Sea Surface Temperatures "warmest on record"…but

The remarks were:
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Fluffy Clouds (Tim L) (22:37:28) :
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 ?????????????
[—snip rest—]
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In all of this it bears keeping in mind that just because ~some~ ocean areas got warmer, it does =not= mean that ALL areas got warmer.
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I have a great degree of disdain for the term ‘global average,’ inasmuch that it is so misleading that it gives rise to false prognostications.
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There are so very many variables to consider when remarking of what appears to be an ‘anomaly,’ that merely talking about the anomalies —in a general way— tends to be very misleading otherwise.
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As with the land, the oceans are affected by the jet stream and the weather patterns which it generates.
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Further to that is the Sun itself which radiates across a wide energy spectrum, not all of which is measured and quantified.
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The gist of this whole ‘news story’ then, is just this: Hype happens.
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You know: If it bleeds, it reads. If the waters were colder this year, would the same degree of hoopla have been expended for a story?
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Therein lay the rub.
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The sky is falling!!! No wait: It’s raising!
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Oh, sorry: It’s just moving around … Just as it has always.
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In conclusion then, I offer this bit of wisdom from a past wise old man:
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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Menchen
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And there you have it!

As with surface temperatures we need to step back and
a) wonder at the practicality of a global temperature
b) Look back in time to ascertain how temperatures respond over a long period.
Last year I wrote a series of short pieces on ‘Fish as a temperature proxy’ which traced back the change from warm, to mid, to cold water fish around the south west coast of Britain. We can trace these from actual records of catches back to around the 13th Century and which also live on in place names such as the Pilchard Inn.
This extract from the University of Plymouth gives us some idea that -like surface temperatures- sea temperatures are constantly fluctuating (Also note that historic records are being constantly ‘adjusted.’ See the CA debate on ‘buckets.’)
“Detection of environmental change in a marine ecosystem—evidence from the western English Channel
References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.
Stephen J. Hawkins, , Alan J. Southward and Martin J. Genner
Marine Biological Association of the UK, The Laboratory, Citadel Hill, Plymouth PL1 2PB, UK
Received 28 January 2002; revised 1 November 2002; accepted 25 November 2002. ; Available online 4 February 2003.
Abstract
To separate human-induced changes from natural fluctuations in marine life requires long-term research. The western English Channel has been investigated from Plymouth for over 100 years. The abundance of marine life has been recorded and related to physical changes in the environment. By comparing different parts of the ecosystem we can demonstrate historic natural fluctuations, allowing prediction of effects of future global change. From the 1920s to the 1950s there was a period of warming of the sea, with increases in abundance of species of fish, plankton and intertidal organisms that are typically common in warmer waters to the south of Britain. After 1962 the sea cooled down and northern cold-water species became more abundant. Since the 1980s regional sea surface temperature has increased again and warm-water species are once more becoming abundant.”
This is part of an aeons old natural cycle-unless someone can demonstrate that Man has interfered with that cycle?
Tonyb

No mystery to that AP silly story.
Hurricane season off to a slow start – TS Ana sputtered on & off, Claudette was a slight TS but dissipated quickly upon landfall, and Bill looks like it’ll miss most land areas until reaching Canada’s maritime provinces. No story here.
Arctic sea ice melt has slowed and looks like it won’t hit a record. Possibly will have more ice in area, extent, & volume than last year. No story here.
Ahh, but sea temps – now there’s a summer slant they can use. Don’t mention variations in ocean currents and eddies. It’s all spin, spin, spin.
And the clowns wonder why the major media is dying on the vine. People read the spin and press releases that pass for journalism these days and have decided to look elsewhere for facts.

“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!”
Priceless!
but at least you offer polite and reasonable advice when he refuses to stay down – all credit to you:
“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.”

Chris Thorne (23:55:20): The SST increase should not affect ocean volume (or sea level) because it is a very small part of the overall ocean. I think your general point is good though, we should be more afraid of volume stopping its increase which would mean we are entering overall global cooling.

Rather OT, but check out the nonsensical 5th paragraph in this contribution to The Times by Oliver Kann. It certainly generated some comment from our side that I doubt he expected.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6804456.ece

What about the lack of Tropical Storms in the Atlantic? They transfer heat energy from the Sea Surface to the upper atmosphere. This has been a very slow year for Tropical Storms. Fewer Tropical Storms could mean that less heat is transported out of the Ocean to the Stratosphere. That might explain a higher SST.

to : anthony . Why does Spaceweather(dot)com make an announcement today, posting about how the sun is on the verge of breaking a record of 52 spotless days back in jul.aug.sept 2008? I ask this, because, I thought that NOAA and the NGDC on Sept 2 of 2008 agreed with the SIDC about a sunspot occuring august 22 of that same year . I don’t get it. Why would NOAA make such a claim or S.W. for that matter. To make that claim, wouldn’t they have to concede that august 08 was actually the first spotless month since 1913. You know, the whole thing is becoming obsurd. How can anyone rely on these govt agencies anymore to inform the public. – David Alan –

“The world’s oceans this summer are the warmest on record.
The National Climatic Data Center, the government agency that keeps weather records, says the average global ocean temperature in July was 62.6 degrees…”
Borenstein is talking about ocean temperature while his data is only related to surface temperatures. he either doesn’t understand the difference or deliberately falsifies the argos data of the recent years.

Totally OT Anthony but Space Weather.com is reporting the following
“QUIET SUN: According to NOAA sunspot counts, the longest stretch of spotless suns during the current solar minimum was 52 days in July, August and Sept. of 2008. The current spate of blank suns is putting that record in jeopardy. There have been no sunspots for almost 42 days and there are none in the offing. Deep solar minimum continues.”
I don’t recall this being reported last year, in fact I specifically recall a controversial decision by NASA to back up 2 weeks and count a sunspeck as a sunspot retroactively last August, spoiling the first calendar month without a sunspot (something that looks to be happening this August perhaps).

Our local weather guy, with eye brow cocked way high, says we are expecting a cold front tomorrow to push down to the Florida peninsular and maybe as far as Jacksonville. I wonder what will the hurricanes do?
As most people know, cold fronts don’t generally hit Florida in August.
Got to feed the hoax, anyway they can.
So my line: Pay more in taxes to the government, so government scientists can pretend to control the weather — Appears to be true. Too bad real science is pushed off the table.

Could it be that overall the global ocean heat content is just exhausting its stored energy? Ot is July just an anamoly? I think back in January of this year there was an unexpected spike in global temperatures. For a few weeks this anomaly generated quite a bit of excitement; however, no one really came up with a good explaination. Things quited down a bit after that.
I do think it is fair to say that GHGs do not force ocean temperatures to rise (that honor belongs to incoming solar radiation). It could be awhile until someone is able to measure the amount of stored energy in the oceans and compare it to , say, 2005. If the top of the oceans are warming, and if the total amount of incoming solar radiation has decreased these last 24 months, where is the warming coming from? Or perhaps sunspot activity is not quite the perfect proxy for climate, afterall. These are interesting times.
My guess is that July was an anomaly. El Nino will continue to increase SSTs in the Eastern PAC, but I wouldn’t be surprised if overall things quiet down this autumn. And by late Winter El Nino will begin to wane.

P.S. I see that the previous poster (“Red Neck Engineer”) also noticed this strange admission by NCDC of not using the satellite data. So it seems I am not the only one scratching my balding head about this.

Red Neck Engineer and Alexander
Below is the executive explanation of changes and reconstruction of existing figures from 2008- which now excludes satellite data.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/papers/merged-product-v3.pdf
This is the detailed document from which the executive statement comes.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/papers/SEA.temps08.pdf
It must be remembered that Historic global SST data is even more sparse than surface global temperatures. Both have their genesis in James Hansens’ 1986 document which sems to have aquired a factual scientific basis from which fractions of a degree are calculated.
We may know SST from extremely localised locations for a few decades, but it is misleading to pretend this is a finely tuned science, and when historic data is adjusted (whichever way) we need to ensure we are comparing like for like.
tonyb

Sorry for my ignorance down here in Oz, but is it cherry picking season in the USA? It must be very pleasant for you all to be able to have a nice warm swim given all the record low July temperatures we have been hearing about. Living as we do on the beach next to the Pacific I can tell youse all that warm and cold waters come and go all the time. Why is that nowadays such a conceptual challenge? We live in different times..

Also as Agst noted the satellites measure the skin temperature. But I believe NOAAs claim that the cold bias is worst in mid to high latitudes of the southern hemisphere is bogus. The winds in the roaring forties and furious fifties, keep the water well mixed much of the time and the skin temperatures should be representative. The persistent cold in the SH oceans seems to have been like the MWP, an inconvenient fact that e3fforst needed to be made to address.
Steve McIntyre’s friend Phil Jones of the Hadley Center last year (menitoned on CA) remarked perhaps there was more warmth to be found in the oceans.
Peterson (who had engineered the removal of the UHI from NCDC USHCN) and NOAA took on the challenge and removed the satellite and do not use the ARGO data real time. Reverting back to the old Hadley ship and island to fill in the global grids approach led to sudden leap up of ocean and thus global temperatures given that 70% world is ocean. This last fact almost guarantees every month will rank somewhere in top 5 warmest ever.
Just in time for Cap and Tax and Copenhagen.

“. . .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.”
Quite. Water takes longer to heat up. So how in the name of God does water temperatures manage to shoot up multiple degrees in a single month?
It has not of course. You’ve already spotted the obvious flaws. These are 1) Surface temperatures 2) Non global.
I would only be interested in what the argo network tells us and I am pretty sure this will be unchanged from the previous month otherwise we will have to rewrite the laws of physics.
I lean towards the view that heat has been transferred from other areas. Sometime in the future we make get the reverse situation. I wonder if Seth will be reporting that?

Every claim ever made by AGW promoters turns out the same:
False.

Alexander Feht (04:33:56) :
So their basing their present number on a different source than previously? Oh great. It’s going to be hard to do site survey’s on ship inlet valves and buckets, Anthony.
I seem to remember there was just a paper on ocean heat content (Dr. Pielke?) showing it hadn’t increased recently. If the oceans are warming we should be seeing increases in sea level. I’m going to bet that we won’t see sea level data for awhile because the numbers may go down.

Anthony
You have obviuosly gleaned some information from Mr Grey’s email address to which we are not privy. It is very unusual for you to be soooo expressive but I did LOL.

It looks like we have another cooking the books episode going on – publish a paper justifying a new process/algorithm – programmers implementing the new process take the high side of each assumption that must be made – viola, out pops another record.
Meanwhile, everyone comments how the weather is unusually cold right now – you feel a little embarassed about putting a coat on in August when all these records are being set.
Another interesting point is that, in July 2009,
– the average Ocean surface temperature was 16.4C;
– the average Land surface temperature is 14.3C;
So the ocean surface is warmer than the land (I think this is the case throughout the year, not just in July).
– some of this will be due to the higher altitude of land;
– the oceans cool off down to 1.5C as one goes deeper so, in total, the oceans are cooler than the land and the atmosphere at the surface;
– but it is difficult to see how the oceans are sinking away greenhouse effect warming when they are warmer than the land and atmosphere on average.

Cooling = natural variation.
Warming = climate change = anthropogenic
Everyone should know that by now.
A source for ocean data:
http://climate4you.com/

OK, lets do some other cherry picking. According AMSRE Sea Ice Extent we have at the moment at about 45 Nord and 145 East, between Sachalin and Hokkaido, sea ice?

From NOAA release on July
Please Note: Effective with the July 2009 State of the Climate Report, NCDC transitioned to the new version (version 3b) of the extended reconstructed sea surface temperature (ERSST) dataset. ERSST.v3b is an improved extended SST reconstruction over version 2. Most of the improvements are justified by testing with simulated data. The primary difference in version 3b, compared to version 2, is improved low-frequency tuning that increases the sensitivity to data prior to 1930.
In ERSST v3b, satellite data was removed from the ERSST product. The addition of satellite data from 1985 to present caused problems for many users. (wonder who complained?)
Although the satellite data were corrected with respect to the in situ data, a small residual cold bias remained at high southern latitudes where in situ data were sparse. For more information about the differences between ERSST.v3b and ERSST.v2 please read Summary of Recent Changes in the Land-Ocean Temperature Analyses and Improvements to NOAA’s Historical Merged Land-Ocean Surface Temperature Analysis (1880-2006) paper.

AGW claims the arctic sea ice is melting. AGW claims that the Greenland ice sheet is melting. AGW claims that this will shut down the Gulf Stream and prevent warmer waters from coming north. Northern waters of Maine are “the warmest ever recorded”.
1 + 1 + 1= 4
Now I understand.

Stephen Wilde: You wrote, “SST measure the rate at which the oceans release heat to the atmosphere.”
To use SST in this calculation, you also assume that a change in SST over time reflects only heat released to the atmosphere. Surface waters also subduct and rise back to the surface (overturn) over time scales of days, weeks, months, decades…

And despite all this warm water and “favorable environmental conditions” Hurricane Bill continues to weaken. Now a weak category three. I’m wondering how much the depth of this warm water plays a role.

Final note:
The total for “cool” when used alone exceeded the total for “warm” by 195%. This pretty much guarantees that one will get a larger number of hits for cool no matter what one is looking for. Using cool loosely is totally uncool.

Someone please explain this quote to me from the article:
“The heat is most noticeable near the Arctic, where water temperatures are as much as 10 degrees above average. The tongues of warm water could help melt sea ice from below and even cause thawing of ice sheets on Greenland, said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado.”
How will warmer ocean water melt the land based ice sheets in Greenland pray tell?

Bob Tisdale (06:00:05) :
“Anthony, the Borentein article is factually incorrect in places and it raises alarmism to ridiculous levels in others. It’s tough to find that area of the Arctic Ocean that’s10 deg F above average.
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/08/borenstien-sea-surface-temperature.html”
Bob, I am sure it’s a coincidence but the red arrow in your map is pointing at Archangels, the Russian harbor where all the nuclear military ships and submarines are laid to rest. Who knows, something is cooking there.
Strange anomaly.

I’m sitting on a porch overlooking the harbor in South Bristol, Maine, right now as I write this note. I’m east a bit north of Portland. I’ve been swimming all week in the water here, and here’s my first-hand report.
It’s cold. About 61-63 degrees, and notably, the heat is in the top 6-12 inches of water. Just below that level, it’s decidedly more frigid, icy cold. So you try to do as much floating as possible, and you don;t stay in the water for more than a minute or two.
BTW, I know Seth Borenstein. Question — what is his college degtee in – journalism. How many science classes did he take in college — one, intro biology. Don;t expect a lot of critical thinking from Seth.

@Adam Grey:
So what *if* this is the warming SST on record? What does it prove? Yes, the earth warmed during the 20th century, but that fact does not imply any specific cause.
In other words, just because the climate warmed and *may* still be warming does not imply that AGW has anything to do with it! Where is the evidence it’s not natural causes. Where is the evidence that we have observed is outside the scope of natural variation?

Many thanks to Capn Jack Walker for the information, your explanation was simple, understandable and to the point.
Cassie K.

Adam Grey (01:08:02) :
“Hundreds to thousands of media articles cover warm events, very few cover cold events.
I ran a search to see if that assertion stacked up.”
One can’t choose exceptional years for the no.- of-hits surveys to determine bias. For example it was a remarkably cool July 2009 over 80% of N. America including frosts in every month this far in Edmonton, Alberta. Similarly when we had snow storms in South Africa, Buenos Aires, Saudi Arabia and frost in Alice Springs, Australia, there were, of course, a lot of news reports. I think one thing that may be starting to happen as the global warming issue is beginning to die is there will be a big up-tick in “cool” stories because, in the propaganda blitz of the past two decades, cool temperatures are now getting to be a story. I’ve noticed a shriller edge to protestations from AGW proponents and of course this has increased as the number of defections increases – including shutting down of one of the major AGW blogs until warming resumes in 30 years!! (real climate was it?).

Has anyone asked how much of the data comes from ship measurements?
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but the worldwide economy has slowed to the point where shipboard commerce has stagnated. Any measurements from commercial ships (oil tankers, cargo vessels) would probably be skewed toward warmer temperatures because they are spending more time in port (shallower water).

Stephen Wilde: “I was quoting someone else before commenting on what he said.”
Sorry. Didn’t see any quotes. Thought it was yours. Let me redirect it then.
Philip_B: You wrote, “SST measure the rate at which the oceans release heat to the atmosphere.”
Wrong. You’d need to include a change in time to measure rate. SST in and of itself is a snapshot of an average temperature for a given month or week or day.
To use SST in this calculation, you also assume that a change in SST over time reflects only heat released to the atmosphere. Surface waters also subduct and rise back to the surface (overturn) over time scales of days, weeks, months, decades…
You wrote, “Once the heat is in the atmosphere it is lost to space fairly quickly.”
The rise in Northern Hemisphere Mid-to-High Latitude TLT anomalies that resulted from the 1997/98 El Nino lasted at least until the El Nino of 2002/03, which bumped them up again, so “fairly quickly” needs to be clarified.

Hmmm, this must be why the hurricane season got off to such a quick start this year. Thanks Mr. Borenstien. It all makes sense now.

barry,
When people talk about a news bias towards “warming” stories, they are usually referring to mainstream media. At least, this is the way I perceive it. I neither know nor care how many cooling vs warming hits appear in Google as most of that is put their by individuals and does not tell us anything about Editorial Bias. Studies have been done by parsing news paper and tv articles (sorry but I can’t think of them specifically) and the conclusion is pretty clear: pro AGW stories outnumber skeptical stories by 3 or 4 to 1.
Returning to Google, maybe there are more “cooling” stories, and if there are then all that shows is how the individual is fighting back against the ministries of truth. Viva la internet!

An interesting thought just occurred to me so I thought I would throw it out for others to consider.
As mentioned above, SST measured by satellite is actually the skin temperature of a very thin layer at the ocean surface. This temperature is effected by several factors, among them total solar intensity on the ocean surface, mixing of the upper layers of the water, and evaporative cooling due to local wind conditions.
It just occurred to me that I never hear mention of the effect or water clarity on the depth of solar heating of the upper ocean layers. If for example the water is highly turbid, the solar energy will be absorbed in a relatively shallow layer near the oceans surface, and little radiant heating will occur deep in the layer. If mixing is absent or reduced due to low wind conditions (which would also reduce evaporative cooling of the surface), you could have a condition where the temperature profile of the upper layer is skewed. Most heating would occur in a thin layer near the surface.
In this condition, with more solar heating in the upper layers (increasing SST) but actual heat content of the full 750 meter thick upper layer is reduced. I would think that to properly evaluate the meaning of SST measurements, and what it means, you would have to understand the temperature profile (as gained from the buoy measurements).
If you did not have the buoy measurements, do the satellites have the ability to indirectly measure the absorption depth where the suns energy is deposited in the ocean water?
In highly turbid water, all the solar energy could be absorbed in a few mm of water, where in crystal clear waters of the Caribbean, the water would be heated to considerable depth by the same energy input from the sun. The difference in these absorption profiles and the resulting temperature profiles with depth would very significantly influence the significance of an increase of SST.
Something as simple as an algae bloom could drastically alter this heating to depth profile for days, weeks or longer. Likewise flood runoff of muddy water, or large inputs of wind blown dust would also effect the surface temperature profile with depth due to the resulting changes in transparency of the water.
Just another consideration regarding SST. Increasing SST does not necessarily mean an increase in upper layer heat energy content, it may only represent a situation that concentrates heating in a smaller volume of water.
Larry

Just one small detail about SSTs. What is the current measurement technique; isn’t it read from satellites; essentially thermal imaging; optical pyrometry or whatever you want to call it. They couldn’t possibly map those areas to that detail by in the water thermometry.
So that brings us to the simple fact that because of the extremely high water absorption coefficient of long wave IR radiation, optical pyrometry can only be reading the very surface layer temperature; as in a few microns. That is the water layer that could be warmed by downward thermal radiation from the atmosphere; but also cooled by evaporation.
I’ve never seen any microclimate data on sea surface temperature versus depth, that would show what goes on in the top few cm of water down to the micron level.
My WA guess would be that the very surface is somewhat warmer than even 10 cm deep,a nd the top ten microns could be the very hottest temperatures. If it was windy, then evaporative cooling might make the very top a bit cooler due to the evaporative cooling. But as I said it’s a WA guess, since I’ve never seen any peer reviewed datya on such things.
George

“”” hotrod (09:33:05) :
An interesting thought just occurred to me so I thought I would throw it out for others to consider.
As mentioned above, SST measured by satellite is actually the skin temperature of a very thin layer at the ocean surface. This temperature is effected by several factors, among them total solar intensity on the ocean surface, mixing of the upper layers of the water, and evaporative cooling due to local wind conditions.
It just occurred to me that I never hear mention of the effect or water clarity on the depth of solar heating of the upper ocean layers. If for example the water is highly turbid, the solar energy will be absorbed in a relatively shallow layer near the oceans surface, and little radiant heating will occur deep in the layer. “””
Didn’t see your post earlier hotrod. Actually,t he Optical absorption of sea water has been fairly well documented in the past,a dn a lot of data is available in “The Infra-Red Handbook” edited by Wolfe and Zissis.
It is interesting in that the spectral absorption by sea water is somewhat like the inverse of the solar spectrum. Minimum absorption occurs at around 470 nm, slightly short of the solar peak at 500 nm. The coefficient is listed as about 0.0001 cm^-1. By 300nm and 800nm, the absorption ghas risen to 0.01 cm^-1. Below 180 nm the absorption coefficient is somewhat greater than 10 cm^-1 and in the infra-red at 3.0 microns for example sea water has an absorption coefficient of around 8000 cm^-1, and it is around 1000 cm^-1 from about 2.5 microns out to forever.
There’s some more detailed data for distilled, fresh water, oceanic water, coastal; even for Chesapeake Bay which is apparently pretty scungy. But oceanic water is not far removed from distilled water, and probably depends mor3e on plankton content.
If there was a way to post pictures here, I could put the graphs here; I have to photograph them with my digital camera to get them into computerese; and I can post those on some other web sites I prowl around.
But the long and the short of it is that solar spectrum radiation penetrates deeply into oceanic waters. An absorption coefficent of 0.01 would mean the intensity drops to 1/e (37%) in one metre of depth; and that is at the 800, and 300 nm points; so the most energetic part of the solar spectrum goes much deeper. the bulk of the solar spectrum energy is capable of penetrating beyond ten metres.
Of course it all is eventually absorbed by something which makes the deep oceans nearly a black body absorber, with just about a 3% Fresnel reflection loss (diffuse) from the surface. The normal reflectance of water is only 2%; but the oblique reflectance climbs to unity,a s the Lambertian flux distribution drops to zero, so you end up with about 3% total reflectance of incident solar energy.
But that IR absorption of 1000 cm^-1 from about 2.7 to 10 microns means a 1/e penetration of 10 microns, and at 3 microns the 1/e penetration is only 1.25 microns depth. But there isn’t much 3 micron thermal radiation from the atmosphere.
The water absorption spectrum is key to climate theory, since it clearly demonstrates that the treatment of thermal radiation energy from the atmosphere (including clouds) is a totally different phenomenon from the solar spectrum energy treatment.
Energy storage in the ocean must be virtually all solar spectrum energy; but SST (satellite) measurments would be expected to strongly represent atmospheric emission of LW IR energy; but that would seem to promote surface evaporation, rather than energy storage.
So IMHO, SST is a poor metric of oceanic energy storage (“heat”).

hotrod (09:33:05) :

It just occurred to me that I never hear mention of the effect or water clarity on the depth of solar heating of the upper ocean layers.

It’s an active area of research in oceanography. The awareness in the climate community seems to be growing more recently.

If for example the water is highly turbid, the solar energy will be absorbed in a relatively shallow layer near the oceans surface, and little radiant heating will occur deep in the layer. If mixing is absent or reduced due to low wind conditions (which would also reduce evaporative cooling of the surface), you could have a condition where the temperature profile of the upper layer is skewed. Most heating would occur in a thin layer near the surface.
In this condition, with more solar heating in the upper layers (increasing SST) but actual heat content of the full 750 meter thick upper layer is reduced.

The solar energy is nontheless absorbed, so barring other factors you would still have the same heating integrated over 750 m.

I would think that to properly evaluate the meaning of SST measurements, and what it means, you would have to understand the temperature profile (as gained from the buoy measurements).

That would be a fair thought.

If you did not have the buoy measurements, do the satellites have the ability to indirectly measure the absorption depth where the suns energy is deposited in the ocean water?

There’s work on trying to infer the “state” of the water from satellite measurements, e.g., from the color of the ocean as seen from space. Obviously, this is not an easy proposition.
Other things you can do include loading expendable probes onto ships of opportunity or using more autonomous instruments (like Argo).

Bryan (12:40:49) : It simply doesn’t equate. What equates indeed is that you have been fooled by the dark prophet of doom. Wonder who?…He has not appeared this summer, which is meaningful.

Re. Warm water off Maine: this happens every year around this time.
I used to live at the beach in Southern Maine. The ocean water was almost always too cold to swim. Every summer my wife and I would stroll down the beach watching the tourists from Boston run into the water, scream, and run back out. They always forgot how cold it gets!
By late August, some tendril of the gulf stream current often moved into the area, and made the water tolerable for more than a few minutes of ankle-deep pain. That has just happened. In fact, we just got back from York Beach in Maine, and it was a great beach day, by Maine standards. I managed to stay in the water for a good half an hour, and there were actually decent waves! Then I sat in my beach chair and shivered for while.
One of the joys of living in York Beach was watching surfers (in warm rubber wetsuits, of course), braving a blizzard when a Nor’easter storm came up the coast and raised the waves above the usual lake-like placid ripples.
Alejo

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2009/08/record-july-2009-sea-surface-temperatures-the-view-from-space/

It just occurred to me that I never hear mention of the effect or water clarity on the depth of solar heating of the upper ocean layers. If for example the water is highly turbid, the solar energy will be absorbed in a relatively shallow layer near the oceans surface, and little radiant heating will occur deep in the layer.
You are correct.
However, most tropical and subtropical oceans are clear and most solar heating of the oceans occurs in these regions. So turbidity has a limited effect on solar heating of the oceans on a global basis. Although turbidity may have a significant local effect. I am thinking of things like monsoon runoff in the Bay of Bengal. I recall seeing satellite images of silt plumes stretching hundreds of kilometers from the coast.

Just a thought………long wave (heat) radiation atmospheric absorption makes it impossible for earth based telescopes to study this form of energy coming from outer space,so how do satellites measure SST’s through our atmosphere?

Maybe there is a connection between this spike in SST and the lack of tropical cyclones in the months leading up to July. Tropical cyclones move heat from the ocean’s surface up to the base of the stratosphere through convection, thereby cooling the waters that they pass over. Tropical cyclones also increase mixing of cooler water from below with the warm surface water. These effects are significant – a tropical cyclone that moves very slowly or comes to a stop will weaken after a day or two, and a tropical cyclone that crosses the path of another recent tropical cyclone will usually show a drop (or leveling off) in intensity as it does so. It seems reasonable that a decrease in tropical cyclone activity would cause heat to build up on the surface of the tropical oceans. Large-scale ocean currents would spread this heat around, so the warm anomaly would not just be restricted to the tropics. Now that the tropical cyclone activity has picked up a little, it seems that the SST anomaly has come down pretty quickly. Obviously this is a simplistic way of looking at it and there are other factors at work, but this may be a significant part of it.

Michael Sager (21:15:01),
Interesting point you make about cyclones and SST’s. It brings up the point of how much mixing and how deep is the mixing when a cyclone passes over water?. Perhaps a cyclone over the Tao-Triton buoys would give valuable information.
A cyclone over the El-Nino hot region might be needed,in fact do cyclones occur on the equator at 85-105 degrees west?

Re: Philip_B (18:28:11) :
Perhaps we’re speaking apples and oranges.
The chart I was refering to was this one
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.south.jpg
My statement about Antarctic Ice being lower than in 16 of the last 20 years is confirmed by this chart.
It clearly shows current ice extent (though admittedly not at southern winter maximum levels yet) is currently only greater than the maximums of 2008, 2002, 1992, and 1987. All other years between 1987 and current had more ice coverage than today.
Re: Nogw (14:30:38) :
If you are saying that decreased solar activity like we are seeing doesn’t equate with warmer temperatures you are likely right. However:
We do have a deep solar minimum occuring with little to no spot activity occuring.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/21/soho-back-up-and-running-didnt-miss-anything-sun-still-blank/#more-10138
Current Antarctic Ice extent (though not at maximum but close) is at 4th lowest point of the last 21 years (subject to change when maximum has been realized)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.south.jpg
Current Arctic Ice is at third lowest level per this sites dataset
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.area.jpg
So while one as you state
Re: Nogow (14:30:38)
Bryan (12:40:49) : “It simply doesn’t equate.”
It still is fact that we are:
in a deep solar minimum
Experiencing 3rd lowest arctic ice levels since prior to 1978
&
Experiencing potential 4th lowest maximum Antarctic Ice coverage levels in 21 years

This is silly-

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.

Well, a 1.06 degree F increase added to a 61.5 degree F average does equal 62.6 degrees F, when rounded down to one decimal place.
What’s your point?
You’re questioning the rounding?

The remarks were:
—————
Bob Tisdale (14:39:52) :
Philip_B: You wrote, “And on heat lost to space. Once the heat is in the atmosphere, it cannot return to the oceans…”
It can’t? I suggest you watch the following video:

Watch the tropical Pacific for the formation of the 1997/98 El Nino, then watch the SST anomalies of the Atlantic rise. The heat released by the El Nino warms the troposphere, which in turn, warms the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. With the increase in SST anomaly in the Atlantic comes an increase in OHC. The surface is part of the ocean, is it not?
—————
.
I beg to differ in that matter of the atmosphere being able to impart heat energy BACK into a body of water, when the body of water is at least as warm as the atmosphere, AND is radiating heat into said atmosphere.
.
Since neither the atmosphere nor the oceans are able to ‘store’ heat energy, inasmuch as such a thing is an impossibility without first converting the heat energy into something else, then the ability of one source to affect another source is directly dependent upon which body is the lesser active heat-wise.
.
On a very cold day, with the temps below freezing, one may see the moisture in one’s expelled breath, merely that the atmosphere is denser and therefore the moisture is not so readily absorbed as it would on a very much warmer day.
.
That very same principle applies with atmosphere over water: As the water becomes closer in temperature to the atmosphere, the water vapor become thinker above the water, and as a result of that the atmosphere becomes the recipient of the heat energy, and NOT the water.
.
And one other thing: Neither the atmosphere nor the oceans generate heat, or cause heat ‘regeneration’ or ‘amplification,’ as without the Sun, there would be no heat at all, other than the geothermal.
.
The whole is system is a net loss engine. Once energy has been expended, it is such: Expended. It CANNOT be ‘recycled.’

Highlander: You began your comment with, “I beg to differ in that matter of the atmosphere being able to impart heat energy BACK into a body of water, when the body of water is at least as warm as the atmosphere, AND is radiating heat into said atmosphere.”
Excuse my use of the word heat and the other descriptive errors. I’ll rewrite what I wrote as:
########
Philip_B: You wrote, “And on heat lost to space. Once the heat is in the atmosphere, it cannot return to the oceans…”
An El Nino event shifts coupled-ocean atmosphere processes. These result in rises in SST anomalies elsewhere. I suggest you watch the following video:

Watch the tropical Pacific for the formation of the 1997/98 El Nino, then watch the SST anomalies of the Atlantic rise. The 1997/98 El Nino transferred warm subsurface water from the Pacific Warm Pool to the surface of the Eastern and Central Tropical Pacific, changing convection patterns there. It also shifted “normal” coupled-ocean atmosphere processes. As these shifts in coupled-ocean atmosphere processes travelled east, they raised the surface temperature of the Atlantic Ocean (and the TLT anomalies of the same area).
http://i29.tinypic.com/nwgg2v.png
The 1997/98 El Nino also caused an upward step change in tropical Atlantic SST Anomalies.
http://i31.tinypic.com/2whmr60.png
The increase in SST anomaly in the Atlantic implies an increase in Ocean Heat Content, at least of the surface component. The OHC of the tropical Pacific may decrease during an El Nino, but the El Nino has resulted in an increase in heat content elsewhere.

About That Warm Ocean…
climate by seablogger
There has been a lot of publicity about a warm spell that has affected oceans of the northern hemisphere this summer. Rare reader Ron sent me the text of this much remarked AP article:
By SETH BORENSTEIN (AP) – 2 days ago
WASHINGTON — The world’s oceans this summer are the warmest on record.
The National Climatic Data Center, the government agency that keeps weather records, says the average global ocean temperature in July was 62.6 degrees. That’s the hottest since record-keeping began in 1880. The previous record was set in 1998.
Meteorologists blame a combination of a natural El Nino weather pattern on top of worsening manmade global warming. The warmer water could add to the melting of sea ice and possibly strengthen some hurricanes.
The result has meant lots of swimming at beaches in Maine with pleasant 72-degree water. Ocean temperatures reached 88 degrees as far north as Ocean City, Md., this week.
The Gulf of Mexico, where warm water fuels hurricanes, has temperatures dancing around 90. Most of the water in the Northern Hemisphere has been considerably warmer than normal. The Mediterranean is about three degrees warmer than normal. Higher temperatures rule in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
It’s most noticeable near the Arctic, where water temperatures are as much as 10 degrees above average.
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.
“This is another yet really important indicator of the change that’s occurring,” Weaver said.
Let’s unpack this article and examine the embedded deceits. First let’s consider the 1880 claim. There was no NCDC in 1880 — no organization to gather and standardize data. The date is arbitrary. About that time ship records became sufficiently numerous that a rough, guesswork chart can be reconstructed. There is no reasonable way to compare the records of that time with the global satellite data we receive today.
US records for all-time high atmospheric temperature were almost all set in the Nineteen Thirties. It would be interesting if we had a satellite data bank of ocean temperatures from those years. But we don’t. Properly speaking, our period of record is only thirty years, not a hundred thirty.
It is true that an unseasonal summer El Nino has developed in the Pacific this year. At the same time other extensive warm anomalies have been noted in the northern hemisphere. The Arctic ones are suspect, owing to the unreliable data coming from a broken polar-orbiting satellite. The mid-latitude anomalies are real. But the AP author conveniently omits mention of the continuing cold anomalies at higher latitudes in the southern hemisphere, which has been more radically decoupled from the northern hemisphere than at any other time in the satellite record.
You can bet that any violent landfalling hurricanes would have been incorporated into the article too. The author overlooks data indicating the tropics worldwide are experiencing less cyclone energy release than at any time since a previous dip in the Seventies. In fact it could be that the deficit of tropical storms has contributed to a surplus of warmth.
I was astonished by the claim of 88 degree ocean temperature in Maryland, so I looked up the site at the National Data Buoy Center. The location is an ocean inlet, subject to tide. When the tide goes out, sun-heated bay water passes the sensor. It did spike to 88 a few days ago on an outbound tide in hot weather. But the true ocean temperature is 78, and this is reflected in cooler readings on the inbound tide. The spike datum has been used in deceptively the article. This is so typical.
Holes of coolness are already appearing in the El Nino. I suspect it will fade before the end of the year. But that will not matter to the AP author, whose agenda is Save Copenhagen! The next round of climate talks is scheduled for December, and it is absolutely necessary, if you are a believer, to keep the agenda on track. The US must pass cap-and-trade. Then it will be better positioned to argue other nations into similar nonsense.
Meanwhile the sun continues spotless. The real driver of Earth’s climate hints at the next ice age. To cripple our civilization for a flutter in sea surface temperatures would be the grandest folly in human history.
From http://www.seablogger.com