In the previous post of this series the ice-melt temperatures related to Ocean Heat Content (OHC) were graphed for the six Regions/Areas along the coast of Antarctica.
That effort was in response to a couple of scientific papers which were misleading, but I did not delve into all of the most basic reasons for those kinds of misleading papers.
The most basic reason for the erroneous concepts about OHC is the failure to apply the principles of TEOS-10 in the first place.
OHC in the official international oceanography nomenclature (TEOS-10) is "Potential Enthalpy":
"it is perfectly valid to talk ofpotential enthalpy, h0, as the 'heat content'
So, today I am presenting improved graphs which are supported by HTML tables that contain the TEOS-10 values which the graphs were generated from. (you can generate your own graphs from that HTML data)
The second basic reason for scientific papers that misrepresent the nature of OHC is the ignoring the application of Quantum Physics to oceanography (Fig. 1, cf. The Ghost Photons, 2, 3).
The author of the article linked-to in that post, although not a virologist, concluded:
"Conclusion
So trovants aren’t technically alive, this isn’t some horror movie waiting to happen. However, these rocks do change over exceptionally long periods of time.
Although not strictly alive, trovants have some characteristics of something that is living. Although not sentient, these rocks do grow and move.
It is not surprising that they have become the stuff of myth to the locals over the centuries. They are the closest thing to living we can consider rock to be and have been around much longer than any human on the planet, thus having encountered more “life” than all of us!"
Concerning viruses, a commercial virologist had more of a problem concluding that a virus is sorta, kinda, maybe alive, depending:
"Hello everyone. I'm Vincent Racaniello and this is Virus Watch, the weekly video report, and what's happening in the amazing world of viruses. Today we're going to tackle the thorny question that always generates a lot of discussion. Are viruses alive? First we have to define life. It's not very easy to do and many people disagree on the exact definition on what is living. But we have to have a definition otherwise we can't answer the question of whether viruses are alive or not. So here we go. Something that's living should have most of these following properties: it should be composed of one or more cells; it should have homeostasis (this is the ability to regulate important properties such as pH or temperature); it should have the ability to make or generate energy; to grow and to adapt to new environments by evolution; also to respond to stimuli (like a plant moving towards light); and of course it must be able to make more of itself, to reproduce. Here's a model of a simple virus that happens to be poliovirus. The virus particle consists of a protein shell that you can see. It's this plastic shell that protects the RNA genome that's inside of it. On its own this virus particle doesn't meet any of the requirements for being alive; it's not a cell; it doesn't have homeostasis; it can't make energy; can't adapt to new environments; it can't evolve; and can't reproduce. This particle here can't do any of these things. But wait, viruses do evolve right, and they do replicate of course. So what's going on? The key is that all the things carried out by viruses happen only after the virus enters a cell." ... I define a virus as an organism with two phases."
(Virology Blog, Youtube transcript, emphasis added). Vincent Racaniello did not originally embrace the "an organism with two phases" hypothesis, or struggle with a definition:
"Viruses are not living things. Viruses are complicated assemblies of molecules, including proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, and carbohydrates, but on their own they can do nothing until they enter a living cell.Without cells, viruses would not be able to multiply. Therefore, viruses are not living things."
(Virology Blog, Virology 101). So, Vincent Racaniello now has the mind of two scientists who have opposing views combined into one.
His view is a composite, a view with "two phases", however, the "yes, viruses are alive" scientist in the following link concludes with "Alive or not, viruses are doing rather well!" (Are Viruses Alive).
The problem is not just semantic as Vince, Nigel, and David assert, because they also infer that it is a nomenclature problem (as does Dredd Blog:Good Nomenclature: A Matter of Life and Death, 2, 3).
Those three commercial scientists also use the word "organism" to refer to a virus, but that is also loosy goosy nomenclature:
"Viruses are not typically considered to be organisms because they are incapable of autonomous reproduction, growth or metabolism. Although some organisms are also incapable of independent survival and live as obligatory intracellular parasites, they are capable of independent metabolism and procreation. Although viruses have a few enzymes and molecules characteristic of living organisms, they have no metabolism of their own; they cannot synthesize and organize the organic compounds from which they are formed. Naturally, this rules out autonomous reproduction: they can only be passively replicated by the machinery of the host cell. In this sense, they are similar to inanimate matter."
(Wikipedia, Organism). Organism smorganism, alive is dead and dead is alive, "we want them dead or alive" is not only and old western wanted poster position, it is also the "take home" from the dialogue of those scientists.
III. Bifurcation Is Not Just For Bipeds Anymore
In the Dredd Blog series ("Weekend Rebel Science Excursion") the failure to keep the notion of evolution a single historical sequence was elaborated upon:
"Regular readers know that in various and sundry posts on the Dredd Blog System we have bemoaned the dearth of research within evolutionary circles concerning the subject of abiotic evolution or Abiology.
... the science of life or living matter in all its forms and phenomena, especially with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior.
(Dictionary, emphasis added). A fair definition of Abiology, then, ought to be:
... the science of non-life or non-living matter in all its forms and
phenomena, especially with reference to origin, growth, reproduction, structure, and behavior.
(see e.g. abiological). One problem or question that biologists struggle with is the art of defining life (Erwin Schrodinger, PDF), but, to be sure that arises most often inside the twilight-zone between the abiotic and the biotic realms."
In the previous post in this series I pointed out two papers that are falsifiable, (papers must be falsifiable to be properly composed), but these two are now falsified.
That is obviously not what the authors would have wanted, but we all make mistakes as we generate hypotheses as an attempt to discern natural events.
Anyway, in that post I did point out that, for one thing, they did not use TEOS-10 which is the international standard for seawater/oceanography research (TEOS-10 Software: Use It Or Lose It).
Fig. 2 Bellingshausen Sea Sector
A. Paper One
The first paper that I criticized alleged that the ocean was at its "hottest in the historical record" (in terms of global warming impact) in 2022.
That can't happen unless the atmospheric global warming in 2022 was the "hottest in the historical record" (which as I pointed out, it wasn't).
2022 was the 5th warmest year on record.
So, the ocean received only the 5th warmest annual amount of warming.
B. Paper Two
The second paper I criticized alleged that the west wind did such a number on the Amundsen Sea area of Antarctica that we don't have to worry about a "runaway" ice sheet melt event there.
Nay, not so.
Fig. 3 Indian Ocean Sector
II. My Criticism Continues
I did some graphs with updated WOD, SOCCOM, Woods Hole, and OMG data composed of in situ measurements.
I processed, with TEOS-10 software, that in situ data from those sources related to all the "sectors" along the coast of Antarctica, including the Amundsen Sea area.
I then generated the graphs in Fig. 1 through Fig. 6 which show that the Conservative Temperature (CT) and the ice-melt-temperature of the tidewater glacier ice, together indicate that the grounding line area of those glaciers is constantly exposed to melt conditions no matter which way the wind blows.
A previous post's appendix reveals further information about this type of graph (Appendix D).
The "sector" of each graph equates to the geographical "area" shown on Fig. 7 as follows: Area A [West Indian Sector], Area B [East Indian Sector], Area C [Ross Sea Sector], Area D[Amundsen Sea Sector], Area E [Bellingshausen Sea Sector], and Area F [Weddell Sea Sector] (see link at Fig. 7).
III. Scientists Who Inspired My Criticism
My criticism is in accord with statements by Dr. Rignot in a "talk" he gave following his being voted into the National Academy of Sciences:
Fig. 4 Ross Sea Sector
"So let me explain to you how this works. This is the Antarctic and [the] water column in the polar ocean is organized very differently from the tropics. You don't have warm water at the top and cold water at the bottom ... it's the opposite of cold water at the top and the warm water ... is at the bottom ... you have to lower instruments very deep down close to the glaciers ... that mixture of ice and sea water [h]as a melting point of minus 2 degrees at the surface and when the water is at two kilometres [(2000 meters)] [depth] becomes minus 3.5 so THERE'S PLENTY OF HEAT AVAILABLE TO MELT THE ICE from beneath and ESPECIALLY IN THE DEEPER PART OF THE ICE THE GROUNDING LINE where we have RATES in Antarctic APPROACHING ... 100 METER PER YEAR whereas AT THE SURFACE THE RATE OF TURNOVER IS more like A METER PER YEAR. So it's 2 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE DIFFERENCE FROM THE TOP AND BOTTOM and by melting the ice below from below you remove a lot of basal friction in front of the grade you lose you remove a lot of basal resistance to the flow and THE GLACIERS FEEL THAT TREMENDOUSLY MUCH MORE THAN THE FEELING OF THE SURFACE. so the heat for the Antarctic comes from the Antarctic circumpolar current which circulates clockwise and is pushed by the westerly winds and you might ask how is changing to with climate warming and is related to climate warming so what's up insignia Antarctic is that we don't have a strong snoring video feedback it's too cold to melt the snow it's not nothing very much in fact ... the
Fig. 5 Weddell Sea Sector
models don't capture the change in wind in Southern Ocean they don't capture the way that warm water is carried onto the continental shelf and wishes the glaciers if you want a model to do that you cannot run it at a hundred kilometer resolution you have to run it at a kilometer resolution and we cannot do that with global models right now ... it started doing its thing in Antarctica all the red spots here are areas of rapid change and we saw ice shafts collapse in the 1990s and 2000 in the peninsula and witness that some of the glaciers not only felt the effect of less flow resistance in front of them they sped up by a factor three to eight in response to that now if you do a fall experiment and do this all around the Antarctic and collapse all these are shafts and say for that you speed up the gracious by a factor six point five you raise sea level by four meters per century and four meters per century it was exactly the rate that was observed for several century during meltwater pass one day fourteen thousand years ago when a lot of the ice sheets in the northern a sphere fell apart in some parts of Antarctica as well so it's not completely realistic to see that because it's happening in the Antarctic Peninsula we paid a lot of attention also in the
Fig. 6 W. Pacific Sector
Western Antarctic Ice Sheet sector in the Pine Island and Thwaites glacier this glacier is a hundred and twenty kilometers wide all of these glaciers feel the effect of more warm water they are spinning up by 75% they are retreating at one to two kilometers per year there's not a single glacier on the face of the earth in Alaska alpine landscape or Himalaya battery trees that bizrate these are the fastest retreating glaciers on the face of the earth but you wouldn't see it with a naked eye because it's happening a kilometer below the surface you can see it with satellite techniques another glacier that I got attention is Totten glacier this is a single glacier in East Antarctica which holds 3.5 meter sea level rise you don't want to teach that one but it's already showing sign of mass loss and filling and in 2016 an Australian expedition found the presence of warm water in front that explains what the glacier is doing what it's doing right now so we are on the
trajectory of a metre [of SLC] per century ... DAMAGE doesn't take place with multi meter sea level rise it STARTS WITH ONE METER [OF] SEA LEVEL RISE. We have a lot of people living within a meter of sea level rise [and] a lot of infrastructure. San Francisco doesn't have an airport with one meter sea level rise so we have to communicate this risk and one of the difficulty when we talk about the polar regions and sea level rise is that THE [SCIENTIFIC] COMMUNITY TENDS TO BE CONSERVATIVE IF YOU'RE CONSERVATIVE YOU LOOK LIKE A BETTER SCIENTIST THAN IF YOU ACTUALLY TELL THE FACTS THAT ARE PRETTY SCARY ... sometimes we will have to move or to protect some people will be able to protect some people will have to move and it's coming with all kinds of issues because the poor populations will be affected the most and you can have massive immigration from climate change instead of violence as we experiment in today my last slide so what can we do instead of the band-aid solution which is to adapt which we'll have to do anyway is to unplug the experiment before the patient dies and avoid a commitment to multi level sea level rise and and I think that that commitment is not way ahead of us I think we have right here we already unplug a lot of the systems ... we're looking for is a world informed by science instead of Twitter ..."
(See video below for the audio/visual ... the Youtube software translated it, I added some emphasis).
What Dr. Rignot said was in total agreement with Dr. Hansen who was quoted in the previous post of this series.
But Don't Look Down is the propaganda reality we are living with, and that is not a comedy.
There is a constant suicidal "look over there" discord that prevents a proper response to the "pretty scary" dynamics of our time (How To Identify The Despotic Minority - 14).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
There is quite a difference between first place and fifth place (Fig. 1), so what does the difference in the two contrasting sources mean?
II. Various Reasons
I don't know, but the general scientific understanding is that about 90-93% of global warming that takes place in the atmosphere flows into the oceans (Wikipedia, IUCN).
That would mean, at first blush, that in 2022 the oceans received the fifth most global warming induced heat, and that another year received the most.
I do know that the paper Cheng et al. 2023 (linked-to above) does not use the international standard (TEOS-10) for calculating ocean heat content (Wikipedia).
Improper nomenclature and practice has been removed by those who use TEOS-10:
"Here, we are concerned with issues related to the properties of seawater that have only recently been widely recognized because of research resulting in the Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater 2010 (TEOS-10). These issues mean that the intercomparison of different models, and comparison with ocean observations, needs to be undertaken with care.
In particular, it is widely recognized that the traditional measure of heat content per unit mass in the ocean (with respect to an arbitrary reference state), the so-called potential temperature, is not a conservative variable (McDougall, 2003). Hence, the time change in potential temperature at a point in space is not determined solely by the convergence of the potential temperature flux at that point. Furthermore, the non-conservative nature of potential temperature means that the potential temperature of a mixture of water masses is not the mass average of the initial potential temperatures since potential temperature is “produced” or “destroyed” by mixing within the ocean’s interior. This empirical fact is an inherent property of seawater (e.g. McDougall, 2003; Graham and McDougall, 2013), so treating potential temperature as a conservative tracer (as well as making certain other assumptions related to the modelling of heat and salt) results in contradictions, which have been built into most numerical ocean models to varying degrees.
These contradictions have existed since the beginning of numerical ocean modelling but have generally been ignored or overlooked because many other oceanographic and numerical factors were of greater concern. However, as global heat budgets and their imbalances are now a critical factor in understanding climate changes, it is important to examine the consequences of these assumptions and perhaps correct them even at the cost of introducing problems elsewhere. These concerns are particularly important when heat budgets are being compared between different models
and with similar calculations made with observed conditions in the real ocean."
"This document describes the International Thermodynamic Equation Of Seawater – 2010 (TEOS-10 for short). TEOS-10 defines the thermodynamic properties of seawater, of ice Ih, and of humid air, and has been adopted by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission at its 25 th Assembly in June 2009, replacing EOS-80 as the official description of seawater and ice properties in marine science."
(TEOS-10 Manual, emphasis added). When a non-standard is used the results have, historically, ended up with some degree of confusion.
III. Some TEOS-10 Results
The conclusion of Cheng et al. 2023 in its broadest sense, which is that the oceans continue to warm at a dangerous pace, is entirely correct, even though the specifics that scientists use for minute detail is not.
In today's Appendices (Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C, Appendix D) I present graphs concerning Antarctica that were generated using the C++ TEOS-10 library (available at the TEOS-10 website here).
Appendix A shows graphs of Antarctica (Sectors A,B,C,D,E and F); the data types are Conservative Temperature (CT), Potential Enthalpy (Ho), and Photon Count (mol).
CT and Ho are explained by Dr. McDougall in the paper above ("The
interpretation of temperature and salinity variables in numerical ocean
model output and the calculation of heat fluxes and heat content").
Appendix Bshows ice melt in terms of gigatons.
Appendix C shows the temperature at which ice melts (TEOS-10 calculations) as well as the temperature of the seawater touching or in 1 meter proximity to the glacier.
Appendix D shows the same as Appendix C but has more detail explaining the graph's lines.
V. Closing Comments
The grounding lines in the sectors total about 53,239 km in length (7,446 km, 6,724 km, 12,694 km, 8,594 km 3,814 km, and 13,967 km).
That length changes in small percentages of increase and decrease as the tidewater glaciers melt, calve, and flow into the Southern Ocean.
But all along that length the ice is being melted at various rates because the ambient seawater is above the melting point of the ice (Appendix C, D).
Papers that ignore these realities, such as Inter-decadal climate variability induces differential ice response along Pacific-facing West Antarctica leaning on aforementioned models ("We attribute this to ... suppression of westerly winds in the Amundsen Sea, which reduced warm water inflow to the Amundsen Sea Embayment ... Thus, model projections accounting for regionally resolved ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions will be important for predicting accurately the short-term evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.").
The authors Christie et al. are following the same pattern Hansen et al. have warned about for decades:
"I suspect the existence of what I call the `John Mercer effect'.
Mercer (1978) suggested that global warming from burning of fossil
fuels could lead to disastrous disintegration of the West Antarctic ice
sheet, with a sea level rise of several meters worldwide. This
was during the era when global warming was beginning to get attention
from the United States Department of Energy and other science
agencies. I noticed that scientists who disputed Mercer, suggesting that his paper was alarmist, were treated as being more authoritative. It was not obvious who was right on the science, but it seemed
to me, and I believe to most scientists, that the scientists preaching
caution and downplaying the dangers of climate change fared better
in receipt of research funding. Drawing attention to the dangers of
global warming may or may not have helped increase funding for
relevant scientific areas, but it surely did not help individuals like
Mercer who stuck their heads out. I could vouch for that from my own
experience. After I published a paper (Hansen et al 1981) that
described likely climate effects of fossil fuel use, the Department of
Energy reversed a decision to fund our research, specifically
highlighting and criticizing aspects of that paper at a workshop in
Coolfont, West Virginia and in publication (MacCracken 1983). I believe there is a pressure on scientists to be
conservative. Papers are accepted for publication more readily if they
do not push too far and are larded with caveats. Caveats are
essential to science, being born in skepticism, which is essential to
the process of investigation and verification. But there is a question
of degree. A tendency for `gradualism' as new evidence comes to light
may be ill-suited for communication, when an issue with a short time
fuse is concerned."
(The Warming Science Commentariat - 12, quoting Dr. James Hansen). As Dr. Rignot points out in the video below, the melt that matters is taking place 1000-2000 meters below the ocean surface at the grounding line.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
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