Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Ocean Warming Verified

The prediction is that man made greenhouse gases will trap the suns heat, and lead to a warming planet, albeit slowly.
But now,Ocean temperature measurements by NASA over the last few years have verified Ocean warmings.

http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/soc-benefits/ocean-warming-from-jason.html

However another prediction -not verified- as yet.
Is that :- Greenhouse heating would cause warmer, wetter air to reach Antartica, where it would deposit its moisture as Snow.
Thus building up the Antartica ice sheet. Or at least keeping the status quo.

Unfortunately although there are difficulties in estimating the amount of extra snow that would fall.
It now looks that the latest (unreleased) data is beginning to show that this additional moisture laden air is not reaching Antartica in the quantitys envisioned.
This may be due to the fact that the huge increase in man made atmospheric dust in the atmosphere, is causing this condensation to fall as rain, before it even reaches Antartica, and able to fall as snow.
This data is not yet being released until there is more research.
But I will update, as soon as I know.

The observations only go to 2003 which was lower than 2002.

Hmmmm. A couple of thoughts

The graph only being 10 years long is certainly suspect. Do you think Hansen likes cherries?

I'm a bit intrigued as to how one accurately calculates the global oceanic heat content. We can obviously calculate the average surface temp using satellites. But to calculate the heat content, you'd need temperature profiles from the surface to the bottom, everywhere throughout the ocean.

I'm wondering if they did some correlation between surface temps and a select few temperature profiles, then created synthetic temp profiles based on that correlation along with satellite data. Any other thoughts as to how they did it? The original paper would be a good source, but I don't have access to Science journals (although, the reference indicates that the paper is only 5 pages long, so it's doubtful there's much detail in that).



And when will we get away from presenting modelling results as a mean of multiple runs. If you're that uncertain, shouldn't that tell you something?

That's another old Hansen report from 2005. Here's a newer NASA report from 2006 that claims the oceans are cooling. I have posted this before, so like the OP, there's no new news here...

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/sep/HQ_06318_Ocean_Cooling.html

Just thinking out loud here ...... what is it that would make the oceans warm or cool ? Not necessarily the same input as warms or cools the atmosphere. As anyone who has owned a swimming pool in a tropical climate will be able to testify, the pool gets warmer when there is more radiating sunshine (cloud cover dependent) and cooler if it rains (injection of colder water). There seems to be a much smaller correlation with air temperature. A +/- 5 degree change has no impact.

On this (probably inappropriate) analogy, wouldn't there be a stronger correlation with global cloud cover and indeed (as Mike says) ice melt and run-off. So - if the arctic air warms, the oceans will cool ..... and if there are less clouds the oceans will warm.

Just some late night thoughts .....

I think your analogy is indeed inappropriate. A swimming pool does not give its energy to storms, and nor does it have currents.

Actually my current pool is pretty big - it definitely has currents although I can't say I ever remember it generating a storm.

More seriously though, I think the question I was trying to get at is : Do we know whether atmospheric warming is likely to result in the oceans warming (positive feedback) or cooling (negative feedback)?

No

Lyman, Willis, Johnson, and Gilson was corrected
http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/heat_2006.pdf

The Lyman, Willis et al group is to be commended for reporting that the apparent ocean cooling was an artifact; I can name a few scientists that will push something no matter how dead it is :-)

Chris

It was adjusted, but instead of cooling it shows a plateau, no increase as you would expect.