There is a lot of wailing an gnashing of teeth today over this Associated Press story title:
Please take a moment to read that story above as I can’t post it here. AP has declared war on bloggers.
First a few caveats:
- Yes (as mentioned about the northeast USA beach water temperatures in the AP article) we have some very warm sea surface temperatures this summer, we also had the coolest summer surface temperatures on record in many places in the USA.
- The AP story is written by Seth Borenstein. Seth tends to report the warmest side of things in the worst way, so take the story with a grain of salt. For example, Portland Maine also set a new record low for July Temperatures, see here. I don’t think Seth covered that one nor the -50°F all time statewide Maine record low on January 16th, 2009 seen here. One should also note that NOAA reported “July Temperature Below-Average for the U.S.” How quickly we forget. I’m not trying to pick a weather -vs- climate food fight, but simply pointing this out for balance. We’ve had some cold events this year also.
- Sea temperature spikes like this have have happened before. More on that later.
In the story Seth says: “The result has meant lots of swimming at beaches in Maine with pleasant 72-degree water.”
To check that out, I utilized the Rutgers SST satellite page here. This image showing coastal Maine from NOAA-15 on August 18th seemed fairly representative and was one of the few that was almost completely filled with SST data. As you can see on this summary page, there is a lot of missing data. With this much missing data, one wonders if SST data averages are accurate.
I’ve annotated the image to give you landmarks and cities. Our warmer buddy “Tamino” lives in Portland, I wonder if he’s taking a dip. As you can see, indeed there is some 72 degree water around Portland. But up in the Bay of Fundy and tip of Nova Scotia, there’s some pretty cold water also, and it is in the 45 to 55 degree range.
A wider view SST of the northeastern US shows the reason for this juxtaposing of opposite ends of the sensing range:
I’ve also annotated this image to give you landmarks and cities.
Note the prominent tongue of warm water and the eddies and swirls. That is the warm water of the Gulf Stream mixing with the cold water of the north. In the middle mix, pleasant swimming temperatures. The earth is doing what is has always done, transporting warm water northward via the Gulf Stream. Yes it is a little stronger this year and maybe a little closer to the coast than usual.
Here’s a view of the source in the Gulf of Mexico, Oh…wait…I had to use a different source since the NOAA/Rutgers imagery was missing so much data in the Gulf – see for yourself here
This Weather Underground plot of buoy based sea temperature measurements shows that indeed the Gulf is warm and around the 90 degrees indicated in the article.
But the question is: is this warmth an event to be concerned about? From the Rutgers map above, it appears that the Gulf Stream has come closer to shore than it normally does, which of course makes it more noticeable to people recreating in the water.This of course generates attention, and reporters naturally pick up on these things. The question is: weather or climate?
Here’s a NOAA Ocean Explorer SST image from a 2005 article that shows how the Gulf Stream tends to hang off the coast a bit more.
And of course, we have an El Nino going on, so a warmer Pacific is certainly not unexpected.
Note the the temperatures above are anomalies, not absolute measurements.
As the AP article mentions, the last time we saw ocean temperature this high was in 1998 during the super El Nino.
What I find most interesting though is this NOAA Hovmoller graph as pointed out by Paul Vaughn in Bob Tisdale’s thread:
Hovmollering the SST: T-shirt tie-dye design or climate science?
Just looking at the 1982-1983 and 1997-1998 SST spikes, it does seem like we are due for another at the bottom doesn’t it?
The point I’m making here. Yes the ocean is warm, it has gotten warm before. Should we panic? No.
A couple of closing points. The AP article that I referenced at the beginning of this post makes no references as to sources other than generally mentioning NCDC.
However I did find a more in depth NPR/AP article that did reference the NCDC sources which you can read here.
The two sources listed were:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?reportglobal&year2009&month7
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/cwtg/all.html
But there is no mention of this on either source:
“The average water temperature worldwide was 62.6 degrees, according to the National Climatic Data Center”
The latest summary NCDC offers ( which AP referenced: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?reportglobal&year2009&month7 ) is for July 2009 where they say this:
The global ocean surface temperature for July 2009 was the warmest on record, 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F). This broke the previous July record set in 1998. The July ocean surface temperature departure from the long-term average equals June 2009 value, which was also a record.
So that makes me wonder, did NCDC give Seth Borenstein some inside information for the middle of August that the rest of us aren’t privy to? Or, could it be a misprint or C to F conversion error?
I simply don’t know, but I do find it odd that I can’t find a NOAA or NCDC press release or data table that has that 62.6 degrees mentioned in it. If anyone knows where that figure came from, please post it in comments. Google is saturated with so many news stories with the keyword combination of NCDC and 62.6 that I’m unable to locate the original source. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but if it does, I’m sure our WUWT readers will find it.
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Anthony: Go to the full global version of the SST anomaly report and check out the size of the antarctic ice pack. You can see that here: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2009/anomnight.8.20.2009.gif.
The ice pack extends out beyond the Antarctic Circle in the mid-Pacific. The Cryosphere Today will give you a better look here: http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/.
It’s grant-fishing time in Asheville and my guess that Borenstein is being used as a tool by these folks to justify more funding.
1.06(above)+61.5(average)=62.56 or 62.6 rounded?
SST measure the rate at which the oceans release heat to the atmosphere. Once the heat is in the atmosphere it is lost to space fairly quickly.
As almost all the heat in the Earth’s climate system is in the oceans, warmer SST mean the Earth’s climate is cooling, because the basic climate cycle of ocean heat to atmosphere to space has increased.
As Anthony suggests, this is likely due to ocean current variations or cycles.
Note the ocean is heated directly by sunshine.
The article says in the second paragraph: “The National Climatic Data Center, the government agency that keeps weather records, says the average global ocean temperature in July was 62.6 degrees.”
You found something saying the temperature was “0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F).”
Add 1.06 and 61.5, then round off the result (66.56) to tenths: 62.6 degrees.
It may not be the right way to state the global average, but I think that’s how the reporter did it.
Anthony–
They may have just added the global average anomaly (1.06F) to the average global temperature (61.5F). That gives 62.56 which, rounded off, becomes 62.6.
How did that second 6 get in there after I clicked “submit”? Gremlins, I say!!
It should have been “(62.56)”.
Whoops, Randy beat me to it!
For those who are interested in the AP declaring war on bloggers, this is a very old war they are fighting. Bloggers are merely the latest foe. Here is a link to the U.S. Supreme Court case (from 1918) that addresses who has the rights to news – in the U.S. WUWT has an international following, and the outcome may be different in other countries.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=248&invol=215
This is a famous case – and features AP as plaintiff, INS as defendant. The language is a bit archaic and stilted to the modern reader.
The Court held that news is not copyrightable, but is in the public domain. The Court decided this case as one of unfair competition in business. INS was not allowed to profit by riding the coat-tails of AP, who had expended considerable time and effort to create the news – in those days, by necessity, in the form of newspapers.
What is interesting is that the commercial value of news is time-dependent. Web bloggers who copy the news into their blog a few days after AP writes their story may have an excellent defense.
Notice: none of the above is, nor is intended to be, legal advice. Anyone who requires legal advice on a particular matter should consult an attorney.
I will appreciate the nice winter here in the NW, but with the past cold winter, and declining atmospheric temps, It makes no sense that this extra heat would have come from the atmosphere. Certainly won’t stop the warmers from declaring victory. And a higher ocean temp should lead to a warmer atmosphere in the year ahead.
Another post I read yesterday suggested this minima may not pack the punch of Dalton, and it looks to me like we could also be in the upward slope of a longer cycle that might eventually take us to another optimum similar to MWP. I was really hoping we could get Dalton II first, to break the hysteria.
Why are you comparing apples to oranges? There were also some extreme warm events around the world, including in the US in July, but that factoid is as revealing about the global average as the number of goals scored in one game when assessing a teams’ seasonal statistics.
I guess you’d think something fishy was going on if a reporting of teams’ dominance in a season was not ‘balanced’ by mentioning that they lost a few matches along the way…
And if you’re going to talk about balance, then you should ‘balance’ your reportage of a few cold weather events by mentioning regiona warm weather events. Agenda much?
That’s a straw man you’re weaving there. This is a weather anomaly. Run this bit of data with another 360 month’s worth and then you’re talking climate.
A handful of regional weather events, hot or cold, tells you nothing about the global average. When will people learn?
If you think you’re balancing a perceived bias, it’s hardly a good demonstration to repeat the fault.
REPLY: If you’ll note, the story is mostly US centric, citing the US coastal temperatures, and the US NCDC. I’m not really concerned if you don’t like that I also focused on the USA in my rebuttal. If the story was from the BBC, citing Hadley CRU, and about beach temperatures in the UK where you are from I would have looked into that. I could write a hundred different things and somebody would disagree with it. What is most interesting though is that you completely ignored the issue of the missing citation source for the 62.6 degrees global ocean temperature. We’ll see more about that soon.
I also have two global SST maps and charts listed in the article. I’d venture the last one you’ve never seen before until this article.
Oh and about “agenda”, I’m really not the least bit concerned about your opinion on that and here is why.
1) How many rebuttal articles can you find to Seth Borenstein’s AP article?
Google says 10,700 that have this exact title: “In hot water World sets ocean temperature record”
2) In a similar story, highlighted by Dr. Roger Pielke Junior we have this:
27 = the number of news stories covering Michael Mann and colleagues’ new paper claiming that Atlantic hurricanes are at a 1,00o-year high.
3 = the number of news stories covering Chris Landsea and colleagues’ new paper claiming that there is no trend in Atlantic hurricanes over a century.
And you are worried about my one article not covering everything to your satisfaction in the face of overwhelming media bias towards warmist stories? Bugger off!
– Anthony
Talk about cherry picking:
“The Mediterranean is about three degrees warmer than normal. Higher temperatures rule in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.”
My half of the mediterranean is prectically the coldest july august sea I have ever seen, which is born out by:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
Seems that the part closest to the Sahara is warmer by 1.5 C and that is what they are using !!
Why should I believe the rest of the assertion of the article?
The global ocean surface temperature for July 2009 ((WAS ?)) the warmest on record, 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F). This broke the previous July record set in 1998.
BUT HOW DOES CO2 WARM THE OCEAN ?????????????
sun tsi doeth ok i got it—— geo thermal doeth i got that—– but co2??????
cooling…. air is thicker so the water does not boil????(evaporate) so it stays hotter longer???? anyone?????
I am just saying ……….
I may well be wrong but increased sea surface temperatures have to come from somewhere, is it coming from increased surface air temperatures or is it due to thermal transfer from the waters beneath, is the deeper ocean cooling by transfering its heat content to the surface where it is more easily dissipated?
Warmer sea surface temperatures allied to a deeper sub surface ocean cooling may be a sign of the general cooling to come.
I understand that the oceans are a giant heat pump/heat storage unit but my understanding of thermodynamics is limited to say the least, perhaps someone can help?
Are we looking at the beginning of a sharp drop in ocean temperatures with the lower levels transfering its stored heat to the surface or will the warm surface waters transfer this heat down to the deeper ocean?
Anthony, LOL, you can not argue with a fool.
waist o time.
Surface temperatures are a function of wind speeds. Increase the trade winds by a few mph, you decrease the surface temperature.
You can experience this “first hand” (so to speak) by dunking your hand in water. Place it in front of a fan. Get colder? Sure it did. Same thing happens with sea surface temperatures. More wind, lower temperature.
What he is really saying is that the winds are calmer than average, not that the climate is “warmer”.
You conflated global average with local in your top post.
<blockquote.The AP story is written by Seth Borenstein. Seth trends to report the warmest side of things in the worst way, so take the story with a grain of salt. For example, Portland Maine also set a new record low for July Temperatures, see here. I don’t think Seth covered that one nor the -50°F all time statewide Maine record low on January 16th, 2009
That Seth Borenstein mentioned warm water areas around the US as a 'consequence' of high global SSTs does not acquit you of repeating the error with a different purpose.
I did ignore it, because I assumed it was an error of some kind propagated by or through the AP. The actual value is meaningless to Joe Average. The fact remains that July global SSTs are the hottest for that month in the instrumental record.
If you’re maintaining that the media get things wrong, well duh. Anyone in the great climate debates knows that, and sensationalism and misinformation swings all sorts of ways, to the dissatisfaction of ‘skeptics’ and activists alike. It’s hardly news. But repeatedly blogging about it with a certain agenda in mind doesn’t deserve to be annointed as ‘balance’. Or can we expect a post soon that emphasises warm weather events in the continental US instead of emphasising cold weather events and playing down any warmth?
REPLY: Oh puhlezze. Don’t lecture me on agenda. Hundreds to thousands of media articles cover warm events, very few cover cold events. This AP article gets broad coverage and yes does exactly what you complain to me about – mentioning local effects in the USA. It gets millions of eyeballs to my few thousand.
Yes, I don’t see you complaining about that warm imbalance in reporting. Perhaps that imbalance fits your agenda?
The SST value in the AP article is important not to Joe average, but in how it was arrived at.
And yes, I cover warm events and issues if you’d bothered to look. Here’s just a few from the last couple of months:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/18/animating-ghcn-global-temperature-anomalies-from-ncdc/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/16/ncdc-june-2009-second-warmest-on-record-globally/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/07/17/pielke-sr-hypothesis-on-daily-uah-lt-records/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/16/how-not-to-measure-temperature-part-88-honolulus-official-temperature-2/
If you are unhappy with WUWT my advice is this: get your own blog and you can run it any way you wish. So far I’ve had great success with what I write about and the style I use. Feel free to try a challenge on your terms with your own blog.
– Anthony
What are all those thousands of diving sensors monitored by NOAA saying about current ocean temps? Seems to me they’d be rather more reliable than some regional readings, no?
I’d like to support Cassandra’s question. If this surface heat has come up from the 500m level say so that the ocean is draining its heat bank then it will have to refill it sometime presumably reducing atmospheric heating as it does so.
Incidentally is the apparent Atlantic tropical coolness due to hurricane Bill pumping trade winds hence evaporation hence heat out off the ocean?
This is the best site in the world. Crosspatch, you rock… but how deep do they measure these SST temps (and have they accounted for evaporative cooling in their “adjustments”)? Anthony… that was a full frontal smackdown, and much enjoyed.
And yet for some reason, this alleged broad-based increase in oceanic temperatures has had absolutely no visible volumetric effect.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
I had been aware of the repeal of the laws of common sense in recent years, but had not yet had it brought to my attention that the laws of chemistry and physics had been similarly repealed.
A sudden increase in sea surface temperature after a decade of no-increase/cooling ocean suggests there are several mechanisms responsible; with the least likely factor being green house gases. That NOAA doesn’t use this as a place to generate more critical scientific inquiry and debate is a dis-service to science and the public. So i will generate a few layman’s questions in light of NOAA’s lack of leadership into scientific inquiry. Any oceanographers here that can answer these questions?
1. The Argo floats measure down to 750 meters and it is temperature of this total volume that should serve as the metric for any radiative imbalance. Why is just sea surface being reported?
2. The temperature changes by approximately 15 degrees C from surface to 750 m deep. http://www.windows.ucar.edu/earth/Water/images/sm_temperature_depth.jpg How does this water column mix and how much effect does that have on surface temperature?
3. Is warmer water being more extensively distributed across the surface? Are warm pools being spread out? Are changes in the PDO, AO, etc changing currents and distributing surface water differently?
4. Could a cooler ocean cause warmer freshwater inputs from rivers, etc. to remain on the surface longer with less mixing and cooling?
5. What is the balance between surface heating, evaporation, density changes and sinking of warm water? In other words could there be a paradox in which less heating at the surface causes warmer surface measurements? For example under “extreme” heating, there would be greater evaporation making the warm water saltier and denser and sinking below the surface. The surface temperature thus would not be an accurate measure of the heat input. Again a greater depth and volume are needed to measure climate change and energy imbalances.
Jason Salit (23:51:16) :
Surface temperatures are just that, surface. There are other measurements of the heat content at depth. I would look for ARGO data and there are other data used for calculating heat content for tropical storm development.
One of the reasons we have seen a lack of tropical storm development is a lack of heat content (in addition to poor wind conditions aloft and dry African air).
Surface temperatures are only a part of the story. You have to look at the heat content at depth.
I’m scratching my head about this AP story’s statement:
“Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land. That’s because water takes longer to heat up and doesn’t cool off as easily, said climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia.”
And then I went to the Rutgers/NOAA link provided by Anthony, and saw that surface water temps off the coast of Maine for Aug 20 were in the 40s and 50s.
http://www.imcs.rutgers.edu/cool/sat_data/show/?file=../../regions/maine/sst/noaa/2009/img/090820.232.0946.n15.jpg
WOW, those coastal waters sure cooled down IN A HURRY! …Am I reading the chart wrong??
Also, the AP story said:
“The warmer water could add to the melting of sea ice and possibly strengthen some hurricanes.”
There’s that word again: COULD. Even though NOAA themselves has claimed that sea ice fluctuations and increased tropical storm reporting are unrelated to “warming oceans”, it didnt stop Seth from “reporting” that it COULD happen!
Well…you never know…it COULD! …it MIGHT!
Are we looking at the beginning of a sharp drop in ocean temperatures with the lower levels transfering its stored heat to the surface or will the warm surface waters transfer this heat down to the deeper ocean?
The former. As is regularly pointed out here, it is physically impossible for the atmosphere to warm the oceans.
Sunshine heats the oceans below the surface. Evaporation cools the oceans at their surface. Heat transfer is always upwards. Except perhaps for some small local anomalies due salinity differences.
If you have ever dived in a tropical ocean, you will have observed that as you descend, water temperature decreases at about the same rate as sunlight decreases.
Absolute temperatures always look dramatic in red. The anomaly does show http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_update/gsstanim.shtml but so what ?.
Hot spots come and go, just stare at the animation for a while, also note the cooler pool north of the Azores.
I am surprised at how quiet the Pacific looks, given the El Nino forecasts.