[Vision2020] As Global Ocean Temperature Reaches Record High In Past Few Months, Solar Activity Is At A "Deep Solar Minimum, " According to NASA

[Ted Moffett]

Five posts today is over the 2 or 3 a day informal limit... So that's it
folks!

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Deep Solar Minimum: NASA:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/01apr_deepsolarminimum.htm
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I don't mean to imply this solar minimum should be significantly cooling the
oceans right now.  The climate time lag effect must be considered.   It
takes time to warm the oceans, and also to cool them.  But the solar forcing
argument for current climate warming is not supported by data from satellite
measurements of solar activity in recent decades:

Page 11-14 at report below from NASA's climate scientist James Hansen on
solar activity and climate:

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20080804_TripReport.pdf
Info on climate time lag effect:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-time-lag.html
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The record global ocean high temperature of the past few months is the
result of decades of heat absorption by the oceans, from greenhouse gas
warming, according to the NOAA led study referenced below:

http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/10/skeptical-science-global-warming-not-cooling-is-still-happening-ocean-heat-content/

The planet is heating up, thanks to human-generated emissions of greenhouse
gases.  But as a new NOAA-led study, “An observationally based energy
balance for the Earth since
1950<http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtml>”
(subs. req’d, release here <http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/2009-24.html>)
concluded:

[S]ince 1950, the planet released about 20 percent of the warming influence
of heat-trapping greenhouse gases to outer space as infrared energy.
Volcanic emissions lingering in the stratosphere offset about 20 percent of
the heating by bouncing solar radiation back to space before it reached the
surface. Cooling from the lower-atmosphere aerosols produced by humans
balanced 50 percent of the heating. *Only the remaining 10 percent of
greenhouse-gas warming actually went into heating the Earth, and almost all
of it went into the ocean.*

Note that this *Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres* study was done
“without using global climate models.”

*Figure 1: “Total Earth Heat Content [anomaly] from 1950 (Murphy et al.
2009). Ocean data taken from Domingues et al
2008<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7198/abs/nature07080.html>
.”*

*------------------------------------------*

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009JD012105.shtml

An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950
D. M. Murphy

Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder,
Colorado, USA

S. Solomon

Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder,
Colorado, USA

R. W. Portmann

Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder,
Colorado, USA

K. H. Rosenlof

Chemical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, NOAA, Boulder,
Colorado, USA

P. M. Forster

School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

T. Wong

NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, USA

We examine the Earth's energy balance since 1950, identifying results that
can be obtained without using global climate models. Important terms that
can be constrained using only measurements and radiative transfer models are
ocean heat content, radiative forcing by long-lived trace gases, and
radiative forcing from volcanic eruptions. We explicitly consider the
emission of energy by a warming Earth by using correlations between surface
temperature and satellite radiant flux data and show that this term is
already quite significant. About 20% of the integrated positive forcing by
greenhouse gases and solar radiation since 1950 has been radiated to space.
Only about 10% of the positive forcing (about 1/3 of the net forcing) has
gone into heating the Earth, almost all into the oceans. About 20% of the
positive forcing has been balanced by volcanic aerosols, and the remaining
50% is mainly attributable to tropospheric aerosols. After accounting for
the measured terms, the residual forcing between 1970 and 2000 due to direct
and indirect forcing by aerosols as well as semidirect forcing from
greenhouse gases and any unknown mechanism can be estimated as −1.1 ± 0.4 W
m−2 (1*σ*). This is consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change's best estimates but rules out very large negative forcings from
aerosol indirect effects. Further, the data imply an increase from the 1950s
to the 1980s followed by constant or slightly declining aerosol forcing into
the 1990s, consistent with estimates of trends in global sulfate emissions.
An apparent increase in residual forcing in the late 1990s is discussed.

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*Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett*
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