The Saturation Chronicles - 9

Fig. 1 Giant Squid of the deep

The ocean depths are measured in terms of temperature, salinity, and depth by instruments specific to oceanography.

But those measurements at deeper and deepest  depths are generally ignored by researchers who like to skim the upper 200 meters, or perhaps down to a thousand meters. 

For example the snapshot of the rare giant squid in Fig. 1 is taken at "about 1,100" feet (~300 meters) in one report ("1,968 feet (600 meters)" in another report), but today's Dredd Blog appendices (APPNDX Sat 1900, APPNDX Sat 1950) contain measurements from all the way down to the bottom of the Abyssopelagic (~18, 000 feet, ~5,500 meters).

Not only that, those measurements are from 31 different ocean areas (listed in each appendix) and project back to the year 1900.

Not only that, they present "saturation percentages", not mere temperatures, which was explained in previous posts of this series (The Saturation Chronicles, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8).

The process involves calculating "ocean heat content" (a.k.a "potential enthalpy" or h^o) which is another way of indicating how many infrared photons have been absorbed by atoms and/or molecules per cubic meter of seawater (The Photon Current, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 , 17, 18, 19, 20, 21).

But, calculating "saturation" goes further than that, because (using World Ocean Database maximum and minimum acceptable ranges of temperature and salinity values) we can calculate the maximum saturation levels of ocean heat content that is normal to various oceans at various depths.

Check out the graphs in the appendices, but remember those values are percentages of saturation, NOT temperature measurements.

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