I’ve moved to WordPress. This post can now be found at The Curious Effect In The Recently Posted Animation Of Global SST Anomalies
###################UPDATE January 15, 2010: Warwick Hughes suggested that I check the other datasets. They are included at the end of the post.
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While I was preparing the maps included in the Animation Of Weekly Global SST Anomaly Maps – November 1, 1981 To January 6, 2010, I noticed an unusual “wave” of cool SST anomalies that appeared to circle the globe in the mid latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere, Figure 1.
http://i47.tinypic.com/xdz0xu.png
Figure 1
It forms about October 30, 1991, near 40S, wanders 10 degrees North toward the equator until mid December, then turns around and heads poleward. It finally disappears about the end of January 1992. Refer to the .gif animation, Figure 2.
http://i46.tinypic.com/243p6pk.gif
Figure 2
I could not find the effect again in the animation. The El Nino that season wasn’t a major event, but Mount Pinatubo erupted about five months earlier, in early June 1991. Is it an aftereffect of Mount Pinatubo? I have no other explanation, but I also haven’t seen this effect discussed in any papers.
Here’s the video again for those wanting to confirm that the “wave” doesn’t appear at any other time. If you do notice it again, please let me know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKMY4JRN0kkYouTube Link
SOURCE
User-defined OI.v2 SST Anomaly maps can be created at the “Full Version” of the NOAA NOMADS webpage here:
http://nomad3.ncep.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/pdisp_sst.sh
UPDATE January 15, 2010: Warwick Hughes noted in a comment:
Bob, it looks like an artifact of the datset construction to me. My inclination would be to check against other SST datsets. I do not want to suggest more work for you.
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I’ve included my response in the following so that I can display the maps of the other datasets. Otherwise they’d appear as tinypic addresses that you’d have to cut and paste to your browser.
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Warwick: Thanks for the thought. I’ve used KNMI Climate Explorer to create the maps of the other datasets. The other datasets are presented only in monthly format, so as a spotcheck of the second source, I’ve also plotted the OI.v2 data. The monthly OI.v2 shows the line of negative anomalies in November 1991:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2z84x8m.pngOI.v2 data for November 1991
HADISST (satellite based like the OI.v2 data) shows a similar pattern but not as defined, and it only appears in December:
http://i47.tinypic.com/2jg9ppf.pngHADISST data for December 1991
The HADSST2 data in that part (your part) of the world is fragmented, as you know, but it seems to contradict the OI.v2 data:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2nv8hhu.pngHADSST2 data for December 1991
Since the ERSST.v2 and ERSST.v3b data are also based on the incomplete ICOADS data and are infilled by the NCDC, I wouldn’t expect the pattern to show. Here’s the ERSST.v3b plot for November 1991 anyway:
http://i49.tinypic.com/s3lzdx.pngERSST.v3b data for Nov 1991
21 comments:
I think it was the fact that the Antarctic Oscillation was very negative in late 1991. If you look at 2002 towards boreal summer/fall, you find that another ring of cooler water forms in the Atlantic and Indian oceans... and less so in the Pacific ocean when the AAO was once again very negative. I think that's where it comes from.. much like the dipole in the Atlantic recently from the negative NAO and AO.
snowguy716: Thanks for investigating.
The following links are to graphs of the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO):
http://i50.tinypic.com/2s6vxfk.png
And to the Southern Annular Mode (SAM):
http://i48.tinypic.com/i380zn.png
Data Source KNMI Climate Explorer (Monthly Climate Indices):
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectindex.cgi?someone@somewhere
The AAO data shows a downward spike at time—Oct 1991 to Jan 1992—but there are larger wiggles. I also did not see the same effect in 2002. I can see the “stretch” of cool waters then that you described but it does not work its way north for a few months, then slide back south again, like the one in 1991.
Regards
Bob,
Based on the following link:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=1510
the plume from Pinatuba up until October 1991 was mainly in the tropical regions for the globe. Your zone of cooler water occurred mainly south of that main area of the plume.
However, this again brings up the point I was trying to make with you earlier. If the atmospheric window to incoming radiation is obviously changed through such external events as volcanoes, how does another external event such as man's addition of pollution into the same atmospheric window not even considered possible in your evaluations?
How would the ocean know if the atmospheric change is due to volcanic activity or because of man? It is obvious the ocean temperatures respond to this atmospheric window change and not the other way around. Otherwise, you wouldn't have tried to make the connection you did with Mt. Pinatuba.
Earlier you also asked me for proof for how the atmosphere is able to store heat. Please consider the following link:
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/oceansandclimate.htm
I copied the following from that link:
Let's look at how greenhouse gases influence the climate system, and how they might cause climate change. The ideas below come from George Philander's book, Our Affair With El Niño, chapter 7: Constructing a Model of Earth's Climate, page 105.
1. Earth with no atmosphere
If earth had no atmosphere, if it had a land surface that reflected some sunlight like the real earth, and if it were in equilibrium with solar heating, the average surface temperature of earth would be -18°C (0°F), far colder than the average temperature of our earth, which is 15°C (59°F). Worse, the surface would cool down to around -160°C (-250°F) soon after the sun set because the surface would radiate heat to space very quickly, just as the moon's surface cools rapidly as soon as the sun sets on the moon.
2. Earth with a static atmosphere and no ocean
If the earth had a static atmosphere with the same gases it has now, but with little water vapor and no ocean, the average surface temperature of earth would be 67°C (153°F). This is much warmer than our earth. The planet would be so hot because greenhouse gases in the atmosphere help keep heat near the surface, and because there is no convection, and no transport of heat by winds. Adding winds cools the planet a little, but not enough.
3. Earth with an atmosphere and ocean
Earth has an atmosphere and ocean, and the average surface temperature is a comfortable 15°C (59°F). Water evaporates from the ocean and land, cooling the surface. Winds carry the water vapor to other latitudes, and sometimes high up into the air, where heat is released when the vapor condenses to water.
You only have to look at the conditions on the moon to verify that if we had no atmosphere, our average global temperature would be around -18C to -20C. The majority of the atmosphere in the form of nitrogen and oxygen have no known effects on temperature. It is the smaller trace amounts of the greenhouse gases (water vapor, CO2, etc.) that can be shown to cause that effect of heat storage. So if you increase those trace gases, even in a minuscule amount, there is a change in the atmospheric window and how it allows radiation and heat energy to be transmitted and stored to and from the earth's surface.
Dennis H.
Dennis: You wrote, "Earlier you also asked me for proof for how the atmosphere is able to store heat."
Incorrect. My question to you, in response to your statements on that thread, was, "Show me the dataset that illustrates this retention of heat, please."
You're now exchanging the word store for the words you used earlier, which were retain and longer. On the "North Pacific Ocean Heat Content Shift In The Late 1980s" thread...
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/12/north-pacific-ocean-heat-content-shift.html#comments
...you wrote, "An increase in ENSO cycles over that longer time period that confirm the increase in heat content is merely a manifestation of the gradual changes in the atmosphere due to that increase in specific pollutants allowing the atmosphere to RETAIN the heat energy LONGER." [my caps for emphasis] You followed this with, "As the atmosphere is able to RETAIN more heat energy due to the physical changes not dependent or related to ENSO or other ocean factors, the heat differential will be less between the oceans and the atmosphere and the ocean will also lose less heat (the long-wave radiation) at night."
You used the words retain and longer. Your links on this thread discuss storage but do not discuss that greenhouse gases cause the atmosphere to store anything for longer periods of time. My question to you was in the context that you had used them before. Sorry that I did not include longer in my question.
I also asked for a dataset showing how the atmosphere retains the heat (longer), not a description.
But in response to your questions today, in past posts, I’ve illustrated that the vast majority of the rise in TLT anomalies over the past 30 years, especially in the Northern Hemisphere where the majority of the warming occurred, was the result of strong El Nino events. Refer to:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/rss-msu-tlt-time-latitude-plots.html
That is, the atmosphere is warmer due to the multiyear aftereffects of El Nino events.
Are you somehow confusing these multiyear aftereffects for longer atmospheric heat storage?
I’ve also shown that there is no detectable influence of a rise in greenhouse gases on the tropical Pacific, the source of the El Nino events:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/09/enso-dominates-nodc-ocean-heat-content.html
Dennis H:
You are stating exactly what I saaid in previous comments.
But I put the numbers of Global Heat Content of Ocean versus Land: Ocean has accumulated approximately 95% of the heat since the energy imbalance,that turned positive n last decade (for 2000-2004,the better measured period thanks to CERES, it was 0,9 W/m^2)
We really must be thankful to our oceans. Without them, our greenhouse effect would already turned Earth into an UNHABITABLE super-sauna (I intended a world with no oceans but there is still the water in glaciers, permafrost,snow, rivers,lakes and groundwater, so there is still water to evaporate).
Maybe that explain the Hell-like climate of Venus: It may have been formed with too little water to have any big ocean, and so a volcanic greenhouse event turned it into a 480ºC hot oven (with the aggravanyt ofr being closer to the Sun)
Oops!
I forgot to put my name on previous comment:
From Lima, Peru
By the way, we have 27,2ºC at Lima(12:41 PM, New York time zone), and it is sunny, so this temps will likely go up today.
Thanks for this fantastic animation Bob. I'm just a regular climate buff, but it's more interesting to see the SST anomalies in this fashion.
MS in Canada
Bob: "I also asked for a dataset showing how the atmosphere retains the heat (longer), not a description."
Bob: "Your links on this thread discuss storage but do not discuss that greenhouse gases cause the atmosphere to store anything for longer periods of time."
Oh, that's right you wanted a DATASET to show how the earth's atmosphere has been able to STORE AND/OR RETAIN heat energy over longer periods of time.
Sorry it is not a large dataset considering the amount of actual data, but here is the source of my dataset that goes back over the most recent 4.6 billion years:
http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm
Essentially it goes like this:
1) Earth's temperature without an atmosphere = -18C (from 4.6 billion years ago to sometime before 1.1 billion years ago)
2) Earth's temperature range with an atmosphere since the Precambrian period = increased to 10C to 27C (during the last 1.1 billion years)
3) Earth's present temperature with an atmosphere = 15C
Alternatively, the data for the moon (at the same distance from the sun as the earth) is based on the following:
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/moon.htm
1) Moon's temperature without an atmosphere for the past 4.6 billion years = -18C
Conclusion
The earth's atmosphere has been able to STORE AND RETAIN enough heat energy to keep the average global temperature about 28C to 45C warmer than it would have otherwise without an atmosphere for the past 1.1 billion years.
Maybe you should plot it out to see the actual trend line if you need to.
Dennis H.
Dennis: You acquired an attitude in your 1:55PM reply, and by having a hissy fit you missed the point. I answered your comment, and I linked two posts that:
First, confirmed that the atmosphere was warmer, therefore holding more heat, but I noted that the atmosphere was warmer due to ENSO events, not greenhouse gases.
Second, confirmed the tropical Pacific, the source of heat for ENSO events, shows no sign of anthropogenic warming, meaning that your “gradual changes in the atmosphere due to that increase in specific pollutants” show no impact on the oceans.
Before that, though, I also noted that in the prior thread you had time qualified the storage, saying the atmosphere would retain heat LONGER due to manmade pollutants. Your 1:55PM reply still does not address the point you were trying to make on the prior thread, in which you said, "An increase in ENSO cycles over that longer time period that confirm the increase in heat content is merely a manifestation of the gradual changes in the atmosphere due to that increase in specific pollutants allowing the atmosphere to RETAIN the heat energy LONGER."
Show me the something that illustrates the changes in atmosphere composition now makes it capable of holding the heat LONGER, Dennis. You're the one who used longer, not me.
Have a nice day.
Bob,
Besides me showing how the earth temperatures have increased due to an existence of an atmosphere, what other components in the atmosphere, besides the trace amount of greenhouse gases, DO YOU THINK causes the atmosphere to retain and store the amount of heat over the past 1.1 billion years that results in the 28C to 45C temperature change? What data set(s) do you have that makes you feel otherwise?
Dennis H.
Anonymous from Lima Peru and Dennis: Maybe you two gentlemen should create your own blog where you can write posts that contradict the instrument temperature record as your comments here often do.
Dennis: Regarding your 4:54PM comment, saying the earth has had a greenhouse effect for the past 1.1 billion years does not address your comment that an "increase in specific pollutants [are] allowing the atmosphere to RETAIN the heat energy LONGER."
Bob, it looks like an artifact of the datset construction to me. My inclination would be to check against other SST datsets. I do not want to suggest more work for you.
Bob: "Show me the something that illustrates the changes in atmosphere composition now makes it capable of holding the heat LONGER, Dennis."
If the amount of heat energy entering a physical domain does not change and if the heat is not being stored or retained over some longer (lag?) period of time, but there is a noted increase in temperature within that physical domain that has occurred, what other explanation do you have for that increase?
Isn't the concept of this lag time what you claim is potentially causing some if not all of the oceans to warm up? Just the fact that the heat energy is being stored and retained in the oceans for a longer period of time, doesn't this allow this retained heat energy to then be transported somewhere else within that ocean domain more than it would otherwise? Also as the heat energy is being retained over a longer period of time, the same amount of incoming heat energy will result in additional heat since the system did not lose as much heat than it would have otherwise in the previous diurnal or seasonal cycle.
So then if the ocean is able to retain more heat energy for a longer period of time and gradually heat up, why is that considered implausible for the atmosphere, which contains the key greenhouse gas called water vapor as well as other greenhouse components that can also retain heat energy? Granted the atmosphere is not as efficient as the ocean is in storing heat, but as I showed there already is an increase of 28C to 45C simply due to the fact we have an atmosphere (which contains these trace amounts of greenhouse gases).
If the heat energy can be maintained in the atmosphere longer by some noted physical change in some of its greenhouse gas components, it will eventually heat up as each cycle loses less heat energy. It will take less of the incoming heat energy to get the temperature back to where it was if there is less heat loss through a longer storage (lag) time and it will heat up further if the incoming radiation remains the same.
In addition, if the incoming radiation remains the same but there is a physical change in the above window that makes it less cloudy (i.e. a warming atmosphere and less cloud condensation nuclei) and there is a lag time in the heat energy loss, the system will heat up further.
Dennis H.
Dennis: You wrote, "If the amount of heat energy entering a physical domain does not change...
That's an assumption on your part that does not reflect the real world conditions.
You continued, "...and if the heat is not being stored or retained over some longer (lag?) period of time..."
What makes you believe that atmospheric heat is being stored longer?
Bob: "That's an assumption on your part that does not reflect the real world conditions."
Does this mean that the TSI chart data you put together here going back to 1880 is not correct or does not represent the real world?:
http://i42.tinypic.com/18f8n8.jpg
What about the last TSI chart in this report going back to around 1600?:
http://www.leif.org/research/GC31B-0351-F2007.pdf
Has the incoming solar radiation (incoming heat energy) changed at all over that 400 year record and have the temperatures increased since 1900? Is this all this data an assumption on your part (since you put the one chart together yourself) or is it the real world? If it is an assumption, then why did YOU use it to support your argument at the time?
Dennis H.
Dennis H: Regarding all of your recent comments on this thread, which were a carryover from one last week, let me try to sum them simply. In this way we can hopefully avoid running around in circles again.
You’re saying that, correct me if I’m wrong, like variations in cloud cover, manmade aerosols can also alter the amount of downward shortwave radiation. The question is by how much. That is, do anthropogenic aerosols have a measurable impact on SST, OHC, and TLT? Or are they so short-lived in the atmosphere that they have no measureable effect?
Three problems: First, some anthropogenic aerosols cool and some warm. Second, there is no long-term (1950 to present) dataset based on measurements of those aerosols that (1) differentiates between the aerosols that warm and those that cool, (2) differentiates between anthropogenic and natural (Saharan dust, etc.) aerosols, and (3) provides global coverage of those aerosols. And, third, based on the posts that I repeatedly link for you, there is no evidence in the instrument temperature record (SST, OHC, TLT) that aerosols have any measureable effect.
You can discuss all of the ways you believe they have an effect, but unless you can provide a long-term dataset that is actually created from global measurements (over land and oceans) of those warming and cooling natural and anthropogenic aerosols, it’s all speculation.
Mr Bob Tisdale:
You said "Anonymous from Lima Peru and Dennis: Maybe you two gentlemen should create your own blog where you can write posts that contradict the instrument temperature record as your comments here often do."
I could not speak about Dennis, but:
Where and when I "write posts that contradict the instrument temperature record" ?
I doesn't wrote anything like that.
Regards,
From Lima, Peru
Anonymous from Lima, Peru (9:02PM): Back on the The Warming Of The World Oceans (0-700 Meters) In Degrees C thread…
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/01/warming-of-world-oceans-0-700-meters-in.html#comments
…you hand calculated the warming of the oceans due to downward longwave radiation. I replied with links to posts that illustrated that the warming of the oceans resulted from natural variables: multiyear La Nina events, the NAO, and the NPI. The assumption that downward shortwave radiation is the cause of the rise in OHC is responsible for the divergence between the observed OHC and the projection by James Hansen:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/10/why-are-ohc-observations-0-700m.html
That was a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM to show that without ocean circulation, the upper cm of the ocean will boil way in few weeks.
(actually that was only considering downward IR radiation, when downward Shortwave radiation + evaporation were included, the upper cm of world oceans still will boil away in less than 2 years)
Then I posted the question:
If 0,9 W/m^2 of energy imbalance have not acumulated in the oceans, where is all this heat?
I am still waiting the answer.
Anonymous Lima, Peru: My apologies for ovelooking the fact that you had qualified your calculations with reductio ad absurdum.
You asked, "If 0,9 W/m^2 of energy imbalance have not acumulated in the oceans, where is all this heat?"
I have not verified your calculations, I have not checked the source of your data, and I have no plans to do so.
Again, Ocean Heat Content data DOES NOT show any signs of downward longwave radiative forcing.
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