Recent Ocean Heat Content Trend Shows Lack of Heating

J. M. Lyman and colleagues earlier this year claimed the ocean heat content data of 1993 to 2008 showed a global warming trend of 0.63 +- 0.28 W/sq.m.  They allowed that the rise from 1993 to 2000 was followed by a flattening ocean temperature that started about 2001-2002.  Given a peak in land surface temperatures around 1998 and a subsequent flattening for a few years after that as solar irradiance and sunspot activity moved out of a warm cycle into what is looking more and more like a cooling cycle, it is to be expected that the ocean heat content would rise for a few years following the end of the solar irradiance increases.  As Roger Pielke Sr.has pointed out, the oceans hold 90% of the variable heat content of the Earth in the upper ocean water.  Thus, trends in the upper ocean temperatures and its heat content must be related to the solar radiance, though with a bit of lag and some averaging due to the huge heat capacity of the ocean.

With respect to longer term trends in the Earth's climate, the upper ocean temperatures are a much better measure than the flighty atmospheric temperatures on land, which are influenced much more by the time of day and the nearby human population.  We know the ground-based weather stations to have been badly biased upward by urban heat island effects (here, here, here, and here) and a long period of undocumented data manipulation (here and here and here).

R. S. Knox and D. H. Douglass of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Rochester have an in press publication in the International Journal of Geosciences, which uses data from the global array of Argo floats to calculate the ocean heat content (OHC) of the upper oceans.  The Argo floats were deployed in the early 2000s and are less prone to the biases and errors of the expendable bathythermographs used to obtain earlier ocean data.  The data is show in the graph below:

The green line shows the average annual ocean surface temperature provided by the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.  That has been trending downward since 2003, with most of the drop since 2005.  The Argo data from the surface to a depth of 700 meters is plotted in blue.  The red data points are the 12-month moving average of the blue line data.  The dashed red line is the linear fit to the 12-month moving average data.  The energy flux to compare to the Lyman result of 0.63 +- 0.28 W/sq. meter increase is -0.161 +- 0.040 W/sq. meter.

The result does not indicate the expected large rate of increase in OHC due to a warming planet if the increasing concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere were the primary driving force in our climate and it acted as the climate models have generally claimed it does.  Given the short span of time and the strong annual variations of the OHC, this result does not clearly rule out a warming effect of CO2 upon the Earth's temperature.  But, it does suggest that the cooling expected by many solar scientists due to decreased sunspot activity, may have started.  It argues that it is foolish to believe that the warming trend of the 1980s and 1990s was the early part of a catastrophe, which was caused by increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2.  It argues that we need to continue to carefully observe solar effects and the ocean heat content so that we can come to a real understanding of our climate and what causes longer term changes in it.

It also follows that forcing the world's peoples to do without energy or to pay skyrocketing costs for renewable energy or carbon sequestration on the basis of an ensuing catastrophe caused by man-made CO2 emissions is without justification.  It is terribly wrongheaded to use force to make people give up many of the comforts of their lives because some scientists and politicians have been claiming an unproved hypothesis is established fact.  Far from it, the strong global warming claim based on atmospheric CO2 has a trendline which indicates that it is not likely to make the transition from hypothesis to proven theory!

Is the Sun Betraying the Catastrophic AGW Hypothesis?

The sun undergoes a solar cycle of sunspot activity of about 11 years.  The comparative intensity of cycles varies and the sunspot minimum between cycles may vary in number of sunspots and in the time it takes for sunspots to start reappearing.  Usually, the sunspot minimum lasts about 1 year.  Sunspots are cool spots on the sun's surface, but more sunspots means that the sun has thrown off more energy.  Thus, more sunspots result in more radiation being received by the Earth.  Sunspot activity has been lower than usual for some time now.

Sunspots are generated by magnetic loops that form deep inside the sun and migrate outward through the surface in a burst of energy.  This leaves the cool spot on the surface called a sunspot.  Sunspot activity is affected by two large conveyor belts of gas that cycle through the sun's interior and out through its surface carrying material and magnetic fields.  This cycle has an average period of 40 years.  David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recently made incorrect predictions that the sun would return to normal activity.  Now he is reporting that the conveyor belt flow across the sun's surface has been speeding up since 2004.  Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson have determined that the internal flows of matter and magnetic fields have slowed down greatly.  The slow internal speeds and the fast exterior speeds are not understood by the solar models used by Hathaway to make his predictions that the sun would soon return to vigorous activity.

Sunspot activity slowed rapidly in late 2007 as the sun went into its solar minimum between active cycles.  2008 was expected to be a year of low sunspot activity, but it was free of sunspots 73% of the time, which was the lowest level of activity observed since the 1913 minimum with 85% sunspot-free time.  Hathaway predicted that 2009 would be a very active sunspot year.  Nothing happened until December 2009, when a large group of sunspots emerged.  The new cycle has finally started, but with much less activity than expected.

William Livingston, of the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, and Matt Penn have found that the average strength of the sunspot magnetic fields has decreased greatly since 1995.  That is the same year that significant global warming stopped according to Phil Jones, the disgraced former head of the Climate Research Group at the University of East Anglia and a long-time leader of the catastrophic AGW advocates.  Livingston claims that if the decrease in magnetic field strength in the sunspots continues, in five years those fields will not be strong enough to form sunspots at all!

Michael Lockwood, professor of space environmental physics at the University of Reading in England, has used the concentrations of isotopes of elements in ice cores and tree rings to find periods of similar solar inactivity over the last few thousand years.  He found 24 such events.  In two of these cases, the sunspot activity was nearly nil for decades.  In only one case did the sunspot activity come back to record levels.  In most cases, the sunspot activity remained low.  This implies that the chances are high that the high level of sunspot activity that characterized most of the 1900s is over.  That was also the period over which most of the warming claimed by the AGW alarmists occurred.

Lockwood also says that the unusually cold winter in Europe in 2009 - 2010 was likely due to the solar inactivity.  He bases this on records going back to 1650.  In 2008, Judith Lean of the Naval Research Laboratory published a paper showing that high solar activity has a disproportionate warming effect upon northern Europe.  I would expect both of these findings to be because the climate of northern Europe is highly dependent upon the Gulf Stream, whose temperature is dependent upon solar warming of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean.

If the sunspot magnetic fields continue to decrease in strength, sunspots may not be able to form by 2015 and we may be in for something like the Maunder Minimum of 1645 to 1715, during which sunspots nearly disappeared.  The effect in northern Europe was colder than usual winters and an average annual temperature drop of about 1 to 2C.  The Maunder Minimum caused one of the worst segments of the Little Ice Age.  Life in that time became notably more difficult.

These two articles from the Washington Post to which I have linked were written by Stuart Clark, who has a Ph. D. in astrophysics and wrote the book The Sun Kings.  These articles were first published in The New Scientist, where he frequently writes.  It is refreshing to find articles honestly presented in the Washington Post which question the idea that man's emissions of CO2 are about to boil the planet.

The Cooling Earth

The principal influence upon the global climate is always our Sun, though our galaxy can also have a major affect over the eons. Ocean currents respond to it. The oceans hold 99 times more heat than the atmosphere, so they in turn affect our climate. But it all comes back to the sun and the Milky Way galaxy. These are the big sources of energy and produce the big effects on cloud cover, at least aside from major volcanoes.

Astronomers Dr. William Livingston and Dr. Matthew Penn have long been measuring the Sun's magnetic fields. They have found that the magnetic intensity of sunspots has been decreasing for the last 15 years. If this continues, the Sun will have no sunspots in 5 years and its activity will be similar to the Maunder Minimum which is believed to have caused the Little Ice Age.

Other scientists measuring the solar wind, the plasma thrown off by the Sun, have found it to be weaker than at any previous time during the measurements which go back 40 years. This both indicates less solar radiation and less shielding of the Earth from cosmic rays. More cosmic rays create more cloud cover. More cloud cover cools all of the earth, except Antarctica. Antarctica actually warms with more cloud cover because its white snow and ice is more reflective even than clouds, which is not the case in Greenland.

Drs. Rachel Howe and Frank Hill of the National Solar Observatory have been tracking the path of a subsurface jet stream called the torsional oscillation which began near the Sun's pole, as such jet streams do in the Sun every 11 years. These streams travel east to west and slowly approach the equator of the Sun over a 17 year period. When they reach a critical latitude of 22 degrees, they generate sunspots. The torsional oscillation of the last Sun cycle took 2 years to make a 10 degree change of latitude, but the torsional oscillation of the present cycle has taken 3 years to do so. This slow rate of travel has extended the solar minimum, which is a cooler period for the sun.

Many solar scientists now believe the chances that the Earth will be cooling significantly exceed the chances of global warming.

Meanwhile, those dumb Democrats are still proclaiming loudly that there is a scientific consensus that catastrophe awaits us if we do not cut back drastically on fossil fuel energy use, even if it costs us a fortune, kills entire industries, and plunges the nation into economic depression. It is fearfully irresponsible of these people to turn to the use of government force to so harm the lives of other Americans without even doing their homework. But then, these are the same people who vote for House and Senate bills they have not read and the same president who tells us the bills do not contain the provisions that they do contain.

In fact, it is more likely we will need all the fossil fuels we can get to keep us warm. Any very modest warming we can get from generating more CO2 through a greenhouse effect will be welcome, though it will be a very small effect compared to the likely cooling brought on by a cooler Sun. With shorter growing seasons, any increased atmospheric concentrations of CO2 that man can contribute will be very helpful in fertilizing our food plants. So drill and drill some more. Nonetheless, the cooling of the oceans will probably cause a decrease in atmospheric CO2, so again, the effect of man will be puny.

With more than 6 billion people, it appears that the environmentalists will get their fondest wish. There will be mass starvation if we slip into another little ice age. If they are right that people are the problem, then there will soon be fewer of them. As always, the Democrats have misidentified the real problem.

Greatly Decreased Solar Radiation

An article in The Independent on 27 April 2009 called "The missing sunspots: Is this the big chill?" notes that the current decrease in solar activity and the reduced radiation due to it is more important than many scientists had thought. Marc Hairston of the University of Texas says of the solar inactivity "This is the lowest we've ever seen. We thought we'd be out of it by now, but we're not."

There is also the so-called solar wind – streams of particles the Sun pours out – that is at its weakest since records began. In addition, the Sun’s magnetic axis is tilted to an unusual degree. “This is the quietest Sun we’ve seen in almost a century,” says NASA solar scientist David Hathaway. But this is not just a scientific curiosity. It could affect everyone on Earth and force what for many is the unthinkable: a reappraisal of the science behind recent global warming.

The article also provides an interesting history of man's observances of sunspot activity:

Sunspots are dark, cooler patches on the Sun’s surface that come and go in a roughly 11-year cycle, first noticed in 1843. They have gone away before. They were absent in the 17th century – a period called the “Maunder Minimum” after the scientist who spotted it. Crucially, it has been observed that the periods when the Sun’s activity is high and low are related to warm and cool climatic periods. The weak Sun in the 17th century coincided with the so-called Little Ice Age. The Sun took a dip between 1790 and 1830 and the earth also cooled a little. It was weak during the cold Iron Age, and active during the warm Bronze Age. Recent research suggests that in the past 12,000 years there have been 27 grand minima and 19 grand maxima.

Throughout the 20th century the Sun was unusually active, peaking in the 1950s and the late 1980s. Dean Pensell of NASA, says that, “since the Space Age began in the 1950s, solar activity has been generally high. Five of the ten most intense solar cycles on record have occurred in the last 50 years.” The Sun became increasingly active at the same time that the Earth warmed. But according to the scientific consensus, the Sun has had only a minor recent effect on climate change.

It would seem reasonable to believe that the warming trend overall of the period following the end of the Little Ice Age might be due to the unusually active Sun of that period. But, no the great computer models of the climate have claimed that that was only so prior to 1950, but that after that time greenhouse gas effects were dominant. Strange that the most intense solar activity observed was post 1950, lasting to the end of the century. Nonetheless, the very inaccurate climate computer models have claimed that the solar effect is responsible for only 10 to 50% of the warming, with most of them claiming the lower end of that range.

The article notes that the Sun's radiation output varies by about 0.1 percent during the 11-year solar cycle, which is small, but the total energy involved is huge. This is about 1.3 W/sq.m. at the ground, which recent investigations have shown causes some strong regional climate changes.

What strikes me as very noteworthy is that there could be no more obvious a natural factor to the Earth's climate than the varying input of the sun. Despite that and the huge claims made with respect to the greenhouse gas effects of CO2 in the atmosphere, climatologists are clearly not on top of an understanding of the climate effects of the Sun. The computer modelers have clearly overestimated the effects of CO2, which is still increasing, despite a lack of warming since 1998. The overestimation of the greenhouse effect due to CO2 is also clearly revealed in the much lower temperatures of the atmosphere as a function of altitude compared to the predictions of the computer models. It seems clear to me that the radiative output changes of the Sun are actually playing the more important role. At least this is where I would invest my time in improving the computer models for moderately long-term climate changes, if that were my business.

Obama: I Want Electricity Costs to Go Up, Up

A tape from earlier this year has surfaced in which Obama pledges to make it so expensive to operate a coal-fired power station that anyone building one will go bankrupt. Presumably HIS plan to heavily tax plants for their CO2 emissions will bankrupt already built power plants as well. Those who mine coal and transport it will lose their jobs in droves. Such a tax will also have to apply to natural gas and to oil-fired power plants, though they emit somewhat less CO2 per BTU of energy. Perhaps this means that some natural gas and oil-fired power plants will survive the socialist Obama's attack upon industrial society and upon the comforts of our homes.

But, these costs have to be passed on to consumers, ....or, the electric companies will hemorage money and will soon be unable to keep generating electricity. Their electricity distribution systems will age and deteriorate. The power companies will not be able to afford to replace old transformers and old, corroded power cables. Power delivery will become ever more unreliable.

Presently, 50% of our electric power is generated from coal, which is also the cheapest source of electricity except for hydroelectric power. Natural gas produces another 20% of our electricity. What does Obama intend to replace 50 to 70% of our electricity generation plants with? Taxpayer subsidized wind and solar power! What a Joker you are Obama! Where is Batman when you need him?

Old people on fixed incomes will not be able to afford to cool and heat their homes. Obama will create new federal programs to provide heat and air-conditioning to those HE favors and the rest of us will be taxed and taxed to pay for their power use. American industries power costs will skyrocket and they will not be able to compete in the world market. The unreliable delivery of power will cost companies huge amounts of money in downtime, destroyed product, and procedures that will have to be redone. American jobs will disappear. A few jobs in alternative energy industries will be generated by tax subsidies, but millions more jobs will be lost. Americans will be hurting as much when they pay their electric bills each month as they did when they were paying $60 or more to fill up their car tank. Of course, with no drilling in the U.S. in places that actually have oil being allowed, the cost of filling your gas tank will increase again.

Why will we have these added taxes on the use of energy? The reason is a completely unproven hypothesis that CO2 emissions will cause catastrophic global warming. Well, we have had increased CO2 for the last 10 years and the temperature has not increased. In the history of the world, much higher CO2 emissions have often occurred during ice ages. Often times they occur as the result of a previous warming of the oceans, which then start emitting more CO2. In any case, most people would benefit from a slight warming, if it were to result. Growing seasons would be longer. Fewer people would want to move to Arizona and Florida. Some warming is not a catastrophe, contrary to the hype.

In fact, now that we are in a sunspot cycle with very low sunspot activity and the next cycle is likely to be long and of very low sunspot activity, the earth is much more likely to cool off. Such a low sunspot activity period is thought to have caused the Little Ice Age. It is particularly insane to pursue drastically damaging economic and tax policies with an already weak economy for the wrongheaded reason of preventing global warming when the earth is not warming and is probably going to be cooling!

Barack Obama is both insane and insanely destructive. HE is anti-capitalism and anti-individual. HE is thoroughly a dogmatic socialist with no understanding of reality. But, HE is a brilliant demogogue and a strangely effective liar. It is clearly a victory of our socialist public schools and our universities that HE is taken seriously and that HIS nonsense is not widely unmasked. Most of our younger people simply have no reasoning ability anymore and are easy victims to carnivores such as HIM. African Americans, who have largely adopted a culture with little regard for learning and knowledge, are following HIM in droves. Unfortunately, HE is so lacking in understanding and wisdom, that HIS presidency will soon be regarded by most as even worse than the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter. The first Black president will be so completely an otherworldly being that the apparent triumph for African Americans will be an American Tragedy. And this is a shame, especially since there are African Americans who would be good presidents.

Very Little Sunspot Activity Recently

There has been very little sunspot activity since the most recent solar cycle 24 began in January. The last sunspot activity was on 20 July. Before that, there was a long stretch with no sunspots also. Measurements of solar irradiance over the last three months have also been very low.

The Little Ice Age had two parts. The second part corresponded to an extensive time of very few observances of sunspots, called the Maunder Minimum.

Farmer's Almanac Expects Global Cooling

The Farmer's Almanac expects global cooling based upon a change of sun spot activity. The sun's sunspot activity just transitioned from Cycle 23 to Cycle 24 in January 2008. Cycle 23 was 25% cooler than the prior cycle, which has caused the cooling of the Earth's average temperature since 2000. Cycle 24 started late. The Farmer's Almanac examined the sunspot activity of the last 88 years and beyond and believes that Cycle 24 will be a cool cycle. The worst is yet to come according to the Farmer's Almanac:

"Doug Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA, believes that solar activity has diminished and will continue to do so for decades. In 2006, he predicted, based on observations of the slowing of the plasma flow on the Sun, that cycle 25 could be the quietest—thus, the coolest—in centuries. Also in that year, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, head of research for the Russian Academy of Sciences, issued an imminent mini-ice age warning based on expectations of a quieter Sun over the next 50 years. Our long-range forecasts also point toward cooling conditions."

At the present time the Pacific Ocean is also cooling. So, the world's biggest ocean and the expected solar sunspot activity over several cycles are expected to be cooler. If there is any effect of CO2 in warming the earth, it may be very welcome. Unfortunately, the record looking back seems to show that natural forces have played the dominant role and will continue to do so.

Meanwhile, the principal candidates for the presidency are both advocates of taking drastic actions to reduce CO2 emissions by forcing carbon-based fuels to become more expensive and by forcing us to use less energy. Whichever is elected will combine with a Democrat Congress to pass draconian legislation which will cost every American considerable money and hardship, even as it should be clear that we should more likely be preparing for a several decades long colder spell.

As I have noted many times before, warmer is usually better for mankind than cooler is. Cooler gives us a shorter growing season and could make it much more difficult to feed the more than 6 billion people now on earth. Cooler tends to create more violent storms. Cooler is harder on older people than warmer is. Of course, if a few billion people were to starve, many environmentalists would rejoice. After all, they think humans are the enemy of the planet.