A New Earth Thermometer?

Written by C. (Kees) le Pair on February 13, 2019. Posted in Current News

With so much controversy in the climate debate over the reliability of ground level (air) thermometers, is it time to reconsider implementing a better way to adduce our planet’s temperature using the 4,000 ARGO bouys in our oceans (image above)?

Below is a novel approach using ocean temperatures, rather than air temperature to improve reliability.

Abstract: The change in the temperature of the earth can be determined by the ocean as a thermometer. After correction for the changing water mass, the method produces values ​​for the temperature change within reasonable limits. ΔT between 0.06 and 0.41 ° C / century. ARGO data and ‘big data. analyses can increase precision.

Introduction

The best-known thermometer is a bulb filled with liquid connected to a capillary (a thin transparent tube). When the liquid warms, it expands more than the material of the bulb. Then the level in the capillary rises.

The earth, at least the thin layer of the earth in which we live (air, ground, water) is itself a thermometer. 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of that shell consists of water, the oceans. When it warms up, the water expands. Unfortunately, there is no capillary on its container, to make the expansion visible. But if one measures very precisely, one can also detect without capillary whether the water occupies more space and how much more.

Accurate measuring is not easy. Since 1993 we do that with satellites. Previously, there were other measurements. Then we compared the height of the sea level with that of the country. That is still happening all over the world. Here is a picture of the Netherlands’ Water Bureau since 1900:

FIG. 1

In 2008, the same agency presented an earlier version of these data on its website. It added a sincere excuse. They were not able to report to a major rise of the sea level (!). The measured increase is ~19 cm/century. In other places the rise is not the same. In Sweden and Finland the sea level is falling. The Swedes have their Northern ports because they are becoming too shallow. The iron exports are getting in jeopardy.

Their problem is that the country is rising, as it is in other parts of Scandinavia. In Finland the lift is 30 – 90 cm / century (!). Deep under the ground a tectonic plate is tilting. During the ice age it was pushed down by the weight of the glacier and now it is ‘jumping back’. That process has been going on for 10,000 years. At the moment Finland is gaining territory at a rate of about 7 km 2 annually.

Earth’s internal movement is not the only cause of uneven sea level rise in different places. Gravity is not equal everywhere. A large mass such as a mountain or a kilometer thick layer of ice pulls the water a bit towards it. And when the ice melts and the mass flows away, the attraction decreases and the ‘water hill’ in the neighborhood sinks. This is why, when the Greenland ice sheet melts, the sea level worldwide rises, but at the same time in nearby Reykjavik (Iceland) it remains virtually unchanged.

When ice on land melts, and meltwater flows to the sea, the amount of liquid in the terrestrial thermometer increases. The temperature of the water does not rise. It drops, think or an ice cube in your drink. But the level of the liquid goes up.

Summing up, the sea level rises globally by expanding and warming by melting or land based ice. (Floating ice does not affect the water level when it melts.) Averaging observations at various places in the world of the satellite measurements indicate a sea level rise of about 24 cm / century . The picture below is about 2008 based on IPCC report RCP8.5 shows the share of various contributions to the net globally.

Fig.2

It was copied from the IPCC (Graph: Figure 9.7 in SWIPA 2017) (RCP8.5)

Until 2008, the data come from measurements. Afterwards from IPCC speculation. The belief in future warming, as a result, more melting land ice is strong, as this picture shows. That also applies to the Scandinavians despite their struggle with a falling sea. For example, Professor Martin Vermeer (Aalto University Helsinki) warns – in a country that is constantly rising above sea level – “It is highly likely that we will change in the near future. at accelerating rates As temperatures go up, the sea level rise will increase further, and Finland will not be safe after that. “Twice” likely “, once even” highly “.

We also have such troublemakers in the Netherlands. Bart Verheggen, scientific researcher for air quality and climate change at ECN, wrote in the Dutch journal of Physics (April 2009):

“The sea level now rises by about 3 mm / year, about a factor 10 faster than in the past of years, Le Pair is wrong there.”

That he rounds off 24 cm / century to 30, I am ready to forgive him if must be. But with those 10 times faster he is quite a mile off. Please see the picture in the past 20,000 years.

Fig. 3

The Pacific Islands are demanding money in the United Nations to limit the damage. It is a source of income.

Observation stations have been installed with the help of the Australian government. The result I showed earlier in the passage about sea level. There is no cause for concern there; the corals grow fast enough.

Recently we know from satellite measurements that the surface area of ​​the majority of the islands is increasing. That is also the case worldwide with the sandy beaches. A. Luyendijk et al. Write in ‘The State of the World’s Beaches’:“Analysis of the satellite data shoreline data indicates that 24{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the world’s sandy beaches are eroding at rates of 0.5 m / yr, while 28{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} are accreting and 48{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} are stable.”

Only in places where people are actively engaged in works on the coastal sea, sand area disappears systematically.

When we use the ocean as a thermometer, we have the right solution for the liquid of melting ice. To this end, we use Figure 2. This choice is a bit risky, because it means that the IPCC has not ‘edited’ the measurement data on the glaciers and the sea level by satellites.

Then the ~ 24 cm rise in sea level per century worldwide ~ 5 cm is the result of expansion and the rest is caused by the melt of land ice. In order to calculate the temperature rise of the sea, a few assumptions are necessary.

• The average ocean depth in the thermal expansion.
• The average ocean temperature of that part. (The coefficient of expansion of water is temperature dependent and the dependency is not linear) Below 4 ° C γ is even negative, otherwise we could not skate.)
• Salt water has different properties than sweet water. (That difference we neglect.)

The escape to the use of averages for the parameters (depth of part of the ocean and expansion coefficient) in formulas is always an emergency step. In fact, we should know the conditions for each cubic meter of the ocean and integrate them. That is impossible. By using the ARGO data and by means of ‘big data’ analysis, a useful result could be achieved with accuracy. (Also, some control of the sea level rise of 24 cm / century minus 19 cm / century ( = 5 cm / century ) for the ice-melt is not superfluous.) Keeping these flaws in mind, the calculation is simple straight forward.

It is not the intention of this article to calculate the accurate value of the temperature change of the ocean. I would just like to show that a plausible result can be obtained in this way. So that perhaps better research groups could take up the calculation on the basis of the ARGO data.

• D is the average depth of the oceans
• A is the surface area of ​​the oceans (unchanging)
• γ (T) is the coefficient of expansion of the water at temperature T
• <T> is the average temperature of the ocean
• t is the time
• V = DA is the volume of seawater.
• dD / dt = 0.05 m / century

dT / dt = 0.05 / (γ.D)

The table below shows the results of the average of the average temperature.

At an average ocean depth of 1500 m <D <3500 m and an average temperature of 16 ° C <T <24 ° C, the earthly thermometer indicates a temperature rise of the ocean:

If less land ice is melting at the same sea level rise, causing an expansion of the water of 0.1 m / century in stead or 0.05 m / century, the temperature rise is between 16 & 24 ° C and narrower sea depth limits: 1500 & 2500 m will be:

Conclusion

The heat capacity of the ocean (~ 700 m), that plays a role for the climate, is greater than that of the air. Although the ocean surface area is 70{154653b9ea5f83bbbf00f55de12e21cba2da5b4b158a426ee0e27ae0c1b44117} of the earth as a whole, the heat capacity (4186 vs. 1005 J / kK respectively) makes the heat capacity around 200 times as strong as that of the atmosphere.

Average temperatures are common terms for climate talk. I have already calculated that they give rise to wrong conclusions.

But if I do not know what is the average temperature of the temperature of the temperature of the average temperature.

That aside from the fact that the semi-transparent water mass has a stronger interaction with solar radiation than the air. And hence has more influence on the climate.

Convection, waves and latent heat are an effective mechanism to spread the oceanic temperature over the globe far over land. And as I calculated earlier in the highs in a semi-transparent medium than in an opaque. Not unimportant when it comes to bridging 255 K to a livable world.

Read more at www.clepair.net

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