August Seas Warmest in at Least 120 Years

[richard schumacher]

August Seas Warmest in at Least 120 Years - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

[tripp]

sweet. More good news. Well, perhaps people will start to really take notice, or perhaps they'll be a bit like the Once-ler. I'm hoping for the former, not the later.

[TimBikes]

Sure - NOAA removes satellite and exclude ARGO data from the estimate and shazam, and extra ~0.2 C ocean warming! Not to mention of course we are in an El Nino.

Beyond that, we are not seeing the sea level rise one would expect as a result of "thermal expansion" if ocean heat content were indeed increasing.

In fact, we see the opposite - a marked decrease in sea level rise in recent years.

Hardly consistent with an accelerating increase in ocean heat content, don't you think?

[djasonw]

Does this mean the Farmer's Almanac is incorrect as to the 2010 winter being severely cold? I thought warm oceanic temps influence the winter weather making it somewhat milder.

[ufourya]

As an addendum to Tim's post, this comment from icecap.us:

What can I say. Between the station dropout (80% of the world’s stations, mostly rural), removal in US or absence globally of any UHI adjustment, bad siting for 90% of the climate stations and the recent removal of satellite input into the ocean temperature assessments, NOAA has ensured that each and every month and season will rank and ‘validate’ their piece of excrement called CCSP and support the governments argument for Cap-and-Tax, carbon regulations and global actions at Copenhagen. This is not an indictment of the hard-working and honest rank-and-file NOAA employees at the local offices and even behind the scenes at NCDC. It is the fault of higher ups and managers whose jobs and reputations rely on perpetrating the global warming hoax long enough so the governments can have their way to control virtually every aspect of our lives and keep the funding at the highest possible level for those who have abused the science to their benefit. See also here, here and here.

There are over 3000 argo bouys measuring ocean temperatures. They measure ACTUAL, OBSERVED temperature. They do NOT show rising temperatures. Here are their locations. They have been in operation since 2003.



New Claims to Refute
All the public education the climate realists have accomplished regarding air temperatures will have to start all over regarding ocean temperatures. Here are some key points to be made:
* Ocean temperatures can be measured adequately only by the Argo buoy network. Argo buoys dive down to 700m, recording temperatures, then come up and radio back the results. There are 3,000 of them floating around all the world’s oceans.
* The Argo buoys have been operational only since the end of 2003. Before that, ocean temperatures were gathered by various methods—usually collected by ships in popular commercial shipping lanes—that lacked uniformity, sufficient geographical coverage, and the ability to measure temperature much beneath the surface. The Argo buoy system has added uniformity and greater reliability to ocean temperature measurements.
* According to Argo temperature measurements, the world’s oceans have shown a slight cooling since Argo became operational in 2003.
* The Argo data contradict claims humans are causing rapid global warming, because ocean temperatures are not rising as fast as predicted by global warming alarmists.

[richard schumacher]

There are some problems in Tycho Brahe's data set also. Better have another look at Kepler's laws.

[chogan2]

As usual, I like to take the stuff that TimBikes posts with a large grain of salt, particularly the assertions without attribution as to source.

So, first, I asked what RealClimate had to say about the Argo data. Interested readers should at least look at the problems with the Argo floats, as well as the problems with other data series. The Argo data initially showed cooling because they had faulty depth switches, and were sampling water deeper than intended.

RealClimate: Ocean Cooling. Not.

It might be interesting to read what the guy who actually first put the Argo data together has to say about the early experience with it. Pretty much the same story, with the added poignancy of having to retract his original paper on ocean cooling.



Correcting Ocean Cooling : Feature Articles

I'm sure the nutcases will interpret that as a big ol' conspiracy, but I prefer to think that the balanced description of biases (warm and cold) in the instrument record here, as summarized on realclimate, is probably a more realistic description. The story I've been hearing, for quite some time, is that measuring global sea surface temps is hard, and measuring global total ocean heat content is much harder (which is why that's not the measure of global warming that is used as the benchmark, even though everyone acknowledges that it would be preferable to using global surface temperatures.)

Now, the sea level rise issue is interesting, because, of course, sea level reflects, among other things, the average temperature of the entire ocean. Whereas what's being discussed in the current temperature citation is sea surface temperatures. So I went to visit the U Colorado site where that sea level graph is posted, to see whether they suggest that the satellite-based sea level data contradict the ocean surface temperature data.

I sure couldn't find any evidence that those folks who actually made that graph thought that it in any way contradicted the NOAA analysis. So, once again, the people who actually put the data together do not appear to have quite the same spin on it as TimBikes does. If someone can show me U Colorado's graph, along with a citation to U Colorado saying that this contradicts the NOAA ocean temperature data, then I'll take notice. Otherwise, the only rational interpretation I can make is that what I am looking at is TimBikes' misinterpretation of the data, not anything like evidence contradicting the NOAA announcement.

Now, as to "ignoring" satellite data, satellites don't measure sea water temperatures. Or at least, that's my understanding. I could be mistaken on that, so if somebody has a link to a credible site saying that satellites measure the temperature of ocean surface and near subsurface water, please show it. So, I think the point is that "ignoring" the satellite data meant that NOAA did not make much of the short-term divergence between sea surface temperature measurements and the satellite-based sea level measurements. Looks like the folks who gather the data don't think so, looks like NOAA doesn't think so.

Well, should they have taken note of this?

No, of course not. Let me put aside the basic statistical issues (all of these series have low signal-to-noise ratio, trends taken over relatively short time periods have large associated standard errors). Let me put aside the fact that sea level reflects far more than just ocean surface temperatures.

Fundamentally, TimBikes is confusing the level of temperature with the trend in sea level. I think all NOAA said is that the level of August sea surface temps was high. I don't think they said anything about the recent trend. If NOAA had said that the trend in sea surface temps is accelerating, while the trend in sea level is decelerating, then at least one would be comparing apples to apples. (Possibly incorrectly, but at least I grasp what the point is supposed to be.) But as far as I can tell (and I didn't bother to look very hard, given the quality of what TimBikes usually posts), NOAA isn't saying that. NOAA is saying that the temperature level reached a new high. I'm not going to take the time to sort through the data, but it looks to me like the sea level is continuing to rise. Perhaps the reason U Colorado didn't point out the contradiction between their data on sea level and NOAA's announcement on sea surface temperature level is that they aren't at all contradictory.

NOW, for my reading of the tea leaves on this. Both NASA GISS and the British Meteorlogical Office are on record with some fairly strong predictions of global surface temperature rises in the near future. NASA's 2008 annual summary said they expect a new record by 2010; the Met. Office was not quite as precise but said that they expected a resumption of trend, and that 15 years (ie, a further five years from now) without significant temperature increase would count as a statistically significant (95% confidence interval) anomaly.

So, while short-term temperature movements embody a lot of noise, for some reason, two of the premier organizations in this area have been willing to go somewhat out on a limb with regard to short-term predictions. That's odd.

To me, that's sort of like watching what Warren Buffet's buying. When you see the smartest guy in the room willing to take what looks to you like a foolish bet, the only intelligent thing to do is to figure out what you don't understand that he does.

I wonder if they've been tracking these (noisy and substantially unreliable) ocean surface temps data, checking the El Nino forecast, and proceeding with what looks on the surface to be a foolhardy prediction on the basis of that. If the oceans are much warmer than normal but the air temperatures are not (that is, ocean temp record but not yet global surface temp record), that suggests the oceans are going to release a lot of heat into the air over the next couple of years.

Anyway, I just find it interesting that the two premier climate organizations are both, to some degree, out on a limb with regard to a short-term forecast of global surface temperature. At the same time , the earth's ocean surface clearly embodies a lot of stored heat that (I think) is in disequilibrium with the surrounding air. It reminds me of Buffet's call to buy stocks at the last market bottom, that's all.

[DaveinOlyWA]

Originally Posted by tripp

sweet. More good news. Well, perhaps people will start to really take notice, or perhaps they'll be a bit like the Once-ler. I'm hoping for the former, not the later.

this new info will be ignored just like all the others concerning GCC simply because it puts a damper on ones day. simply too much thinking required since the obvious steps are not acceptable

[TimBikes]

Originally Posted by chogan2

...
Fundamentally, TimBikes is confusing the level of temperature with the trend in sea level.

You are confusing a lot of things, the primary issue being that sea surface temperature (SST) is not the same as ocean heat content and SST is a very poor metric by which to assess climate change (whereas ocean heat content is the right metric).

You are also confusing "weather" with "climate" since, even IF SST was the proper metric to assess climate change (it isn't) a monthly deviation is not meaningful. There was a similar upward spike in 1998 - which was - surprise, surprise - also an El Nino year.

As for the U of Colorado, I don't know that they have commented at all on the recent sea surface temps - probably because unlike you (and the New York Times), they recognize it is not a meaningful metric for the purpose of assessing climate change.

[TimBikes]

Originally Posted by chogan2

As usual, I like to take the stuff that TimBikes posts with a large grain of salt, ...

Now, as to "ignoring" satellite data, satellites don't measure sea water temperatures. Or at least, that's my understanding. ...

Umm - who should take whom with a "grain of salt"?

It is called OI.v2:

"The optimum interpolation (OI) sea surface temperature (SST) analysis is produced weekly on a one-degree grid. The analysis uses in situ and satellite SSTs plus SSTs simulated by sea ice cover."

This dataset, BTW, while showing a spike in August sea surface temps, does not confirm the "warmest in at least 120 years" assertion. So my point stands. The data the NYTs trumpets are incomplete and would not support their assertion that a 120 year SST record has been seen.

But again, all of this is really not relevant since it is not talking OCEAN HEAT CONTENT anyway and is nothing more than a short term temperature deviation - not a trend indicator - as is obvious from the chart below, where no real SST trend is discernible since the 1998 El Nino.

If this "spike" stays at this level for an extended period of time, proving to be something more than "weather" and the ARGO and satellite data confirm this, I will concede the point. But when (more likely) it drops back down again in a few months or so, will you concede mine? Somehow I doubt it.