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:
John Peter: You wrote, “so would it be right to conclude that Figure 1 actually represents a heating of the ocean since 1961 of 0.6 degrees C?????.”
Are you sure you didn’t mean 0.06 deg C? The discussion of Figure 1 on the link you provided…
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/global_change_analysis.html
…reads, “This is consistent with the comparison by Roemmich and Gilson (2009) of Argo data with the global temperature time-series of Levitus et al (2005), finding a warming of the 0 – 2000 m ocean by 0.06°C since the (pre-XBT) early 1960’s.”
This is consistent with the Abstract of an earlier Levitus et al paper, one from 2005, “The Warming Of The World Ocean: 1955 to 2003”. It states, “During 1955–1998 world ocean heat content (0–3000 m) increased 14.5 × 10^22 J corresponding to a mean temperature increase of 0.037°C at a rate of 0.20 Wm−2 (per unit area of Earth’s total surface area).”
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2004GL021592.shtml
I discussed this in an earlier post, where I listed the rise in OHC in terms of Deg C:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/01/warming-of-world-oceans-0-700-meters-in.html
Regards
The Lyman et al 2006 paper “ Recent Cooling of the Upper Ocean” (http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/lyman/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf) suggested the oceans began cooling in 2003. The 2 arguments against their conclusion was 1) a few Argo floats in just the Carribiean showed a cooling bias due to incorrect depth correlations. To access Lyman paper online the links always led to the paper but with the rebuttal preceding it, even before the rebuttal was accepted. Clearly politically motivated damage control. I wonder how many Argo floats they adjusted upwards? Did they use the cooling bias of the Carribean outliers to upwardly adjust all the Argo floats?
The second argument against Lyman’s warming was the Gouretski & Koltermann 2007 paper documenting a warming bias in the XBT’s. It was interesting that the G&K paper contradicted with Hansen’s “smoking gun analysis” that the Hansen model’s missing heat was in the ocean, and thus the XBT warm bias suggested the heat was still missing. But instead the team’s focus was to use the G&K paper to show the OHC was still rising by just dropping those back end temperatures and not mentioning it’s effect on Hansen’s claim , The big step jump in Levitus’ NODC graph happens when they made “adjustments” to account for those 2 problems. Such jump sure seem suspicious. I also find it interesting that the adjustments are similar to those employed by land surface temperatures, like Darwin, where the older temperatures are “adjusted” lowered thus creating a steeper trend.
I couldn’t determine exactly how Levitus’ paper made their adjustments, but it was interesting that they needed to use “median” vs “mean” XBT temperatures in order to drop those back end temperatures and eliminate this recent cooling. And would you be surprised that all those “outliers” were warm biased?
I think just like these recent adjustments we will soon see that 2003 step jump was more a function of politically biased adjustments to “hide the decline”.
Ocean heat content should be a function of two parameters:
i) Input from solar energy getting past the evaporative layer which is governed mainly by shortwave quantities. Longwave fails to get past the evaporative layer. Shortwave depends on solar variability and also on global albedo which is mainly cloudiness dependant.
ii) Output as energy is released by sea surface temperatures to the air above.
One problem is that each ocean basin is doing it’s own thing at any given time so ascertaining net energy output to the air globally is somewhat difficult.
Another problem is that the effect of solar variability on the input side of the equation is heavily dependent on global albedo, even more so than on solar energy output variability which, as Leif says, is very small.
During the late 20th century warming we had both a high solar input to the oceans from the solar Modern Maximum and a high output from the oceans to the troposphere from all those strong El Ninos so I have to assume that the El Ninos were reducing overall low level cloudiness by warming the air above the oceans to increase the vapour carrying capability of the air. That allowed more solar energy in to supplement the strong solar activity and add more to the oceans than the El Ninos were releasing.
Now we have less solar input plus more low level cloudiness from cooler ocean surfaces as the vapour carrying ability of the air is reduced. The cooling ocean surface is in a negative PDO phase despite the current El Nino whilst the 2007 La Nina is still cooling the other oceans and the air above them.
So we should (as observed) have a levelling off of ocean heat content with perhaps another 30 years of that to follow.
The issue I wish to resolve is whether the oceanic changes in the rate of energy release to the air are governed by the behaviour of the sun and air or whether the oceans themselves have their own internal cycles that dominate the system with changes in the sun and air merely modifying the oceanic influences.
I discern from my readings so far that Bob Tisdale, Svensmark, Erl Happ and others consider that the oceanic influences are sun and air driven but at the moment I beg to differ.
Can that issue be definitively resolved by any currently available observational evidence?
I’d hate to keep wasting my time on a false premise.
Sean: You asked, “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.”
Sorry. I don’t do shading.
Max (12:32:15) :
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?”
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2009/12/29/comment-from-josh-willis-on-the-upper-ocean-heat-content-data-posted-on-real-climate/
“There is still a good deal of uncertainty in observational estimates of ocean heat content during the 1990s and into the early part of the 2000s. This is because of known biases in the XBT data set, which are the dominant source of ocean temperature data up until 2003 or 2004. Numerous authors have attempted to correct these biases, but substantial difference remain in the “corrected” data.”
the summer water temperature in northern Australia in 1968-1970 were higher than these chart figures indicate, relative to the current water temperature.
I suspect the chart above is for North America due to El Nino or similar effects.
“DirkH (12:36:46) :
[…]
I hear they get out of the astronaut business. I suggest they concentrate on Hansen style work some more and change their name to
N ational
A gency for
S caremongering and
A larmism”
I see that they already have taken my advice to heart:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/
NASA – the BBC amongst the space agencies.
NASA – we know how to generate funding. Why build complicated rockets when biased writeups do just fine?
Michael Larkin: “Kind of puts in perspective the heat capacity of the oceans.”
But looking at the rise in average temperature of the oceans at depth (0-700 meters) also puts the rise in OHC into perspective, a different one. Table 1 from Levitus et al (2009) shows the rise from 1969-2008 to be only 0.17 deg C.
http://i46.tinypic.com/30de5qs.png
From this post:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2010/01/warming-of-world-oceans-0-700-meters-in.html
Regards
Wish I were a cartoonist: I’d draw Buster the Robust climate probe adjustment.
Buster is a data-reprogramming specialist. His specialty is CYA models.
James F. Evans (11:56:26) : wrote
“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…”
I’ve been hinting at this effect for a while.
The affect is cumulative. I don’t know why nobody gets it.
kadaka (13:49:37) :
Would there even need be a burst like 1859 to take out every mobile phone, laptop, cell tower, electronic ignition, etc. ?
Moore’s Law may turn out to be a liability for the end user, but a boon for sales. Just don’t be in motion when it hits.
Dan in California (11:54:55) :
bob,
thanks for another factual, well written post.
keep ’em coming!
Michael (14:38:14) quotes James F. Evans (11:56:26) :
“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). . . .
The Sun controls Earth’s temperature and thus climate.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out…”
and adds, “I’ve been hinting at this effect for a while.
The affect is cumulative. I don’t know why nobody gets it.”
Almost nobody “gets it” because almost everybody “gets paid” to ignore the obvious fact that “The Sun controls Earth’s temperature and thus climate.”
Scientists are not stupid, but they cannot get positions, promotions, or tenure if they cannot get grant funds.
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) controls the purse strings of federal research agencies. US’s research agencies have been transformed into propaganda generators, just line the UN’s IPCC.
What a sad state for science!
What a sad state of the world!
What a sad state for democracy!
Oliver K. Manuel,
Emeritus Professor of
Nuclear & Space Sciences
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Michael (14:38:14) :
I get it, and a lot more besides just me get it.
What I see is a Buster minimalist movement that leads to paralysis in not being able to adapt. There will be but one final ‘heads up’ in the coming S. Hemisphere’s winter.
O/T but in the “if a tree falls in the forest …” department, Bagla’s extended interview with Pachauri in Science Magazine (Jan. 29/10) contains the following:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/327/5965/510/DC1
“[…]I mean, let’s face it, that the whole subject of climate change having become so important is largely driven by the work of the IPCC. If the IPCC wasn’t there, why would anyone be worried about climate change?[…]”
GaryPearse (13:17:48) :
I can’t speak directly to the scientific papers, but with all the different items coming out in one fashion or another which have destroyed the credibility of AGW, I can say this:
The tide has turned: A sea change has happened in the last four months:
Putting out mushy scientific papers in support of AGW has become dicey:
And nobody wants to go down in a sinking ship and sacrifice their professional career — that’s how bad it’s gotten for AGW.
Kadaka 11:53:42
“are we going from hide the decline to decline the hide”?
Well, they seem to be going to —Save our hides.
Maybe related. The BBC flagship weather forecast is on a Sunday. It’s part of the “country file” programme for farmers, and immensely popular with the general public too, came up with a startling revelation, IMHO.
Scotland has had its coldest December and January since, at least, 1914!
I knew I was cold. Now I can put a number to it!
Michael (14:38:14) :
I for one get it. Others good in general science and math will get it too if they would just stop and calculate the numbers.
Keep in mind, the top 700m of the oceans has a mass ~50 times that of the total atmosphere. Also water has a specific heat ~4 times that of air. That makes the oceans top 700m able to hold ~200 times the heat (energy) as all of the atmosphere. Ponder on that! One two hundreth of a degree in ocean (top 700m) temperature can raise the temperature of all of the air one degree. Yea, it’s influence is huge.
As commented on earlier, it’s nice to see WUWT get back on track with real science again and away from the steamy TMI fantasy that has railroaded recent threads.
If it had gone on any longer, I would gave been forced to yield to temptation and play the Elvis card with Patchy Choo Choo.
“Love me Tender”
Thank goodness, I resisted the temptation.
graham g: You wrote, “I suspect the chart above is for North America due to El Nino or similar effects.”
What chart are you referring to?
jack morrow (15:33:31) :
The AGW’s S.O.S. is drowned out by the public’s economic S.O.S.
Discretionary spending freeze means AGW is too much of a sinking burden to tow.
End of Jan 2010 finds the World’s Oldest Temperature Record finding it hard to come up to scratch! Maybe it does not know it is January?
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=cet;sess=
70-00 Jan Ave 4.62c
2010 Jan Ave 1.66c
A wonderful -2.96c deg of warming. Reminds me of the good old days when corporations never made a loss but did occasionally report a negative profit.
Sorry, cheap shot, I should know better, weather is not climate, weather is not climate, whether its cold or not, weather is not climate!
Green Sand, proud to be one of the great leader’s “Flat Earther’s”. A claim I will enjoy making to my grand children!
Re: Matt (13:11:42)
Matt, IIRC, the problem is not with the temperature sensor, it is the pressure sensor that is problematic. The pressure readings are used to estimate the float’s depth, and if it is off a little bit, it affects the estimates of the HC of that column of ocean sampled.