New Paper: Ocean Temperature Changes Are Uneven And Uncertain
A new paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation looks at how scientists monitor changes in ocean temperatures and finds a story of huge uncertainties and surprising findings.
For example, while warming might be expected to be fairly uniform, measurements suggest that it is regionalized, with parts of the South Pacific, in particular, warming more than elsewhere.
As the report’s author, Dr. David Whitehouse, says, it is hard to draw firm conclusions about what is happening in the seas:
“The oceans can absorb far more heat than the atmosphere, so temperatures changes are extremely small and therefore hard to measure reliably.”
“The energy that would raise the temperature of the atmosphere by 4 degrees C would only raise the ocean temperature by thousands of a degree, barely detectable.”
“Measuring changes in the ocean heat content are at the limits of our current capability and are made with significant uncertainties and unknowns.”
A recent claim that warming of the oceans was accelerating had to be withdrawn after errors were found in its uncertainty estimates by an independent scientist.
Cold Water? The Oceans and Climate Change can be downloaded here (PDF)
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Robert Beatty
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The sea surface temperature has been rising very slightly since 1980. We can tell this because the NOAA site at https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html has a record of the rising atmospheric CO2 level since that time – which is a proxy for SST according to Henry’s Gas Law.
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Case Smit
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The Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanology program reports that there are normally some 40 – 50 active volcanoes on the 30% of the earth’s surface that is above sea level. They do not keep a track of those below sea level on the remaining 70% of the earth where the crust is thinner.
The number of active undersea volcanoes is variously estimated (guessed at) to be up to 1,000 in number. Obviously, each time a significant volume of molten lava erupts, it would cause a large increase in the ocean water temperature in its vicinity. A cluster of eruptions would provide enough heat for a large regional warm spot which would have climate effects like an El Nino.
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Frank
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IIRC the top ten feet of the ocean contains the same heat energy as the atmosphere, which should point out to the casual observer that the ocean is the ultimate arbiter of global temperature, being on the average around 11,500 feet deep. This study just shows that the water temperature is associated with geography, which I would be stunned to find out is a wrong observation.
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