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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The oceans are the largest global heat reservoir. As a result of man-made global warming, the temperature in the global climate system increases; around 90% of the extra heat is absorbed by the oceans. This means that the average sea temperature can tell us a lot about the state of our climate, both today and in the past. However, it is difficult to determine an accurate average value across all sea depths and regions of the world.
The results of previous measurement methods heavily depend on location, season or sea depth, which can lead to distorted results. As part of the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project, an international research team led by Bernhard Bereiter from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography - now working at Empa and the University of Bern - has developed a method of measuring ocean temperatures over the last 24'000 years with high accuracy.
These measurements have now been published in Nature. "Our study clearly shows that the basic idea - the connection between the concentration of noble gases in the atmosphere and the average ocean temperature - is correct and that the method works," said Bereiter.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday January 08 2018, @12:46PM (9 children)
The article is paywalled, but other sources have information about the money-quote concerning climate change [iowaclimate.org]: “Our precision is about 0.2 ºC (0.4 ºF) now, and the warming of the past 50 years is only about 0.1 ºC”.
This is a small fraction of the warming claimed by the alarmists, who have been touting figures anywhere from 0.5ºC to 1.0ºC. No worries, I'm sure they'll find some way to dismiss these results.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 08 2018, @01:10PM (5 children)
I'm not at all "dismissing the results," but isn't it logical that a "heat sink" would experience smaller changes and have significant lag? I have limited knowledge in this area, but I vaguely remember studying ocean temperature and CO2 dynamics nearly 20 years ago, and how they were predicted to lag any atmospheric changes.
If I understand your argument correctly, you're comparing predicted changes in measured global air temp to changes in the enormous liquid heat sink that is the oceans?
Or do I misunderstand you?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday January 08 2018, @01:13PM (4 children)
Yes, you misunderstood, or I said it poorly. Search for ocean warming, and you will find all sorts of claims that the oceans have already warmed, by some amount up to a full degree centigrade. Which claim this paper would seem to disprove.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 08 2018, @01:49PM (1 child)
Well, I looked briefly, and I see references to rise in ocean SURFACE temp on the scale you claim. The way TFA is worded, it sounds like this study may be measuring mean ocean temperature overall (not just surface temp) which is a very different metric. Unfortunately, as you note, the full study is paywalled, so I don't really know the details -- but this could make a big difference.
The deep oceans are a huge heat (and CO2) sink, and part of the supposed "pause" in global warming that some claim.in the past couple decades has been claimed to be related to heat migrating to these lower layers. (And again, you may claim this is a post hoc justification, but I remember learning about the potential influence of different ocean layers on warming and CO2 levels in the late 90s, though no one that I remember was predicting an imminent "pause" due to it at that time. But it was recognized as a large influence.)
But again, I'll fully admit I'm not an expert in this area, and I haven't read the full study here. But if the discrepancy of predictions was as large as you claim, I think this study would be bigger news...
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 08 2018, @02:00PM
Actually, the report from Nature [nature.com] confirms this study is definitely about mean ocean temps overall, not ocean surface temp. So that may be a significant difference. Do you have studies that claim a full degree rise in the deep oceans in recent years? Because I don't think I've seen predictions of that magnitude.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:05PM (1 child)
In other news, scientists again have no clue what is really happening with pretty much anything.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @03:02PM
When did they let you out? I think Algernon's treatments made him a little loopy.
(Score: 4, Informative) by alincler on Monday January 08 2018, @01:14PM (1 child)
The 0.1C figure is for WATER temperature.
As for global average AIR temperature increase, it depends on what baseline you choose.
2017 was
0.1C cooler than 2016
0.5C warmer than the 1981–2010 average
~1.2C warmer than pre-industrial
These are the measured numbers, no alarmism here.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday January 08 2018, @06:49PM
Is the 2017 NOAA data even out yet?
I wasn't able to locate it....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:33PM
Heat capacity of water is huge, compared to almost anything else we know [wikipedia.org], so small increase in ocean temperature stands for great amount of thermal energy absorption. The impact is shown when temperature of air above water drops bellow the temperature of the water: the air then gets heated without cooling the water much.