Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Sea-Temp Computers Updated

The three thousand of floating Sea-computers dropped in the oceans, to read and record just below sea surface temperatures, have cost the UK Argo program a lot of money. The little overall temperature changes found, were not enough to rewrite the overall global Warming formulae.

Here is a picture of where in the Oceans, the thousands of automatic Sea-computers have been dropped by UK ships over the last 8 years.

http://networks.silicon.com/mobile/0,39024665,39169185-2,00.htm


Now here is the bad news, the tens-of-thousands of readings have been found to contain a Data Glitch
.....which has now been corrected.
The correction finds that the Worlds Oceans are warming, and rising faster than previously reported.
Here is what they found........ --The global average ocean warming between 1961-2003 is larger than previously reported and rose about 0.4 celsius (0.7 F) over the period. --The world's seas rose an average of 1.6 mm a year during the 1961-2003 period, but increased to more than 3 mm a year from 1993-2003.

Thats a 50% rise upon previous reports.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/blogBurst/...1j8z2NPr6AjJf27

I had a look through the articles ..... just have to love the quote below ....

Fellow report author John Church said he had long been suspicious about the historical data because it did not match results from computer models of the world's climate and oceans.

"We've realigned the observations and as a result the models agree with the observations much better than previously," said Church, a senior research scientist with the climate centre.

I'm speechless.


Reading further ... it appears that 'the prime source of error' is the depth at which the measurements are taken. Really ? Apparently the depth of the probe is calculated by making assumptions 'about how fast it descends through the water'. With all the other fancy measurements on the probe, you would have thought they could have included a pressure gauge !!! Now they are using a 'mathematical formula' to correct the error. Anyone smell anything fishy here ??

Even more speechless.

Imran,
It must be the Global Warming coup plotters....
.
.
.
Hey, ...I just got that; "...fishy!"
Ocean temperatures; ...yes, that's funny.
My second best laugh of the day, ...thanks.

It does seem "convenient" that they've found this correction; but that's kinda standard in science to refine the instruments as the experiment progresses (well, that is reaching a bit, but not unheard of in science).
I can see your point though; but I'm hopeful that they'll offer a lot of corroboration, and I'm sure this'll undergo a lot of scrutiny.

http://www.csiro.au/news/OceansWarming.html

Look how many folks are involved with this conspiracy!

Uh oh, ...too sarcastic?

~

p.s. Thanks Mike!

p.p.s. ...also from the article with the "fishy" quotes.
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN946269.html

Glad to give you a laugh .....

.... I do not think of this as a conspiracy ..... its more about being selective with your data to get the answer you want ...... as has been discussed on multiple threads on this site, a key criticism is the amount of tweaking that can be done to get models to match observational data. In this case we are seeing manipulation of the data itself to 'fit' pre-conceived models. Another quote from the article :
Correcting the error in data running over decades as well as applying a complex statistical analysis to sea temperature data, the team came up with a global estimate of ocean warming in the top layers down to 700 metres (2,300 feet) as well as how fast oceans are rising.

What is a "complex statistical analysis" ?? Maybe I am being a bit cynical here .... but after the hockey stick fiasco, I would have thought there was a slight credibility issue with 'complex statistical analysis'. I'm absolutely positive the data could have been statistically analysed to give ANY answer needed. What was it Churchill said " Lies, damn lies and statistics."

I was searching Drs. Wijffels and Church, and found this. It looks to be a preliminary effort leading up to this latest citation that Mike provided.

You could probably read about the "complex statistical analysis" in these papers she used as references.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2007/2006GL028044.shtml
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 34, L02606, doi:10.1029/2006GL028044, 2007
Observed temperature trends in the Indian Ocean over 1960–1999 and associated mechanisms
Gaël Alory; Susan Wijffels; Gary Meyers
Abstract:
The linear trends in oceanic temperature from 1960 to 1999 are estimated using the new Indian Ocean Thermal Archive (IOTA), a compilation of historical temperature profiles. Widespread surface warming is found, as in other data sets, and reproduced in IPCC climate model simulations for the 20th century. This warming is particularly large in the subtropics, and extends down to 800 m around 40–50°S. Models suggest the deep-reaching subtropical warming is related to a 0.5° southward shift of the subtropical gyre driven by a strengthening of the westerly winds, and associated with an upward trend in the Southern Annular Mode index. In the tropics, IOTA shows a subsurface cooling corresponding to a shoaling of the thermocline and increasing vertical stratification. Most models suggest this trend in the tropical Indian thermocline is likely associated with the observed weakening of the Pacific trade winds and transmitted to the Indian Ocean by the Indonesian throughflow.

Received 8 September 2006; accepted 12 December 2006; published 20 January 2007.
Keywords: Indian Ocean; temperature; trend.
Index Terms: 4215 Oceanography: General: Climate and interannual variability (1616, 1635, 3305, 3309, 4513); 4532 Oceanography: Physical: General circulation (1218, 1222); 1620 Global Change: Climate dynamics (0429, 3309); 1635 Global Change: Oceans (1616, 3305, 4215, 4513); 1637 Global Change: Regional climate change.
===


To see what informs their IOTA analysis, these are the references cited in their Data and Methods section.

Ridgway, K. R., J. R. Dunn, and J. L. Wilkin (2002), Ocean interpolation by four-dimensional weighted least squares—Application to the waters around Australasia, J. Atmos. Oceanic Technol., 19(9), 1357–1375.

Smith, T. M., and R. W. Reynolds (2004), Improved extended reconstruction of SST (1854–1997), J. Clim., 17, 2466–2477.

Rayner, N. A., D. E. Parker, E. B. Horton, C. K. Holland, L. V. Alexander, D. P. Rowell, E. C. Kent, and A. Kaplan (2003), Global analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice, and night marine air temperature since the late nineteenth century, J. Geophys. Res., 108(D14), 4407, doi:10.1029/2002JD002670.

Kistler, R., et al. (2001), The NCEP-NCAR 50–year reanalysis, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc., 82(2), 247–267.

Uppala, S. M., et al. (2005), The ERA-40 re-analysis, Q. J. R. Meteorol. Soc., 131, 2961–3012, doi:10.1256/qj.04.176.
Abstract:

Enjoy....

the pressure will fluctuate as the temperature fluctuates.

water pressure at 1000 ft depth in 50 degree water
will be higher than
water pressure at 1000 ft depth in 60 degree water.

due to thermal expansion.

the speed at which the probe decends

will be
faster in 60 degree water.
and
slower in 50 degree water.

due to viscosity.

unless they include these two things into their formula it will
be wrong everytime.

also , they would need to take temperature and pressure readings at timed intervals as the probe decends to aquire any accurate or useable data.

taking salinity into consideration would also be a good idea.

however with these two readings alone you could determine how fast the probe decends if the salinity is known.

why not just weight down a probe and attach it to a buoy that stays submerged at 200 ft or so and bobs up to send the data?

the probe could be attached to the bouy by a optical fiber type fishing line of sorts and be reeled in and out as needed.

the data could be sent to the bouy via the optics.

that sounds expensive and if so then they could calibrate the probes with the buoy / probe thingy.

.

ImranCan - this is more than "fishy", it's absolutely ludicrous.

We were suspicious of the data because it didn't jive with our "models". How do you resolve this? Easy, look hard enough at the poor data, find an issue with it (which will result in an increased warming trend), and change the data. Welcome to "climate science".

This is seemingly a common practice in climate science. Word has it that GISS global average temperatures back in the 1930, have somehow being moving downwards. I guess if the present isn't warming as much as you want, you can always cool the historic years, right?

When are climate scientist going to realize you can't statistically model accuracy into an inaccurate system. It certainly can't be resmoothed to accuracies within tenths of a degree.

It would seem that climatology just can not let go of bad data and insists that you can smooth bad data into something valuable.

We should never be fiddling with data that was never intended, or taken with enough accuracy, to determine temperature changes in tenths of a degree. But yet the insanity continues.