Deoxygenation due to climate change threatens marine life
From the NATIONAL CENTER FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH/UNIVERSITY CORPORATION FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH
BOULDER — A reduction in the amount of oxygen dissolved in the oceans due to climate change is already discernible in some parts of the world and should be evident across large regions of the oceans between 2030 and 2040, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
Scientists know that a warming climate can be expected to gradually sap oceans of oxygen, leaving fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and other marine life struggling to breathe. But it’s been difficult to determine whether this anticipated oxygen drain is already having a noticeable impact.
“Loss of oxygen in the ocean is one of the serious side effects of a warming atmosphere, and a major threat to marine life,” said NCAR scientist Matthew Long, lead author of the study. “Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it’s been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change. This new study tells us when we can expect the impact from climate change to overwhelm the natural variability.”
The study is published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor.
Cutting through the natural variability
The entire ocean–from the depths to the shallows–gets its oxygen supply from the surface, either directly from the atmosphere or from phytoplankton, which release oxygen into the water through photosynthesis.
Warming surface waters, however, absorb less oxygen. And in a double whammy, the oxygen that is absorbed has a more difficult time traveling deeper into the ocean. That’s because as water heats up, it expands, becoming lighter than the water below it and less likely to sink.
Thanks to natural warming and cooling, oxygen concentrations at the sea surface are constantly changing–and those changes can linger for years or even decades deeper in the ocean.
For example, an exceptionally cold winter in the North Pacific would allow the ocean surface to soak up a large amount of oxygen. Thanks to the natural circulation pattern, that oxygen would then be carried deeper into the ocean interior, where it might still be detectable years later as it travels along its flow path. On the flip side, unusually hot weather could lead to natural “dead zones” in the ocean, where fish and other marine life cannot survive.
To cut through this natural variability and investigate the impact of climate change, the research team–including Curtis Deutsch of the University of Washington and Taka Ito of Georgia Tech–relied on the NCAR-based Community Earth System Model, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.
The scientists used output from a project that ran the model more than two dozen times for the years 1920 to 2100 on the Yellowstone supercomputer, which is operated by NCAR. Each individual run was started with miniscule variations in air temperature. As the model runs progressed, those tiny differences grew and expanded, producing a set of climate simulations useful for studying questions about variability and change.
Using the simulations to study dissolved oxygen gave the researchers guidance on how much concentrations may have varied naturally in the past. With this information, they could determine when ocean deoxygenation due to climate change is likely to become more severe than at any point in the modeled historic range.
The research team found that deoxygenation caused by climate change could already be detected in the southern Indian Ocean and parts of the eastern tropical Pacific and Atlantic basins. They also determined that more widespread detection of deoxygenation caused by climate change would be possible between 2030 and 2040. However, in some parts of the ocean, including areas off the east coasts of Africa, Australia, and Southeast Asia, deoxygenation caused by climate change was not evident even by 2100.
Picking out a global pattern
The researchers also created a visual way to distinguish between deoxygenation caused by natural processes and deoxygenation caused by climate change.
Using the same model dataset, the scientists created maps of oxygen levels in the ocean, showing which waters were oxygen-rich at the same time that others were oxygen-poor. They found they could distinguish between oxygenation patterns caused by natural weather phenomena and the pattern caused by climate change.
The pattern caused by climate change also became evident in the model runs around 2030, adding confidence to the conclusion that widespread deoxygenation due to climate change will become detectable around that time.
The maps could also be useful resources for deciding where to place instruments to monitor ocean oxygen levels in the future to get the best picture of climate change impacts. Currently ocean oxygen measurements are relatively sparse.
“We need comprehensive and sustained observations of what’s going on in the ocean to compare with what we’re learning from our models and to understand the full impact of a changing climate,” Long said.
###
Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it’s been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change
All said.
So essentially the point of this study was to attribute something to climate change aka CAGW rather than scientific study into O2 variability in the oceans, following the evidence no matter where it led them.
That they were unable to, despite not doubt herculean efforts on their part speaks volumes.
Scientists know that a warming climate can be expected to gradually sap oceans of oxygen, leaving fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and other marine life struggling to breathe.
This is absolute rubbish
N. Atlantic temperature in degrees C
Year ………. Feb ………. Aug
1860 ……….18.7 ………. 23.0
2014 ……….18.8 ………. 23.7
Ocean temperature from February to August in 2014 goes up by nearly 5C:
fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and other marine life are all breathing fine.
Ocean August temperature from 1860 -2014 (154 years) changed by 0.7C
fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and other marine life struggling to breathe.
Not meaning to nitpick, but they didn’t “follow the evidence”. All they did was program a computer to tell them that it’s worse than we thought. There is no sign of validation, at least not in the above report.
No validation, no validity, garbage science.
Hivemind, I think that’s exactly what Sunderlandsteve was saying. Parse it as:
So essentially the point of this study was “to attribute something to climate change aka CAGW” rather than “scientific study into O2 variability in the oceans, following the evidence no matter where it led them”.
All these sea animals “dying” and “unable to breath”, Have these people never heard of the word “adaptation’? The rates these levels change over decades allows that little thing to happen.
What happened to the colours in the most important parts of the world’s oceans? You know, the cold parts! For f-sake the Southern Ocean is not only cool but it is cooling! But let’s not get facts in the way of “good” story! ;-(
I think the colour scale is the wrong way round. The pink (=bad) end should be used for the areas where dexoygenation is predicted to be detectable earlier.
They say — “We need comprehensive and sustained observation of what’s going on in the ocean to compare with what we’re learning from our models.”
No actual data just modeling. Not the earth but science is in danger!
These people have modeled a planet on which they mentally live. They are not dealing with reality but things that they have imagined.
That is the essence of mental illness. One of the interesting things about metal illness is that a patient scores the highest on craziness tests when he or she is in the process of applying for a disability check. It seems applying for government climate funding has the same effect.
Eugene WR Gallun
OMG it’s worse than we thought!
We blame global warming!
/sarc right off
🙂
But Allan, there’s a plus-side! Just think, you’ll be able to stroll down to the beach and fill your bucket with ready-made bouillabaisse!
Aaaah! Bouillabaisse!!!
law of partial pressures rules how much Oxygen and CO2 are dissolved in water. Pure physics and chemistry. Variation of O2 & CO2 varies as high and low pressures move across the oceans. Low pressures O2 and CO2 released to atmosphere and High pressures more O2 and CO2 dissolved into the oceans.
Nope. Biology.
” it’s been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change”
Yeah, for that you’d need to get out of your computer lab and do field work. Then you’d actually need to find deoxygenated water due to an increase in water temperature, not brought on by an algae bloom. And to find that you’d need to live in the Twilight Zone, hence, software-science was called upon instead.
Having read that comment I scrolled down till I found this.
To cut through this natural variability and investigate the impact of climate change, the research team–including Curtis Deutsch of the University of Washington and Taka Ito of Georgia Tech–relied on the NCAR-based Community Earth System Model,
I knew I could safely ignore it.
James Bull
Guess all the oceans died during the Medieval Warm Period and the rest of the 95% of the earth’s history when temps were higher.
Or perhaps the Mesozoic era, a 150 million year period, when the entire Earth – including the oceans – was packed with the most bountiful megafauna to ever exist on the planet.
Oh! No! No! — You see that is the distant past! They are worried about the distant future! You know, that time after their retirement when nothing that doesn’t happen can bite them.
Eugene WR Gallun
Or as Larry Tate used to say, “That was yesterday. Can’t keep living in the past.”
Another paper from the “Cambrian? Shmambrian! The earth was created in 1850” department.
Ignoring the obvious question how marine life evolved and thrived in global temperatures 10C higher than today with atmospheric CO2 in the 10,000-30,000 range.
leaving fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and other marine life struggling to breathe.
Hollywood style exaggeration, worthy of a dystopian B movie but shoddy journalism.
” … worthy of a dystopian B movie but shoddy journalism.”
You can say that again. And you can say that about all of climate “science”.
The B-grade movies I’m familiar with were fun and tongue-in-cheek: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, Night of the Lepus, Bug, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Toxic Avenger, and more. This trollop by tweakers playing with a computer is disastrous because it’s going to be used as evidence we’re all doomed unless we stop burning fossil fuels.
Actually, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) was serious and pathetic, almost to the point of being bleak. There was no happy ending…but the character was reconciled with the possibility that he would continue to live and find wonder.
Now, if you want a bizarre B-movie, I would recommend Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988).
Ptolemet2 you have given me a good idea.
Climate scientists bleating on about CAGW are essentially creationists who promote (and believe) the idea that the Earth and everything in it was created in 1850. All those traces of past ages are no more than distractions put there by Gaia to confuse the unbelievers. There was no megafauna. There is only the mega-stupid idea that anything existed before 1850.
Climate science is a lot easier than it looks.
I’m curious is there any evidence Oxygen was higher or lower in those epochs? Are modern crustacea etc thought to be different than their forbears?
And of course they have simply oodles of data from the bottom of the ocean to back up their models.
Bloke, let me help you with that:
“And of course they have simply oodles of data from their ‘bottom of the ocean’ model to back up their models.”
And lower atmospheric CO2 levels lead to lower O2 production by plant photosynthesis.
So there you have it. Less oxygen for the ocean either way.
Not true according to FACE research.
Morose, link please.
Does the model include terms for oxygen production by phytoplankton and land plants and the effects of increased CO2 on the productivity of these life forms? Or is it just a Henry’s law calculation.
O2 from ocean based photosynthesis is estimated to be around 50% of total O2 production. More CO2 in the water means more biomass which means more O2. Good thing, considering we need O2 just like plants need CO2.
Win, win.
I got a peek at the source code while I was visiting:
10 print “It’s worse than we thought.”
goto 10
No wonder the models are so bad. They are written in Basic.
OMG, it’s basic! Not even Visual.
Nitpick; you forgot the line number on your goto statemen 😉
DHR, I was curious too. According to the documentation, CESM does have an ocean biology module with several compartments: phytoplankton, cyanobacteria (nitrogen fixing), ‘dust’ (imported micronutrients like iron), detritus (lost CaCO3 from organisms like phytoplankton) and two layers, euphoric zone and below. Could find no validation evidence that the thing is realistic.
Freudian Typo: The “euphoric” zone is that place in Colorado where they cooked up this paper. The “euphotic” zone is the upper layer in the ocean where there is enough sunlight to support photosynthesis.
Colorado did legalize marijuana, so “euphoric” zone may be what he intended.
DHD. “Or is it just a Henry’s law calculation?”
It follows Berkeley’s Law: Whatever you are thinking, it is worse than you think.
Not just O2 production by any and all plant life (which grows faster/better as it gets warmer) but no mention of just how close to O2 saturation the salt water is now! Also, while it is true that warmer water is less dense, evaporation both cools and increases the salinity which makes it more dense. Higher salinity water sinks in lower salinity but cooler water.
But, we must not let any facts get in the way of our predetermined (by the grant money) conclusions.
This is the mark of shear desperation. Only two year olds fall for this kind of stuff, it’s called “magic”; it certainly isn’t science.
I have experienced real “MAGIC” when first held my new born son. I believe the term you were thinking of was “Magical Thinking” that is to be expected of climate quacks.
It’s just a natural response – try nappies (diapers) next time
Will look some more, but I am not certain what I think about a study that makes model claims about something that is not really noticeable now. “Widespread loss of ocean oxygen to become noticeable in 2030s”
I suspect that disparate ocean areas go through natural cycles of O2 flux, which may be what they are ascribing to your SUV in this study, but increased bio growth from CO2 can provide for more O2. Take this study for instance… http://www.co2science.org/articles/V18/nov/a5.php
“Elevated CO2 Simulates the Oxygen Production of Marsh Plants to the Benefit of Estuarine Heterotrophs”
===============================
“Consequently, in the words of the authors, “a new saltmarsh service arises as a crucial O2 producer for the estuarine aquatic community to accompany the role of these marshes as important carbon-harvesting primary producers”
================================
Wait…it just occurred to me David A-
“Widespread loss of ocean oxygen to become noticeable in 2030s” actually means “Maybe by 2030 we’ll actually find a way to measure how much oxygen is being “lost” by the oceans…” 🙂 sarc
So warmer oceans absorb less oxygen, but are becoming acidic because warmer oceans absorb more CO2?
Yes you’ve got it.
The atmospheric O2 concentration is dropping so if the ocean temperature also increases then the ocean surface concentration will drop even faster.
http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/sites/default/files/imce/ljo_o2_plot.gif
The atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising so even if the ocean temperature increases the ocean will still absorb more CO2 unless the temperature rise is considerable.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/SIOMLOINSITUTHRU2008.JPG
Phil, so we note that in 55 years, there would be one percent less 02, assuming there is no lag in the ability of bio-life to grow and produce more 02. We also note that this decrease has been happening for a very long time, much longer then the advent of the industrial revolution. (In other words there are multiple causes)
Now let us put this in terms we can understand. 02 concentration decrease due to elevation in the first 2 km (~6500 ft) above sea level can be approximated as linear. In this case, at a constant temperature, the rate at which oxygen decreases with elevation is about 10% per km. Thus in 55 years people at SL will, making a non scientific assumption of continuing trend, in effect experience the same 02 levels that people currently 328 feet higher experience.
The destruction of the rain forests is a significant contributing factor to this. Fertilization agricultural and industrial run off has not helped. All the wasted money on CO2 mitigation is preventing solutions for real problems. We could easily plant more trees and prevent harmful runoff and stop cutting down rain forests, and allow the greening of the biosphere to continue, thus also producing more 02.
02 flux has actually varied (15% to 35%) throughout millions of years of geological time. We are currently near the middle of this range. Here is a good summary of disparate causes and observations… http://r.duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&uddg=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pnas.org%2Fcontent%2F96%2F20%2F10955.long
David, I think Phil dot’s attempt at communal bedwetting is even worse than you stated. It’s 19 ppm/year or around 0.2% over 100 years – from the original Scripps pier data.
http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu
So warmer oceans absorb less oxygen, but are becoming acidic because warmer oceans absorb more CO2?
B I N G O !
That’s the money quote from all the comments.
A warmer ocean does indeed absorb less oxygen and less CO2, if the partial pressure of oxygen and CO2 remain reasonably constant. But if the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising significantly while that of oxygen is not, then a warming ocean could indeed absorb less oxygen and more CO2.
So it is definitely not the money quote.
Fe fertilization is the home run here.
removing CO2 and lift O2 levels.
Your comment beat me to it.
Not only that but extra CO2 is causing higher air temps which increases water temps which increases absorption into the oceans which decreases CO2 in the atmosphere which ……. (Oh, what a tangled web we weave: When first we practise to deceive!)
Warmer waters absorb less CO2, not more.
I thought warmer oceans absorb less CO2, like a warm coke bottle overflowing when opened.
The thing I don’t understand is the mass balance that they propose. Will a PPM increase in CO2 in the atmosphere drive a larger percentage increase in oxygen in the ocean, even though the atmosphere has orders of magnitude less mass than the ocean? So there’s a little more oxygen in the atmosphere from elevated CO2, but certainly not enough to cause a big drop of oxygen in the vast oceans. Where do they suppose all this oxygen goes? Maybe to the same place as the missing heat!
You are correct, Mr. R. CO2 is less soluble in warmer waters. But there is a Henry’s Law increase in CO2 from having more in the atmosphere above. I have never tried calculating the sensitivity of the two factors. Maybe I should get off my dead butt and try ti. Film at 11:00.
“it” not “ti.”
So in other words. Their model that was program to show CAGW causing oxygen depletion, shows oxygen depletion. Wow! That is about as scientifically important as the fact that turning on my oven causes it to heat up.
A model will do what it is program to do. The important thing is does the model react the way the real world does. Did they verify any of their model output with actual real word data? If not they should be forced to pay back all the money they got and have their degrees revoked.
Can you tell who farted in crowded elevator?
“The researchers also created a visual way to distinguish between deoxygenation caused by natural processes and deoxygenation caused by climate change.”
I doubt this on its face.
especially since they admitted, as Nylo above commented
=============
“Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it’s been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change”
=================
challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change … which is the goal of the study/model … if they can’t attribute it, they can’t get more grant money … confirmation bias without even having to jury-rig the evidence, yet.
http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/units-and-terms
“Our reference is based on tanks of air pumped in the mid 1980s which we store in our laboratory. ”
So…..unless they can re-create in the real world, in every location across the globe in which they are taking samples today, to the exact, and I mean exact, conditions/specifications in which those “tanks of air” were collected in the mid-1980’s…how in Gaia’s name can they pretend to be able to compare today’s ocean oxygen levels with ocean oxygen levels in the past?
I ain’t no scientist, but even my farm bred primitive sense of smell knows what bullcr@p smells like no matter how fancy a lab it’s in!
I mean, don’t humans “de-oxygenate” the atmosphere with every single breath they take?
“Our reference is based on tanks of air pumped in the mid 1980s which we store in our laboratory. ”
Wonder what those tanks are made from? It ought to be gold. Pretty difficult to find anything else that will not oxidize at all even at ppm levels over a multi-decade period.
I can tell it was not me.
“When there are only two people in the elevator, both of you know who did it.”
G. Carlin
on no, shrimps are going to rule the world-
Shrimp that lives in water four times hotter than boiling point …
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…/Shrimp-lives-water-times-hotter-boiling-point.ht...
Just something I ran across a while back. My wife loves her new aquarium, and wanted to determine the correct temperature per the fish she choose.
http://www.aquariumfish.net/information/warm_water_aquariums.htm
Once again it’s models all the way down.
Do these writers ever search the web.
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Ge-Hy/Hot-Springs-on-the-Ocean-Floor.html
?
David,
Here is a little more on oceans, oxygen levels and fish adaptation.
http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/fishes/environment/environment_zones.html
Sigh – good thing we are still well within the natural variation that already happened since the end of the last full on ice age (we are still in an ice age). It’s been warmer, quite a bit warmer, 5 times since then.
Everything survived and we are still swamped by past natural variation. Only hubris in the guise of models creates the panic to drive political change or simply grant money.
Over and over again these mouth breathers complain – read, reach out for more ‘funding’ – about stuff that has happened …
over and over again.
Are you suggesting that the problem of oxygen depletion is caused entirely by mouth breathers?
Or is that only a partial factor in a more complex and interlinked system.
Perhaps bottom feeders are also to blame?
Didn’t we just have a paper recently where they measured a 10 times increase in plankton? A real measurement over 50 years. So what do these pseudo-scientists do? They ignore it. Nothing but more nonsense from this anti-science field.
Yet more solipsistic, welf-referential computer models. What I did not see was anything about actual measurements of ocean O2 levels, let alone how well the actual levels tracked the models.
This is utter garbage sweet jebus
More bloody doom heralding
How warm is the water here?
Marine Life Thrives in Unlikely Place: Offshore Oil Rigs – The …
http://www.nytimes.com/…/marine-life-thrives-in-unlikely-place-offshore-oil-rigs...
7 Mar 2016 – EUREKA OIL PLATFORM OFF CALIFORNIA COAST — Eight miles off the coast … and other rigs like it in the area are home to a vast and thriving community of … British Columbia — have made them perfect habitats for fish and other sea life. … While so-called rig-to-reef programs in the Gulf of Mexico have …
Breaking news! Garbage climate models crank out – garbage. Film at 11.
Tom Halla – you did see something about actual measurements of ocean CO2 levels. They said “Currently ocean oxygen measurements are relatively sparse.” In other words, there is negligible current, and probably even less historical data to support any supposition that there has actually been any change. If currently in any spot the oxygen level is X ppb you have no idea if it is increasing, decreasing or steady unless you have had a prior test in that same spot. And if the levels are “sparse” your data is at the best, poor.
Nothing here
moving on to another much more frightening story, not that there is much to see either
Monster black hole 3 billion times the mass of the sun formed by trio of colliding galaxies
At least there is a pretty picture
http://www.abc.net.au/news/image/7359320-3×2-700×467.jpg
(or is it a giant shrimp struggling to breathe)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-27/monster-black-hole-formed-by-trio-of-colliding-galaxies/7359340
more ‘sciency’ stuff here
‘sciency’ stuff link
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.07537v1.pdf
That is Us and Andromeda in several billion years. I can’t wait. But more seriously, there is some thought that the sun was sucked away from the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy some time ago. The angle of rotation of the sun around the galactic core is consistent with that hypothesis.
Our high metallicity content suggests our gas disk is at least 3rd Gen, maybe 4th, in the supernova ovens.
Japan gives up on failed black hole research satellite (Update)
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-japan-black-hole-satellite.html
I like the dichotomy: Giant Shrimp
More garbage from people that have never taken an oceanography course or picture the ocean as, “it’s just there” and refuse to believe that it is a dynamic environment we do not understand! We know more about the moon than we do about the ocean. So to “conclude” that lower O2 levels will become detectable in….wait for it….yep 20 years time is absolute rubbish.
Why is every doom and gloom prediction on a 20 year scale? Has anyone ever asked that question? Maybe they should.
Cause once you get tenure, that is your remaining career span.
That reply is closer to the truth than any prediction from the alarmists I’ve ever seen!
I read with interest ’til I got to the part where they said they used a model……. all garbage after that.
+1
I usually read to where it says climate change and if I can’t tell if it’s climate change or phony climate change I stop there. Am I missing anything ?
SO they have developed cherry trees that thrive in the ocean, in space, and everywhere else… And the cherries aren’t edible for 20 years…
I am shocked I tell you, simply shocked…
Is it just me or is the desperation so visible that nothing is off the table, especially something the average person is incapable of disproving or proving… the “just take our word for it” meme…
An increase of 0.001C is enough to noticeably change how much O2 the oceans can absorb?
Really?
Beyond parody.
I had a go anyway – see comment below!!
El Nina? Well, it’d be funny if it weren’t so plausible. But, I’ll give an A for effort.
Whoops, you have probably discerned that I am not Portuguese.
In fact I’m not even sure if that is how to spell Portuguese.
There are limits to my expertuese.
Thanks for the “A for effort”.
We might as well have fun, whilst the world goes to hell in a handbasket. 🙂
It’s Spanish, not Portuguese.
Damn, it was a 50/50 guess. And I still screwed that up!! If we hadn’t defeated the Armada, then perhaps I’d know the difference. 🙂
MarkW,
“It’s Spanish, not Portuguese”, but he probably knows how to spell “Spanish”. Duh! 😛 (couldnt resist!)
And a heartfelt moment of silence for one of my favorite people ever- Victor Borge…who mentioned once seeing a “Portugoose and all of her little Portugoslings”. Having fun is the only way to stay sane in a world in which science has become psy-ince.
One mongoose, two mongeese.
Or is it mongooses.
Anyway, I digress. What were we actually talking about?
Yeah, El Nino. I thought that it was named by Portuguese fishermen.
I have a very shabby grasp of the details of colonization of the Americas, because I am an English ignoramus.
Although, I did once play Christopher Columbus in a play at school!! After that part, I lost interest.
EL Nino is off the western coast, which is Chile.
Unbelievable. This one will be easy to scrutinize. If the model used is one of the many versions that cannot model ENSO ocean dynamics, nuff said.
Well, if ENSO doesn’t occur in the models, then why do we not simply conclude that the models are correct.
I’d love to see the headlines.
“EL NINO A FIGMENT OF IMAGINATION, SAY CLIMATE SCIENTISTS.
A team of international scientists specializing in computer climate modelling have shown that a regular El Nino/El Nina phenomenon does not occur.
Nor did it occur in the past. Nor will it occur at any time in the future.
“This certainly puzzled the heck out of us”, said one scruffy bearded guy in sneakers, “we have relied upon the output of these models to predict all sorts of real world events such as the on-coming global thermo-pocalypse, and clearly having trusted them so far, we can only therefore conclude that there is no El Nino, or El Nina. It would be inconsistent for us to only trust them when they predict the end of the world, but to ignore everything else which they do or don’t predict.”
Technicians working in the field have already formerly apologized for the failure of observational data to support the work of real climate scientists working with multi billion dollar computer models.
When the head of the ARGO ocean measurement project was asked why observations had perpetuated the El Nino myth for so long, he responded, “Yes, we’ll now have to go back over years of observations and make the necessary corrections. Obviously we will need to toss some floats and that should make most of the El Nino go away, If that doesn’t work, then we’ll just keep on digging”….etc”
(Contains satire.)
I once had a warmista tell me that not only do the models accurately reflect our current climate, but that nobody had any idea that El Ninos existed until they were predicted by models. Then scientists went looking for them and found them.
Yes, they are that delusional.
Yes, that’s also how they discovered clouds.
Except that they expected them to be cuboid and 220km across along both the north-south and east-west edge.
Later, observation did indeed show us that clouds exist, but that they are smaller and fluffy looking.
Relative to an earlier remark, the clue that El Nino / La Nina are Spanish is the fact that the middle letter “n” is supposed to have the superposed tilde (~). It produces what we might approximate in English as the “ny” dipthong. But in Portuguese, this is spelled with an “nh” (e.g., Senor vs. Senhor).
Thankyou.
Now, at that I need to do is to learn the entirety of the rest of both languages and my education will be complete!! 🙂
“We need comprehensive and sustained observations of what’s going on in the ocean to compare with what we’re learning from our models and to understand the full impact of a changing climate,” Long said.
Translation= We need more of other peoples money!
Queue up Dire Straits “Money for nothing”
I much prefer the unedited version. My ears aren’t hurt by words the way some snowflakes are.
If warmer oceans means less oxygen which means no fish, I guess those giant marine reptiles were all surviving on takeout from Captain-D’s?
Well back then there was as much as 35% O2 in the atmosphere which would compensate for the higher temperature.
…and the cause of the depletion of 02 since??
How do you “force” warmer ocean surface waters to “absorb” any of that additional O2 that was in the atmosphere back then?…you know….to compensate, if expanded, warmed water releases rather than absorbing?
“Deoxygenation” is just the newest buzzword meant to alarm the stupid, but is simply a naturally occurring physical process.
Thus the 12″ dragonflies. I would like to know where it all went, though.
Most of those giant marine reptiles were air breathers.
Never mind, I got your point on the second reading.
MarkW,
ALL of the giant marine reptiles were air breathers, unless they were dead. Even some of the fish, like lung fish, were air breathers.
Yet one more example of a ‘scientist’ who specializes in de novo extrapolations of speculative consequences of mechanisms in vacuo – without regard to concurrent competing mechanisms. An increment of temperature will slightly decrease the solubility of oxygen in water, but this is only a significant consideration when the water is saturated with oxygen. In the unsaturated state, a slight decrement to solubility is irrelevant since it does not trigger the de-solution of oxygen.
The competing mechanism of photosynthesis by phytoplankton is actually accelerated by a temperature increase. Thermodynamics dictates the acceleration of chemical reaction kinetics with temperature.
These two mechanisms oppose each other as temperatures change, stabilizing the availability of oxygen. The major cause of oxygen depletion in water then becomes the metabolism of oxygen by zooplankton and higher animals.
It looks like the authors could use a little more oxygen.
All models are safe in Boulder, it’s a modeling safe haven city.
Safely above the storm surge.
So…the earth is greening at a phenomenal rate and plankton are in a frenzy of growth both producing more oxygen in the atmosphere and in the ocean. Another compartmentalized study with models not being fed critical parameters.
Perhaps they’re aware of the fact that the atmospheric concentration of O2 is actually going down? Apparently that’s something that escaped you.
Atmospheric concentration of oxygen is 21%. Carbon dioxide, 0.04% up from 0.028% in 1850. The meaningfulness of how much the oxygen concentration is declining is infinitesimally small and of no relevance to life on the planet as we know it.
I did notice a bit of a pant in your breathing. Two things: a) They can’t get a temperature in the ocean they are happy with with thousands of Argo buoys, b) Ocean “acidification” is largely associated with influx of freshwater runoff near coastal areas, tropical storm rains in equatorial zones, plus the presence of natural acidic “smokers” in the sea floor so the readings (measuring technology is even poor) are all over the map literally. Why do you think they have a handle on ocean anoxia?
Look Phil, it’s okay for your guys to be wrong sometimes, even Einstein wasn’t perfect. How you find out is by not being their cheering section. You become a skeptic. Look it up, it’s an honorable position to take, not what you sociologists think it is. Oh- and they use scales on the graph like they do for methane (which is parts per billion total) or else it shows no discernible change. As an engineer, the appropriate units to use depends on the mass you are dealing with: we don’t measure coal or limestone production in nanograms. Oxygen is 20 percent of the atmosphere. If you use small eneough units you end up with wide fluctuations even during a day and a real measure is inundated in error of measurement. Were talking the ocean here!!
the atmospheric concentration of O2 is actually going down
=====================
yes, O2 concentrations have been dropping for tens and hundreds of millions of years. Giant flying insect no longer exist. They required 35% oxygen to survive. A similar argument likely also applies to dinosaurs.
The reason oxygen levels are dropping is limestone. As CO2 is taken out of the atmosphere by the oceans it ultimately gets converted into limestone which settles to the ocean bottom. For every carbon removed, two oxygen are removed. Eventually the oxygen will be depleted and life would be impossible.
Luckily however the earth has a molten iron core and plate tectonics. The energy from the core reduces limestone carried into the earth through subsidence, and using iron as a catalyst produces hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons float upwards to the surface and where they get trapped in rocks they are available for us to dig up as fossil fuels.
When we burn these fossil fuels the original CO2 that got trapped as limestone is released into the atmosphere. The plants consume the CO2, adding carbon to their structure to allow them to grow, and releasing the O2 back to the atmosphere that was so long ago lost.
So by burning fossil fuels we are actually returning the oxygen to the atmosphere that was so long ago lost, and helping plants restore the carbon that was also lost.
Fredberple, that fits my understanding, which is why I asked Phil to explain how O2 went down in the first place, long before we drove SUVs. (I wanted to see Phil follow the logic) However, O2 has continued to drop as CO2 rises.
Is this partially due to a lag in the greening? (If we held CO2 to 400 PPM, how long and how much would the biosphere continue to green?) Could that, in conjunction with human activities like burning the rain forests, and agricultural land run off be combining to inhibit the growth of O2. Not that we want more then we have, as fires tend to rage as O2 concentration rises.
Gary Pearse April 28, 2016 at 11:42 am
Look Phil, it’s okay for your guys to be wrong sometimes, even Einstein wasn’t perfect.
You claimed that oxygen was increasing in the atmosphere and the ocean, I pointed out that it is actually going down and gave data to support that. So you’re the one who’s wrong, deal with it.
David A April 28, 2016 at 10:24 pm
Fredberple, that fits my understanding, which is why I asked Phil to explain how O2 went down in the first place, long before we drove SUVs. (I wanted to see Phil follow the logic) However, O2 has continued to drop as CO2 rises.
Sedimentation mostly (carbonates, sulphates etc.), growth in biomass, particularly with the evolution of trees, also when pO2 got very high there is evidence of major forest fires which would also sequestrate O2 in the form of CO2. The most recent decline in O2 is due to combustion and the amounts concerned are consistent with the corresponding growth in CO2.
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Mostly money.
Well, the oxygen part of your story does not make sense..
With money, you can buy the rest.
So if the ocean temperature changes from, say, 293 K to 294 K it’s the end of life as we know it? Or whatever. Doesn’t the ocean temperature naturally vary much more than that, depending on latitude and season and currents and other factors? How on Earth did marine life make it through all the climate changes that have always occurred naturally in the past?
You are clearly not a climate scientist.
First you must learn to abandon intuition AND reason.
Now, you must fixate upon the goal of creating an attention grabbing, clickbaity, apocalyptic prediction.
And then you must abandon any interest in observation and retreat to a basement containing computers where you are surrounded by other people who have a similarly limited contact with reality.
After a period of time tweaking and adjusting parameters, you must pick the simulation that creates a vision of dire catastrophe.
Then, don’t think. Just don’t think about it at all. Just publish the thing. And wait for the accolades from the warmist cult master and their hoards of devotees.
(apologies typo; Should read “masters”. Since there are many, vying for authority.)
“Scientists know that a warming climate can be expected to gradually sap oceans of oxygen, leaving fish, crabs, squid, sea stars, and other marine life struggling to breathe.”
Attn. you fools and assorted “Deniers”, any criticism of their “Study” is wrong because “Scientists” already ~”know it”!
And shhhhhh, don’t tell anyone right now, but we’re all gonna’ die also because Scientists know a Warming Climate will attract the Evil Space Alien Invaders! All that’s left is to fill in the blanks. Or move to the North Korean Utopia, “before it’s too late!” Attn. you fools, get on the “right side of History”: Pay me now or pay me later! “It is Written.”
So, just thinking out loud here:
The megalodon was a really really big shark. Clearly an apex predator.
It lived during a time of warmth and appears to have died out with the onset of glacial cooling.
SO – let’s suppose that this massive animal ate, whales and large fish, and they ate lesser fish or plankton and so on down to the tiniest fish.
Clearly, enough biomass was sustained by the oceans to allow the evolution of this monster predator.
In other word, during times of extreme warmth the ocean was buzzing with life.
I’m sure that the denizens of WUWT could give better examples of biodiversity and biomass exploding in quantity during warm periods.
But, isn’t it obvious that nothing was “struggling to breathe”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalodon
This pathetic.
The Model is useless as it can’t be subject to Falsification,after all this is about a postulated 15 years + into the future. How can anyone test a model on something that doesn’t exist for years ahead?
To expand on this modeling absurdity is to consider when CO2 levels in the atmosphere were much much higher for millions of years,yet Mammals,Dinosaurs and of course the O2 bearing plants manage to survive,many of them are still around today.
Ginkgo,Sycamore and other plants have been around for a 100 million years are still with us today. So have Crocodiles and bird species.So have a number of insects. They lived under much higher Atmospheric levels of CO2 and presumably higher levels of CH4 as well but are here today.According to the model there would be little O2 available to support the ecosystem,implying they should have died out and replaced by low O2 tolerant plants that would have been all over the planet,but they are not easy to find today for some reason………….
These so called researchers left out a lot of factors that dooms their silly modeling exercise.
In addition to the posts above discussing why a paper based on sequential runs of a model that has never been validated, was even published; the following sentence made me wonder what the authors were thinking about the source of their “discovery.”
“As the model runs progressed, those tiny differences grew and expanded, producing a set of climate simulations useful for studying questions about variability and change.”
Did it never occur to the authors that their model was becoming unstable as the runs progressed?
Brooks,
Why would it occur in a field where the science itself is becoming unstable as it progresses?
I am stunned that it took so long for someone to comment on this. It was the sentence that jumped out at me as I read the article. It shows that their model was garbage, because gas imbalances are not unstable like that, but re-balance over time.
They just discovered that the climate is chaotic!
They ran models. They made “scientific predictions”. They published their results. They sent out a press release.
But at the very end….They admit:
“Currently ocean oxygen measurements are relatively sparse.”
IOW
They made it all up !
Good summary, thanks
Resourceguy,
Do you think I should apply for a job at a university as a “Climate Communicator?” I mean, WUWT just posted a study yesterday (day before?) about how educating people on the facts, and physical characteristics of the climate makes them LESS concerned about it. Maybe what the world needs is an idiot like myself dumbing it all down properly for the “common man” so to speak?
Because it’s OBVIOUS that “climate communicators” like Cook et al are clearly the opposite….the stupid making things complicated=getting people concerned over nothing. 🙂
….and they got volume-based pub mill credit and vita lines for the exercise.
It is even dumber when it has been shown that the Ocean waters already have 99% of the Free CO2 in the system.
How can a trace of CO2 increase in the waters suddenly endanger all the waters?
Sunsettommy-
Because those little, bossy, CO2 molecules go swimming, and in doing so, they push the “ocean molecular patrons” limit over the top, or they pee in the water, which both warms it up AND acidifies it, so Gaia makes some of the oxygen molecules jump OUT of the water….er…um….but I need to call Kevin Trenberth to find out where they are going because according to Phildot, they are NOT in the atmosphere or the oceans anymore!
Which makes me think that there is a giant invisible sink (or server room) somewhere in which not only are the missing oxygen molecules “hiding” but the missing heat from the Earth’s energy imbalance, the missing link, the missing bristle-cone pine proxies, one half of every pair of socks in human history, and Hillary Clinton’s missing email server, and Lois Lerner’s emails!
I’m still working on my climate communications skills….but I’ll have results for you by 2030….I promise!
Aphan April 28, 2016 at 5:12 pm
Sunsettommy-
Because those little, bossy, CO2 molecules go swimming, and in doing so, they push the “ocean molecular patrons” limit over the top, or they pee in the water, which both warms it up AND acidifies it, so Gaia makes some of the oxygen molecules jump OUT of the water….er…um….but I need to call Kevin Trenberth to find out where they are going because according to Phildot, they are NOT in the atmosphere or the oceans anymore!
Which makes me think that there is a giant invisible sink (or server room) somewhere in which not only are the missing oxygen molecules “hiding”
There are several sinks, one of them is the CO2 in the atmosphere. Every mole of CO2 produced by combustion consumes one mole of O2. In addition to the CO2, H2O is also produced, in fact we consume about 3 moles of O2 for every mole of CO2 that accumulates in the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion.
Phil.
“Every mole of CO2 produced by combustion consumes one mole of O2. In addition to the CO2, H2O is also produced, in fact we consume about 3 moles of O2 for every mole of CO2 that accumulates in the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion.”
CO2 molecules contain 2 oxygen atoms, not one.
H2O molecules contain 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
Aphan May 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
Phil.
“Every mole of CO2 produced by combustion consumes one mole of O2. In addition to the CO2, H2O is also produced, in fact we consume about 3 moles of O2 for every mole of CO2 that accumulates in the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion.”
CO2 molecules contain 2 oxygen atoms, not one.
H2O molecules contain 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.
And a mole of O2 contains two oxygen atoms so as I said:
“Every mole of CO2 produced by combustion consumes one mole of O2”
What you also appear to be ignorant of is the composition of the fossil fuels!
Methane: CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O
Propane: C3H8 + 5O2 -> 3CO2 + 4H2O
Octane: C8H18 + 12.5O2 -> 8CO2 + 9H2O
etc.
Aphan May 1, 2016 at 5:01 pm
Phil.
Actually, technically, plants absorb CO2, turn it into sugars AND O2 AND CO2.
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/mg/gardennotes/141.html
No, plants absorb water and produce O2 from it in the light dependent reactions of photosynthesis. The Calvin cycle takes CO2 and using the H transferred from the water via NADPH converts it into sugar.
‘Scientists know that a warming climate can be expected to gradually sap oceans of CO2, leaving marine plants gasping for breath. This also effects the animal life since the plants have less CO2 to convert into O2 that the animal life needs to breath.”
Fixed it for ya.
Plants don’t convert CO2 into O2! They convert it into sugars.
Sugars and CO2.
Converting CO2 into CO2, really!
Phil.
Actually, technically, plants absorb CO2, turn it into sugars AND O2 AND CO2.
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/mg/gardennotes/141.html
No they don’t, see above!
The following link http://www.unisense.com/files/PDF/Diverse/Seawater%20&%20Gases%20table.pdf has a series of tables showing, among other relationships, the solubility of Oxygen in seawater with respect to changes in temperature and salinity. The higher the salinity, the lower the O2 solubility. Salinity varies from more than 0.038 in the Mediterranean Sea to less than 0.030 in the Arctic, although most of the Oceans vary between 0.034 and 0.036. At 10 C, this means that O2 solubility would vary from 277 to 291 (micro moles per liter) with the natural variability of ocean salinity. Ar 0.035 salinity O2 solubility varies from 295 at 8 C to 270 at 12 C.
Interestingly, the highest salinity parts of the oceans correspond to the parts of the oceans with the highest temperatures. These would be the Mediterranean Sea and the tropical oceans. These would be the ocean areas with the lowest O2 solubility. If these authors conclusions were correct, then we should already be seeing a major die off in the Mediterranean Sea and the tropical oceans driven by oxygen depletion. Conversely, cold fresh water lakes should be absolutely teaming with life (compared to high salinity/high temperature sea water) since these cold lake waters have the highest O2 solubility.
Darn, there you are bringing real science into the conversation again. How can us grant whores get our grants to study this stuff if you keep on doing that!!!
LOL!
a major die off in the Mediterranean Sea and the tropical oceans driven by oxygen depletion
==============
what instead you are seeing is a major die off due to fishing. especially with the widespread use of nets and dragging. oxygen has nothing to do with it, because with less fish there is more oxygen for each fish.
if reduced oxygen was an issue, nature would quickly solve the problem by favoring those fish with larger gills. in a few generations there would be no fish with smaller gills, and the problem would be solved.
A similar adaptation happens in humans. We quickly adapt (in a matter of weeks) to living at altitude through blood chemistry changes, such that reduced oxygen is not an issue. And in populations that live at high altitude over time they are genetically selected to develop larger lung capacity.
Back when I was in school, I read that the natives who live in the Andes, have lungs that are several percent larger in relation to the rest of their body, than do the rest of us.
Brooks,
Wait…are you saying that oxygen is not a well mixed gas that drives ocean chemistry? *faints* (sarc)
Conversely, cold fresh water lakes should be absolutely teaming with life (compared to high salinity/high temperature sea water) since these cold lake waters have the highest O2 solubility.
But since the freshwater might have no buffering ability you’ll have a much lower pH and therefore not very fertile. Cold acidic lakes are not very fertile compared with those in limestone areas.
Are you sure these people even have a computer?. I bet there is no hardware envolved. It’s sort of like — I got the computer in me! This all sounds like paper and pencil stuff — you know, science fiction writing.
Eugene WR Gallun
As the ocean de-oxygenates the Kraken will appear. So it is written and so it will be.
Eugene WR Gallun
What’s the best bait for Kraken, Eugene; maybe a live blue whale or cut bait?
Oh, and for fly fishermen like George E. Smith, is there a special pattern that’s more effective or do you just “match the hatch?”
Thanks in advance.
P.S. I think I’m gonna need a bigger boat.
I suggest using 97% of climate scientists as bait.
On second thought, I don’t think even a Kraken could get past the taste….never mind.
“Oh, and for fly fishermen….” A Cessna works nicely.
Aphan – Hadn’t thought of that. Probably the only thing a Kraken won’t eat.
Paul – Is that a dry Cessna or a wet Cessna?
Once it hits the water, won’t it be wet regardless?
CO2 feeds algae, algae produces O2, how does feeding algae reduce O2 in the oceans? Warming oceans will outgas O2, but ocean warming isn’t due to CO2.
They had to make a few simplifying assumptions in order to get their models to work.
Leaving out algae was one of them.
/sarc
Wrong Thread but I was taken by the Vice President of the Royal Society’s letter in today’s TIMES and the claim of his upcoming ‘no censorship’ debate about UK’s fossil fuel emissions and how to reduce them – thoroughly parti pris before starting. So I wrote to him; –
Professor Alex Halliday
Vice President
The Royal Society
6 – 9 Carlton House Terrace
LONDON SW1Y 5AG
“Nullius In Verba”
I was interested in your letter to The Times about your upcoming ‘open meeting’ . I do hope that you will be allowing the views of climate scientists who do not believe that the carbon dioxide increase heralds appreciable or dangerous global warming. I hope it will be recognised that increased carbon dioxide is beneficial to plant growth and that billions of poverty-stricken people need access to cheap, reliable electricity through ‘fossil fuels’.
We need to recognise that whatever the facts, suppression of the UK’s CO2 emissions will have no effect whatever on ‘global warming’. Recognise that even the political IPCC admits that there has been no climate change to date.
I warmly recommend that you should read the very recent devastating Complaint of Bias in the BBC on the website notalotofpeopleknowthat – it runs to 162 pages and inter alia sets out where the actual non-political science of climate now stands. There’s a bit of a go at your Professor Tim Palmer in there somewhere – his ‘misstatement’ about Cyclone Pam to the BBC Today programme. I think the Royal Society should realise the power of today’s internet – in that case an embarrassingly untruthful statement about ‘climate change’ could have been avoided with a couple of clicks bringing up velocities, tracks and barometrics of all South Pacific cyclones for forty years.
But that incident is illustrative of the dishonesty of ‘climate science’ these days – the ‘consensus’ scandal of Cook et al, data manipulation (Karl et al), the hockey stick, ‘climategate’ – the list is endless. The Royal Society is better than all that.
Yours sincerely
Good letter, but I haven’t been able to trace the letter in today’s Times to which you are replying. Prof. Micheal Kelly had a letter published on Tuesday in which he criticised the RS, following an excellent opinion piece by Matt Ridley on Monday. Was the letter somewhere in the news section?
First ocean acidification, now ocean de-oxygenation. What’s next: ocean evaporation? ‘The world’s oceans may disappear entirely by 2100 due to carbon dioxide emissions and for sure, it’s worse than previously thought. Send money, now’.
“The research team found that deoxygenation caused by climate change could already be detected in the southern Indian Ocean and parts of the eastern tropical Pacific and Atlantic basins.”
Go check.
Was just doing that. There are places in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian sea that are ‘OMZ’ (oxygen minimum zones) at mid depth 400-1000m. In those two OMZ, surface waters are fine. 2013 paper on a fine grid regional ocean model of biology and currents. The reason seems to be currents and gyres, not surface temperature or biology, as oxygenated deep water pushed up from the southern ocean just doesnt reach those places. Biology without currents does not reproduce the OMZs. Sea water oxygenated at depth comes from Antarctic thermohaline circulation inside the circumpolar current winter sea ice formation exudes brine, and the saltier oxegenated surface water sinks. It gets pushed north in the Indian ocean, and then shoals.There is insufficient historical data to know whether these OMZ gyres are changing, and no attribution to global warming that i could find in a couple hours looking or in the 2013 paper that reproduced the general OMZ features in a model featureing biology, ocean bottom shape, and currents.
NCARs anthropogenic attribution appears to be a fact free fanrication..
So it was said about ocean oxygen: “either directly from the atmosphere or from phytoplankton, which release oxygen into the water through photosynthesis”.
That article the other day that says the Earh is greener because of more CO2 theses past decades, means more plants and a greener Earth which also means more plants take in more CO2, and expel what? MORE oxygen !….meaning MORE oxygen to seep from the atmosphere into the ocean…
Hmmm…what am I missing? Oh, that’s right! they have a super computer ! They modeled it! … two dozen times ! And the U.S. and European forcast for me here in Las Vegas said it would MAYBE rain Thursday (20%) and this coming Sunday….but oops, it rained Wednesday (pretty heavy) and now they say Saturday (my daughter’s prom night), instead of Sunday. Great! And Accuweather, Weather Underground and the NOAA all disagreed as to when and how much rain we might have. Every model has screwed up every forecast for the past three months here in Vegas where all the cocktail servers in bikinis have been freezing their *&^s off on weekends since March when the pools opened.. If they can’t model all the weather that shows up here from the Pacific (and you can see it coming), then how the h%ll can they model oxygen in the ocean a dozen years from now?!
Super computers: garbage in, garbage out. Grant money to government scientists and universities = wasted funding in, garbage out. Keep those papers and computer models coming. It’s sort of like cell phones and social media. If you are looking down at your screen all the time, you miss the world around you and get run over by a car.
But What you’re missing is that supercomputers can efficiently produce garbage at a rate that provides an economy of scale.
GIGO
It’s always a good idea when selling politically correct junk science to make your predictions decades away so that by the time you are shown wrong you will be safely retired.
(Yawn) Start measuring oxygen levels throughout the world’s oceans and get back to me in 20 years.
These people must know NOTHING about earth history You’d think that they would have……………………
Oh, never mind, if they had looked at paleoclimate data and the marine fossil record, they would have found a way to spin them into their story.
Is gray the new burnt orange for alarmist model mapping?
“Warming surface waters, however, absorb less oxygen. And in a double whammy, the oxygen that is absorbed has a more difficult time traveling deeper into the ocean. That’s because as water heats up, it expands, becoming lighter than the water below it and less likely to sink.”
We have been told that the “missing heat” is deep in the ocean, and that’s why we can’t find it.
I’m not sure Mann, Trenberth, Schmidt could understand this….
On the flip side, unusually hot weather could lead to natural “dead zones” in the ocean, where fish and other marine life cannot survive.
=========================
name one place in the ocean where it is so hot that “fish and other marine life cannot survive”
they don’t exist. even 600 C thermal vents are surrounded by life.
the notion that a small warming on the surface, which leaves the vast bulk of the ocean unchanged to within the nearest 1/100’th of a degree, that this will wipe out life in the oceans is so absurd that one must question the motives behind this study.
You have all underestimated the brilliance of these guys
Part 1 of the project consists of modelling , with conclusions that scare the pants off the man in the White House who asks them to name a figure that will allow them to cruise the Med , Caribean and other endangered tropical areas to actually obtain data to substantiate the computer predictions , because as they say – the data is sparse.
Part 2 of the project , when the plan comes together , they hire a modified yacht , equip it with all essentials and sail off for 2 years .
Whatever they are , they are certainly not fools.
The climate change we are experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans and Man does not have the power to change it. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate. Other warm periods during the Holocene have been warmer than this one yet life in the oceans survived. The previous interglacial period, the Eemian was warmer than this one with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels yet life in the oceans survived. If their models have anything to do the climate models supported by the IPCC then their models must be suspect because to date the IPCC supported climate models have all been wrong.
In a related development, Widespread Loss of Climate Science Credibility to Become (more) Noticeable in 2030.
In a closed system, with progressive processes, maybe.
Among the many other things the “Scientists Know” Cultists, Totalitarians, and their Crony Throngs don’t know or have never even heard of – including real science – is Hemoglobin [Hgb]; which in the Human body and others is a molecular mechanism developed over time and conditions to carry very much more O2 in red blood cells than when it’s merely dissolved in plasma, saline or H2O. Even when a Human breathes 100% O2 [normal=21% Atmospheric] Hemoglobin still carries ~9/1 more O2 than is only dissolved. And even at an internal body pO2 of only 60 [normal=100] Hgb is still 90% saturated with O2; so that it can then release enough O2 to the cells of tissues and organs with a lower pO2 [often ~40] resulting from their life-sustaining metabolic activities. Additionally at lower than pO2=60, Human Hgb starts unloading its O2 much more readily than it does above 60.
Yet the “Scientists” are obsessing and disasterizing about the fate of every living thing that has some kind of Hgb in it for the same purpose a Human body does, to stay alive at various internal and Oceanic or Atmospheric O2 concentrations, which the “Scientists Know” have never gotten as “bad” as they will in a few decades – or hundreds of years , whichever comes last – if we don’t go back to the Stone Age Utopia “before it’s too late!”
But alas, I guess we’ll just have to wait for these “Scientists” to somehow think it up before Hgb will even exist! Don’t hold your breath.
JPeden April 28, 2016 at 1:15 pm
Among the many other things the “Scientists Know” Cultists, Totalitarians, and their Crony Throngs don’t know or have never even heard of – including real science – is Hemoglobin [Hgb]; which in the Human body and others is a molecular mechanism developed over time and conditions to carry very much more O2 in red blood cells than when it’s merely dissolved in plasma, saline or H2O. Even when a Human breathes 100% O2 [normal=21% Atmospheric] Hemoglobin still carries ~9/1 more O2 than is only dissolved. And even at an internal body pO2 of only 60 [normal=100] Hgb is still 90% saturated with O2; so that it can then release enough O2 to the cells of tissues and organs with a lower pO2 [often ~40] resulting from their life-sustaining metabolic activities. Additionally at lower than pO2=60, Human Hgb starts unloading its O2 much more readily than it does above 60.
You left out an important factor, the red blood cells absorb CO2 from the tissue and consequently the pH in the cell goes down which causes more O2 to be released (it’s called the Bohr effect).
Here we have a classic contradiction within climate science.
The equation for this, demands CO2 absorption also decreases and emission increases.
But this is ignored as a cause of CO2 growth. It is ignored in the chemistry and physics of OA claims.
Now it is relevant for oxygen?
No science out of Boulder can be trusted, it is a center of fr4ud
The very process they use to claim this is the very process they deny is an influence on CO2 growth.
This is stunning delusion
No, Henry’s Law defines the ratio between the atmospheric partial pressure and the dissolved concentration. In the case of O2 the pO2 is decreasing and the Henry’s Law coefficient for O2 changes in the same way with temperature leading to a decrease in [O2].
However, in the case of CO2, pCO2 in the atmosphere is increasing at a faster rate than the Henry’s Law coefficient changes with temperature so the change in temperature is inadequate to explain the growth in pCO2. pCO2 is increasing so fast as a result of combustion that the net flux is still into the ocean according to Henry’s Law.
Best of all the arrogance, to say we know how much oxygen is in the oceans. How much is cycled and so on, we are utterly in the dark on that one, I just dont accept models on something that cannot be confirmed in any real way.
They are saying there is no oxygen cycle? Surely they are not saying that. Otherwise the oceans would have little oxygen.
For the oceans to eventually “deplete” in the real sense of the word in Oxygen two requirements need to be met, no oxygen producing Algae and aquatic plants, and the moon needs to disappear to stop ocean water moving, oh and you need to stop ice melting while you are at it, stop storms, rain and… it’s impossible.
and apparently the tropical fish I’ve been keeping for donkeys are not real either.
There is also a whole industry spanning around the globe based on fish that dont exist 😀
A starting point could be a question of how many trillions of tonnes of oxygen is there in all of the earth’s oceans.
It’s known that there is far more CO2 in Earth’s ocean than in the atmosphere- thousands of times more.
One can find loose guesses of the amount of CO2. Let’s see:
“The ocean stores 50 times more carbon dioxide than does the atmosphere;”
http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/oceanography-book/carboncycle.htm
And:
Of the three places where carbon is stored—atmosphere, oceans, and land biosphere—approximately 93 percent of the CO 2 is found in the oceans. The atmosphere, at about 750 petagrams of carbon (a petagram [Pg] is 10 15 grams), has the smallest amount of carbon.
…
The oceans contain about 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere and 19 times more than the land biosphere.”
Read more: http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Bi-Ca/Carbon-Dioxide-in-the-Ocean-and-Atmosphere.html#ixzz479aG94u8
Hmm so I guess the guess is instead 50 times, I thought it was more.
But anyhow oxygen:
“….My estimate for the total mass of O2 in the atmosphere is 1.2 million billion metric tons, which agrees with this reference. So overall the analysis is pretty close.
The stromatolites alone produced 20 million billion tons (possibly more, see Appendix). The majority of the oxygen produced by stromatolites has apparently gone somewhere other than the atmosphere. In fact, there are enormous amounts of atmospheric oxygen that ended up chemically tied up in rocks.”
http://mathscinotes.com/2011/04/oxygen-on-earth/
So 1.2 million billion metric tons O2 in atmosphere and how much in the oceans?
“The dissolved oxygen levels are higher in the summer and during daylight hours because this is when photosynthetic organisms produce oxygen.
And gives chart which includes:
0C: 14.6 mg/L
4C: 13.09 mg/L
24C: 8.4 mg/L
http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/GenChem1/L23/web-L23.pdf
And I suppose I can roughly assume freshwater and seawater about the same.
Most Ocean is about 3 to 4 C, so about 13 grams per cubic meter of ocean and “Total mass of hydrosphere: 1.4 x 10^21 kg or 1.4 x 10^18 tonnes.
So 18.2 x 10^18 grams, or 18.2 x 10^9 tonnes of oxygen
Hmm that does not seem right- I suppose one reason is that this doesn’t include the pressure of the
ocean.
But anyhow were it correct
Ocean: 1.8 x 10^10 to tonnes vs Atmosphere of 1.2 x 10^15 or
there would about 1/100,000th of oxygen in Ocean as compare to the Atmosphere.
I would tend to think that, rather much less, there should be much more oxygen in ocean
as compared to atmosphere.
But anyhow, how much oxygen is there suppose to be in the entire ocean?
Many years ago when I was doing stream sampling, wintertime daytime Dissolved Oxygen was frequently above saturation even though the water was just above freezing. DO was normally around saturation. This indicates to me that photosynthesis continues in very cold conditions and is likely suppressed less by cold than is respiration. The photosynthesizing organisms were a small fraction of the total organism count. This was in freshwater.
I don’t accept that climate change, which has occurred throughout geological history, is not natural.
Does a model without skill improve with multiple iterations?
“Does a model without skill improve with multiple iterations?”
Practice makes perfect.
This paper seems to assume that oxygen absorbed from the air is the primary source of dissolved oxygen in ocean water. But oxygen follows a cycle too. Biological processes produce free oxygen, and a variety of biological and non-biological processes react with free oxygen so it becomes part of another compound like CO2 as one example, and the cycle resumes. But 70% of the biological production of oxygen occurs in the oceans. So 70% of the free oxygen starts out in the oceans; the oceans aren’t some minor part of free oxygen production, they are the main site where this process takes place. And what do all biological and chemical processes do when they get a little warmer?–they speed up. And really — how can the oceans as a whole become “depleted” of oxygen when they are the prime production site for free oxygen? Depleted oxygen zones are local areas where the balance between the production and consumption of dissolved oxygen favors consumption, like areas with no algae and lots of decaying biological matter.
Just another example of one-sided cost benefit analysis from the warmists — count all the costs, ignore the benefits, like algal oxygen production speeding up.
–This paper seems to assume that oxygen absorbed from the air is the primary source of dissolved oxygen in ocean water. But oxygen follows a cycle too. Biological processes produce free oxygen, and a variety of biological and non-biological processes react with free oxygen so it becomes part of another compound like CO2 as one example, and the cycle resumes. But 70% of the biological production of oxygen occurs in the oceans. So 70% of the free oxygen starts out in the oceans; the oceans aren’t some minor part of free oxygen production, they are the main site where this process takes place. And what do all biological and chemical processes do when they get a little warmer?–they speed up. And really — how can the oceans as a whole become “depleted” of oxygen when they are the prime production site for free oxygen? Depleted oxygen zones are local areas where the balance between the production and consumption of dissolved oxygen favors consumption, like areas with no algae and lots of decaying biological matter.
Just another example of one-sided cost benefit analysis from the warmists — count all the costs, ignore the benefits, like algal oxygen production speeding up.–
Yes, this the major problem with Lefties in general- why the think the Earth could become like Venus.
Why when they get govern, they cause poverty.
Why they worry about over population. Why they imagine resources can be depleted. Or can be terrified by 8 inches of sea level rise per century
It basically due to a bias of opinion- they begin with a stupid premise, ignore anything that gets in the way of reaching the conclusions they want to reach
It’s fundamentally unscientific- and they dislike scientific details- it’s a type of labor, that they don’t want to do. They want a world where the science is finished- and science will never be finished.
Instead of ending, science is barely begun.
‘And what do all biological and chemical processes do when they get a little warmer?–they speed up.’
But the solubility of gases in water vary inversely with temperature. So it’s not all good.
Gamecock. As the oxygen is principally produced in the oceans and outgassed to the atmosphere,, one might think warmer seas would be bad. The outgassing might be more but then so is the oxygen production which progresses around the world daily. The proof of this is that clearly life has survived just fine for 600 million years during which most of the time the climate was a good 10 deg C hotter and, notably, CO2 was not a all tied to ocean temperatures.
We live in a very cold time which happens to have very low CO2. The overwhelming majority of the last 600 million years have had CO2 three to ten times higher than now. The Cliffs of Dover were laid down by coralline life during high CO2 and high temperatures—clearly life thrived in those times.
They can’t generate fear with more CO2 so they’re trying out oxygen depletion. Oh my. They can’t seem to get it through their heads to Stop With The Doom-Mongering already! The more they continue with this nonsense the more skeptical everyone becomes. Not once have they ever admitted to being wrong, not once have they stepped down from one of their scare-stories. We’re supposed to not only believe this latest but that every other story is true too.
How did Life ever make it this far? And WHY are people still putting up with what is blatant manipulation? These people are so into their tale-telling, they don’t really see (much less understand) the shift in reception. There is anger building and they don’t see it. Now would be a really good time for them to head for the hills, but they won’t.
What’s extra pathetic is that when the crunch finally bites them on the assets, they won’t have a clue what went wrong.
Sanity Check: The surface water in the Arctic is about 28 deg F; the surface water in the tropics may be as warm as 78 deg F. Fish survive in the ocean from the Arctic to the tropics, over a 50 deg F range. Are we to believe that if the average water temperature increases a couple degrees that fish will be unable to obtain enough oxygen to survive? The authors of this ‘research’ apparently didn’t give much thought to what they claim.
The equilibrium O2 concentration in seawater is ~360 mmole/m^3 at 0ºC vs ~190mmole/m^3 at 30ºC.
I am surprised any sea life survived the catastrophic warming of the Minoan Warm Period when it was well above today’s temperature.
But there’s more: “Since oxygen concentrations in the ocean naturally vary depending on variations in winds and temperature at the surface, it’s been challenging to attribute any deoxygenation to climate change.”
I’ll bet! What with all the back radiation warming the oceans I will be surprised if there is any mixing of the upper ocean layer at all!
Anthony: What’s up with WUWT today? These articles present so many whacko ideas we need a new term to describe them:
“Stream of unconsciousness”
We have had the ‘don’t build where there are forests’ from UC Bizarro and now we have something flowing from a parallel universe in Colorado. I detect in this missive above the omnipresence of high mountain air. You know, a clean breeze plus a high concentration of PM2.5 with a large fraction of it being thought provoking condensible volatile compounds found only in the smouldering emissions of slightly damp biomass.
Yes, more CO2, better plantgrowth, more O2. OK. But then
DURHAM, N.C. — Political advocates who support action on climate change have long sought “the perfect message” for swaying skeptics. If the issue can be framed correctly, they believe, the battle can be won.
A new Duke University study suggests it may be more complicated than that.
“Because climate change has become polarized along party lines, it’s no longer just an issue of finding ‘the right framing’ to convey relevant facts,” said study author Jack Zhou, who will graduate with a Ph.D. in environmental politics next month from Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “It has become a matter of political identity, particularly the political party we feel closest to.”
– so how to tell them partisan corals stop bleaching, wander polward and breath free –
Maybe the next study models that.
The change in oxygen concentration in seawater when the temperature changes from 12 deg C to 14 deg C (the “average world temperature” of open oceans and the expected 2 deg C change due to global warming, all other factors being equal – which they never are, of course) is 4.36%.
This small change would be swamped by the other factors affecting solubility which are never constant over time.
(Me: Heh Mum, I did it without a computer. Mum: It can’t be right then since computers never lie).
Noticeable is a weak, weak criteria. As measurement instruments and analyzers get better “Noticeabilty” is increased. And noticeable is a long, long, long way from harmful.
Stunning…I want my tax money returned…this “new” finding has been around for years. See this for a reference to pollution as one of the root causes.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0ahUKEwihpcL5ybLMAhUFg4MKHWwJCK4QFggaMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2Fdn14835-marine-dead-zones-leave-crabs-gasping%2F&usg=AFQjCNFNNGcEk082WITjC6exbcVGOx-s_Q
Quick, we need another survey. If 97% of scientists agree there is a consensus on the findings of this “model” study then the science is settled. Calling John Cook.
“But it’s been difficult to determine whether this anticipated oxygen drain is already having a noticeable impact.”
That’s why studies use models instead of actual observations. It’s much easier to program “wishful thinking” into a model than into reality.
So there are no “natural processes” capable of causing the climate to change? That’s what the above quote infers to me when it refers to natural processes and climate change as completely separate events. Apparently, natural processes are only capable of causing “weather” phenomena, not climate change. But that would mean that the climate never changed before humans came on the scene. There were only temporary weather events for most of the Earth’s 4 billion years of existence. Do they actually believe that?
“Do they actually believe that?”
Cognitive dissonance allows them to believe it and not believe it at the same time.
As with all their work, the cognitive dissonance is probably fake too.
No point reading any further than this
Why? – that’s how ensemble forecasting is done in NWP.
Varying the starting conditions slightly with each run, shows you the sensitivity of the system to those starting conditions and in the case of medium range weather forecasts places a probability on the likely outcome.
I believe the cooler water rises due to upwelling along coasts due to the coreolis effect pulling surface water away from the coasts and then it sinks elsewhere due to the upwelling, it has little to do with temperature.
The Coriolis force only acts on a moving body.
It does not exert itself on things that are stationary.
IOW: water has to have had a primary force acted on it before Coriolis takes effect.
It always acts to the right in the NH ad to the left in the SH.
So long as the wind blows, the oceans will be oxygenated.
How on earth did the oceans survive the the Holocene Optimum, Minoan, Roman and Medieval mass extinctions?
That’s exactly what I was about to ask because that question exposes this study for what it is.
From to Noah to NOAA, the news has been that of imminent doom.
And yet, here we are.
Just for laughs, it is undoubtedly true that seawater is oxygenated in some small part by ionizing radiation, either from terrestrial radioactive elements (such as the thousands of tons of uranium, etc., in every cubic kilometer of seawater) or from cosmic rays. The main effect of ionizing radiation is the splitting of water molecules into hydroxyl radicals (HO) and hydrogen atoms (H). The hydroxyls can combine to form hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), which naturally decomposes into water and oxygen. This is the mechanism of radiation damage in living tissue. (The peroxide attacks most any other molecule.)
That’s strange. Culver’s is now selling Atlantic cod fish sandwiches because the fishing boats are pulling in loads of cod. Awhile back, the cod shoals were all fished out.
Gee, I wonder what it all means!
That extra wind they’re getting from DC and other alarmist countries ought to help with the aeration
The usefulness of this paper for anything meaningful is questionable as it does not go into particular details about how the model or model interpreter can eventually discern the natural variations from the effects of climate change in 2030. It’s like saying, yes we found evidence but then not showing the evidence
This is a real problem, if we only understood the parameters well enough to evaluate it. Ocean Anoxic Events do seem to concentrate during warm periods. There was an uber one at the Permian extinction, possibly explaining the marine component. They pop up again in the Cretaceous with minor consequences and again in the Eocene with somewhat more. Minor oscillations seem to happen all the while in between.
Yet vast time periods of extremely warm climate occur without OAE’s.
“The US Geological Survey defines anoxic waters as those with dissolved oxygen concentration of less than .5 milligrams per litre.” Hypoxic events maybe….but anoxic?
This horrific climate forecast was brought to you by the increasingly unlikely RCP8.5 scenario
“Finding forced trends in oceanic oxygen” by Matthew C. Long et al, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, February 2016. Ungated copy here.
Journalists reporting these papers without mentioning that they’re based on RCP8.5 is malpractice (of a sorts, assuming there is such a thing for journalists).
The nightmarish predictions of climate change that dominate the news almost all rely on the most severe of the four scenarios used by the Fifth Assessment Report, the IPCC’s most recent: RCP8.5. It describes a future in which much has gone wrong (details here), most importantly…
a slowdown in tech progress (coal is the fuel of the late 21st century, as it was in the late 19thC), and
unusually rapid population growth (inexplicably, that fertility in sub-Saharan Africa does not decline or crash as it has everywhere else).
The current bankruptcies of coal miners already suggest that the late 21st century will not be, like the late 19th, dominated by burning coal (details here). There is little evidence that fertility in Africa will remain high as their incomes grow.
Once again, ignoring paleohistory (and even recorded history). Temps were frequently much higher, and fish and invertibrates survived and thrived. Existence disproof.