Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Oceans Correlate with Continental Warming

There are several links available that discuss a new paper that looks at how well ocean influences recent continental warming.

Compo,G.P., and P.D. Sardeshmukh, 2008: Oceanic influences on recent continental warming. Climate Dynamics, in press.

Motl describes it nicely as a correlation and a possible primary driver. He said, "One of the messages of the paper is that the ocean temperature should be studied more carefully and the climate should be investigated in the regional context, not just through the global averages that completely overlook many of the essential phenomena: the paper actually shows that the regional patterns were predicted completely incorrectly by two popular classes of climate models."

Correlation does not imply causation

That's right Zephir. Like Motl's wrote, "The very statement that the ocean temperature is sufficient as a 'driver' to explain the continental temperature sounds good and plausible (because of the high heat capacity of the oceans) but I am afraid that it is another example of the logical fallacy emphasized by Roy Spencer. They haven't really proven it. Correlation is not causation and even in the cases where it is, you can't quite know the direction of the causal relationship..."

With compare to L. Motl, I'm an aetherist and intuitive alarmist - so I've no problem with Motl's not quite typical stance, which infirms an article, which basically opens an alternative of anthropocentric origin of GW (providing the ocean is the primary cause of GW rather than increasing of greenhouse gases over land - as the article is proposing).

But I'm not expert in this area and I'd recommend to consider the factual arguments of both sides thoroughly.