Claim: The deep sea is slowly warming

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION

Research News

WASHINGTON–New research reveals temperatures in the deep sea fluctuate more than scientists previously thought and a warming trend is now detectable at the bottom of the ocean.

In a new study in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers analyzed a decade of hourly temperature recordings from moorings anchored at four depths in the Atlantic Ocean’s Argentine Basin off the coast of Uruguay. The depths represent a range around the average ocean depth of 3,682 meters (12,080 feet), with the shallowest at 1,360 meters (4,460 feet) and the deepest at 4,757 meters (15,600 feet).

They found all sites exhibited a warming trend of 0.02 to 0.04 degrees Celsius per decade between 2009 and 2019 – a significant warming trend in the deep sea where temperature fluctuations are typically measured in thousandths of a degree. According to the study authors, this increase is consistent with warming trends in the shallow ocean associated with anthropogenic climate change, but more research is needed to understand what is driving rising temperatures in the deep ocean.

“In years past, everybody used to assume the deep ocean was quiescent. There was no motion. There were no changes,” said Chris Meinen, an oceanographer at the NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory and lead author of the new study. “But each time we go look we find that the ocean is more complex than we thought.”The challenge of measuring the deep

Researchers today are monitoring the top 2,000 meters (6,560 feet) of the ocean more closely than ever before, in large part due to an international program called the Global Ocean Observing System. Devices called Argo floats that sink and rise in the upper ocean, bobbing along in ocean currents, provide a rich trove of continuous data on temperature and salinity.

The deep sea, however, is notoriously difficult to access and expensive to study. Scientists typically take its temperature using ships that lower an instrument to the seafloor just once every ten years. This means scientists’ understanding of the day-to-day changes in the bottom half of the ocean lag far behind their knowledge of the surface.

Meinen is part of a team at NOAA carrying out a rare long-term study at the bottom of the ocean, but until recently, the team thought the four devices they had moored at the bottom of the Argentine Basin were just collecting information on ocean currents. Then Meinen saw a study by the University of Rhode Island showcasing a feature of the device he had been completely unaware of. A temperature sensor was built into the instrument’s pressure sensor used to study currents and had been incidentally collecting temperature data for the entirety of their study. All they had to do was analyze the data they already had.

“So we went back and we calibrated all of our hourly data from these instruments and put together what is essentially a continuous 10-year-long hourly record of temperature one meter off the seafloor,” Meinen said.Dynamic depths

The researchers found at the two shallower depths of 1,360 and 3,535 meters (4,460 feet and 11,600 feet), temperatures fluctuated roughly monthly by up to a degree Celsius. At depths below 4,500 meters (14,760 feet), temperature fluctuations were more minute, but changes followed an annual pattern, indicating seasons still have a measurable impact far below the ocean surface. The average temperature at all four locations went up over the course of the decade, but the increase of about 0.02 degrees Celsius per decade was only statistically significant at depths of over 4,500 meters.

According to the authors, these results demonstrate that scientists need to take the temperature of the deep ocean at least once a year to account for these fluctuations and pick up on meaningful long-term trends. In the meantime, others around the world who have used the same moorings to study deep sea ocean currents could analyze their own data and compare the temperature trends of other ocean basins.

“There are a number of studies around the globe where this kind of data has been collected, but it’s never been looked at,” Meinen said. “I’m hoping that this is going to lead to a reanalysis of a number of these historical datasets to try and see what we can say about deep ocean temperature variability.”

A better understanding of temperature in the deep sea could have implications that reach beyond the ocean. Because the world’s oceans absorb so much of the world’s heat, learning about the ocean’s temperature trends can help researchers better understand temperature fluctuations in the atmosphere as well.

“We’re trying to build a better Global Ocean Observing System so that in the future, we’re able to do better weather predictions,” Meinen said. “At the moment we can’t give really accurate seasonal forecasts, but hopefully as we get better predictive capabilities, we’ll be able to say to farmers in the Midwest that it’s going to be a wet spring and you may want to plant your crops accordingly.”

###

AGU supports 130,000 enthusiasts to experts worldwide in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, we advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.

Notes for Journalists

This research study is freely available through November 15. Download a PDF copy of the paper here. Neither the paper nor this press release is under embargo.

Paper title:

“Observed ocean bottom temperature variability at four sites in the northwestern Argentine Basin: Evidence of decadal deep/abyssal warming amidst hourly to interannual variability during 2009-2019”

Authors:

Christopher S. Meinen, Renellys C. Perez, Shenfu Dong: NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, Miami, Florida, United States;

Alberto R. Piola: Naval Hydrography Service, Buenos Aires, Argentina; University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Franco-Argentine Institute on Studies of Climate and its Impacts, National Council for Scientific and Technical Research, Buenos Aires, Argentina;

Edmo Campos: Oceanographic Institute, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Department of Biology, Chemistry and Environmental Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.

The following press release and accompanying images are available online at: https://news.agu.org/press-release/the-deep-sea-is-slowly-warming/

From EurekAlert!

0 0 votes
Article Rating
151 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
RoHa
October 13, 2020 10:16 pm

It’s the Missing Heat!

We’re doomed!

Reply to  RoHa
October 13, 2020 10:54 pm

Thank God for the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

… and the more anthropocentric 2nd Amendment.

Pillage Idiot
Reply to  Joel O'Bryan
October 14, 2020 6:45 am

All good things come in twos!

Robert W. Turner
Reply to  RoHa
October 14, 2020 5:38 am

From the study:

The absolute accuracy of the temperature sensors inside the PIES has traditionally not been carefully calibrated at the factory, as absolute accuracy is not essential to the pressure unit conversion. As noted earlier, Tracey et al. (2017) demonstrated that the absolute accuracy of the sensor can be calibrated using concurrent CTD profiles.

From (Tracey, 2017):

Fortunately, deep hydrographic casts taken at each site provided the means to determine temperature offsets and thereby to calibrate the deep temperature measurements; this allowed observations from successive instrument deployments to be patched together to form continuous 4-yr-long time series at numerous sites spanning the deep passage. …
While the absolute accuracy of the uncalibrated sensors is poor, their resolutions are good. The Paros resolution is 0.0002°C. The two DCS models used during cDrake have different resolutions; the resolution of model 3820, used almost exclusively in cDrake, is only 0.012°C, whereas the resolution of model 4390 is 2 × 10−5°C. The Paros and DCS temperature measurements were highly correlated; for the single-instrument sites, correlations between the hourly records exceeded 0.92, except for one site (C13) where the correlation was slightly lower (0.87). …
The hourly Paros and DCS temperature records from each instrument were individually calibrated to agree with the deepest CTD measurements, and the calibrated records agree to within 0.02°C

So temperatures from different devices, using different techniques, at different times, and miles away were used to calibrate these admittedly inaccurate measurements. But don’t worry, the inaccurate devices can take a bad measurement at high precision and their correlation with the aforementioned measurements of unmentioned accuracy and precision was “good” – if you consider 0.92 good for correlation of temperature precision of thousandth of a degree even though they agree to within 2 hundredth of a degree?

And nevermind that

The CPIES were to remain undisturbed on the seafloor for the full observational period; however, instruments that developed problems were replaced as needed on annual cruises.

Just ignore the details of which ones, how many, at what times, and what types of “problems” these uncalibrated instruments had and what they were replaced with. It’s irrelevant when creating trends in climastrology.

And finally,

High variability in temperature on interannual time scales requires record lengths of 13–17 yr to estimate long-term trends reliably.

because

Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) variability and transport

I chalk this paper up to, hey we needed something to write about to justify our annual cruises.

Mr.
Reply to  Robert W. Turner
October 14, 2020 8:48 am

Every time I see an article that splatters anomaly numbers in the thousandths, hundreds or even tenths of a unit, the word “CALIBRATION” just fills my head to the extent that I have move on.

czechlist
Reply to  Mr.
October 14, 2020 9:36 am

Are you saying a measurement isn’t accurate to the last digit of the nixie tube display?

Bryan A
Reply to  Robert W. Turner
October 14, 2020 9:30 am

Don’t forget the added HANDOUT tagline, “More research is needed”. AKA More $$$ are needed.
Curious about what goes bad in them making them need to be replaced, perhaps over time they developed a warming drift in their temperature sensors

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Robert W. Turner
October 14, 2020 10:15 am

Ya know, whenever I criticize adjustments made to temperature records, someone from the Climate Wroughters always pops up and says … oh there were ‘station moves’. One example was the long running temperature record for Capetown, about which I pointed out that the raw temp pattern was indistinguishable from that of the USA with the 20th Century highs in the 1930s to mid 40s, a 30yr cool period following (ice age Cometh period) and then a warming that was in no way inusual. This ‘was’ true also for Paraguay, Ecuador, Canada, Greenland, Europe and Siberia (also Australia where the climate record has been tortured most egregiously).

Here’s Capetown:

http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/clip_image0022.gif

I have come to believe that station moves, perhaps initially with justification have become a manipulation tool in the Climate Wroughters’ toolbox. Notably such manipulations were pointed out in some classic cases in Australia and New Zealand where there was no reason for the move or readjustment was done from cooling to warming. Climate Wroughters in the blog post here are replacing sensors that are no longer ‘working properly’ nudge nudge, wink wink. And we are talking about O.2C°/ century!

With an area of the ocean tested so large, the layer so thick and the magnitude of the measurements so small, I simply don’t believe there hasn’t been cooling in some of the sensors and the crafters of this study should be queried in detail about this and what sensors were changed and why.

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Gary Pearse
October 14, 2020 4:00 pm

Here is an unmodified surface temperature chart from Durban, South Africa, that I just got off Tony Heller’s website. It shows the warmth of the 1930’s, and it shows the cooling that took place from the 1940’s to the 1980’s, and then it shows a new warming trend starting in the 1980’s.

Every unmodified surface temperature chart I have seen from around the world has a similar temperature profile, i.e., the Early Twentieth Century was just as warm as today, and there was significant cooling from 1940 to 1980.

Unmodified surface temperature charts from around the world show it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today, which means CO2 is not the control knob of the Earth’s temperature because there is a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere now, yet it is no warmer now than in the Early Twentieth Century, when there was less CO2 in the atmosphere. We are not experiencing unprecedented warming today, as is claimed by the alarmists.

Since the unmodified surface temperature charts would destroy the Human-caused Climate Change narrative, the Keepers of the Temperature Data decided to take the actual temperature readings and put them into their computers and manipulate them so that they caused the exceptional warming of the 1930’s to disappear by cooling the past and warming the present, and as a consequence of this manipulation, they also ended up downplaying the cold of the 1970’s.

These are all visual manipulations that make the global surface temperature chart look as though the temperatures have been getting hotter and hotter and hotter for decade after decade, and we are now at the hottest temperatures in human history. This is all a Big Lie, meant to sell a product. Actual temperature readings from around the world put the lie to this tale.

Here is the US surface temperature chart (Hansen 1999), on the left of the webpage, along side the bogus, bastardized, Early Twentieth Century Hockey Stick chart.

https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_07/

All the unmodified surface temperature charts I have ever seen resemble the US Hansen 1999 chart profile where the 1930’s shows to be just as warm as today

As you can see the Hockey Stick chart drastically changes this temperature profile and turns it into a hotter and hotter and hottest year evah! temperature profile. This is the scam that has been perpetrated on the world. The Big Lie. Real temperature charts don’t show anything like the Hockey Stick horror show.

If you believe the Hockey Stick represents reality, then you *should* be scared about rising temperatures. One would have to be a fool to ignore it. The only problem is it is a Big Lie. The reality is you are a fool if you believe the Hockey Stick chart.

No unmodified chart on Earth looks like the hotter and hotter Hockey Stick. It’s a computer-generated Outliar. It has caused untold misery and economic loss, with no end in sight because the Powers that Be, believe a lie.

The Bogus Early Twentieth Century Hockey Stick chart is the *only* thing the alarmists have that they can point to as “evidence”. It’s all they have. But it’s enough when the power-hungry and money-hungry get involved in the scam.

The Alarmists only “evidence” is a fabrication. A distortion of reality. I sure do hope Karma is operative. These liars have to pay somehow for all the enormous damage they have done to humanity..

Joe Lynch
Reply to  Tom Abbott
October 15, 2020 1:23 am

outliar -Love it!

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Tom Abbott
October 15, 2020 5:46 am

I see I failed to provide the link to the Durban, South Africa chart in my earlier post.

Here it is:

comment image

Tom Abbott
Reply to  Tom Abbott
October 15, 2020 5:48 am

Yeah, Joe, “Outliar” is SO appropriate. 🙂

oeman50
Reply to  Robert W. Turner
October 14, 2020 10:58 am

Excellent point about calibration, Robert. When I saw, “A temperature sensor was built into the instrument’s pressure sensor used to study currents and had been incidentally collecting temperature data.” So instruments that were uncalibrated afterthoughts are being used to draw trends down to 0.02 C. And that piece of information is buried in the paper well below the more dramatic conclusions they drew from the “data.”

Adrian
Reply to  oeman50
October 14, 2020 12:03 pm

What always bothers me is the operation of thermocouples is dependent on a reference junction temperature. In standard instruments this reference junction is at an assumed room temperature which is assumed also to be stable. However in a thermal system like undersea the reference temperature would not necessarily be stable or at room temperature.

Furthermore if you claim reference to calibration then the reference junction must be at the same temperature as when the device was calibrated otherwise the readings are arbitrary at best.

If you want to claim accuracy to tenths or less of a degree then the reference junction should be in iced water as the triple point is the only true way of stabilising the reference over any timeframe.

As others have pointed out referencing off salinity or other sensors is bogus.

Michael S. Kelly
Reply to  Adrian
October 14, 2020 7:13 pm

The Argo floats use platinum resistance temperature detectors, with truly amazing resolution and accuracy – and they hold their calibration for years (there’s not a heck of a lot that can change in a PRTD). They don’t rely on the Seebeck effect, and so have no reference junction. They just measure the resistivity of a very fine platinum wire, and from that infer temperature.

Other types of temperature detectors, such as thermistors, also require no reference junction. I’ve used all of them, and have worked with them in pressure transducer applications for ICBM in-flight pressure measurements (specifically engine chamber pressure). You don’t use a thermocouple in that environment. I suspect the same is true for the detectors used by these instruments. But it would have been nice had they specified what type were used.

old construction worker
Reply to  Adrian
October 16, 2020 5:12 pm

I seem to remember Argo floats were re- calibrated shortly after being deployed.

Reply to  Robert W. Turner
October 14, 2020 12:06 pm

Glad to see you had access to some of this. I am flabbergasted that scientists dealing with actual, physical measurements are so ignorant of metrology and laboratory practices. I suspect there is not one word about measurement uncertainty and probably nothing about propagating it throughout the data analysis.

Anomalies have become so de rigor that who cares about accuracy! Precision is what your best instrument will read, not the readings of your worst. If they were running a lab with certified results they would lose their certification immediately.

Jean Parisot
Reply to  Jim Gorman
October 14, 2020 4:43 pm

Does anyone even do an Experimental Design anymore?

Joel Snider
Reply to  RoHa
October 14, 2020 4:13 pm

‘Now you’re telling me,
all that missing heat,
is hiding at the bottom of the sea’

Lyrics from ‘Green Dream Believer’.

Reply to  RoHa
October 15, 2020 3:24 am

The paper can be found here

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020GL089093

To their credit, the Data and Methods section describes their methods and deficiencies in some detail however the issues are considerably downplayed. The thermometers might be precise but they’re not at all accurate. That fact is admitted to.

Its well worth the read. The kicker for me is their data graph.

Sites C and D are the interesting ones as they’re deep and Site B has data for only a few years, anyway.

Site C is measured using 3 separate instruments deployed and retrieved over the years. The first instrument measured a little warming. The second instrument measured no warming and the third instrument measured a little warming. The trend changes precisely aligned with the instrument changes. Red flags right there.

Site D is also measured using three instruments and the first shows a little warming but the second and third dont and on top of that appear to be capped or truncated at a certain temperature. The data is just strange looking and that’s a massive red flag. The paper barely mentions the data from Site D.

In fact the paper almost exclusively comes to its conclusions from one Site and never discusses the fact the three measuring devices behaved unexpectedly differently.

Its a pig with lipstick.

Reply to  TimTheToolMan
October 15, 2020 8:48 am

Thanks, Tim, good analysis.

w.

Reply to  TimTheToolMan
October 15, 2020 10:17 am

Add that to the fact that tolerances for 100 ohm Class A Platinum RTDs per IEC 751-95 are +/- .15 deg C @ 0 deg. C and there is a tolerance aliasing issue in their data.

Of course, they also claim they aren’t using the highest accuracy sensors available, so that would put them into class B Platinum RTD tolerance which is +/- .30 deg C @ 0 deg C.

Add that to the fact that there are no claims of cabling accuracy or readout devices and the claimed data accuracy observed is buried beneath their devices actual tolerance of observation by at least a magnitude of error. That’s bad measurement technique that would get anyone else fired for incompetence.

Hans Erren
October 13, 2020 10:21 pm

But how? With increasing calving of Antarctic ice I would expect an increase in cold ocean bottom water offshore Argentina.

Doc Chuck
Reply to  Hans Erren
October 13, 2020 11:19 pm

Well now let’s see. While reported here is a 0.02 C. rise over a full decade that is deemed statistically significant, I’d relish to know the repeatable accuracy of the instrumentation compared to the apparent local variation range during that time to get some notion of an identifiable trend. In shallower deeps there were variations of up to a degree C. monthly And in light of the ‘great ocean conveyor’ thermohaline circulation with currents linking all the great oceans, as well as mantle layer heat emerging through the crustal ocean bottom in scattered abyssal hydrothermal vents and frank vulcanism, just what am I to conclude this tiny change must surely represent?

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Doc Chuck
October 14, 2020 12:42 am

Well, given that the oceans have about 1000x the heat capacity of the atmosphere, they have effectively infinite capacity to absorb any minor warming of the atmosphere.

So we’re safe.

RB
Reply to  Zig Zag Wanderer
October 14, 2020 3:29 am

Can anyone correct any bad mistakes here.

There are 1.4 billion cubic kilometres of ocean on the planet. For simplicity I will say there are 7 billion people. Therefore every 5 people on the planet is responsible for heat 1 cubic kilometre of ocean.

So 1 person heats up 1/5 of a cubic kilometre = 200 million cubic metres of water = 200 million tonnes = 200 billion kg of ocean. I read some heating of 0.04C = 4 billion joules of energy to heat that. So to heat that over 10 years would be about 500 million joules of energy per year so of the order of about 15 Watts of energy (permanently) from every person goes into heating the ocean.

Have I made a big mistake somewhere or is that clearly not correct.

Hubert
Reply to  RB
October 14, 2020 8:40 am

Let’s explain diffently : you need 4,19 Joules to heat up 1 gramm of water per 1 degree or 0.167 joules per 0.04 degree . So you can calculate which energy you need for 1400 000 000 x 1000 000 000 x 1000 x 1000 gramms of water per décade, or 10x 365x 24 x 3600 seconds to get watts …and divide the result by the sea surface to have watts/ m2 …and you get finally 2 watts/ m2 which correspond to anthropogenic warming (IPCC report) …

RB
Reply to  RB
October 14, 2020 11:32 am

I had 1 joule heating 1 gram by 1 degree. That mistake would imply every person is contributing 60W to heat the ocean that much.

Gary Pearse
Reply to  Doc Chuck
October 14, 2020 10:19 pm

Don’t forget 0.02C°/ decade is 0.2C per century is what they are talking about! I°C per 5 centuries

tty
Reply to  Hans Erren
October 14, 2020 9:31 am

No. Water at these intermediate depths is more likely NADW (North Atlantic Deep Water) than AABW (Antarctic Bottom Water). And iceberg calving is in any case unlikely to affect deep water temperatures except very indirectly. When melting they tend to freshen the sea and this light water stays on top.

However if the temperature rise is real (very doubtful) it might well be due to NADW being affected by the end of the LIA. I would expect it to take a century or two before reaching the South Atlantic.

Jean Parisot
Reply to  tty
October 14, 2020 4:46 pm

That would be an awesome paper: The LIA exists, confirmed by deep water warming.

Loydo
October 13, 2020 10:30 pm

“changes followed an annual pattern, indicating seasons still have a measurable impact far below the ocean surface”. Interesting.

Claim: sea surface 5 year running mean temps gallop off towards the edge of the chart. https://www.data.jma.go.jp/gmd/kaiyou/english/long_term_sst_global/glb_warm_e.html

Reply to  Loydo
October 13, 2020 10:42 pm

Slow gallop. And there’s no change in the rate since before CO2 could have been the culprit.

But most importantly this kind of essentially unmeasured historical data is highly dubious at best and actually most likely simply wrong.

fred250
Reply to  TimTheToolMan
October 14, 2020 12:29 am

There was no way of getting the sort of accuracy shown in loy’s graph before ARGO, even now its very much a guestimate.

Before that, just assumption driven modelling with a bit of proxy data.

That proxy data shows so much more when you extend it back further to BEFORE the coldest period in 10,000 years.

comment image

comment image

I mean seriously.. If you start at the COLDEST period in 10,000 years, you better be DARN GLAD of a bit of warming, no mater how trivial it is.

Bryan A
Reply to  fred250
October 14, 2020 9:33 am

Very interesting Loydo, the anomalous rise at the end of the record you linked to is repeated in 1890 and 1940. Not so anomalous after all

Reply to  Loydo
October 13, 2020 10:56 pm

Thanks Loydo, good to know!

At 0.55 degrees C per century we are SAVED! With a thermal mass well over 1,000 times that of the atmosphere, the oceans are like a large adult dragging a child kicking and screaming through a crowded mall (remember those?). It is the kicking and screaming child that got everyone’s attention, but there was no doubt that the child was going exactly where the large adult was going .

Appreciate it Loydo. Spread the word folks. Loydo says we’re going to be OK.

Reply to  davidmhoffer
October 13, 2020 11:33 pm

I want a Loydo Halloween mask. That’ll scare the f-kin kids real properly.

fred250
Reply to  philincalifornia
October 14, 2020 12:31 am

Or have them rolling around in fits of laughter. !

comment image

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  davidmhoffer
October 14, 2020 12:43 am

I like that analogy!

Loydo
Reply to  davidmhoffer
October 14, 2020 1:58 am

“the child was going exactly where the large adult was going”
Except its not an adult. With land areas at three times that rate and the Arctic five times, the trend baked in for decades to come and unpredictable effects that will last thousands of years. It’s not an adult, its 7.7 billion apes with delusions of grandeur, ransacking what was once a really nice planet.

Yes, thousands of years.
“The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.”
From IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group I (AR4, WG-I) Executive Summary of Chapter 7

LdB
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 3:04 am

10,000 years …. So now it’s not even my great great grandchildren you want me to worry about but my great children 20 or 30 thousands times removed 🙂

Lets put that in perspective for you Loydo its 2020 so do you think those in 7080BC should have worried about us? That is the human timescale you are talking on and why everyone is laughing at you.

RexAlan
Reply to  LdB
October 14, 2020 3:31 am

Agree totally LdB

Steve Taylor
Reply to  LdB
October 14, 2020 9:35 am

10,000 years = 400 generations. Nothing like as many as you might think.
1,000,000 years = 40,000 generations

Bryan A
Reply to  LdB
October 14, 2020 9:39 am

Unpredictable affects? I thought the models held great predictive ability to 95%
Are you saying the models hold no.predictive capability? HERETIC

fred250
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 3:48 am

What a warped imagination you have Lot.

Not one thing you can back up with any actual science that shows the cycles of the AMO, the recovery from the LIA, coldest period in 210,000 years, has ANY human causation.

Only thing “baked”, is your mind. !

Let’s hope that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a long long time, to provide sustenance to ALL LIFE ON EARTH.

Yes, even you , Loy !

If you don’t like the planet….. please leave…

….. or at least stop using all the resources she provides.

Only modern civilization can keep the planet in good enough health to provide for human habitation. An one of the best ways to improve the GREENING of the Earth is with atmospheric CO2.

Why do you CHOOSE to remain IGNORANT of this FACT !!

John Tillman
Reply to  fred250
October 14, 2020 4:44 am

The LIA was not colder than the last glaciation and that before it, both of which occurred in the past 210,000 years.

fred250
Reply to  fred250
October 14, 2020 2:45 pm

oops….. that was a typo.. meant to type 10,000 years 🙂

fred250
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 3:54 am

“the trend “

You mean the trend of warming by El Ninos charged by a series of strong solar cycles?

comment image

Or do you mean the ocean warming caused by the drop in cloud cover over the Tropics?

comment image

and with a La Nina forming

So droll, loy. ! Do you ever think about anything you rant about ?

Do you any evidence to back up your ignorant claims?

Sara
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 4:43 am

Lighten up, Loydo!

I have serious doubts about a “study” that is based entirely on ONE area being the basis for an entire planetary ocean. Failure to take into account heat sources like black smokers (which I’ve brought up before), tectonic plate boundary movements that release heat into ocean water, and using a numerical value that no one on earth can detect physically — 0.02C, for Pete’s sake???? — isn’t just an error. It is a Big, HUUGE mistake! It is a false assumption that one spot covers everything. That’s precisely the same thing as saying that if I have one burner going on the stove to make tea, the rest of the stove burners are running, too, and NOT just in my kitchen! The entire neighborhood stove burners are on fire!!! Have to be!!.

I have a couple of words for that assumption: HOGWASH and BALONEY!

And then., there’s this classic conclusion: but more research is needed to understand what is driving rising temperatures in the deep ocean. -article

Well, clearly, this means that more CASH is needed in the cash drawer so that those temperature changes of 0.02C can be found elsewhere, right? Right. Let’s make sure we measure a temperature differentiation that no human alive can detect without instruments. And to top it off, it’s all on a planet which has its own agenda and these people clearly can’t do anything to control what happens, but they can send out begging letters to get cash to explain it all.

HD Hoese
Reply to  Sara
October 14, 2020 6:45 am

Sara has got it–“In a new study in AGU’s journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers analyzed a decade of hourly temperature recordings from moorings anchored at four depths in the Atlantic Ocean’s Argentine Basin off the coast of Uruguay. The depths represent a range around the average ocean depth of 3,682 meters (12,080 feet), with the shallowest at 1,360 meters (4,460 feet) and the deepest at 4,757 meters (15,600 feet). They found all sites exhibited a warming trend of 0.02 to 0.04 degrees Celsius per decade between 2009 and 2019 – a significant warming trend in the deep sea where temperature fluctuations are typically measured in thousandths of a degree. According to the study authors, this increase is consistent with warming trends in the shallow ocean associated with anthropogenic climate change, but more research is needed to understand what is driving rising temperatures in the deep ocean….At depths below 4,500 meters (14,760 feet), temperature fluctuations were more minute,”

I suggest putting these temperature experts on a slow boat to China, maybe then understanding how minute their location was. Farmers send money? “At the moment we can’t give really accurate seasonal forecasts, but hopefully as we get better predictive capabilities, we’ll be able to say to farmers in the Midwest that it’s going to be a wet spring and you may want to plant your crops accordingly.” That’s really relevant! Maybe they should take their boat through the midwest first.

Sara
Reply to  Sara
October 14, 2020 7:14 am

Eeewww!!! I meant 0.002C for the temps. My bad!!! (Mumbles something vile about proofreading stuff.)

I guess Loydo is quite unfamiliar with the conditions on EARTH during the Carboniferous epoch – it was mostly a jungle, swampy, frequently subjected to raging fires owing to the 30% O2 level in the atmosphere. That’s fine for bugs, especially gigantic 6 foot long centipedes and that lovely critter meganeura, a dragonfly with a 3 foot wingspan. But for Hoomans, not so much; we’d die off from oxygen poisoning. And the ambient temperature of the planet back then was warm, the atmosphere was quite humid and it was essentially just one big jungle. We’ve had this discussion before, but I’m guessing Loydo was off in a corner somewhere.

But then, the Triassic –> Jurassic periods were also quite warm, humid, and tropical, with a 20% oxygen level, because like Hoomans, the diinosaurs couldn’t handle the higher level of 30% oxygen. Since there is fossil evidence of critters in Antarctica, as well as tropical plants, it’s a bit disingenuous to say that the planet is doomed if it warms up.
( see: https://oceanwide-expeditions.com/blog/the-ancient-fossil-forests-of-antarctica#:~:text=In%20a%20small%20part%20of,the%20carbonaceous%20soil%20deposits%20today.)
People have climbed some of the mountains down there in that cold, cold land and found the +/-260 million year old remains of ancient forests, among other things.

While I’m happy to provide informative stuff to back up what I say, if Loydo wants to go on banging his head against the brick wall he’s leaning on, and deny the reality that the planet will NOT end if the “global” temperature goes up a tenth of a degree, or even a full degree, then let him. He’s being silly.

The planet has been through very warm and very cold periods and life has survived and prospered and gone on. There is no way any mere human can control anything this planet does. Period.

Bryan A
Reply to  Sara
October 14, 2020 10:34 am

Kind of like Yamal and the Hockey Stick
One tree to rule Yamal

Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 5:28 am

Loydo

ransacking what was once a really nice planet.

ransacking? Your most fundamental assumption is that warming is bad. It seems to me that the earth is doing just fine with plant growth booming, populations growing, food in plentiful supply and most of the tangible problems associated with pollution and land clearing not warming.

So now we get to your next assumption which is that the CO2 might be good now but more CO2 and warming will be bad.

And the fact is there is no science for that, its all speculation. Its belief that is so ingrained in you that you cant even see it anymore.

MarkW
Reply to  TimTheToolMan
October 14, 2020 8:24 am

In my experience, liberals actually believe the entire planets looks like the cities that they never leave.

Sara
Reply to  TimTheToolMan
October 14, 2020 12:11 pm

Mark is right, and if you get away from Earth, view it on the daylight side from a good distance (like the Moon), it looks like there’s nothing there but land and mountains and lotsa big water bodies and rivers – things like that.

Mickey Reno
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 7:21 am

Loydo is just worried that now that the Earth has been designated a sh*thole planet by the Marcab Federation, he won’t be able to emigrate to one of the good planets he’s had an eye on and if he crosses the border illegally, he’ll be deported back to Earth

Sara
Reply to  Mickey Reno
October 14, 2020 7:40 am

Well, NASA’s rovers have found water ice that may have links to below-ground ice pockets (BIG POCKETS!!!), so Loydo could go live there and worry about warming up Mars….\

Yeah, like warming Mars is gonna happen any time soon!!! 🙂

Bryan A
Reply to  Mickey Reno
October 14, 2020 6:26 pm

W w w wait… isn’t Mars’ atmosphere 95% CO2?

Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 9:44 am

Gawsh Loydo, do you just into what I wrote what you hope to be true? Cus that would be awful since what you apparently hope to be true is something awful. This that through dude.

The ocean is the adult. The land areas are the child. They can have lots of variability (weather) but their long term trend is bounded by the ocean. With over 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere, the temp of the atmosphere can only move so far from the temp of the ocean. The bigger the temp disparity , the faster the ocean absorbs heat from the atmosphere. That’s why the atmosphere is the child thrashing about. It can move a bit up or down, but then the atmosphere simply sucks the difference out of it.

Unless of course Loydo, you’re saying this study is wrong? You’ve changed your mind and don’t want to follow the science after all?

Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 12:19 pm

The ocean temp has risen, YIPEE! Now I can go swimming without hypothermia!

fred250
Reply to  Jim Gorman
October 14, 2020 2:25 pm

Hoping loy will go for a swim in Iceland, or off the Siberian coast

… sans thick wetsuit , naturally.

All that warm water, wouldn’t it be luxurious.! 🙂

Robert Austin
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 6:17 pm

Loydo,
The only ransacking I see is the “ransacking” of the scientific method by rent-seeking alleged scientists.

Megs
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 10:21 pm

“ransacking what was once a really nice planet.”

Loydo I don’t understand how you can’t see that the mining for the manufacture of renewables, batteries and EV’s is ransacking the planet on a scale way beyond that of traditional mining. You do understand that renewables cannot exist without fossil fuels, don’t you?

And at the end of their very short life much of this ‘renewable’ infrastructure is simply buried, or sent off to developing countries under the pretence that it’s useful. A way to get rid of unwanted waste and practice virtue signalling because it’s been ‘recycled’ and it’s ‘helping’ the poor.

fred250
Reply to  Loydo
October 13, 2020 11:46 pm

Let’s put this TRIVIAL and beneficial warming in perspective, shall we.

Cure the MANIC PANIC from little loy d’oh !

comment image

fred250
Reply to  Loydo
October 13, 2020 11:48 pm

“0.55 degrees C per century”

That is just SO SCARY !!

Loy.. you are SO DUMB !!

fred250
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 12:01 am

Loy d’oh’s graph of OHC in perspective..

see that little red squiggle at the end….

comment image

DON’T PANIC !!!! loy…. it will be ok. 😉

Now.. do you have ANY EVIDENCE AT ALL that this trivial warming was cause by anything humans have done ?

Or will you remain an EVIDENCE -FREE abyss. !!

Tonyb
Editor
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 3:41 am

I heard Thomas stocker himself say at a climate conference a few years ago that we did not have the technology to measure the temperatures of the deep ocean. So either he didn’t know of this decade long study or more Likely the decade long study is far too imprecise to have any merit

Tonyb

rbabcock
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 5:35 am

So just how did we measure the ENTIRE global sea surface temperature in the first half of the 20th century to fractions of a degree C? Absolute BS but obviously Loydo takes it as fact.

Michael Jankowski
Reply to  Loydo
October 14, 2020 9:41 am

So the surface temps have risen “off the charts,” and this study found significant warming in the deep ocean, but there was no significant warming in between. Huh.

October 13, 2020 10:41 pm

but the increase of about 0.02 degrees Celsius per decade was only statistically significant at depths of over 4,500 meters.

These guys are in a race with the WHO for which of them can change direction more often. I cannot remember the exact years but:

Trenberth: we can’t find the missing heat
Trenberth: we found the missing heat at the bottom of the ocean. We don’t know how it got there without changing any of the temps on the way down.
Trenberth (just recently!): the ocean is stratifying which is preventing heat from getting to the bottom (so it must be hiding somewhere else?)
…and now these guys say its on the bottom again, but again without changing any of the temps on the way down.

Then they mutter something about 0.04 degrees per DECADE needing to be understood in order to better predict WEATHER.

After following these nutters for over a decade my mind has lost the ability to boggle.

Chris*
October 13, 2020 11:06 pm

“Rising temperatures in the deep ocean”…… have these scientists heard of geothermal activity?

Sara
Reply to  Chris*
October 14, 2020 7:47 am

No, they have not, and you can show them photos of deep ocean geothermal stuff, like those black smokers which are absolutely thriving with life, and they will ignore it, or say it’s all Special Effects from some sci-fi movie, because it doesn’t meet their belief system. And they want more money, anyway.

Patrick MJD
October 13, 2020 11:12 pm

Four sites on the floor of the Atlantic at depths of ~3000m with over 10 years worth of data shows a rise of between 0.02c and 0.04c per decade? Colour me bad but that really isn’t scary!

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Patrick MJD
October 13, 2020 11:34 pm

And are their instruments really that precise? Or is it more averaging?

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
October 14, 2020 8:59 am

From the paper “ the resolution of model 3820, used almost exclusively in cDrake, is only 0.012°C”. So, practically speaking, a prediction of absolute change to tenths of a degree per decade would require recalibration every few months, which isn’t going to happen for these floaties. The authors of the paper missed their “statistical measurements 203” course, but then they aren’t engineering graduates.

Reply to  DMacKenzie
October 14, 2020 12:24 pm

So right! When are these folks going to be called to task for high school education of how to handle measurements?

Phil
October 13, 2020 11:20 pm

At least we found out where Trenberth keeps the family joules.

Zig Zag Wanderer
Reply to  Phil
October 14, 2020 12:44 am

That was good!

Mike Gill
October 13, 2020 11:29 pm

What do you call a bunch of people who failed to read the specifications for the instruments they were deploying?

Mike

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Mike Gill
October 14, 2020 10:47 am

Mike
Technicians? Union members?

Waza
October 13, 2020 11:40 pm

In the 19th century, sailors should have used longer ropes on their buckets.

October 13, 2020 11:49 pm

Statistical noise, not a real signal.

October 14, 2020 12:13 am

Meridional overturning?
The Ocean’s Meridional Overturning Circulation, Schmittner, Chiang, Hemming 2007, downloadable from ResearchGate.

October 14, 2020 12:41 am

So there is some heat at the bottom of the Ocean. Hard;y suprisimg with the knowledge we have of vents and volcanos.
Now if this increase had occurred all the way to the top, that might have some meaning . Anyway I thought that bottom water moved so slowly that its hundreds of years old.
So what was happening say in 1066. The brass makers of Bagdad perhaps, busy making lots of the dreaded # Emissions # of CO 2.

VK5ELLMJE

fred250
Reply to  Michael
October 14, 2020 4:13 am

Very interesting correlation between ocean seismic activity , lagged two years, a the lower troposphere temperatures

comment image

I saw a more recent graph as well, and there was another rise in ocean seismic activity in 2013, 2 years before the big blob/El Nino warm transient.
(didn’t save it because I was in a rush, must try to find that again)

Robert W. Turner
Reply to  fred250
October 14, 2020 4:54 am

I’m not sure exactly when we had the capacity to accurately detect globally the number of 6.0+ earthquakes, but according to USGS data their frequency greatly increased in the 50s-60s and then decreased until the 1980s, and then once again greatly increased until the 2010s and have plateaued/slightly decreased.

The important thing is that according to AGW hypothesis, the increased melting at the poles should have slowed thermohaline circulation and less heavy saline waters should have descended into the dark abyss. Thus the only source of warming could have been geothermal.

fred250
Reply to  Robert W. Turner
October 14, 2020 1:07 pm

Latest Ocean seismic activity

comment image

Notice the big spike in 2013, 2 years before the large El nino of 2015.

Heating from below would be much faster than cooling from above, so I suspect the drop off in seismic activity might take a while to show up in the atmospheric temperature.

Time will tell

October 14, 2020 12:54 am
October 14, 2020 1:56 am

How does heat get to the deep ocean without going through the upper layers first?

Clearly this is BS, unless it is geothermal heating.

Another Ian
Reply to  Matthew Sykes
October 14, 2020 3:18 am

“Heavy heat”, sinks quickly?

Sara
Reply to  Matthew Sykes
October 14, 2020 7:53 am

I’ll go with Another Ian: it is dropped downward as a cube of Very Hot Water, which releases its contents as a specific subsurface level.

tty
Reply to  Matthew Sykes
October 14, 2020 9:42 am

The water in the deep ocean comes from two places: the North Atlantic and coastal waters around Antarctica.

This is where the densest water forms, which is both very cold and quite salty. If the deep ocean temperature changes it is probably due to salinity/temperature changes in these source areas decades to centuries ago (the turnover time is on the order of 1,000 years)

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  tty
October 14, 2020 10:50 am

tty
+1 Almost certainly the monthly changes seen in the bottom water reflects surface conditions at least hundreds of years ago, NOT what has been happening recently!

commieBob
October 14, 2020 2:34 am

The deep ocean is a vast reservoir of CO2 dissolved in the water. It’s around 37 x 10^12 tons. link

As the ocean warms, some of that CO2 will come out of solution and increase the partial pressure in the atmosphere. So, if the deep ocean has been warming up ever since the end of the Little Ice Age that could account for the increase in atmospheric CO2. If the partial pressure of CO2 in the ocean controls the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere, that alone could explain the increase in atmospheric CO2. Because of the vast amount of CO2 in the oceans, human CO2 emissions would be irrelevant.

From time to time folks have wondered the same thing. Here’s an example from Roy Spencer.

commieBob
Reply to  commieBob
October 14, 2020 5:08 am

When we look at previous increases in atmospheric CO2, the oceans are cited as the source although the mechanism is not as simple as the one I stated above. link

During early deglaciation, rising [CO32–] at three locations in the deep ocean suggests a release of deep-sea CO2 to the atmosphere, probably via the Southern Ocean. Both increased late deglacial carbonate burial in deep-sea sediments due to elevated [CO32–] and Holocene expansion of coral reefs on newly flooded continental shelves depleted global ocean alkalinity, which reduced CO2 solubility in seawater and contributed to atmospheric CO2 rises at these times.

commieBob
Reply to  commieBob
October 14, 2020 7:03 am

… expansion of coral reefs on newly flooded continental shelves depleted global ocean alkalinity, …

OMG … Did I read that right? Coral causes ocean acidification!

Rich Davis
October 14, 2020 3:07 am

0.002 degrees per year?
Temperature fluctuating almost a degree over a month.
Instruments moored in the deep sea for a decade.
How are they calibrated?

Give me a break!

It’s EurekAlarm! of course.

Robert W. Turner
Reply to  Rich Davis
October 14, 2020 4:44 am

“So we went back and we calibrated all of our hourly data from these instruments and put together what is essentially a continuous 10-year-long hourly record of temperature one meter off the seafloor,”

And here I was thinking that equipment should be calibrated before taking measurements. Silly me.

Reply to  Robert W. Turner
October 14, 2020 6:51 am

Correctly-calibrated instruments don’t give the required answer.

Rich Davis
Reply to  Robert W. Turner
October 14, 2020 4:16 pm

So here’s my guess on how they did the “calibration” of the data.

The raw observational data must certainly not be trusted. (It could possibly show cooling, for example). It must be calibrated by comparing to the pristine model output data. If the models prove that the observation was biased low, then we know that the thermocouple was reading low at that time and so we correct it to match the model data.

If it should happen that the observations were higher than the correct model data, then we assume that that was natural internal variability and so we don’t adjust it, of course. It’s critical that we don’t compromise the integrity of the data!

Oh and we also need to adjust the adjustment to ensure that the known 0.002 degree rise per year is matched as closely as possible.

After a year, we recognize that there was a cooling bias that went undetected, and the data will be republished to show 0.004 degrees per year. Each year, new flaws will be corrected to double the rate of rise until the trend reaches 8 degrees per year, or until all countries have communist governments, whichever comes first.

In the end, it’s always worse than we ever thought.

# # #

From EurekAlert!

Flight Level
October 14, 2020 3:42 am

So they must have used thermometers calibrated, accurate and true to at least 1/1000 th of a degree. At sea, actually that deep under the sea.
Or somehow cooked, homogenized the raw data. Like in that cartoon, “And here, a miracle occurs”…

Krishna Gans
October 14, 2020 3:42 am

Wasn’t there a paper in the past telling us that the warming water in the depth has an age of around some hundred or more years ?

They won’t tell us that the “heating” is an actual one.

PaulM
October 14, 2020 4:04 am

From the article…

“So we went back and we calibrated all of our hourly data from these instruments…”

I would want to hear a lot more about how the intruments were calibrated before taking any notice of this.

Robert W. Turner
Reply to  PaulM
October 14, 2020 4:57 am

That’s the sentence that stuck out to me as well. What does “calibrating data” even mean? Typically it is the equipment that is calibrated and it’s the data that is normalized, unless you’re in climatstrology and then the data is manipulated.

Juan Slayton
October 14, 2020 4:12 am

Hmm…. A team of researchers designs (or acquires) 4 devices to measure ocean currents, spends a lot of time and money to plant them in the deep blue sea, and the device has built-in thermometer with circuitry to record hourly temperatures. And nobody on the team knows about/has the interest to use this tool for years?

This does not speak well for the competence of the team. Meaning no slight to the one guy who, when he found out about it, is putting it to use. A worthy effort, even if the results to date do not seem significant.

DaveS
October 14, 2020 4:42 am

“typically measured in thousandths of a degree”

So how, and for how long, have they been measuring deep sea temperature to a resolution of thousandths of a degree?

October 14, 2020 4:47 am

“They found all sites exhibited a warming trend of 0.02 to 0.04 degrees Celsius per decade between 2009 and 2019 ”

When I read that, I stopped. They don’t have that level of accuracy. Statistical output based on far too few data points at far too few depths over far too short a time and off a coast too and I bet even after all that, there will still be problems found with their study.

Garbage study, more rent seeking nonsense, they set out to find a trend I do not doubt and it being only 10 years of data, they were GAGGING to make claims based on such a poverty of data, its mind boggling.

Juan Slayton
October 14, 2020 4:53 am

I’d like to know more about these sensors. Three miles is a long way down. Ten years is a long service interval. What is their power source? How do they recover the data? Were they purchased from a civilian firm that provided proprietary software without access to source code that could have disclosed the thermometer data handling. (OK, you guessed it, I’m all in for Linux.)

October 14, 2020 5:38 am

NoTricksZone has discussed a published proxy review which embarrasingly shows practically no ocean warming in the last two centuries:

https://notrickszone.com/2020/10/12/unheralded-global-ocean-2000-year-temperature-reconstruction-reveals-embarrassingly-small-modern-changes/

It also confirms that the oceans were much warmer at the Holocene optimum 8000 years ago (that’s why it’s called the optimum!).

They key paper – McGregor et al 2015 – is behind a paywall but the NTZ post includes the important figures that include significant recent cooling in parts of both the Atlantic and Pacific:

https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2510

Absence of recent warming in this review of all (quality controlled) ocean proxies puts the JoshWillisised Argo data in an uncomfortable light – makes it look like a children’s story book by Josh Willis.

Krishna Gans
October 14, 2020 5:42 am

“But each time we go look we find that the ocean is more complex than we thought.”

Didn’t they follow the scientific literature over the years ?
Seems they think to be the first to research s.th. in and about oceans and never heard about the streams turning around the continents since ever.

James Clarke
October 14, 2020 6:03 am

For decades, climate crisis skeptics have offered alternative theories to explain recent climate observations, but they are generally dismissed with a hand-wave because these theories do not come with a complete understanding of the physical mechanisms involved. For example, if you suggest that periodic ocean cycles are responsible for most of the changes, it is required that you explain how and why the ocean cycles exist before your theory is even considered.

On the other hand, people like Trenberth proclaim that the Earth’s atmosphere is not warming as fast as expected because the heat is going into the deep oceans, while offering no explanation of how that might be possible. Apparently scientific arguments weakening the AGW theory must be subjected to the highest scientific scrutiny and rejected at the slightest deviation from perfection, while arguments supporting the AGW theory require only a proclamation to be considered true, and the scientific method be damned!

ResourceGuy
October 14, 2020 6:08 am

It’s bad and getting worse. It’s also poorly studied and we need more money to show more bad and getting worse in minute differences without context.

fretslider
October 14, 2020 6:16 am

Clearly the sea floor and what is below it has no effect. It’s all the fault of Hom sap.

Why do they bother other than getting their names into print or even lights?

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  fretslider
October 14, 2020 11:19 am

fretslider
You asked, “Why do they bother …?” For a salary squeezed out of the grant.

Richard M
October 14, 2020 6:16 am

I wonder if this paper corrected for other influences? Didn’t read it but ….

Wasn’t 2009 a La Nina year? Wasn’t 2019 an El Nino year? That alone could account for the warming. Remember, they stated seasonal influences were detected. Therefore, other short term influences would almost surely affect the measurements.

Krishna Gans
Reply to  Richard M
October 14, 2020 7:47 am

That implies a sudden heating of the deep water by warm surface water, questionable…..

dh-mtl
October 14, 2020 6:29 am

“this increase is consistent with warming trends in the shallow ocean associated with anthropogenic climate change”

It is not the atmosphere that heats the oceans (nor IR radiation from CO2), but rather short wavelength radiation that penetrates deep into the oceans. If anything, this heating of the deep oceans shows an increase in the sun’s energy penetrating the oceans.

“Because the world’s oceans absorb so much of the world’s heat, learning about the ocean’s temperature trends can help researchers better understand temperature fluctuations in the atmosphere as well”

The oceans control the atmosphere. If one needs to ‘learn about the ocean’s temperature trends, then it is a tacit admission that one is clueless about what is happening to atmospheric temperatures. The inability of ‘climate models’ to resemble reality is a testament to this cluelessness.

Nick Schroeder
October 14, 2020 7:12 am

“..a significant warming trend in the deep sea where temperature fluctuations are typically measured in thousandths of a degree.”

They are?

With what instrumentation?

October 14, 2020 7:15 am

In the above article’s third paragraph, notice how this phrase was just slipped in, without any further scientific reference or justification, as if it were as obvious to everybody as the Sun rising in the East: “. . . this increase is consistent with warming trends in the shallow ocean associated with anthropogenic climate change . . .”

So, where is the peer-reviewed, science-based paper that shows by direct experimental data the percentage of global warming that is attributed to mankind (“anthropogenic”)? Any response must include the period of 1940-1975 that had measured global atmospheric cooling, and the documented hiatus (aka “pause”) in global warming that occurred over 1988-2015.

This is, all things considered, a very simple question to ask.

Kevin kilty
October 14, 2020 7:39 am

“In years past, everybody used to assume the deep ocean was quiescent. There was no motion. There were no changes,”

Was there actually a belief that the deep seas were quiescent? Considering the constant rain of debris from above the deep seas should have been anoxic. Although mixing in the deeper ocean is so slow that temperature and salinity are almost conserved quantities, I’m not sure that anyone believed the quiescent part.

There is a slow over turning of this water as cold/saline water in regions of bottom water formation continues to sink. Where does this water go if it doesn’t replace “quiescent” water currently occupying the bottom? The time scale is probably thousands of years. We are to accept that a warming trend begun at most a hundred or so years ago at the surface ago is now detectable at depth — like a tape recording of earlier changes at the surface? Perhaps, but measurements alone are not enough to convince me. I want to see a credible explanation based on physical principles.

tty
Reply to  Kevin kilty
October 14, 2020 9:50 am

“The time scale is probably thousands of years”

More like 1,000 years. In an icehouse world like the current one has been for 35 millon years the deep sea is rather well ventilated and oxygenated. As long as Antarctica remains frozen there will be a constant supply of cold, salty, oxygen-rich bottom water.

When Antarctica is ice-free and vegetated at least along the coasts things might change.

Or maybe not. There will still be North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) unless the Panama Isthmus sinks back below sea-level.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Kevin kilty
October 14, 2020 11:04 am

Kevin
You said, “I’m not sure that anyone believed the quiescent part.” I would say that the belief originated with geologic evidence. Very fine-grained rocks like shales are improbable if the water is turbulent. What is seen more commonly is bioturbation of the muds. Then the manganese nodule fields strongly suggest areas are undisturbed for millions of years, with extremely slow deposition of layers on the nodules.

Al Miller
October 14, 2020 8:00 am

I didn’t get past the headline. We have poor surface temperature records for any time span over the vast majority of the earths surface, but I’m supposed to believe that now we know what the deep sea was like during the Little Ice Age (or any other time in history)!?
The ludicrous Communist lies keep coming.

October 14, 2020 8:11 am

Deep ocean waters are only a few degrees above freezing . . . let’s say 2 °C, or about 275 K. The above article states: “They found all sites exhibited a warming trend of 0.02 to 0.04 degrees Celsius per decade . . .” So, together the “warming trend” accounts for an average absolute change ration of .03/275 per decade, or about 1 part in 10,000 per decade.

In comparison, the amount of global sea level rise over the decade of 2009-2019 was about 30 mm, presumably mostly from the overall melting of land-supported ice (i.e., only a very tiny amount would be due to thermal expansion based on the above-noted temperature changes). This increased water level would result in increased pressures at all depths.

Now, the above article also states, referring to temperature data from anchored moorings used in the above-cited research: “The depths represent a range around the average ocean depth of 3,682 meters (12,080 feet).

Thus, we have the situation of an absolute SLR-induced pressure change ratio at the instrumentation depth of 0.03 m/3682 m, or about 1 part in 100,000.

Given that the ΔP/P is 10% of the ΔT/T at the average depth of the measurements used, I’m just wondering if the adiabatic compressibility of seawater might account for a significant portion of the temperature increase discussed in the above article.

Anyone want to take a stab at doing the detailed calculation for this (I’m thinking the energy of adiabatic compression will be partitioned between the internal energy of the water and its sensible heat, but maybe not)?

There is no indication that this factor was even considered by the authors of the AGU article summarized above.

A G Foster
Reply to  Gordon A. Dressler
October 14, 2020 9:36 am

Water is so near non-compressible that any adiabatic processes are negligible (between 4 and 5×10−10 Pa−1).

A G Foster
October 14, 2020 8:14 am
October 14, 2020 8:23 am

I *still* want to know how that heat got into the deep ocean without first traversing the ocean surface!

Is there a cloaked Enterprise in orbit above us using their transporter to move heat into the deep ocean?

According to Fourier’s law: q = -kAg
k is the coefficient of thermal conductivity
A is the area involved
g is the temperature gradient, i.e. dt/dL where dt is the infinitesimal temperature change over the infinitesimal distance L.

We can also write q = (k/x)(t1 – t2) or (t1-t2) = qx/k
where x is the distance between the measured points.

This implies that the ocean surface (t1) will always be warmer than the deep ocean (t2). So where is all the surface temperature causing the warming of the deep ocean?

A G Foster
Reply to  Tim Gorman
October 14, 2020 8:47 am

Cold water everywhere sinks below warmer water, especially when the cold water is of higher salinity. When polar ice freezes (and refreezes) the salt is eventually eliminated. The cold salty brine is denser than than warmer subsurface waters. It sinks to the bottom. Warm evaporated water from the Red Sea also sinks beneath cooler less salty water. –AGF

tty
Reply to  A G Foster
October 14, 2020 10:00 am

The deep water from the Red Sea however has to cross the shallow Hanish sill at Bab el Mandeb, so not much gets out in the ocean.

The only significant source of warm, oxygen-poor (and very salty) deep water today is the Mediterranean.

Back in the Hothouse World >35 mya this type of water was dominant in the deep sea, and ocean anoxia could then develop fairly easily. Not so now.

Reply to  A G Foster
October 14, 2020 1:52 pm

try
This nice paper from 2020 by Marcantonio et al shows – perhaps paradoxically – from
meticulous sediment isotope data over nearly 200k years, that higher atmospheric CO2 results in higher deep ocean oxygenation. They found that deep ocean anoxia, indicated by the presence of a chemical form of uranium, was associated with glacial periods of low atmospheric CO2 less than 200ppm.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63628-x

This suggests that healthy levels of CO2 in the atmosphere enhance planktonic primary production which among other things (like supporting nearly all life in the ocean) result in more oxygen being carried down to the ocean floor.

That’s interesting since it suggests that cold alone is not sufficient to oxygenate (ventilate) the ocean floor. Robust atmospheric CO2 is also needed.

All further evidence of course of how bad and dangerous CO2 is (/sarc).

Reply to  A G Foster
October 14, 2020 3:45 pm

AG,

Which still implies that the surface has to be hotter than the depths. Exactly what the formula says. If the ocean depths warm then the water will *rise* past colder water above it, just like you said, which would still leave the surface warmer than the depths.

Reply to  Tim Gorman
October 14, 2020 10:03 am

The Enterprise doesn’t have a cloaking device.

Not sure where you learned your science.

sarc (if its necessary)

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Pat from Kerbob
October 14, 2020 11:09 am

Pat
Yes, it is a Klingon conspiracy.

October 14, 2020 8:26 am

What is the precision and accuracy of their instruments?

tty
Reply to  Buckeyebob
October 14, 2020 9:54 am

Precision is probably very much better than accuracy. This is typical for temperature sensors.

This means that you can detect very small changes, provided that you calibrate frequently and have a good overlap between old ad new sensors.

Reply to  tty
October 14, 2020 10:26 am

Right. Is the change they are measuring within the error or capability of their measuring equipment?

Reply to  Buckeyebob
October 14, 2020 12:51 pm

Precision is basically repeatability of a measurement. The ability of a device to read the same thing multiple times is very dependent upon environmental factors. Voltage fluctuations, temp changes of a degree, parts aging, and so on. Accuracy, Ha! No way in Hades. There is a reason labs offering measurements of this precision spend millions every year insuring their equipment meet NIST standards.

October 14, 2020 10:54 am

Deep ocean warming in one place over 10 years.
Over the southern hemisphere as a whole there are widespread signs of cooling:

https://ptolemy2.wordpress.com/2020/09/12/widespread-signals-of-southern-hemisphere-ocean-cooling-as-well-as-the-amoc/

ResourceGuy
October 14, 2020 11:08 am

Send money!! Or we’ll round our data averages up some more and do more extrapolations.

Editor
October 14, 2020 11:23 am

I looked through and couldn’t find any link to the data. Does anyone know where it is to be found?

w.

Krishna Gans
Reply to  Willis Eschenbach
October 14, 2020 2:28 pm

Data Availability Statement
The PIES data used herein are freely available to the public from the NOAA National Centers for
Environmental Information (NCEI) via accession numbers 0125596, 0175745, and 0205725; the PIES and
CTD data are also available on request from the authors and at the project web page: http://www.aoml.noaa.
gov/phod/research/moc/samoc/sam/.

fred250
Reply to  Willis Eschenbach
October 14, 2020 2:44 pm

Maybe ask Mickey Mann 😉

October 14, 2020 12:43 pm

The effect of depth on temperature accuracy is -0.73 milli kelvins /metre.

Not sure if the 0.73 value is the same for salt water as it is for pure water.

Much research is going on to refine the 0.73 value.

See here in section 6.6 for a straight forward discussion in:

http://www.isotechna.com/v/vspfiles/pdf_articles/A%20Technical%20Guide%20and%20Standard%20for%20the.pdf

For a more complete discussion see Fig 1 in: https://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/final_reports/T/K3/CCT-K3.1.pdf

Where the temperature changes for each centimeter of depth increase.

Geoff Sherrington
October 14, 2020 5:27 pm

Followed the references about temperature sensor performance and concluded as follows, after seeing a makers claim of resolution of 0.00001 deg C.
A typical climate researcher seems to look at the graphs of temperature over time, to conclude that this (exquisite?) new data shows useful patterns about climate change.
OTOH, the seasoned hard scientist seems to find a complex mishmash of noise and wonders if one can extract a vald signal.
So, we ask people like lab chemists, or researchers in measurement labs, who set standards, what their experience shows. The lab chemists will likely say that it requires lots of money, special gear, lots of attention to detail, etc to consistently measure water at ambient temperature with accuracy better than +/- 0.05 deg.
The standards lab metrician might well recount experience that an accuracy of +/- 0.005 degrees is possible for a short time with much dedicated effort and frequent recalibration.

Dear reader, form your own conclusions. Remember that accuracy is not precision is not resolution and all contribute to uncertainty. Remember what national measurement lab specialists can achieve, then contrast that with the claims of these authors dealing with water in remote and unexplored deep seas.
Geoff S

Reply to  Geoff Sherrington
October 14, 2020 5:34 pm

What Geoff said ⤴︎

Also, the claims from climate scientists of accuracy, precision, and resolution generally sell on my planet at about a 75% discount from retail …

w.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Geoff Sherrington
October 15, 2020 11:29 am

Geoff and others

There are really two kinds of problems. One is measuring something with a constant value, such as a high-precision ball bearing. Assuming that things like temperature are controlled, and the same observer uses the same instrument for repeated measurements, the variations are largely random and speak to the precision with which the fixed value can be measured. A large number of measurements can improve the precision by averaging out the random variation.

In the second case, measuring something that does not have a fixed value, one still has the issue of random variation. However, more importantly, the parameter being measured varies over time, and possibly also varies with other influences, and it is highly likely that the temporal variance swamps the random variance. One is never measuring the same thing (e.g. temperature) twice, nor using the same instrument for all measurements. And, the variance is almost certainly not Gaussian. Thus, the appeal to the Central Limit Theorem to increase precision is NOT justified. In the case of a variable, what measurements lead to is the central value of the sample, and the probability that subsequent measurements will be within z number of standard deviations from the mean. ALL the measurements are limited by the characteristics of the measuring system and will not exceed the precision of any single measurement.

I have previously pointed out that the Empirical Rule in statistics strongly suggests that the standard deviation for the global average temperature is several tens of degrees Fahrenheit. Anyone who supports the claim that one can improve temperature precision for the global average (or even stations) by taking thousands of measurements, has to explain why the Empirical Rule can be violated.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/23/the-meaning-and-utility-of-averages-as-it-applies-to-climate/

SAMURAI
October 14, 2020 6:59 pm

It’s absurd to think the current network of deep-ocean temp monitors is capable of accurately tracking temp anomalies to thousandth of degrees Celsius per decade….

Leftist CAGW advocates have agendas and can easily “adjust” datasets with algorithms to get their desired “results” to assure their livelihoods and propaganda..

The penultimate example of manipulated data is, of course, Dr. Michael Mann’s hilarious Hockey Stick graph whose algorithms were so manipulative, one could input random National Hockey League game scores and still get a hockey stick looking graph….

Isn’t modern “#SCIENCE!!!(TM)” wonderful?

John Guy
October 15, 2020 12:49 am

Powerful deep Arctic Ocean geological heat flow forces are melting the ice, says geologist James Edward Kamis.

In an article entitled “Heat From Deep Ocean Fault Punches Hole in Arctic Ice Sheet,” Kamis punches his own holes in the “humans-are-melting-the-ice”chorus.This world class plate tectonic pull-apart rift is a 1,000-mile-long fault system on the seafloor that has in recent past pulsed massive amounts of heat into the overlying ocean and thereby melting large portions of the ice that floats above the heated ocean column.

Natural forces play dominate role in sea ice extent it is clear to most scientists, he continues, that non-atmospheric natural forces play the dominate role in sea ice extent and thickness.

These natural forces include variations in the Earth’s orbit, long-term cyclic changes in deep-ocean currents, and most importantly geologically induced heat and chemically charged fluid flow from deep ocean faults and volcanoes.

Source: https://climatechangedispatch.com/heat-from-deep-ocean-fault-punches-hole-in-arctic-ice-sheet.html/Second source:Explosive volcanism on the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel ridge, Arctic Ocean.Roughly 60% of the Earth’s outer surface is composed of oceanic crust formed by volcanic processes at mid-ocean ridges.   

Explosive volcanism on the ultraslow-spreading Gakkel ridge, Arctic Oceanhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/5275125_Explosive_volcanism_on_the_ultraslow-spreading_Gakkel_ridge_Arctic_Ocean  
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature07075  

Jon R
October 15, 2020 4:29 am

Their analysis is much worse than I had previously thought! marginalized analysis hardest hit!

October 15, 2020 8:43 am

Quiet in the depths. Really? I just wrote him this on the actual scale of variable submarine volcanism in the deep oceans:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/eqoebgjxmoyk50r/Another%20and%20Variable%20Source%20of%20Deep%20Ocean%20Heating.rtf?dl=0

Geoff Sherrington
October 17, 2020 3:26 am

Those interested in useful discussion about proper ways to measure accuracy, precision, etc, please see this 2010 paper by Pat Frank.
http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/Frank/uncertainty_in%20global_average_temperature_2010.pdf

If you read it, a lot more of the discussion above will have clarity and implications. Geoff S