Report: Another Year of Record Heat for the Oceans

[chubbs]

18 hours ago, bdgwx said:

And as of this morning it is official. Hansen et al. 2023 was formally accepted for publication.

Why is this a big deal?

1) It is a sobering prediction of what may happen.

2) The authors (and there are big names in this list) take an adversarial tone toward the IPCC by indicting them of reticence and gradualism.

Official: https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false

News: https://www.eenews.net/articles/james-hansen-is-back-with-another-dire-climate-warning/

 

Will take a while to sort out the ramifications of this years temperature spike. A spike is unsettling when there is uncertainty  about climate sensitivity.  We are running a big science experiment.

[csnavywx]

Hansen not the only one sniffing out higher ECS. @bluewave @chubbs @bdgwx  Timestamped for the appropriate part of the talk.

 

[csnavywx]

https://staff.cgd.ucar.edu/cdeser/docs/hwang.anthro_aerosols_persistent_lanina.oct23.pdf

Paper link.

 

Would go quite a long ways in explaining why La Nina and trade wind strength has been persistent. Seems to suggest that this is a fast (transient) response and that the slow response is in the opposite direction. Interestingly the model experiment in the paper seems to suggest the fast response in the real world peaks this decade and then the slow response kicks in, reversing the trend.

Overall, not great news as this slants the table more towards higher sensitivities with the current trend only being a transient braking mechanism on warming.

[chubbs]

10 hours ago, csnavywx said:

Hansen not the only one sniffing out higher ECS. @bluewave @chubbs @bdgwx  Timestamped for the appropriate part of the talk.

 

Interesting, shows we need to consider aerosols as well as CO2 in understanding man-made climate change, particularly short-term trends which may not have much staying power, if aerosol driven. One quick thought: aerosols apparently contributed to WPac warming and increased frequency of Modoki ninos and perhaps helped our winter snow.

[chubbs]

September update continues this years ocean heat content (OHC) spike which started in May. Broadly consistent with Ceres net radiation data which shows an increasing earth energy imbalance, but doesn't match in detail since the Ceres imbalance has been increasing since 2015. Not clear why OHC would spike in a nino, when stored ocean heat is being released to atmosphere and space, but measurement uncertainty probably plays a role. Another one of this years warm-side surprises.

[bdgwx]

One of Mann's criticism against the accelerated warming hypothesis is that OHC dataset are not yet confirming the high EEI. I don't know...that looks like a pretty big jump in OHC. And like @chubbs said it is coming at a time when we are expecting a drop due to El Nino.

[Typhoon Tip]

It's kind of interesting...

the critics of CC have been, thus far been, unilaterally wrong. 

the consensus, warning of CC ( ... not even qualifying it, just warning ) have if anything been objectively proven insufficient in  timing, and/or magnitude - not only wrt those predictions, but observations of impact over the broad environmental global scale. 

Yet, the former group ... keeps attempting with what really comes off at this point to be stressing even AI to generate argument nuggets. Here's the thing, they don't appear to qualitatively be aware that those 'plausibility' discussion points are getting weaker and weaker - they keep using them regardless - sometimes with the same fervency.

 

 

[bdgwx]

[Miniere et al. 2023] - Robust acceleration of Earth system heating observed over past six decades

[chubbs]

13 hours ago, bdgwx said:

[Miniere et al. 2023] - Robust acceleration of Earth system heating observed over past six decades

Unfortunately study doesn't cover last couple of years, when Ceres energy balance estimates have continued to spike higher. There is brief discussion in the paper comparing Ceres to the ocean heat data. Ceres is running higher than OHC at the end of the study period, (ending in 2020). There are large error bars though and the difference is not statistically significant. They mention that the ocean heat data only covers 60S to 60N and 0-2000m and could be missing some heat content increase. Bottom-line confirming the recent Ceres spike with ocean heat content data is still an open question.

 

[chubbs]

Ocean heat data is out for 2023. Overall the data is similar to recent years. The oceans continue to warm at a steady clip. Found this twitter exchange interesting. There is considerable uncertainty in short-term trends making it hard to determine how much acceleration is occurring.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-024-3378-5

[bdgwx]

Here is a another twitter thread with more information and graphs.

 

[Typhoon Tip]

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-global-ocean-temperatures.html

[chubbs]

Another paper summarizing 2023 ocean warming with a comparison to other methods of estimating global heat imbalance. Ocean warming is accelerating. Reasonably good agreement among the methods considering the measurement uncertainty. Global heating rates are running above the worst case scenario (bottom graph). Why? - aerosols are coming down faster than projected due to air pollution control. This warming boost will last another decade or two unless CO2 emissions start to fall as well.

https://www.mercator-ocean.eu/en/news/new-paper-co-authored-by-moi-oceanographers-reports-record-breaking-ocean-heat-content-levels-in-2023/