No need to shout. My main concern was accuracy in reporting. As for the significance of the record warm ocean temperatures, we’ve heard a lot about supposed cooling of the oceans and atmosphere, but these recent measurements suggest otherwise.

Once again, compare texts.

NOAA: “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.”

Borenestein: “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.”

I don’t see any “significant differences”.

“He also elected not to distinguish between temperature and temperature anomaly.”

I doubt that citing the anomaly would change the basic message of the NOAA PR.

In light of my post above please observe the following:

Brendan, since you love to talk about it so much, please explain to us WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE of the warmer ocean temperatures, HOWEVER YOU CHOOSE TO INTERPRET THEM, on climate or any science for that matter, based on your work?

(Please provide all references, equations, and PLEASE use proper scientific notation for any forward predictions. Please also provide proof that it is YOUR work.)

That’s how you handle it Bob. You don’t waste your own ink. Wanna bet it’s about to get real quiet around here?

Borenstein’s inane articles aren’t even worth this much discussion. I lived in Florida from 2004-2006. In the summer of 2005 there was a shift in the Atlantic currents that led to the waters on the Atlantic coast of Florida never reaching 70F all summer. This is some 10F below normal. It was reported as one of those “FYI” stories they cram in at the end of the news, but there was no kneejerk reaction that the world had suddenly slipped in to global cooling. So a .6C increase is kind of a joke, and how big of a joke is directly proportional to how aware you are of how things ACTUALLY work. Knowing that Atlantic waters are prone to such shifts, Seth’s story does nothing but prove to me that he is the clueless idiot I already believed him to be. On the flip side, making a capitol case out of it and presenting a 15 slide presentation on why he is wrong gives him WAAAAAYYYY to much legitimacy. He is making statements with no point of reference. While they may seem profound in his pea brain, how startlingly UNPROFOUND they are to anyone who knows better is all the proof you need that he doesn’t even know what he is actually reporting. So the only danger in his reporting it is that equally dumb people will believe it. But hey, buffalo will follow each other over a cliff too. But there’s no sense wasting time, bandwidth and reasoned thinking trying to prevent it….

Yes, but a record warm temperature anomaly in July indicates the likelihood of a high absolute temperature.

More to the point, did Borenstein accurately report the NOAA press release? I think the relevant quote here is his lead: “The world’s oceans this summer are the warmest on record.”

That is a reasonably accurate representation of the NOAA PR: “The global ocean surface temperature for July 2009 was the warmest on record…” especially given that the June record was the same.

Significant El Nino events like those in 1986/87/88 and 1997/98 have long-lasting impacts on global temperature. They create step changes in the mid-to-high latitude TLT anomalies of the Northern Hemisphere as illustrated in the following post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/rss-msu-tlt-time-latitude-plots.html
They also create step changes in SST anomalies of the East Indian and West Pacific Oceans…
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of.html
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/01/can-el-nino-events-explain-all-of_11.html
…and in the North Atlantic. In the North Atlantic, they happen on top of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation signal:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/02/there-are-also-el-nino-induced-step.html

The other problem would remain. Increasing CO2 results in increasing ocean acidification.

Which still leaves us with those age-old questions:

By how much?
By when?
and
So-what?

phoenix mattress (08:46:48)

“Let’s say that the earth is NOT warming…”

“Yes, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that increasing CO2 is unrelated to increasing global temperatures.
The other problem would remain. Increasing CO2 results in increasing ocean acidification.”

Francis,

No Francis, ocean acidification is another hoax which is debunked time after time but keeps coming up time after time based on BS.
So, as our local warmer, Francis, please asnwer the questions asked in the article.

The article:
In response to a question concerning the likelihood of our oceans becoming acidic from global warming Ian Plimer, University of Adelaide, has replied:

THE oceans have remained alkaline during the Phanerozoic (last 540 million years) except for a very brief and poorly understood time 55 million years ago.

Rainwater (pH 5.6) reacts with the most common minerals on Earth (feldspars) to produce clays, this is an acid consuming reaction, alkali and alkaline earths are leached into the oceans (which is why we have saline oceans), silica is redeposited as cements in sediments, the reaction consumes acid and is accelerated by temperature (see below).

In the oceans, there is a buffering reaction between the sea floor basalts and sea water (see below). Sea water has a local and regional variation in pH (pH 7.8 to 8.3). It should be noted that pH is a log scale and that if we are to create acid oceans, then there is not enough CO2 in fossil fuels to create oceanic acidity because most of the planet’s CO2 is locked up in rocks.

When we run out of rocks on Earth or plate tectonics ceases, then we will have acid oceans.

In the Precambrian, it is these reactions that rapidly responded to huge changes in climate (-40 deg C to +50 deg C), large sea level changes (+ 600m to -640m) and rapid climate shifts over a few thousand years from ’snowball’ or ’slushball’ Earth to very hot conditions (e.g. Neoproterozoic cap carbonates that formed in water at ~50 deg C lie directly on glacial rocks). During these times, there were rapid changes in oceanic pH and CO2 was removed from the oceans as carbonate. It is from this time onwards (750 Ma) that life started to extract huge amounts of CO2 from the oceans, life has expanded and diversified and this process continues (which is why we have low CO2 today.

The history of CO2 and temperature shows that there is no correlation.

Ask your local warmer:

1. Why was CO2 15 times higher than now in the Ordovician-Silurian glaciation?

2. Why were both methane and CO2 higher than now in the Permian glaciation?

3. Why was CO2 5 times higher than now in the Cretaceous-Jurassic glaciation?

The process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere via the oceans has led to carbonate deposition (i.e. CO2 sequestration).

The atmosphere once had at least 25 times the current CO2 content, we are living at a time when CO2 is the lowest it has been for billions of years, we continue to remove CO2 via carbonate sedimentation from the oceans and the oceans continue to be buffered by water-rock reactions (as shown by Walker et al. 1981).

The literature on this subject is large yet the warmers chose to ignore this literature.

These feldspar and silicate buffering reactions are well understood, there is a huge amount of thermodynamic data on these reactions and they just happened to be omitted from argument by the warmers.

When ocean pH changes, the carbon species responds and in more acid oceans CO2 as a dissolved gas becomes more abundant.

Royer, D. L., Berner, R. A. and Park, J. 2007: Climate sensitivity constrained by CO2 concentrations over the past 420 million years. Nature 446: 530-532.
Bice, K. L., Huber, B. T. and Norris, R. D. 2003: Extreme polar warmth during the Cretaceous greenhouse? Paradox of Turonian ∂18O record at Deep Sea Drilling Project Site 511. Palaeoceanography 18:1-11.
Veizer, J., Godderis, Y. and Francois, L. M. 2000: Evidence for decoupling of atmospheric CO2 and global climate during the Phanerozoic eon. Nature 408: 698-701.
Donnadieu, Y., Pierehumbert, R., Jacob, R. and Fluteau, F. 2006: Cretaceous climate decoupled from CO2 evolution. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 248: 426-437.
Hay, W. W., Wold, C. N., Soeding, E. and Floegel, S. 2001: Evolution of sediment fluxes and ocean salinity. In: Geologic modeling and simulation: sedimentary systems (Eds Merriam, D. F. and Davis, J. C.), Kluwer, 163-167.
Knauth, L. P. 2005: Temperature and salinity history of the Precambrian ocean: implications for the course of microbial evolution. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 219: 53-69.
Rogers, J. J. W. 1996: A history of the continents in the past three billion years. Journal of Geology 104: 91-107.
Velbel, M. A. 1993: Temperature dependence of silicate weathering in nature: How strong a negative feedback on long-term accumulation of atmospheric CO2 and global greenhouse warming? Geology 21:1059-1061
Kump, L. R., Brantley, S. L. and Arthur, M. A. 2000: Chemical weathering, atmospheric CO2 and climate. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 28: 611-667.
Gaillardet, J., Dupré, B., Louvat, P. and Allègre, C. J. 1999: Global silicate weathering and CO2 consumption rates deduced from the chemistry of large rivers. Chemical Geology 159: 3-30.
Berner, R. A., Lasagna, A. C. and Garrels, R. M. 1983: The carbonate-silicate geochemical cycle and its effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 100 million years. American Journal of Science 283: 641-683.
Raymo, M. E. and Ruddiman, W. F. 1992: Tectonic forcing of late Cenozoic climate. Nature 359: 117-122.
Walker, J. C. B., Hays, P. B. and Kasting, J. F. 1981: A negative feedback mechanism for the long term stabilization of the Earth’s surface temperature. Journal of Geophysical Research 86: 9776-9782.
Berner, R. A. 1980: Global CO2 degassing and the carbon cycle: comment on ‘Cretaceous ocean crust at DSDP sites 417 and 418: carbon uptake from weathering vs loss by magmatic activity.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 54: 2889.
Schwartzman, D. W. and Volk, T. 1989: Biotic enhancement of weathering and the habitability of Earth. Nature 311: 45-47.
Berner, R. A. 1980: Global CO2 degassing and the carbon cycle: comment on ‘Cretaceous ocean crust at DSDP sites 417 and 418: carbon uptake from weathering vs loss by magmatic activity.” Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 54: 2889.
CO2 + H2O = H2CO3
H2CO3 = H+ + HCO3-
2Ca2+ + 2HCO3- + KAl2AlSi3O10(OH)2 + 4H2O = 3Al3+ + K+ + 6SiO2 + 12H2O
2KAlSi3O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2K+ + 4SiO2
2NaAlSi3O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2K+ + 4SiO2
CaAl2Si2O8 + 2H+ + H2O = Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + Ca2+
KAl2AlSi3O10(OH)2 + 3Si(OH)4 + 10H+ = 3Al3+ + K+ + 6SiO2 + 12H2O
CO2 + CaSiO3 = CaCO3 + SiO2
CO2 + FeSiO3 = FeCO3 + SiO2
CO2 + MgSiO3 = MgCO3 + SiO2

In the oceans, CO2 exists as dissolved gas (1%), HCO3- (93%) and CO32- (8%)

http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2008/10/not-enough-co2-to-make-oceans-acidic-a-note-from-professor-plimer/

This may seem nitpicky to you but the dataset being discussed by NOAA and by Bernstein is SST, not SST anomaly. Again, there is a difference. Also, whether the July 2009 SST anomaly is a record high depends on which NOAA dataset you use. Their OI.v2 dataset clearly shows that the 1997, 1998, 2003 and 2005 had higher SST anomalies:
http://i25.tinypic.com/24g7kwj.png

The graph is from my monthly update here:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/08/july-2009-sst-anomaly-update.html

Yes, but NOAA also says the July figure is the warmest on record. So it may be the warmest for July, but also the warmest overall. NOAA’s figures seem to support this interpretation:

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/monthly.ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat