The graph at Fig. 1 shows ocean water temperature fluctuations in WOD zone 7015 (Dredd Blog zone AM.SW.SE), in the Christmas Island area.
That is what is happening "down under" the surface where most of the water is.
The graph at Fig. 2 shows what has been happening in that zone concering sea level change as measured by PSMSL tide gauge stations #1361, #801, and #1371.
Fig. 2
In terms of thermal expansion and contraction (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction), it is not difficult to see that there is, like waves on the surface when they interact, cancellation or mitigation of impact.
That is, should thermal expansion take place on the surface due to warming by sunlight, it can be neutralized or enhanced by what is happening down under where most of the water is.
Fig. 3 Ocean Temperatures
The graph at Fig. 2 bolsters the notion that sea level change (SLC) is not tightly coupled with temperature sufficiently enough to equate sea level change MOSTLY to thermal expansion.
I am not speaking of the minor contribution of thermal expansion and contraction, I am speaking of the fingerprints of reality (SLC Fingerprints R Us, 2).
The ocean temperature at the same depths for S.E. Alaska is shown in Fig. 3, and the PSMSL tide gauge station records for that area (Fig. 4), showing sea level fall consistently during the same locale and time frame, illustrate the point further.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
"It makes we wonder what's going on down under ..."
The basic essence of the science of thermal expansion / contraction of pure water is that either adding or removing heat from the water causes an inherent trajectory (a direction either away from or toward the maximum density temperature of 4 deg C).
That is, after adding or removing heat, the resulting trajectory will either move the resulting temperature of the water closer to the 4 deg. C maximum density temperature, or away from it.
The consequence of moving in a direction toward 4 deg. C (e.g. from 2 deg C to 3 deg C) is contraction (shrinking).
The consequence of moving in a direction away from 4 deg. C (e.g. from 3 deg C to 2 deg C) is expansion.
Thus, when water is at 4 deg C, either the addition of heat, or the removal of heat will cause expansion, because either result is a trajectory away from the 4 deg C maximum density temperature.
That is because at that temperature either warming or cooling causes a temperature movement in a direction away from the maximum density temperature of 4 deg C (e.g. 4 deg C to 5 deg C causes expansion, just as a 4 deg C to 3 deg C temperature change also causes expansion).
The hourglass shaped graphic at Fig. 2 illustrates the point further (see Fig. 1 too).
Where the thermometer says the water temperature is below 4 deg C and warming is applied (represented by the pink arrow pointing toward the maximum density point of 4 deg C), contraction (shrinking) will take place (Fig. 2).
The opposite is the case when the thermometer says that the water temperature is above 4 deg C (etc.).
The principles I have explained using 4 deg C apply mainly to pure water, a different maximum density temperature applies to deep ocean water and any other water that is not pure (The Warming Science Commentariat - 2).
NOAA focused on aspects of a related event, ocean "freshening", a few years ago:
While previous studies have shown that the bottom water has been warming and freshening over the past few decades, these new results suggest that significantly less of this bottom water has been formed during that time than in previous decades. ...
“Because of its high density, Antarctic Bottom Water fills most of the deep ocean basins around the world, but we found that the amount of this water has been decreasing at a surprisingly fast rate over the last few decades,” said lead author Sarah Purkey, graduate student at the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle, Wash. “In every oceanographic survey repeated around the Southern Ocean since about the 1980s, Antarctic Bottom Water has been shrinking at a similar mean rate, giving us confidence that this surprisingly large contraction is robust.” ...
Changes in the temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, and dissolved carbon dioxide of this prominent water mass have important ramifications for Earth’s climate, including contributions to sea level rise [and fall] and the rate of Earth’s heat uptake.
(NOAA). Since the contraction / expansion principle is the same in all water, and those deepest coldest waters are warming, some sea level fall and some sea level rise is likely to result from it.
But not much, percentage wise, compared to ice sheet melt-water contributions from Greenland, Antarctica, and non-ice sheet glaciers.
This full reality needs to be addressed by The Warming Commentariat, because their TEM model that says "MOST sea level rise is caused by solar warming of the ocean surface" is not robust.
At this point, thermal contraction is, by definition, holding back sea level rise, rather than causing, as the TEM says, MOST of it.
The temperature involved is one thing, salinity is another.
So, the fact that "freshening" (decrease in salinity) has been taking place indicates that seawater's maximum density temperature levels are moving upward closer to the 4 deg C maximum density of pure water (Fig 1, Fig 2).
That freshening and warming which has been and still is taking place is surprisingly robust:
In addition, glacier melt has freshened shelf water near the deep-water formation regions in the Weddell Sea (Hellmer et al. 2011). In the Ross Sea, shelf water and bottom water have freshened over the past 50 years (Jacobs and Comiso 1997; Jacobs and Giulivi 2010). Finally, bottom waters off the Adelie Coast have cooled and freshened on isopycnals between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s (Aoki et al. 2005; Rintoul 2007; Johnson et al. 2008a; Jacobs and Giulivi 2010). ...
A slowdown of the AABW production rate is consistent with the freshening of shelf waters in AABW formation regions in the Ross and Weddell Seas in recent decades (Aoki et al. 2005; Jacobs and Giulivi 2010; Hellmer et al. 2011). The surface freshening increases the stability of the water column, making it more difficult for surface waters to sink, possibly causing a slowing of the bottom limb of the MOC (Stouffer et al. 2007). In the Ross Sea, the shelf water and RSBW have freshened by ;0.03 and ;0.01 decade21, respectively, between 1958 and 2008 (Jacobs and Giulivi 2010), most likely caused by recent glacial melt along the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas freshening the westward flowing coastal current (Rignot et al. 2008; Jacobs and Giulivi 2010). Along the coast at 1408E and within the central Australian–Antarctic Basin, AABW has also warmed and freshened (Aoki et al. 2005; Johnson et al. 2008a), again pointing toward a freshening of the shelf water end member of either, or both, RSBW and ALBW. In the Weddell Sea, the northwestern shelf water has freshened by 0.09 between 1989 and 2006, owing to increasing glacial meltwater input, changes in sea ice extent, and higher precipitation (Hellmer et al. 2011).
(Global Contraction of Antarctic Bottom Water, p. 5831-32, 5841). Most money is in the banks, so the robbers rob banks; most ocean water is below the surface, so, the deep water there is where the research needs to be focused.
At any rate, thermal expansion / contraction is a minor factor in sea level change (~5.1%).
The major factors of sea level change are ice sheet and glacial melt-water, ice sheet and glacial calving of ice into the oceans, and of course ghost water: The Ghost-Water Constant, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
The TEM is expressed as "most sea level rise over the past century was caused primarily by thermal expansion."
Let me set the stage by saying that most ocean water is located below the surface (duh), but the TEM is spread about as if all sea level rise takes place at "the surface warmed by the Sun, because water always expands when it is warmed."
It has not yet occurred to The Warming Commentariat that the most expansion and/or contraction will take place where the most water is.
Like the bank robber said, when asked "why do you rob banks?" ... "Because that is where the money is."
II. The Software
The software I developed to handle the "pi files of the order of pi" (Put Your Lab Coats On) is object oriented C++ source code (i.e. written in the C++ programming language).
Here are the "header files" for the WOD-13 file sections within their files that look like pi on the run:
Each class handles a section of the stream of numbers that look like a section of a pi stream.
III. What The Software Does
The software reads a WOD-13 file byte by byte, value by value, and cast by cast.
A cast is (think of a fisherman casting into the depths to see what bites) a session of data collection.
The data is very painstakingly traversed, packaged into "fields", then placed into an SQL table.
Once there, I can use it with other tables to present the under the surface picture of ocean reality by way of graphs made from CSV files.
Secondary modules of the software access the SQL database then write the csv files which a graphing program translates into the graphs I present to readers.
IV. Did I Mention Graphs?
Which brings us to Fig. 1, which is a digest of WOD file "CTDO7015" and "PFLS7015" which I downloaded from the WOD website.
They have 888 and 3,501 casts respectively, totaling 4,389 casts.
Which means that scientists took a lot of cruises and made a lot of casts of their instruments over many years to bring us this scientific data.
I am merely a messenger continuing the public service that they began.
Anyway, I hope you get my drift that a little graph on a little blog is not absent of any value to you.
V. The Revolutionary Thingy (Fig. 1,2)
The green and red squares that I placed on the lines in the Fig. 1 and Fig. 2 graphs are astoundingly nonintuitive in terms of what they mean.
Fig. 2 Expansion vs. shrinking
The lines they are placed on show up and down temperature variations over the years.
I placed a blue line crossing the graph at 4 degrees C in Fig. 1.
That is where water in general has its greatest compaction, its lowest volume, its max shrinkage (see section IV. @ The Warming Science Commentariat - 2).
Sea water is the same in principle, but in any case Fig. 2 tells what the TEM folks would see as an OMG reality.
I will detail (sea water vs. pure water) sameness-in-principle in future posts when I have salinity graphs combined with the temperature graphs.
Basically, the WOD data show that the great bulk of ocean water (which is not located at the surface where the Sun makes it glisten) is shrinking and expanding slowly all of the time (thermal expansion vs thermal contraction), due to thermal ups and downs.
The Warming Commentariat makes no mention of this big league dynamic, resting on the plastic fantastic populism of if it warms the surface, look out Miami.
Which is an exercise in fantasy like expecting a rookie minor league baseball player to cause the defeat of all the major league champions.
Which is not at all realistic.
VI. Conclusion
Many posts on this subject are coming.
Review the proof of concept posts for cases where the ocean level has dropped several feet and cases where it has risen several feet (e.g. Proof of Concept - 3).
TEM is Oil-Qaeda's sicko way of making the plastic fantastic people think sea level rise is solar cool.
Don't believe it for a second.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
