Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Does the IPCC represent a reliable scientific organization? In the meantime, many scientists have convincingly demonstrated that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is not a reliable scientific organization. It does not hurt to give a brief overview of the considerations.
Let’s start with the mission of the IPCC. The aim is to show that the human influence on the climate is disastrous. This is not a balanced scientific question, but an ideologically tinted approach.
If there were indeed an existential climate crisis, you would bring in the best physicists to tackle that problem. IPCC members are put forward by the government, and you won’t find any skeptics in those circles. In fact, the pallbearers are usually not scientists with an impressive track record, but political followers.
IPCC reports are hardly read, except for the summaries for policymakers. These are created by a show of hands, where the hands are raised by the above-mentioned government representatives. That is a parody of natural science.
The IPCC is guided by climate models. Moreover, the IPCC has specific ideas about which factors determine the climate. In doing so, all kinds of factors that probably play an important role are omitted in advance. Not my idea of independent responsible science. Let’s first look at the IPCC modeling. First of all, passages on the KNMI and IPCC websites of the climate state.
“Internal variations of the climate system beyond monthly timescales, apart from the contribution of the positive trend in multi-decade surface temperature that is currently prominent (Oldenborgh et al. 2012) and oceanic variability (Hazeleger et al. 2013), are difficult to predict and on timescales of 30 to 100 years, useful predictions are basically impossible. Not only because of the large contribution of natural variability, but also because the external forcing related to human activities is considered unpredictable. Any attempt to make climate predictions on a relatively small spatial scale, such as the Netherlands or even Western Europe, for several decades ahead, is not expected to yield useful results.” The KNMI therefore concludes that predictions and expectations are not possible and that climate predictions do not lead to useful results. TheIPCC says: “Scenarios are images of the future, or alternative futures. They are not predictions or forecasts. Rather, each scenario is an alternative view of how the future might unfold. A series of scenarios helps to understand possible future developments of complex systems. Some systems, which are well understood and for which complete information is available, can be modeled with some certainty, as is often the case in the natural sciences, and their future states can be predicted. However, many physical and social systems are poorly understood, and the information about the relevant variables is so incomplete that they can only be understood by intuition and are best communicated through images and stories. Predictions are not possible in such cases.”
By the way, these passages have disappeared from the websites in question!
Greenhouse Gases
Greenhouse gases, especially CO2, are the IPCC’s bad guy. In reality, water vapor is by far the most important greenhouse gas, but that is not opportune, so it is concealed. There is also a logarithmic dependence between the concentration of a greenhouse gas and the resulting warming. In practice, there is less and less warming with ever higher greenhouse gas concentrations.
This realization is old. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, an astrophysicist who worked on radiation transfer in stellar atmospheres around 1960, developed the theory. Chandrasekhar won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983. The Dutchman Wim Witteman made an important contribution, and pioneering work has been done by Van Wijngaarden and Happer with beautiful mathematical 2n stream techniques.
The ICC also recognizes the logarithmic dependence, but you will not find it in the summary for policymakers. Nevertheless, this result is crucial. Ultimately, when the CO2 content is doubled, the climate sensitivity increases by a small 1%. Hardly a reason for a crisis.
The forcing as a result of greenhouse gases can be well calculated with AMO physics. What is much less known is the climate sensitivity: how much forcing causes how much warming and where. More and more it is becoming clear that this climate sensitivity (including the alleged feedback by water vapor) was heavily overestimated in the past. There is an extensive literature on this.
I refer to the publications below to underline the above points (and more). In these links you will also find a multitude of references and graphs.
The heat flows into the atmosphere due to greenhouse gases are not the most important heat flows on our planet. In the atmosphere, the Hadley cells are at least as important. The sea currents also transport a multitude of heat compared to the atmosphere because of the enormous heat capacity of water.
Due to the focus of IPCC on CO2, other factors that influence the climate are conveniently forgotten: the role of the sun, Milankovics cycles, etc. It is therefore striking that the “predictions” of models deviate very strongly from the observations. Following Feynman, the models are apparently incorrect. This conclusion is a no go for the IPCC.
In the links above, I will discuss all kinds of factors in more detail. The conclusion that the IPCC is a political and not a scientific body is confirmed on every point.
The Failure of IPCC
At first glance, measuring the Earth’s temperature seems like a trivial matter. You stick a thermometer in the soil and read it regularly, and you’re done. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. How representative are those measurements if the measuring points are not evenly distributed over the earth’s surface in sufficient numbers? Around 1850 there was only a somewhat comprehensive network in North America and parts of Europe. To this day, the number of measuring stations in Antarctica is extremely limited. Why do the measuring points that change regularly give a true picture of the entire earth’s surface? So, they don’t do that.
Many of the current measuring stations were previously located in places where the temperature disturbance was small. Nowadays, cities have advanced far beyond their original boundaries, and monitoring stations are now located in places (in suburbs, near airports, etc.) that do not meet the scientific requirements for the placement of measuring stations. This Urban Island effect is significant and a significant part of the warming formulated by the IPCC is due to it.
IPCC actually only talks about warming of the planet as a result of CO2, and uses the average temperature of the earth’s surface as a benchmark. This position has curious consequences. If you calculate the average of the temperature in Greenland and in the Sahara, then of course you get figure. but unfortunately, meaningless numbers that have nothing to do with climate. No one lives under such average temperatures, so the relevance to humanity of such an approach is nil.
Another sore point where the IPCC fails concerns climate models. Making those models is a purely theoretical exercise, but the real test is of course the comparison with hard observations. Since 1978, have been able to measure the temperatures of layers in the troposphere with the help of satellites. Measurements with balloons also play a role. The model predictions show very large differences (up to factor of 3) with the theoretical models. The simple truth is therefore that the models should be rejected.
To make matters worse, the IPCC has had to acknowledge that the most extreme models (the RPC 8.5 global warming scenario), which were routinely put forward by alarmists as “business as usual”, are now finally qualified as very unlikely after many years of criticism by skeptics. This pretty much means the death knell for the credibility of these kinds of models and their alarmist proponents.
The above is only an anthology of the problems that years of faith and trust in the IPCC have brought The conclusion is gradually inescapable that the IPC is an ideological construct and certainly not a scientifically reliable organization.
Actually, we already know enough when we listen to the recent words of António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, the ninth secretary of the United Nations and someone who certainly does not excel in his knowledge of physics:
“The era of global warming has ended, and we are now in the era of global boiling”. I rest my case.” – António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres
It would be useful to give an overview of ALL the reasons why the IPCC is unreliable. Above I gave a small anthology, but there is a mer a boire on this point. If there is interest in making an attempt to do so, please let me know.
Dr. C.A. de Lange is a CO2 Coalition member and Guest Professor in the Faculty of Science at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and was a Member of the Senate in The Netherlands from 7 June 2011 until 1 May 2015 as well as the Chairman of The Netherlands Organization for Pensions from 12 May 2009 until 10 January 2011. He has a PhD in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Bristol (UK) in June 1969 with a Dissertation on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance in Oriented Molecules.
“There’s no such thing as a scientific consensus,” Nir Shaviv, a Professor at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says in response to a question about what he thinks of the widespread claim that there is a scientific consensus on the anthropogenic nature of climate change. “In science, we deal with open questions, and I think that the question of climate change is an open question. There are a lot of things which many scientists are still arguing about,” he explains.
“There’s no such thing as a scientific consensus,” Nir Shaviv, a Professor at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem says in response to a question about what he thinks of the widespread claim that there is a scientific consensus on the anthropogenic nature of climate change. “In science, we deal with open questions, and I think that the question of climate change is an open question. There are a lot of things which many scientists are still arguing about,” he explains.
Indeed, there are scientists who say that climate change is caused entirely by humans and the situation is very dire. But then there are those who say that although humans are causing much of the warming, the situation is not as bad as we are being told by politicians and activists through the media. Some think that CO2 plays an important part in the current warming trend and some believe its role is insignificant.
Although Shaviv assesses that some of the warming in the 20th century is indeed the result of increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, most of the change is a natural phenomenon. “My research has led me to strongly believe that based on all the evidence that’s accumulated over the past around 25 years, a large part of the warming is actually not because of humans, but because of the solar effect,” he says.
Up to two-thirds of the warming comes from the Sun
As an astrophysicist, Shaviv’s research has largely focused on understanding how solar activity and the Earth’s climate are linked. In fact, he says, at least half, and possibly two-thirds, of the 20th century’s warming is related to increased solar activity. Shaviv has also shown that cosmic rays and their activity influence cloud cover formation, also causing the climate to change. He has been working on this issue together with Danish astrophysicist Dr Henrik Svensmark.
In any case, Shaviv says, if solar activity and cosmic ray effects are taken into account, the climate sensitivity remains relatively low, or simply put – an increase in the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere cannot cause much warming. Scientists have long attempted to calculate how much a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would raise the temperature of the Earth. The first attempt was made more than 100 years ago by the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, who suggested an answer of up to six degrees Celsius. Since then, this number has been revised downwards, but not enough, according to Shaviv. “If you open the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports, then the canonical range is anywhere between one and a half or two, depending on which report you look at, to maybe four and a half degrees increase for CO2 doubling. What I find is that climate sensitivity is somewhere between one and one and a half degree increase per CO2 doubling,” Shaviv says, adding that he does not expect the temperature rise in the 21st century to be very high.
Explaining the warming that has happened primarily with CO2 is where the IPCC’s scientific reports err, Shaviv says, by failing to account for the solar effect. And because they do not account for it, but there is still a need to explain the temperature rise, the rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, which has been attributed to human influences, has been used to explain it. Shaviv explains that this is the wrong answer as it fails to take into account all the contributing factors.
Is the planet boiling?
But is this temperature rise causing a climate crisis? Shaviv’s answer to the question is simple and clear: “No.” He explains that the average temperature on the planet has risen by one degree Celsius since about 1900, but this is not unprecedented. We are familiar, for example, with the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings charted the coast of Greenland, including its northern part, which today is covered with ice even in summer. “This kind of climate variation has always happened. Some of the warming now is anthropogenic, but it’s not a crisis in the sense that the temperature is going to increase by five degrees in a century and we’re all doomed. We just have to adapt to changes. Some of them are natural and some are not, but they’re not large,” Shaviv explains.
It has been widely reported that both 2023 and 2024 were the warmest years on record. Referring to this rise in temperatures, UN Secretary-General António Guterres already in July 2023 declared that we have entered an “era of global boiling”. Shaviv says that of course, we can have average surface temperatures that are highest if we only look back 100 or 150 years. “If you go back a thousand years it was just as warm. If you go back 5,000 years it was definitely warmer. So, It doesn’t mean much,” he explains.
And if you look at a longer time scale, warmer periods have alternated with colder periods throughout. Also, over the last 100,000 years, the Earth has been in an ice age for most of that time, and the retreat of the ice in Europe and North America happened about 12,000 years ago.
Do extreme weather events prove a climate crisis?
However, it is often claimed in the media that we are in an unprecedented and critical climatic situation and all the reported extreme weather events are said to be proving it.
In reality, there is no indication that most extreme weather events are more frequent or in any way more severe than in the past. Take hurricanes, for example. It’s true that the damage they cause has increased over time, but Shaviv says that’s because more people live near the coast. “If you look at the statistics of hurricanes making landfall in the US, which is a relatively reliable record, then you see that there is no significant change,” he says. Shaviv adds that, in reality, there is not even any reason to expect a warming climate to bring more hurricanes. “Sure, you need hotter waters to generate hurricanes, but you also need the gradient, you need the temperature difference between the equator and the subtropics in order to drive the hurricanes. And warmer Earth actually has a smaller temperature difference. So it’s not even clear ab initio whether you’re going to have more hurricanes or less,” Shaviv explains.
Large wildfires, for example, are also associated with climate warming, but Shaviv says there is no reason for this either. “In the US in the 1930s the annual amount of area which was burnt a year was way larger than what it is today,” he says, adding that the reality is that a large proportion of fires are caused by poor forest management, which fails to clear the forest floor of flammable material.
Towards nuclear energy
In the light of the above, climate change does not make it necessary to abandon fossil fuels. However, Shaviv says we should still move towards cleaner energy. Firstly, burning fossil fuels causes real environmental pollution – in particular coal, which is still on the rise worldwide. Secondly, fossil fuels will run out one day.
But mankind cannot replace these fuels with wind and solar power. “First of all, it’s very expensive. You can see that any country that has a lot of any of those, they pay much more for electricity,” Shaviv says. He suggests looking at electricity prices in countries such as Germany or Denmark, where wind and solar have been developed with billions of euros of government aid, and comparing them with, for example, France which uses nuclear power. What makes this form of energy so expensive is its intermittent nature – generation takes place when the sun shines and the wind blows. So, to guarantee electricity supply, either huge storage capacity or backup systems, such as gas-fired power stations, are needed.
Shaviv believes that in the future, much more reliance should be placed on nuclear power, which does not have the pollution problems of fossil fuels and, unlike wind and solar, can provide a stable energy supply. However, the critics of this plan remind us of past nuclear accidents – Chernobyl in Ukraine, Three Mile Island in the USA and Fukushima in Japan. Each of these accidents had its own causes – in the case of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, technical defects mixed with human error, and in the case of Fukushima, natural forces, in other words, the earthquake and tsunami. In the case of Fukushima in 2011, however, no one died as a direct result of the accident at the nuclear power plant (though thousands of people died as a result of the tsunami that devastated the coastline).
Shaviv says there is no point in comparing the safety of nuclear plants that have suffered accidents in the past with today’s technology. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem in the sense that we can have an extremely safe design,” he says, adding that the wider deployment of nuclear power will happen whether the West joins in or not. “If you look at China, which is energy-hungry, they don’t care about public opinion as much as we do in the West. And they don’t have as much problem with regulation. So, they’re just going to run forward and instead of building or opening a coal power plant every few weeks, in a few years, they’re going to be opening a nuclear power plant every few weeks,” Shaviv says. He adds that the West would also be wise to participate in this development, rather than moving in the opposite direction.
They say the victor writes the history of a period, and that may be so. But when enough time has passed it must be the case that the present will be seen as truly bizarre when it comes to the demise of the natural sciences and our understanding of the physical world around us. This must especially be the case when it comes to how energy moves in it, especially heat.
They say the victor writes the history of a period, and that may be so. But when enough time has passed it must be the case that the present will be seen as truly bizarre when it comes to the demise of the natural sciences and our understanding of the physical world around us. This must especially be the case when it comes to how energy moves in it, especially heat.
Thermal energy, or heat, is the energy that comes from the movement of atoms and molecules in a substance. Heat increases when these particles move faster.
Rather than acknowledging that most of the heating on planet Earth comes from the Sun, and how this energy is distributed changes with the seasons because of the tilt of the Earth relative to the Sun. Instead of acknowledging this – and considering how most of the heating occurs at the equator with the heat transferred to the poles – we have even the right of politics promoting the nonsense idea that global warming from carbon dioxide is real and it’s manmade. I’m quoting Bjorn Lomborg, that is what he keeps repeating, and Jordon Peterson has made him the chief scientists, for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship that is attempting to rewrite the story for the right of politics in The West.
This is the meme that has swept across the West with the ruling class pretending their scientists, who are often just political scientists, can not only know the average temperature of the Earth, but also control the temperature of the Earth.
To be able to do this, they will, of course, need to be able to dial back this heating as it moves from the equator to the poles, or should they be dialling it up?
Which should it be?
To dial down the average temperature of the Earth, should we be seeking to increase the yearly average heat transport poleward, or slow it down?
Part I in this series on the Sun and climate described how we know that the Sun has been responsible for some of the major climate changes that have occurred over the past 11,000 years. In Part II, we considered a range of changes that the Sun is causing in the climate today, including changes in the planet’s rotation and in the polar vortex that are changing the frequency of cold winters.
Part I in this series on the Sun and climate described how we know that the Sun has been responsible for some of the major climate changes that have occurred over the past 11,000 years. In Part II, we considered a range of changes that the Sun is causing in the climate today, including changes in the planet’s rotation and in the polar vortex that are changing the frequency of cold winters.
None of the evidence for the Sun’s effect on climate we reviewed is included in the IPCC reports. The role of the IPCC is to assess the risk of human-induced climate change, not to find the causes of climate change, which since its inception has been assumed to be due to our emissions.
Main solar theories
Nevertheless, some scientists continue to try to explain the Sun’s effect on climate and have developed three different explanations. These three theories are not mutually exclusive. The fact that one is true does not mean that the others are false.
The first theory is based on the direct effect on climate of changes in solar radiation. Because the effect is proportional to the cause, we say it is linear.
This theory has been defended by Dr. Soon, Prof. Scafetta and 35 other scientists in a recent paper.[i] To explain the Sun’s effect on climate, these scientists make their own temperature reconstruction, based on rural stations to avoid the urban heat effect, and their own reconstruction of solar activity over the last two centuries. Figure 1 left shows their reconstruction compared to the one accepted by the IPCC on the right. The differences between the two would explain a much larger effect of the Sun on climate than that accepted by the IPCC.
Figure 1. Left graph shows in black a temperature reconstruction using only rural stations from four regions in NOAA’s GHCN dataset, and in orange a high variability solar series. Right graph shows in black a temperature reconstruction with urban and rural stations and in orange an IPCC’s AR6 recommended solar series (from Soon et al. 2023).
In the second theory, it is cosmic rays that change the climate, and the Sun’s magnetic field regulates the number of cosmic rays that reach the Earth. It is therefore an indirect effect, but also a linear one, since the change in cosmic rays would be proportional to the activity of the Sun.
This theory, proposed by Dr. Svensmark, is based on the fact that cosmic rays create ions in the atmosphere that act as cloud seeds.[ii] Part of the theory has been confirmed by experiments in a particle accelerator, but it is not yet known whether the effect is significant enough. One problem is that cosmic rays have increased while satellites show a decrease in the low cloud layer, which may actually contribute to the observed warming.
Figure 2. Percentage cloud cover anomaly (black) from EUMETSAT CM SAF dataset. Cosmic ray data (red) from the Oulu neutron monitor database.
The third theory is the one I have proposed.[iii] In it, the Sun acts indirectly on the climate, and its effect is non-linear because other factors are involved. Non-linear means that the effect is not proportional to the cause. This explains why there is no direct correlation between the Sun and surface temperatures, although the Sun’s effect is important. What is this process, capable of changing the climate in a natural way, that scientists have not properly accounted for? It is heat transport.
Figure 3. Three main types of solar theories based on the direct or indirect effect of different components of solar variability. Less developed hypotheses based on solar particles and solar wind have also been proposed.
Changes in heat transport change the climate
What is heat transport?
Most of the Sun’s energy reaches the Earth in the tropics, creating a zone of excess energy that receives more energy than it emits, shown in red in Figure 4. Outside the tropics, there are two energy deficit zones, which receive less energy than they emit and whose size depends on the seasons. They are shown in blue in Figure 4, which presents the situation during winter in the Northern Hemisphere. These imbalances should result in continuous warming in the red zone and continuous cooling in the blue zones. That this does not happen is due to the transport of heat, which also transports moisture and clouds, and is very important for the climate. The climate of any region depends on insolation and the transport of heat and moisture.
Figure 4. Actual graphic of the mean top of the atmosphere net radiation by latitude for December-February, showing positive values in red and negative values in blue, placed in a cartoon showing the Earth’s tilt with respect to the Sun. The direction of heat and moisture transport is shown with purple arrows.
Heat transport is a particularly difficult climate process to study and some scientists who research it believe current theories do not satisfactorily describe it.[iv] The seasonal variation in heat transport is very important. Because of the tilt of the planet’s axis, much more heat is transported in the winter than in the summer.
In the first chapter of the 6th Assessment Report, the IPCC provides a clear explanation of climate change, defining its causes as follows: “The natural and anthropogenic factors responsible for climate change are known today as radiative ‘drivers’ or ‘forcers’. The net change in the energy budget at the top of the atmosphere, resulting from a change in one or more such drivers, is termed ‘radiative forcing’.” According to the IPCC, heat transport is not considered a radiative forcing and, therefore, not a cause of global climate change. Its effects only contribute to internal or regional variability. This perspective is reflected in the limited attention given to heat transport in the IPCC reports. In the massive 2,391-page 6th Assessment Report, heat transport is only briefly mentioned in a 5-page subsection on ocean heat content.[v] In this subsection, we learn that climate change is due to heat addition, while changes in ocean circulation cause heat redistribution.
To the IPCC, variations in heat transport have not contributed to recent climate change because they only redistribute heat within the climate system, while recent climate change is due to heat being added to the system. Therefore, heat transport cannot cause global climate change, only regional changes.
Figure 5. The first objection to changes in heat transport being a cause of climate change is incorrect because the greenhouse effect is very uneven, so emissivity is altered by poleward heat transport.
Is this true? Actually, it is not. It is rarely mentioned, but 75% of the Earth’s greenhouse effect is due to water vapor and water clouds.[vi] And their distribution by latitude is extremely uneven. The tropical atmosphere contains a lot of water, and the polar atmosphere in winter contains almost none. Therefore, the greenhouse effect in the polar regions is extremely small, and the transport of heat from the tropics to the Arctic changes the emissions. This means that the total is not constant, so heat transport has the ability to change the global climate through changes in water vapor and cloud distributions.
In the 1960s, Jacob Bjerknes stated that if the top of the atmosphere fluxes and oceanic heat storage remained relatively stable, the total heat transported through the climate system would also remain constant. This implies that changes in atmospheric or oceanic transport should be compensated by changes of the same magnitude and opposite sign in the other one. This Bjerknes compensation has not been empirically demonstrated but is present in all models despite its physical basis being unknown.[vii] If the compensation is true it should result in transport being constant and, thus, not a cause for climate change.
Figure 6. The second objection to changes in heat transport being a cause of climate change is incorrect because heat transport to the Arctic does not show the expected compensation.
But again, reality is different. Heat transport can increase in the atmosphere and also in the ocean, changing the amount of energy transported. In fact, this is logical because an important part of ocean transport is in surface currents driven by wind, which is also responsible for heat transport through the atmosphere. If the wind increases, the transport in both compartments should increase.
Figure 7. Upper graph, tropospheric winter latent energy transport across 70°N by planetary scale waves (Rydsaa et al., 2021). Lower graph ocean heat transport to the Arctic and Nordic Seas in Terawatts (Tsubouchi et al. 2021).
This is also supported by data from two studies of Arctic heat transport in recent decades.[viii] Both atmospheric and oceanic heat transport increased in the early 21st century. In the Arctic, winter temperatures have risen sharply. Obviously, that heat has to be transported there, because the Sun does not shine in the Arctic in winter, so no heat is generated. And the increase in temperature has greatly increased the emission of infrared radiation into space. Remember that the greenhouse effect is very weak in the Arctic at this time of year, and heat is not retained. Because of the warming of the Arctic caused by increased transport, the planet is losing more energy than it was losing before.
Figure 8. Upper graph, Arctic winter temperature anomaly. Data from Danish Meteorological Institute. Lower graph, 5-year November-April average outgoing longwave radiation anomaly at 70-90°N top of the atmosphere from NOAA data (black) and solar activity (sunspots, red) with a decadal Gaussian smoothing (thick line).
So, what has caused this warming of the Arctic in the 21st century? CO₂ has been rising sharply since the 1950s and its effects on radiation are instantaneous, they do not take 50 years. There’s also talk of it being a consequence of the warming that’s been going on since the mid-1970s, but why should it take two decades for the heat to reach the Arctic? We have the Sun. Arctic warming and increased outgoing radiation coincide in time with the decline in solar activity that began in the mid-1990s with solar cycle 23, which, as we have seen, was accompanied by a weakening of the polar vortex.
How do we know that the change in solar activity caused the change in transport and the warming of the Arctic? Because it has been doing so for thousands of years. A study by leading scientists looked at the relationship between solar activity and Greenland’s temperature and found that over the past 4,000 years, solar activity has been inversely correlated with Greenland’s temperature.[ix] When solar activity decreased, Greenland warmed, as it is doing now. It also says that there have been periods in those 4,000 years when Greenland was warmer than it is now, which is inconsistent with being caused by our emissions.
How the Sun changes heat transport
The signal from the Sun is received in the stratospheric ozone layer, which absorbs much of the ultraviolet radiation. This is a very sensitive receiver because UV radiation changes 30 times more than total radiation (3%). But in addition, the increase in UV radiation creates more ozone, which also increases by 3%. With more ozone and more UV radiation, the ozone layer experiences a temperature increase of 1°C with solar activity, which is much more than at the surface.
The ozone response to changes in solar activity modifies the temperature and pressure gradients, and this causes the speed of the zonal winds in the stratosphere to change, as we saw earlier. When the activity is high, the gradients become larger and this causes the wind speed to increase, and when the activity is low, the gradients become smaller and the wind speed decreases. In the troposphere, atmospheric waves called planetary waves are generated, and when the wind is weak, they reach the stratosphere and hit the polar vortex, weakening it. But when the wind is strong, they do not manage to enter the stratosphere and the vortex remains strong. Changes in the vortex are transmitted to the troposphere, altering atmospheric circulation and heat transport.
Figure 9. Cartoon showing the mechanism by which solar activity regulates planetary wave activity in the stratosphere and the polar vortex strength and, through it, winter atmospheric circulation and heat transport toward the Arctic.
Planetary waves are atmospheric waves of the Rossby type. The largest storms on the planet fit into their undulations and have a huge impact on meteorology. They are responsible for some of the most extreme atmospheric phenomena, such as the heat waves in Europe in 2003 and in Russia in 2010, and the floods in Pakistan in 2010, in China in 2012, and in Europe in 2013. The amount of energy they move is staggering. Planetary waves are the largest of all, and under certain conditions can reach the stratosphere, hitting the polar vortex and weakening it.
Fifty years ago, a scientist suggested that if the Sun had an effect on climate, planetary waves were a possible candidate for the mechanism.[x] But no one investigated this possibility, and the paper was forgotten.
A 2011 study finally proved him right, showing that planetary waves in the Northern Hemisphere respond to the solar cycle.[xi] Figure 10 shows the sunspot cycle in red and the amplitude of the planetary waves in black. We observe large oscillations from one year to another because the mechanism is not exclusive to the Sun and there are other causes that affect it. This is the difficulty of studying non-linear phenomena. But the effect of the solar cycle is clear, because the highest amplitudes occur in periods of low solar activity.
Figure 10. Planetary wave amplitude index based on the averaged amplitude of wavenumbers 1–3 averaged over 55–75°N in 70–20 hPa (black, from Powell & Xu, 2011). Annual sunspot index (red, from SILSO). Purple circles indicate high wave amplitude years that coincide with low solar activity.
The effect this has on the polar vortex was discussed in Part II and is shown in Figure 11. More active solar cycles, with fewer planetary waves, have faster zonal winds and stronger vortices, while during less active solar cycles the increase in planetary waves weakens the vortex.
Figure 11. Monthly sunspot number (red), cumulative anomaly of zonal wind speed at 54.4°N, 10 hPa (blue, Lu et al. 2008), and the mean vortex geopotential height anomaly at 20 hPa (purple, NCEP, Christiansen 2010).
We have already mentioned the effect this has on the frequency of cold winters in the Northern Hemisphere, but how does this mechanism explain the change in global climate?
How the Sun changes the climate
My theory is that when solar activity is high, the zonal winds are strengthened, preventing the planetary waves from entering the stratosphere and allowing the vortex to remain strong throughout the winter. By acting as a wall, the vortex reduces heat transport to the Arctic in winter, and this causes temperatures to drop, reducing the infrared emissions to space that allow heat to escape from the Earth. All of these steps have been verified by scientists. The result is that by reducing emissions, the planet conserves more energy, which can cause it to get warmer. This is the situation that occurred from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, when the planet experienced strong warming under high solar activity.
Figure 12. Climate-changing mechanism through changes in heat transport as a result of high solar activity.
When solar activity is low, the zonal winds subside, allowing planetary waves to enter the stratosphere and hit the vortex, weakening it. As the wall weakens, heat transport to the Arctic increases, causing it to warm. This warming increases emissions to space, causing the planet to conserve less energy. The result is that the planet either warms more slowly or cools, depending on other factors. Because this mechanism regulates the amount of heat that enters the Arctic in winter, I have named my theory “The Winter Gatekeeper”.
Figure 13. Climate-changing mechanism through changes in heat transport as a result of low solar activity.
It is important to note that this is not a solar theory, although it does explain the Sun’s effect on climate. Variations in heat transport are a general cause of climate change. Perhaps the most important one. Any factor that persistently changes the amount of heat transported becomes a cause of climate change, and this includes plate tectonics and orbital variations. This theory has the ability to explain the ice age of the last 34 million years, and the growth and shrinkage of the ice sheets in glaciations and interglacials.[xii] The explanations it provides fit the evidence better than the CO₂ changes.
The solar mechanism I propose has the following features:
It is indirect, because what changes the climate is not the change in solar energy, but the change in heat transport.
It is exclusively due to changes in the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation.
It produces dynamic changes in the stratosphere, which is the part of the climate system whose response to the Sun is important for climate change.
The mechanism works by altering the propagation of planetary waves, as proposed 50 years ago.
Since there are multiple causes that affect this propagation, the cause-effect relationship becomes non-linear, which makes it very difficult to study because we humans think linearly.
It affects the polar vortex, which is responsible for transmitting what happens in the stratosphere to the troposphere, determining the position of the jet streams and the atmospheric circulation in winter.
In its final part, the mechanism alters the transport of heat to the Arctic in winter. This is the most visible effect of the Sun on climate. Winter temperatures in the Arctic and the frequency of cold winters in eastern North America and Eurasia reveal the Sun’s effect on climate.
Finally, the mechanism works because the greenhouse effect is extremely heterogeneous across the planet. It is a very thick blanket in the tropics, leaving the poles exposed. Increasing CO₂ doesn’t change that because most of the greenhouse effect is due to water, which changes much more than CO₂.
This theory explains many of the problems that the Sun’s effect on climate has always had:
Figure 14. The solar part of the Winter Gatekeeper theory provides an explanation for several questions and solar-climate related phenomena, some of them not properly explained before.
It explains the mismatch between the small change in solar energy and the resulting climate effect. The change in solar energy only provides the signal, like the finger pushing the button on an elevator. The energy to change the climate is provided by planetary waves, which carry very large amounts of energy and act on sensitive parts of the climate.
It explains the lack of cause-and-effect correlation claimed by NASA and the IPCC. It is a non-linear process that cannot be required to have a linear correlation.
It explains the recent warming of the Arctic, the timing of which cannot be explained by CO₂ or global warming.
It explains the recent increase in cold winters in the Northern Hemisphere that scientists cannot adequately explain.
It explains changes in the Earth’s rotation due to the Sun that no one has been able to explain. Changes in atmospheric circulation induced by the Sun are what alter the angular momentum responsible for variations in the Earth’s rotation.
It explains the cumulative effect of changes in solar activity on climate. Why grand solar minimums have such a large effect, proportional to their duration. Low activity alters the energy balance by increasing emissions throughout the duration of the grand minimum, progressively reducing the energy of the climate system and causing the effects to become larger and global over time.
It explains the greater impact of solar-induced climate change on the Northern Hemisphere, as it affects the heat transported to the Arctic. The Antarctic polar vortex is much stronger and less sensitive to solar forcing. This is why the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, caused by solar forcing, were much more pronounced in the Northern Hemisphere.
It also explains a significant part of the 20th century warming. The 70 years of grand solar maximum in that century caused the planet to increase its energy and warm up.
Conclusion
The Sun has a lot to say about future climate, but we are not listening. Long-term changes in solar activity are cyclical, and what adds to warming now will subtract from it in the future. This theory does not deny that changes in CO₂ affect climate, and indeed it is based on differences in emissions due to changes in the greenhouse effect, just not in time, but in space, with latitude. But it is undeniable that if the Sun has played a relevant role in the warming of the 20th century, it reduces the role our emissions have played.
This article can also be watched in a 19-minute video with English and French subtitles.
More than 3,400 years ago, Joshua led the Hebrew people across the Jordan River into the land that is now Israel. It would become “a land flowing with milk and honey.”
At least the central, northern, and Galilee (Kineret) regions would; they generally received enough rainfall to sustain ancient nomadic and agricultural communities. In the south, the Negev Desert around and below Be’er Sheva and Abraham’s famous well was too parched for much more than camel stops. In 1900, Be’er Sheva was home to just 300 hardy souls, and even today, most of the Negev gets a fraction of Arizona’s annual rainfall.
More than 3,400 years ago, Joshua led the Hebrew people across the Jordan River into the land that is now Israel. It would become “a land flowing with milk and honey.”
At least the central, northern, and Galilee (Kineret) regions would; they generally received enough rainfall to sustain ancient nomadic and agricultural communities. In the south, the Negev Desert around and below Be’er Sheva and Abraham’s famous well was too parched for much more than camel stops. In 1900, Be’er Sheva was home to just 300 hardy souls, and even today, most of the Negev gets a fraction of Arizona’s annual rainfall.
Nevertheless, national founder and first prime minister David Ben Gurion envisioned milk, honey, and much more in a prosperous Negev. Today, time-traveling Israelites would be astounded to see a lake and 660,000 people in the bustling modern city of Be’er Sheva – and crops, livestock, and small towns transforming the vast desert.
I recently joined other volunteers in the area. We were overcome by emotion at memorials to victims of Hamas’s barbaric massacres last October 7. But we also visited hospitals and schools and met with grateful, passionate, resolute, resilient people. We painted and spruced up several less devastated kibbutzim and marveled at how fruitful the desert has become.
Endless acres boast fields of wheat, flowers, and vegetables; lemon, orange, date, olive, apple, and avocado orchards; and huge “hothouses” that actually keep temperatures from getting too hot while controlling sunshine and insects. These hothouses enable farmers to grow tomatoes, eggplants, berries, bananas, and other bumper crops to feed Israel and send abroad.
We got dirty, weeding and pruning tomatoes, planting herbs, and picking lemons. Scratches on my forearms still remind me that lemon trees have dastardly thorns. Who knew?
Israeli commitments to inspiration, innovation, and especially perspiration continue to pay dividends. They’ve fostered new technologies and techniques that turn dry wastelands into bountiful farmlands, using desalination, water recycling, drip irrigation, and constant refinements.
Some Israelis worry that manmade climate change will make the country’s water and agricultural challenges even more daunting. Others point out that abundant rains in recent winters have helped raise Sea of Gallilee water levels to their maximum levels for the first time in decades and that more atmospheric carbon dioxide spurs crop and natural plant growth.
Hebrew University astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv says the sun (not CO2) is the control knob for planetary temperatures, anyway. When the sun is more active, he explains, it sends out stronger solar winds, reducing galactic cosmic rays streaming into Earth’s atmosphere. That causes clouds to be less white, less dense, and less reflective of sunlight, resulting in a warmer Earth. When solar activity decreases, Earth cools. Graphs of solar activity and ocean temperatures over thousands of years confirm this.
The climate debate matters less and less, of course, when people do what our ancestors did: adapt to climate changes, natural or manmade, by employing our creative talents to devise new tactics and technologies for living and farming in cold, wet, dry, and changing climates.
Rely less on nature’s unreliable beneficence and goodwill, become less at the mercy of the elements – and be more self-reliant, resourceful, and innovative in housing designs, heating and cooling systems, more sustainable manufacturing, and beyond. Israel has set a good example in water use and conservation.
Desalination plants use ultra-filtration and reverse-osmosis to remove salts and minerals from seawater and brackish groundwater deposits. The leftover brine goes to the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
Israel’s eight desal plants annually produce 835 million cubic meters of expensive yet affordable safe drinking water for Israelis, Bedouins, and West Bank and Gaza Palestinians. (That’s 835 billion liters; 221 billion gallons.) Over 90% of Israel’s drinking water is desalinated, freeing up Sea of Galilee water that Jordanians can then purchase from Israel.
A vast water recycling system further aids in conquering deserts and droughts. Israel reuses over 85% of its water (with a goal of 95%). Treatment plants purify “graywater” from homes, hospitals, schools, and businesses so that farms can irrigate crops and polluted water stays out of rivers, streams, and groundwater. The Shafdan wastewater treatment facility alone provides nearly 140 million cubic meters of clean, recycled irrigation water to Negev Desert farms every year.
Over half of Israel’s farm irrigation water is recycled graywater. Much of it is combined with urban and highway stormwater runoff and stored in hundreds of underground reservoirs, which local and regional communities also utilize.
Recurring droughts, growing populations, and expanding agricultural needs underscore the imperative to build more desalination plants, treatment facilities, and reservoirs in Israel and neighboring countries.
Drip irrigation delivers water slowly and directly to plant roots via a revolutionary network of hoses, valves, and drip nozzles. That’s a monumental improvement over systems that spray water onto plant leaves and stems, resulting in significant loss through evaporation, especially in arid regions. Simcha and Yeshayahu Blass began developing the water-saving technology 65 years ago and established the Netafim irrigation products and services company to market their technologies and educate people worldwide.
Today, drip irrigation waters over three-fourths of Israel’s crops. However, only 5% of farms globally use the technology due to a reluctance to change longstanding practices and the costs of replacing existing systems with initially expensive drip technologies.
Cutting-edge research continues apace in these and other water-related arenas to further improve technologies, reduce their costs, decrease recycled water sediments that can eventually clog irrigated soils, optimize equipment efficiencies and crops’ water uptake, and promote the use of water-saving technologies in the United States and around the world.
Israel’s Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in the eastern Negev’s Kibbutz Ketura conducts research and teaches Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, African, and Asian students how to utilize water and agricultural technologies and best practices. Led by Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed, it also teaches them to live and work together with other future scientists, farmers, and leaders of different cultures, ethnicities, and religions.
The institute understands that “in the hyper-arid, drought-stricken Middle East, one resource is more precious than water: Trust.” Since 1996, it has brought together more than 2,000 students to do research and engage in university-accredited programs. I’ve met some of them.
In a further testament to how far back these agricultural challenges go, Ketura is also home to a date tree called Methuselah because it was grown from a 2,000-year-old seed found in King Herod the Great’s palace and fortress at Masada, near the Dead Sea.
Perhaps instead of spending countless trillions of dollars trying to replace fossil fuels with wind, solar, and battery technologies, we should focus on adapting to whatever climates we live in or encounter — especially since China is building hundreds of coal-fired power plants to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, EVs, grid-scale batteries and transformers to sell to Western nations for that “energy transition.”
The climate has been changing for 4 billion years and 99.999% of those physical and climate changes occurred when humans were NOT on this planet. Humanity’s 8 billion have only been on earth for less than 200 years which represents a micro-second of the 4.5 billion years the Sun and Earth have existed.
The climate has been changing for 4 billion years and 99.999% of those physical and climate changes occurred when humans were NOT on this planet. Humanity’s 8 billion have only been on earth for less than 200 years which represents a micro-second of the 4.5 billion years the Sun and Earth have existed.
Ronald Steinis an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for the Heartland Institute and CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
Without getting too detailed with geological explanations of the physical and climate changes to Mother Earth over the last 4.5 billion years, let’s review, in layman’s language, some of those changes against the current evaluation of the rise in temperatures during the “micro-second”, i.e., the “hockey stick” of time that current humanity has been on this planet.
To put size, time, and events in perspective, let’s look at this old planet that we’re on:
SUN: The Sun is about 109 times the diameter of Earth. The Sun weighs about 333,000 times as much as Earth. It is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it.
AGE OF EARTH: The earth is more than 4.5 billion years old.
Earth’s age 4,500,000,000 years
Present day humanity 200 years
The current 8 billion people on this planet have been on earth for about a micro-moment of the Earth’s life!!!!
Many physical and climate changes have occurred because of the complexity of atmospheric, planetary, and galactic forces of the solar system that determine Earth’s climate and 99.999% of those changes occurred when humans were NOT on this planet.
GLACIAL MOVEMENTS: Glacial advances and retreats have been caused by changes in the axis of the earth in the solar system. The earth has experienced 40 or so glacial maximums throughout its history, with the most recent glacial maximum, 20,000 years ago.
GRAND CANYON: The Grand Canyon was developed over 12,000 years of water erosion carving out the majestic cliffs and valleys that we see today. There were no environmentalists around at that time that were concerned about the vast changes occurring to the earth’s landscape.
HABITABLE LAND: Today the earth is 71% ocean and 29% land. Out of this 29%, about 33% are considered uninhabitable as it is mountainous, deserts, Artic or other inhospitable environments. This means that roughly 20% of the Earth’s total surface area is habitable by humans.
OCEANS: The deepest part of the ocean at 36,000 feet is at the Marianas Trench located in the Pacific Ocean. To put this depth into perspective, consider that the highest point in the world is Mount Everest at 29,029 feet. The size and depth of the oceans account for 99% of the planet’s living space.
HUMANITY INHABITANTS: The earth population increased from 1 to 8 billion in 200 years after the discovery of oil.
Oil has allowed us to produce more food, provide better healthcare, generate substantial industries, and create more jobs. Oil is used to power machinery that is used in agriculture, communications, transportation, and manufacturing. This has allowed us to produce more food than ever before, which has fed a growing population. Additionally, in modern times, oil is used to produce pharmaceuticals and medical equipment that have helped to extend life expectancy and improve overall worldwide health.
Furthermore, the discovery of oil has led to the creation of new industries and job opportunities. The oil industry itself employs millions of people around the world, but it has also spurred the growth of other industries, such as the automobile, healthcare, electronics, and airline industries. These industries have created millions of additional jobs and have helped to drive economic growth.
Note: While renewables have made some strides in generating occasional electricity from inconsistent breezes and sunshine, they cannot make any of the more than 6,000 products demanded by our materialistic society that are now totally based on crude oil. Fossil fuels are essential in the production of countless products that we use in our daily lives, from tires and synthetic fibers to fertilizers and pharmaceuticals.
INFRASTRUCTURES: The infrastructures that exist today are vastly different from those that existed before the 1800s. In the past, infrastructure was limited and mostly rudimentary. Roads were unsealed and were often narrow and winding. Bridges were made of wood and could not carry the load of today’s traffic. Transportation was limited to horse-drawn carriages and sailing craft. Communication was slow, as it relied upon the manual carriage of written messages and was unreliable.
Since the 1800s, medical science has made significant advancements in the field of healthcare. Prior to the 19th century, most medical treatments were based on superstitions and folklore. However, with the advent of modern medical science, new medicines and medical facilities have been developed to help treat a variety of illnesses and diseases. Some of the most significant medical advancements since the 1800s include the discovery of antibiotics, the development of vaccines, the creation of X-rays and other imaging technologies, and the establishment of hospitals and medical schools. These advancements have helped to improve the overall health and well-being of people around the world.
Today, infrastructure has evolved significantly, thanks to advancements in technology and engineering. Roads are wider, smoother, and made of concrete or asphalt. Bridges are made of steel and can withstand heavy loads. Communication is instantaneous, because of modern electronic systems. Transportation has become faster and more efficient, with the invention of cars, trains, modern ocean-going ships, and airplanes.
CO2 LEVELS: During the Earth’s glacial advances and retreats, the CO2 levels were driven nearly entirely by temperature changes in the ocean, with the colder oceans during glacial advance sequestering huge amounts of CO2 and then expelling it during interglacial warming periods.
A MICRO MOMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE: 200 years of the earth’s existence is a micro moment, of climate change.
To be exact, 200 years of the 4.5 billion-year-old planet represents only a micro-second of the total time the Earth has existed. This tiny fraction highlights just how young human civilization is in comparison to the age of this planet within the solar system that we inhabit.
The climate has been changing for 4 billion years and 99.999% of those changes occurred when humans were NOT on this planet. Thus, after putting our current “micro second” on this planet into perspective of the earth’s existence in the solar system, we might ask: How dare the political, bureaucratic, academic, and media ruling elites, who disseminate theoretical nonsense, calculated myths and outright disinformation imply that their “green” policies for humanity’s micro moment presence on this planet to change the climate are more forceful than the galactic forces of the solar system?
My personal thoughts about present day humanity’s ability to impact climate change are comparable to an individual urinating in the ocean and believing he or she can change the temperature of the ocean waters!
How dare the Globalists like Al Gore, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Pope Francis, John Kerry, and millions of zombie followers that have only been on the planet less than 80 years out of the 4.5 billion plus years of the existence of this marvelous planet, imply that their “green” policies to change the climate are more forceful than the effects of the Sun and the solar system? What mindless arrogance!
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”, policy advisor on energy literacy for The Heartland Institute, and The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and National TV Commentator- Energy & Infrastructure with Rick Amato.
Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy literacy, environmental policy, and human rights, and Founder of PTS Advance, a California based company.
Ron advocates that energy literacy starts with the knowledge that renewable energy is only intermittent electricity generated from unreliable breezes and sunshine, as wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture anything for the 8 billion on this planet.
Climate change is the most important scientific issue of our time, catalyzing a profound societal shift based on our perceived understanding of it. While many books explain what we already know about climate change, this book explores what we admit we do not understand about it (the known unknowns). In doing so, it reveals a previously overlooked mechanism of climate change, one that operates in the background and eludes the scrutiny of prevailing climate theories and models. Astonishingly, this phenomenon is clearly evident in numerous climate studies, casting a new light on climate change that warrants a critical reevaluation of many of the conclusions presented in the IPCC Assessment Reports.
Regardless of your position on climate change or your familiarity with the underlying science, this book offers a wealth of knowledge and a profound shift in your understanding of the dynamics that govern climate variability. With 134 illustrations (black and white in the paperback edition), this book aims to make climate science accessible to a broad audience, and only you, the reader, can ultimately determine the extent to which it succeeds in this goal.
This post features a chapter from my new book Solving the Climate Puzzle: The Sun’s Surprising Role. The book provides a large body of evidence supporting that changes in the poleward transport of heat are one of the main ways in which the planet’s climate changes naturally. It also shows that changes in solar activity affect this transport, restoring the Sun as a major cause of global warming. Since climate models do not properly represent heat transport and the IPCC reports completely neglect this process, this new hypothesis will not be easily dismissed. I am sure that over time it will lead to a better understanding of how the climate changes naturally, and hopefully less climate hysteria.
Here is the text of Chapter 17 of my new book
The Ocean’s heat transport is largely wind driven
The ocean is the primary source of poleward heat transport in the tropics, with the tropical Pacific being the dominant player due to its size. It exports heat to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, which are the only ones to transport heat across the equator. However, inter-basin exchanges are relatively small, indicating that global seawater pathways play a minor role in heat transport. The Atlantic is unique in having an exclusively northward net heat transport due to its meridional overturning circulation, which accounts for about 60% of the heat transported in the North Atlantic. Oceanic heat transport from the North Atlantic to the Nordic Seas and the Arctic increased significantly between 1998 and 2002, during a period of Arctic and global climate shift.
Most of the heat transported by the global ocean is carried by water above 10°C (50 °F), located between 40°N and 40°S at depths of less than 500 m. This transport is primarily due to wind-driven circulation. Even the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is as sensitive to winds as it is to the formation of high-latitude deep water.
Analysis of the critical tropical upper-layer heat budget has revealed a remarkable 11-year variability associated with the solar cycle that is ten times larger than can be accounted for by changes in solar radiation. In addition, model studies of the Atlantic meridional circulation show that solar forcing is its most important natural determinant. These studies underscore the critical role of the Sun in modulating ocean heat transport by inducing changes in atmospheric circulation.
Ocean heat transport
The ocean plays a critical role in the Earth’s climate system, providing thermal stability and storing a large fraction of the system’s energy. With a total mass 265 times that of the atmosphere and a heat capacity 1000 times greater, the ocean stores 96% of the energy in the climate system and receives 75% of the energy delivered by the Sun to the planet’s surface. This essential feature of the ocean has allowed the existence of complex life. However, because the Earth is currently in an ice age that began 34 million years ago (the Late Cenozoic Ice Age), the ocean has reached a cold state with an average temperature of about 4°C (39 °F), and only the upper mixed layer is substantially warmer due to solar heating and wind-induced turbulence. The sea surface temperature of the open ocean is limited to 30°C (86 °F) because deep convection occurs above 27°C (80 °F), increasing evaporation and forming clouds that effectively cool the surface. Although the upper 2.5 m of the ocean contains as much heat as the entire atmosphere, its main function in climate change is to absorb heat as the planet warms and release it as it cools, providing thermal inertia.
The ocean contributes about 25% of global poleward heat transport (ch. 10). In the tropics, the ocean is the most important heat transporter. Its contribution is even greater in the Northern Hemisphere, where it accounts for about 30% of heat transport. However, the Atlantic Ocean has a unique heat transport pattern. The South Atlantic has a net heat transport towards the equator (fig. 25).
Figure 25. Ocean heat transport. Mean meridional ocean heat transport (in petawatts) for the global ocean (solid black), Atlantic (dashed red), and Indo-Pacific (dotted blue).[1]
Most of the ocean’s heat is transported by water with a temperature above 10°C (50 °F), mainly in the band of the ocean between 40°S and 40°N and above a depth of 500 m. This is the main reason why meridional ocean heat transport is more important at these latitudes, where the Hadley cell is not very effective in transporting heat poleward (ch. 13).
Global ocean heat transport is dominated by heat export from the tropical Pacific, which has the largest tropical surface area and receives the most solar energy. However, it’s striking how much the tropical Pacific dominates heat export to other oceans, exporting four times more heat than is imported into the Atlantic and Arctic oceans. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans transport heat north and south across the equator, respectively, but the Pacific provides this heat through the Drake Passage and the Indonesian Throughflow. While there is some exchange between the basins, it’s relatively small, suggesting that global seawater pathways play a minor role in the Earth’s heat budget.[2]
Poleward heat transport to the Arctic
The Atlantic Ocean has northward heat transport in both hemispheres and across the equator due to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. This circulation is part of the thermohaline circulation, which involves the northward flow of warmer, lighter water in the upper layers of the Atlantic and the southward flow of cooler, denser water at depth. Although the two branches are mechanically driven, they are linked by the transformation of warm to cold water masses at high latitudes (ch. 10).
The uniqueness of Atlantic heat transport is highlighted in figure 25 and is related to the asymmetry of the latitudinal temperature gradient between the two hemispheres. Each year, the Southern Hemisphere receives more solar energy than the Northern Hemisphere. This is due to the Earth’s current axial precession, which causes the Southern Hemisphere to be oriented toward the Sun when the Earth is closer to it. Albedo does not correct for this difference due to its interhemispheric symmetry (box 2, ch. 3). Despite receiving a greater annual influx of solar energy, the Southern Hemisphere is about 2°C cooler than the Northern Hemisphere, and the Earth maintains a steeper temperature gradient toward the colder Antarctic than toward the warmer Arctic (ch. 9, fig. 13). Transport theory states that more heat should flow toward the colder pole since temperature differences drive transport. However, the Atlantic transports more heat from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere, suggesting that energy transport is not solely determined by entropy production. Rather, it is strongly influenced by geographic and climatic factors and thus may be a forcing mechanism for climate change.
The exceptional nature of the Atlantic Ocean’s heat transport has important implications for the climate of the surrounding regions of the North Atlantic, the Arctic, and the global climate. Sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic exhibits a multidecadal oscillation that correlates with global temperature (ch. 19).[3] Analysis of the Atlantic heat flux over time shows a clear relationship between oceanic heat transport and North Atlantic sea surface temperatures (fig. 26). This evidence supports the notion that the oscillation in North Atlantic sea surface temperature is a result of changes in meridional heat transport. Surprisingly, despite this evidence, ocean oscillations are rarely considered in terms of heat transport.
Figure 26. Atlantic heat transport and North Atlantic sea surface temperature. a) Atlantic integrated meridional heat transport over time in petawatts from reanalysis. b) North Atlantic sea surface temperature record for the same period.[4]
The transport of Atlantic water to the Arctic occurs through the Nordic Seas, and the volume and temperature of the transported water strongly influence the climate of northern Europe and the Arctic. The transformation of warm to cold water masses necessary for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation occurs in the Nordic Seas and the Arctic Ocean. Although oceanic heat transport is a small part of the Arctic heat budget (ch. 11 & 16), its analysis can be very informative. A recent study of ocean heat transport in the Nordic Seas and the Arctic Ocean found a sudden increase in transport. From the 1993-98 average to the 2002-2016 average, oceanic heat transport in this important climate region, the “bellwether” for climate change, increased by 25 terawatts (9%) between 1998 and 2002 (fig. 27).[5]
Figure 26. Atlantic heat transport and North Atlantic sea surface temperature. a) Atlantic integrated meridional heat transport over time in petawatts from reanalysis. b) North Atlantic sea surface temperature record for the same period.[4]
The transport of Atlantic water to the Arctic occurs through the Nordic Seas, and the volume and temperature of the transported water strongly influence the climate of northern Europe and the Arctic. The transformation of warm to cold water masses necessary for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation occurs in the Nordic Seas and the Arctic Ocean. Although oceanic heat transport is a small part of the Arctic heat budget (ch. 11 & 16), its analysis can be very informative. A recent study of ocean heat transport in the Nordic Seas and the Arctic Ocean found a sudden increase in transport. From the 1993-98 average to the 2002-2016 average, oceanic heat transport in this important climate region, the “bellwether” for climate change, increased by 25 terawatts (9%) between 1998 and 2002 (fig. 27).[5]
Figure 27. The Arctic Shift in ocean transport. Ocean heat transport to the Arctic and Nordic Seas during 1993-2017 shows an abrupt change during the Arctic Shift.
I refer to the period of rapid climate change in the Arctic that coincided with the change in oceanic transport as the Arctic Shift. As we will see, atmospheric heat transport to the Arctic also increased during the Arctic Shift, not showing the compensation between atmospheric and oceanic heat transport that the models predicted (box 8, ch. 12). It accelerated climate change in the Arctic, a clear demonstration of how changes in transport lead to profound climate changes that are erroneously attributed to anthropogenic forcing. The Arctic Shift was only one of the most conspicuous parts of the most significant global climate shift in 40 years. This issue is discussed in detail in chapter 33.
Wind-driven and thermohaline circulations
Ocean circulation can be divided into two types: fast circulation driven by wind stress, organized into ocean gyres, and slower circulation, related to changes in water density caused by changes in temperature and salinity (thermohaline). These two types of circulation are not independent, as the wind also affects the thermohaline circulation. It is important to note that the term thermohaline circulation, which refers to mass, heat, and salt circulation, can be misleading because heat and salt circulations are different.[6] In the Atlantic, wind-driven and thermohaline circulations contribute to poleward transport, but wind-driven gyres carry most of the heat in other oceans.
Despite its importance for understanding the climate system, our knowledge of the vertical structure of ocean heat transport is poor. This issue is fundamental to the debate over whether abyssal mixing, high-latitude deep-water formation, or winds control oceanic heat transport. This debate has led to unwarranted concerns that the Atlantic overturning circulation could be disrupted, causing significant cooling in Europe. Previous investigations of the vertical structure of oceanic heat transport, taking into account the temperature difference at the ocean-atmosphere boundary, have revealed our misunderstanding of this crucial process.[7] Such analyses show that surface circulation, which is highly sensitive to wind stress, dominates the total oceanic heat transport, while abyssal mixing has virtually no effect. High-latitude deep water formation contributes 60% of the North Atlantic heat transport, but the meridional circulation transport is also proportional to wind stress, being as sensitive to winds as to high-latitude convection.
The results of these studies challenge the common understanding of ocean heat transport as presented in books and illustrated by colorful ribbon diagrams. It is clear that winds play a critical role in ocean heat transport and that the amount of heat transported by the oceans is linearly proportional to the magnitude of wind stress. These findings lead to three controversial and far-reaching conclusions about climate change:
Atmospheric circulation is primarily responsible for heat transport on a global scale, either directly or through its influence on oceanic transport.
Atmospheric and oceanic heat transport cannot compensate for each other. Since they are fundamentally linked by wind action, any change in one must be accompanied by a change in the other in the same direction. Consequently, changes in the amount of heat transported poleward are not only possible but inevitable.
Variability in global heat transport must occur on the decadal timescales typical of atmospheric and upper ocean variability, rather than the centennial or longer timescales characteristic of deep meridional overturning.
BOX 14. RESPONSE OF OCEAN HEAT TRANSPORT TO SOLAR VARIABILITY
Ocean heat transport occurs primarily in shallow tropical waters, so the heat budget of the upper layer is critical to global ocean transport. Studies of the variability of sea surface temperature and pressure have identified typical quasi-biennial and El Niño-Southern Oscillation frequencies, as well as an 11-year frequency. Although this 11-year variability is synchronous with the solar cycle, its magnitude cannot be explained by direct radiative forcing from the Sun at the surface.[8] In the global tropical ocean, the temperature in the upper layer varies by ±0.1°C in phase with the solar cycle, requiring a change of ±0.9 W/m2, while the change in surface radiative forcing from the solar cycle is an order of magnitude too small, ±0.1 W/m2. Therefore, the variability must be due to ocean-atmosphere mechanisms despite its synchronization with the Sun.
The effect of El Niño on ocean heat transport is characterized by the warming of the upper layer of the global tropical ocean, which then warms the overlying atmosphere. In contrast, variability associated with the solar cycle leads to the warming of the global tropical atmosphere, which then heats the underlying ocean. This process is accomplished primarily by reducing the net sensible + latent heat flux from the ocean to the atmosphere, as the increase in solar radiation in the ocean is insufficient. Evidence indicates that the effect of the solar cycle on the ocean is indirect, occurring through the atmosphere. Claims that the Sun cannot be responsible for climate change because of the small change in total solar irradiance that produces its variability ignore the abundant evidence that solar variations act indirectly by affecting atmospheric circulation.
Models agree that solar variability has a significant impact on ocean heat transport. The fully coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation model of the UK Met Office Hadley Centre shows that solar forcing is the most important natural factor determining the multidecadal response of the Atlantic meridional circulation.[9] Solar forcing is associated with long-lasting anomalies in the atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic caused by changes in the stratosphere due to weaker solar irradiance during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The model does not fully capture the atmospheric response to solar variability, but it does show notable changes in the location of the Intertropical Convergence Zone, precipitation in the Amazon, and temperatures in Europe.
In summary
The ocean plays a critical role in transporting heat poleward within the tropics. Wind-driven circulation in the ocean gyres is responsible for most of the heat transport, and a global conveyor has a limited contribution. However, the Atlantic Ocean is an exception, exhibiting net northward heat transport with relevant transequatorial transport, mainly due to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is sensitive to both wind stress and deep water formation at high latitudes.
The atmosphere, directly through its circulation and indirectly through the effect of wind stress on oceanic transport, is primarily responsible for most of the poleward heat transport. The multidecadal oscillation of sea surface temperature in the North Atlantic results from changes in poleward heat transport. In addition, the upper layer of the tropical ocean shows temperature changes in phase with the solar cycle caused by changes in the atmospheric circulation that affect the heat flux from the ocean to the atmosphere.
The English edition of the book is available on Amazon and Google Books, and will soon be available elsewhere through the IngramSpark distribution network. The paperback edition has black and white figures. The Spanish edition should be available later this month, and the German, French, and Italian editions shortly thereafter, with other language editions to follow.
I’d like to thank our gracious host, Judith Curry for her appreciation and support of the book prior to its publication.
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