Sunday, May 10, 2015
The Ocean and the Ill-Defined "Climate"
The Tallbloke site says "ocean makes climate", with 2 graphs. My response:
I don't know whether the last "430 words" [of the original post, linked to by tallbloke] address the direction of energy flow, but these two graphs do not. The ocean covers 70% of the surface, so one would worry if variations in the GMST and the GMSST did not largely agree. What these graphs tell me--and should tell anyone who didn't actively ignore my Venus/Earth temperatures comparison--is that it is the atmosphere, stupid (I add the "stupid" lovingly, not hatefully, sports fans), that controls the global mean SST (and of course the GMST). I would say (and I'm no expert, but at least I have some common sense) the oceans make weather, not global climate as defined by the GMST (and while they can make regional or local climate--and when are you all going to realize that that is the only "climate change" that can occur, so long as the Sun continues to shine on this world--they only do so in tandem with other local factors like latitude, topography--like mountains, affecting the prevailing winds--and the degree of forestation). The public and internet debate on "climate science" remains a case study in incompetence all around. This generation is failing a critical test.
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ReplyDeleteYou can forget the first sentence above, about the direction of energy flow; I only wrote that because "tallbloke" stressed that, as being from ocean to atmosphere. The direction of energy flow is irrelevant, because the atmosphere is warmed to its governing equilibrium state--the vertical temperature gradient of the Standard Atmosphere, which is precisely confirmed by the Venus/Earth comparison--by direct absorption of incident solar radiation, not by heat from the surface (the latter is responsible for winds and weather--i.e., local and transient variations, not global--only).