Why should there be a hot spot?

Well I can't say I have a very good understanding about it, but I tried to provide some explanation for it in Myth #14 by quoting RealClimate's explanation:

As a side note, I think eric's question on this subject perfectly illustrates the difference between deniers and skeptics.  Compare eric c and bucket's reactions to making the same error in this question.

Yeah that was my take on it, that it's due to a water vapor response to warming at the surface and has very little to do with the source of the warming.  Eric is just convinced that it's got to be an anthropogenic signal, but of course has no physical or scientific reason for that conviction.  It's pure denial - he just needs there to be a flaw in the AGW theory and he thinks this is it.

As for honest skeptics, it depends on your definition.  By the real definition, almost all scientists are honest skeptics (with some exceptions like Lindzen, of course, who I think is very intellectually dishonest).  But if you mean 'skeptics' as in contrarians, well, then it depends what you mean by honest.

Like eric, he really believes that the hot spot has to be an anthropogenic signal because he needs there to be something wrong with AGW.  It's not that he's dishonest, it's just that his denial leads him to believe things which aren't correct, and it's impossible to convince him otherwise.

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that there don't seem to be any logical or reasonable "skeptics" (contrarians/deniers/what have you).

Yeah I totally agree of course.  If you look at the body of evidence, it's crystal clear that the AGW theory is scientifically sound.  And these so-called 'skeptics' arguments are just so lame.  Garbage like 'global warming has stopped' and 'it's cold in my backyard'.  At least eric's argument is a little more sophisticated, even though it's still purely based on misunderstanding the physics.

It's funny, one of my co-workers stopped by my office yesterday to ask about global warming out of the blue.  Very conservative, but a good guy.  Right off he asked if I 'believe in global warming' and was shocked that I said yes.  So then he was asking me questions about orbital cycles and why I thought AGW was correct, easy questions to answer.  Then at the end he asked "so did I convince you global warming is wrong?". 

I think he was mostly joking, but it's that same mindset that people start off convinced that AGW has to be wrong and then look for a reason to support that belief.  It's exactly the wrong approach, but that's how almost all 'skeptics' operate.  That's why they accept such lame arguments like 'global warming has stopped'.  I've always said deniers form a political opinion before understanding the scientific basics, and they continually confirm that statement.

I agree, they start off by lying to themselves.  The problem is when they take it a step further and start lying to other people.  That's what ticks me off.  People who don't even understand the difference between weather and climate but who are going out of their way to answer other peoples' questions with misinformation.

In really simple terms, when you warm the surface and the air above it, you can have more water vapor in the air since the vapor pressure of water increases with temperature.  Water vapor represents stored heat, that's why the water vapor flux out of the ocean is called latent heat.  When that water vapor gets carried aloft, it moves heat upwards, warming the air at the altitude where it condenses and releases the energy contained in the latent heat of vaporization when it formed.  So, regardless of how the surface warms, the upper troposphere above the tropical ocean will warm faster than the surface because of the increased upward flux of latent heat.  This is a really simplistic explanation of the "moist adiabatic lapse rate," sort of. 

Sometimes skeptics will point out that relative humidity isn't changing, which is true, but also irrelevant.  This is because the important parameter to track is the specific humidity, or total mass of water per volume in the atmosphere.  In a warming situation with surface warming, specific humidity at the surface increases (and I believe this trend has been measured), leading to the increase in the latent heat flux aloft. 

But as everyone points out, this happens regardless of how the surface warms, be it solar forcing, GHG forcing, or some weird unknown ocean circulation that takes heat from cold water in the deep ocean, brings it to the surface and warms both the poles and equator (this last situation is what skeptics appear to believe happens). 

Why is the hot spot specific to the troposphere above the tropical ocean though?  Shouldn't there be the same effect above all oceans?

The tropics are where the ocean and atmosphere are warmest, so specific humidity highest, and where deep convection is largest.  You don't get deep convection most other places because the air is colder, the specific humidity is lower, and there isn't as much latent heat transported aloft.  I forget exactly, but at some point in arguing with a skeptic on usenet I estimated the fraction of global deep convection of latent heat that occurred in the tropics and it was something like 80% (I realize my saying that makes the number of dubious validity, but it wasn't a bad estimate).  The Hadley circulation (i.e., trade winds blowing towards the equator with rising air at the ITCZ) is generated by deep convection in the tropics and really well defined, but the Walker circulation at mid-latitudes, which is the analogous circulation to the tropical Hadley cells, is much less visible in mean flow patterns.  The relative weakness of the Walker cell is directly related to the decrease in surface specific humidity. 

The cold deep water warms the surface because, and I am trying to intuite skeptic science (there is an oxymoron for you!), there are special heat particles that want to be where it is already warmer.  We'll call these morons.  The moronic heat flow from cold deep oceans to warmer tropical regions, where it is then transported to the poles, is what is really driving the observed warming.  The forcing from the GHGs is completely counterbalanced by the secondary moronic heat flow, which takes energy from the GHG forcing and transports it directly to space where it can do no harm.  I know, it's complicated, but that's the moronic explanation of global warming for you. 

Okay, that makes sense.  I'll have to incorporate some of that explanation into the Myth #14 wiki.

It's my understanding this is what's causing that hot spot As you can see most of the old analog systems are closed down and been replaced with digital systems Hear is what started it of Science back in the 30's new this process would heat the atmosphere so why hasn't it been brought forward to now and the theory revisited makes a whole lot of sense to me because what we are talking about is man made magnetic waves interacting with the natural flows and creating changes through proses of Action Reaction Result Here's a couple of links to get u started Also the hockey stick graph lines up with the introduction of this technology I actually started looking at this process before global warming/ climate change was promoted I do believe that CO2 play's it's roll as do all greenhouse gasses in reacting to frequency abuse from satellites as well as ground base units. Here's the links

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_White_Alice_Communications_System_sites

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_propagation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_scatter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_ducting

http://globalmicrowave.orgfree.com/