Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
It has been known for some time that the “Pacific Warm Pool”, the area just northeast of Australia, has a maximum temperature. It never gets much warmer than around 30 – 31°C. This has been borne out by the Argo floats. I discussed this in passing in “Jason and the Argo Notes“, and “Argo Notes Part 2“. I’d like to expand on this a bit. Let me be clear that I am by no means the originator of the claim that there is a thermostat regulating the maximum ocean temperature. See among many others the Central Equatorial Pacific Experiment. I am merely looking at the Argo data with this thermostat in mind.
First, Figure 1 shows the distribution of all of the ~ 700,000 surface temperature measurements taken by Argo floats to date.
Figure 1. A “histogram” shows how many data points fall in each of the 1°C intervals shown along the bottom axis. The maximum is in the interval 28°-29°C.
The number of temperature records peaks around 29°C, and drops quickly for temperatures above 30°C. This clearly establishes the existence of the mechanism limiting the oceanic temperatures.
What else can the Argo data tell us about this phenomenon? Quite a bit, as it turns out.
First, a look at the year by year evolution of the limit, and how it affects the temperatures at different latitudes.
Figure 2. Annual temperature variations measured by all northern hemisphere argo floats that exceeded 30°C. Temperature observations are colored by latitude. Click on image for full-sized graphic.
A couple points of interest. First, the cap clearly affects only the warm parts of the year. Close to the equator, that is most of the year. The further from the equator, the less of the annual cycle is affected.
Second, the majority of the breakthroughs through the ~30° ceiling that do occur are from areas further from the equator, and are short-lived. By and large, nobody exceeds the speed limit, especially those along the equator.
Figure 3 is a closeup of the years since 2005. I chose this starting point because prior to that the numbers are still changing due to limited coverage. To show how the mechanism is cropping the tops of the warmer parts of the year, I have added a Gaussian average (129 point width) in dark gray for each two-degree latitudinal band from 0°-2°N up to 10°-12°N.
Figure 3. Annual temperature variations measured by all northern hemisphere argo floats that exceeded 30°C. Dark lines have been added to highlight the average annual swings of the data by latitude band. Click on image for full-sized graphic.
As you can see, the warm parts of the yearly cycle have their high points cropped off flat, with the amount cropped increasing with increasing average temperatures.
Finally, here is the corresponding plot for the southern hemisphere:
Figure 4. Annual temperature variations measured by all southern hemisphere argo floats that exceeded 30°C. Click on image for full-sized graphic.
Note that there is less of the southern ocean that reaches 30°C, and it is restricted to areas closer to the equator.
Next, where are these areas that are affected by the temperature cap? I had always thought from the descriptions I’d read that the limitation on ocean temperature was only visible in the “Pacific Warm Pool” to the northeast of Australia. Figure 5 shows the areas which have at some point been over 30°C.
Figure 5. Locations in the ocean which are recorded at some time as having reached or exceeded 30°C.
Figure 5a. A commenter requested a Pacific-centered view of the data. We are nothing if not a full-service website.
Clearly this mechanism operates in a wider variety of oceans and seas than I had realized, not just in the Pacific Warm Pool.
Finally, here is another way to consider the effect of the temperature maximum. Here are the average annual temperature changes by latitude band. I have chosen to look at the northern hemisphere area from 160 to 180 East and from the Equator to 45°N (upper right of Figure 5, outlined in cyan), as it has areas that do and do not reach the ~ 30° maximum.
Figure 6. Average annual temperature swings by latitude band. Two years (the average year , shown twice) are shown for clarity.
Note that at say 40°N, we see the kind of peaked summer high temperatures that we would expect from a T^4 radiation loss plus a T^2 or more evaporative loss. It’s hard to get something warm, and when the heat is turned down it cools off fast. This is why the summer high temperature comes to a point, while the winter low is rounded.
But as the temperature starts to rise towards the ocean maximum, you can see how that sharp peak visible at 40°N starts first to round over, then to flatten out at the top. Curiously, the effect is visible even when the temperatures are well below the maximum ocean temperature.
Speculations on the mechanism
I want to highlight something very important that is often overlooked in discussions of this thermostatic mechanism. It is regulated by temperature, and not by forcing. It is insensitive to excess incoming radiation, whether from CO2 or from the sun. During the part of the year when the incoming radiation would be enough to increase the temperature over ~ 30°, the temperature simply stops rising at 30°. It is no longer a function of the forcing.
This is very important because of the oft-repeated AGW claim that surface temperature is a linear function of forcing, and that when forcing increases (say from CO2) the temperature also has to increase. The ocean proves that this is not true. There is a hard limit on ocean temperature that just doesn’t get exceeded no matter how much the sun shines.
As to the mechanism, to me that is a simple question of the crossing lines. As temperature rises, clouds and thunderstorms increase. This cuts down the incoming energy, as well as cooling the surface in a variety of ways. Next, this same process moves an increasing amount of excess energy polewards. In addition, as temperature rises, parasitic losses (latent and sensible energy transfers from the surface to the atmosphere) also go up.
So … as the amount of total radiation (solar + greenhouse) that is warming any location rises, more and more of the incoming solar radiation is reflected, there are more and more parasitic losses, more cold water and air move from aloft to the surface as cold wind and rain, and a greater and greater percentage of the incoming energy is simply exported out of the area. At some point, those curves have to cross. At some point, losses have to match gains.
When they do cross, all extra incoming energy above that point is simply transferred to the upper atmosphere and thence to the poles. About 30°C is where the curves cross, it is as hot as this particular natural system can get, given the physics of wind, water, and wave.
I make no overarching claims for this mechanism. It is just one more part of the many interlocking threshold-based thermostatic mechanisms that operate at all temporal and spatial scales, from minutes to millennia and kilometres to planet-wide. The mechanisms include things like the decadal oscillations (PDO, AMO, etc), the several-year Nino/Nina swings, the seasonally opposing effects of clouds (warming the winters and cooling the summers), and the hourly changes in clouds and thunderstorms.
All of these work together to maintain the earth within a fairly narrow temperature band, with a temperature drift on the order of ± 0.2% per century. It is the stability of the earth’s climate system which is impressive, not the slight rise over the last century. Until we understand the reasons for the amazing planetary temperature stability, we have no hope of understanding the slight variations in that stability.
My regards to you all,
w.
UPDATE (by Anthony):
Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. has some praise for this essay here:
Summary of possible factors that could affect maximum ocean temperatures (some were already mentioned):
1. Depth of ocean. The shallower the ocean, the less distance visible rays have to penetrate to heat the sand so the less diffuse the energy of the photons.
2. Color of sand where the ocean is. (I believe it was in Tahiti or somewhere that I saw beaches of black sand.)
3. Length of day. Over 12 hours of sunlight, and only some of it directly overhead, there is only so much time for the ocean to heat up.
4. Specific heat capacity of ocean water. Related to #3 above, it takes a long time to heat up water, especially if really deep.
5. Conductivity of water. Water is a poor conductor, but some heat may conduct to the cooler parts below if there is a large temperature difference.
6. Oil spills. The spill the other year off Mexico caused a good increase in water temperature since evaporation was greatly hindered under the oil.
7. Cloud cover. The more evaporation, the more clouds.
8. Winds. If winds blow the clouds away from #7, more sunlight may enter the water.
9. Solar makeup. With more sunspots and more UV, perhaps more warming.
10. Proximity to land. Land can get much hotter so this may affect oceans temperatures close to land.
11. Particles or life in the water. Darker things in the water would warm things more.
12. Natural ocean currents. If there are none to carry heat away, things could really heat up.
Willis Eschenbach said @ur momisugly February 12, 2012 at 11:38 am
Willis, if it’s a mistake to theorise before one has data, why do all of our physics teachers teach the exact opposite? Consider the paradigm case of the Law of Falling Objects:
Aristotle taught that heavy objects fall faster than light objects. This was discounted by John Philoponus (6thC), Jean Buridan (14thC) and finally Galileo a thousand years after Philoponus gets the credit for the disproof by contradiction. If the lighter object falls slower than the heavier object, then when they are tied together, the combined weight must fall even faster. But the smaller object will be slowing the heavier object (like a parachute) so the heavier of the two objects will also be falling slower. Since no object can fall both faster and slower, all objects fall at the same rate. QED
Now Galileo is supposed to have demonstrated this by dropping a light and a heavy cannonball simultaneously from the tower at Pisa. Both cannonballs supposedly reached the ground simultaneously to the dismay of Galileo’s opponents. Unfortunately, this is a lie made up a century after Galileo’s death. In the actual experiment that Galileo described, his assistant dropped a wooden and an iron cannonball of the same size from a height some 300 feet greater than Pisa’s tower. The wooden ball initially fell faster before being overtaken by the iron ball which arrived at the ground considerably ahead of the wooden ball.
Now if we say that “it’s a mistake to theorise before one has data” then clearly John Philoponus, Jean Buridan, Galileo and presumably unrecorded and forgotten others were mistaken and Aristotle was correct (though for the wrong reason). Yet we are taught the opposite: Aristotle was wrong and the thought experiment trumps any amount of contrary observation.
I’m not interested here in why the Law of Falling Objects is true, just that theorising before data acquisition appears to be the norm. Off the top of my head, the only example I can think of where the opposite sequence occurred is Faraday’s motor.
Steve from Rockwood says:
February 12, 2012 at 8:11 am
Willis, I can’t agree here. The hard limit on ocean temperature is not 30 degrees. It is the maximum heating from the sun (which just happens to be around 30). Increase the energy from the sun and the temperature goes up. Decrease it and the temperature will go down.
If what you say is true, then the data should show a “normal” distribution around the maximum (bell shaped). From a first look it doesn’t, thought it is hard to say positively until the maximums are isolated. The very steep upper “edge” to the data implies that there is some sort of physical mechanism that limits the temperature around 30C.
This is actually quite an important observation. Statistical analysis of the upper limit would be a good topic for a peer reviewed paper.
Willis Eschenbach says:
February 12, 2012 at 9:53 pm
//////////////////////////////////
Willis
This all started in your previous post when your claim was far more unequivocal. In one of my earlier posts on this thread I acknowleged that you have slightly raised the bar and widened the mechanism you claim imposed the cap.
Nearly 10,000 ARGO data sets is not an insignificant number. This represents quite some area dispersed over a number of different regions. Claiming that it is 1/10th of a percent is the same ridiculuous argument that some people raise about the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere. In percentage terms something can be small but nonetheless significant. Again misquoting Einstein 1000 experiments can ‘show’ that I am right but it only needs one to prove that I am wrong. He therefore appreciated that 1/10 of a percent was quite sufficient to demolish a claim. Indeed, he could easily have saud a million experiments can reveal results consistent with my theory but it only takes one that reveals a result inconsistent with my theory to prove me wrong. Frankly, your argument on numbers disappoints.
Then you resort to consensus. What need I say on that argument?
Even your own data (the ARGO data) contradicts your claim. Even ignoring my claim with respect to data contained in ship’s logs, the other day, I posted many reference to places which had higher temperatures than the capped temperature.
One of the problems in this area of science is the certainty with which people put forward claims which claims should be equivocal in nature. People frequently over stretch the data, ignore contadictory data, fail to acknowledge the uncertainty and shortcomings in the data sets relied upon eyc etc. Another problem is that people too quickly get entrenched with a ‘theory’ and refuse to step back when problems are raised and then take a more objective re-evaluatiion. Regretfully I consider that some of these traits are finding their way into this post of yours.
If this post had been more general in natuire and on whether the hydrological cycle tends to lower ocean temperatures, I would have no gripe with it. It is the speicific claims that I have aproblem with and in particular the claim that no matter how much solar due to the hydrological cycle temps are capped at 30degC (this particular post suggests may be it is about 30 to 31degC and now includes some processes other tha the hydrological cycle).
I would tentavilely suggest that what we are seeing in the ARGO buoys is that the temperature of the open ocean can get up to about 34 degC but this rarely happens since the currents remove the warming water in the tropics before it gets an opportunity to go above (or much above) 30degC and carries this warm water polewards (it cooling as it goes), there being en route someareas where those currents pool such as off the coast of Ghana where the sea temperature gets up to about 35deg C before the current continues on its Northward journey.
It is rather akin to a pot of water being placed on a stove. The stove can drive the water in the pot to a temperature of say 50 degC but as soon as it reaches about 30deg someone removes some water and replenishes it with slightly cooler water. This process on goes ad infinitum such that one only sees a 30deg C temp in the pot. If the syphoning off and replenishment were to stop the watter temp would increases.
What you have done is look at the temperature in the pot, noted that this generally peaks at 30degC and immediately jumped to a knee jerk reaction that it must be due to the latent heat of evaporation without considering other processes involved.
The ARGO data does not in itself tell you what is capping the temperature and you are over reaching the data in this regard and ignoring inconvenient data within the data set. Thiis is below your usual standard.
Just consider that your post had been put out by the ‘Team’ under pal review, what would your response have been. I am fairly convinced that you would be jumping on the 10,000 ATGO readings that contradict the claim. You would go off and search other data bases showing higher temperatures in many parts of the ocean. In short you would have a field day and would be right to do so.
..
R. Gates says:
February 12, 2012 at 9:30 pm
Thanks, R. Gates. Not sure what you call impressive. We’ve been measuring ocean temperature down to 2,000 metres for about half a century. During that time, as best as we can tell, the temperature of the ocean has increased by eight hundredths of a degree.
Can’t say I’m all that impressed by that myself …
w.
The Pompous Git: February 12, 2012 at 10:30 pm
says: “…Willis, if it’s a mistake to theorise before one has data, why do all of our physics teachers teach the exact opposite?….”
Seems to have become the realm of the pedants around here;
Sure the usual situation is observation, theory, data collection, test theory, proof.
In this case, let’s just say Willis’ ‘observation’ is in the data someone else has published.
We are now therefore at the theorizing stage. We may have to collect some more or different data to proceed further….
David says:
February 12, 2012 at 9:41 pm “…I understand (?) the geothermal heat flux estimate to be from land based borehole meausrements, yet the crust thickness on land is several miles thicker then the mean ocean crust thickness. Also, the mean volcanic heat flow into the oceans may be far greater then realised in the recent past. As the deep layers of the ocean have very little circulation how long do you think this heat energy could accumalate. In other words what is the residence time of the deep ocean volcanic and geothermal heat?…”
Look, the seafloor ridges are expanding at about 6 cm a year (or less). The oceanic crust is about 3 kilometers thick. So let’s posit 200,000 miles of oceanic spreading ridges forming a slab of hot basaltic material (1260˚C) that is 6 cm wide X 3 km thick X 320,000 km long. I’ll let you do the math to determine how much heat is contained in that annual dollop of new oceanic crust. When you compare it to the volume of the ocean, filled with the magic potion known as water, you’ll find that this is like the fly on the withers of an ass – inconsequential.
“…Also, the mean volcanic heat flow into the oceans may be far greater then realised in the recent past….” What do you mean here? The seafloor spreading in the Cretaceous – 100 to 65 million years ago – was dramatic, say about twice the rate outlined above. Four billion years ago, there was enormously more energy being emitted by radioactive elements than today (one totally unstable element, technetium, 43, may no longer exist in nature. However, you may get a dose of it when you go for certain kinds of medical tests, the Tc being all man-made). Three billion years ago, there were lavas being erupted on the surface of the Earth that had to come out at >1500˚C (komatiites), which seems impossible today (common basalt, think Hawaii, is around 1250˚C, and that is THE MOST BASIC rock the Earth can form today). The Earth, and its internal heat, has been winding down for 4.5 billion years. So what happened in the recent past?
The Pompous Git says:
February 12, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Willis, if it’s a mistake to theorise before one has data, why do all of our physics teachers teach the exact opposite?
My physics teachers taught us to collect the data ahead of theory. But that was a different era, before liberal arts majors started teaching physics. Now the norm is to:
1) identify an area of study for which grants are available.
2) identify a theory likely to attract a grant
3) attract the grant
4) identify data that supports the theory sufficient to get published and justify further grants.
5) repeat from step 1.
Sadly modern science isn’t about investigating nature. It is about writing good proposals to attract funding and jobs. The vast majority of scientists will never make a single discovery in their career’s more important than: “you need to go along to get along”.
In the first of these posts, Willis notes: “Like Jason, I proceed into the unknown with my look at the Argo data, and will post random notes as I voyage. I have no great insights at this point, just some interesting results.”
With that as prelude, it seems to be that a few comments have gone off the rails. The word “strident” comes to mind. Oh well. End of rant.
In these Argo posts, Willis and others, have mentioned ocean currents, specifically off the west coast of S. America. With an understanding of the wind spinning out of the edges of Subtropical High Pressure, the Coriolis Effect, and so on – I was impressed by the white area (lack of data) from this part of the ocean.
Some years past a plane went into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Peru. As I recall from the MSM it was visible for a short time and then the current carried it away. I believe it was this one: Aeroperú Flight 603;
Just past midnight in October 1996, a Boeing 757 crashed into the Pacific Ocean about 30 mi off the coast of Lima, Peru.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroper%C3%BA_Flight_603
The Argo floats folks are going to have to find a different method for some parts of the ocean.
The Pompous Git says:
February 12, 2012 at 10:30 pm
I guess that’s the advantage to being an amateur scientist. I’m not bogged down with the prejudices of the physics teachers. I can just let the data lead me wherever it wants to go.
Seriously, Pompous, investigating a dataset is best done in the spirit of play. You have to get to know the data, you need to mess about with it, simply for the sake and the joy of messing about. You need to notice the oddities, you need to cozen it into revealing the secrets and the anomalies. You need to toss it into the air and see how the wheat separates from the chaff. You need to hold it in your hands, and turn it around and look at it from different angles, try a host of vantage points and discriminant functions.
If you march in the door all armed with your whiz-bang theory, you won’t notice or see or understand all of that stuff. As the saying goes, “To a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
All the best,
w.
richard verney says:
February 12, 2012 at 10:47 pm
Sorry, buddy. As I’ve been trying to say, I’m done with this trivial, nitpicking subject. Drop it and move on, you are embarrassing yourself.
w.
Non-linear feedback, which turns negative under saturated conditions,
Is the governor of local overshoot
Temperature of evaporation is the root non-linearity cause
There will be a SkepticalScience piece published about this article any day now (written by me), since the topic is rather interesting; as others have pointed out it is also a subject that has generated a number of peer-reviewed articles over the last couple of decades. The SkS article will have a more thorough argument and references, but the main point is that the premise laid out for a ‘maximum SST near 30 C’ is fundamentally wrong (and many of the references cited, for example by Ramanathan and Collins were wrong too). This has been pointed out by a number of papers since the 90s, but evidently has not gained widespread appreciation by the community, at least prior to several years ago. As a quick summary,
– The apparent cutoff on the histogram at 31 C or so is a consequence of the onset in deep convection in the modern climate, when low air has enough moist static energy to reach the upper troposphere, and becomes buoyant with respect to the upper layers. It has nothing to do with a maximum allowable SST, which instead is determined by (and certainly not independent of) the top of the atmosphere energy balance.
– In a warming world, the troposphere also warms, and thus the SST threshold for the generation of convection increases too. There are other coordinate systems aside from SST that are more appropriate to envision this problem, such as the entropy difference between the surface and upper troposphere, but I didn’t get into this in the coming article for fear of losing too many people on the web. The key point is that the distribution of SST will also shift to the right in a warming climate. It is also worth noting that a number of studies looking at the most recent paleodata for time periods such as the Eocene show tropical SSTs well above that of the purported maximum threshold of SST.
– It is not appropriate to think of clouds as thermostats in the modern climate, since the shortwave albedo component nearly cancels the longwave greenhouse component at the top of the atmosphere (in the tropics). The details on how this cancellation plays out in a global warming scenario cuts into the heart of the climate sensitivity issue, which I didn’t really get into, but there is no compelling basis to suggest that clouds inherently buffer SST changes in a forced climate.
Willis Eschenbach said @ur momisugly February 12, 2012 at 11:03 pm
Willis, I’m not disagreeing with you; it’s how I approached my auto-didactic adventures into ag sci and computing. I was just curious as to whether had any thoughts about why we turn an exciting adventures into something as dull-as-dust in the classroom. And why do we tell so many Lies-to-Children? It seems so counterproductive… and OT I guess.
markx said @ur momisugly February 12, 2012 at 10:56 pm
Why is it pedantic to ask a legitimate question? And you would seem to have the sequence wrong; it’s usually theory first aka the Plato approach. It was Aristotle, an excellent marine biologist, who put observation first.
The Pompous Git: February 12, 2012 at 11:28 pm
“…Why is it pedantic to ask a legitimate question? And you would seem to have the sequence wrong….”
Pompous, nothing wrong with the question, just perhaps (to my mind!) in insisting on the ‘correct order of procedure’.
But really, was ANY theory ever advanced without some sort of observation? ie, noting the sun rises in the east, an apple falls from a tree, etc, THEN attempting an explanation? Then deciding to collect more data?
Surely we are at the “hey, look at that…. I wonder if….?” stage?
And now I’M being pedantic…..!
“Stephen, the primary driver of ocean/atmosphere heat flow is the temperature differential, with a secondary contribution from air flow/turbulence.”
Surface air pressure determines the amount of heat (or rather energy) flow that one gets from a given temperature differential.
The higher the pressure at the surface the higher the temperature needs to get at the surface to enable convection to overcome the weight of air pressing down on the surface.
The Gas Laws prevail.
We hold this to be self-evident …
*(I’ll use ‘heat’ in a wrong physical sense for clarity sometimes).
As an exploration geochemist (now retired) I’m rather familar with geothermal gradients as measured on land; and after long discussions with people like Prof S Warren Carey, I’ve some idea of plate tectonics, ocean floor spreading and subduction (if it exists). But, my point was that the rock under the deep ocean is not a SINK for heat, it is a source; and that as a constant source, it is an accumulator. Over millions of years it would have added significant heat to the oceans – but it would not have cooled them. I’ve not seen a quantitative global flux measurement that looks feasible, but I’ve not searched exhaustively.
That’s the view from the bottom up.
From the top down, the main driver is sunlight. It is commonly asserted that without sunlight, the globe would be cooler. This happens every night to half of it. So there is heat coming in from above and below and in the middle of this sandwich we have a very cold deep ocean. How and why?
I was simply asking why the ocean stays so cold for so long, when all around there are heat sources. The unstated implication is that it might not have been so long ago, in geological time, that the heating effect of sunlight was much less than now, or the heat removal process much larger than now, perhaps for a long period The essential question relates to the rate of change of heat, which is currently impossible to calculate from historical data.
Having established, as we all know, that the oceans can get hotter and colder at a rate that cannot be calculated except perhaps for a very brief recent period – like a decade or so – surely we are taking one hell of a gamble blaming poor old CO2.
The ocean temperature cap that Willis has so elegantly displayed is one of the more refreshing pieces of info that I’ve read for a while. It widens the scope of possible mechanisms for ocean heating and cooling, but constrains some other candidates. It’s long been a fair bet that ocean heat dominates the Global Warming topic, so I for one will be watching this subject much more closely than before.
Indeed, all scientists interested in the topic should watch it for pea and thimble tricks that have so badly degraded the publics’ exposure to science with land based temperature sets.
Now, can anyone explain the mechanism for the air temperature at Vostok has been measured as low as minus 89.2 degrees C? There’s heat above, there’s heat below…..
Karl Popper maintained that theory always precedes observation.
But then observation leads to reprising theory. So its a chicken and egg discussion. A chain of theorizing, observation, theorizing, etc.
I agree, it is a puzzle, but upwelling of cold water, together with the physics of deep salt water is worthy of another story, so as not to distract from Willis’ excellent research.
Back in the day when the endless summer was made, though, we used plain paraffin wax … hang on … OK, various internet sources say 50°C, or 105°F, as the melting point of paraffin. That matches with my experience.
So I doubt greatly that the water melted the wax. I’ve been in Togo, next door to Ghana, and I suspect it was the hot tropical sun melting the wax …
My best to all the surfers out there,
w.
————————————————————–
Thanks. Shows how long it is since this ex surfie chick has been out the back waiting for a set.
Incidentally, 50 celsius is about 122F, not 105. But I note that some versions of paraffin wax have lower melting points, closer to 105F. It is also worth remembering that the surfers were probably on the continental shelf, which Argo doesn’t measure. I have swum in water off Perth, Western Australia which is blood temperature, so it is conceivable that waters directly off the coast in the tropics get even hotter. There are no hot spots on your map within thousands of kilometres of Perth, but quite a few very close to Ghana.
I will say this Willis. In your first post where you mentioned a “cap” of 30 degrees or so, it was clear to me, since you showed a graph with some data points above 30, that you were speaking approximately. Of course, lots of wanna be dolts, feel like they have caught you in some sort of error. Most of us with 3 digits in the IQ department, knew exactly what you were indicating.
Nice Chris Colose, looking forward to it.
Willis,
I enjoyed the post and I believe you are correct in suggesting a limit to ocean temperatures. But then I noted in you reply to Stephen Wilde that you again asserted DWLWIR has the same effect over the oceans as it does over land. I would again ask you to consider that you are in error on this point. After your post on “radiating the oceans” I conducted several experiments looking at this issue. I found that Stephen Wilde is correct and that liquid water that can evaporatively cool does not have its cooling rate effected by incident LWIR in the same manner as other materials. Subsequent to that as reported here at WUWT, Schmittner et al 2011 was published indicating that the effects of increasing CO2 may be “multi-modal” ie: different over the oceans.
I urge you to take the time to conduct you own empirical experiments into this issue. You can use microwave safe cling wrap to restrict evaporative cooling of warm water samples without greatly altering conductive and radiative cooling. Thin film LDPE is largely IR transparent at the relevant frequencies. In urging you to design and conduct your own physical experiments I would remind you that Anthony Watts, the host of this site, started out on his journey with empirical experiments into the effect of changes in white wash to latex paint on Stephenson screens.
Stephen Wilde says:
February 12, 2012 at 11:30 pm
Anti-scientific hogwash. I’ve asked you before and I ask you again to take your ridiculous pressure theories to Tallbloke’s Talkshop. They have no place in a scientific discussion.
w.
Stephen Wilde says:
February 12, 2012 at 11:30 pm “…The higher the pressure at the surface the higher the temperature needs to get at the surface to enable convection to overcome the weight of air pressing down on the surface.,,,”
It appears the tropics – exactly the area where the maps and floats show having the highest SSTs – are relatively low-pressure regions. They are bounded by higher pressure zones north and south. Are you saying that this contributes to the tropical seas weighing in at around 30˚C, rather than 35˚C?