Guest posts by Willis Eschenbach
After three consecutive years of unusual La Nina (cool) ocean temperatures, alarmists are all worried about sea temperatures as we approach El Nino conditions. We get requests like this:
The global oceans are so hot right now, that scientists around the world are struggling to explain the phenomenon. Sea surface temperatures in June are so far above record levels, which is considered statistically nearly impossible in a climate without global warming.
These excessive claims are often accompanied by charts like the following:
Figure 1. The title says it all.
YIKE! Thermageddon is just around the corner! Scared!! …
So… what’s not to like? Well, for a start, they ignored the colder areas of the ocean, the areas near the poles. It’s cherry picking to magnify any warming. But that’s just the beginning.
Those who have read my work know that I often don’t believe in numbers until I run them myself. So I went to their data source. The data they use is NOAA’s Optimal Interpolated Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) data. From OISST . website:
“NOAA 1/4° Optimal Daily Interpolated Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) is a Long Term Climate Data Record that combines observations from different platforms (satellites, ships, buoys, and buoys). Argo) into a conventional global network. The dataset is interpolated to fill in the gaps in the grid and produce a spatially complete map of sea surface temperatures. The satellite and ship observations are referenced to the buoys to compensate for platform differences and sensor offsets.”
Downloading data takes a while. That’s 15,259 files, one per day, 1.7 megabytes each, about 26 gigabytes in total… good luck.
After downloading them all, I charted the daily values. But not the outliers shown above. I’ve graphed the actual daily values of the sea surface temperature (SST) of the entire ocean, so I can see what the SST is actually doing.
Figure 2. OISST Sea Surface Temperature (SST) for the global ocean.
There are a few things worth noting in Figure 2.
- You can see previous El Nino peaks in 1998-99, 2010-11, 2016-17 and El Nino now developing.
- As is often the case with natural datasets, it changes in batches and starts, heats up for a while, then cools, then heats up a bit, then cools…
- You can see recent cool La Nina years just before the 2023 peak
- The temperature peak occurred on April 2, 2023, and temperatures have dropped about a quarter of a degree since.
Finally, is this “far beyond record territory” as people are claiming?
Well… in a word, no. The April 2 temperature was 0.04°C warmer than the previous record set in 2016.
Four. percent. Belong to. A level.
(And if we just look at the ocean cherry picking from 60°N to 60° South [not shown]that’s a whopping 0.06°C…)
In a word, as everyone who has ever climbed a mountain knows, the higher you go, the cooler the air. This cooling process is colloquially known as the “adiabatic error rate”. Generally, it cools by about 1°C for every 100 meters in altitude.
So, in human terms, 0.04°C is equivalent to the amount of warming you can get when you go from the second floor to the first floor in a building… in other words, not even detectable. would do without a very expensive thermometer.
Of course, the question arises: why is there such a difference between Figure 1 and Figure 2?
The reason is very simple. Warming in 2023 is happening earlier in the year. The temperature is not unusually high. It was unusually early, which is not surprising since we are experiencing several years of La Nina (cool) temperatures.
And this is why using outliers instead of actual values, while helpful in some situations, can lead you astray in others.
Continuing, the majority of hyperventilation involves the North Atlantic. These are the SST anomalies for that part of the ocean.
Figure 3. As shown in Figure 1, but only for the North Atlantic.
Again, this looks like Thermageddon is about to happen… but this is the actual temperature of the North Atlantic.
Figure 4. OISST Sea Surface Temperature (SST) for the North Atlantic.
Unlike the global ocean, because this is only the northern hemisphere, there is a strong signal every year.
And again, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about the maximum temperature. In fact, maximum temperatures in the North Atlantic have been fairly stable since 2010. All that’s happening is that, like the global ocean, this year is warming earlier than usual.
TL version; DR?
- The Thermageddon Festival 2023 is canceled and tickets will not be refunded.
Best for all on another cold, foggy day in Northern California. I, I say let’s cause global warming, or at least some sunshine.
w.
As usual: I politely ask that when you comment, you quote exactly the words you are discussing. I choose my words very carefully and I am happy to defend them. But I cannot defend your interpretation of my words. Thank.
Related
