There has been a lot in the press about the recent spike in global temperatures, and claims have followed about how this has caused the oceans to warm and the corals to bleach.
There has been a spike in global temperatures as measured by the satellites since 1979, and there remains much regional and seasonal variability in this data. Furthermore, the same satellite data very clearly shows that the warmth is coming from the oceans, not from the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The Australian Bureau Meteorology, among others, could easily issue a press release clarifying this. Of course, they don’t – because the Bureau’s leadership have an agenda, that this misinformation supports.
My friend Bill Kininmonth is a former Bureau employee – for more than a decade he headed Australia’s National Climate Centre and was a Bureau delegate to the Second World Climate Conference that culminated in the first IPCC report.
Kininmonth hasn’t stopped thinking. He wrote a book some years ago, and I have borrowed its title (Climate Change: A Natural Hazard) for this blog post, inspired by his note to me just this morning. It reads:
Hello Jennifer,
Just to provide more evidence in support of your recent post.
The charts for the sea surface skin temperature for the zonal band Lat 10S to Lat 10N as measured by satellites.
I have read media coverage of claimed ‘global’ coral bleaching that is being attributed to anthropogenic global warming. From the graphs it can be seen that neither the recent temperatures nor the temperature anomalies are the highest of the recent 45 years. The recent temperature spikes are, however, associated with a major El Nino event, which is rapidly decaying.
Your comment on the effect of spring tides is also of interest to me. I have long thought that part of the impact of El Nino, especially for the Great Barrier Reef, is that during these events sea levels across the equatorial Pacific Ocean change.
During the 1997-98 El Nino event sea level over the Western Pacific Ocean dropped about 35cm with an equivalent rise over the Eastern Pacific Ocean. Such a drop in sea level over the Great Barrier Reef would be expected to reduce the flow of cooling water over the reef and giving a greater response to solar heating of the shallow reef water. Lower spring tides would be expected to accentuate the heating of water over the shallow reefs.
On your point about SST (surface sea temperatures) being warmer than air temperature, this is confirmed in the chart of ocean skin temperatures versus air temperatures (see feature image).
The IPCC scientists do not seem to recognise that the greenhouse gases of the atmosphere radiate more energy than they absorb from the surface below.
Radiation processes are tending to cool the atmosphere at a rate of about 2C/day. This radiation cooling generates convective instability, allowing near-surface air to rise buoyantly in convective clouds. The radiation energy lost by the atmosphere is replaced by heat and latent energy flowing from the surface. As you comment, the atmosphere cannot warm the ocean!
Regards, Bill
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It is important to understand the data, to think about it. It is also useful to test claims that it is possible to know the state of the corals from 150 metres altitude. I've been fortunate to have this opportunity, to live near the Great Barrier Reef, and to have friends with boats and even drones.
A drone aerial taken of me from an altitude of 40 metres a few years ago. I am looking down on a lot of very healthy coral, but you need to be in the water to actually see the coral. This aerial was taken by Stuart Ireland above Pixie Reef to the north east of Cairns, that Stuart regularly features at his Facebook page, including very recently, CLICK HERE. I am receiving emails about how I should realise that the scientists have done the aerial surveys and these prove that the Great Barrier Reef is 75% bleached. In fact, these surveys are done from an altitude of 150 metres from which it is difficult to actually conclude very much about the corals, even to see them.
It is the case that our institutions have become expert at promoting misinformation, and the mainstream media duly repeat it to the masses. Thank you for taking the time to read this note, and please consider subscribing for my weekly e-news, which is how Bill knew about my 'recent post', CLICK HERE.
"The (so called) El Nino concept has never been predictable, since it left the University of East Anglia in the mid 1970’s."
The 20thC climate was defined by 3 Pacific Decadal Oscillations (PDO). The PDO is determined by El Nino and La Nina.
https://www.psl.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/Newmanetal2003.pdf
A positive or warm PDO is dominated by El Nino and a negative PDO phase is dominated by La Nina. During the 20thC there were 2 positive PDOs, the first from about 1910 to 1940 and the second from 1976 to about 2005 (although some scientists say 1998). The fact that there were 2 positive/warm PDOs and only one negative/cool PDO is in itself sufficient evidence to explain why there was warming during the 20thC.
But as well as the 2 positive/warm PDOs there was also an asymmetry between the 2 positive/warm PDOs and the one negative/cool PDO. That is the positive/warm PDOs were warmer than the negative/cool PDP was cooler: see:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/24/15/2011jcli3999.1.xml
The transition from the negative/cool PDO to the positive/warm PDO in 1976 produced a global temperature increase of about .5C which is about all the temperature increase the world has seen since the 1976 PDO phase change. This paper explains that and also proposes a mechanism for the phase change and the global warming:
https://arxiv.org/abs/0907.1650
Simply in 1976 ocean upwellings partially ceased. These upwellings replace warm surface water with colder water from the ocean depths. As a result of the upwelling cessation warm surface ocean water, which is heated by the sun NOT human CO2 IFR, remained on the surface producing an immediate warming of the atmosphere
"So yes, it is entirely contrived"
ENSO and PDO are not contrived and have been regular for centuries:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311922223_Characterizing_unforced_multi-decadal_variability_of_ENSO_A_case_study_with_the_GFDL_CM21_coupled_GCM
Elaborating a little on my just previous post, mentioning the hypothesis that chaotic changes in ocean currents might explain some global warming and cooling.
I think that ocean currents must work alongside atmospheric circulatory convection to carry energy from the equator polewards.
Perhaps the ocean currents have changed so that since 1978 they have not transported energy polewards as rapidly as they did before. This would slow down the radiation of heat from the polar regions to outer space. It would also lead to some tropical warming, and speeding up of radiation to outer space from tropical regions. If the slowing of polar radiation outweighs the speeding of tropical radiation, then the whole earth will warm. And vice versa.
I have no knowledge of what might speed up the polewards carriage of energy by ocean currents.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ignores crucial peer-reviewed literature and cherry-picks evidence to promote doom scenarios on climate change. These are just some of the findings of Climate Intelligence (Clintel) founder emeritus professor Guus Berkhout (84) after critically analyzing IPCC's scientific reports. “They refuse my request for an honest and open debate. The result is a very one-sided, fear-mongering story.”
Berkhout emphasized that Clintel advocates a scientific approach in which dialogue, discussion, and debate are pivotal. Berkhout: “If you refuse to debate models and data, it gives the impression that you are not a scientific organization but serve another goal.”
That is precisely where the shoe pinches regarding the IPCC. The IPCC is an intergovernmental organization, a forum of national governments. Scientists do not control it, but politicians do.
https://theliberum.com/ipcc-refuses-repeated-calls-for-dialogue-with-critical-scientists/