By Andy May
David Calver has posted a critique of my seven-part series on Climate Model Bias. His critique is here.
The first problem in the critique, and one Mr. Calver often repeats, is his presumption that I did not properly identify my sources. I don’t know how he missed it if he read the posts through, but at the end of all seven posts, before the footnotes, there is this line:
Download the bibliography here.
This is a link to download a pdf of the full bibliography for all seven posts, the line is at the end of every post in the series. It could be that Mr. Calver did not read any of the posts through to the end and thus missed it. In any case, download the series bibliography now by clicking on the “here” above. The bibliography for this post is the same one.
Part 1
Beyond this oversight, Mr. Calver’s first criticism is about my complaint that recently discovered ocean oscillations are not reproduced properly by the climate models. This is important because the oscillations are closely related to climate changes (Vinós, 2022, pages 189). He then jumps from all ocean oscillations (there are many) to my one example that the North Atlantic Oscillation (the “NAO”) is indistinguishable from white noise in the CMIP climate models in Part 1 (Eade, et al., 2022).
He then launches into a long discussion of the NAO that is pointless, it was only one example of dozens of possible examples. The best discussion of the recently discovered ocean oscillations and their relevance to long term (>30-year) climate is Wyatt and Curry, 2014. Another good source is Javier Vinós’ book (Vinós, 2022, pages 181-190). A discussion of the various ocean oscillations is beyond this post or my series and is very well covered elsewhere. Suffice it to say ocean oscillations are very predictive of climate on the decadal timescale.
Wyatt and Curry’s “stadium wave” describes what happens during the Earth’s ~65-year climate cycle fairly well. The series of climatic events starts in the Arctic sea ice pack (their group 1) and then moves to what they call group 2, which is dominated by the Arctic Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), so while not at the beginning of the overall climate cycle the NAO is an early part of it. Like everything in Earth’s climate, the overall climate oscillation comprised of the individual ocean oscillations is complicated, but it is a fascinating story. I suggest reading up on it in Wyatt and Curry and in Vinós’ book.
One of the best indicators of the weakness of the CMIP climate models is the fact that they do not reproduce or include as input, these vital climate indicators. For example, see the discussion on the “AMV” (AMV is what AR6 calls the AMO) in AR6 WGI page 504. The “AMV-like” signal in the climate models is too weak, following is a quote from AR6:
“On average, the duration of modelled AMV episodes is too short, the magnitude of AMV is too weak and its basin-wide SST spatial structure is limited by the poor representation of the link between the tropical North Atlantic and the subpolar North Atlantic/Nordic seas. Such mismatches between observed and simulated AMV have been associated with intrinsic model biases in both mean state and variability in the ocean and overlying atmosphere. For instance, compared to available observational data CMIP5 models underestimate the ratio of decadal to interannual variability of the main drivers of AMV, namely the AMOC, NAO and related North Atlantic jet variations … which has strong implications for the simulated temporal statistics of AMV, AMV-induced teleconnections and AMV predictability.”
AR6, page 504
A point that I and others have made before is that if they can’t model these important oscillations correctly, their models are wrong.
Mr. Calver concludes that my part 1 was “a cherry-picked strawman red herring, presented with very poor scholarship.” Clearly, he cherry-picked an example, turned it into a strawman to attack, attacked it badly, and completely missed the obvious link to the bibliography at the end of the post, probably because he did not read the whole thing.
Part 1 concludes in part:
“All the models in AR6, both climate and socio-economic, have important model/observation mismatches. As time has gone on, the modelers and authors have continued to ignore new developments in climate science and climate change economics, as their “overelaboration and overparameterization” has become more extreme. As they make their models more elaborate, they progressively ignore more new data and discoveries to decrease their apparent “uncertainty” and increase their reported “confidence” that humans drive climate change. It is a false confidence that is due to the confirmation and reporting bias in both the models and the reports.”
Part 1
AR6 has made it clear that ignoring the model/observation mismatch is continuing and will continue (AR6, page 504).
Part 2
Mr. Calver’s criticism of part 2 revolves around his belief that the critical mathematical errors discovered in the AR6 calculation of the equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO2 are unimportant. He also believes the erroneous subjective IPCC calculation of a range of 2-5°C is not too different from Nic Lewis’ corrected and objective calculation of 1.75-2.7°C. We disagree on this point.
Mr. Calver seems to have a problem with my statement that the AR6 conclusion that CO2-caused warming feedback changes radically in the past 150 years is a very desperate reach (AR6, page 996). This is discussed thoroughly in Crok and May (2023) in Chapter 7 and the appendix to the chapter.
He also takes issue with my statement that the proportion of warming that is due to humans is unknown, but it falls somewhere between zero and 100%. This is the conclusion of two very important peer-reviewed papers, Connolly, et al. (2021) and Connolly, et al. (2023).
Part 3
His first complaint about part 3 is with my statement that the IPCC still assumes the Sun is constant and seems to think this is based on Bob Irvine’s work. He apparently has very poor reading skills. This statement is based on the AR6 quote right at the top of post 3 where they say it explicitly, the quote is from page 962. I never say anything about Bob Irvine in that context.
He goes on to say Irvine’s work should be discounted because it was not in a journal, which is not true, as the bibliography plainly states, Irvine’s initial paper was published in the peer-reviewed volume: Heat Transfer XIII: Simulation and Experiments in Heat and Mass Transfer.
Next, he says that the IPCC reports cover solar variability, cleverly changing the time period from 1750-2019, that I referred to, to “millennial-scale.” His quote says the same as my quote and my figure 2 (AR6 p 961, figure 7.7), the IPCC ignores potential solar influences on climate from 1750 to 2019. Mr. Calver does not seem to understand what I or the IPCC wrote.
Next, he lists various blog posts that criticize the peer-reviewed papers I cite in my bibliography, all the blog posts have been shown to be incorrect elsewhere and are not worth discussing here.
His conclusion on part 3: “smoke and mirrors, no credible evidence.” Considering most of my evidence was from AR6, he seems to be saying AR6 is not credible.
Part 4
He tries to discredit Chris Scotese’s many peer-reviewed publications with a blog post, from realclimate.org, a rather sleezy alarmist cite that has been heavily criticized (see here, here, and here). Chris Scotese is a leading geological researcher with many publications and 23,859 citations according to google scholar. Suffice it to say if you are relying on a criticism of an imminent scientist like Chris Scotese by realclimate.org, you are a gnat on an elephant. No one will believe you and I certainly do not believe you.
Part 5
He starts out by claiming the book that Marcel Crok and I edited, The Frozen Climate Views of the IPCC, was not peer reviewed, which is nonsense, every part of the book was peer reviewed by at least two climate scientists and generally four.
Mr. Calver still has not found my bibliography, even though it is linked at the bottom of every post and claims he cannot find a paper I refer to by Yan. I cut-and-pasted the reference in my bibliography into google scholar, and viola! There it was! Here is the link.
He goes on to try and refute peer-reviewed research with alarmist blog posts, we will ignore that bit. He disputes my comments about there being a huge amount of evidence that solar variability affects climate, although it is certainly true, I refer the reader and Mr. Calver to Hoyt and Schatten’s book, Joanna Haigh’s excellent report, as well as Connolly, et al. (2021). All of these are in the bibliography that Mr. Calver couldn’t find for some reason.
As for the AR6 models running much too hot. That is straight from AR6, page 444, as quoted in part 5.
Mr. Calver’s reading skills are extraordinarily poor.
Part 6
Mr. Calver doesn’t like my criticism of the unsupported AR6 conclusion:
“It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”
Calver’s blog post and AR6, page 4
The bottom line is that there is no evidence for this conclusion by the IPCC other than their models, and my whole series is about how biased and unreliable those models are. Mr. Calver states with religious fervor that: “the basic facts of AGW have been established beyond any reasonable doubt (despite the attempted sowing of FUD by anti-AGW disinformation propagandists).”
There is plenty of doubt about the whole AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) idea, AGW has never been observed or measured, only modeled. We cannot even be sure it exists at all, it is just a reasonable hypothesis that humans might have some impact on climate, nothing more.
This is followed by bashing Bjorn Lomborg’s famous 2020 peer-reviewed paper with yet another alarmist blog post (the notoriously bad granthaminstitute). He then cites desmog and his own blog posts, nothing credible though. I’ll ignore all that.
He doesn’t have much to say about part 7, but Mr. Calver does trash the Nobel Prize winning economist William Nordhaus, just as AR6 does. Sorry, I think William Nordhaus is one of the best economists of our day. Nordhaus is sort of a lukewarmer and thinks that climate change should be dealt with, and I don’t agree with him on that, but he is a smart guy and he did win a Nobel Prize. Show some respect.
Summary
Mr. Calver clearly did not read my posts very carefully. I’m surprised he was able to read all seven and miss the link to the bibliography when it was at the bottom of every post! He should write less and read more carefully.
He complains that many of my claims are unsupported, but everything he complains about was supported in the footnotes and bibliography with peer-reviewed references. His contrary claims were generally from very biased and unreliable blogs, like realclimate and desmog.
I was unable to find even one of his claims that was credible.
Download the bibliography here.
Andy, you did an amazing job. Excellent narrative, well-researched, credible. Congratulations. Mike
Andy, keep it up. You are over the target, otherwise Calver would not be critiquing your series.
Hello
Hello Andy
Followed your series on WUWT with interest.
One critique that is sorely missing imo is that no climate model/ theory explains how the deep oceans got so hot. Presently the coldest ocean water is ~270K, already ~15K above the maximum the sun is supposed to be able to do (255K) If the atmosphere is capable of warming 4km deep oceans I’m very interested in the mechanism that makes this possible . Afaik warm water does not sink into the deep oceans, not even warm salty water.
As you know the temperature in deep mines increases with depth. I assume you’ll agree that this is due to the very hot molten stone/metal that makes up > 99% of the Earth.
Why would this be different for the oceans?
Some portion of the heat in the deep oceans is probably due to heat rising from Earth’s mantle. But most is from the Sun. For and average depth profile see figure 1, here https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2020/11/27/ocean-temperature-update/
There are two things that determine temperature, the amount of energy the Earth receives, and the energy residence time. Your figure of 255K only accounts for the radiation received, it assumes zero residence time, that is all heat is instantly sent to space.
The oceans have a very low albedo (reflectivity) and they absorb over 90% of the sunlight that hits them. Some of the solar spectrum penetrates a 1,000 meters into the ocean. Ocean heat residence time varies, it expells a lot of heat with an El Nino or a hurricane or monsoon, but absorbs a lot in the absence of these events.
We talk a lot about the atmospheric greenhouse effect, but the big player in temperature is the variablity of ocean heat storage, which is a function of storm activity.
Thanks for the speedy reply 😉
“But most is from the Sun.”
I don’t see how this is possible. The maximum energy the sun delivers on a sunny day in the tropics is
~30 MJ/m^2. This is just enough to warm a column of ~7m deep 1K.
This energy is lost to the atmosphere/space at the end of the night before the next warming begins.
Same for seasonal warming. I haven’t seen any depth profile where the temperature did change below ~400m before the cooling at the end of summer started, and all added energy was lost again to the atmosphere/space by the end of winter.
https://www.climate4you.com/SeaTemperatures.htm#North%20Atlantic%2059%20degrees%20north%20transect%20to%201900%20m%20depth
I would add some graphics to make my point, but this doesn’t seem possible.
“This energy is lost to the atmosphere/space at the end of the night before the next warming begins.”
No, it isn’t. It cannot be, if it were the dawn temperature everywhere would be just over 4K. Earth’s surface receives about 45 TW of heat from its core, versus 173,000 from the Sun.
The residence time of the heat received is much, much longer than a day. The overall ocean climate cycle is at least 65 years, and longer cycles are possible. See figure 5 here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2022/10/22/talk-on-climate-shifts-for-the-creative-society/
I don’t know what the energy imbalance is, but it is positive (warming) right now, and the long term average is probably positive. Heat accumulates mostly in the oceans. Consider time. The Earth and the atmosphere are gray bodies, not black bodies, they will be warmer than their black body temp. The residence time of the heat received determines the temperature, unless the energy source changes.
“It cannot be, if it were the dawn temperature everywhere would be just over 4K.”
The 30 MJ/m^2 just warms the upper 10m or so. The rest of the 4km water below that is not affected. The surface temperature changes very little from day to night, around 1k or so depending on mixing (wind velocity)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225649603_Diurnal_sea_surface_temperature_variation_and_its_impact_on_the_atmosphere_and_ocean_A_Review
When the added energy from daytime is lost at the end of the night, the temperature of the deeper water still remains and is just 1K or so lower than day max, certainly not 4K.
“Heat accumulates mostly in the oceans. Consider time.”
Agree, but the deep oceans have on average been cooling down for the last 85 my.
Some 30 mya they became cold enough to allow ice to form on Antarctica, and the last 2 million years or so we are in the cold glacial / interglacial cycles.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JC007255
especially figure 9.
The moon is less gray than Earth, so its temperature should be higher.
(275K vs 255K) In reality its average surface temperature is ~90K lower than Earths.
The reason is not the fact that we have an atmosphere (plays a role of course) but that we have oceans for 70% of our surface. Their deep water temperature determines the “base temperature” to which the sun adds its warming of the mixed surface layer.
“No, it isn’t. It cannot be, if it were the dawn temperature everywhere would be just over 4K. ”
The sun warms (= increases the temperature) just the upper 5-10m of our oceans.
The added energy during the diurnal / seasonal warming is lost again during the cooling at night / in winter.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225649603_Diurnal_sea_surface_temperature_variation_and_its_impact_on_the_atmosphere_and_ocean_A_Review
After the cooling the temperature is back (more or less) to where it started when the warming began, not at 4K.
On long timescales the deep oceans have been cooling for the last ~85 my.
Deep oceans were some 15-20K warmer then today, explaining the reduced temperature gradient between tropics and polar regions (Scotese).
Some 30 mya the oceans where cold enough to allow ice to form on Antarctica.
About 2 mya they were cold enough for the glacial/interglacial cycles to start. I don’t see evidence of the deep oceans warming to help us out of the current ice age.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JC007255
especially figure 9.
“Your figure of 255K only accounts for the radiation received, it assumes zero residence time, that is all heat is instantly sent to space.”
This is more or less the situation on our moon. Same amount of energy from the sun, very little heat storage. Average surface temperature ~197K, where the daytime temperatures are close to radiative balance temperatures, but the night time temperatures are far above radiative balance temps.
The Moon is also a gray body, just blacker than Earth.
“No, it isn’t. It cannot be, if it were the dawn temperature everywhere would be just over 4K. ”
The sun warms (= increases the temperature) just the upper 5-10m of our oceans.
The added energy during the diurnal / seasonal warming is lost again during the cooling at night / in winter.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225649603_Diurnal_sea_surface_temperature_variation_and_its_impact_on_the_atmosphere_and_ocean_A_Review
After the cooling the temperature is back (more or less) to where it started when the warming began, not at 4K.
On long timescales the deep oceans have been cooling for the last ~85 my.
Deep oceans were some 15-20K warmer then today, explaining the reduced temperature gradient between tropics and polar regions (Scotese).
Some 30 mya the oceans where cold enough to allow ice to form on Antarctica.
About 2 mya they were cold enough for the glacial/interglacial cycles to start. I don’t see evidence of the deep oceans warming to help us out of the current ice age.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JC007255
especially figure 9.
“The Moon is also a gray body, just blacker than Earth.”
Indeed, so since they are at the same distance from the sun the moon should be warmer than Earth.
In reality Earth is >90K warmer than the moon (average surface temperature)
The reason is not the atmosphere (it does play a role) but our hot oceans (270K and warmer)
Andy
I wrote a comment that is not showing here. When reposting the same it was rejected because I made a duplicate comment?
There were some pending comments, I think because of multiple links in them, I just approved them. The system only allows one link per comment.
Great, will remember that 😉
Here is the source for the energie input from the sun:
https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/properties-of-sunlight/isoflux-contour-plots
This is a repost of something I previously posted:
“No, it isn’t. It cannot be, if it were the dawn temperature everywhere would be just over 4K. ”
The sun warms (= increases the temperature) just the upper 5-10m of our oceans.
The added energy during the diurnal / seasonal warming is lost again during the cooling at night / in winter.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225649603_Diurnal_sea_surface_temperature_variation_and_its_impact_on_the_atmosphere_and_ocean_A_Review
After the cooling the temperature is back (more or less) to where it started when the warming began, not at 4K.
On long timescales the deep oceans have been cooling for the last ~85 my.
Deep oceans were some 15-20K warmer then today, explaining the reduced temperature gradient between tropics and polar regions (Scotese).
Some 30 mya the oceans where cold enough to allow ice to form on Antarctica.
About 2 mya they were cold enough for the glacial/interglacial cycles to start. I don’t see evidence of the deep oceans warming to help us out of the current ice age.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JC007255
especially figure 9.
I agree with this comment except for this:
“The sun warms (= increases the temperature) just the upper 5-10m of our oceans.
The added energy during the diurnal / seasonal warming is lost again during the cooling at night / in winter.”
Again, you are talking only about the thermodynamic radiation effect and ignoring the dynamic processes. This is a critical mistake the IPCC group makes also.
The ocean mixed layer is the layer with nearly constant temperature at the top of the oceans. It is maintained by wind and turbulence. It mixes the heat delivered by the Sun and currents to an average depth of around 50-70 meters (see figure 5 in post linked below). Convection and circulation matter. More here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2020/12/12/the-ocean-mixed-layer-sst-and-climate-change/
Agree, dynamic processes mix the solar energy down to ~300-400m.
eg Gulf stream and El Nino / La Nina play in the upper 400m.
Below that NO solar warming. So the heat content of the oceans below ~500m is entirely of geothermal origin.
Realize that the warm surface layer prevents water warmed at the ocean floor from rising all the way to the surface. It is an effective insulator.
Only water that sinks all the way to the ocean floor is the brine that forms with surface ice creation.
eg AntArctic Bottom Water, the coldest, densest water in the oceans.
“So the heat content of the oceans below ~500m is entirely of geothermal origin.”
Not entirely of geothermal origin. Some surface water enters the deep ocean in the North Atlantic and in the Southern Ocean (see figure 1, https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2020/12/12/the-ocean-mixed-layer-sst-and-climate-change/).
But, I agree, the depper in the ocean you go, the more geothermal matters, I don’t know the proportions.
Note that deep water regularly surfaces in the Pacific (especially the eastern Pacific) and in the Indian Ocean.
“Not entirely of geothermal origin. Some surface water enters the deep ocean in the North Atlantic and in the Southern Ocean”
That surface water has cooled down and lost the energy the sun had added before sinking to the ocean floor.
The geothermal flux through the ocean floor is ~100 mW/m^2 on average. It is capable of warming the average oceanic column 1K in ~5000 year. So the entire ocean heat content is “refreshed” every ~1,4 my by the flux alone. Add all magma erupting and cooling into the oceans and it should be clear that the heat content of the oceans is of geothermal origin, except for the mixed surface layer, where the sun has added its energy.
“Note that deep water regularly surfaces in the Pacific (especially the eastern Pacific) and in the Indian Ocean.”
The Eastern Pacific is probably the cooling during La Nina?
I don’t see DEEP water surfacing here. La Nina comes into life when the wind blows the warm surface water towards the West Pacific, exposing the underlying cold(er) water. This plays in the upper 300 m or so.
Very nice animation of the proces:
I no longer think that there is an organized thermohaline circulation outside of the Atlantic, but take a look at figure 2 here:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2020/11/27/ocean-temperature-update/
For me the next image nicely represents the Thermohaline circulation:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Matthew-Palmer-18/publication/237467905/figure/fig2/AS:669398272585738@1536608393477/A-schematic-of-the-World-Ocean-meridional-overturning-circulation-from-Schmitz-1996.png
I’m pretty sure AABW is the main driver of this thermohaline circulation.
See this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU0GhTmZhrs
It is worth your time, but the part about AABW starts around 33 min.
Thanks for the great links. I think all we disagree on is the amount of the deep ocean warming that is due to the Sun versus geothermal heat, and the proportion of each source is unknown with the data we have. Below the thermocline things are pretty static, except in the Atlantic. The Atlantic deep water is anomalously warm and active. Anyway, informative discussion.
Can’t post images directly, so in this PDF on page 7 an image.
https://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/roe/Web_page_314/ESS314/Week_4_files/314diffusion.pdf
At OWS Papa the solar energy fluctuates over the year between roughly 5-20 MJ/m^2 a day.
This plays a role in the upper ~130m, about 4% of the average ocean depth.
Temperature at the surface fluctuates between ~5C and 13C, 8C difference.
8C is ~3% of 270K, the temperature of the coldest ocean water.
So all the sun is accomplishing here is at best a 3% increase in the heat content of 4% of the ocean heat content (this only if the total 130m would be 8C warmer). And all added energy is lost again at the end of winter.
I see no role for solar energy in the heat content of the deep oceans.
Thanks for the great link, I saved it for further study. Longer term, ocean temps below the mixed layer do correlate with solar activity to an extent, in at least part of the deep ocean. But the data is sparse. It is like all solar/climate correlations, we know they exist, but it is beyond our understanding today. Longer term deep ocean temps correlate with air temperature also.
See here and the Rosenthal paper cited in the post:
https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2024/03/15/the-holocene-climatic-optimum-and-the-pre-industrial/
Don’t ask me how it happens, I don’t know, but it does.
The point I’m trying to make is that by including the geothermal heat content of our oceans the sun is very well capable of warming the surface to the observed values.
We can forget about a Greenhouse effect, where the atmosphere is supposedly “further warming the surface” with its backradiation. (Lacis et al 2010, 2013)
The atmosphere merely reduces the energy loss to space, but also prevents a lot of solar energy from warming Earth by reflecting it back into space (albedo .3 for Earth vs .11 for the moon)
I’m not sure which effect has more influence.
Anyway, we need an explanation for the > 90K higher average surface temperature on Earth vs on the moon, and the Greenhouse effect theory is not providing that answer.
Can’t argue with you there. I would add that it is hard for GHE radiation to make any difference on SSTs since it cannot penetrate the ocean surface. Thanks for an excellent discussion, I learned a lot.
Fine. So I propose a mechanism that explains the very high surface temperatures on Earth versus the moon, that ends the Faint Young Sun paradox and has a solid explanation for the climate through geological times. I proposed these ideas some 10 years ago now, but the world is still acting as if CO2 has anything to do with the temperatures on Earth.
I need help in advancing these ideas to the right people.
Had recently a short email exchange with Javier Vinos and his reaction is typical:
Hi Ben,
You are correct that the energy released at the bottom of the ocean by geothermal activity is very small. Changes in the temperature of the ocean at different levels have been studied by paleo-oceanography and the result is that the temperature of the ocean follows the temperature of the rest of the climate system imposed at the top of the atmosphere by orbital changes as per Milankovitch theory. The ocean warms through its surface and cools through its surface. It absorbs heat when the planet is warming and releases heat when it is cooling, providing thermal inertia to the system. There is too much evidence on this paradigm for it to be wrong. Science is not about explaining things, it is about finding evidence for things, which probably explains why you are having problems in getting attention to your explanation.
Kind regards,
Javier
“I would add that it is hard for GHE radiation to make any difference on SSTs since it cannot penetrate the ocean surface. ”
Backradiation does slow the energy loss of the surface, eventually the entire atmosphere reduces the average surface radiation from ~390 W/^2 to ~240 W/m^2 at the TOA..
Here is my original post:
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/ben-wouters-influence-of-geothermal-heat-on-past-and-present-climate/
Only thing I would change now is the effect of magma erupting in the deep oceans.
It takes ~1 million km^3 magma cooling in the oceans to increase the temperature of ALL ocean water 1K.
Thanks for the link, good post. Why did you leave off the NAIP? From just before the PETM? I think it was a factor in the PETM increase in North Atlantic SSTs. See: https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2021/08/18/the-paleocene-eocene-thermal-maximum-or-petm/
I don’t have a problem with your hypothesis that subsea eruptions contribute to ocean temps. There is very little exchange of water from the deep oceans to the surface, so geothermal heat from the sea floor will have to be around a while. Deep ocean heat content must have a geothermal component. Some of the heat will be from the Sun since there are places where surface water mixes with deep water, especially in the North Atlantic.
I doubt GHGs affect SSTs deeper than the ocean skin. Conduction is too weak, and evaporation is too rapid.
” Why did you leave off the NAIP?”
I used LIPs from this list: http://www.largeigneousprovinces.org/record
Only the ones marked O(ceanic).
Magma erupting on land or in shallow water will transfer its heat almost immediately to the atmosphere and space. No warming of deep ocean water possible.
The NAIP seems mostly subaerial.
“Some of the heat will be from the Sun since there are places where surface water mixes with deep water, especially in the North Atlantic.”
Assume you mean the Mediterranean outflow water, very salty water that sinks into the intermediate depths of the Atlantic. It does not sink to the ocean floor.
Water cooling at the surface in the Nordic sea or Arctic ocean first loses all its additional heat energy before it is dense enough to sink to the ocean floor.
The temperature in this reconstruction are based on Benthic Forams, and thus representative of temperatures near the ocean floor.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JC007255
Water cooling at the surface in the Nordic sea or Arctic ocean first loses all its additional heat energy before it is dense enough to sink to the ocean floor.
What mechanism do you envision to create temperatures like those in the Cretaceous, up to 15C warmer than today?
I don’t know the mechanism, this is like the impact of solar variations on climate in general, the mechanism is unknown, but the correlation exists, and it is very unlikely to be coincidental. We do know that overturning is more common in the Atlantic, and see figure 2 here. https://andymaypetrophysicist.com/2020/11/27/ocean-temperature-update/
A mechanism is not needed to observe the correlation.
Seems we are talking past each other. I mean how you see solar energy warming bottom water in 4 km deep oceans. Water warmed at the surface becomes less dense, so does not sink.
Water only sinks when its density is higher then that of the water it sinks into.
This means lower temperature or very much higher salinity.
Fig. 2 is a nice demonstration of warming by the geothermal flux especially in the Atlantic. Brine sinks to the ocean floor near Antarctica and travels north towards the Greenland-Iceland Ridge. During its stay on the ocean floor it warms due to the slightly
warmer ocean floor. When its density becomes lower it will leave the floor and can no longer be warmed by the geothermal flux.
“this is like the impact of solar variations on climate in general”
Solar variations have a massive impact on climate.
First of all diurnal variations and seasonal variations. But they only impact the temperature RISE of the upper ~400m or so. Longer term variations like solar cycles, Milankovitch cycles etc. etc. influence how much the variation in the temperature of the upper 400m is.
How much the actual surface temperature will be depends on the temperature of the underlying ocean.
I have shown some cooling rates in my post. Think 1K per 2-5 million years.
Do you know this site?
https://www.ewoce.org/gallery/index.html
Has very nice cross sections of our oceans.
“Do you know this site?
https://www.ewoce.org/gallery/index.html”
No I hadn’t seen it, great site, love the cross sections.
Thanks
My further response to your rebuttal of my critique can be found here:
https://planetarycfo.weebly.com/bloghome/response-to-mays-rebuttal-of-my-critique-of-his-multi-part-blog-on-agw