It seems that tectonics does play an important role in surface temperatures. ARGO floats will probably give us a better idea of where the heat comes from in the oceans. It is said that the atmospheric heat energy is hidden by the oceans, but I think we will find that tectonics does play a part in temperature variations and that the "missing heat" proposed by alarmists is more of a phantom than a mystery.
-------------------------------------
pegminer - http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/2013/05/...
- "... The warming is dependent on ENSO, and for the ocean heat content of the North Pacific, it depends on a change in wind patterns and sea level pressure. ..." -
El Ninos and La Ninas have to do with the cycles in ocean currents along with the upwelling and down-welling of cool and warm waters from the ocean. Sea surface pressure has everything to do with the warming or cooling of the oceans at specific points in time.
--------------------------------------
pegminer - I think the point of the question has to do with the extra warming from tectonics. Additional heat from the geothermal forcing adds to ocean heat content no matter how you look at it. The 1% of warming that has occurred over the past 150 years has natural causation. Zippi62 has only brought up another possible cause to additional warming from a natural source - tectonics and its natural variability. How does science know where a diverging plate hasn't opened up more than normal and let more geothermal heat out of the core? I doubt there is enough instrumental measuring equipment stationed all over the ocean floor "keeping an eye" on it and satellites surely have a hard time measuring this when it may come from the depths of the ocean.
-------------------------------------
pegminer - Not even the point. Upwelling from the crust is just an explanation for 'some' of the extra warming. We are talking about a 1% increase in temperature and you want to "blame" people for it? You seem like a vigilante when you speak this way.
I'm a cloud watcher too and I saw a cloud about one mile up, one mile wide, one mile long, and one mile tall (mathematics taught me this) and it occurred to me that 1/3rd of that cloud will fit the entire population of the Planet. How much energy does it take to take care of that space in a given day, week, month, year, decade, millennium, or even a sesquicentennial and where does that energy come from and why would I expend it?
------------------------
pegminer - Is transportation your only issue? ... or is home-heating an issue too? Most people stay at one place most of the day after work (unless they spend energy on wanting more out of life by expending more energy to get even more money to give themselves more of an advantage over people who won't expend enough energy to take care of themselves). I think you need to expand on all of the human condition and its will to improve itself! Just a thought. I still think you are selfish and uncaring about the human condition. My opinion.
If not for the heat from its interior, Earth would be slightly cooler. Could this heat be responsible for recent warming?
From your link
"There are basically two sources of heat for the interior of the Earth:
"1. Heat produced by radioactive decay of unstable isotopes
"2. Heat left over following the formation and differentiation of the Earth"
In other words, the heat comes from sources which do not vary much over periods of a few decades. Over very long periods of time, the amount of heat from the Earth's interior is slowly getting less, because the unstable isotopes are decaying and the heat from the formation and differentiation of Earth is slowly escaping into space.
<"flow decreases away from the mid-ocean ridges and is at a minimum over the convergent plate boundaries, deep ocean trenches or subduction zones. In general lithosphere is hot.">
According to the link, 7*10^12 calories per second or --- terawatts comes from the Earth's interior. Earth recieves 174 petawatts or 174,000 terawatts from the Sun. So far, the Sun sounds much more impressive than Earth's interior. But what matters is how much these energy fluxes vary.
Between the Maunder Minimum and the present, TSI has varied by 1.3 W/m^2.
http://134.76.238.34/projects/sun-climat...
This means that the energy that Earth recieves from the Sun varies by 166 terrawatts.
If it is so blatantly obvious, it is obvous to climatologists and they have considered it.
How about apologies to Climate Realist. At least you didn't call me "Maxx." That would have been an insult. Or "Rio."
Rio
OH! Boy! Someone else who thinks that people should be afraid to drink milk in Canada. Yes, I know the difference between internal and external radiation. It takes less radioactive material to give a given dose of radiation if it is internal radiation than if it is external radiation. And articles about iodine isotopes and thyroid cancer, including ones that say that the risk of thyroid cancer is negligable are talking about internal radiation.
Nuclear radiation is not a signficant threat. We receive 300 times more radiation from nature than from nuclear power. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/...
An unbiased source about supposed Fukushima deaths
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/0...
Pat
As Pegminer says, El Nino is a result in the change in the trade winds. The energy source is the same as that of the Urban Heat Island effect. And I am not talking about someone puting the Pacific Ocean to close to a window with an air conditioner.
The radiative forcing from CO2 is on the order of 20 times greater than the geothermal heat flux, which averages less than 0.1 W/m^2 over the surface of the Earth (this is measured). Also, the geothermal heat flux does not keep increasing, but is relatively constant.
It's smart to worry about things like this, but they have already been taken into account.
EDIT: Rio, what ARE you talking about? If you're going to make a comment about my answer, at least try to make one that's understandable
Another EDIT: When I look at this question and some of the "answers" for it (Happy, Kano, Rio, etc.) it's like you people make the assumption that scientists don't actually know anything. Geothermal heat flux has been measured for decades--probably in some areas for centuries. Try opening a book sometime a learn something, rather than make a bunch of silly assumptions. There are lots of good books on geophysics, and all of them cover heat flux. We have MAPS of global geothermal heat flux--they're not hard to find. Stop wallowing in your ignorance and LEARN something.
EDIT for Rio: Exact earthquakes don't need to be predictable, we MEASURE the geothermal heat flux, it may change locally if a volcano erupts or an earthquake happens, but that does not change the global average significantly, and that's what's important. Also, even though we can't predict individual earthquakes, we also measure average plate motion, and that's what causes earthquakes. In a simplified sense, earthquakes occur because there is a lot of friction that needs to be overcome along the plate boundary before the crust (or mantle) breaks there. Away from the faults (the plate boundary) the plates move along at their inexorable pace, when an earthquake occurs, the part of the plate that was stuck at the fault "catches up" to the rest of the plate, that is called "elastic rebound."
A long time ago, before I was in atmospheric science, I did research in seismology, specifically on deep focus earthquakes at subduction zones. I've also participated in GPS surveys along the plate boundary in Southern California (Imperial Fault Zone), where we actually measured the movement along the fault over a period of 10 years. I am familiar with these concepts.
LET"S DO A CALCULATION: The energy released by the Japan earthquake that destroyed Fukushima was about 2 x 10^17J. Now most of this was not heat energy and it certainly wasn't released at the Earth's surface, but let's pretend that it was. Let's also pretend that we have one of those earthquakes every year (we don't, but we'll say that all the little ones add up to one big one). So what is the average power flux from the earthquake?
Flux = Power/Area = Energy/time/area = 2 x 10^17/J(3 x 10^7 sec)/(5 x 10^14 meter squared) ~ 10^-5 W/m^2 (to one significant digit)
So what do we get? Something much less than the MEAN geothermal heat flux, which is already much less than the radiative forcing due to carbon dioxide. In other words:
THINGS LIKE LARGE EARTHQUAKES ARE NOT IMPORTANT IN THE GLOBAL ATMOSPHERIC HEAT BUDGET.
Rio, this sentence "Standards are common out cards for explaining what's unexplainable." is complete irrelevant and incoherent. What "standard" are you talking about? And the only "out card" that I see is your assertion that something is "unexplainable," which is just clap-trap from someone that doesn't want to learn anything.
Again Rio, you didn't make any sense and you can't explain yourself--and you certainly have never "got" me on questions before, third grade or otherwise.
As for the original question, the answer is that people don't usually model very small variations in a very small background because it would not make a difference. Put it in the model or leave it out and you get the same result.
EDIT for Pat: El Nino is NOT an upwelling of heat from the ocean bottom. Where did you get that idea from? It is an air-sea interaction associated with the lessening of the trade winds and the propagation of ocean Kelvin waves eastward.
Further EDIT for Pat: Tisdale is not a credible source, but your quote supports what I said and not what you said, did you not realize that?
You people are unteachable, you're willing to believe that tectonics can cause global warming even when shown that the energies are not great enough. Here's a challenge for you, find ONE legitimate scientist that agrees with this garbage. Feel free to use Richard Lindzen, Roy Spencer, John Christy, Roger Pielke, etc. I don't even think Fred Singer is a big enough liar to try sell this nonsense. Are you all so poor at math that you miss the point? Go to community college, take some classes in physics, chemistry and calculus. Learn something and stop being willfully ignorant.
They don't, the obvious is the kinetics/temperature for large scale movement isn't predictable. Peg is confusing atmospheric standards with unpredictability. (Two separate and distinct issues), believe me He's not going to grasp the concept.
To be honest nobody knows the answer. That's why standards are so common.
Peg: Stop acting like a idiot (Fukushima). Now your saying it was predictable...Get a life.
edit: Again at the risk of repeating myself. Standards are common out cards for explaining what's unexplainable. Peg, you just repeated, but thanks for the attempt.
ed: Crapola, why talk to an Alarmist. You do know you completely avoid the original question. Why not just convert the energy potential into moles instead of joules? The big question brain child is applicability, variability, and predictability. I'm curious, do you know how much force is required to lift a pound one foot. I've got you on some simple third grade problems before.
Yeah, I heard that you can boil water on the San Andreas fault line anytime! When lava from a volcano reaches the ocean, water will boil for hundreds of miles around, huh? And your favorite, when tree branches move, it causes the wind to blow!
Apology accepted, don't forget heat from radioactive decay
Today's scientist just spin a wheel for the solution. If it isn't the one they want, they use Micheal Mann's "trick" and get the answer they want.
You can not measure plate tectonic temp ,you guess what it is .And Global Warming is not a science , it is just theory . Bullshitters making a lot of money.
It seams to alarmists that there is only one cause for Global Warming and it involves humans mainly.
What about convergent plate tectonics where no volcanic activity happens and the heat it causes by simple movement of the Earth's crust? How is that measured?
