Cause of Global Warming 'Hiatus' Found Deep In the Atlantic 465
vinces99 writes with news about a study that may account for a slowdown in air temperature rises. Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth's surface. More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. New research from the University of Washington shows the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and is part of a naturally occurring cycle. The study is published in Science. Subsurface ocean warming explains why global average air temperatures have flatlined since 1999, despite greenhouse gases trapping more solar heat at the Earth's surface. "Every week there's a new explanation of the hiatus," said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung, a UW professor of applied mathematics and adjunct faculty member in atmospheric sciences. "Many of the earlier papers had necessarily focused on symptoms at the surface of the Earth, where we see many different and related phenomena. We looked at observations in the ocean to try to find the underlying cause." What they found is that a slow-moving current in the Atlantic, which carries heat between the two poles, sped up earlier this century to draw heat down almost a mile (1,500 meters). Most previous studies focused on shorter-term variability or particles that could block incoming sunlight, but they could not explain the massive amount of heat missing for more than a decade.
why this article is nonsense (Score:2, Informative)
An explanation why this article is nonsense:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201... [wattsupwiththat.com]
Re:Washington DC think tanks (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fun Fact (Score:5, Informative)
Yet the climate buffoons ignore the oceans in their models.
OK, I am down on climate models, because they have poor accuracy [ed.ac.uk], but come on, they don't ignore the oceans in their models. Check it out on Wikipedia at least [wikipedia.org] before writing something.
You might be able to say that their handling of the oceans is incorrect, and if you have a good reason, such a post would be interesting, but scientists definitely aren't ignoring the oceans in their models, I don't even know why you would think that.
Hiatus articles (Score:5, Informative)
google global warming hiatus ipcc
http://www.motherjones.com/env... [motherjones.com]
http://washington.cbslocal.com... [cbslocal.com]
http://www.weather.com/news/sc... [weather.com]
http://articles.latimes.com/20... [latimes.com]
http://www.theguardian.com/env... [theguardian.com]
http://www.climatecentral.org/... [climatecentral.org]
Sigh. Some additional facts (Score:2, Informative)
3. warmer air increases the rate of evaporation
4. warmer air can hold more moisture
5. convection carries this additional heat away from the surface
6. precipitation returns significantly cooled moisture to the surface
7. the amount of heat trapping done by CO2 is minimal compared to other effects
8. the climate -- not weather -- models based upon the apparent curves have failed
9. this ocean thing may be why -- or it may not be
10. models of things that have not happened yet are not "settled science" until the thing actually happens at least once
11. technology is advancing rapidly, and this will likely further distort any model's predictions
SO, these first time predictions whose models have failed are worthy of at least some skepticism
BUT, if the earth does warm a bit, we should keep in mind it's been a great deal warmer previously, and was a garden at that time as near as we can tell, and further, this is substantiated by the fact that plants just love CO2.
AND, if the seas rise, they will do so extremely slowly, such that anyone who wishes to move will probably have done so long before they see a drop of water.
Change. It's what the earth does. We're part of the earth. Coincidence? lol
Re:Wait (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well, that's bad news... (Score:4, Informative)
Here is what the temperature trendline looked like before and after 1999: http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl... [woodfortrees.org]
"flatline" is really the wrong word...
Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia (Score:4, Informative)
Re:why this article is nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
An explanation why this article is nonsense:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201... [wattsupwiththat.com]
WUWT is one of the absolute worst sites you can go to for any kind of "scientific analysis". They wouldn't make it through a first year statistical analysis course, let alone any sort of rigorous review process.