Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Anthony has an interesting post up discussing the latest findings regarding the heat content of the upper ocean. Here’s one of the figures from that post.
Figure 1. Upper ocean heat content anomaly (OHCA), 0-700 metres, in zeta-joules (10^21 joules). Errors are not specified but are presumably one sigma. SOURCE
He notes that there has been no significant change in the OHCA in the last decade. It’s a significant piece of information. I still have a problem with the graph, however, which is that the units are meaningless to me. What does a change of 10 zeta-joules mean? So following my usual practice, I converted the graph to a more familiar units, degrees C. Let me explain how I went about that.
To start with, I digitized the data from the graph. Often this is far, far quicker than tracking down the initial dataset, particularly if the graph contains the errors. I work on the Mac, so I use a program called GraphClick, I’m sure the same or better is available on the PC. I measured three series: the data, the plus error, and the minus error. I then put this data into an Excel spreadsheet, available here.
Then all that remained was to convert the change in zeta-joules to the corresponding change in degrees C. The first number I need is the volume of the top 700 metres of the ocean. I have a spreadsheet for this. Interpolated, it says 237,029,703 cubic kilometres. I multiply that by 62/60 to adjust for the density of salt vs. fresh water, and multiply by 10^9 to convert to tonnes. I multiply that by 4.186 mega-joules per tonne per degree C. That tells me that it takes about a thousand zeta-joules to raise the upper ocean temperature by 1°C.
Dividing all of the numbers in their chart by that conversion factor gives us their chart, in units of degrees C. Calculations are shown on the spreadsheet.
Figure 2. Upper ocean heat content anomaly, 0-700 metres, in degrees C.
I don’t plan to say a whole lot about that, I’ll leave it to the commenters, other than to point out the following facts:
• The temperature was roughly flat from 1993-1998. Then it increased by about one tenth of a degree in the next five years to 2003, and has been about flat since then.
• The claim is made that the average temperature of the entire upper ocean of the planet is currently known to an error (presumably one sigma) of about a hundredth of a degree C.
• I know of no obvious reason for the 0.1°C temperature rise 1998-2003, nor for the basically flat temperatures before and after.
• The huge increase in observations post 2002 from the addition of the Argo floats didn’t reduce the error by a whole lot.
My main question in this revolves around the claimed error. I find the claim that we know the average temperature of the upper ocean with an error of only one hundredth of a degree to be very unlikely … the ocean is huge beyond belief. This claimed ocean error is on the order of the size of the claimed error in the land temperature records, which have many more stations, taking daily records, over a much smaller area, at only one level. Doubtful.
I also find it odd that the very large increase in the number of annual observations due to the more than 3,000 Argo floats didn’t decrease the error much …
As is common in climate science … more questions than answers. Why did it go up? Why is it now flat? Which way will the frog jump next?
Regards to everyone,
w.
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izen says:
February 26, 2013 at 3:59 am
“…No, there isn’t. The GHG effect is old science, very well established and can be clearly observed on all rocky planets with an atmosphere. You have no hope in explaining the temperatures of Mars and Venus without a GHG effect and the variation in GHG over a glacial cycle on Earth
reveals clearly their role in the climate…”
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This is a very weird assertion since it is well known that the temperature of Venus can be fully explained by atmospheric pressure and lapse rate (I am not saying that it is so explained, but it certainly can be explained by that) and Mars has a very high concentration of GHGs (CO2 being approximately 96% of the Martian atmosphere) and yet no significant GHG warming is observed (Mars has a roughly similar percentage of CO2 compared to Venus which has just under 97% CO2 but unlike Venus it is not a hot world). The usual argument from warmists with regard to Mars is that whilst CO2 concentration is high (96% roughly the same as Venus), in absolute terms, there is little atmosphere on Mars so the the effect of GHGs is not seen. There is a lack of partial pressure (average atmospheric pressure on Mars being just 0.6 kilopascals or 0.087 psi)..
John Eggert says: February 26, 2013 at 3:44 am
Willis: Small (5%) quibble. Your heat capacity is for pure water at 4 celsius, atomspheric pressure. None of which, generally, apply to sea water.
– – – –
Are you sure about that John?
“I multiply that by 62/60 [1.03333…] to adjust for the density of salt vs. fresh water…”
That looks like about 3.3% to me, in the ball park.
Every now and the I get this fantasy thougtflash of Lewis Carrol some how time travelling forward to our timeperiod stopping for a while, having a quick peek at the global warming consensus crowd an their argumnents , then going back to his own age and publishing his agony in eight fits a.k.a. “The hunting of the snark” as his personal (and unexplaind to his contempories ) comment to the future he saw.
For those who have not read it delow is a link to a very nice illustrated online version of the all eight fits ( of laughter ???).
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/c/carroll/lewis/snark/
b.w. Björn
Further to my last post, the last sentence was incomplete. It should have read:-
“There is a lack of partial pressure (average atmospheric pressure on Mars being just 0.6 kilopascals or 0.087 psi) such that the spatial distribution of CO2 molecules is too spread out for them to produce the greenhouse effect which it is claimed that CO2 produces on Venus and Earth”
I trust that makes a little more sense. I am certainly not endorsing the warmists’ argument in this regard, but obviously partial pressure and spatial distribution of molecules is a factor which could have some relevance,
Here are some interesting factoids, according to wikipedia-
The ENTIRE global energy usage for one year is approximately 0.5 ZJ. After checking the numbers above (they seem to be correct FWIW), that means if you could somehow dump the entire sum of energy into the ocean it would raise the top 700m 0.005K. ALso, the entire amount of energy absorbed by the sun in one year comes out to around 5500ZJ. Wow
NODC reports the standard error in 2012 of the 0-700 metre ocean here as 0.361 10^22 joules or (one-third of the PMEL SE) or what would be just 0.0035C.
http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/woa/DATA_ANALYSIS/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/DATA/basin/yearly/h22-w0-700m.dat
I used your spreadsheet on the 0-2000 metre ocean (assuming there is 10% less area as one moves down to 2000 metres) and the temperature change from 1955 to 2012 is only 0.07C and from mid-2004 (when the Argo floats starts to become reliable) to 2012, it is 0.018C.
I´m getting very suspicious when people tell me that they can measure temperatures to a hundredth of a degree outside the lab, ARGO is even worse, they say that they measure temperature to an accuracy of +- 0.005 degrees Celsius.
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/FAQ.html#accurate
I´ve been trying to find what kind of out tech. they´re using to achieve this, to no avail. Does anyone here know?
Izen
It is difficult to make any comparison between rocky planets since none are blackbodies and therefore, as a matter of first principle, BB calculations are misconceived.
However, even more fundamental than that is the proposition that you make a comparison between a rocky planet and a water world. Some 70% of earth is not rocky but watery.Water has very unusual characteristics and throws a complete spanner in the works. No meaningful comparison can be made between a water world and a rocky planet.
Juraj V. says:
February 26, 2013 at 3:47 am
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Yes, I forgot about that.
Quite extraordinary. It was apt of you to remind us of this.
The problem in climate science is that one can have llittle confidence in the quality of any data set, they are all far too brief and errors, accuracy and precision are not properly acknowledged.
The upshot of all of this is that any honest scientist would have to acknowledge that we dot know whether, on a global basis, it is today warmer than it was in the 1880s and/or 1930s and as far as the USA is concerned it is probably cooler today than it was in the 1930s.
richard verney says:
February 26, 2013 at 2:04 am
“If there is more than 6 microns of windswept spray and spume, even less than 25% of DWLWIR could penetrate this barrier. This is an issue which seems to be overlooked by those promoting the AGW meme.”
Richard, to me, this effect would allow the ocean surface to absorb more LWIR. The spray would be heated and fall back onto the surface, mixed and more spray.,,. In the case of a calm ocean, then the absorption is low as you note. Perhaps the phenomenon of heated spray is the reason why there is a measurable difference in heat content of the upper ocean layer. I suggest (if it is possible to know the “ocean skin removal rate”) integration of this “thin” effect 10 microns at a time over a time period of say one year? Let’s take the peeling off of the ocean layer as occurring every 10 seconds – it would only occur during the day, but sun angle would be less variable for spray up above the surface: 365 days/2 * 3600 secs* 24hrs *10 microns~= 160 metres! Where’s my PhD!! and grants? Do you think Trenberth will put my name on his paper, having found how the missing heat gets into the deeper ocean?
[ snip – waaaay off topic – into outer space off topic -mod]
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Anthony posts giving evidence that the ocean isn’t warming, just like the rest of the earth. Well, duh. Then here Willis runs the conversion of the heat content anomaly to temperature deviation. Different units, but the same thing. I know Mosh asserts that the “anomaly” measurement isn’t subject to the usual limits on temperature measurement, but I’ll point out that a typical digital thermometer has specs along the line of ± (0.1% reading +1°C). Accordingly, the heat analysis as presented claims that the oceans warmed over the last 20 years 0.1°C ± 1.25°C. Is that a reasonable assertion? Is it even rational?
Paul says:
February 26, 2013 at 4:07 am
I think we are due for another big la nina event.
_______________
The US Southwest and much of the Southern and Central Plains are in their third year of La Niña- type weather pattern, with drought result, even though the ENSO has been shown alternating between El Niño and La Niña. The persistent pattern with blocking high seems to have broken recently. Many residents of the mentioned areas hope you guessed wrong.
The ocean looks to be heading for a cooling off.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.area.antarctic.png
Antarctic ice has bottomed out and is on its way back up. Also note that the sea ice extent for the 2013 SH summer minimum is a record high (tied with 2003 if the acuity my old eyes can be trusted) for the entire satellite period 1979-2013. With the prolonged deep freeze in the arctic,
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
look for a new record maximum global sea ice extent this year. Note that Japan, which was bemoaning the long trip tour operators had to make to show tourists arctic ice a few years ago, now have it jammed up against the whole north coast of Hokkaido and pressing down the sides – they will now have no sea tourists! Even North Koreans can take a stroll on the sea ice if they dare.I don’t think this is the signal CAGW proponents have been waiting for..
Thank goodness we no longer study the individual ups and downs of solar parameters at such close scale (well…at least some of us don’t). If we did, we would be in a panic from year to year! My hunch is that eventually the bloom will be off the rose of minute scale ocean heat variability and we will all laugh at our previous wriggle watching consternations.
Professor Ole Humlum has an analysis of temperature and CO2 over the Jan 1980 to Dec 2011 period, where satellite data tells us that ‘total’ insolation is constant within 0.1%.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818112001658
“The maximum positive correlation between CO2 and temperature is found for CO2 lagging 11-12 months in relation to global sea surface temperature, 9.5-10 months to global surface air temperature, and about 9 months to global lower troposphere temperature.”
The oceans are a maximum saturation of CO2 and other elemental gases and outgas based on system wide thermal changes, which may well be influended by changes in particle bombardments which are NOT part of the TOA ‘constant’ insolation values. Solar and galactic forces may well drive the fission thermostat that is the real basis for climate and CO2 changes.
John Marshall says:
February 26, 2013 at 2:27 am
“There is more than enough heat from the sun to preclude the need for a GHG theory.”
You’re neglecting the nightside of the moon when temperatures drop to 70K and lower.
(lowest temps on the moon are ~25K in craters near the poles)
Average lunar surface temp. is ~197K, so you need a good explanation for our ~290K average surface temp. since we receive even less solar radiation than the moon with our higher albedo.
see http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/123-moons-hidden-message.html
for more details.
I have probably missed something here, but isn’t the ARGO data temperature originally? Before it is converted to energy? Can you not just get hold of the ARGO data and calculate temperature directly without having to make the various estimations for volume, salt-water density etc.?
Not that it would make any difference (or should not anyway), but it would remove a good chunk of the comments above which seem to be quibbling about the calculation methodology.
Also, as an abuser rather than a user of statistical methodology, has anyone (Willis, I know you have done a lot of ARGO posts in the past) looked at the range of temperatures seen in these buoys, together with the variation in readings from one area? This might go a part of the way to answering your question of whether the error bars are that good or not. I suspect these come from the final ‘god’ number for the total energy content and are nothing more than the presumed instrument error.
By the way, I meant that I am an abuser of stats – not you Willis! sorry if there was any misunderstanding!
Juraj V. says:
February 26, 2013 at 3:47 am
“Google “NASA correcting ocean cooling”. That JPL guy openly admits that he threw away all “too cool” buoy ARGO data, since consensus says it must be warming. I have barely any faith even in ARGO since then, whatever fine system it has been designed to be.”
If they can read cool then they probably can also read hot. Leaving them in probably is closer to the right overall OHC. I’m sure this cavalier treatment of data adds enormously to the “error”. Were I to be charged with evaluation of the cool ones, I would take half a dozen and move them into a different sector and see how they compare. If the “anomaly” disappears, I would move them back and add the data back into the sheet. The treatment of the data shows that good science is not the objective. Shouldn’t this info be sent to the senate/congress committees.
If your calculation is right then the 200 zeta joule increase in OHC since 1950 translates to .2C and that doesn’t seem very concerning to me.
Can someone give me some background on this issue – I’m totally confused. Graphs aside, surely no one is measuring the heat content of the ocean! Isn’t it correct that they are measuring temperature, with buoys and such? So even if someone decided to convert that into heat content for some reason beyond my understanding, why should we convert it back? Rather, what is the basic data available on temperature, above 700 meters or below or whatever? Do we know what’s been happening in the last decade and before, and how does it depend on depth? I had heard that there is “missing heat”, that some are guessing that it passed down into the very deep ocean beyond reach of our instruments… what are the facts about this?
Thanks.
That’s pretty much how I’ve felt about the hype in both directions. Those predicting warming or cooling.
richard verney says:
February 26, 2013 at 2:04 am
I have asked Willis a number of times to explain the process by which energy from DWLWIR absorbed in the top few microns of the oceans can be dissipated downwards
========
The DWLWIR is calculated to be about the same order of magnitude as solar radiation at the surface. Yet every swimmer knows that the ocean surface warms only in the daytime and cools at night. On cloudy days, the oceans surface doesn’t warm, yet according to the typical energy budget drawn by Climate Science there is little change in the W/M2 reaching the surface on a cloudy day as compared to a sunny day.
And, on a rainy day there is more W/M2 reaching the surface that on a sunny day. This can easily be verified by the speed at which rain melts ice and snow as compared to the rate at which sunshine melts ice and snow. Yet the ocean surface does not warm on a rainy day.
This certainly suggests that the typical energy budget as drawn by Climate Science, which suggests that the land area of the earth is large and the oceans are small is wrong. That the absorption of DWLWIR by the oceans goes primarily into evaporation, because it is absorbed by such a thin layer of molecules on the surface.
@bw
You asked “What would happen to the northern polar ice if there were a small shift in the direction of the Gulf Stream??”
In one of the many comments at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/27/sea-ice-news-volume-3-number-11-part-2-other-sources-show-no-record-low/Arno Arrak said at
August 27, 2012 at 7:35 pm: “Apparently a rearrangement of the North Atlantic current system at the turn of the century caused the currents to start carrying warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean. Direct measurements of current temperature reaching the Arctic in 2010 showed that it exceeded anything measured for the last two thousand years of Arctic history. See E&E 22(8):1069-1083 (2011).”
IanM