About the aspect: Dimensions matter

Posting: February 25, 2919

It looks miraculous how easily some scientists show how ocean temperatures behave.  But can it be taken seriously, if considering the vastness of the ocean, its low mean temperature (merely + 4°C), and its overriding impact on the global weather/climate system? Any research on global warming that pays nil attention to the possible impact of human activities at sea, and below the sea surface, should be received with great reservations.

Any research regarding the network of more than 3,800 robotic floats sufficient to calculate past and future overall ocean temperature trends since industrialization is very close to manipulation, but far away from understanding ocean matters.  One needs only to take an assessment by the IPCC (2013) more serious, whereby “Ocean warming dominates the total energy change inventory, accounting for roughly 93% on average from 1971 to 2010 (high confidence)”, while concluding that the “Warming of the atmosphere makes up the remaining 1%.”

An article published last year in the journal Nature, describes a way to measure the average temperature of the ocean and to reconstruct past ocean temperatures. The abstract outlines that

• that the mean global ocean temperature increased by 2.57 ± 0.24 degrees Celsius over the last glacial transition (20,000 to 10,000 years ago), and that

• most of the anthropogenic heat added to the climate system has been taken up by the ocean up until now, its role in a century and beyond is uncertain.

One of the authors, geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus, claims according a summary by the University of California – San Diego:

“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,” he said, adding that advanced equipment can provide more precise measurements, allowing scientists to use this technique to track the current warming trend in the world’s oceans. Up to this point, the best estimates have come from the Argo program, a network of more than 3,800 robotic floats distributed around the world’s oceans that measures temperature and other properties and reports the data via satellite”

One can only wonder how little ‘feeling’ some scientists have about the aspect: Dimensions matter. Consider the following:

There is first of all the oceanic water volume versus those in the air. One estimate of the volume of water in the atmosphere at any one time is about 3,100 cubic miles (mi³) or 12,900 cubic kilometers (km³). That is only about 0.001 percent of the total Earth’s water volume of about 332,500,000 mi³ (1,385,000,000 km³. If all of the water in the atmosphere rained down at once, it would only cover the globe to a depth of 2.5 centimeters, about 1 inch. MORE

It seems very far-fetched referring under such circumstances to ‘natural variability’. If for example, Indrani Roy of the University of Exeter, (28.Sept.2918) to consider merely segregating the role of natural factors (the sun and volcano) to that from CO2 led linear anthropogenic contributions, than the discussion goes without any regard to proportion. The ocean matters most.