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Study: Past Climate Change Was Caused by Ocean, Not Just the Atmosphere
Chipmunk100 writes Most of the concerns about climate change have focused on the amount of greenhouse gases that have been released into the atmosphere. Researchers have found that circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth's climate. The study results were published the journal Science (abstract. "Our study suggests that changes in the storage of heat in the deep ocean could be as important to climate change as other hypotheses – tectonic activity or a drop in the carbon dioxide level – and likely led to one of the major climate transitions of the past 30 million years," said one of the authors."
no...please...not Billy Ocean
The year is 2014, and these "scientists" are just NOW realizing that the ocean plays a key role in global climate change? We learned about this in elementary school. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
And the horse it rode in on.
US Having Its Coolest Year On Record
The percentage of US HCN stations to reach 90 degrees was the smallest on record this year, with four of the five coolest years occurring above 350 PPM CO2. The most widespread heat occurred in 1931, when more than 98% of stations were over 90 degrees.
So who should be happy about this news? The pussified tree huggers or the red state meanies who want to destroy the earth? Enquiring minds want to know, and are too lazy to RTFA!
Yes I am executive at MSNBC
So to prevent climate change we just need to eradicate the ocean? Simple!
... political. It would be nice to just talk about the science and mute all the political gamesmanship.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Any engineer who has studied thermodynamics knows that water has about four times the specific heat as air. The mass of the oceans is about 260 times that of the atmosphere. Combine these facts, and you find the oceans have about 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. Thus it should be obvious that in any scenario of temperature change, the oceans will play a big, if not dominant part.
In regards to Chipmunk100's summary, greenhouse gases affect the heat input to the planet. The oceans represent a vast amount of thermal storage capacity. One is the current rate of change, the other is the integrated total of the changes over a number of centuries. Different units with different dimensions. A change in greenhouse gases today will take a long time to show up as an overall change in ocean temperature.
http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014...
Of course NASA is used to doing this.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Doubled CO2 means under 2 degrees warming
"8th December 2010 13:24 GMT - A group of top NASA and NOAA scientists say that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy, and have failed to properly account for an important cooling factor which will come into play as CO2 levels rise."
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/ear...
""Ice cores from Summit show that melting events of this type occur about once every 150 years on average. With the last one happening in 1889, this event is right on time," says Lora Koenig, a Goddard glaciologist and a member of the research team analyzing the satellite data. "
Why would a 150 year melt cycle be "right on time" in warming world? Never mind somebody made the headline "Unprecedented melting of Greenland ice".
How can a cyclical even be unprecedented?
I believe Mr. Hansen left shortly after this. I could be wrong but I think it was around that time.
Need Mercedes parts ?
The study says that the ocean currents changed (of course, everyone knows that will cause a different climate). The reason the currents changed is because of lowered ocean levels and much more ice on Antarctica (blocking the flow of the water).
The question of course to ask is, what caused the lowered ocean levels in the first place?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yes the ocean is a FACTOR. The Sun is a greater factor. CO2? not so much. Did you realize that the parable of Chicken Little was written to warn children and simpletons (and liberals) not to follow doomsaying fools? Bwaaaaaahaahaahaahahahaa
No shit, idiots. If you are just coming to that realization now, maybe we shouldn't be trusting you to 'fight climate change' with our hard earned tax dollars.
an ill wind that blows no good
Where is Captain Planet when you need him?
These Last 6 Months Were The Warmest Humans Have Ever Recorded On Earth
The Science is Settled! There ARE NO MORE FACTS to be discovered or discussed. The journals should just stop accepting articles about it.
What's with these people anyway?
Who could have thought that Northern Atlantic can be colder and more polluted than Southern Pacific? If so thats all Norwegians fault.
Carbon Dioxide wise, the last time I checked, 98% of it on earth were contained in the oceans. So global warming advocated should not to swim in our oceans so as to preserve the natural habitat of their carbon footprint.
Does this mean we need to throw a bunch of depth charges into the ocean to kill all the fish, so they stop polluting the oceans with their coal fired power plants? Or should we implement a new smart fish family strategy where we only allow fish families to have one offspring to limit the amount of C02 they are producing
Exactly. I we want to prevent man made climate change, we need to eliminate all people from the planet too. Every person on the planet DOES have an affect on the environment. If we don't do this pretty soon the planet will be so polluted that it will not be able to sustain life. Get it?
The liberals who support this argument (not the people on /.) are tend also to be the ones ridiculing space travel because we need to solve the problems on the planet earth before we go marching off to mars.
Enough with the flame bait and your soapboxing... get back to posting articles about tech instead of pushing your political agenda
No, really, how many of you thought that the whole effect of the ocean was understood and implemented in the existing climate models?
When the climate models are provided with both their assumptions, omissions, and error, then maybe we can consider basing public policy on them. Until that time, keep them in the lab and out of public debate because they are nothing more than an opinion ... and we have more than enough of those to go around.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Scientists: "Our studies have increased our knowledge of the climate, which will help us to make our models even more accurate and refine our generic theories further giving even better immediacy to the results"
Deniers: "See, scientists still know nothing about the climate - they are constantly finding things that influence it which they didn't know about before so we should just ignore whatever they say about it forever"
Deniers with rabies: "See, humans can't possibly be influencing the climate because there are all these huge natural forces more powerful than us and there's no way humans could EVER change their environment and even though we always change it to suit ourselves surely none of our changes could ever have negative unintended consequences - only governments and LAWS have unintended consequences because guvmit is evil and this whole thing is just a giant hoax they made up because they hate my SUV"
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
We'd better dry up the oceans immediately and enact huge taxes on creating water. W00t00! SAVE DA URTH!
I know youre jhust an AC...but do try to at least read TFA before posting.
It was a study about the past.
You say we dont know?
Well....this is scientists trying to find out.
Specifically:
Earth’s climate underwent a major transition from the warmth of the late Pliocene, when global surface temperatures were ~2-3C higher than today, to extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation (NHG) at ~2.73 Ma. We show that North Pacific deep waters were significantly colder (4C) and likely fresher than North Atlantic deep water prior to the intensification of NHG. At ~2.73 Ma, the Atlantic-Pacific temperature gradient was reduced to <1C suggesting the initiation of stronger heat transfer from the North Atlantic to the deep Pacific. We posit that increased glaciation of Antarctica, deduced from the 21 ± 10 m sea-level fall from 3.15-2.75 Ma, and the development of a strong polar halocline, fundamentally altered deep ocean circulation, which enhanced inter-hemispheric heat and salt transport thereby contributing to the NHG.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
It seems to me that the ocean currents store and move heat around.
Assuming the sun radiates a fixes amount towards us, this won't change how much stays here.
This might affect the polar ice caps, sea levels, and overall weather patterns.
CO2 level adjusts the amount re-radiated back into space.
These are two different effects. Both or neither may be significant.
What bugs me about climate models is I can't use them to tell which, if any of this is significant as to if I can live comfortably here.
I kind of like to eat, breath, have fresh water and a moderate climate, but it's not clear how any of this will actually affect this.
The only thing so far is that the weather seems odd recently.
And possibly, a lot of climate scientists are living better because of new job opportunities.
I have a similar issue with economic models as to how much disruption acting on the climate model guesses will cause.
Please mod parent funny, because there is no fucking way he could be serious.
Very true and I hope everyone who thinks that the climate models used by the IPCC are in any way accurate or even capable of accuracy please read Dr Brown's views on the subject and give it some thought.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/
Combine that with the fact that all 5 of the major datasets (RSS, UAH, HadCRUT4, GISS, NCDC) show no warming for between 14 and almost 18 years and in that time CO2 has risen 8-10% and you see that CO2 does not control the climate.
If you "believe" that CO2 controls climate then enjoy your religious belief but don't call it science. You've been had, used and are about to be discarded with all your sincere hard work with it. You've been had, get over it, get mad at those who've conned you and get even with them by never trusting them again.
1% is a bad number to use, especially out of context. 1 degree C is better, but the more exact answer is 3.7W/m^2. The Earth receives about 240W/m^2, which gives us a black-body temperature of 255 K, or -18 degrees C. The observed global average temperature is about 33 degrees higher than that, thanks to the atmosphere.
The effect of an increased partial pressure of CO2 is to extend the CO2-rich region further into space. Outgoing longwave radiation (OLR) has a low mean free path (which varies with altitude but is generally in the low tens of meters), so it doesn't make much difference near the surface. The lower atmosphere is already more or less opaque to IR, so the effect is for OLR to take slightly longer to leave the upper atmosphere. Overall this means that the system retains more heat energy, by a tiny amount.
The problem is that CO2 isn't the only gas in the atmosphere, and there happen to be huge reservoirs of a much more effective greenhouse gas covering some 70% of the Earth's surface. It would be nice if either we could figure out another way that heat is transferred to space, or if there were some agent in the upper atmosphere that would counteract the effect of CO2. The first one can be ruled out by the physics of radiation, and the second one has not been observed by satellites. So, that leaves us with a certainty of 3.7W/m^2 per doubling of CO2, plus water vapor feedbacks, which are likely to be strongly positive, because the amount of water vapor that can be held in the atmosphere goes up exponentially with temperature, and as stated, water vapor is a much more effective GHG than CO2.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Correlation does not prove causation. Two (or more) things having the same cause will correlate. Oddly this was first articulated by David Hume
Next year's Nobel prize, no doubt!
-- 29A the number of the Beast
No, of course. They should have called you.
A silly question: Opining about climate stuff... doesn't this make you a climate scientist (they are only common guys with opinions, right?) My quesion is: What happens that the Evil IPCC is NOT paying you a living? That's what climate scientists do, isn't it?
Well, I'm enjoying our record warmth here in Holland, no, don't take me wrong, I am not an Apostate I know that Global Cooling is coming soon and I firmly believe in the Hiatus (whatever this may be). Insh Allah!
-- 29A the number of the Beast
Co Founder of weather channel is reporting that man made global warming is a myth. NO LIE! LOL Can he think he can pull the wool over people who know goddamn well governments around the world are spraying chemicals and metals as well as super hearting the ionosphere with HAARP radio wave technology. We are not fucking morons you twit.
What if climate change is caused by God, and he's punishing humanity for not doing well enough?