The Warming Science Commentariat - 5

Fig. 1

The warming commentariat (The Warming Science Commentariat, 2, 3, 4) in the past has proclaimed that "thermal expansion" has been "the" (or "a") major cause of sea level rise (SLR) since the Industrial Revolution began circa 1750.

I have hypothesized that their assertion, as a falsifiable hypothesis, is simply false (ibid).

One of the Romper Room types of experiments which they typically show is some kid filling a flask with water, then letting the flask sit a while to, perhaps, reach room temperature (no bias! mmm kay?).

Then, the kid uses a magic marker to place a line on the flask at the top of the water column.

Fig. 2 Explained Here at Section IV

Next comes the Bunsen Burner, which is used to heat the column of water in the flask.

After a bit of time, a new line is drawn on the flask at the top of the water column.

Voila, the second line is higher than the first one, hence "water always expands when it is heated."

To stretch the fantasy a bit further, this rap goes on to assert that because of global warming the ocean is warming more that it once did.

Ocean warming is therefore "a" or "the" major reason why global mean average sea level is rising (A Green Solar Example).

Fig. 3

The problem is that these experiments are fundamentally false because water expands or contracts when heated or cooled ... DEPENDING ON ITS TEMPERATURE at the time when that heating or cooling is applied to it (The Warming Science Commentariat - 2).

The oceans, like for instance The Great Lakes, generally consist of water layers that have different average temperatures at different depth layers.

For instance, depending on the latitude of a given ocean, the surface is warmer than the depths ... or the surface of the ocean is colder than the deeper parts.

Fig. 4

That is, if Fig. 1 was a graphic of the ocean at the Equator, the water temperatures at each layer would generally vary from warmest at the top, to colder and colder further and further down.

However, the opposite is generally the situation in areas near Antarctica.

The temperatures would be colder at the surface, and generally would be warmer at deeper layers.

So, depending on the temperature at the time of application, the water would expand or contract when sunlight or other sources of heat fell upon it, or it would expand or contract even when cooling sources fell upon it.

Fig. 5

Fundamentally, pure water at 4 degrees C is at its most condensed state (The Warming Science Commentariat - 2).

Ocean water (i.e. non-pure water) varies with chemical alteration (e.g. salinity), but holds to the same principles (see Fig. 2, and be sure to read Section IV here).

The "take home" from this is that preceding from a 4 degrees C thermometer reading, if you heat the water to 5 degrees C, that water will expand, or if you cool it to 3 degrees C, that same water will also expand.

This science may not be what we call "intuitive," but intuitive is sometimes just another word for "I guess" (The Gravity of Sea Level Change, 2, 3, 4, Don't Believe In Abrupt Sea Level Change - Know About It, 2, Proof of Concept , 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

Fig. 6

In closing, let me say that the excursion into the Southern Ocean database from NASA AMD has been a mixed bag (Databases Galore - 13).

IMO, their data quality control is wanting as is their documentation.

Nevertheless, I plod on, because it is, on balance, useful data.

I repeat again, the "bathtub model" and the "thermal expansion model" are falsified (The Bathtub Model Doesn't Hold Water, 2).

Fig. 7

The graph at Fig. 7 is Fig. 2 - Fig. 6 combined into one graph to show how the temperature increases and decreases can negate one another in terms of thermal expansion vs. thermal contraction.

In the "warming science commentariat" there has been no satisfactory explanation of the actual dynamics of thermal expansion.

At least not satisfactory or robust enough to be competent explanations.

Thus, the haphazard use of the bogus bathtub model fused with the utterly incomplete thermal expansion model have been presenting a half-baked scenario to the public.

That gloss-over acts as pabulum, or as a sedative.

Another illustration of the insufficiency of the presentations of layers of ocean water at different depths, and their intermingling at times but not at others, is seen in a previous post:

In one sense, it's [El Niño is] like an iceberg; most of it is submerged, but part of it sticks out above the sea's surface, as the wedge floats in the surrounding ocean. Partly because warm water is less dense than cool water, and also partly because El Niño waters are less salty than normal

Fig. 8

seawater. (It's always raining over an El Niño, and the rainwater dilutes the sea.) Both of these conditions contribute to buoyancy. A sharp temperature and density change—called the thermocline—floats about 100 meters below the surface, and marks the bottom of this warm "iceberg." The top layer of water may protrude 150 or more centimeters above sea level. This isn't so hard to picture if you think about tides, which also pile water up above sea level.

(On The Origin of the Sea-level Seesaw - 2). Sometimes the ocean waters mix and sometimes they do not, depending on a combinations of factors.

Finally, other data sources have shown (Fig. 8) that under the Antarctic ice shelf the warmest temperatures, for some reason, are at about 400m down (Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us? - 8).

Let's not reject the obvious, which is that Greenland, Antarctica, and non-ice-sheet glacial melt water (enhanced with ghost-water), are the two major contributors in sea level change dynamics (The Ghost-Water Constant, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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