On The Origin of Ghost Heat & Temperature

Fig. 1 NOAA Thermohaline Circulation

I. First

In today's post I want to explore a "cognitive black hole."

That cognitive black hole is the flow of heat in the oceans.

Let's explore the issue lost in the black hole by using the light of the Second Law of Thermodynamics to peer into the darkness.

II. Second

This one post is not designed to completely question or solve all the issues that may arise.

Instead, this one post is designed to question those issues that must be addressed prior to logically and reasonably moving on to another issue.

Not being one to move on, until every material issue taking place in a particular scenario is explained, I will make some comments or ask some questions that address skipped-over issues.

III. Third

The graphic at Fig. 1 is a NOAA explanation for how Thermohaline Currents
are engendered.

Concept One:

"... the heat provided by the Sun is effectively distributed throughout the top

Fig. 2 How deep?

few hundred meters of ocean water. However, the deeper ocean, which contains about 90% of all ocean water, does not mingle much with the surface layers ..."

"... warming (or cooling) of the deep ocean will likely occur on much longer timescales than is the case for the ocean's surface layers ... "

"Global warming will heat the deep ocean very slowly ..."

"Effects that began early during the industrial revolution in the 1800s are now being felt in the deep oceans."

(Windows To The Universe, emphasis added). The world according to measurements requires that we do not leave out measuring 90% of that world.

Concept Two:

The second law of thermodynamics has been stated in many ways. For us,

Fig. 3 All the way down dood!

Rudolf Clausius said it best:

"Heat generally cannot flow spontaneously from a material at lower temperature to a material at higher temperature."

So if you put something hot next to something cold, the hot thing won't get hotter, and the cold thing won't get colder. That's so obvious that it hardly needs a scientist to say it, we know this from our daily lives. If you put an ice-cube into your drink, the drink doesn't boil ... (Skeptical Science)

"The second law can be expressed in several ways, the simplest being that heat will naturally flow from a hotter to a colder body." - (What is the second law of thermodynamics?)

IV. Fourth

In some matters one has to "follow the money," but in this case one has to follow the

Fig. 4 Temperatures change at all depths

temperatures all the way down to the ocean bottom.

That is if one wants to see if a warmer layer's "heat will naturally flow" from that hotter layer to a colder layer per the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

That would seem to be the case shown in Fig. 4.

Using the average ocean depth (3688.08 m, 12,100 ft), the 90% / 10% separation sections of the ocean's average would be 368.808m (10%) and 3319.272 (90%).

Thus, in a thermodynamic "natural flow," for every 9 degree C loss of temperature in the entire 10% warmer layer, there would be only a 1 degree C increase in the entire cooler 90% layer.

Fig. 5

I am just saying that: for every temperature drop, the heat involved must flow to a colder region where the temperature will rise in proportion to the volume of water in that new location, that new region.

The graph at Fig. 4 shows temperature fluctuation up and down, which is an indication that heat is either entering a layer, or leaving it, to go to another layer with a different temperature.

The thermodynamic law is that the direction of travel is from warmer ocean water to colder ocean water (warmer region -> colder region).

The graphic at Fig. 5 shows how a band of heat can move lower in the water column without violating the laws of thermodynamics.

The amount of heat (red) moving downward stays the same amount (first law of thermodynamics) as it changes the temperature of the water at the moving heat column's edges.

That is, as the temperature of the cool water (dark blue) at the bottom of the heat band (red) changes by warming, the temperature at the top of the band (red) touching the warmer surface band (cyan) drops an equal amount so that energy is conserved (the temperature changes, but the quantity of heat does not).

Since the deeper water is generally colder, then by thermodynamic law the flow is generally from shallower depths of warmer water to deeper depths of colder water.

In some cases, the average temperature of the surface will drop as an equal rise takes place in deeper cooler water to balance the equation.

Some observers have misinterpreted actual events (where surface temperature drops) as a hiatus, without having carefully measured the depths beneath the band of ocean water that dropped in temperature.

Other observers have noticed that misinterpretation:

"According to the paper, arguably, the most appropriate single variable in Earth's system that can be used to monitor global warming is ocean heat content integrated from the surface to different layers and to the bottom of the ocean."

(Oceans act as a 'heat sink': No global warming ‘hiatus’). When that surface layer average temperature drops, there will have been an increase in average water temperature in the layer somewhere down below (unless the surface heat had flowed upward to cooler air above the ocean surface).

V. Fifth

The problem with the thermal expansion hypothesis is that it makes a similar mistake all too often, because in the vast majority of cases the deep cold water "heat sink" underneath is not sufficiently considered (Steric-Related Sea Level Change Estimates).

One of the papers in that link used measurements at depths from 0-750m, four of them used depths of 0-700m, and only one used 0-3000m (none of them used deep water WOD measurements >3000m, or considered the ocean as a whole).

They all also implied that the ocean surface water will stay at a fixed temperature year in and year out, rather than flowing from warmer to cooler water "naturally" (spontaneously).

They did not discuss the surface cooling at night, during rain deluges, or the flow of heat according to the laws of thermodynamics.

They assume a static bathtub model construct, and leave out the dynamics of 90% of the ocean under the water they hypothesized about.

VI. Sixth

The reality is that ocean water is in constant flux and temperatures are changing at all depths (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18).

But that dynamic is all too often "below the radar."

VII. Conclusion

Graphs which clearly show these variations and changes in ocean water at all depths have been produced repeatedly on Dredd Blog (e.g. The Layered Approach To Big Water - 7).

This is another case of "I see ghosts" (The Ghost-Water Constant, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

Those ghosts are temperature ghosts this time, not relocated ocean water ghosts.

The next post in this series is here.

The World According To Measurements - 3

Fig. 1a Annual steric volume

I. Thermal Expansion Formula

Volume is "The amount of 3-dimensional space an object occupies" (Math is fun).

Scientists calculate that the ocean contains some 1.37 x 10⁹ km³ of water (1,370,000,000 cu km).

If we have some sufficient source of recorded measurements of temperature and salinity, we can use that data, along with the formula V₁ = V₀(1 + β ΔT) to calculate thermal expansion and contraction of the entire ocean (i.e. volume change).

II. World Ocean Database

We do have that "sufficient source of recorded measurements of temperature and salinity" known as The World Ocean Database (WOD).

Fig. 1b Annual steric volume change

That source also has other data associated with the temperature and salinity, such as the depth, zone location, and date of the measurements.

Today's graphs were made from WOD data which I downloaded from that location (I use only the CTD and PFL datasets in the WOD).

The quantity of those measurements totals to about 0.97 billion (~970,000,000), but a small amount of under 5% are excluded due to error flags.

Fig. 1c Temperature/Salinity coefficient table

Since I use an SQL database system, once I had downloaded the data files, I then had to write software modules to translate them from WOD format into an SQL compatible format.

At it turned out, converting the format was by far the most difficult task out of the many software tasks I had to accomplish in this project.

III. Pumping The WOD Data Through The Formula

Next, in order to generate the CSV files with which to produce the steric, thermal expansion/contraction graphs shown at Fig. 1a and Fig. 1b, the software accesses the relevant SQL Server's tables, in sequential order (year to year), averages them, and finally prints out columns of data.

Fig. 2a

The purpose for that is to generate a mean average for each year for which there is data.

The range capacity of the software module is 1800 - 2100, or 300 years.

The software module records the mean temperature and salinity of the water, at all depths, and combines the hundreds of millions of measurements into annual averages for temperature and salinity.

Fig. 2b

Once that is done, I pump the data through a formula:

V₁ = V₀(1 + β ΔT)

The ocean volume value 1.37 x 10⁹ km³ is represented by V₀; the mean average temperature and change in temperature from one year to the next is represented by ΔT; which is nothing more than subtracting one year's temperature value from another (ΔT = T₀ - T₁); and the symbol β represents the salinity/temperature coefficient (see Fig. 1c).

And finally, the resulting volume for each year is represented by V₁.

The resulting volume change for the entire ocean over the 50 year span of time was an increase of about 12,210 km³ (about 244 km³ per yr).

That is the very small mean-average steric, thermal-expansion volume that was generated using the CTD/PFL WOD measurements.

IV. Sea Level Rise During The Fifty Years

Another "sufficient source of recorded measurements" comes from the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level (PSMSL).

Fig. 3a Temperature & Salinity

This is tide gauge station data taken at the surface on coastlines around the world.

It is in a much easier format to load into the SQL system, requiring little to no conversion, compared to the WOD data.

It covers a much longer time frame too.

However, since today's graphs are generated from combined WOD and PSMSL data, only data for the past half century are used.

That is because, in that time frame, there is a match year by year for both WOD and PSMSL data.

That combo is required to determine, primarily, whether or not thermal expansion is shown to be a major player in sea level change.

Fig. 3b Temperature & Salinity

The graphs at Fig. 2a and Fig. 2b show a mean average sea level change (increase) of 90.8736 mm, using data from 1,482 PSMSL tide gauge stations over a span of 50 years (1966-2016).

Mean sea level is deceptive unless one also considers that it is a median, meaning there are much higher and much lower values that go into a mean average.

For example, the highest sea level rise in that mean was 1216.25mm or 3.99032 ft., and the lowest sea level fall was 1096.33mm, or 3.59688 ft. (Permanent Service For Mean Sea Level).

Fig. 4a Temperature changes

Together, that is a  1216.25 + 1096.33 = 2312.58 mm (7.5872 ft) variation between high and low regional tide gauge station recorded sea levels (ibid).

Comparing steric, thermal expansion calculations with tide gauge station sea level records indicates that we have been wrong to say that "thermal expansion has been the main cause of sea level rise in the 19th and 20th centuries" (compare Fig. 1a, Fig. 1b with Fig. 2a, Fig. 2b, and see Fig. 1 here).

That assertion is generally made without using available data for depths below 3000m (Steric-Related Sea Level Change Estimates).

Fig. 4b Temperature

That, even though the waters at the deeper levels below 3,000m are more sensitive to temperature changes:

"Water ... at greater depth ... expands [and contracts] more for a given heat input ..."

(IPCC, see also Fig. 3, Fig. 4 here).

V. Change In Temperature-Salinity Patterns

The combined values of temperature & salinity per annum, mathematically forged into a mean average, have a pattern that looks far more similar to the thermal expansion and contraction patterns than the sea level change patterns do (compare Fig. 1a & Fig. 1b with Fig. 3a & Fig. 3b).

Fig. 5a Salinity

That is, those patterns look more like one another than they look like the sea level change patterns in Fig. 2a & Fig. 2b.

Even separately, the non-combined, individual temperature and individual salinity patterns are more akin to the steric, thermal volume change patterns than they are to the sea level change patterns (compare Fig. 1a & Fig. 1b with Fig. 4a, Fig. 4b and Fig. 5a, Fig. 5b).

Fig. 5b Salinity changes

VI. Faith And Trust

Our knowledge is more sound the more it is based on actual measurements, which are a type of observation.

Seeing sea level rise or fall with our eyes is an observation, but the measurements by equipment that are extensions of our senses are essential to a solid foundation of knowledge.

Nevertheless:

We don't often reflect upon the reality that our "knowledge" is either faith based or trust based, which fundamentally constitutes nothing more than the essence of "belief".

Since the secular and non-secular worlds are supposed to be utterly different from one another, for the secular realm such as science, let's call that belief "trust", and for the non-secular realm such as religion, let's call that belief "faith".

Whatever words we use, the essence of "belief" boils down to a dependence on other people, a belief in what other people write or say they know, as the real basis for what we call "our knowledge".

There is a substantial amount of discourse and debate, in some circles, about the impact that this reality should or should not have on us ...

(The Pillars of Knowledge: Faith and Trust?). It would seem that measurements are a substantial type of knowledge.

The measurements are available to us, so Dredd Blog adds a bit of verification to the equation, which makes knowledge more robust.

VII. Conclusion

We can hope that the ignorance of denial, now pulling off an ignorance coup, does not snuff out the world according to measurements.

If it does, then the rape of the minds of people using "alternate facts" is just around the bend.

That will eventually produce another increase in the form of mental illness called social dementia (Etiology of Social Dementia, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16).

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

Permanent Service For Mean Sea Level (Update)

Tide gauge records updated

The PSMSL folks updated their database on or about May 8th.

So, I downloaded the new monthly and annual datasets, then merged them into my SQL system.

I thought it might be time to distance this Dredd Blog post from the mean average realm, so, here are the ten highest and lowest RLR measurements in the new dataset (no mean averages today!).

A link to each tide gauge station in the high/low list is also provided.

Highs:

rlrMM = 8216.25 (1216.25mm; 3.99032 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 1002

rlrMM = 8125.62 (1125.62mm; 3.69298 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 1593

rlrMM = 8060 (1060mm; 3.47769 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 2126

rlrMM = 7986.5 (986.5mm; 3.23655 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 1364

rlrMM = 7745 (745mm; 2.44423 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 605

rlrMM = 7634.25 (634.25mm; 2.08087 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 122

rlrMM = 7608.58 (608.58mm; 1.99665 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 145

rlrMM = 7603.67 (603.67mm; 1.98054 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 808

rlrMM = 7591.67 (591.67mm; 1.94117 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 30

rlrMM = 7591.33 (591.33mm; 1.94006 ft.) above median 7000mm
station = 99

Lows:

rlrMM = 6421.11 (578.89mm; 1.89925 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 2028

rlrMM = 6325.92 (674.08mm; 2.21155 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 1061

rlrMM = 6300 (700mm; 2.29659 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 118

rlrMM = 6274.33 (725.67mm; 2.38081 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 405

rlrMM = 6233.04 (766.96mm; 2.51627 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 495

rlrMM = 6221.78 (778.22mm; 2.55322 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 1354

rlrMM = 6145.83 (854.17mm; 2.8024 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 41

rlrMM = 6115.42 (884.58mm; 2.90217 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 144

rlrMM = 5954.5 (1045.5mm; 3.43012 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 137

rlrMM = 5903.67 (1096.33mm; 3.59688 ft.) below median 7000mm
station = 1858

For those thirsty for the mean average, it is 7002.02 mm for the above figures ("The oceans have risen 2.02 mm folks, move along nothing to see here").

The "7000 mm median" and "RLR" are explained here.

A Mother Asks Her Sons

A son.

A mother ("I thought of my mother, who bought me my first Dylan album ... Having my own blue-eyed son, I sang the words to myself") asks her sons (Vladdy and Bobbie) ...

"...
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
..."

Bobbie responds as follows ...

I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
...
I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
...
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley
...
I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded with hatred
...
I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
...

(Proof). And Vladdy says ... ?

Anyway ...

Happy Mothers are aware of at least Five Senses ... eh?

Happy Mother's Day !

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Happy Mothers' (never have only one mother) favorite Nobel Laureate @ Literature ...

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