Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Today I ran across an interesting presentation from 2013 regarding the Argo floats. These are a large number of independent floats spread all across the world oceans. They spend most of their time sleeping at a depth of 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) below the surface of the ocean. Then they drop down to 2,000 metres, which is followed by a slow ascent to the surface taking measurements of temperature and salinity. Once on the surface they call home like ET, and then drop down to the deeps and go to sleep again.
Figure 1. Argo float operation. There are about 3,500 floats in the ocean, and a total of ~10,000 floats have been used over the period of operation.
Now, there were several interesting things in the presentation. The first was a total surprise to me. We hear a lot about how the heat is “hiding” in the ocean. But what I didn’t know was that according to the Argo floats, every bit of the warming is happening in the southern extratropical ocean, while the oceans of both the tropics and the northern hemisphere are actually cooling … color me puzzled.
Figure 2. Change in ocean heat content by zone. Units are 10^22 joules. Graph from the presentation linked to above.
What does that indicate? I’m sure I don’t know … but I doubt very greatly if any of the climate models reproduce that curious combination of warming and cooling.
What I found most interesting, however, was a graph of the global change in ocean heat content over the period. Here is that graph:
Figure 3. Global change in ocean heat content (OHC) since the time of the full deployment of the Argo floats. Data from the surface down to 2000 decibars (dbar), which is approximately 2000 metres.
I was sad to see a couple of things. First, this is the data with the monthly averages (the “climatology”) removed. I prefer to see the raw data so I can look at seasonal patterns. Second, the presentation lacks error bars … but needs must when the devil drives, so I use the data I have. I digitized the data so I could analyze it myself.
The first thing that I wanted to do was to look at the data using more familiar units. I mean, nobody knows what 10^22 joules means in the top two kilometres of the ocean. So I converted the data from joules to degrees C. The conversion is that it takes 4 joules to heat a gram of seawater by 1°C (or 4 megajoules per tonne per degree). The other information needed is that there are 0.65 billion cubic kilometres of ocean above 2,000 metres of depth, and that seawater weighs about 1.033 tonnes per cubic metre.
Figure 4. Ocean volume by depth. Little of the ocean is deeper than about 5 km.
Using that information, I calculated what the change in heat content means in terms of temperature change. Here is that graph:
Figure 5. Change in ocean temperature from the surface down to 2,000 dbar (~ 2,000 metres).
A change of two hundredths of a degree per decade … be still, my beating heart. Unfortunately, I can’t give you any error estimate on the trend because there are no error bars on the data in the presentation.
Let me take a detour here whose purpose will be clear in a moment. I want to look at the CERES data, which is satellite based data on the radiation budget of the earth. Here is the month-by-month change in the “Net TOA Radiation”. The net TOA radiation is the incoming radiation at the Top Of the Atmosphere (TOA) that hits the earth (sunlight) minus the outgoing radiation at the TOA leaving the earth (reflected sunlight plus thermal infrared [longwave] radiation). Figure 6 shows those changes:
Figure 6. Decomposition of the CERES net TOA radiation into a seasonal and a residual component. Units are watts per square metre (W/m2). The residual component (bottom panel) is the raw data (top panel), with the monthly averages (seasonal component or “climatology”, middle panel) removed.
Now, this is an interesting graph in its own right. In the net radiation you can see the ~ 20 watts per square metre (W/m2) effect of the annual swing of the earth towards and away from the sun. The earth is closest to the sun in January, so the earth gains energy around that time, and loses it in the other half of the year. In addition, you can see the amazing stability of the system. Once we remove the monthly averages (the “climatology’), the net TOA imbalance generally only varies by something on the order of ± half a watt per square metre over the thirteen years of the record, with no statistically significant trend at all … astounding.
But I digress. The reason I’m looking at this is that the excess energy that comes in to the Earth (positive values), peaking in January, is stored almost entirely in the ocean, and then it comes back out of the ocean with a peak in outgoing radiation (negative values) in July. We know this because the temperature doesn’t swing from the radiation imbalance, and there’s nowhere else large enough and responsive enough for that amount of energy to be stored and released.
In other words, the net TOA radiation is another way that we can measure the monthly change in the ocean heat content, and thus we can perform a cross-check on the OHC figures. It won’t be exact, because some of the energy is stored and released in both ice and land … but the main storage is in the ocean. So the CERES net TOA data will give us a maximum value for the changes in ocean storage, the value we get if we assume it’s all stored stored in the ocean.
So all we need to do is to compare the monthly change in the OHC content minus the climatology, as shown in Figure 1, with the monthly change in downwelling radiation minus the climatology as shown in the bottom panel of Figure 6 … except that they are in different units.
However, that just means that we have to convert the net TOA radiation data in watts per square metre into joules per month. The conversion is
1 watt-month/m2 (which is one watt per square metre applied for one month) =
1 joule-month/sec-m2 * 5.11e+14 m2 (area of surface) * 365.2425/12 * 24 * 3600 seconds / month =
1.35e+21 joules
So I converted the net TOA radiation into joules per month, and I compared that to the Argo data for the same thing, the change in ocean heat content in joules/month. Figure 7 shows that comparison:
Figure 7. A comparison of the monthly changes in ocean heat content (OHC) as measured by the CERES data and by the Argo floats.
Now, this is a most strange outcome. The Argo data says that there is a huge, stupendous amount of energy going into and out of the ocean … but on the other hand the CERES data says that there’s only a comparatively very small amount of energy going into and out of the ocean. Oh, even per CERES it’s still a whole lot of energy, but nothing like what the Argo data claims.
How are we to understand this perplexitude? The true answer to that question is … I don’t know. It’s possible I’ve got an arithmetical error, although I’ve been over and over the calculations listed above. I know that the CERES data is of the right size, because it shows the ~20 watt swing from the ellipticity of the earth’s orbit. And I know my Argo data is correct by comparing Figure 7 to Figure 2.
My best guess is that the error bars on the Argo data are much larger than is generally believed. I say this because the CERES data are not all that accurate … but they are very precise. I also say it because of my previous analysis of the claimed errors given by Levitus et al in my post “Decimals of Precision”.
In any case, it’s a most curious result. At a minimum, it raises serious questions about our ability to measure the heat content of the ocean to the precision claimed by the Argo folks. Remember they claim they can measure the monthly average temperature of 0.65 BILLION cubic kilometres of ocean water to a precision of one hundredth of a degree Celsius … which seems very doubtful to me. I suspect that the true error bars on their data would go from floor to ceiling.
But that’s just my thoughts. All suggestions gladly accepted.
Best of everything to all,
w.
My Standard Request: If you disagree with someone, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU DISAGREE WITH. That way everyone can understand the exact nature of your objections.
Data and Code: The Argo data (as a .csv file) and R code is online in a small folder called Argo and CERES Folder. The CERES TOA data is here in R format, and the CERES surface data in R format is here. WARNING: The CERES data is 220 Mb, and the CERES surface data is 110 Mb.
Further Data:
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Willis insists we always quote him exactly before commenting or especially before asking a question. So:
“As usual … what rgb said. +10 w.”
So Willis, (and Anthony) when does Dr Robert get unrestricted posting privileges on WUWT and his own archive page of pertinent prior comment?
pouncer, contrary to some people’s perceptions, I’m just a guest author here, I have nothing to do with how the site is run, how it is moderated, or the like.
However, I’m sure that any time that Dr. Brown wants to write a guest post Anthony would be more than happy to publish it …
w.
I suggest that the radiation budget between the surface and space is being moderated by the processes of evaporation/condensation in clouds, while the energy budget below the surface is literally all over the map as a function of all the different surface and sub-surface currents. Has anyone used the ARGO data to try to trace these currents? As Bob Tisdale has pointed out, the Kelvin wave rides on top of the Cromwell current.
For too long, Climate Scientists as well as [snip] have focused on average lower troposphere and land mass temperatures. Although there has been a slow but steady rise, the real answer is in the ocean temperatures. (3% of the newly created heat from Global Warming will be absorbed into the ocean and only 1% of extraneous heat will be absorbed into the land masses.
I thought global warming™ had stopped and been replaced by climate change™ or is it extreme weather™?
Willis, has anyone suggested that the big argo swings in your figure 7 ARE the error bars? The Ceres trace looks a bit like a filtered argo measurement. Eyeball stdev is ~2 zetaJ. Also, it is incorrect to use only the accuracy of the equipment to estimate error in measurement, if that is what I understand the Argo ‘boys’ to mean. Indeed, if the equipment was accurate to a hundred decimal places of temperature, the error bars of the method would be just about the same – very large.
Oops +/- 2 zeta J
2 zetta J or 0.002 yotta J
If an ARGO float is being pushed by a current of water, it is essentially held captive by the parcel of water (consider the Gulf Stream) as it moves. This means that over time a single float is resampling the same parcel of water as it moves and does some mixing and changing. It is not sampling different parts of the ocean. the sample size is much less than imagined.
Craig the water in the Tropics is always going to be consistently warm and the water towards the poles is always going to be consistently cold, basically unchanging.
It is the water temperature between the tropics and the higher latitudes that changes because the heat flow isn’t perfectly steady. This is where the warmers are going to ‘find’ the warming.
Look at the first figure. The float rides a surface current for only a short period of time. It is below the thermocline most of the time
Good point. I don’t think they’re held captive by a current. I think randomness is probably sufficient for the upper 2000 meters.
Why would you expect randomness over time. The ocean currents, both surface and deep, are not random.
Some surface current and Argo float location links a few comments down here. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/30/the-tempering-effect-of-the-oceans-on-global-warming/#comment-1803131
The currents we’re looking at would be those at about 1000 meters. Some floats will enter currents and some will exit them.
One float per 185,700 km³ of water, if you moved all 3500 floats (or 10,000 overall) into this volume the accuracy would still be highly suspect. A weekly / monthly / yearly location map of all 3500 tracks would be interesting to see.
I would guess it’s due to the short timeframe and low sampling size of the Argo buoys. They aren’t a fine enough mesh to capture short-term fluctuations (sometimes an individual buoy is in the cold part of a cell, sometimes they’re in the hot spot, sometimes they’re in an average spot). Satellite CERES measurements don’t have that undersampling problem I assume.
The Argo buoys are better suited (and intended) for long-term (annual? decadal? century?) trend monitoring than monthly, because undersampling errors tend to cancel each other out in the long term trend calculation. I’m not saying they have enough buoys to give precise decadal trends (that depends on the standard deviation of ocean temperature, you would need all the individual buoy data to analyze/interpret that, and do some out of sample analysis to see how much the number of buoys’ data changes the results).
If you did such an analysis and found out your error bars are too large due to undersampling, the only solution is to add more buoys (refining your mesh) and reanalyze until your error bars converge to the point you need it. But again the error changes on different timescales I believe. The longer the timescale, the less undersampling error. But if it takes 100 years to get meaningful decadal trend data with the number of buoys you have, it’s not giving you info fast enough and you need more buoys.
Remember that the intent of the buoys is more for accurate trend analysis over long periods of time, than for accurate absolute data at a given point in time. The error calculations for each are very different.
Willis, regarding your perplexitude, is the problem looking at two different spheres, one with the radius of the earth, the oceans, the second longer radius, the TOA or atmosphere? Off the cuff, the radius difference seems too small for that grand of an effect.
Thanks, Willis. A very interesting article, as always.
ARGO seems to me like good first try, but to really profile the temperature and salinity of the ocean, which is a moving target, it would need many more buoys. So many that they would become a mayor pollutant themselves. Headline: Small Boat Boat Sunk by Surfacing ARGO Buoy!
THANKYOU Willis! I have only suggested doing this comparison on every ARGO post for the past year!
This to me almost confirms that the ARGO data are junk; it is simply unexplainable and impossible to account for the massive fluctuations in heat content. If it were possible to add in the total heat content of the atmosphere (I don’t know if that data exists) to the ARGO data and the same unexplainable swings in total heat content were present then that would be confirmation that the data are horribly imprecise and possibly horribly inaccurate.
Keep up the good work. This is definitely worth looking into further. The AGW theory — at least the future projections based on it — is close to being proven false. If there is no “hidden heat”, then the whole thing falls apart and the agenda will be derailed, at least for a little while.
Perhaps so, Robert … but I’m still not convinced that it’s not an error somewhere in the numbers. The difference between the two still strikes me as being too large to be a real finding.
But I’ve been over the dang numbers six ways from Sunday and found nothing … perplexitude.
w.
The southern oceans point to the sun around perihelion when the TSI is maximum, so there’s extra energy to store.
The northern land areas point to the sun around aphelion when the TSI is lowest, and they get hotter so radiate more energy during the day.
Seems pretty simple to me.
Willis…you are great. I love reading your stuff!
Willis
I think there are two grave errors in this calculation. First, when you use a 24 hour sunlight model you have to divide the surface area of the Earth by four to get only the radiated surface. The dark sides do not count.
5.1 *10**14 is total surface area.
Second, when using TOA you have to take into account that not all radiation on TOA reach the surface. A considerable fraction is radiated back to space.
/Jan
Thanks, Jan.
First, all of the various flows (sunlight, reflected sunlight, etc.) are calculated on a “per square metre” basis, based on the 24/7 global averages. This means that their instantaneous values are divided by four. However, this doesn’t “get only the radiated surface”, it averages the values over both the dark and light sides.
Regarding your second point, read the definition of TOA I gave above, viz:
So you are right that you need to include reflected sunlight … but it is in fact included.
w.
You are right on both, my fault, thank you for clarifying
/Jan
Hi Willis,
I admit to being confused by the ocean heat data you presented, because I was sure I had seen OHC data (from ARGO) showing a very clear annual cycle, consistent with maximum insolation in January and minimum in July. After serarching a bit I found the following link to then now inactive Roger Piekle Sr. blog: http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/new-information-from-josh-willis-on-upper-ocean-heat-content/
In that post Josh Willis shows a multi-year plot of ocean heat content with 1-sigmal error bars for the top 900 meters of the ocean, from mid 2003 to early 2008. While noisy, the plot appears to show a clear annual cycle, with a peak to trough range of ~6*10^22 joules, lagging the solar intensity cycle by a couple of months, which is not too far from the magnitude and timing of ocean heat content change we might expect from the annual cycle of solar intensity. I remember thinking when I first saw the plot that it was reasonably consistent with the annual cycle, and so no surprise.
Perhaps the cyclical pattern is more clear when the deeper ocean is not included, or perhaps there is a difference in the way you and Josh Willis treat the data.
Thanks, Steve. As I said in the head post, what is shown is the Argo data with the monthly average values subtracted out. This of course removes the annual cycle.
w.
Willis,
Somehow I missed that. Sorry. I guess then that you are just seeing the relative noise/uncertainty in the two measurement methods, and clearly the ARGO data is a lot more noisy. The benefit of Argo is that (within the uncertainty posed by noise) you get a long term look at absolute heat accumulation in the ocean and by inference, a better long term estimate of the relative contributions of ice melt and thermal expansion to sea level increase. It is also nice that the OHC appears to track (in a noisy way!) the expected annual cycle of solar intensity.
Couple of observations/questions (to nobody in particular):
a. Why are the so-called ‘scientists’ sucking the public teat, not doing these comparisons?
b. When max insolation finally becomes synchronised with the N Hem summer (as I presume it will do at some time in the future), what difference would this have on climate?
Ralph
Silver ralph: Why are the so-called ‘scientists’ sucking the public teat, not doing these comparisons?
Lots of scientists are analyzing lots of data sets and publishing lots of papers on their work. Willis writes about things that catch his fancy, as he has said (I think he used the word “sparklies”), and makes his results public here. I for one like the “creative tension” of the two approaches.
silver Ralph asks…b. When max insolation finally becomes synchronized with the N Hem summer (as I presume it will do at some time in the future), what difference would this have on climate?
========================================================================
A question I have asked many many times, and no answer so far. If procession theory is correct, then this happens every 25,000 years. However for some unknown reason precession is accelerating, indicating perhaps a 24,000 year cycle.
Despite the fact of 90 W/M-sq. additional insolation during January, the atmosphere cools (increased SW insolation into the SH oceans, thus “hidden heat” for a time from the atmosphere, plus increased albedo due to NH land and snow, thus again less energy into the atmosphere).
What long term changes would occur when the max insolation is in June is a wonderful subject to speculate on, but FEW venture here. The thing is you would think WILLIS (shout out to Willis to engage his curious mind in this direction) would be as curious as HELL to see if this 24,000 year cycle exists in the earth’s record, and if not, why not.
Thanks to Willis Eschenbach for another good analysis, and to rgbatduke for good comments.
About this:color me puzzled.
In my opinion, anybody not puzzled is not paying attention to all of the data, even before today’s presentation. As I wrote at Bob Tisdale’s post: the Earth system is a high-dimensional non-linear dissipative system, rotating with respect to the source of its input, which is varying. What’s worse, it’s round. Models to date are inaccurate, nothing obeys “common sense”. Roundness leads to the 22/90 disparity between Willis’ presentation and rgb’s. Averages relate to totals, but everything that happens does so in response to the detailed conditions at the time and place.
And to put the ! point on what was already written: because the AARGO buoys are drifting, you can’t distinguish between drift to a warmer place and in situ warming.
And the question lingers on: does anybody know what is producing those divergent trends? They would seem to be manifestations of some large intra-oceanic heat flow, or evaporation/precipitation flow, or something.
There are several different models and manufacturers of Argo floats. Has anyone checked to see if the distribution of models correlates to temperature anomalies? It seems like an obvious question, so apologies if it’s been addressed above.
Answered my own question. It’s a little old, but I don’t like the distribution.
http://i62.tinypic.com/2a69ls0.png
Sorry to be a pest, but here is the newest one.
http://i62.tinypic.com/evdu2p.png
I noticed there don’t seem to be any in the Arctic. Is that because the ice would keep them from surfacing? Maybe the ice would prevent them from being placed? Some other reason?
Just asking if anyone knows.
I don’t know about the Arctic, but during the southern winter many of the antarctic floats are listed as being trapped in ice.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/04/argo-and-ocean-heat-content/#comment-1806560
Wouldn’t it be expected that the solar max of 2000-03 would result in an increase in SH ocean temperatures, after a thermal lag?
I’m offended by this statement. You took meaningful information and turned into meaningless information. If the basic unit of energy is unfamiliar to you, maybe you really shouldn’t be discussing a problem which has thermodynamics and energy balance at its core.
Solar Energy:
received each day = 1.5 x 10^22 J
received each year = 5.5 x 10^24 J
Energy(crust) = 7x Energy(ocean)
Energy(ocean) = 1280x Energy(atmosphere)
Energy(ocean) = 290x Energy(solar-year)
Energy(atmosphere) = 83x Energy(solar-day) = 1 – 1.5 x 10^24 Joules.
From this we can see SH Ocean (60 S – 20 S) was up about 2.6 solar-days worth of energy.
The difference could be measurement technology related, but it doesn’t seem to be arithmetic. However, it does seem to be conceptual. You conflated the change in energy in one component of the system with the change in energy in the total system. Parts of the system you neglected:
Ocean under 2000 meters
Ocean further north than 60 degrees North
Ocean further south than 60 degrees South
Crust under oceans
Land in NH
Land in SH
Atmosphere
All of these components are exchanging heat. I provided the relative energy levels to give you some perspective. The change you’re calling a “stupendous amount of energy” is actually 1/40,000 of the energy in the ocean.
In short, there is no obvious mystery. Lots of internal activity inside the party, but only a few are coming or going from the party.
Is anything measured directly? Certainly not temperature. There is nothing unbelievable about temperature instrument accuracy of .002. That’s what it is for this technology.
You are obviously familiar with ARGO hardware. I believe that temperature is encoded using 19 bits in the ARGO message, about 2 parts per million precision. Can you convince us that the believable accuracy you quote, about 40 parts per million is achieved in the sensor signal conditioning and digitization circuitry of the buoys – including such considerations as the thermal effects on the measurement of a cold-soaked buoy rising through a gradually (or not so gradually) warming environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_thermometer
http://www.terrapub.co.jp/journals/JO/pdf/6002/60020253.pdf
So, I think we can discard any comments about the temperature measurements not being precise enough.
You’re really going with a claim that either
A) the international collaboration of scientists screwed up the IT part and are losing precision in the data packets
OR
B) 19 bits is insufficient to store 3 decimal places, when it’s known that water temperature will be between 0 C and 35 C?
If it’s B, then you may want to learn something from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_floating_point
Even binary 16 has over 3 digits of precision, but if you take a look at Extended and extendable precision formats, you’ll see that given the temperature range between 0 and 35, 19 digits is quite enough.
This is out of an Argo users manual.
6.3.4 Temperature Coding
Depending upon the value of the first bit, it is followed by either 10 or 15 data bits. If the difference between the current temperature measurement and the previous temperature measurement (Tn – Tn-1) is included in the closed interval[-0.512C, +0.511C], the difference (Tn– Tn-1) is coded into 10 bits two’s-complement.
Otherwise the measurement is absolutely coded in 15 bits with an offset of – 2 °C. The temperature is reported in the range -2C to + 30.767C, with a resolution of 0.001C
I mentioned the precision. I asked about ‘believable accuracy’. You ignored accuracy in your reply. Can you convince us about the accuracy of the measurements? In particular, I would expect all measurements in an ascent from depth to be too cool owing to the thermal effects from a cold-soaked buoy. Furthermore, you assume a perfect signal conditioning and digitisation process. Can you convince us that this is the case?
I wasn’t claiming either A or B in your reply because you answered a question I didn’t ask. Same goes for RH; you are talking about precision, I asked about accuracy.
Why should I? The burden of proof is on you. You are the one making an extraordinary claim, which is that between 1871 (when the technology was invented) and 2014, scientists and engineers have not been able to figure out how to perform accurate temperature measurements. You are claiming that with 143 years of science and engineering behind us, only YOU can think of systematic errors that everyone else just couldn’t fathom (pun intended).
Actually, cell thermal mass corrections are applied to conductivity data and then the data is averaged into approximately 10 m depth bins for transmission. I’m satisfied with this, but what if you’re right? How would the overall temperature readings being too cool affect the variations from the average (anomolies)?
I don’t assume perfect anything, and I don’t need to convince you of anything. What does this have to do with the original article’s results, or with my comment at December 5, 2014 at 1:43 pm? My comment answers the questions raised by the posting.
VikingExplorer
In response to a question from Billy Liar which was
you have replied by saying in full
NO! ABSOLUTELY NOT! HOW DARE YOU!?
That response is insulting not only to Billy Liar but also to every observer – including me – who is interested in the nature and validity of the data.
There is no reason that anybody should take on trust any unsubstantiated assertion by an anonymous internet popup such as yourself.
YOU claim the data is reliable and Billy Liar is merely fulfilling the scientific duty of demanding that you justify your claims. He has said nothing which requires any “proof”, and the “burden of proof is on you” to justify your assertions. Your refusal to provide any attempt at justification suggests you cannot, and your irrelevant mention of “143 years of science and engineering” fails as an excuse for your failure to attempt to justify your assertions.
Richard
Actually, you got the order reversed. All I did was make a verifiable statement of FACT, which is that RTDs are capable of being accurate to within .002 C. This matches the manufacturers spec, as well as the claims from Argo. As an engineer, I used this technology for years, as a new generator design required us to instrument a prototype to verify the thermodynamic design. I made no extraordinary claim when I said:
“There is nothing unbelievable about temperature instrument accuracy of .002. That’s what it is for this technology”.
Billy Liar then started repeated the claims of many others on this thread, claiming that it was NOT accurate. In response, I provided:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_thermometer
That should settle the matter. But if it doesn’t, then I would categorize that person as a quack. No one is more anti AGW than myself, but I will not believe that there is some huge conspiracy of millions of scientists reaching back 143 years, all to support the AGW hoax. It’s far more believable that the vast majority of scientists are working within the boundaries of logic, integrity and the laws of science, while an extremely small minority of pseudo scientists promulgate impossible speculative ideas for a political purpose, and a much larger group of politicians and media further those political aims.
I’ve already answered his claim that thermal lag while ascending is introducing error. Besides, the floats spend most of their time at their parking depth. Thus, the burden of proof is on Liar man that RTDs are not accurate to within .002 C.
richardscourtney, I would like to add that it takes a particular rabid kind of stupidity to always argue with whatever the AGW team says, even when they admit to something that’s true, which when followed to it’s logical conclusion, will mean that AGW is impossible.
@VikingExplorer
Thanks for your response.
So, in 2013, the ARGO program are still correcting errors in the data which has been acquired since 2006.
http://www.seabird.com/technical_references/CellThermalMassSciencePoster_2014OceanSciencesMtg_Handout.pdf
The above paper deals with errors in salinity measurements due to thermal problems.
Do you know of any work which deals with the thermal mass of the whole float?
It’s easy enough, as you point out to make a precise measurement of temperature to 0.002°C (2mK) with a time constant of 0.39-0.5 seconds (see link) but is the accuracy of this measurement affected by the thermal characteristics of the float. If the float is in thermal equilibrium with its surroundings throughout its profiling ascent then there may not be a problem. If, however, the float is cooler than its surroundings as it ascends then not only may the sensor be affected by conduction from the relatively cooler float but thermoelectric emf’s may be generated in the sensor conditioning circuitry due to temperature differences.
Any comment?
ALos from the manual
Sensors
Salinity
– range…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….10 to 42 PSU
– accuracy…………………………………………………………………………………………………………-
0.005 PSU
– resolution ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….0.001 PSU
Temperature
– range……………………………………………………………………………………………………………-3°C to +32°C
– accuracy……………………………………………………………………………………………………… -0.002°C
– resolution …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 0.001°C
Pressure
– range……………………………………………………………………………………………………..0 bar to 2500 dbar
– accuracy………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. –
1 dbar
– resolution ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..0.1 dbar
@Bill Liar,
Thanks for your comment. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the float cycle is about 10 days long. They seem to spend 10 hours ascending to the surface, 5 hours on the surface, 10 hours descending to their parking depth and 9 days at the parking depth.
So, even if you are right about the accuracy during the ascent and descent, it doesn’t seem to be applicable to all the good readings at the parking depth. It seems to me that it’s extremely likely that the international collection of scientists would get it about as close as humans can for the early 21st century. Sure, there is always random and systematic error, but this isn’t new unknown technology or science. It was just engineering a temperature measurement solution that would satisfy the system requirements. I see no reason to believe why that didn’t happen.
I believe strongly that hard core warmists capable of outright fraud are very small in number, maybe less than 100 world wide. They made it possible for Argo and all the rest of the climatology instrumentation to be funded. However, I don’t believe that rank and file scientists are infected with Warmism. For one, US funding of science only extends to US universities, and this is an international effort.
As you can see from http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/Organisation.html, Norway was involved, so how can you doubt it. 🙂
Nordic and Scandinavian countries occupy 4 of the top 8 positions: http://coolfunpedia.blogspot.com/2013/05/worlds-most-honest-people.html
🙂
There are 3 parts to this comment: 1) temperature measurement accuracy, 2) volume of ocean water, and 3) sampling
1) There really is no reason to have significant doubts about the accuracy of RTDs, nor of the Argo technology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(oceanography)).
2) My arithmetic could be off, or maybe yours is. I understand that each Argo float occupies a 3° latitude by 3° longitude grid square. At the equator, each degree of longitude is 69 miles (same as latitude), or 111 km. So, the volume of water is 111 * 3 (long) * 111 * 3 (lat) * 2 (depth) = 221,777 cubic km. What am I missing? .65 BILLION is 2,930 times too much.
3) Sure, it would be better if there were more argo floats, but it’s fairly good. I see no reason to expect a dramatically different result if we had more resolution. However, the important point regarding the sampling resolution is that the same issue affects air temperature measurements, but no one cared much about that. There were no surface temperature measurements for 2/3rds of the earth, but hey, let’s claim the whole earth is warming because a few airports are getting hot.
At least now, we’re measuring energy levels in a component of the earth thermodynamic system that actually has some Joules. The energy of the whole atmosphere is only 1/1280 of the energy of the ocean. We’re finally measuring something real, and yet you people are complaining. You seem to want to go back to measuring one small part of 1/1280 of the air/ocean system, and extrapolate that to the earth?
I see now that .65 BILLION refers to all water above 2 km of depth. I don’t see that they ever implied that all water above 2 km has a certain energy. They are averaging over time and volume.
This brings up a question about how you actually went from temperature back to Joules. Maybe you should find the Argo raw data.
Certainly, they took a temperature measurement and extrapolated that to the volume of water for that Argo float, which is 221,777 cubic km of water. Using the mass of that volume of water, they computed the energy in that water.
Thermocouples – types and precision:
https://www.yokogawa.com/fld/pdf/temp/TI06B00A01-01E.pdf
Pee page 17.
@RH
“Otherwise the measurement is absolutely coded in 15 bits with an offset of – 2 °C. The temperature is reported in the range -2C to + 30.767C, with a resolution of 0.001C”
Well, that is the reading precision, but what is the accuracy of the number? ±0.005? ±0.01? The resolution is on the electronics side and is not indicative of the quality of the recorded data point per se. Do they talk about that?
My daily data looks like this [27.943] but I don’t believe the last two.
Presumably the original measurements taken by the floats must have been of temperature, not heat content. So those measurements must have been converted to joules, for some reason.
Now, as your conversion shows a humongous 0.02°C per decade, it follows that the floats are capable of measuring to considerably better accuracy than one hundredth of a degree.
Perhaps I’m doing them an injustice, but I have considerable difficulty in believing that 3,500 of these things can be deployed for a decade and be collectively capable of such a high degree of accuracy over an extended period.
“…according to the Argo floats, every bit of the warming is happening in the southern extratropical ocean”
Since most of the ocean is in the southern hemisphere, it makes sense that the oceans there respond in different ways to longer term changes in solar activity. We shouldn’t expect the two hemispheres to behave exactly the same, or on the same time cycles, and geological history appears to also bear this out.
A curious example could be that both Greenland and the contiguous US/Canada haven’t been warming much at all since the early-mid 20th century compared to the rest of the world, and this seems to indicate a fortuitous thing, if future cooling sets in, it might well be starting in the area of North America-Greenland-western Europe, which is good news against the rampant alarmism there.
An aspect of Mann’s ridiculous hockeystick is that the north Atlantic (the study of which led to his insular views) is sensitive to both warming (which gave him his ‘regional MWP’) but also cooling.
>> So those measurements must have been converted to joules, for some reason.
How about because it’s energy that’s important for climatology?
You’re doing yourself an injustice with ignorance. RTDs are a very new technology (invented in 1871). And yes, they are quite capable of measuring temperature to an accuracy of .002 C.
Skepticism is good, but a little research before you write is even better.
I suppose that you also wouldn’t believe that the generators that I once designed had many parts that were machined to .001 inches.
What was the Geometric Tolerance of your 0.001 inch parts?
For example, 1.350 +/- .001
Your replies lead me to think that you are unaware that accuracy has a very loose relationship with precision. Just because a number has a lot of digits after the decimal point doesn’t say anything about it’s accuracy.
The above was @VikingExplorer not garymount.
‘Its’ not it’s above.
As a trained engineer, I do understand accuracy vs. precision. For those of you in Rio Linda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_and_precision
Your replies lead me to think that you don’t understand thermodynamics (“measurements must have been converted to joules, for some reason”).
Sorry, it was catweazle666 who said “measurements must have been converted to joules, for some reason”.
I seem to remember a comment in one of Willis’ CERES articles that the data itself was not really raw data but the result of a computer algorithm. It may be the CERES data has the variance removed as part of that processing.
I imagine the law of large numbers applies to the coverage issue regarding sparse geographic sampling of each ARGO float having to cover about a 180 mile by 180 mile area of ocean. The expectation would be on a convergence to the true value rather than a bias.
Ragnaar: The expectation would be on a convergence to the true value rather than a bias.
You are on the right track, but your language is slightly off. Convergence to the wrong value *is* bias.
MeanSquaredError of the estimate is Variance + Bias^2. What we have here is a case where the variance of the Argo mean is very small, but the bias is unknown: given the problems elucidated (non-random placement, floating with the currents, etc), it is likely that the bias is very large compared to the variance. In the other language, the estimate is “precise” (aka “reliable”) but it’s “accuracy” (with respect to what we want to learn, the true mean temperature of the region of interest ) is not known.
Argo And Ocean Heat Content The earth is closest to the sun in January, so the earth gains energy around that time, and loses it in the other half of the year. please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU DISAGREE WITH.
Time for me to get on a hobby horse and get knocked off.
I understand what you are trying to say but disagree with the concept.
The energy in equals the energy out on a 24 hour basis.
Hence when the earth is closer to the sun in January yes there is more energy in but also more energy out to balance.
The atmosphere is naturally hotter as the sun is closer.
But the earth does not retain more energy stored in the sea. Any heat that has gone deep is balanced by colder water elsewhere as the earth has to give up all the energy it takes in over the 24 hour cycle.
If that heat went deep somewhere else had to radiate the equivalent back to space.
Yes there are Kelvin waves, yes, there are pockets of down-welling hot water.
But these do not store extra heat, they only carry heat that has already been balanced by the outgoing radiation from the rest of the sea and land.
That is why “the net TOA imbalance generally only varies by something on the order of ± half a watt per square metre over the thirteen years of the record, with no statistically significant trend at all”
not astounding at all.
TOA is simply the heat in, heat out interface.
Hence so called stored heat cannot come back to bite us. It has already gone back to space.
ENSO and stadium waves and El Nino’s are simply descriptors of current weather patterns.
Yes El Nino is real, the sea is warmer but there is no more heat in the system because of it.
There must be more heat in the system causing El Nino.
The simplest explanation for this would be altered albedo due to cloud cover. This lets more heat into the atmosphere which then heats up.
More complex would be altered albedo due to atmospheric factors we have not taken into account.
Choppy surface water in storms, dust storms, forest fires.
or even factors in the sea which might cause increased reflectance off water.
The last would be simple variance in the amount of energy emitted by the sun which we are reluctant to consider.
angech says…”The energy in equals the energy out on a 24 hour basis.”
=============================================================
No Sir.
===============
angech says… “Hence when the earth is closer to the sun in January yes there is more energy in but also more energy out to balance.
The atmosphere is naturally hotter as the sun is closer.
========================================================
Sorry but not so. The atmosphere cools in January, despite 90 W/M sq. additional insolation. SW radiation over the oceans has a long residence time, penetrates up to 800′ deep, and some of that insolation is lost to the atmosphere for decades, maybe even centuries. It is perhaps valid to think of the oceans as a very powerful SW GHL (Greenhouse liquid)
The atmosphere may cool in January where you are in the Northern Hemisphere but at the same time the atmosphere in the Southern Hemisphere is getting miles warmer.
Overall the energy balance for the whole earth’s atmosphere, not just your little bit, stays the same.
The earth is closer to the sun in January in its elliptical orbit hence the atmosphere in January overall is a little warmer.
VikingExplorer December 7, 2014 at 6:39 am
” mpainter, I never said that Heat transfer is dependent on Insolation. I have said that Heat transfer is dependent solely on delta T. ”
but,
VikingExplorer December 6, 2014 at 4:13 pm
” If the sun lost mass, and our insolation was reduced, there would be a greater delta T, and more Heat would flow.”
You do not read what you have written and you contradict yourself repeatedly.
Stop, reflect and think.
This is completely and utterly false. (David A is too kind). There is absolutely no law of physics that says energy in equals energy out. Earth is exothermic, which means it is slowly losing heat. The earth was liquefied about 4.5 billion years ago when a mars sized sibling crashed into earth, creating the moon. The moon’s orbit is slowly increasing by 4 cm per year, and Earth’s rotation is slowing.
Eons from now, earth may eventually get to a point where it is in radiative balance. However, at some point, the earth’s rotation could slow to around 47 days, and the thermodynamics of Earth would be completely different. Don’t worry about that though, since maybe that situation would be forestalled by the Sun growing into a red giant. This could cause the Moon to be torn apart into a ring of debris that will eventually rain down on us like our worst possible nightmare. Or maybe the sun will lose enough mass so that we’ll go off into space with or without our friendly moon companion.
The point is, these scenarios are just as speculative as achieving radiative balance.
Huh? This is completely false. The energy in the ocean is 1280 times that of the atmosphere, while the energy in the crust is 7x that of the ocean. The energy in the ocean is certainly retained.
There is nothing to prevent the earth from gaining or losing heat. If for some reason, the sun would get hotter, than the earth would either lose heat slower, or start gaining energy.
Viking Explorer December 6, 2014 at 8:36 am “As a trained engineer, I do understand accuracy vs. precision.”
Really?
” The energy in equals the energy out on a 24 hour basis. Hence when the earth is closer to the sun in January yes there is more energy in but also more energy out to balance.
This is completely and utterly false. (David A is too kind). There is absolutely no law of physics that says energy in equals energy out.”
Try the
“law of conservation of energy.” Energy is conserved. What does this really mean, and why is it true?
Energy is similar. If you take any volume of space, then the total energy inside that volume at a given time is always the amount that was there earlier, plus the total amount that has come in through the surface, minus the total amount that has gone out through the surface.
Another way of saying the same thing is that energy can’t be made or destroyed. For there to be more, it must have come from somewhere; for there to be less it must have gone somewhere else.
The conservation laws, such as the conservation of energy, give physics its backbone.
Which bit of accuracy, precision and trained engineer is either accurate or precise given this sort of comment?
You need to take a course in physics. It certainly does NOT mean that “The energy in equals the energy out on a 24 hour basis”. The law of conservation of energy states that the total energy of an isolated system cannot change. Earth is NOT an isolated system.
dU = dQ – dW
OR
dU = Qin – Qout – dW
OR
Internal_energy_change (IEC) = Heat_added – Heat_lost – Work_done
First of all, even if IEC is zero, Work is being performed, so Heat_added != Heat_lost
Second and much more importantly, First Law doesn’t require IEC to be zero. IEC can be quite positive or negative. In the case of planets like Earth, it’s slightly negative. For planets like Jupiter, it’s more negative.
You just claimed that Heat_added = Heat_lost. That’s AGW speak for “I don’t understand the First thing about thermodynamics”.
I see your understanding of maths is as good as your understanding of physics, that is not a compliment by the way. Willis may well give up with you .
Hint dU=H.
angech: The energy in equals the energy out on a 24 hour basis.
Why ever do you believe that? Do you have a reference for the claim?
Try the “law of conservation of energy.” Energy is conserved. see reply to Viking above .
For a more detailed summary look up Newton’s laws and physics of black bodies.
If you wish to carp, which you do,
then you can nit pick on Newton’s laws which however hold true for this level of discussion and you can mention the fact that the earth does provide some energy itself from its core which is minuscule and irrelevant to the concept that the sun is providing energy on a constant basis and the earth is a receiver and emitter of all the energy it receives.
You’re confusing cause and effect.
The Heat transfer from earth core/crust to the air and sea is small BECAUSE the sun is providing energy on a constant basis. Heat transfer is directly proportional to delta T. The surface and lower atmosphere are in near thermal equilibrium, so the delta T is small.
There is in fact an extremely large energy store in core/mantle/crust. If the sun lost mass, and our insolation was reduced, there would be a greater delta T, and more Heat would flow.
The heat transfer from the earths core is minuscule compared to the heat output from the sun which is what warms our atmosphere.
If the sun were to go cold the earth would continue to lose its own intrinsic heat at its own intrinsic rate.
The amount of heat the earth itself emits would gradually diminish over time according to most scientists who assume that the core of the earth is cooling.
You are mixing up total energy, sun plus very small earth with energy flow,very small earth out with imagination, cold sun plus very small earth out. There is a larger differential in surface temp of the cooler earth to the temperature inside the earth but the flow of endogenous energy (very small) from the earth core to the surface remains the same and will diminish in time as the earth’ score cools.
Viking Explorer,
If you investigate the question thoroughly, you will find that geothermal flux depends entirely on intrinsic properties of the earth and its crust and not on insolation.
For example, most spreading centers are undersea. Thermal conductivity of the crust is a low value. The mantle is put at ~2500°C. What matter if the atm temp is 0°C or 40°C? Gradient does not change. Groundwater temp. (Shallow aquifers) is usually at a temp which is the yearly average of the charging area.
Thermal gradient is a characteristic of the region and a typical figure is1° F/100 ft. of depth. The
mpainter, I never said that Heat transfer is dependent on Insolation. I have said that Heat transfer is dependent solely on delta T.
You might want to research a bit further, because you’re wrong to say “Thermal conductivity of the crust is a low value”.
The thermal conductivity of the crust is 68 times that of air, and 2.5 times that of water. Water is generally considered a very good conductor of heat, but not compared to Earth.
Heat transfer is NEVER an intrinsic property of a material. I would suggest taking a course in thermodynamics: https://www.edx.org/course/thermodynamics-iitbombayx-me209x#.VIDXs3l0yUk
angech
December 7, 2014 at 2:22 pm
VikingExplorer December 7, 2014 at 6:39 am
” mpainter, I never said that Heat transfer is dependent on Insolation. I have said that Heat transfer is dependent solely on delta T. ”
but,
VikingExplorer December 6, 2014 at 4:13 pm
” If the sun lost mass, and our insolation was reduced, there would be a greater delta T, and more Heat would flow.”
You do not read what you have written and you contradict yourself repeatedly.
Stop, reflect and think.
angech
The earth can store heat and does not need to balance radiation in and out on any particular day. In fact it can take in excess energy for a long time and have an imbalance, then reverse the net flow for another long period of time. If you stand near a hot wood stove and get warm, you do not cool off instantly when you move to a cold corner. You and your clothes retain some of the heat for a while.
An ocean can retain an enormous amount of heat. Fortunately, if cannot come out rapidly because it moves so slowly. There can be an imbalance with more heat coming in than going out for centuries at a time. It is difficult to detect.
Mr. W. If I may make a suggestion to solve your concerns:
1) Scrap the data. 2) Come up with your own hypothesis as to what the ocean heat content should be. 3) Develop your own sub-prime computer model, with unlimited amount of adjustments, to reinforce your hypothesis . 4) Never, never let anyone V & V your work.
Problem solved.
Mr. W. Next step. Convince the politicians you have the answer to kept our oceans from boiling and you too could become a millionaire like AL Gore.