Abstract
Since 1850, the rise in global mean surface temperatures (GMSTs) from increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) has exhibited three ~30-year hiatus (surface cooling) episodes. The current hiatus is often thought to be generated by similar cooling episodes in Pacific or Atlantic ocean basins. However, GMSTs as well as reconstructed Atlantic and Pacific ocean basin surface temperatures show the presence of similar multidecadal components generated from a three-dimensional analysis of differential gravitational (tidal) forcing from the sun and moon. This paper hypothesizes that these episodes are all caused by external tidal forcing that generates alternating ~30-year zonal and meridional circulation regimes, which respectively increase and decrease GMSTs through tidal effects on sequestration (deep ocean heat storage) and energy redistribution. Hiatus episodes consequently coincide with meridional regimes. The current meridional regime affecting GMSTs is predicted to continue to the mid-2030s but have limited tendency to decrease GMSTs from sequestration because of continuing increases in radiative forcing from increasing atmospheric GHGs. The tidal formulation also generates bidecadal oscillations, which may generate shorter ~12-year hiatus periods in global and ocean basin temperatures. The formulation appears to assimilate findings from disciplines as disparate as geophysics and biology.
Highlights
This paper includes an update of the tidal hypothesis developed in T02 and T17 as it relates to global mean surface temperatures (GMSTs) variability and to surface temperature variability in the Pacific and Atlantic ocean basins
This was followed by an expansion of the approach to characterize tidal components over a range of timescales, which were hypothesized to contribute to GMSTs and which to contribute to variability in ocean and atmospheric oscillations [37]
In its focus on the controversial issue of the hiatus, this paper shows that a statistical relationship exists between GMSTs and ocean basin temperatures and that these temperature oscillations and three GMST hiatus periods can be related to exogenous tidal forcing
Summary
Fundamental questions include whether the phenomenon is real and meaningful. If it is real and statistically meaningful, does it have a physical explanation? Related to the hiatus, has global warming slowed or varied from modelled behaviour? If the hiatus is real and statistically meaningful and there is no widely accepted explanation for this suspension in temperature rise from anthropogenic global warming (AGW), how can the scientific consensus concerning. In the forefront of explanations for the hiatus is that it is an ocean surface phenomenon manifesting energy redistribution and heat uptake to the deeper ocean [2,3,4,5] but the mechanisms of heat redistribution vary for each basin [3,5]. On the basis of models of observed contemporaneous surface cooling patterns for particular ocean basins, energy redistribution during the episode has Climate 2019, 7, 31; doi:10.3390/cli7020031 www.mdpi.com/journal/climate
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