Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[Trakar]

According to this (I'm not sure of its reliability.), the total energy content of all the atmosphere and ocean mass is 5.6x10²⁴ Joules/Kº while the total for the atmosphere is 5x10²¹ Joules/Kº. The ratio is about 1.12x10³. I don't know if I'm interpreting this properly.
LINK

Even if broken clocks technically approximate the correct time twice a day, trying to discern real science out of a fringe hyper-partisan political blog with a strong history of pseudoscience is generally a fool's mission.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Even if broken clocks technically approximate the correct time twice a day, trying to discern real science out of a fringe hyper-partisan political blog with a strong history of pseudoscience is generally a fool's mission.

I'm not referring to politics. The question is a scientific one.
Specifically,
Is it correct that the total energy content of all the atmosphere and ocean mass is approximately 5.6x10²⁴ Joules/Kº while the total for the atmosphere is 5x10²¹ Joules/Kº? If so, since the average global ocean temperature is estimated to be 278º kelvin, and the average atmospheric temperature is estimated to be 287º kelvin, we have:

(5.6x10²⁴x278)/(5x10²¹x287) = 1.08x10³, so it seems reasonable to say the oceans contain about 1,000 times more heat energy than the atmosphere. I'm simply asking if any knowledgeable people here might verify the reasonableness of that calculation.

 

[Mikemcc]

Don't know and really can't be bothered to do your research for you. All we would ask is that find a more reputable source than WUWT and Pielke Sen. A few of us have pointed out that the significant measurement is the relative energy gain in both systems since pre industrial times.

 

[lomiller]

The average global ocean temperature is estimated to be 278º kelvin, and the average atmospheric temperature is estimated to be 287º kelvin, so the ratio of total atmospheric heat energy to oceanic heat energy seems to be:

(5.6x10²⁴x278)/(5x10²¹x287) = 1.08x10³, so it seems reasonable to say the oceans contain about 1,000 times more heat energy than the atmosphere. If my assumptions are incorrect or my logic flawed, I would appreciate any comments.

Over the very long term maybe, but it's really only the top 10m-100m of the ocean than mixes relatively freely with the atmosphere. Relative to it's water mass, only a tiny amount of heat makes it into the deeper ocean. Skim back for macdoc's ocean heat content graph for more detail.

Up until the 1950's when it was discovered just how thin the actual mixing layer of the oceans are it was generally believed CO2 would be absorbed into them much more quickly and temperatures would rise much more slowly.

It was this discovery, along with the ability to identify fossil carbon in the atmosphere via isotopes that changed greenhouse gasses and their potential for warming the planet form a curiosity to a near certainty back in the 1950's.

 

[Trakar]

I'm not referring to politics. The question is a scientific one.
Specifically,
Is it correct that the total energy content of all the atmosphere and ocean mass is approximately 5.6x10²⁴ Joules/Kº while the total for the atmosphere is 5x10²¹ Joules/Kº? If so, since the average global ocean temperature is estimated to be 278º kelvin, and the average atmospheric temperature is estimated to be 287º kelvin, we have:

(5.6x10²⁴x278)/(5x10²¹x287) = 1.08x10³, so it seems reasonable to say the oceans contain about 1,000 times more heat energy than the atmosphere. I'm simply asking if any knowledgeable people here might verify the reasonableness of that calculation.

Again, as I thought I implied, while the factoid (in isolation), which you are concerned about does not seem terribly far from the mark, comparing the heat content of a dense liquid solution and a dispersed gaseous mixture really isn't going to reveal a lot of new information about climate change on its own.

Perhaps if you would give the energy comparison some context and discuss your understandings of what the issue is that gives rise to the need for understanding this comparison, maybe we could share some more involved consideration and discussion about the greater topic at hand.

While you may not be talking about politics, everything that appears on the website you linked is intimately tied to and flavored with intense partisan politics and serves the purpose of supporting that very extremist political position.

 

[Perpetual Student]

Again, as I thought I implied, while the factoid (in isolation), which you are concerned about does not seem terribly far from the mark, comparing the heat content of a dense liquid solution and a dispersed gaseous mixture really isn't going to reveal a lot of new information about climate change on its own.

Perhaps if you would give the energy comparison some context and discuss your understandings of what the issue is that gives rise to the need for understanding this comparison, maybe we could share some more involved consideration and discussion about the greater topic at hand.

While you may not be talking about politics, everything that appears on the website you linked is intimately tied to and flavored with intense partisan politics and serves the purpose of supporting that very extremist political position.

Thanks for your response. It seems like 1,00 to 1 is about it. My question is not motivated by any question about climate change. It seemed to me this might be a good thread to ask my question since there is likely to be some oceanography and climatology expertise here. Since something like 99.7% of the surface heat of the earth is due to the sun, I was wondering how that stored energy is distributed. That's it -- no agenda.
For what it's worth, I view AGW as scientifically confirmed.

 

[Trakar]

Thanks for your response. It seems like 1,00 to 1 is about it. My question is not motivated by any question about climate change. It seemed to me this might be a good thread to ask my question since there is likely to be some oceanography and climatology expertise here. Since something like 99.7% of the surface heat of the earth is due to the sun, I was wondering how that stored energy is distributed. That's it -- no agenda.
For what it's worth, I view AGW as scientifically confirmed.

Hopefully, I did not impugn your understandings, I was not looking for an agenda, merely trying to understand what you were actually looking for and the context for that search. It is much easier to accurately address an issue if you have a fuller understanding of the query.

Again, in reference to: "Since something like 99.7% of the surface heat of the earth is due to the sun, I was wondering how that stored energy is distributed." Time-frames are an important consideration. The difference between soil and water is that most visible light is absorbed (or reflected) in the top few millimeters of soil (which tends to have much higher albedo) whereas visible light (remember, even in its liquid form, water is an IR absorber and diffuser) penetrates below the surface of water. 73% of the surface light reaches a depth of 1 centimeter, only 44.5% of the surface light reaches a depth of 1 meter, 22.2% of the surface light reaches a depth of 10 meters 0.53% of the surface light reaches a depth of 100 meters. It is also important to remember that once the heat is in the surface material (soil or water) there are two means of its diffusion, through conduction or convection. In soils the primary process is conduction, and in water there is a mix of conduction and convection going on (in a gas, convection is the leading process with conduction being a minor player).

 

[macdoc]

picture ,,,1,000 words n'all

if course the interesting times aspect just now is how that interchange between air and ocean is playing out in extreme weather in various and sundry places.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26023166

and some of the distribution gradients are hilarious as long as you are not on the recieving end of the resulting wild weather...

Arctic Sea Ice Melting Now - In February - North Pole 35F Over Historical Avg. 2/13

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024512342

Redistribution of the heat via ocean and air patterns drives the weather and local climates and that is where we apparently are living in VERY interesting times

 

[Mikemcc]

Oh hell, when I saw references to > 20 degrees I'd been assuming it meant Farenheit, not Centigrade!

 

[lomiller]

According to this (I'm not sure of its reliability.), the total energy content of all the atmosphere and ocean mass is 5.6x10²⁴ Joules/Kº while the total for the atmosphere is 5x10²¹ Joules/Kº. The ratio is about 1.12x10³. I don't know if I'm interpreting this properly.
LINK

That site isn't one that I would consider reliable for anything.

I don't know the total heat energy of the oceans off hand but 5*10^24J seems too small. See macdocs graphic above, the ocean have gained 2*10^23J in the last 50 years and that barely moved the needle on their average temperature.

 

[macdoc]

Antartic links

Came across some one else's compendium....some seem dated...some relevant...use as you see fit

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/13/3155431/massive-glacier-melt-irreversible-antarctica/

http://www.imaja.com/as/environment/can/journal/madhousecentury.html

Related to this is any shutdown of the ocean conveyor system:

More on the Ocean Conveyor belt:
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/conveyor.html
http://oceanmotion.org/html/background/ocean-conveyor-belt.htm
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/545.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100618102646.htm

Please note it takes about 1000 years for water to go through this system, but it tends to keep most of the world at the same temperature.

You also have to understand that West Antarctic is NOT one piece of land but a series of interconnected islands, connected by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Here is a map of Antarctica without ice, notice on the Left, which is West Antarctica mostly islands:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica

More maps of Antarctica:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_Antarctica

The Antarctic is melting from below:
http://www.motherjones.com/authors/julia-whitty?page=20

More on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet
http://earthsky.org/earth/sophie-nowicki-on-weak-underbelly-of-west-antarctic-ice-sheet
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100116103350.htm
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/20...ollapse-even-more-catastrophic-for-us-coasts/
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast27dec_1/

Part of the the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is 1.5 KM below sea level:
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n6/full/ngeo1468.html
http://www.utexas.edu/news/2012/05/10/ice_sheet/

More on the Antarctic Circumpolar Current:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Current
http://phys.org/news191483678.html
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/about-...-spring-2002/the-southern-oceans-global-reach

El Nino tied in with the Antarctic Circumpolar Current:
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/pacific-01b.html


Here are some links, the first one goes into details on some of the proposals to "help the Climate":
http://www.chooseclimate.org/cleng/cleng.html

http://www-esd.lbl.gov/CLIMATE/OCEAN/fertilization.html
http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/life/dustplankton...
http://www.mountwashington.org/transcripts/2004/03/23.p...
http://www.esse.ou.edu/classes/geos5510/lecture_notes/L...
http://www.princeton.edu/~cebic/enzymecycles.html
http://www.princeton.edu/~cebic/chelbindintro.html


Map of sea level raise:
http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/washington.shtml

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024512342#post12

 

[r-j]

Storm after storm has pounded England and western Europe, smashing the coastline with massive waves and flooding, making this the stormiest winter in the long English weather records which go back to 1766. But there's something happening in the ocean that's even more disturbing than the destruction to Europe. The extreme wind field across the Atlantic this winter is literally driving water that originated in the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean causing sea ice extent on the Atlantic side of the Arctic ocean to decline in the middle of February. Water temperatures reported by NOAA are far above normal from the coast of north America, to the Labrador and Greenland seas, extending all the way into the Arctic ocean. The sea surface temperature anomaly maps are shocking. Water temperatures are more than 10°F above normal near Svalbard in the Arctic ocean.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/...Water-into-Arctic-Sea-Ice-Melting-in-February

 

[macdoc]

Mikemcc

Oh hell, when I saw references to > 20 degrees I'd been assuming it meant Farenheit, not Centigrade!

Yeah I did the jaw drop thing as well when I saw the numbers.....I suppose in theory if that kept up we could see an earlier ice free Arctic summer.
Like pouring warm water into a glass of ice....does not take long.

 

[Perpetual Student]

That site isn't one that I would consider reliable for anything.

I don't know the total heat energy of the oceans off hand but 5*10^24J seems too small. See macdocs graphic above, the ocean have gained 2*10^23J in the last 50 years and that barely moved the needle on their average temperature.

I'm not sure. The variation shown in the graph is 200x10²¹ Joules, so call it 2x10²³ Joules. The total heat energy (according to that site) is claimed to be 5.6x10²⁴Joules/Kº. Since the average ocean temperature is 278º Kelvin. we get 278x5.6x10²⁴, which is about 1.5x10²⁷ Joules. This would mean the energy in the oceans has increased over the period shown by a factor 1.3x10^-4, or .00013. Does that make sense?

 

[lomiller]

I'm not sure. The variation shown in the graph is 200x10²¹ Joules, so call it 2x10²³ Joules. The total heat energy (according to that site) is claimed to be 5.6x10²⁴Joules/Kº. Since the average ocean temperature is 278º Kelvin. we get 278x5.6x10²⁴, which is about 1.5x10²⁷ Joules. This would mean the energy in the oceans has increased over the period shown by a factor 1.3x10^-4, or .00013. Does that make sense?

I'm not even sure what you are trying to do so how would I know if it makes sense or not?

 

[Perpetual Student]

I'm not even sure what you are trying to do so how would I know if it makes sense or not?

As I said, I'm merely trying to confirm something I've seen elsewhere, that the heat energy stored in the oceans is roughly 1,000 times that stored in the atmosphere.

 

[macdoc]

much more than 1,000 times I would think.

Total mass of Earth's atmosphere 3×1019
Total mass of Earth's oceans 7.3×1022

thats 3 magnitudes right there and then you have latent heat = beyond my pay scale

 

[r-j]

How much of the "heat" the ocean has, comes from the earth itself?

 

[Belz...]

Are you suggesting that the earth's heat output has increased, somehow ?

 

[lomiller]

How much of the "heat" the ocean has, comes from the earth itself?

The heat content of the oceans is controlled by the energy flux at the suface not the floor