. We are now ENSO neutral.
> ENSO fluctuations produce short-term fluctuations on both the
> average global temperatures but even more so sea surface temperature
> because ENSO is defined by temperature anomalies in the Pacific near
> South America. Because of this Glenn saw a slight dip in the NASA
> SST during that period. It didn't matter that over the decadal time
> frame we had a solid rising trend in temperatures. We had cooling
> oceans because of a 6 month dip.
>
> Which brings us to the Nature article in which I was allegedly
> playing a YEC. Randy, the graph I pointed you to from Hansen's
> presentation used data from this paper.
>
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7198/abs/nature07080.html
>
> Changes in the climate system's energy budget are predominantly
> revealed in ocean temperatures1, 2 and the associated thermal
> expansion contribution to sea-level rise2. Climate models, however,
> do not reproduce the large decadal variability in globally averaged
> ocean heat content inferred from the sparse observational database3,
> 4, even when volcanic and other variable climate forcings are
> included. The sum of the observed contributions has also not
> adequately explained the overall multi-decadal rise2. Here we report
> improved estimates of near-global ocean heat content and thermal
> expansion for the upper 300 m and 700 m of the ocean for 1950–2003,
> using statistical techniques that allow for sparse data coverage5,
> 6, 7 and applying recent corrections8 to reduce systematic biases in
> the most common ocean temperature observations9. Our ocean warming
> and thermal expansion trends for 1961–2003 are about 50 per cent
> larger than earlier estimates but about 40 per cent smaller for 1993–
> 2003, which is consistent with the recognition that previously
> estimated rates for the 1990s had a positive bias as a result of
> instrumental errors8, 9,10. On average, the decadal variability of
> the climate models with volcanic forcing now agrees approximately
> with the observations, but the modelled multi-decadal trends are
> smaller than observed. We add our observational estimate of upper-
> ocean thermal expansion to other contributions to sea-level rise and
> find that the sum of contributions from 1961 to 2003 is about 1.5
> <image001.png> 0.4 mm yr-1, in good agreement with our updated
> estimate of near-global mean sea-level rise (using techniques
> established in earlier studies6,7) of 1.6 <image001.png> 0.2 mm yr-1.
>
> Glenn got it exactly right that this paper dealt with heat content
> rather than temperature. What Glenn gets wrong -- like many if not
> most climate skeptics -- with respect to climate is presuming that
> temperature is more important than heat, local is more important
> than global, and short term fluctuations are more important than
> long term trends. This error had him refer to the wrong data (the
> SST temperatures of the last few months rather than the heat of the
> last few decades) when asking the question are the oceans warming or
> cooling.
>
> A common refrain is we cannot trust the climate models because we
> cannot predict the weather accurately. Climate models solve a
> different problem and have different challenges. The challenge of
> weather modeling is getting the initial condition right while for
> climate modeling it's getting the energy balance (or budget)
> correct. In fact, what's done is to have an ensemble of Monte Carlo
> initial conditions and compare the results. The spread of the
> predicted temperatures also gives us a gauge on how accurate our
> results are. Climate models actually get more accurate with time
> and is why decadal rather than monthly time scales are important.
> What is the most important factors to get right is the so-called
> forcings measured in W/m^2. CO2 is largest of the positive forcings
> while solar irradiance has a small positive forcing and aerosols has
> a small (and decreasing) negative forcing. The best analogy to a
> forcing is heat and why the authors of the Nature paper associated
> heat, not temperature, with ocean warming trends. When a furnace
> warms a house it is measured in the heat and not the temperature.
> When you say the earth or the oceans are warming or cooling it is
> the same question, what is the heat balance. Otherwise, you are
> measuring weather instead of climate.
>
> Glenn hypothesizes a heat source from below in the ocean. If he
> wants to show this he needs to show that this models the heat in the
> ocean down to 700 m, three year mean, is better than GISS E-R
> (Hansen et al, Science, 2005). But I don't see any of that coming
> from any of the climate skeptics. They throw up one hypothesis after
> another but they don't build a better computer model and show how it
> is superior to the existing ones. They will say things about sun
> spots but they don't use the directly-measured solar irradiation or
> the magnetic field of the Sun but don't look at the directly-
> measured cosmic rays nor measured cloud cover. This is for good
> reason. Solar irradiation and GCR and cloud cover are either flat or
> cyclical and do not show a secular trend on the time scales of the
> current warming. On the other hand, CO2 has been up and to the right
> for as long as we have been measuring it.
>
> One of the weaknesses of the current modeling was the decadal
> variation of heat levels in ocean along with the sea level rise.
> Until now, the computer models simply didn't cut it. This was an
> opportunity for the skeptics to come in and improve the science.
> Like YEC and ID they just said it's wrong without providing better
> predictions. As usual, the poor old, maligned, mainstream climate
> scientists plugged away and improved -- in this case -- the
> observations and showed that the models were actually sound. They
> also showed that ocean warming and sea level rise were being
> severely underestimated. Early in the 21st Century similar bad
> satellite and radiosonde measurements were also improved by
> eliminating the "leakage" from the lower stratosphere into the mid
> troposphere. This showed the climate models were good at a wide
> variety of altitudes and provided an important piece of the forensic
> evidence that AGW was indeed real. To this day, Spencer and Christy
> still won't fix their bad data presumably because it disproves their
> now faulty thesis that the satellite data does not support the models.
>
> I hope this is helpful to people on the ASA list and why Randy I
> pointed out slide 15 of Hansen's presentation. It may not be the
> sexiest one of the bunch but from a scientific standpoint it is the
> most relevant as to how the science is continuing to improve. It is
> also further evidence on how mature climate science has become.
>
> Rich Blinne
> Member ASA

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Received on Wed Jun 25 23:13:23 2008