The Photon Current - 15

Fig. 1 Atlantic Ocean (World Ocean Database)

I. Introduction

This series concerns the flow of photons from the Sun through what was once simply called 'space', but is now considered to be 'Spacetime', until they flow  into the land masses and the oceans of the Earth (The Photon Current, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14).

When the ocean's seawater molecules absorb those photons it increases the 'heat content' of those oceans (that 'heat content' is technically called 'potential enthalpy'; scientific symbol 'h⁰'):

"it is perfectly valid to talk of potential enthalpy, h⁰, as the 'heat content' and to regard the flux of h⁰ as the 'heat flux.' " (Potential Enthalpy: A Conservative Oceanic Variable for Evaluating Heat Content and Heat Fluxes).

...

"Potential temperature is used in oceanography as though it is a conservative variable like salinity; however, turbulent mixing processes conserve enthalpy and usually destroy potential temperature. This negative production of potential temperature is similar in magnitude to the well-known production of entropy that always occurs during mixing processes. Here it is shown that potential enthalpy—the enthalpy that a water parcel would have if raised adiabatically and without exchange of salt to the sea surface—is more conservative than potential temperature by two orders of magnitude. Furthermore, it is shown that a flux of potential enthalpy can be called “the heat flux” even though potential enthalpy is undefined up to a linear function of salinity. The exchange of heat across the sea surface is identically the flux of potential enthalpy. This same flux is not proportional to the flux of potential temperature because of variations in heat capacity of up to 5%. The geothermal heat flux across the ocean floor is also approximately the flux of potential enthalpy with an error of no more that 0.15%. These results prove that potential enthalpy is the quantity whose advection and diffusion is equivalent to advection and diffusion of “heat” in the ocean."  (A thermodynamic potential of seawater in terms of Absolute Salinity, Conservative Temperature, and in situ pressure).

Those two papers quoted above indicate that the energy of the Sun in the form of visible photons ('light') and invisible photons ('infrared') compose 'heat content' in the oceans.

Those photons, whether they are visible to us or not, are absorbed by molecules of seawater:

"Visible sunlight makes up about 40 percent of the total energy Earth receives from the sun. The rest of the energy Earth receives from the sun is not visible. About 50 percent is infrared energy, nine percent is ultraviolet (UV) energy, and one percent is X-rays or microwaves. Electromagnetic radiation is made up of electromagnetic waves that are defined by their wavelength and frequency. Of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, the human eye can view only a small portion of electromagnetic waves in the form of light." 

(Light Energy and the Electromagnetic Spectrum). Therefore photons can be considered as the quanta that comprise 'potential enthalpy' or 'ocean heat'.

I use the GISS surface temperature data as an indicator of the pattern of that heat energy at the surface and beyond.

Those GISS values are taken from the 'ocean surface anomaly' values stored in a GISTEMP 4 data CSV file.

II. Surface Heat and Deep Heat

Fig. 2 GISStemp Projection (estimate)

The graphs shown in today's post indicate that as the photons are absorbed by seawater and become a part of the potential enthalpy heat content they then are subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

They will then only flow from hot to cold, i.e. from warmer water into cooler water (or air, etc.).

Over timescales subject to the hot/cold or warm/cool thermodynamic environment, the photons will be emitted from their current molecule and will flow into other seawater molecules as determined by the in situ seawater temperatures around (above, below, beside) them.

That flow does take place because otherwise the actual in situ (WOD data) patterns shown in Fig. 1 would have become the patterns shown in Fig. 2.

The Conservative Temperature of the TEOS-10 stricture (Fig. 1) is reformed by using the GISS surface temperature ocean surface values (Fig. 2) to modify them.

That generates the pattern that would be shown if there was no Second Law of Thermodynamics.

III. Closer Analysis

That is because among other things those photons are consistently on the move as the Second Law of Thermodynamics kicks in after the photon's journey from the Sun ends when those photons enter the molecules of surface seawater. 

Thus, what the two graphs show is that if the photons did not move to cooler seawater near them the graph at Fig. 2 would be the resulting pattern.

The Fig. 2 graph shows what the Conservative Temperature pattern would be but isn't.

That is because the heat then at the surface would continually increase as more and more photons entered surface seawater molecules and then stay there.

The Fig 2 graphs shows that the actual in situ temperature patterns shown in Fig. 1 are prevented from existing because the GISS temperature anomaly recorded at the ocean surface is manifested down, down, down into the deeper water.

In other words the heat flux is composed of infrared photon flow from hot/warm to cold/cool.

This repeats over and over at each ocean depth at different rates during day/night and summer/winter times and seasons.

This is fundamental science (warm/hot flows spontaneously to cool/cold) which is still known as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

IV. Closing Comments 

Today's WOD ocean temperature values are from the Atlantic Ocean.

In future posts of this series I will focus on other ocean areas.

The previous post in this series is here.