Monday, August 20, 2012

New paper finds Southern Oceans are losing heat

A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters finds from observations that the Southern Oceans show an annual net heat loss of -10 Wm-2. The paper is the first to study annual heat flux between the atmosphere and the Southern Oceans, a "key component of the global climate system: insulating the Antarctic polar region from the subtropics, transferring climate signals throughout the world's oceans and forming the southern component of the global overturning circulation." The finding contradicts warmist claims that the oceans are gaining 'missing heat' due to an increase in greenhouse gases.


GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L16606, 8 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2012GL052290
Key Points
  • Southern Ocean air-sea fluxes are under-observed, leading to large uncertainty
  • The first year-long air-sea flux observations quantify an annual cycle
  • Shows seasonal cycle, small annual net ocean heat loss and extreme events
E. W. Schulz
Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
S. A. Josey
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, Southampton, UK
R. Verein
Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
The Southern Ocean is a key component of the global climate system: insulating the Antarctic polar region from the subtropics, transferring climate signals throughout the world's oceans and forming the southern component of the global overturning circulation. However, the air-sea fluxes that drive these processes are severely under-observed due to the harsh and remote location. This paucity of reference observations has resulted in large uncertainties in ship-based, numerical weather prediction, satellite and derived flux products. Here, we report observations from the Southern Ocean Flux Station (SOFS); the first successful air-sea flux mooring deployment in this ocean. The mooring was deployed at 47°S, 142°E for March 2010 to March 2011 and returned measurements of near surface meteorological variables and radiative components of the heat exchange. These observations enable the first accurate quantification of the annual cycle of net air-sea heat exchange and wind stress from a Southern Ocean location. They reveal a high degree of variability in the net heat flux with extreme turbulent heat loss events, reaching −470 Wm−2 in the daily mean, associated with cold air flowing from higher southern latitudes. The observed annual mean net air-sea heat flux is a small net ocean heat loss of −10 Wm−2, with seasonal extrema of 139 Wm−2 in January and −79 Wm−2 in July. The novel observations made with the SOFS mooring provide a key point of reference for addressing the high level of uncertainty that currently exists in Southern Ocean air-sea flux datasets.

2 comments:

  1. Ah, ocean heat content. Another of my favourite topics along with cloudiness data, jetstream behaviour and solar variability.

    So the southern oceans are losing energy are they ?

    Not recharging as they ‘should’.during La Nina events ?

    Quelle surprise with higher global albedo resulting from more clouds and meridional / equatorward jets.

    All those surges of cold air from the south pole to Australia, South America and South Africa creating more clouds and cutting off insolation.

    Meanwhile the Arctic has pretty much lost its ‘hat’ and is pumping the remaining warmth in the north Atlantic out to space at a high rate.

    In due course the bleed of energy to space from the Arctic is going to meet the reduced warmth from the southern oceans.

    Not many warm seasons left, methinks.


    “with extreme turbulent heat loss events, reaching −470 Wm−2 in the daily mean, associated with cold air flowing from higher southern latitudes. ”

    Didn’t Marcel Leroux propose just such events sucking energy out from the oceans when his mobile polar highs moved equatorward into the mid latitudes ?

    This paper suggests that such events can make the difference between net energy gain and net energy loss.

    And such events happen more often and for longer when solar activity is low.

    Stephen Wilde.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Steven, I appreciate and have learned much from your commentary on climate issues.

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