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| Ocean Heat Saturation? |
In the previous post I indicated that research into ocean heat content saturation may lead to discovering a cause of the recent jump in global atmospheric heat content.
Usually the oceans absorb 90-93 percent of global warming atmospheric temperature increases:
"Rising amounts of greenhouse gases are preventing heat radiated from Earth’s surface from escaping into space as freely as it used to. Most of the excess atmospheric heat is passed back to the ocean. As a result, upper ocean heat content has increased significantly over the past few decades. Upper layers are accumulating heat faster than deeper layers ..."
(Climate Change: Ocean Heat Content). It would seem that it's about time or even past the time to figure out the relevant saturation factors:
“Once again, the temperature record has been shattered—2024 was the hottest year since record keeping began in 1880,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Between record-breaking temperatures and wildfires currently threatening our centers and workforce in California, it has never been more important to understand our changing planet.
NASA scientists further estimate Earth in 2024 was about 1.47 degrees Celsius (2.65 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the 1850–1900 average. For more than half of 2024, average temperatures were more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the baseline, and the annual average, with mathematical uncertainties, may have exceeded the level for the first time."
(NASA Earth Observatory). One key element is the dynamics of The Second Law of Thermodynamics ("heat spontaneously flows from warmer/hotter matter into cooler/colder matter").
The circumstances of the hows, whens, wheres, and whys of seawater dynamics should be examined very carefully and closely if it is to be determined whether or not ocean heat saturation could be a factor of surprising atmospheric heat increases:
"In Episode 15 of this series I suggested that if the Second Law of Thermodynamics was not operational serious temperature changes would be observed in the upper ocean depth levels.
...
So, the next posts in this series will use the TEOS-10 C++ library to search for clues as to the conditions that would cause "ocean heat saturation" and/or the like in the worlds oceans.
Stay tuned."
(The Photon Current - 20). The appendix (APPNDX p enthalpy) to today's post contains graphs of "potential enthalpy" because:
"Hence h0 is the correct property with which to track the advection and diffusion of heat in the ocean, irrespective of the arbitrary function of salinity that is contained in the definition of 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.' Moreover, h0 is shown to be more conserved than is θ by more than two orders of magnitude."
(Potential Enthalpy: A Conservative Oceanic Variable for Evaluating Heat Content and Heat Fluxes). Various ocean areas are graphed and those graphs are in today's appendix (APPNDX p enthalpy).
Another key element is the maximum heat content seawater is capable of absorbing.
Since h0 is derived by the temperature, salinity, and depth of any quantity of seawater, I have utilized the World ocean database 2018 user's manual (WOD), focusing on Appendix 11 therein.
That chapter provides maximum and minimum temperature and salinity values at 33 depth levels for various ocean areas.
Some of those areas are considered in the first use of the software I wrote using a Ubuntu C++ compiler and the TEOS-10 C++ library.
I will continue to improve the graphs to show those maximums and minimums as well as the measurements contained in the WOD database.
For this post I graphed only the in situ measurements in the WOD database, not including those WOD maximums and minimums as a contrast.
Nevertheless, the first lesson shown by these graphs is that ocean heat content (potential enthalpy h0) is very active.
Note that the one direction (warm to cold) varies significantly in depth and in time because the "warmer to cooler" direction can be up, down, sideways, or angular.
Stay tuned, I am working on it.
The previous post in this series is here.
