On Resplandy Et Alia (2018) - 3

Fig. 1 The GISTemp of global warming

I. The In Situ of Ocean Warming

If you haven't heard of "Resplandy et al. (2018)" you might want to review (On Resplandy Et Alia (2018), 2).

The authors of that paper sought to be innovative and discover "where da heat at" by unconventional means and unconventional methods.

Without using the plethora of available data with which to do it conventionally, they erred.

I am not going to go into it in this post except to show another way to try what they attempted to do by creating yet another example of going around the available data when it really isn't needed.

In other words, when you have adequate in situ measurements, why not use that data instead of making the deniers howl at the moon?

Especially since:

"The vast Southern Ocean, which surrounds Antarctica, plays a

Fig. 2 WOD meets GISTEMP & SOCCOM

starring role in the future of climate change. The global oceans together absorb over 90 percent of the excess heat in the climate system and roughly three-quarters of that heat uptake occurs in the Southern Ocean.

Despite its critical role in our climate system, the Southern Ocean has gone almost completely unobserved."

(SOCCOM, emphasis added, originally quoted here). I had to use the Wayback Machine's historical copy because the SOCCOM folks, for some reason "lost" the original web page on their website from which I originally quoted.

Nevertheless, I think that the SOCCOM folks were correct to write what they did on their website.

I think so for the reasons I posted in The Warming Science Commentariat - 14.

Especially since:

"The caveats are (as usual) there are still imperfections in the ocean models being used and the systematic biases in old observations are always being looked at. The differences between the two studies are thus understandable from their study design."

(New Ocean Heat Content Histories, Real Climate). Why use an indirect approach when ample data now exists?

I mean ample data to show that catastrophic ice sheet melt is taking place before our very eyes.

IMO, that "catastrophic ice sheet melt" is due to exactly what the SOCCOM people wrote about on their website.

II. Another Way To Make The Deniers Howl

Anyway, on to the gist of today's post.

The World Ocean Database manual contains two tables in Appendix 11, described as:

APPENDIX 11. ACCEPTABLE RANGES OF OBSERVED VARIABLES AS A FUNCTION OF DEPTH, BY BASIN

The range values provided has range values for temperature, salinity, oxygen,

Fig. 3 WOD meets only GISTEMP

phosphate, silicate, nitrate, pH, chlorophyll, and alkalinity.

The range values in the tables are used to help identify the most obvious questionable values for these variables.

For simplicity, please note that ranges are given on 33 standard levels (+ one for depths deeper than 5500 m).

(WOD Manual, p. 78, PDF). I used the in situ temperature, salinity, and depth values of two of the tables in that Appendix 11 to generate today's graphs.

I derived a median or mean average seawater temperature for all 30 of the ocean basins of the world, at 33 individual depth levels, by simply adding the maximum and minimum values for each of those 33 depth levels together.

Then, simply dividing by two.

Not only that, I also used the latest data from GISTEMP so as to conform those cast-in-concrete maximum / minimum values in Appendix 11 to current atmospheric temperature anomalies since circa 1800 CE.

In other words, for each year that the GISTEMP global average decreased, the mean average OHC decreased, and for every year that the GISTEMP value increased, the OHC mean average increased.

Thus, the graphs at Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 show the abstract results, which have the same pattern as the real data, which is the GISTEMP data.

III. The Gist of SOCCOM

The graphic at Fig. 1 shows the plethora of world wide GISTEMP stations that are used to generate the temperature anomaly trends of global warming.

The graph at Fig. 2 shows what happens when the SOCCOM statement ... "most OHC ends up in the Southern Ocean" ... is for real.

Fig. 3 shows what happens when a "bathtub model" like imaginary situation takes place, where all heat is perfectly and evenly distributed around the globe.

IV. The Real OHC

Fig. 4 The Real OHC

The graph at Fig. 4 shows the real Conservative Temperature (lower left pane) and the real OHC, a.k.a. (h^O) or potential enthalpy (lower right pane).

They are compared with the abstract values that were also shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3.

The idealized patterns in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 do not take into consideration that OHC is modified when the seawater's heat content is used to melt the vast ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

The Resplandy paper alleged that the oceans have absorbed about 60% more heat than what has been reported over the years.

V. So, You Might Ask:
"Dredd, What Is The Value Of This Exercise?"

None, in terms of actually tracking down ocean heat content and ocean heat flux.

It does, however, show that there are any number of methods one can use to avoid the very hard work required.

I mean "very hard work required" in order to secure the WOD, OMG, SOCCOM, WHOI, and other in situ measurement sources, then load them into a favorite data server; a server that handles the vast amount of data available; an SQL or other suitable database server ready for subsequent use.

It also shows that the mathematically perfect display of abstract data is how we think sometimes, e.g. the "bathtub model" (The Bathtub Model Doesn't Hold Water, 2, 3, 4, 5).

But, that is not the real world according to measurements (The World According To Measurements, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21).

VI. Closing Comments

Gather the data available for the real-world analysis and use it (Build Your Own Thermosteric Computational System, 2).

"The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement." - George Will

The previous post in this series is here.

---

---

---