There is a puzzling new report about the true amount of heat being soaked up by the oceans as a result of the greenhouse gas effect. The authors of the study believe the total amount is 60% greater than the amount that has widely been accepted, which is based on a limited history of measurements made at many locations and at various levels of depth using thermometers. Their research has employed a different method of measurement, which might well be more accurate but suffers from the obvious fact that it is difficult to understand or explain. I am going to give you three links to reports of their work, the first being a BBC news report that has a general description of what is being said and implied plus some reactions about its plausibility from outside scientists:
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Here is the story as provided by publicists at Princeton University, which is the origin of where the report was written, containing helpful inputs from the authors themselves. An important conclusion has been drawn, from a practical point of view, as expressed by opinion of the lead author: “The researchers’ findings suggest that if society is to prevent temperatures from rising above that mark [2C], emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas produced by human activities, must be reduced by 25 percent compared to what was previously estimated.” If all of the new findings, once studied and combined, are upheld by the science community at large that conclusion would presumably have to be taken seriously and the accepted message to policymakers would thus need to be adjusted in a considerably more onerous direction.
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Third, let’s take a peek at the information available in the study itself, which unfortunately does not have open access. You can go over the Abstract, which is clearly written, see what kind of Figures are involved, and maybe check out the list of References. Then I’ll make some comments.
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The most puzzling thing I noticed in the Abstract is that after taking all the extra ocean heat input into account the researchers find it “equivalent to a planetary energy imbalance of 0.83 ± 0.11 watts per square metre of Earth’s surface.” That is squarely in line with what Kevin Trenberth, James Hansen and many others have been saying all along but with a number of uncertainties that remain unresolved. Trenberth has probably done more work on that subject than anyone, and his best number for the imbalance is a bit higher at 0.9 watts per square meter. ( For an example, see Reference #62 in the new report.) Any sound projection of future temperatures for the entire climate system depends on what they will be after the energy imbalance has been fully corrected, or reaches equilibrium, which essentially means when there is no longer any excess heat being stored anew anywhere on the surface of the globe or employed in melting ice. That is, incoming energy and outgoing would finally be the same.
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Now for the puzzling part. If the energy imbalance is truly the same as before then the amount of energy being swallowed by the oceans instead of passing through the atmosphere and heading out to space must also be the same. If in fact there is a real difference in the amount being swallowed, in this case 60%, then that difference would have to be reflected in the figures showing amounts of imbalance. It is possible that the new figure is correct while the Trenberth figure and others like it happen to be correct but for the wrong reasons. No matter what, they should be different if the ocean surfaces are in fact shuttling more heat downward than what is normally shown in the standard calculations. From my own perspective the new ideas help to explain why air temperatures just above the ocean surfaces are rising so much more slowly than air temperatures above land surfaces, the latter of which are not “penalized” by any mechanism that can actually remove a significant part of the energy collected before it gets radiated back to space. (See the relevant charts for land and ocean temperature histories at this link from Hansen’s website, which has been discussed in previous letters: http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/land+SST_ann_1880-1920base.pdf.)
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If the greenhouse effect were to stop growing there would still be an energy imbalance but it would start to shrink until finally the deeper waters would warm enough to forestall any more energy from being taken down from the surface. At that point the surface temperature anomaly that we see today would disappear and the long-term rise over the oceans would equal the long-term rise over land. Later on, if the greenhouse effect were reduced, all of the heat energy that has been accumulating in the ocean depths would begin to pass outward, entirely (by default) through the ocean surface, and then through the air layers just above the ocean surface, and then on and out to space. Those air temperatures that are just above the surface would therefore be falling more slowly than those above land where nothing like it can occur, a switch that could last for one or more centuries. That, once again, is the meaning of “ocean inertia.”
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There should be more discussion in the scientific literature about the current difference between land and ocean temperature increases, as revealed in the chart, and what it means, today and tomorrow.
Carl