I'm glad they still believe in blackbody radiation, the resonance frequencies of CO2 and the rest of physics!
Plenty of energy HAS gone into surface temp increases. It is funny that the climate scientists you have so denigrated over and over have suddenly become such believable sources to you.
If you compare this year to 1998 it hasn't warmed, but if you compare this year to other years from that time period it has warmed a lot. So the Deniers keep pointing out 1998 because it is atypical. And the climate scientists, hardly the brightest people on the planet ("peer review, consensus, blah blah blah") are falling for it.
"My question is: What is the physics (i.e mechanism(s)) that explains a period where increasing CO2 caused increased global surface temperatures and then switched to a period where the energy started going into the oceans instead of the atmosphere?"
There are times when cold water from deeper in the oceans flow towards the surface. Cold water is more heatable--heat transfer rates typically are linearly proportional to temperature differences. So during those time periods more energy goes into the oceans. There might be other mechanisms like that, but the basic point is that tranfer rates depend on physical situations that are not constant.
EDIT
"When you say "heat transfer" you are implying a radiative transfer from the atmosphere to the ocean. Is this correct? I'm asking this because UV from the Sun heats the oceans by energy conversion."
No, I am referring to thermal contact. Air molecules bumping into water molecules. ( In a technical sense it is "radiative" in that when a molecule transfers energy to another molecule the transfer proceeds via electromagnetic interactions, but not the "radiative" iteractions" people think of when they hear "radiative".)
Ocean heat rising is based on NOAA Argo floats to measure temperatures down to 2000m.
There are 3300 argo floats to cover an area that is 70% of our planet 'a very insignificant sampling'
anyone who has gone diving or even snorkeling will tell you that it is common to come upon pockets of warm water or cold water and no doubt our oceans are the same, so it would take a lot more than 3300 temperature measuring points to make me believe the ocean heat is increasing or reducing.
The increase in heat content is due to complex theoretical entropy. This causes the concoction of a feasible way to create a huge and soul-destroying radioactive thunder storm which will create a massive rift in the space time consortium which will inevitably lead to the consumption of the sun and all celestial bodies through the mass inauguration of the souls of the deceased which could cause the dead narwhal anti-christ to rise from the depths of eternal hell and all will be damned until time itself unravels and creates a portal to the real centre of the universe and eventually lead to the end of the galactic alliance through the destruction of the portal of Nephron, the starship commandeered by the evil hippothacrus demons in the year of the Dragon birth in an ancient village in the mountains of tibet where the tibetan mountain whales suffered from chronic earlobe syndrome which can only be cured by the blood of a thousand albanian virgins or the fur of 99 iranian flying polar bears
The ENSO. Warming of atmosphere is correlated with El Nino patterns. Warming is slowed when icy cold water is pushed to the surface during a La Nina. Heat transfers more rapidly from surface air to water when the water is colder at the surface.
<<
I would call it desperation looking to explain something that doesn't fit with their preconceived ideas. It is throwing spit wads on the chalkboard and seeing if any stick. Billions$ depend on one of those spit wads sticking. Even if they fall (if their theories fail), they will chose the gooiest spit wad, call it science, and consensus and continue to push their cause.
Microwaves penetrate water.
The recent 10-15 year (take your pick) global warming pause has had several explanations of which one is from Kevin Trenberth (and others). They claim there is still an energy imbalance and it is still due to CO2 but the heat is not going into the atmosphere but rather into the deep oceans. This SKS page explains: http://www.skepticalscience.com/new-research-confirms-global-warming-has-accelerated.html
The late 20th century saw perhaps the greatest warming rate since 1850 as shown for the 25 year period here: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1940/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/to:1999/trend
My question is: What is the physics (i.e mechanism(s)) that explains a period where increasing CO2 caused increased global surface temperatures and then switched to a period where the energy started going into the oceans instead of the atmosphere?
