The Saturation Chronicles - 5

Fig. 1 Combined Heat Saturation Percent

Let's consider ocean heat concentration on the average.

The view of heat saturation in 19 ocean areas combined as an average is shown in Fig. 1.

Those individual ocean areas are:

Equatorial Indian, NW Pacific, Mediterranean, North Atlantic, Red Sea, North Pacific, Persian Gulf, Sea of Okhotsk, Equatorial Pacific, Sulu Sea, North Indian, South Indian, Southern, Bering Sea, Sea of Japan, Equatorial Atlantic, Arctic, South Atlantic, and South Pacific.

The percentages are averages of all in situ measurements at up to 33 depths from  World Ocean Database (WOD), SOCCOM database, and Wood's Hole database files.

Fig. 2 Sniff The Waters

The values of all 19 ocean areas are combined at depths up to the maximum depth of each ocean area.

Temperature, salinity, depth, latitude, and longitude are the in situ parameters used in those calculations.

Those parameters are then used in TEOS-10 functions which calculate height (Z), pressure (P), Conservative Temperature (CT), and Absolute Salinity (SA).

The "ocean heat content" (a.k.a. potential enthalpy or h^o) is also calculated using the TEOS-10 C++ library to process those TEOS-10 parameters.

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

On the Fig. 1 graph, the depth data is as follows:

Concerning colors of lines at WOD and Pelagic depths:

WOD depths (L1 - L9) = epipelagic (0 - 200m) [200 m]
WOD depths (L10 - L18) = mesopelagic (201m - 1000m) [799 m]
WOD depths (L19 - L29) = bathypelagic (1001m - 4000m) [2,999 m]
WOD depths (L30 - L32) = abyssopelagic (4001m - 5500m) [1,499 m]
WOD depths (L33) = hadopelagic (beyond 5500m)

The lines are colored as epipelagic,  mesopelagic, bathypelagic, abyssopelagic, and hadopelagic as noted on the graph.

Note that the old belief, written in textbooks and on various websites, that the deeper the water is the colder it is was a myth.

The Fig. 1 graph shows that the highest heat saturation percentages are not based on depth alone.

That graph shows that heat saturation depends on how many infrared photons have been absorbed by the ocean water molecules (The Photon Current, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 , 17, 18, 19, 20, 21).

Closing Comments

Google's AI says:

" 'Heat saturation' refers to the point at which a substance has absorbed the maximum amount of heat it can hold at a given pressure, meaning any additional heat added will cause it to change phase from liquid to vapor (like boiling), and is essentially synonymous with the term "saturation temperature" in thermodynamics; at this point, the liquid is considered "saturated" with thermal energy and further heat input will result in a phase change, not a temperature increase."

(Thank you Mr. AI). Note that for water (not saltwater) that temperature is about 212 deg. F (100 deg. C).

That is not the focus of this series.

What this series uses is the Maximum temperatures the WOD manual sets as the maximum, NOT the evaporation temperature.

We are not focusing on the temperature at which the ocean turns into steam, no, we are focusing on the temperatures of saturation which cause a RESISTANCE to further photon absorption.

The exercise in this saturation context is the percent of the WOD maximums set by WOD officials.

Then, using the historical 90-93 percent rate of absorption set by oceanographers as the amount the ocean has absorbed during the graph's time frame (1950-2023) we can hope to estimate the decline in that WOD maximum historical absorption percentage as the ocean's potential enthalpy or h^o percent increases.

if the hypothesis is confirmed, we can expect the surprising 2023-2024 temperature increases to continue as the ocean's in situ heat saturation percentage rate increases.

Just sayin' ...

The previous post in this series is here.

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