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.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 8:13 am
Sure, it’d be great to have 10 times as many buoys, or a hundred times more. Is there a reason to think that would give greater precision of the model’s average temperature?
—-
I’m sorry if I was unclear. I don’t have any issue with the number of buoys deployed. I don’t read Willis as having taken issue with this either. I believe the issue is in the error claims. Willis appears to be expressing skepticism that these measurements are accurate to within a hundreth of a degree. He does not appear to be stating that we require accuracy to within a hundreth of a degree, and neither am I.
Mark Bofill says: “I believe the issue is in the error claims. Willis appears to be expressing skepticism that these measurements are accurate to within a hundreth of a degree.”
It’s good to raise questions. It’s also good to answer them. I don’t see Willis crunching the numbers to provide an alternative number. On the other hand, there has been a lot of work done on the ARGO system over the years, much of which is concerned about data integrity:
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/Bibliography.html
And, Levitus et al 2012 have an entire Appendix on it; clearly they have thought about the issue a lot, and, importantly, crunched the numbers.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2012GL051106.shtml
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 7:07 am
“The interest (in this case) isn’t so much in whether the modeled system gives a precise measurement of the average temperature of the ocean — which would, of course, require an infinite number of a set of measurements {x,y,z,t} for every point in the ocean and at every instant in time — but in how the consistently modeled system changes with time.”
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 9:01 am
‘Mark Bofill says: “I believe the issue is in the error claims. Willis appears to be expressing skepticism that these measurements are accurate to within a hundreth of a degree.”
It’s good to raise questions. It’s also good to answer them. I don’t see Willis crunching the numbers to provide an alternative number. On the other hand, there has been a lot of work done on the ARGO system over the years, much of which is concerned about data integrity:
http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/Bibliography.html
And, Levitus et al 2012 have an entire Appendix on it; clearly they have thought about the issue a lot, and, importantly, crunched the numbers.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/pip/2012GL051106.shtml‘
OK, Phobos, which is it? How consistently the model changes with time or the integrity of the measurements. Maybe you are going to address the latter? So far, you have not.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 7:07 am
Huh? That claim is totally meaningless without a quote or a page number for a citation ..
w.
Phobos writes
“which would, of course, require an infinite number of a set of measurements {x,y,z,t} for every point in the ocean and at every instant in time”
I cannot imagine where you got this idea. You are allowed to sample, just as the Hershey Company samples. But you have to identify the physical processes that you are sampling and the physical characteristics of the measuring instrument. Both projects demand rigorous experimentation. From what I see, you have assumed that the ocean is everywhere uniform, at least down to 200 meters. You have assumed that there are no physical processes to measure. Regarding the buoys, you assume that they are all ideal and remain so come what may. As a scientist, your level of rigorous experimentation should at least come up to the level of the Hershey Company. Treating the ocean as everywhere uniform is simply myth making.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 9:01 am
It appears you hold the bizarre idea that anyone who discovers an error in a scientific work is required to “provide an alternative number”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact that I think there is an error, as I’ve discusses here and in “Decimals of Precision”, doesn’t impose on me any obligation to do anything at all, much less “provide an alternative number”.
w.
Phobos writes:
“It’s good to raise questions. It’s also good to answer them. I don’t see Willis crunching the numbers to provide an alternative number.”
Of all sins against logic and scientific method, this one is the most offensive. Alarmists claim to reason that any claim they present, no matter how ridiculous, is authoritative until critics present an alternative. The only thing behind the Alarmists’ claim is narcissistic grandiosity.
Willis Eschenbach says: February 27, 2013 at 10:08 am
Reviewed your post on “Decimals of Precision.” An Excellent description of what is needed to provide the precision purported in all of these “scientific” papers. The more I look into the Global warming hype the more I am convinced that if I am a Skeptic, then those providing and supporting the AGW theory are “Pseudo Scientists.”
On the ARGO’s website they list their instrument packages. SBE Sea Bird Electronics lists the accuracy of their instrument at 0.001 C, with a drift of 0.0002 c/month. They use a Platinum Resistance Thermometer, a very accurate thermocouple. So, this accuracy is probably true, as their website is extremely sophisticated. Averaging tens of thousands of these readings, assuming all are this accurate, will give a pretty good look at OHC.
Willis Eshenbach said: “It appears you hold the bizarre idea that anyone who discovers an error in a scientific work is required to “provide an alternative number”.
You think you have discovered an error. You have not. All you have said is, this number looks suspicious to me. That’s easy to say and anyone can say it. Until you are more specific or quantitative, it doesn’t rise above just another blog comment,
Theo Goodwin says: “Alarmists claim to reason that any claim they present, no matter how ridiculous, is authoritative until critics present an alternative.”
Hardly. But what we have here is an experienced research group who has been analyzing ocean data for a long time and who have published a peer reviewed paper in a respectable journal that contains an entire Appendix on error analysis, versus a blog comment that says, this doesn’t look right to me.
Until more specifics are offered, and/or I crunch the numbers myself, I’m going with the scientific experts.
From Lars P.
“””””…..Argument 1. People claim that because the DLR is absorbed in the first mm of water, it can’t heat the mass of the ocean. But the same is true of the land. DLR is absorbed in the first mm of rock or soil.
When you put your hand on land it is warmer above and cooler below. This explains why heat is tranferred from above to below.
The oceans have a cool skin above, so the comparison is wrong……”””””
Water has its maximum absorption coefficient at 3.0 microns wavelength, it’s about 8,000 cm^-1. It is still above 1,000 cm^-1 out to 10 microns wavelength, where the peak of the earth radiation spectrum is for 288 K Temperature.
1,000 cm^-1 means the 1/e absorption depth is 10 mirons; only 37% survives to that depth. So five times that is 50 microns, by which distance 99% of the incident LWIR radiation has been absorbed. So the atmospheric downward LWIR doesn’t make it to anywhere near one millimetre depth.
That absorption in just a couple of thousandths of an inch results in enhanced evaporation of surface water; and that is the reason the very surface layer is cooler than the water a few cm down. Evaporation removes about 590 calories per gram of water evaporated, which is much more heat energy than what results from just the Temperature depression.
And because of that surface gradient; Temperature increasing from surface down, even if only for a few mm or cm, means that there is not a heat conduction from the surface to the ocean depths.
This is of course predicated on a relatively still surface. Wind driven storms of course may roil the surface waters, and stir things up a bit, but the principal effect of downward LWIR radiation absorption in the sea surface is evaporation, not downward conduction of heat.
The far more energetic photons of the incoming solar spectrum radiant energy encounter water absorption coefficients that are more like 0.0001 to 0.001 cm^-1 so the 1/e absorption depth is in the range of ten to one hundred metres; not ten to one hundred microns.
Don’t take my word for it; go read it for yourself in the literature. I can suggest “The Infra-Red Handbook” prepared for the US Navy, as one reputable source.
I don’t know why we continually rehash this belief that downward LWIR from the atmosphere stores heat in the ocean.
Now for the solid rocky surface, it is different, as the rocks don’t evaporate as easily as the ocean water.
Michael Moon says: February 27, 2013 at 10:51 am
“On the ARGO’s website they list their instrument packages. SBE Sea Bird Electronics lists the accuracy of their instrument at 0.001 C, with a drift of 0.0002″
——————
Those numbers do not make sense, they do not agree with the capabilities of ultra-high precision, laboratory only use, NIST traceable thermometers costing $10000 and multiples of that even more.
You are being “snowed” with the B/S. They are not “calibrating” or “analyzing” the whole instrument string. That data ONLY represents the potential accuracy of the ELECTRONICS. It does not include the PRT (Platinum Resistance Thermometer) or the effects of the change in resistance of the PRT leads, connections, and the change in the ambient temperature of the electronics (ambient temperature could affect the reading by as much as a full degree). In essence they are using a micrometer to measure a 2X4. It would be like you calibrating your car speedometer and then replacing the 15’ wheels with 17” wheels – your speedometer is no longer accurate – get ready for a speeding ticket when it says you are doing 63 in a 65 zone. It has to be calibrated all the way to the source (moving roller/pavement) to be “accurate.”
SeaBird has designed an electronics package that will display numbers to 5 or 6 decimal points. Yes, they have data that even after 5 years, the ELECTRONICS (not the electronics AND PRT) gives them the same number within +/- 0.002 C. BUT they are reading a Temperature Transfer Standard (TTS) – NOT the actual temperature in an actual Triple Point Water (TPW) bath and a Gallium Melt Point (GPW) bath. They just hook up the TTS with “Calibrated leads” to the SeaBird, set the TTS for TPW – read the display, set the TTS for GMP – read the display and WALA – 0.002 percent accurate. That only proves the ELECTRONICS is accurate – nothing more. They have ignored the accuracy of the PRT and ASSUMED that the PRT follows the standard resistance curve. In my 50 years of experience I have found that even PRT’s costing over $5,000 (yes five thousand) have been off by as much as 0.1% (when 0.01 was specified on the PR) and NOT followed the standard curve. AND again the accuracy stated for PRT’s is almost always for the maximum range. In laymen’s terms that means 0.01% of 100 degrees is 1 degree which is 0.03% of 33 degrees.
You have been snowed, they have been snowed, and we have been snowed. They need somebody that knows what they are doing. That is the problem with book learned scientists that have never seen actual, real, practical, applied application of real world instrumentation.
Some observations about the ARGO location map:
First, it is Cartesian in Latitude, so it is not “Equal Area”. The map’s creators should make the Y-axis linear in cos(Latitude) to make it an equal Area Map.
The density of points in the Sea of Japan is remarkably high compared to the Southern Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico and the Philippian Sea. Is it evidence of a trap? There is also a surprising gap between the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, one of the deepest average depths in the Pacific.
There is an unusual lineation at 165 W 30-50 deg N, a clump bordered by a dearth on each side. I thought this might be the ridge of sea mounts running north of Midway, but those are further west at 170 E.
It is hard to see why Argo’s tend to the west side of the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea. Water depth doesn’t preclude floats in the Straights of Madagascar.
ARGO’s avoid southern West Africa which cannot be explained by shallow water. Likewise offshore Peru.
To a lesser degree, the southern Atlantic Ocean seem not very random. Is there a E-W clump at 30 deg S or is it an optical illusion with the latitude line? If so, where is the illusion in the Pacific? There is a dearth south of 30 deg S 10-45 deg W.
I’d sure like to see a time-series plot of the number of Argo’s south of 60 deg S over time.
Willis, did you post to the net the compiled data from the 8000+ downloads you described in “Where in there World is Argo?”
Map of ocean depth – NOAA to compare to Argo location map.
http://serc.carleton.edu/images/eslabs/corals/ocean_depth_colorscale.jpg
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 11:09 am
Then come to the United States and meet the people who say “Show me!” Scientists are given exactly the respect they earn; that is, they are permitted to offer evidence and explanations in support of their assertions. They will be questioned. They will be judged on the quality of their answers. They may respond and a new cycle of debate begins.
The playing field that I have described is level in accordance with scientific method. If you find something wrong with it, please tell me.
george e. smith says:
February 27, 2013 at 11:41 am
From Lars P.
“””””…..Argument 1. People claim that because the DLR is absorbed in the first mm of water, it can’t heat the mass of the ocean. But the same is true of the land. DLR is absorbed in the first mm of rock or soil.
When you put your hand on land it is warmer above and cooler below. This explains why heat is tranferred from above to below.
The oceans have a cool skin above, so the comparison is wrong……”””””
…………………….
Don’t take my word for it; go read it for yourself in the literature. I can suggest “The Infra-Red Handbook” prepared for the US Navy, as one reputable source.
I don’t know why we continually rehash this belief that downward LWIR from the atmosphere stores heat in the ocean.
Now for the solid rocky surface, it is different, as the rocks don’t evaporate as easily as the ocean water.
George, I perfectly agree.
My answer was to Willis who made that particular claim a the post above. The Arguments 1,2,3,4 are Willis’ arguments and I tried to show they were wrong. It looks like I did not succeed much to make my point clear.
Here was Willis post that I was answerring:
Willis Eschenbach says:
February 26, 2013 at 10:05 am
Where he was linking to his blog post here – where you can find the arguments:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/15/radiating-the-ocean/
Michael Moon says:
February 27, 2013 at 10:51 am
How do they describe the rigorous experimentation they did to validate the instruments in the ocean? Did they assume that the ocean is everywhere uniform, at least down to 200 meters? If not, against what physical processes were the instruments validated?
What is their program for removing and re-validating instruments that have been in use for (what period of time)? What have they discovered about instrument deterioration (change) for instruments that were actually in use? What are the differences between instruments that traveled some distance from their starting points and those that did not?
If these questions seem annoying, do remember that the future of industrial civilization may very well depend upon the answers.
Stephen Rasey says:
February 27, 2013 at 12:37 pm
Excellent post, Thanks. Once again unpaid skeptics do part of the necessary work for the paid scientists.
Uzurbrain says:
February 27, 2013 at 12:34 pm
Ditto. Unpaid skeptic substitutes for paid scientist and, in this case, reveals some falsehoods and some important work not done.
Phobos says:
February 27, 2013 at 11:09 am
“Theo Goodwin says: “Alarmists claim to reason that any claim they present, no matter how ridiculous, is authoritative until critics present an alternative.”
Hardly. But what we have here is an experienced research group who has been analyzing ocean data for a long time and who have published a peer reviewed paper in a respectable journal that contains an entire Appendix on error analysis, versus a blog comment that says, this doesn’t look right to me.
Until more specifics are offered, and/or I crunch the numbers myself, I’m going with the scientific experts.”
Do you really not see that what you say here is exactly what the followers of Ptolemy said to Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo? There is no authority in science except scientific method and observational evidence.
Theo Goodwin,
http://www.seabird.com/pdf_documents/Datasheets/911plusbrochureAug11.pdfin,
Have a look for yourself. These are commercial instruments with guarantees involved, and as usual, when someone buys something like this and expects to get what he paid for, he probably will. Having bought accurate instruments and used them, these guys impress me as the real deal.
The group I do not trust are the ones apparently at UC-San Diego who took the first 5 years of data, saw that OHC was Falling, and adjusted the data to show the opposite. The instrument was not at fault there.
“””””Lars P. says:
February 27, 2013 at 12:55 pm
george e. smith says:
February 27, 2013 at 11:41 am…..”””””
Yes Lars, your post was just a convenient place to put in some elaboration, so I wasn’t directing any criticismic comment at you.
The ocean shallows really are a diabolical interface.
We know that there is generally a cooling with depth, relatively fast at first (my scuba daughter reminds me of this constantly) and then a slower decine into the abysmal depths, so that is the direction of conductive diffusion for solar energy implanted in the top few hundred metres; but the top mm have a reverse gradient due to evaporation of the most energetic molecules in the surface film, and that is enough to stop the LWIR energy from breaking through the barrier, and then diffusing to the depths.
Of course these effects aren’t necessarily a constant over all the oceans regradless of local conditions,but a good picture of the mostly tropical regions, where most of the solar energy is.
Phobos writes “You think you have discovered an error. You have not.”
Alternatively one could ask whether Levitus et al have adequately justified their precision in their paper. Particularly for the older 1955 sparse data on which the overall trend relies. The more measurements we have (ie after Argo), the flatter the trend.
Uzurbrain,
This is from National Physical Laboratory of the UK.
“For the highest accuracy, special glass-sheathed standard PRTs, usually of 25 ohms at 0 °C, are calibrated at the fixed points of the International temperature scale 1990 (see above). The ITS-90 specifies equations to relate the resistance to temperature and, using these, uncertainties can be achieved of 0.001 °C or better. Standard PRTs can be used from temperatures as low as 259 °C up to 660 ºC, or even, 962 ºC, with some increase in uncertainty and of loss of reproducibility.”
O of course do not know the UCSD people, nor whether their data quality control is straightforward or tricked up. They were caught with their hand in the cookie jar once, but maybe now they are telling the straight dope.
Phobos says:
February 26, 2013 at 10:55 am
“Doug Proctor says: “Huge numbers of data points in different places and different times do not reduce error estimates; only repeated measurements of the same parameter that is unchanging reduces errors (of measurements). Each time you measure a different thing that is itself changing you get back to your fundamental measurement limitation.”
——————————–
It is simply statistical sampling — much like what a candy company does as its boxes come off the assembly line, in order to measure and control quality. They don’t measure the same box over and over again, but sample a subset of the boxes over time. With sufficiently sized sampling, the difference between the sampled set and the entire population is small — this is, after, the basis of all statistical reasoning.”
Phobos, you did not address your error here. In fact, you did not acknowledge it and when prompted you pretended that it does not exist. Yet this error is huge. You have assumed that the ocean is everywhere uniform down to 200 meters. In effect, you make a preposterous claim of uniformity. Once again, Alarmist thought is top down and has no place for empirical work.