Posted on 02/04/2011 11:43:56 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The Greenland-Scotland Ridge looms like a great undersea barrier, stretching from East Greenland to Iceland and the Faroe Islands, and across to Scotland. The Denmark Strait is a critical checkpoint through which cold, fresher waters from northern seas flow across the ridge into the the main body of the North Atlantic Ocean. (Illustration by E. Paul Oberlander, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)From USGS, who is now apparently in the climate business, because mapping and earthquakes are sooo 20th century.
New Discoveries Improve Climate Models
Underwater Ridges Impact Ocean’s Flow of Warm Water
New discoveries on how underwater ridges impact the ocean’s circulation system will help improve climate projections.
An underwater ridge can trap the flow of cold, dense water at the bottom of the ocean. Without the ridge, deepwater can flow freely and speed up the ocean circulation pattern, which generally increases the flow of warm surface water.
Warm water on the ocean’s surface makes the formation of sea ice difficult. With less ice present to reflect the sun, surface water will absorb more sunlight and continue to warm.
U.S. Geological Survey scientists looked back 3 million years, to the mid-Pliocene warm period, and studied the influence of the North Atlantic Ocean’s Greenland-Scotland Ridge on surface water temperature.
“Sea-surface temperatures in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans were much warmer during the mid-Pliocene warm period than they are today, but climate models so far have been unable to fully understand and account for the cause of this large scale of warming,” said USGS scientist Marci Robinson. “Our research suggests that a lower height of the Greenland-Scotland Ridge during this geologic age was a contributor to the increase of poleward heat transport.”
“This is the first time the impact of a North Atlantic underwater ridge on the ocean circulation system was tested in a mid-Pliocene experiment,” said Robinson. “Understanding this process allows for more accurate predictions of factors such as ocean temperature and ice volume changes.”
Research was conducted on the mid-Pliocene because it is the most recent interval in the earth’s history in which global temperatures reached and remained at levels similar to those projected for the 21st century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Therefore, it may be one of the closest analogs in helping to understand the earth’s current and future conditions.
The article was published in the journal, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, and can be viewed online. Any journalists who are not registered with this journal and cannot view this article can contact us to have a copy emailed to them.
This research contributes to the scientific foundation needed to make sound planning decisions in response to changes in climate and land use. To learn more, visit the Climate and Land Use Change website.
The USGS led this research through the Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping group. The primary collaborators in this research are the University of Leeds, University of Bristol and the British Geological Survey. More information about PRISM research is available online.
*****************************EXCERPT**********************************
H.R. says:
“Research was conducted on the mid-Pliocene because it is the most recent interval in the earth’s history in which global temperatures reached and remained at levels similar to those projected for the 21st century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”
That kinda puts a wooden stake through the heart of “unprecedented,” eh?
I don’t want to hear it any more until something really is unprecedented.
********************************EXCERPT*************************************
Patrick Davis says:
Intersting study however, you can clearly detect these guys can smell where the money is.
**********************************EXCERPT*************************************
Lew Skannen says:
A better headline would be “New Discoveries add yet another set of parameters to complicate climate models even further.”
*******************************EXCERPT****************************************
stupidboy says:
I know a man who always completes a sentence with, “it’s God’s will”. Why do so many scientists now complete their papers with, “…because of man-made climate change”?
As far as the study of climate goes: Epistemology = Mendacious Charlatans².
Einstein wouldn’t mind, after all he did say: “…no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system.”
It’s amazing how they can state those glaring contradictions with a straight face.
********************************EXCERPT***********************************
DJ says:
Geology affecting climate? Oh, the opportunity.
IPCC will need one more chapter.
CRU will need a bigger computer.
NASA will need another satellite.
NSF will need a bigger grant budget.
…and when it’s found, in the end, that the warming is all well within the bounds of natural variability, ….
FOX news will be blamed for reporting it.
*********************************EXCERPT************************************************
Just The Facts says:
Since “Argo deployments began in 2000 and by November 2007 the array is 100% complete. “;
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/
we have literally just beginning to measure Earth’s Thermohaline Circulation;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation
http://oceanmotion.org/html/impact/conveyor.htm
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/Water/deep_ocean.html
which is caused when “wind-driven surface currents (such as the Gulf Stream) head polewards from the equatorial Atlantic Ocean, cooling all the while and eventually sinking at high latitudes (forming North Atlantic Deep Water). This dense water then flows into the ocean basins. While the bulk of it upwells in the Southern Ocean, the oldest waters (with a transit time of around 1600 years) upwell in the North Pacific (Primeau, 2005).”
In addition to wind, temperature and salinity, Earth’s rotational energy influences the Thermohaline Circulation, especially around Antarctica;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Conveyor_belt.svg
which is also called the Antarctic Circumpolar Current;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current
and the Arctic:
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455&tid=441&cid=47170&ct=61&article=20727
http://www.john-daly.com/polar/flows.jpg
as well as Earth’s Gravity;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection#Gravitational_or_buoyant_convection
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=205
and the Gravity of the Sun and the Moon during the different phases of the Saros cycle;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saros_cycle
We have 4 years of reasonable quality ocean temperature data on a cycle “with a transit time of around 1600 years”. At present, our capacity to predict changes in the Thermohaline Circulation is essentially nil.
Furthermore, “One of the “pumps” that helps drive the ocean’s global circulation suddenly switched on again last winter for the first time this decade. The finding surprised scientists who had been wondering if global warming was inhibiting the pump and did not foresee any indications that it would turn back on.
The “pump” in question is in the western North Atlantic Ocean, where pools of cold, dense water form in winter and sink beneath less-dense warmer waters. The sinking water feeds into the lower limb of a global system of currents often described as the Great Ocean Conveyor. To replace the down-flowing water, warm surface waters from the tropics are pulled northward along the Conveyor’s upper limb.”
http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12455&tid=282&cid=54347
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n1/abs/ngeo382.html
Based on our limited understanding of Earth’s climate system, any predictions about Earth’s climate system and the long term trajectory of its average temperature are, at best, educated guesses. We are still learning how to accurately measure Earth’s temperature, much less accurately predict it 50 – 100 years into the future. Those who claim to be able to accurately predict Earth’s average temperature decades into the future, are either deluding themselves, or lying.
bttt
************************************EXCERPT*******************************************
cal says:
“Warm water on the ocean’s surface makes the formation of sea ice difficult. With less ice present to reflect the sun, surface water will absorb more sunlight and continue to warm”.
Does anyone know of any research that actually measures or even calculates this effect? It is s major plank in the AGW platform and yet, while plausible, it is not entirely obvious to me that it is true.
The problems I have are:
1) In the Arctic, even in summer, the angle of incidence (to the normal) is very high. Although the average albedo of water is low it is very reflective at these large angles in the absence of waves. The pictures I see of the ice, on the other hand, often show a very rough surface which looks like it might actually absorb quite well after multiple partial reflections. Furthermore the minimum ice level (when we see the biggest variance year to year) occurs well after mid summer such that the angle of incidence is larger still. I need to be convinced that the actual annual variation in absorption is that great.
2) When I see pictures of the arctic ice I see numerous water pools sitting on the ice where the surface has melted. How does the albedo of these pools compare with the open sea? Unless the ice pool albedo is significantly higher than the sea albedo the difference in absorption between ice and sea, where the sun is strongest ( that is where pools are forming) might not be so great.
3) Simplistically, if the surface of the Arctic sea in summer is about 10K warmer than the ice, the radiation density upwards from the sea will be about 14% greater. This assumes their albedos are the same. However the exact calculation will depend on the emissivity of these two in the infra red and I do not think this is easy to estimate. But it is possible that, even if there is more sea and that it does indeed absorb more UV it may be radiating more IR and thus may be cancelling out or even reversing the warming effect.
I am not putting any of this forward as a hypothesis, since I have no idea how large these effects are. It is just that when I see something repeated many times and never see any data I begin to get twitchy. Can anyone point me to some good research to put my mind at rest?
Thanks for adding that graphic and text.
********************************EXCERPT**********************************************
pyromancer76 says:
Can we have some real scientists in the USGS, please? These pretenders must go. Perhaps the article, in contrast to this “press release(?)” is real science, This is a new discovery that ocean ridges direct ocean currents and, perhaps (therefore?), changed ocean currents affect “global temperature”!?! Have they left these ridges and ocean currents out of their “climate models” to date? Do they imagine that changes in the positions of the plates, closing/opening of oceans, developing ridges/trenches might, just might, affect ocean circulation and, therefore, “global temperature”? Let’s not even talk about underwater volcanoes, which would be part of ridge development. When I eyeball ocean temperatures today, some of the warmest in each hemisphere appear to be over these “ridges”. But then I am not a scientist.
Now that they have identified a ridge as the cause of lower “global temperature”, do they propose a massive tax-payer funded project to build higher ridges so that “global temperatures” do not “reach[ed] and remain[ed] at levels similar to those projected for the 21st century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” If so, then we can be assured that this project would be part of their “sound planning decisions in response to changes in climate and land use?”
(I will, must, stop. Like other readers I cannot get over my open-mouth astonishment that a so-called scientist has not communicated with those in other sciences, e.g., in geology, who have studied these changes in the Earth. They seem to be able to communicate only with their computers and their computers’ models.)
****************************************EXCERPT*****************************************
“INTERNATIONAL BATHYMETRIC CHART OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN”
*************************snip****************************
From USGS, who is now apparently in the climate business, because mapping and earthquakes are sooo 20th century.
LOL, I have to agree but if you take a look at this amazing “INTERNATIONAL BATHYMETRIC CHART OF THE ARCTIC OCEAN” you can see why the USGS is so sexed to explain some of the geologic formations.
I’d say they should go for it, I’d love to know their opinion about the forces and events necessary to create the Abyssal Plains and Ridges on the Ocean floor.
It’s a great footprint of history without any explanation I’ve ever seen.
Who cares if their using the Climate meme to explore but one would think they could just as easily justify the funding if they simply inspired us with the real benefit?
The white are in the upper right of the above image is Greenland....(which may have been obvious ) and the northpole is approx in the center of the sphere.
Too many dinosaurs being raised to feed cave-men I suppose.
Sphere of course is 3 - dimensional and we have a circle...in 2 dimensions...
********************
Reverting to Math Teacher verbiage...
I wonder how much money the USGS received to carry out these studies and how many other duplicate studies are going on.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
