Ocean temperatures

[Hefaistos]

...
So what the hell are you doing bringing this guy as an authoritative source to this forum?

Geron, as I said in my original post 2018, this was percieved to be a Very Important Paper: "This is a really important research paper with enormous policy implications."
It was also picked up a lot in mass media!
It was published in Nature!

Then came Nic Lewis and in essence destroyed their results. It turns out that they didn't do their calculations correctly.
Paper was RETRACTED by Nature.
After retraction came recalculations, and now their results are basically in line with previous research, as there is no statistical significance to their claim that oceans are heating faster. "...after correction, the Resplandy et al. results do not suggest a larger increase in ocean heat content than previously thought"

Geron, do you have anything to say about the science here? About the critical analysis?
Seemingly not, You prefer to just throw your petty pebbles at the messenger, who actually did a great service to the science community here.

Why don't you want to discuss the science?

We should also mention the mass media. That research was big climate news, reported in I'd say all major mass media, here are some examples:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46046067
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/climate/ocean-temperatures-hotter.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/10/31/startling-new-research-finds-large-buildup-heat-oceans-suggesting-faster-rate-global-warming/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-oceans-are-heating-up-faster-than-expected/ https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/01/australia/ocean-warming-report-intl/index.html http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-oceans-study-climate-change-20181031-story.html
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/11/01/oceans-more-heat-study-global-warming-climate-change-nature/1843074002/
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-global-warming-ocean-temperature-heat-fossil-fuels-science-research-a8612796.html

How many have published the news about the retraction and that results are now in line with previous research?

[Hefaistos]

Agreed gerontocrat.
Nic Lewis is well known for hand waving away any research that finds global warming a risk.
Some suggested reading for those so inclined.
 https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/understanding-lewis-2013/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2016/02/marvel-et-al-2015-part-iii-response-to-nic-lewis/

And who is doing the hand waving here?

Do you have anything to say about the science here?
About the critical analysis?

[KiwiGriff]

I never bother following links to whack fringe sites as it gives them  traffic they dont deserve .
Nic Lewis is not an authority and his blog posts are not science so do not need examination.
I did follow your links to the MSM.
According to you

How many have published the news about the retraction and that results are now in line with previous research?

From your first two links.

Errors have been found in a recent study suggesting the oceans were soaking up more heat than previously estimated.

The initial report suggested that the seas have absorbed 60% more than previously thought.

But a re-examination by a mathematician showed that the margin of error was larger than in the published study.

The authors have acknowledged the problem and have submitted a correction to the journal.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46046067

Editors’ Note: November 14, 2018

An earlier version of this article included a conclusion from a study about ocean warming that is now in doubt. The researchers are working to revise their study because of errors detected in their calculations and it appears unlikely that they will be able to support their original conclusion that the oceans have warmed an average of 60 percent more per year than the current official estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The sections of the article dealing with that conclusion have been removed and the headline has been updated.

Update: Sept. 26, 2019: Nature, the journal which initially published the study last year, announced on Wednesday that it was retracting the paper.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/31/climate/ocean-temperatures-hotter.html

You have just been publicly Pawned for gibbering nonsense.
I will bet your list came unchecked from some fringe crank site and like many deniers you never bothered to check what your links actually said  instead believed your crank source unconditionally.

[kinbote]

...
Then came Nic Lewis and in essence destroyed their results. It turns out that they didn't do their calculations correctly.
Paper was RETRACTED by Nature.
After retraction came recalculations, and now their results are basically in line with previous research, as there is no statistical significance to their claim that oceans are heating faster. "...after correction, the Resplandy et al. results do not suggest a larger increase in ocean heat content than previously thought"
...

High-profile ocean warming paper to get a correction
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/high-profile-ocean-warming-paper-get-correction

The overall conclusion that oceans are trapping more and more heat mirrors other studies and is not inaccurate, but the margin of error in the study is larger than originally thought, said Ralph Keeling, a professor of geosciences at Scripps and co-author of the paper.

"These problems do not invalidate the methodology or the new insights into ocean biogeochemistry on which it is based, but they do influence the mean rate of warming we infer, and more importantly, the uncertainties of that calculation," said Keeling in a statement on RealClimate.org.

"The more important message is that our study lacks the accuracy to narrow the range of previous estimates of ocean uptake," Keeling said in an email. He thanked Lewis for pointing out the anomaly.

In the past, scientific debates about climate science have prompted skeptics to attack mainstream climate science generally. Some climate scientists said they are concerned that could happen again in this case and the outcome wildly misinterpreted.

When asked about the response of skeptics, climate scientist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University in State College said, "We can't worry about that."

"We have to just call it as we see it, do good science, put it out there, defend it and, when necessary, correct it. That's the legitimate scientific process, and it stands in stark contrast to the tactics employed by the forces of pseudoscience and antiscience," Mann said.

This morning the website Climate Depot, which frequently targets mainstream climate science, sent out an email with the headline, "Skeptic review dismantles study."

----

Sounds familiar. Also, I'm not sure I understand the argument that Mass Media ignored the retraction and resubmission of this Very Important Paper, particularly when I checked the first three links you shared and all had updates on the retraction, and two had links to updated stories with more information.

[Hefaistos]

I never bother following links to whack fringe sites as it gives them  traffic they dont deserve .
Nic Lewis is not an authority and his blog posts are not science so do not need examination.

In this case he is, as it is only due to Nic Lewis' critical review that this Seemingly Very Important Paper got retracted from Nature, one of the leading science journals. On top of that Prof. Keeling himself taking the blame. At least he had the manners to thank Nic Lewis for his help in finding the faults in that research

I did follow your links to the MSM.

The links were just a sample to show how the results of the paper were widely published. The list was from Nic Lewis site.
In addition, I asked a question, how many of them that published a retraction notice. Yes, some of them did. Some of them certainly didn't.

You have just been publicly Pawned for gibbering nonsense.
I will bet your list came unchecked from some fringe crank site and like many deniers you never bothered to check what your links actually said  instead believed your crank source unconditionally.

Please, Kiwigriff. We are not in the Forum Decorum sandpit thread now! We are in the Science section, discussing a major scientific paper that has been retracted from a top notch journal due to the researchers not being able to make some rather basic calculations correctly. It's pretty scandalous what has happened, not least due to how widely publicized those results were!

You, however, have totally nothing substantial to say about the issue itself. You say that it is "nonsense". Indeed?
Your major quest seems to be to try to scandalize me for bringing this up.
That's pretty sad.
I think that there should be room for scientific discussions in the Science forum of ASIF?

Finally, you accuse me of being a 'denier'. No, I'm not a 'denier', I'm just a realist. I have my Ph.D. and my critical mind, and I don't believe in climate alarmism any more.

[Simon]

As a reminder.

For ocean temperatures https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-ocean-heat-content

Nice visuals here https://www.seatemperature.org/

[kassy]

So Lewis is a denier but he did play a role in the retraction of this paper.

I will remove the link to his site from the post above but i will leave the pdf attached.

[Hefaistos]

So Lewis is a denier but he did play a role in the retraction of this paper.

I will remove the link to his site from the post above but i will leave the pdf attached.

The inquisitor came up with the verdict, and poor Nic's head is chopped. Why does this make me think about the queen of hearts in the Alice in wonderland fairytale?

Seriously, I don't think it's correct to define Lewis as a 'denier'. He has never denied AGW and the effect of GHG, afaik. He is a skeptic when it comes to how strong the climate feedbacks are, e.g. as measured by the ECS or the TCR, where he claims values are likely in the lower end of the ranges set by IPCC.
E.g. in this youtube talk, where he assigns ECS values somewhere around 1.7. Does that make him a denier?

I find everything he says in that presentation perfectly reasonable, and very interesting.

I don't think it should qualify anyone to be labeled a denier who just disputes the strength of feedbacks, when the discussion is still well within the limits set by the IPCC. At least as long as the IPCC is unable to narrow down the ECS range, and no-one in the science community can be very sure about the correct values.

So, what exactly is it that makes Nic Lewis a 'denier'?

[Hefaistos]

....
You can add American Enterprise Institute and and and and..

So what the hell are you doing bringing this guy as an authoritative source to this forum?

While in the Science (!) forum, maybe it should also be mentioned that poor head-chopped Nic also had a paper published in a VERY well renowned climate science journal:

" An Objective Bayesian Improved Approach for Applying Optimal Fingerprint Techniques to Estimate Climate Sensitivity"
Nicholas Lewis
J. Climate (2013) 26 (19): 7414–7429.
https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00473.1

[kassy]

So Lewis is a denier but he did play a role in the retraction of this paper.

I will remove the link to his site from the post above but i will leave the pdf attached.

I find everything he says in that presentation perfectly reasonable, and very interesting.

So, what exactly is it that makes Nic Lewis a 'denier'?

His link to the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

The YT talk is questioning if going zero carbon by 2050 is needed.

His general career.

[Neven]

Nic Lewis is a climate risk denier. There is no doubt about it. He believes there are no serious risks to global warming. He's not stupid, though.

Hefaistos is not a climate risk denier. He made his point, but there's absolutely no need to turn Nic Lewis into Galileo.

Does that about sum it up?

[Tom_Mazanec]

If you say there are no risks to AGW then I guess you are a denier.
On the other hand, I deny Sam Carana's projection of 18° C warming by 2026 and human extinction, but that does not make me a Denier.

[KiwiGriff]

<Snip. Let's not make Hefaistos the centre of attention and stay on-topic; N.>

[kassy]

Climate change: Earthquake 'hack' reveals scale of ocean warming

Scientists have found a clever new way of measuring ocean warming, using sound waves from undersea earthquakes.

The researchers say the "hack" works because sound travels faster in warmer water.

The team looked at sonic data from the Indian Ocean emitted by tremors over a 10-year period.

As the seas have warmed due to global heating, the scientists have seen the sound waves increase in speed.

Their new method shows the decadal warming trend in the Indian Ocean was far higher than previous estimates.

...

The scientists examined data from over 4,000 tremors that occurred in the Indian Ocean between 2004 and 2016.

...

The team then looked for pairs of "repeaters", earthquakes with almost identical origins and power.

By measuring how long these slow-moving signals took to travel across the waters from Indonesia to a monitoring station on the island of Diego Garcia, they were able to work out the changes in temperature for the whole of the ocean over the 10-year period.

"It takes sound waves about half an hour to travel from Sumatra to Diego Garcia," lead author Dr Wenbo Wu from the California Institute of Technology told BBC News.

"The temperature change of the deep ocean between Sumatra and Diego Garcia causes this half-hour travel time to vary by a few tenths of a second.

"Because we can measure these variations very accurately, we can infer the small changes in the average temperature of the deep ocean, in this case about a tenth of a degree."

...

In their research, the scientists showed that warming in the Indian Ocean over the decade that they studied was greater than previously estimated.

However, the paper has some important caveats.

"It is important to emphasise that this is a result that applies to this particular region and this particular decade," said Dr Wu.

"We need to apply our method in many more regions and over different time frames to evaluate whether there is any systematic under- or over-estimation of the deep-ocean trend globally.

"It is much too early to draw any conclusions in this direction."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54193334

[vox_mundi]

Major Wind-Driven Ocean Currents Are Shifting Toward the Poles
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-major-wind-driven-ocean-currents-shifting.html


"Satellite observational sea surface temperature anomaly during the last five years (2015-2019), reference to the first five years (1982-1986)". Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institut/Gerrit Lohmann

The severe droughts in the USA and Australia are the first sign that the tropics, and their warm temperatures, are apparently expanding in the wake of climate change. But until now, scientists have been unable to conclusively explain the reasons for this, because they were mostly focusing on atmospheric processes. Now, experts at the AWI have solved the puzzle: the alarming expansion of the tropics is not caused by processes in the atmosphere, but quite simply by warming subtropical ocean.

To date, experts assumed that processes in the atmosphere played a major role—for instance a change in the ozone concentration or the aerosols. It was also thought possible that the natural climate fluctuations that occur every few decades were responsible for the expansion of the tropics. For many years researchers had been looking in the wrong place, so to speak.

"Our simulations show that an enhanced warming over the subtropical ocean in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are the main drivers," says Hu Yang, the study's lead author. These subtropical warming patterns are generated by the dynamic of subtropical ocean gyres, measuring several hundreds of kilometers in diameter, which rotate slowly. These currents are especially well-known in the Pacific, because the majority of floating marine litter is concentrated in them. "Because the currents in the region bring together the surface warming water masses particularly intensely, it's easier for the subtropical ocean surface to accumulate warmth than in other regions—and the same applies to plastic," says Lohmann. As a result of this warming of the subtropical ocean, the tropical warm ocean regions are expanding. According to his calculations, this phenomenon is the catalyst for the tropics expanding to the north and south. "Previous researchers had been taking an overly complicated approach to the problem, and assumed it was due to complex changes in the atmosphere. In reality, it's due to a relatively simple mechanism involving ocean currents."

What led the experts to explore this avenue: data on ocean gyres that they happened to come across five years ago—data on ocean temperatures and satellite-based data, freely available on databases. Both sources indicated that the gyres were becoming warmer and more powerful. "That's what led us to believe that they might be a decisive factor in the expansion of the tropics," explains Hu Yang.

The AWI experts were right: their findings perfectly correspond to actual observations and the latest field data on tropical expansion. Just like in reality, their climate model shows that the tropics are now stretching farther to the north and south alike. In the Southern Hemisphere, the effect is even more pronounced, because the ocean takes up more of the overall area there than in the Northern Hemisphere.



Hu Yang et al, Tropical Expansion Driven by Poleward Advancing Midlatitude Meridional Temperature Gradients, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (2020)
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2020JD033158

[morganism]

"The SST changes in the mid- and high-latitudes of the northern Hemisphere during the past 10 years have been dramatic. Just a random sample today looking at other moderate (or stronger) #LaNina events, and it is stunning to compare Oct 2010 to 2020."

https://twitter.com/EricBlake12/status/1317578721226784771

[oren]

Thanks morganism, just posting the images. 2020 top, 2010 bottom.

[kassy]

Upper Ocean Temperatures Hit Record High in 2020

...

The most recent data indicate that the OHC in the upper 2000 m layer of the world’s oceans has increased with a mean rate of 5.7 ± 1.0 ZJ yr−1 for the 1958−2020 period (IAP/CAS) (Fig. 1). There is a more rapid increase in OHC that began ~1980s and has continued unabated since then (Fig. 1). Since 1986, the average annual increase is 9.1 ± 0.3 ZJ yr−1 (1986 to
2020), almost eight times larger than the linear rate from 1958~1985 (1.2 ± 0.6 ZJ yr−1). Further, the uncertainty has decreased as improved instruments (e.g., Argo) and analysis methods have become available (Cheng et al., 2017; Argo,
2020) (Fig. 1). Moreover, each decade has been warmer than its preceding decade.
The 2020 OHC value is higher than the last year’s value, by 20 ± 8.3 ZJ using the IAP/CAS data, and by 1 ± 3.5 ZJ
using NOAA/NCEI. Both are the highest on record (Table 1). Differences between the OHC analyses reflect the uncertainties in the calculation due to method and data coverage. OHC values herein are preliminary and will be augmented by ocean
profile data which are not immediately available at the end of the year (but added later), and by calibration and quality control processes which also occur on longer time scales. Further quantification of the uncertainties in OHC will help to better
specify the confidence in OHC assessment.

...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-021-0447-x

[Tom_Mazanec]

Climate change pushed ocean temperatures to record high in 2020, study finds
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-18/ocean-temperatures-reached-record-high-in-2020-study-finds/13062628

Last year the world's oceans absorbed 20 zettajoules of heat
Higher ocean temperatures can lead to an increase in extreme weather
Seas are warming at twice the global average in Australia's south-east

[kassy]

Antarctica: The ocean cools at the surface but warms up at depth

Scientists have concluded that the slight cooling observed at the surface of the Southern Ocean hides a rapid and marked warming of the waters, to a depth of up to 800 meters. These results were obtained thanks to unique data acquired over the past 25 years.

...

The study points to major changes around the polar ice cap where temperatures are increasing by 0.04°C per decade, which could have serious consequences for Antarctic ice. Warm water is also rising rapidly to the surface, at a rate of 39 metres per decade, i.e. between three and ten times more than previously estimated.

Published in Nature Communications on 21 January 2021, these results were obtained thanks to unique data acquired over the past 25 years on board the French Antarctic resupply vessel L'Astrolabe. This is the longest series of temperature records in the Southern Ocean covering north to south.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/01/210121131818.htm

Southern Ocean in-situ temperature trends over 25 years emerge from interannual variability

Abstract
Despite playing a major role in global ocean heat storage, the Southern Ocean remains the most sparsely measured region of the global ocean. Here, a unique 25-year temperature time-series of the upper 800 m, repeated several times a year across the Southern Ocean, allows us to document the long-term change within water-masses and how it compares to the interannual variability. Three regions stand out as having strong trends that dominate over interannual variability: warming of the subantarctic waters (0.29 ± 0.09 °C per decade); cooling of the near-surface subpolar waters (−0.07 ± 0.04 °C per decade); and warming of the subsurface subpolar deep waters (0.04 ± 0.01 °C per decade). Although this subsurface warming of subpolar deep waters is small, it is the most robust long-term trend of our section, being in a region with weak interannual variability. This robust warming is associated with a large shoaling of the maximum temperature core in the subpolar deep water (39 ± 09 m per decade), which has been significantly underestimated by a factor of 3 to 10 in past studies. We find temperature changes of comparable magnitude to those reported in Amundsen–Bellingshausen Seas, which calls for a reconsideration of current ocean changes with important consequences for our understanding of future Antarctic ice-sheet mass loss.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20781-1