Deep oceans warming at an alarming rate

[n2doc]

Larry O'Hanlon

Despite mixed signals from warming ocean surface waters, a new re-analysis of data from the depths suggests dramatic warming of the deep sea is under way because of anthropogenic climate change. The scientists report that the deep seas are taking in more heat than expected, which is taking some of the warming off the Earth’s surface, but it will not do so forever.

"Some of the heat (from human-caused global warming) is going into melting sea ice and heating the surface, but the bulk is going into the oceans,” said climate researcher Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a coauthor on a new research paper reporting on the deep ocean warming in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The study involved the bringing together of a diverse suite of data, ranging from satellite measurements of the surface waters to ship observations at all depths, instruments mounted on elephant seals, ARGO profilers (a large collection of small, drifting-robotic probes deployed worldwide), and data-gathering instruments moored in place. The data include temperature, salinity, depth, and altimetry of the ocean surface, going back decades.

Piecing together different kinds of data from different times and sometimes from sparse data sets was the key challenge, Trenberth explains, but that is the specialty of his coauthors at the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts in the U.K

more

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/deep-oceans-warming-alarming-rate-6C10606562

[truedelphi]

1. Yes, as ice melts there is less reflectivity of the sun's rays from the ice.

Several decades back, just as a lark, some grad students modeled the planet earth and what would happen if there was ever a spike in temperatures. (They did this back when the major prediction for the planet was that we were headed for a mini-ice age.)

What they found was that eventually the weather system, including the jet stream and ocean currents, would stall out. The weather for any locale ends up being whatever it is the vary day that this stall occurs, forever. (Or at least until a volcano or comet strikes the earth and puts up enough dust and debris to significantly reduce the sun's heating effect.)

So the weather that exists in your locale will be what it is forever, the moment that the stall occurs.

Within a year, various plagues will do in much of humanity. Since part of the effect of continuously moving weather is to air out the microbes and bacteria and mold in the environment and keep them moving along, once everything stagnates, plagues will rule. (A continuous flow of movement also keeps the fungal particulates and mold from developing.

Within short order, most animal and plant life would cease. This overall stagnation means too much rain in some places, too much sun in others. I imagine that fish, dolphins and whales and most other marine life might be okay though.

[GaYellowDawg]

2. That can't be right.

Major ocean currents and the jet stream result in part from the Coriolis effect, so as long as the planet keeps rotating, they'll never fully stop. Even if temperatures get hotter, there will continue to be differences in solar input to polar and equatorial regions, also a major reason for polar/Hadley/Ferrel cells. Wind/water currents will never permanently "stall out," so all of the downstream effects you refer to are pretty much off the mark, too.

These grad students obviously needed to take a basic marine sciences course.

[Thor_MN]

4. Not to mention annual change in solar heating

Here in Minnesota, there is more than 6 hours of change in daylight between summer and winter. Absolutely no chance weather could "stall out" and remain the same through that amount change.

[Igel]

3. This would be heat migration to below the pycnocline.

It's usually modeled as a fairly clean break. Above it the water is less dense because of thermal expansion and (in some places) salinity differences. Below it the water is more dense. Mixing is relatively rare because winds and tides and the like seldom get down the 100 m or so necessary. Even hurricanes don't necessary cause much mixing.

You get mixing in the polar regions, where the temperature difference makes mixing between the layers easy and where ice formation tends to give the surface water higher salinity.

You get it along the equator, esp. in the Pacific, where the winds usually push a lump of water up into the SE Asian basin and the Equatorial Countercurrent has it flow east. The result is that the S. Pacific gyre typically causes the deep, cold water to get closer to the surface, close enough for wind to create some mixing. There's also and Eq. CC in the Indian ocean and in the Atlantic, but they're weaker.

The El nino usually results when winds allow the Eq. CC to bring a lot of warm water to the S. Am. west coast.

I wish the pop sci article had actually said where the mixing was occuring, the mechanisms, and where the biggest delta Ts were. But that would be information.

Egads. I actually learned something when I read Thurman's book? Argh.