The Warming Science Commentariat - 13

Pelagic Depths

I. Background 

The bleep goes on following the Resplandy paper (On Resplandy Et Alia (2018)).

After the Resplandy paper was found to be in error, along comes another paper quoting it and others that are less error prone (How fast are the oceans warming?, 1/11/19).

And the echo chambers echoed it: Chinese Academy Oceans Warming Faster than Expected (same Reuters) (same Arctic Today) (same Eureka Alert!) (same French Press) (same RawStory).

We have more "coverage" than we have close analysis, so here Dredd Blog goes again with a criticism of the lack of scientific coherence on the subject of ocean heat content (OHC).

Let's begin at the beginning with three major factors that cause the Warming Science Commentariat (WSC) to not have a reasonable clue about the boundaries of the issue of OHC.

II. Three Factors

The first factor is that OHC models contain a false premise that has been pointed out for the better part of two decades (McDougall, 2003, Patterns: Conservative Temperature & Potential Enthalpy, TEOS).

All Layers

All Layers

All Layers

Yet, that practice continues:

"Recent estimates of observed warming resemble those seen in models, indicating that models reliably project changes in OHC ... Several studies have attempted to improve the methods used to account for spatial and temporal gaps in ocean temperature measurements ... Resplandy et al. used ocean warming outgassing of O2 and CO2, which can be isolated from the direct effects of anthropogenic emissions and CO2 sinks, to independently estimate changes in OHC over time after 1991."

("How fast are the oceans warming?", supra). That paper blatantly quotes the Resplandy paper without mentioning that the authors admitted their error.

The WSC are not deterred because they are unaware of the nuts and bolts of OHC detection systems.

Layer 0

Layer 0

The second factor is that the current standard of seawater thermodynamics (TEOS-10) is not being used or quoted in such papers some nine years after its introduction.

And the third factor is that the in situ measurements available are not being utilized.

The excuses for not doing so are lame.

The recent paper ("How fast are the oceans warming?") quoted above does not even mention The World Ocean Database (WOD).

That excellent source has billions of in situ global ocean measurements taken by researchers from all over the globe, but is currently shut down at this time due to a snit fit by The Shape Shifters of Bullshitistan who in effect closed the government agencies that maintain it.

III. The Search For OHC

Layer 8

Layer 8

Layer 8

I am reminded of what I wrote a while back.

Concerning OHC I wrote:

"If we do not know what to look for when searching for seawater "heat" then we are not likely to find it are we?"

(Patterns: Conservative Temperature & Potential Enthalpy - 2). What we are looking for when we search for OHC is potential enthalpy (McDougall, 2003; supra).

Today's graphs are made with WOD data and the TEOS-10 toolbox to depict thermodynamic proportion.

This is done by calculating h^O (potential enthalpy, the real OHC) and Conservative Temperature (CT) from actual measurements of the ocean to show that McDougall and his team and the official institutions of oceanography are correct.

They have been correct for many years and we owe them a debt of gratitude for the improvements to the tools for searching for OHC (to ignore them is unprofessional and erroneous).

IV. The Graphs Show Where To Search

Remember, for a moment, your high school thermodynamics teacher telling you that heat spontaneously "flows".

WOD Layers

The "direction" it flows in is from hot to cold, so warmer flows to cooler.

You are likely to conclude that since the warmer water generally tends to be near the surface and the cooler water tends to be deeper, we should check out the Hadopelagic Zone to see if any is getting there.

Today's graphs give us a taste of that.

The graphs labeled "All Layers" are composed using "all" (excluding XBT and surface only datasets) WOD temperature, salinity, and depth measurements from all WOD Zones.

The graph labeled "Layer 0" is composed using WOD temperature, salinity, and depth measurements from WOD Layer 0 (Arctic).

The graph labeled "Layer 8" is composed using WOD temperature, salinity, and depth measurements from WOD Layer 8 (Equator).

Let's cut to the chase and notice that the "All Layers" and "Layer 8" graphs show that even the deepest depth zone, the Hadopelagic, has "heat flux".

By "heat flux" I mean heat entering and leaving those depth levels.

V. Thermodynamic Proportion

In the graphs CT and h^O are placed side by side so you can visualize their proportional relationship (except the Hadopelagic zone where they are stacked CT over h^O).

The graphs show that CT and h^O are in exact proportion to one another at all ocean depths.

When a graph segment changes upward or downward it indicates that CT at that depth is changing, and that h^O is tied to CT (changes proportionally with it).

That, then, is the way to follow OHC.

When a graph line changes direction, a spontaneous flow of hot to cold, warm to cool, or less cold to colder has taken place.

Both the temperature and heat content go up and down in synchrony.

The last graph of "All Layers" concerning the Hadopelagic at the equator shows that the synchrony reaches all the way to the greatest depths.

If you think ocean heat is "missing" in a particular location, look deeper, or in some case shallower, because if a layer of cool water is above a warmer layer, the spontaneous flow will be upward (and sometimes even sideways).

The amount of heat in the ocean does not have to change as these ups and downs take place.

Where the heat is located is what changes (with some exceptions such as when heat leaves the ocean to enter the atmosphere, leaves the ocean to enter tidewater glaciers, or a colder ocean bottom) because the heat flows spontaneously as radiation to a cooler location (Second Law of Thermodynamics - hot flows to cold).

VI. Conclusion

It is way past time for the WSC to get with the official oceanography program (TEOS-10 which has McDougall's proofs in it).

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