A 15-year research project has revealed that changes in wind patterns are contributing to rising sea temperatures in the Southern Ocean.
ABC News: ‘Research shows Southern Ocean wind currents weakening’
CSIRO Media release: ‘Antarctic route highlights new ocean-climate links’
Thanks to Luke for alerting me to this story.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Hhmmmnn. So we have a 15 year data set from which conclusions are being drawn about global and southern hemisphere warming. The only problem is that for at least the past ten of those 15 years both the globe and the southern hemisphere has been cooling down.
Could it be that they are simply recording the contribution of the 1998 El Nino peak as it resonates into the thermohaline circulation? Indeed, given the cooling since that event it would seem that this is all it could be.
And surely, they wouldn’t seriously be trying to suggest that the transect from Hobart to the French station is a suitable proxy for all the variations in wind intensity and thermocline in the entire southern ocean, would they?
Actually they are just telling you just what they’ve found which is most interesting.
You should listen to the Podcast which is somewhat more comprehensive and informative. Very good data set and a very valid transect.
http://www.csiro.au/files/files/pisg.mp3
However, there’s enough happening in the Southern Hemisphere to make a case of interest in things anthropogenic. But whether we’re looking at decadal cycles or a very interesting greenhouse x stratospheric ozone depletion interaction is the actual science problem.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/296/5569/825?ck=nck
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;296/5569/895?ck=nck
and major a recent conference on Southern Annular Mode (SAM) workshop just last year
http://web.archive.org/web/20070219035455/http://www.amos.org.au/conf2007/AMOS07_ABSTRACTS.pdf SAM part starts at page 147
Southern hemisphere circulation is a somewhat neglected area that needs much more work IMO.
15 Years?
This is half a climate cycle, and thus data to be ignored until the rest of the data representing the cycle (I’m tempted to say bi-cycle) are to hand.
Well strangely Louis you’re prepared to say the world is cooling on much less a period and entering a new climate regime – any chance you might be having a bet each way? Yes of course you are. And BTW as you have often said the temperature data can’t be trusted so we also must not know whether we’re warming, cooling or steady?
Any hypocrisy ?
It may well be “interesting” science but for 56 of the past 69 years there has been no correlation between CO2 change and temperature change. That is no correlation over 81.16% of the records.
And given that even the unadjusted temperature change during the period 1979 to 1998 is still well within the historical range of variation, we are left with the breathtaking new “finding” that a cyclical temperature rise has fed into the thermocline and has a loose association with localised changes in wind speed and current.
The science is fine but they just couldn’t help themselves indulging in spin. C’est magnifique mais c’est ne pas nouvelles.
There is a lot of knots (kn / kt) viewing CSIRO’s “Australian Currents” – WMV 21.8 MB
For Ian –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg
Nice bit of colouring-in there Gavin. But the only way anyone can get a vaguely plausible correlation between temperature and CO2 over the past 69 years is to use longer and longer moving averages. My guess is that these guys have used a 30 year average. If you look at the related images section at the very bottom of your link you will see a five year average that confirms my point.
In the 40 years between 1939 and 1979 the temperature dipped and rose. So where is the commensurate dip and rise in CO2? Not there.
Is there even a plateau in CO2 levels that would correlate with the temperature plateau that appears with a medium term moving average? No.
And you have been advised on numerous occasions on this blog that cosmic radiation also combines with sunspot activity, especially in relation to cloud formation and albedo, to influence climate.
Thank you for providing this opportunity to mention this again.
Ian: Are you saying we are being knocked off by shock waves from some far distant supernova?
I can’t buy it when you argue against short term averages used in modern climate science on one hand then say cosmic rays are upping the anti with the other. Cosmic rays like solar radiation have been round since the solar system formed. Fluctuations in both are about as steady as it gets in this old universe. If we had a supernova up front we wouldn’t be worrying about CO2 or AGW.
Sure string theory is exciting stuff but meantime we are pumping carbon as never before.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080120182315.htm
http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/APR08/SessionIndex3/?SessionEventID=84307
No, Gavin, I’m, saying there are a lot more variables than sunspots and CO2, neither of which appear to tell the whole story. There is also the not inconsiderable influence of plain old dumb random variation within a broader range than we have seen over the past century.
Cosmic rays are roadkill. Debunked. And well illustrated Gavin.
And of course there is not a good correlation with CO2 and temperature in the longer term – that’s one of them thar threshold tests and a classic dee-nigh-alist ruse argument.
Once again Luke posts a label and a boorish teenage hillbilly jibe with no logical argument or facts to support his case.
The Climatozoa are exposed in the curious position of claiming every downward movement in the temperature record as a natural variation while claiming every upward movement as CO2 forcing. Nice work, provided you don’t run out of thick bozos to believe you.
Yep true … silly, childish and hillbilly …
“Come and listen to a story ’bout a man named Jed
Poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed
Then one day he was shooting for some food,
And up through the ground come a bubbling crude
(Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea)”….
Well at this point it would be tedious to say anything else. Surely you should be able to say by now “that arguments against are ….” and the answer to that is. But alas just more of the same propagandista lil’ homilies.
For heavens sake. Blind freddy can see an upward trend. The saints preserve us !
At risk of a bollocking Tamino has done a nice piece on the climate records.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/giss-ncdc-hadcru/#more-556
I don’t look at this blog for a few days and come back only to find that nothing has happened.
Luke is still throwing around his wild and baseless assertions, with nary any data to support them. He’s also prattling on about the newest “god of man-made global warming”, Tamino. Funny how that person is so juvenile as to not show his name.
But is Luke’s name really Luke? Does he have any qualifications in any science related to climatology? Or is he a just a public servant who works for some “greenhouse” office in a state of federal government who wants to keep waving the flag? Maybe he’s a member of Greenpeace.
Funny how little he tells us about himself and yet he wants us to be in awe of his comments. LOFL!
John is …. ? John’s right actually Luke:
people who live in greenhouses
shouldn’t smoke so many cones
The problem with Gavin’s linked graphics is that the vertical scale has had to be seriously manipulated to get anything like a long term correlation. The jump in CO2 is in the order of 25% (from 300ppm to 375) while the temperature series uses a similar spatial range to plot a change in temperature from 286.75 Kelvin to 287.55 K (0.28 of 1%).
We could express this as a change from 13.6C to 14.4C (5.88%) but this would be entirely arbitrary as it is only a reference to zero C, the freezing point of water. But it would still be much less arbitrary than this stupid anomaly graphic that we have had thrust upon us.
Oh lordy it’s the guy with no qualifications pretending to be someone again. “Australia’s greatest climate analyst”. “Dr” John.
And what do we actually know about John – was it a COBOL programmer who likes taking pictures. Wow !
Maybe John’s a card carrying Nazi too – maybe he likes small porcelain vases – who would know and do we care – nope.
Anyway your salient point to add to the debate John was what again?
“We could express this as a change from 13.6C to 14.4C (5.88%) but this would be entirely arbitrary as it is only a reference to zero C, the freezing point of water”
Ian has acknowledged a very practical framework that is most appropriate for any intelligent creature in understanding changes round the surface of Mother Earth.
From the ice point we get the margins, ice cover, sea level, pulses, tipping point and many other concepts to measure and model at atmospheric pressure. Zero C was something I used a lot in process control system calibration. Rates of change become important observations around anomalies of say 5.88% and whether we like it or not we are tied to these surface issues.
The next step is to range our models. Relatively recent sea levels max / min IMO are the best guide to what’s possible over much longer time scales than our modern instrument records
Wrong, Gavin. The normal range of variation in atmospheric temperature on Earth is roughly between -50C and +50C. So if we are to conduct a proper discussion of temperature anomalies then it must be done in a way that expresses any change in relation to the scale of the normal range.
It is fortunate that the total amplitude of temperature change is 100 degrees because that enables us to express the each whole degree of temperature change as a whole percentage point. That is, all the variation in global temperature over the past century or more has only amounted to 0.8 of 1% of the normal range.
When one plots the recent changes on a graph with 100 degrees of vertical range, the climate scare is placed in its proper perspective. One could also include the entire range of historical and paleoclimatic variations as additional points of reference to provide the viewer with a deeper and proportionate appreciation of the truth.
The current representation of temperature anomalies is a gross misrepresentation.
But so “misrepresented” that the trend is the same.
http://cce.890m.com/temp-compare.jpg
Yes !
And you can calculate your anomalies with a variety of baselines – but doesn’t change the key story. Comparing anomalies to the daily range just misses the entire point.
http://cce.890m.com/part06 (Needs sound & Quicktime player)
Short term atmospheric temp oscillations, night / day, summer / winter are not even in a faint way an indicator of long term global averages or trends and certainly not SST or ocean energy distributions.
Ian: Make a fuss about input / output > the ice / melt point re CO2 levels in all GCM’s
Look out for our first installment of the Garnaut Report
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,23250297-949,00.html
Gavin and Ian
You are both wrong. There are good physical reasons for the lower bound to be held at or near 0K so full range is from 0-~320K.
While the figures tend to blur due to quantum effects but at zero internal energy the temperature is at 0K not 0C or -50C. Any temperature sensitivity to changes in internal energy (and of course the radiation due to that temperature) expressed as a percentage of the ranges you try to specify is overstated.
zero internal energy ???
zero internal energy ???
My apology that’s zero point energy (nothing left to radiate) it’s still .5*h*nu. I did say it gets fuzzy down there due to quantum efects. Needles to say the classical projection is for Zero vibrational (internal) energy at absolute zero.
Jan: We are so different. Given Earth’s core was estimated to be 3677 C , 6650 F at 1000 miles deep recently also hot rock in the crust can be 870 C I fail to see why you are hung up on Zero K fuzzy or otherwise.
See the Oz geothermal map
http://www.ga.gov.au/ausgeonews/ausgeonews200709/geothermal.jsp
From here we go to the hydrosphere then the atmosphere where the notional black body stuff is also lost in the wash.
Jan: We are so different. Given Earth’s core was estimated to be 3677 C , 6650 F at 1000 miles deep recently also hot rock in the crust can be 870 C I fail to see why you are hung up on Zero K fuzzy or otherwise.
I’m not hung up on anything.
Impact is minor, so tell me gavin what do you think the ‘average’ surface temperature would be if you turn the sun off?
The temperature might be slightly above the 2.75K of space but not much. You can calculate it if you wish using fourier’s law, you’ve been telling us you’re the expert around here in thermodynamics, so let’s see some of it.
Use a thermal conductivity for the mantle of say 3 W/mK (it won’t be far off, if anything, a little generous).
“From here we go to the hydrosphere then the atmosphere where the notional black body stuff is also lost in the wash”
That is a message I’ve been trying to get across for a while now. I had thought that you at least would have noticed. Luke did it annoyed him no end.
Good site, Gavin. Given the location of most of the geothermal potential, it seems clear that its major contributive potential would actually be in raising the temperature of saline water to a point just below boiling so the economics of desalination are significantly improved. Most of the energy cost in desalination is from increasing the temperature. And running this pre-heated water through a solar system may then be an optimum mix of technologies.
Given the proximity of Adelaide to both sea water and geothermal energy, there is really no excuse for this city to be drawing any water from the Murray River. It has always been ecologically parasitic.
Ian,
Last I heard someone had accidently dropped some equipment down the borehole in the “Hot Rocks” exploration and that has stalled the project.
This hot granite does not rely strictly speaking on geothermal energy (from the core) but it’s hot due to radio-active decay in the granite. Hey that’s nuclear!!!
This is more the case in Australia.
“http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/renewable/recp/hotdryrock/one.html”
Jan: I agree hot earth radiates little by itself however we still need to focus on the oceans as the solar moderator.
Looking beyond doing some black body calcs again, the issue of thermal inertia in crusty earth had me start a range of fresh searches for likely surface averages. At a glance there is very little data on the www. A Canadian series on ground temp suggests a range of 15-22 C but it all depends on depth to reduce the day night variation. However in some circles ground temp is seen as constant for most purposes.
After looking up a few building industry and Ag sites I popped down a trench under the house with my trusty sling (no RT 100) and came up with 20.25 C and that’s 5 C below ambient. Somebody should remind me to go back under about August and repeat.
There should have been more on concrete ground slabs etc however I kept these links
http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/vro/vrosite.nsf/pages/climate-temperature
http://www.abc.net.au/science/slab/elnino/story.htm
Cheers
Gavin,
“However in some circles ground temp is seen as constant for most purposes.”
The mines around Bulli are a fairly constant 21C (I used to go down them to test air quality on occasion when the regular bloke was on holidays) and underground homes in Cooper Pedy 25C year round.
The difference could be due to different surface temperatures and depths. Need to look up bore hole data.
I agree oceans are a solar moderator and there is much work to be done there but I prefer to leave that to people who don’t turn a shade of green on a 100cm ripple. 🙁
Interesting links I’m planning a little work on the frosts issue (first link) measuring temperature at various heights under 2m perhaps under surface too. I’ve decided on AVR micro (it has a Wifi module available overseas) but am undecided on sensors or exact configurations as yet – I’m open to suggestion.
There was also some good work somewhere on the detection of past climate variation down through layers of earth. The implication also being that landmass, and seafloor, are also solar moderators, and of much greater mass than the total mass of oceans. So long term climate change would also have to change, an albeit variable, terrestrial thermocline and the depth at which it meets heat from the earths core. Will try to find the link.
Jan: It’s years since I had decent probes made , however I was wondering today about settling the bulbs in a pot of water deliberately half buried in the rubble at the bottom of my dark trench to speed up readings. Whatever way, I’m crouched down there with a torch, squinting at thermometer scales etched in glass while breathing all over them.
Now let me say I was a dab hand at remote sensing.
Regardless of transmission mediums, one of the big problems with all measurements is getting true sensor contact with your target. Some of the places I used platinum resistance elements made in Japan, hams in sealed smokehouses, truckloads of poppy stems and bins of mushroom compost also in sealed growing conditions. Unfortunately fork lift trucks always played havoc with our Teflon coated wires. Elsewhere in those days industry still used capillaries, 3-15 psi, 4-20 ma and telemetry via landline.
Data logging with batch sends in digital came a bit later. These days ANU or CSIRO probably has the Alps from Vic to the ACT plugged into someone’s mobile for their interrogation program to download masses of data.
Gavin,
Your project sounds uncomfortable to say the least. I hope it’s worthwhile.
I don’t think there will be many EE around that worked in control that doesn’t have experience in remote sensing at one stage some 4-20 mA current loop valve position sensors I designed were being exported to Japan.
There is a mildly interesting story attached. I am a registered nurse I through out the years worked casually to keep my hand in. Those sensors I had made in a sheltered workshop where I looked after the people (developmentally delayed) at night who stuffed my boards during the day. You can imagine the surprise of the supervisors when I walked in the workshop one day and half the workers got up to give me a hug.
I love fork lift trucks and their drivers they are responsible for more of my income than than any single group in the my customers labour force.
I don’t need to go to the extent of ANU or CSIRO as I expect to be camping with the set up. Can’t afford to have the probes made but I’m a fair sort of jeweller so I expect to make them myself.
I’m thinking in terms of something like these
http://www.maxim-ic.com/quick_view2.cfm/qv_pk/3021
or this
http://www.national.com/mpf/LM/LM335.html
I’ve never used either if you have a suggestion regarding better precision (affordable please) I’m all ears.
Jan: Beyond sensor cost, think about junctions, interface, response, display, portability, accuracy that comes with say a cheap hand held digital thermometer used by chefs, gardeners and others. After a quick check they seem to range up from $30 au.
I guess reinventing the wheel with all that electronic stuff including on board compensation for cold junctions etc is the long way round when you can grab something off the shelf in a single package then quickly error check it against pro gear in a lab down the road.
Let’s look on ebay first hey
I found one with a long SS probe, display point 1 C and head about the size of a 20 c piece in a kitchen drawer at a moving sale. Unfortunately the head tilting battery switch has finally worn out.
Gavin,
I’m planning an array that will track temperatures at different fixed levels in a column minutes apart over several 24 hour periods.
I’m going to have to build it. I may also want to record air currents as well.
Hey I want to play with some toys and the mechano set no longer satisfies;-)
Thanks for your suggestions.