World’s Oceans Hit Record Warming in 2020

January 16, 2021

Channel 4 production featuring friends-of-this-blog John Abraham, and Michael Mann.

It’s gettin hot in here.

Posted by greenman3610
Filed in Crock of the Week

10 Comments »

10 Responses to “World’s Oceans Hit Record Warming in 2020”

Pieter Zijlstra Says:

January 16, 2021 at 2:02 pm
Question:
What is to first order the process that does heat the oceans.
Is there a nett effect of more fluxes?

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- grindupbaker Says:
  
  January 30, 2021 at 10:36 am
  Solar radiation penetrates ocean to a few metres depth. That warms water, makes it warmer than air above. So heat seeps upward in top few metres of ocean. Radiates, evaporates & conducts heat away at surface, warming air. “greenhouse gases (GHGs)” radiate down on ocean surface, penetrating up to 1 mm. This heats top 1 mm which reduces the rate of that solar heat getting to the surface and meanwhile the wind mixes the heat downward in ocean. So some heat gets mixed downward instead of moving to surface and escaping to air. The more GHGs making more down-welling LWR the more heating of the top 1 mm, so the more solar-radiation-caused heat mixing down. That’s how it warms the ocean. All explained more thoroughly on Skeptical Science (SKS), obviously, but I like typing to keep my fingers strong & limber.
  
  Reply
indy222 Says:

January 16, 2021 at 2:13 pm
This week I gave a Zoom talk to the Citizen’s Climate Lobby chapters of Central California. It has some very recent new studies included and emphasizes how very far we are from any sort of meaningful action, and how deeply antithetical meaningful action is to the evolutionary biological drives Nature bred into us. A few honorable and honest people, and scientists understand and would make great sacrifices to save the future. The political/economic paradigm we threw in with, will not. Nor will the large majority of us fight our short term gains in favor of long term benefit. We’ll posture, but in the end, we want someone ELSE to pay for what must be done. The proof of that is in the people we continually choose to empower. Brooks et al 2016 finds the percentage of CEO’s who fit the diagnostic criteria as psychopaths, is 21x higher than for the general population. And they are the ones we’ve let choose the people we ultimately have the choice to elect (Boss Tweed “I don’t care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating”). Gilens and Page 2014 show there is zero correlation between what the average citizen prefers in legislation, and the legislation that is actually enacted, while there is near perfect correlation for the Economic Elites.

Meanwhile, we keep trying to cheer ourselves up with hopeful little techno things here and there, which only – in the end – will help civilization grow yet faster.

Click to access PT-CCL-Monterey2021.pdf

I’ve got to massage it some before the Zoom recording is ready for YouTube.

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- jimbills Says:
  
  January 16, 2021 at 2:46 pm
  20 thumbs up if I could.
  
  Reply
- Brent Jensen-Schmidt Says:
  
  January 16, 2021 at 10:30 pm
  Most excellent. With zero sarcasm, am perpetually searching for effective ways to help, persuade, generally make a difference. Suggestions welcome.
  
  Reply
- redskylite Says:
  
  January 17, 2021 at 6:29 pm
  Very comprehensive and easy to comprehend visual aids – a lot of thought, time, blood, sweat and tears must have gone into your Zoom presentation, sure to put aside doubts in the minds of the receiver. Thanks for sharing in the “crock” blog.
  
  Reply
- Gingerbaker Says:
  
  January 20, 2021 at 8:10 am
  Your presentation seems to contradict the recent statements by Mann and others who say that temperatures will start to come down very soon after we achieve near zero CO2 emissions.
  
  Is that a fair statement?
  
  Reply
  - grindupbaker Says:
    
    May 9, 2021 at 9:45 pm
    “Is that a fair statement?” It seems to be more of a mis-understanding than a fair statement. It’s my assumption that Mike Mann means that in his (or others) opinion the ocean will continue to do its duty of reducing CO2 in air by 1.15 ppmv per year and therefore CO2 in air will be dropping by 1.15 ppmv per year rather than the present rising by 2.5 ppmv per year. This science aspect isn’t discussed in this posting and therefore this presentation cannot “seems to contradict the recent statements by Mann” because it doesn’t address that aspect at all. I can’t quite remember whether Mann finally said that’s what he meant after being typically (for him) vague all over the place. I think he did somewhere but anyway he cannot possibly mean anything else because he knows perfectly well that there’s a huge global heater. So Mike Mann is saying there’ll be a race between the global heater (which operates at 60% of final surface warming per century) and the ocean reducing CO2 in air by 11.5 ppmv per decade which reduces the global heater by 15% per decade, so all gone and warming stops in 67 years from when humans stop. Mike Mann might also think that the land biosphere will keep greening up but of course that depends on whether humans continue to totally remove the land biosphere or not, separate issue. There’s a 3rd thing but I’ve forgotten it now. Anyway, that’s what Mike Mann means and there’s no contradiction with this post.
    
    Reply
    - grindupbaker Says:
      
      May 9, 2021 at 9:54 pm
      I remembered the 3rd thing. It’s that the ocean will continue mixing up its cold deep water like it’s doing now (that was the “pause” or “hiatus” 1999-2015) so if humans stop battling the ocean with +CO2 then the ocean will start winning that because humans have stopped battling. Ocean temperature is 3.5 degrees but ocean surface temperature is 16 degrees so’s there’s huge cold available (from Antarctic over the last 3,300 years) as long it keeps stirring a little bit and doesn’t become totally stagnant in its stratification. Heat going into ocean is totally irrelevant for that of course because 560 Zettajoules warms ocean only 0.1 degrees. The ocean is slightly vast.
      
      Reply
grindupbaker Says:

May 9, 2021 at 9:58 pm
At 0:33 you clearly see the large 2015/16 El Nino. Look at the heat pouring out of the ocean (tropical Pacific) on that plot.

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