From the University of California – San Diego Scripps Institute, you gotta love the subheading in this PR. I didn’t know robots could travel back in time. Gosh, I learn something new every day. Apparently 300 soundings done by the HMS Challenger between 1872-1876 are enough to establish a “new global baseline” for the last century. The temperature rise is pretty much what we’d expect from LIA recovery. Though, for an outfit that hauls Titanic Chicken of the Sea debate ducker James Cameron to the bottom of the deepest ocean trench, I’d take this PR with a grain of sea salt, especially since it provides no supporting graphics or documentation. I’d sure like to see how the distribution of those 300 sounding looks. – Anthony
New comparison of ocean temperatures reveals rise over the last century
Ocean robots used in Scripps-led study that traces ocean warming to late 19th century
A new study contrasting ocean temperature readings of the 1870s with temperatures of the modern seas reveals an upward trend of global ocean warming spanning at least 100 years.
The research led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego physical oceanographer Dean Roemmich shows a .33-degree Celsius (.59-degree Fahrenheit) average increase in the upper portions of the ocean to 700 meters (2,300 feet) depth. The increase was largest at the ocean surface, .59-degree Celsius (1.1-degree Fahrenheit), decreasing to .12-degree Celsius (.22-degree Fahrenheit) at 900 meters (2,950 feet) depth.
The report is the first global comparison of temperature between the historic voyage of HMS Challenger (1872-1876) and modern data obtained by ocean-probing robots now continuously reporting temperatures via the global Argo program. Scientists have previously determined that nearly 90 percent of the excess heat added to Earth’s climate system since the 1960s has been stored in the oceans. The new study, published in the April 1 advance online edition of Nature Climate Change and coauthored by John Gould of the United Kingdom-based National Oceanography Centre and John Gilson of Scripps Oceanography, pushes the ocean warming trend back much earlier.
“The significance of the study is not only that we see a temperature difference that indicates warming on a global scale, but that the magnitude of the temperature change since the 1870s is twice that observed over the past 50 years,” said Roemmich, co-chairman of the International Argo Steering Team. “This implies that the time scale for the warming of the ocean is not just the last 50 years but at least the last 100 years.”
Although the Challenger data set covers only some 300 temperature soundings (measurements from the sea surface down to the deep ocean) around the world, the information sets a baseline for temperature change in the world’s oceans, which are now sampled continuously through Argo’s unprecedented global coverage. Nearly 3,500 free-drifting profiling Argo floats each collect a temperature profile every 10 days.
Roemmich believes the new findings, a piece of a larger puzzle of understanding the earth’s climate, help scientists to understand the longer record of sea-level rise, because the expansion of seawater due to warming is a significant contributor to rising sea level. Moreover, the 100-year timescale of ocean warming implies that the Earth’s climate system as a whole has been gaining heat for at least that long.
Launched in 2000, the Argo program collects more than 100,000 temperature-salinity profiles per year across the world’s oceans. To date, more than 1,000 research papers have been published using Argo’s data set.
The Nature Climate Change study was supported by U.S. Argo through NOAA.
How precisely did HMS Challenger measure deep ocean temperatures?
If memory serves, they lowered a tube, open at both ends, then when it got down to the layer they wanted to sample, they pulled a rope that snapped both ends of the tube shut and hauled the tube back to the surface where temperature data was taken.
Possible problems.
1) Did they give the tube time to adjust to the local temperature before sampling?
2) How well insulated was the tube, and what was the temperature of the water the sample was hauled through on the way to the surface.
3) How was the sample handled while it’s temperature was taken once it reached the surface?
4) DId they use the same sampling hardware for all 300 samples?
300 samples is sufficient to give us a knowledge of the ocean’s temperature to 0.01C????
I don’t think so.
Steven Mosher says:
April 2, 2012 at 12:11 pm
data is a good thing.
—
Good data would be even better.
Personally, I think the mean telephone number in the Manhattan Telephone Directory is the most important.
/sarc
Sometimes the pettiness of the comments here gets in the way – we really do need more Willis, that is, thoughtful musings.
Why only the 300 from HMS Challenger? Sailing Ships coming into port, leaving port, and in unfamiliar waters would take soundings, which would then be entered into the sailing master’s logbook and the captain’s logbook. This was true for merchantmen and military vessels. A quick stroll down to the Admiralty in the UK, or Navy Department would get you all of the soundings you could hope for, cross referenced by air temperature, latitude, longitude, time of day, phase of moon,and high/low tides.
Funny. HADSST2 has 1878 at 0.0 and Jan 2012 at .201
Not much of a rise.
Oh, and bottom conditions, broken shell, soft and sandy, etc.
The awful silence was impressive: unwilling to break it I sat me down.
“I felt her presence by its spell of might,
Stoop o’er me from above—
The calm majestic presence of the night,
As of the one I love.”
Suddenly a distant roar boomed along the water and echoed amongst the rocks: again and again I heard it, when, to my astonishment, several huge icebergs in the offing commenced to break up. A fearful plunge of some large mass would clothe the spot in spray and foam; a dull reverberating echo pealed on; and then, merely from the concussion of the still air, piece after piece detached itself from icebergs far and near, and the work of demolition was most rapid: truly did Baffin boast, that he had laid open one of Nature’s most wonderful laboratories; and I thought with Longfellow, in his Hyperion,—
“The vast cathedral of nature is full of holy scriptures and shapes of deep mysterious meaning: all is solitary and silent there. Into this vast cathedral comes the human soul seeking its Creator, and the universal silence is changed to sound, and the sound is harmonious and has a meaning, and is comprehended and felt.”
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24891/24891-h/24891-h.htm
Thursday, 27th June, 1850, found us still cruising about under canvas; northward and westward a body of dirty ice, fast decaying under a fierce sunlight, bergs in hundreds in every direction; and, dotted along the Greenland shore, a number of whalers fast in what is called “Land water,” ready to take the first opening. The barometer falling, we were ordered to make fast to icebergs, every one choosing his own. This operation is a very useful one in arctic regions, and saves much unnecessary wear and tear of men and vessel, when progress in the required direction is no longer possible.
The bergs, from their enormous depth, are usually aground, except at spring-tides, and the seaman thus succeeds in anchoring his vessel in 200 fm. water, without any other trouble than digging a hole in the iceberg, placing an anchor in it called an ice-anchor, which one man can lift, and, with a whale-line, his ship rides out under the lee of this natural breakwater, in severe gales, and often escapes being beset in a lee pack.
Interesting. Let’s not be too quick to reject these findings. If there was significant warming from the 1870s through until 1960, say, it suggests CO2 is not responsible. For the first 30 years or so there were no cars, no aircraft and fossil fuel burning was confined to just a few industrialised locations in the NH (not in China, India etc). Atmospheric CO2 concentrations in 1900 were supposedly only about 295 ppm which is equivalent to a forcing of ~0.2 w/m2 since 1850. If warming were the result of CO2 forcing alone it would not be detectable. In 1958 atmospheric CO2 concentration was ~315 ppm – equivalent to a forcing of ~0.5 w/m2. Again it’s doubtful if any ocean temperature increase could be detected – particularly as we’re forever being told that there is a lag before warming is fully realised.
Accept these findings at face value then ask for an explanation as to how they fit with the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. They don’t!
ktwop says:
April 2, 2012 at 1:06 pm
I’ve just noticed your post and I think you’re more or less making the same point as me. This study does not support a significant CO2 influence.
HADSST2 again …
Jan 1878 = 0.247
Jan 2012 = 0.201
As Mosher says … isn’t data great!
300 spartan soundings against hundreds of thousands from the Argo.
It’s the battle of Thermopylae all over again.
I think almost any data is better than no data. I think it is most important outcome from this study is that a non skeptical group begins to realize/recognize that our climate has been changing for a lot longer than expected. Whether or not this will lead to a new idealized baseline is yet to be determined.
“Scientists have previously determined that nearly 90 percent of the excess heat added to Earth’s climate system since the 1960s has been stored in the oceans.”
I thought they couldn’t find the missing heat. What gives?
What amazes me is that the CAGW believers seem to think that if they constantly plug the line that there HAS been warming of the Earth since the industrial revolution that this will — in the end — force skeptics to concur that the warming is due preponderantly to the atmospheric CO2 increase. Their ability to change colour like chameleons is noting short staggering. They started out by talking about global warming and then switched to climate change and more recently to climate uncertainty — all because they find these switches to be useful when it comes to hoodwinking the public. And now they say that us skeptics/realists are not scientists, don’t believe there has been any warming and don’t think that there has been any climate change. How can they be so totally out of touch with reality. What calumny.
John Finn says:
April 2, 2012 at 1:38 pm
ktwop says:
April 2, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Isn’t a 100 year OHC rise problematic for CAGW? – not enought anthro carbon back then.
but that the magnitude of the temperature change since the 1870s is twice that observed over the past 50 years
Hmmm – that’ll make it harder for them to squeeze an acceleration out of it – but no doubt they will try.
“It’s data. That’s good.”
It is not good for 0.x Cº differences. It doesn’t says us anything relevant except that in 1870 there wasn’t any Ice Age or Warmist Age. Something we already know.
The study doesn’t support anything other than the temperatures have been stable for the generous precision and definition brackets necessary. The conclusions of the article are pure and simply a scientific fraud.
Another interesting article at Judith Curry’s site on HadSST and magic bucket syndrome.
http://judithcurry.com/2012/03/15/on-the-adjustments-to-the-hadsst3-data-set-2/
This article shows between half and 2/3 of the variation from the earlier 2/3 of the raw data gets removed as “bucket bias”. The remaining 1/3 (post-war period) just gets a gentle warming boost.
we need to wait for the homogenization to give us a real steep rise.
it may be as well to also suggest that they go and repeat the 300 sample temperature execise at the exact locations and times of year for the next 5 years to see how stable they are or not. they will have that all very precisely or else the data is simply BS. ( the old boys were very careful about this stuff)
i dont remember but there was a bit of discussion about data errors on the 3500 units and 100,000 sample points. I forget but is std error some sort of inverse squareroot formulae and thus a 3 std dev error of 5.7% is a lot.
i remmember when i studied physics the experiment was grade at zero if the errors were not fully calculated and discussed. that was undergrad, these folk jumped the fense to post grad while no one was looking.
Putting things into perspective, these 300 readings may be of about the same statistical significance as all currently available proofs of medieval warm period being really warm and global. Of course it’s possible to pull both right and wrong conclusions out of them, but most people here can hadly decide which are which.
Sorry but even though this doesn’t support the AGW meme, I call BS.
1) There’s no way to cross calibrate
2) The precision is ridiculous. the error bars must be over 1°C.
3) There’s no way we know for certain the ENSO states over those four years.
DaveE.
The study seems to be saying that the warming from 100-50 years ago is the same as the last 50 years. While the data can be questioned, this is one more study that is NOT consistent with CAGW. Like the studies showing the LIA and the data showing no warming for the last 10-15 years, this study adds to the growing evidence that “the CO2 is the thermostat” hypothesis is false.
As the warmista’s like to say, no single study proves it but there are multiple independent studies that verify that the earth’s climate changes for reasons not yet understood and CO2 is just a bit player at worst.
If you had to choose between HMS Challenger’s ocean data and the new improved adjusted data from GISS et alia, which would you choose?
Stupid question – well it would be if you are one of those who believe GISS’ increasingly large adjustments to drive down historic temperatures bear any resemblance to reality.
From the voage route map shown here –
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03mountains/background/challenger/media/route.html
it doesn’t look like they got above 45Deg north except for into and out of England & around Newfoundland, Canada. Didn’t do much in the Indian Ocean either.
From – http://www.fathom.com/feature/60885/index.html
She had spent more than half of the intervening days in harbour, providing her sailors and scientists with the opportunity for exotic port calls in North and South America, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Japan and a series of Atlantic and Pacific islands.
Also a first for science junket travel and you thought it was just the IPCC .
Steven Mosher says:
April 2, 2012 at 12:11 pm
data is a good thing.
A statistical sample size of one is a bad thing.
I’ve just started reading “Late Victorian Holocausts” by Mike Davis. It details the severe famines that affected most of India, north China, Brazil , northern and southern Africa from 1876-79.
Estimates of between 30 to 60 million starved to death. This was related to ENSO.
Must be the earliest recorded event of the now popular “climate weirding”.