Ocean Heat Content Reaches Record Highs

We all know by now -- or should know -- that ocean heat content (OHC) is easily the best metric of a global energy imbalance -- about 93% of the trapped heat goes there.

At least, The Guardian has caught on.

The OHC data for 4Q17 are in, and it shows that in 2017, the OHC of the top sixth and the top half of the global ocean both reached record annual values:

In 2017, the heat uptake for the 0-2000 m region -- the top half of the ocean -- was 1.6 W/m² relative to 2016, and its acceleration, in just 12 years of data recording, is 0.039 ± 0.018 W/m²/yr.

Guesses for the New Doomsday Clock Setting?

Update 1/25: The Clock was set forward by half a minute, "amid increasing worries over nuclear weapons and climate change," so it's now at two minutes to midnight. Trump has at least 3 more years in office, so if this trend continues the Clock would be at a half a minute to midnight at the end of his first term. The fate of the world might hinge on defeating his bid for reelection (or on his impeachment and conviction -- one can always hope).

"'This is the closest the Clock has ever been to Doomsday, and as close as it was in 1953, at the height of the Cold War,'” said Rachel Bronson, president of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists." 

I certainly worry about nuclear Armageddon -- though not as much when I was younger, where for a few years after graduate school I would sometimes wake up screaming in the middle of a night after a dream -- but I don't think climate change will be "catastrophic." Difficult, costly, tragic in some situations -- but not catastrophic. By the 22nd century humans will probably know enough to do responsible geoengineering and prevent the 40 to 60 meters of sea level rise that would otherwise be coming over several millennia. Half of Florida might be gone by then, though. That alone is gonna cost trillions.

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The Doomsday Clock is currently set to 2.5 minutes before midnight. It's maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and will be reset this Thursday at 10 am ET, 7 am PT, 15:00 GMT. (No adjustment is also possible, as was done last year.) Watch online.

Any guesses on the new setting? I'm guessing 1.5 minutes before midnight, based solely on the fool now in the White House. (He'll probably consider this a positive sign of his worldwide fame.) A substantial jump forward, but still not too close to pure panic.

1.5 minutes before midnight would be the Clock's more dire setting ever. Here's its history:

Climate Models Are Doing Great

After 2017's annual temperatures came in, Gavin Schmidt posted this on Twitter:

Here, historical forcings are used prior to 2000 -- the actual GHG concentrations, volcanic eruptions, etc. After 2000 the comparison uses the old IPCC Scenario A1B -- "...very rapid economic growth, global population that peaks in mid-century and declines thereafter, and the rapid introduction of new and more efficient technologies." (Truth is, there isn't much of any difference in these old AR4 scenarios by this time.)

Looks equally good with the CMIP5 models.

The model/observation difference varies depending on the particular year (or couple of years), but over the long-term it's looking pretty good.

Certainly good enough to see that we have a big AGW problem on our hands.

Build a Wall....

Doomsday Clock

On January 25th at 10 am ET the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will reveal their annual decision about the hands of their Doomsday Clock: bit.ly/2Dp0wnS. It's currently set at 2:30 minutes before midnight.... I expect that will decrease to maybe 1:30 before midnight...simply because Trump is an ignorant, dangerous idiot.

It's stunning to me that we/Congressional representatives are letting such a clearly ignorant and unthinking man decide, minute by minute, the literal fate of the world.

The world must -- seriously -- I really mean, seriously -- outlaw all nuclear weapons for all time.

I'm not kidding at all. We're 7 billion strong...but never use it.

A Song About the Umpqua Shooting

By Patterson Hood and the Drive-by Truckers, my favorite band for the few years:


I used this song for an op-ed I wrote for the Salem Statesman Journal, published in November.

Michael Mann Has a New Blog

Michael Mann now has a personal blog. (Nothing there yet.) Here's the RSS feed.

Between Twitter, Facebook, RealClimate and now a blog, he must be the most socially connected scientist on the planet. And I see him quoted everywhere these days. And he still co-authors a lot of papers and articles.

Here was his recent rebuttal to an op-ed by Oregon's leading denier, Gordon Fulks.

Why Nikolov and Zeller's Pressure Claim Violates Basic Physics

Nikolov and Zeller claim that planetary surface temperatures are set by surface pressure. Published in a journal indicted for fraud.

They even go so far as to assert that there is no greenhouse effect. Or that it's 90 K, not the usual 33 K we have all seen. (Which, by the way, is a heuristic calculation only.) Hard to keep their claims straight.

This is obviously bull -- but why?

Because N&Z did no science -- they just fit 5 independent data points to a curve of 6 independent data points. Just curve-fitting.

I trust you understand why that's trivially easy to do, and why it's not science.

But they insist they have made a ground-breaking discovery, a la Galileo or Newton.

(That should set your bullshit detector off right there, ringing very, very loudly. See John Baez's Crackpot Index.)

But here's the thing -- their claim isn't even in accord with basic physics.

Their formula for surface temperature as a function of surface pressure, T_s(Ps), implies, for current Earthlike conditions

dT_s/dP_s > 0

where "s" stands for surface.

But this is wrong, for the simple reason that a higher surface pressure leads to a lower surface temperature. And it's not difficult to understand why.

It comes down simply to density and optical path. More pressure means more molecules in the path of incoming sunlight, which means less sunlight reaches the surface, because there is less shortwave (Rayleigh) scattering. From Poulsen et al, Science 2015:

Click to Enlarge

So lower pressure means less scattering of sunlight, so more of it reaches the surface. The surface is warmer at lower pressure. That's not surprising -- though N&Z choose to turn their back on this physics.

And a warmer surface means a higher temperature in the lower troposphere, which in turn means the air holds more water vapor. (See the Clausius-Claperyon equation.) That water vapor increases the greenhouse effect, leading to an even higher surface temperature.

So the idea that pressure somehow creates a higher surface temperature is clearly wrong. Atmospheric pressure does not increase incoming shortwave radiation -- radiation from the Sun. It decreases it.

Naturally (and unfortunately), Nikolov and Zeller have ignored all questions about this on Twitter, as if they think blatantly ignoring these question about the physics will get rid of these inconvenient questions, and their stolid, unenlightening, unphysical curve-fitting will shine through.

This is why they're properly classified as "deniers." Real scientists and real people do not ignore questions, if they're interested in getting at the truth.

If you don't want to be labeled a denier, don't act like one.

Checkmate: how do climate science deniers' predictions stack up? | Environment | The Guardian

Good stuff. Don Easterbrook gets thoroughly raked over the coals:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/dec/19/checkmate-how-do-climate-science-deniers-predictions-stack-up

Scientists Link Hurricane Harvey’s Record Rainfall to Climate Change

NY Times: "Two studies of the storm that overwhelmed Houston last summer say global warming made the rain much worse."

Read More...

Daily Record Highs in US Now Far Above Daily Record Lows

From “Daily record highs are vastly outpacing daily record lows in the U.S.” Climate Central, 12/6/17.

Major New Discovery Using the Principle of Nikolov and Zeller

I've made a "major discovery" -- for the five solar system objects considered by Nikolov and Zeller, their Principles show that an object's Global Mean Annual near-surface Temperature (GMAT) is exactly determined by its radius.

And I only used five free parameters. Their model uses six.

😁

Eli Rabbet has a nice post about the games Nikolov and Zeller are playing. Nikolov is all over Twitter proclaiming their "new discovery," which is nothing more than curve fitting with almost no physics involved. ≧ 2 can play at that game.

Americans Are Using Less Electricity

Data via US EIA and FRED.

"Physics is Not a Religion"

"Physics is not a religion. It it were, we'd have a much easier time raising money."

-- Leon Lederman

Turkeys Acting Weird

When I was searching for "turkeys" yesterday I came across this page. It sure looks weird:


This clip purports to answer the question of why turkeys do this, but I don't find it very convincing, let alone scientific.

Quite a Day for Schadenfreude

Days like this don't come along often, so enjoy them when they do.

1) Joe Barton, epic harasser of scientists Mann, Bradley and Hughes for their hockey stick, was caught sending a public dick pic to a woman on Twitter. Here's the picture, if you really have to see it. Always nice to see the sanctimonious suffer, especially by their own hand.

Barton says he's still trying to decide if he's going to resign.

Update 11/24 4:42 pm PST - Barton says he's a victim of "revenge porn" -- he says he sent his dick pic to someone, who released it, or aided its release, onto the Internet. That wasn't a very smart thing to do.... And, of course, Barton had no problem invading the privacy of Mann, Bradley and Hughes by expecting them to release all kinds of information pertaining to their research -- a clear fishing expedition. So I still find it hard to feel sorry for him. 

2) OMICS Publishing, publisher of that ridiculous paper by Ned Nikolov and Karl Zeller claiming that surface temperatures are solely determined by surface pressures -- a paper that contained no physics whatsoever, but merely fits a curve with five free parameters to five data points -- received an injunction from a US court issued for deceptive business practices. Via Retraction Watch via Eli Rabbett.

Man, that's gotta sting....

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Do forgive me. Tomorrow.

Simple But Wrong

3rd Quarter Ocean Heat Content Drops

NOAA has released the 3rd quarter ocean heat content data (thanks JHC) -- the best measure of the planet's energy imbalance -- and there has been a lot of cooling, at least in the top half of the ocean, compared to three months ago.

where ZJ = zettajoule = 10²¹.

Clearly this means AGW is over. Perhaps this is why UAH and RSS both showed a record high for the lower troposphere for both September and October, and, for RSS, August as well. (UAH LT had the third warmest August.)

Here are the graphs.

(The graphs with error bars look...weird.)

Finally, the acceleration of the top half of the ocean (0-2000 m) is dropping, but still positive: 0.038 ± 0.019 W/m2/year. But my uncertainty doesn't include autocorrelation, which clearly the ocean has in abundance. Maybe I'll work on that later.

Zombie iPhone

So this is strange. My iPhone 5c failed about three weeks ago -- it wouldn't boot up, just, when I tried to recharge it, would only show the Apple logo, then fail and try to power cycle again, endlessly. My battery was 3 years old and failing fast, so I took it to Batteries & Bulbs, but a new battery did not work -- they said my phone was broken. What do I know. So I went to Sprint and bought an iPhone 7, which is more or less the same, but the camera is noticeably better. And it has this strange "taptic engine" -- you feel clicks and scrolls in the hand that's holding the phone -- which I don't like and could do without. (The iPhone 8 has it too. Don't know about the X.)

I didn't want to donate my old phone anywhere, since all my data are still in it, so tonight I took the plunge (...) and flooded it in a container of water.

Immediately the flashlight turned on, and it's been on now for about an hour, while completely underwater. I didn't hit any buttons, certainly not the power button, when I submerged it. It just turned on and has stayed on.

Can anyone explain that?

PS: I hope to get back to blogging about climate soon. Though my interests are necessarily expanding -- too many other people writing about climate these days.

Update: Two hours later, and the light is no more.

The Bloop

This is interesting -- the loudest noise ever recorded -- from The Atlantic: