Off to chase the eclipse with my children, and then travel tomorrow to Heartland conference. Airplane has WiFi so may be able to keep up with posting en-route.
Expect moderation delays today and tomorrow.
Hopefully will post an eclipse image tonight.
“A review has cleared the scientist Peter Gleick of forging any documents in his exposé of the rightwing Heartland Institute…”
______________
Well, I’m certainly convinced. How about you?
I share cui bono’s curiosity. I counted 179 known planets and moons in the solar system, not including millions(?) of asteroids, comets etc.
If measuring temperature on Earth is a tough job, it must be hard on other planets, too.
Nevertheless, I’m sure we have a rough idea of temperature evolution of at least a few heavenly bodies.
Does it matter whether they have an atmosphere to be able to determine a solar forcing?
Lots of questions, too little answers. My uneducated guess is that we are far from getting a clue about all the different factors that might influence climate on others planets and moons: dust storms? orbital factors? gases? water volcanoes, meteor impacts, …?
If anyone has any useful sources, I’ll be more than happy to bookmark them!
Too much ice for boating!
“Two rowers from the U.K. have dropped their plan to try to row from St. John’s to England in time for the 2012 summer Olympic Games in London.
Roz Savage and Andrew Morris said they believe the risk posed by sea ice, bergy-bits and icebergs off the east coast of Newfoundland this year is too high.”
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2012/05/20/nl-rowers-cancel-520.html
Some European says:
May 20, 2012 at 2:31 pm
“If anyone has any useful sources, I’ll be more than happy to bookmark them!”
All that I have is
http://www.theonion.com/articles/scientists-trace-heat-wave-to-massive-star-at-cent,21088/
So you have that powerful multi- core CPU in your desktop or laptop and all of that processing power is barely being touched.
How about putting all of that unused processing power to good use in a way that won’t effect your personal computing needs…
Join thousands of other volunteers who donate unused processor time to help find a cure for cancer and myriad other diseases!
http://folding.stanford.edu/English/HomePage
LMAO! I tweeted Suzanne Goldenberg , author of the piece.
@suzyji read your Gleick article…. no sources for article? Did you and Gleick just invent this, too?
Now story seems to be gone.
Just from pure curiosity, I followed the link at the right of the screen that says
“tools”,
“UAH AMSU Daily Temps”
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
And checked out the current daily graph of temps for various lower altitude channels, with all the check boxes filled to see all the past years. It appears that May 2012 is so far proving to be a relatively cold month compared to last ten years. At 25,000 ft, so far its 3rd coldest in 10 years.
That’s within the troposphere correct? Can someone smarter than me tell me I am reading this correctly?
James Sexton says:
May 20, 2012 at 1:58 pm
No sources, no quotes……. I’m wondering if Suzanne Goldenberg didn’t just make this up with Gleick.
==============
I think you scared her……………………..LOL
kev in Uk
Wow! You are the MAN! No sooner do you comment on the length it takes to load tips and notes than the mods reset it to zero. Next step-solving the Euro crisis.
tonyb
DirkH;
Water is densest at 4 degree C, this temperature might be somewhat different for salt water>>>
Lots different. The freezing point and the max density point are both lower. This is a VERY important aspect of saltwater vs fresh when discussing processes in the oceans. In a fresh water lake, at freezing point, ice forms on the top, and being less dense than the water below it, floats and acts as an insultating layer. That’s not what happens in salt water. When the freezing point is reached, the salt is forced out of the water, leaving a thin layer of ice on top, but saltier than normal water below, which is now denser than the water below. So, it sinke, bringing up warmer water from the bottom. This process continues until ALL the water, from surface to bottom, it at or very near the freezing point. Only then does the ice thicken.
Grauniad appears to have dropped the ‘Gleik Cleared’ story – giving a 404 error now.
While the conference is important, quality (not to mention educational) time with your kids is more important. Enjoy! Someone post pictures, please.
I see that others have responded but I’ll try a different tack, here.
1) The bottom water in all ocean basins originates as water that cooled in polar regions and sank to the bottom. As it has no source of energy to heat it up, it remains cold until it returns to the surface in more equatorial regions, hundreds perhaps thousands of years later.
2) The oceans continually over-turn. The lateral temperature gradient (tropics to poles) prevents stability; thus they cannot become isothermal.
3) Water does not have high enough thermal conductivity to compensate for the large distances involved (surface to depth) so convection predominates over conduction as a heat transfer mechanism within the body of the ocean. For an idea of the relative magnitudes of conduction versus convection, divide thermal diffusivity of water (1.5 x 10^(-7) m squared per second), by the product of typical velocity of currents, etc. (1 m/s) and typical distances ( 2,000 m surface to lower ocean) and you’ll see conduction means almost nothing.
4) Good question, but the important fluxes are primarily horizontal, carrying heat from low latitudes to high, and are a substantial fraction of the flux carried by the atmosphere. Flux from surface to depth over the entire ocean is nil as ocean temperature is pretty close to steady state; there is locally significant flux between surface and depths of a few hundred meters at times (spring and summer in polar regions)–I have no value to report..
The Grauniad Gleick link appears to have gone dead.
DocMartyn asks @ur momisugly May 20, 2012 at 11:48 am
Not sure I have the truth, but many years of scuba diving lead me to conclude
Can some one please give me a simple explanation of the thermal-gradients of the oceans?
1) Why are they hot at the top and cold at the bottom?
The visible spectrum (incoming short wave radiation ISR) penetrates water, which is moderately transparent at these wavelengths. Plankton and silt, etc. reduce this transparency. However, the ISR is either reflected from the water surface or is totally absorbed by the water. As the ISR is absorbed by the top layers, there is less to be absorbed by the lower layers. Hence the higher layers are warmed more than the lower layers.
2) Why have the oceans not become iso-thermal over time?
If the oceans were static, then they would, but they are not. There are daily and annual variations in ISR and there are ocean currents that churn the water. Interestingly, the St. Lawrence River is more or less isothermal and its temperature varies from about 30F in winter to 70F plus in the summer. This is because it flows at a rate of 1 knot, and all the layers are well mixed through turbulence.
3) What are the mechanism of heat transfer in the oceans?
Conduction and convection and turbulent mixing.
4) What are the overall heat fluxes from top to bottom and bottom to top?
ISR is the source of heating of the oceans. Cooling of the oceans at the surface is due to some outgoing long range radiation (OLR), evaporation and turbulent mixing.
It appears that the story has been pulled. At least the linked story is gone.
My guess is someone went off at half cocked. Typical MSM mistake, would be my guess. GK
Dear Tropical Storm Alberto:
Our lawns need watering awfully bad in Charleston.
Why are you leaving?……………….Darn!
The lakes need filling, too! Come back!
JohnH, Mike Mangan, Gnomish, Cui Bono, James Sexton & Luther Wu say: Gleick….
I can’t find contact information for Suzanne Goldenberg nor any way to comment on her article. Does anyone have a way to comment on this nonsense (other than this blog)?
James Sexton says:
No sources, no quotes……. I’m wondering if Suzanne Goldenberg didn’t just make this up with Gleick.
She’s been hanging around the Team too much. She does her reporting the same way they do their research.
Apparently the ‘Gleick cleared’ article has disappeared from the Graundian website, although the adjacent one (also by Suzanne Goldenberg) gloating about Heartland’s loss of sponsors remains.
Bishop Hill is following this closely, for those who are interested.
Freshwater lakes only. Salt water isn’t just “somewhat different”, it’s denser all the way down to its freezing point, which is <0°C, depending on concentration. (IIRC, Fahrenheit set 0°F at the coldest he could achieve with salt water before the salt came out of solution and ice began to form.)
You have to read carefully what the Guardian wrote:
“A review has cleared the scientist Peter Gleick of forging ***any*** documents ”
The review didn’t just clear him of forging the strategy memo – it also cleared of writing ***any*** forgery!
He didn’t forge multiple emails to Heartland’s staff, getting them to send him confidential documents. And he didn’t forge emails to “15” friends, pretending to be a Heartland Insider. He’s not guilty of pretexting. And he’s not guilty of disseminating Heartland’s confidential materials. (according to the review).
In fact, it’s now clear that Peter Gleick is a completely innocent man, hounded by Heartland for no reason whatsoever. (according to the review)
I’m sure the Guardian would love to tell us more about the review, who was involved, what procedures were followed and so, on, but I suspect that all they have is a scanned, unsigned PDF, created on an Epson scanner, and sent to them from an anonymous email address. And when the review “leaker” is eventually found, it may well turn out that he can not testify as to the details of the review either – since it was slipped to him anonymously, possibly because he was mentioned by name as a prominent climate scientist in the review.
It usually takes me about a minute, once it’s built up to a few hundred posts.
But see what you’ve done? It’s now gone, cleared for “refreshing”!
I generally keep it open in a tab, and only reload when making a Reply or reloading FF, etc. Lots of interesting stuff in it that never makes it to the articles. But chasing it all eats time up like a starving polar bear! 😉
The Grauniad has pulled the Gleick story.
With regards to,
http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/07/28/photos-discovering-the-wreck-of-hms-investigator/
Peter Gorrie never stopped to ask himself; How did HMS Investigator get so far north in the first place?
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/843898–gorrie-arctic-discovery-confirms-impact-of-global-warming
JohnH says: May 20, 2012 at 11:32 am
No idea if this is true but the timing is suspicious so close to the Heartland Conf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/20/peter-gleick-cleared-heartland.
Gleick cleared of Forging documents.
Then it gets mysteriously pulled.