NODC Ocean Heat Content (0-700 Meters) – 2007, 2008 & 2009 Corrections
Guest post by Bob Tisdale
The National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) recently updated its 4th quarter and annual 2009 Ocean Heat Content (OHC) data. The data that was presented in conjunction with the Levitus et al (2009) Paper now covers the period of 1955 to 2009. There have been changes that some might find significant.
This post presents:
1. A brief look at the revisions (corrections) to the data in 2007 and 2008 OHC data
2. A comparison of the NODC OHC data for the period of 2003 to 2009 versus the GISS projection
REVISIONS (Corrections) TO THE 2007 AND 2008 NODC OHC DATA
Figure 1 is a gif animation of two Ocean Heat Content graphs posted on the NODC GLOBAL OCEAN HEAT CONTENT webpage. It shows the differences between the current (January 2010) version and one that appears to include data through June or September 2009. So this is an “Official” correction (not more incompletely updated data posted on the NODC website discussed in NODC’s CORRECTION TO OHC (0-700m) DATA, which required me to make corrections to a handful of posts). I have found nothing in the NODC OHC web pages that discuss these new corrections. Due to the years involved, is it safe to assume these are more corrections for ARGO biases? As of this writing, I have not gone through the individual ocean basins to determine if the corrections were to one ocean basin, a group of basins, or if they’re global; I’ll put aside the multipart post I’ve been working on for the past few weeks and try to take a look over the next few days.
http://i48.tinypic.com/14e6wjn.gif
Figure 1
NODC OHC OBSERVATIONS VERSUS GISS PROJECTION (2003-2009)
One of the posts that needed to be corrected back in October was NODC Ocean Heat Content (0-700 Meters) Versus GISS Projections (Corrected). The final graph in that post was a comparison of global ocean heat content observations for the period of 2003 through year-to-date 2009 versus the projection made by James Hansen of GISS of an approximate accumulation of 0.98*10^22 Joules per year. Figure 2 is an updated version of that comparison. Annual Global OHC data was downloaded from the NODC website (not through KNMI). The trend of the current version of the NODC OHC data is approximately 1.5% of the GISS projection. That is, GISS projected a significant rise, while the observations have flattened significantly in recent years. The apparent basis for the divergence between observations and the GISS Projection was discussed in the appropriately titled post Why Are OHC Observations (0-700m) Diverging From GISS Projections?
http://i47.tinypic.com/20kvhwn.png
Figure 2
Note: The earlier version of that graph (with the NODC’s October 15, 2009 correction)…
http://i37.tinypic.com/i6xtnl.png
…shows a linear trend of ~0.08*10^22 Joules/year. The current linear trend is ~0.015*10^22 Joules/year. Some might consider that decrease to be significant.
NOTE: I DELETED THE THIRD AND FOURTH PARTS OF THIS POST…
3. GLOBAL, HEMISPHERIC, AND INDIVIDUAL BASIN OHC UPDATE THROUGH DECEMBER 2009, AND
4. TREND COMPARISONS
…UNTIL I TRACK DOWN DISCREPANCIES I CAN’T EXPLAIN. I WILL REPOST THOSE SECTIONS IN A NEW POST. I BELIEVE I UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCES, BUT I NEED TO CHECK WITH KNMI.
SOURCES
NODC Annual Global OHC data used in Figure 2 is available here:
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Hide the incline?
A million thanks for all you do Bob!
I am just reading James Hansen`book “The Storms of my Grand Children”. He is competely sure about his conclusions that CO2 emissions are the main climate forcing agent. Most of the rest is a very emotional appeal for measures to be adopted to prevent the unavoidable catastrophe. He worries a lot, how to communicate his “truth” efectively.
It strikes me that he doesn`t express not a hint of any doubt!
Just an opinion, but in my mind the CRUmail release has been a tectonic shift point in climate science.
Maybe I am just projecting, but it seems that since the release, more data/papers are coming out that are dampening down the hysteria of GW. There seems to be more calls to work with sceptical scientists and trash the trashtalk. Maybe this release has finally freed the science?
That’s one of the first adjustments I’ve seen going down for sure.
Currently SST-wise there’s been a very significant rise in SST’s in the Southern Hemisphere (according to Unisys) and the daily SOI has dropped by nearly -30 today (hinting at a new ENSO peak if it continues at that level even as the models say otherwise.)
What it means for the Summer though, Joe D’Aleo talked in an article on Intellicast showing that some of the hot summers like 1998 was due to El Nino having decayed to La Nina by the summer, if I remember right if there’s still El Nino conditions by Summer there shouldn’t be blockbuster heat in the U.S according to his analysis.
Could someone do me a favor. I know what looks like a big jump between 2003 and 2005 is also when the Argo buoy data became the basis of the ocean heat content rather than a more dispersed surface measurement. Would it be possible to put some shading in the period covered which showed which were Argo, which were determined from a different data sets and different analytica methods.
Someone needs to tell the pentagon, seems they are planning to reduce carbon emissions and take account of global warming into conflict planning.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/pentagon-ranks-global-warming-destabilising-force
And the guardian gets caught out using wrongly captioned pictures again, says dried lake bed is due to global warming but actually due to a new dam Doh!!!
Dr. Hansen is often wrong, but never uncertain.
Are they finally getting honesty worked back into the science?
Are we going from “hide the decline” to “decline the hide”?
Could it be some agencies are starting to realize there’s someone looking over their shoulders? It’s getting harder to publish results that don’t match observations. Now if we could backtrack and verify previous data and plot trendlines based on observations rather than corrected data……
I still would like them to correct the obvious and incorrect jump in the data when ARGO went active in 2003.
So, the Sun’s total energy output is down as evinced by a lack of Sunspots and evinced by decreased solar magnetic flux (and has been for a while).
Now, this is starting to show up in ocean heat content data.
Lag times are common in Nature: The hottest time of the Summer is late July and early August, the coldest time of the Winter is often late January and early February.
It seems reasonable that a lag time exists, too, for Ocean heat content.
Should this quiet Sun and low magnetic flux continue unabated into next Winter, expect this Winter to look like a tropical picnic and to freeze your rear end in the Northern Hemisphere next Winter…as if we haven’t already done so this Winter!
The Sun controls Earth’s temperature and thus climate.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out…
Thank God you’ve finally pulled Pachauri off the front page of WUWT!
Perhaps they were holding the thermometer upside down.
Does this mean the NASA GISS “2009 2nd warmest year on record” will be changed?
Although this graph shows the heat content it’s obvious from the shape that it also follows the temperature. As we should expect.
Since the oceans cover about 71 percent of the earth:s surface it will have a major impact on global mean temperature anomalies. I suspect that GISS temperature will soon have a downward trend for the last 8 years like the CRU-temp curve did. It does not matter if they include the poles, cherry picks stations or do usual corrections.
In previous threads the work of David Douglass at Rochester, who found a recent change to negative in ocean thermal budget, was visciously rubbished by AGW posters. They said it never should have been published. Douglass himself posted on the long struggle to publish in the International Journal of Climate.
Refer to this thread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/21/gaming-the-peer-review-system-ipcc-scientists-behaving-badly/
This post shows how hard they tried to obstruct Douglass from publication. (Jones and Wigley even discuss the topic of getting Douglass to lose his job.) Now there is a hint that part of the establishments attack on his work was modification of the OHC data to conceal the truth of his finding? Or is this conspiracy paranoia? In any case, the data adjustment reported in today’s posting vindicates Douglass and Knox 2009.
I’m not sure of the International Journal of Climate paper ref but here is another by the same group:
DH Douglass, RS Knox, Ocean heat content and Earth’s radiation imbalance. Physics Letters A, Volume 373, Issue 36, 31 August 2009, Pages 3296-3300.
I’ve always thought you had to be a top notch scientist to make it into NASA.
James Hansen has proven me wrong.
Kadaka,
“Are they finally getting honesty worked back into the science?”
Temperatures have been trending up and trending down since the dawn of time…roughly 30 years up followed by 30 years down..along with some longer cycles.
To be fair…if the only reliable data one has is from the ‘uptrend’. Quantifying how much is man manmade is almost impossible.
One needs to wait for the down trend. We are now in the downtrend.
We haven’t decreased out CO2 emissions, yet the temperature is trending down.
Good post, science is making a comeback. Now NASA will study the sun for effects on earth as if they could do something about it!
Well knock me over with peer reviewed paper.
What’s next?
Gore admitting he’s not a scientist?
Or Gavin Schmidt admitting he’s not Al Gore?
Or how about James Hansen admitting he likes Romance Novels?
Or Jane Lubchenco admitting she hates seawater?
One more,
Joe Romm admitting he is sort of an angry dude.
Dr. Bob (12:03:07) :
Does this mean the NASA GISS “2009 2nd warmest year on record” will be changed?
===============================================
No. But if any change is made it will be alterations in the data so the result will make 2009 the warmest year, not the 2nd warmest, on record.
hmmmmm
Now there has to be some tricky, sneaky way this current administration can take credit for this downturn?
I notice a huge jump in heat content circa 2003. Would that by any chance correspond to NODC’s initial correction of the ARGO “bias?”
A bit off topic, but: Just watched a report on Davos (on Al Jazeera … seems to be the only place to get unbiased news these days 🙁 ).
The fanatics have not given up. They are trying to get the legal binding agreements that failed in Copenhagen done at Davos.
Watch for back-door deals!