The Layered Approach To Big Water - 6

Fig. 1 The WOD Ocean World

This post will complete the first look at all of the ocean areas on Earth (The Layered Approach To Big Water, 2, 3, 4, 5).

The WOD database has 18 layers based on latitudes, which are numbered 0 through 17.

The final four layers are 0,1, 16, and 17 (Fig. 1).

These last four are in some rugged areas, so I am not including sea level graphs because of the dearth of PSMSL tide gauge stations in these harsh environments.

Fig. 2

These graphs have some sharp changes in temperature.

For example, Layer Zero shown in Fig. 2 has a large spike circa 1992, then several more in recent years.

Since the record for low sea ice in the Arctic (until this cycle), and Greenland's maximum surface melt, was set in 2012, the spike in those years seems reasonable.

I am not sure about the 1992 spike however, but I will look into it later when I assimilate the latest update (Jan. 2017) to the WOD dataset.

Fig. 3

Layer One is shown in the graph at Fig. 3, and it too is quite active, in terms of temperature changes, because it is up in that volatile area too.

Fig. 4

But the most strange and active areas are Layer Sixteen and Layer Seventeen.

Fig. 5

The surface layer of Layer Sixteen is shown to be colder than deeper areas, which is typical of areas near coasts with ice sheets, Antarctica in this case.

The most strange is Layer Seventeen (Fig. 5) because it is a simulation, except for the years 2008 and 2009.

There were only two years with data so I could not graph it that way.

So I used data from Layer Sixteen to fill in missing Layer Seventeen data, then guestimated the missing years, assuming a 5% variation from Layer Sixteen.

Remember how harsh of an area Antarctica is, especially around areas where the sea ice grounds to the ocean floor.

It takes specialized drones (even more sophisticated than ARGO) to travel under the ice to gather measurements.

Which is why there are so few CTD and PFL measurements.

So, take Fig. 5 with a grain of salt, it is pure guesswork except for 2008 and 2009.

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