March Global Sea Surface Temperatures

“anna v (21:31:50) :
Re: Harry Lu (Apr 7 13:14),
The inside layers of the water, supposing there is no convection, will lose heat by conduction only. … LW in water can travel less than a micron before being absorbed, so it cannot get out as long wave except from the few microns of the surface. It will reach the surface through conduction.”
If I am understanding you, then 1um below the surface will not radiate to the air but heat will conduct to the surface and then radiate/conduct/evaporate to the air.
This is the same as I understand it.
but I also assume that radiation will go in all directions from each heated molecule. Some will heat the 1um towards surface. some will heat the next 1um down the 1um down will also radiate in all directions but will be at a lower temperature. Hence there will be less radiation to surface than the surface radiates down.
There will be a net frow of energy from surface downwards by radiation.
The conduction I assume is also equal to all connecting molecules so conduction from the surface hot molecules will conduct to the lower cooler molecules and the cooler molecules will conduct to the hot molecules but at a lesser rate.
Hence there will be a net flow of energy downwards.
Convection will cause energy to flow in the direction of the molecular gross movement. At normal (non freezing) sea temperatures the surface will be made up of less dense warm water and the lower layers will be more dense cold water
Hence convection will not occur? there will be mixing by molecular motion but again this will favor heating the cool layers.
TSI SW will penetrate the depths warming them but as I pointed out 198W hits the surface, less hits each succeeding molecule as it passes downward therefore more energy will be absorbed by the surface layers (assuming homogeneous water absorption). the surface 1um will also receive the back radiation (LW) 321W.
As far as I can see the hot layer will control the loss of energy from the depths. Hot surface = hotter depths

Re: Harry Lu (Apr 8 15:01),
Infrared radiation within a non transparent to infrared medium is part of heat conduction macroscopically.
The back scattering illustration is double counting when one tries to deduce macroscopic thermodynamic quantities. It is wrong for the atmosphere and it is wrong here.
One would have to formulate statistical ensembles with hamiltonians and stuff and integrate etc etc to come to thermodynamic quantities, one cannot hand wave microscopic quantities into macroscopic thermodynamic quantities. If one did that, the end result would be to find that infrared radiation is part of heat conduction in a medium.

Bob,
Ok, but I never intended to reproduce the Kiehl/Trenberth diagram without downward LW.
I just wanted to show that the net solar of todays Earth is only capable of keeping the ocean at around 234 K (because it’s emissivity is 0.98)
Which proves the ocean is absorbing at least 220 W/m2 downward LW, to keep the mixed layer at 15 C. If you start adding the other losses like latent you make the ‘problem’ worse because then of course you have to add an equal amount of LW to balance the budget, the emissivity doesn’t change much. So using the K/T numbers of 100 W in other losses you end up with 320 W/m2 downward LW, which must be absorbed by the ocean. That’s the only way to explain a mixed layer at 15C.
This said, I see no reason to doubt that less clouds and thereby more solar is responsible for most of the warming the last decades, because that’s what the measurements are showing, and I see no reason to believe a warmer ocean would give less cloud cover. But again, I only believe in science in a multidecadal time frame…

Bob
1. I’d vote yes, but because of the evaporation it can absorb more radiation than it emits.
2. Again, it doesn’t matter much where the energy is absorbed because of the mixing. The mixing gives a uniform temperature through the mixed layer, from tens to hundreds of meters. (and only 1% or so of the sunlight reaches 100 m) I guess the mixing will also totally override a greenhouse equivalent.
3. You may be right that El Nino events help to release the heat, but it is also true that during 2000-2005 ENSO was positive and everything increased;
net solar, SST and OHC. http://virakkraft.com/Pacific2.png
A puzzling thing OHC apparently leads the whole thing by about one year. Is it all ruled by the trade winds?

Bob,
Ok, your fig.3 confirms the lag, thanks.
But “Higher than normal trade winds decrease cloud cover and increase Downward Shortwave Radiation.”
Data seem to suggest the opposite. http://virakkraft.com/Pacific3.png
(Net solar is for -30 to +30 deg lat. but -60 to 60 is almost identical)
What I read out of this is: trade winds increase > evaporation increase > cloud cover increase > solar decrease > temperature decrease.
(and of course: trade winds decrease >… > temperature increases)
But then again, your fig.3 …
When the OHC increases, perhaps the OHC graph is misleading because of an ‘import’ of heat from west of the area and an ‘export of cold’ in the eastern part of the area because of a deeper thermocline. So what we see is just a energy transport and not a real increase?

lgl (03:18:08) : Please provide a link to the solar radiation data, thanks.

lgl (09:22:30) : I assume you’re referring to the “NCEP/NCAR R1 1948-now” dataset, and that you’re using “surface net solar/longwave radiation”. That’s a very curious dataset. I checked a few areas around the tropical Pacific and the data (not anomalies) are negative. What’s that about? That dataset shows a rise in net solar for the NINO3.4 region during the 1997/98 El Nino, when there should have been a decrease due to the increases in total cloud amount and precipitation. I looked at that dataset a while back but was not pleased with the assumptions (that the data was inverted) I had to make in order to use it.
I’ve been using the “NCEP/DOE Reanalysis-2 flux data (dswrfsfc)”, downward shortwave radiation flux at the surface, for an upcoming post. Its wiggles go in the right direction. It’s available on the “External data” page…
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_external.cgi?someone@somewhere
…which you have to sign in to use. (No big deal about registering)
lgl (09:22:30) : I assume you’re referring to the “NCEP/NCAR R1 1948-now” dataset, and that you’re using “surface net solar/longwave radiation”. That’s a very curious dataset. Note that the data (not anomalies) are negative. What’s that about? That dataset also shows a rise in net solar for the NINO3.4 region during the 1997/98 El Nino, when there should have been a decrease due to the increases in total cloud amount and precipitation. I looked at that dataset a while back but was not pleased with the assumptions (that the data was inverted) I had to make in order to use it.
I’ve been using the “NCEP/DOE Reanalysis-2 flux data (dswrfsfc)”, downward shortwave radiation flux at the surface, for an upcoming post. Its wiggles go in the right direction. It’s available on the “External data” page…
http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_external.cgi?someone@somewhere
…which you have to sign in to use. (No big deal about registering)
An example: The following is a comparison of Surface Downward Shortwave Radiation flux anomalies for the tropical Pacific (east of the Pacific Warm Pool) versus NINO3.4 (for timing):
http://i43.tinypic.com/2saaquv.png

Hmm.. so after 1980 the trends are cloud cover decrease, solar decrease and temp increase. This ended like I feared, more confused than ever. Why can’t I ever learn to stay away from these things…
I can’t find any DLR but net LW shows another puzzling thing, the almost exact inverse of net SW. http://virakkraft.com/SH-sw-lw.png I give up.

Bob,
Still ‘NCEP/NCAR R1 1948-now’ and ‘ISCCP’, both from knmi, but now with SW inverted like you suggested (and I have to agree).