Quote:
Originally Posted by ArgoNavis
So am I to understand that all the excess heat that the AGW models predict is leaking into space through the poles?
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That is not what I said, although it remains a possibility that increased reradiation is holding down average increases.
Excess heat energy is, and has always been, reradiated to space. This happens on all of the planets but is complicated on Earth by tectonic movements, liquid water, and life.
The IPCC has determined that increasing CO2 levels have reduced the reradiation of thermal energy causing global warming (which I prefer to call anthropogenic global surface warming). This trapping of heat will tend to be greatest at low to mid latitudes where the atmosphere is thickest and the energy balance is high. Normal heat transfer mechanisms will naturally be extended farther poleward to where this heat can be discarded (higher than 60 degrees latitude where the energy balance is negative).
The established thermal energy transfer mechanisms can, and no doubt usually do, include temporary storage capacity in the ocean bottom water currents that currently have a partial circulation period of about 1450 years. Some 250 million cubic miles of this water are currently within a couple of degrees of freezing. The thermal capacity of this water dwarfs the capacity of the warming atmosphere and ocean surface water. If for the last 10,000 years of the current interglacial this ocean bottom water has been cooling off, we are all in for a rude awakening when ocean currents change drastically and plunge the surface temperatures toward their typical glacial lows.