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Global ocean monitoring program struggling to stay afloat, warn scientists
Graham Readfearn
The Argo array of ocean floats supported by 31 countries has ‘revolutionised’ our understanding of the oceans but its future is uncertain
Wednesday 24 February 2016 20.31 AEDT
Right now, roughly a kilometre below the surface of an ocean near you, a yellow cylinder about the size of a golf bag is taking measurements of the temperature and saltiness of the water.
Every couple of days, the float will drop deeper – down to 2km – and then rise to the surface to transmit its data, before disappearing back into the depths to do the whole thing again.
World's oceans warming at increasingly faster rate, new study finds
Read more
These floats do this for as long as eight years, until the poor little things die of exhaustion (well, their batteries run out).
There are about 3,800 of these floats scattered across the globe as part of a program called Argo, supported by more than 30 countries.
It’s likely you’ve never heard of Argo and much less likely you’ve ever seen one of the floats.
But for the last decade, climate scientists and oceanographers have been using the data from these Argo floats to plug a gaping ocean-sized hole in our understanding of global warming.
Scientific papers that use the data from these floats are now appearing in science journals at the rate of about one per day.
.....
Argo is fundamental because this all comes back to the heat problem. The key thing that matters for the Earth is how much extra heat is retained in the system.
While we have seen this huge debate over the last 15 years about this so-called ‘hiatus’, really what Argo shows us is that surface variability [in temperature] is just a re-organisation of heat.
When you get below a couple of hundred metres you see the inexorable growth of global warming happening in the oceans. That’s driving a good chunk of the sea level rise. It is telling us what the radiation imbalance is at the top of the atmosphere.
Once that heat and that carbon is down there in the deep ocean it’s there for decades – if not longer – and it’s locking in that warming. We see that warming in Argo right down to the depths of our measurement – right down to two kilometres and its probably extending further.
Another analysis of the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. This story goes into more detail of the climate that is killing the coral - and its not El Nino.
View attachment 66378
Chart showing record sea surface temperatures across northern and Coral Sea areas of Australia in summer 2015/16 Photograph: Bureau of Meteorology
Hughes said that in 1998, 2002 and this current GBR bleaching event, the areas of the reef that bleached matched “perfectly” the areas with unusually high SST.
The record warm oceans that have been stressing the corals in recent weeks are part of a long-term trend of warming ocean temperatures around the globe, including the waters off Australia.
View attachment 66379
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ing-clear-and-incontrovertible-say-scientists
Another analysis of the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. This story goes into more detail of the climate that is killing the coral - and its not El Nino.
View attachment 66378
Chart showing record sea surface temperatures across northern and Coral Sea areas of Australia in summer 2015/16 Photograph: Bureau of Meteorology
Hughes said that in 1998, 2002 and this current GBR bleaching event, the areas of the reef that bleached matched “perfectly” the areas with unusually high SST.
The record warm oceans that have been stressing the corals in recent weeks are part of a long-term trend of warming ocean temperatures around the globe, including the waters off Australia.
View attachment 66379
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ing-clear-and-incontrovertible-say-scientists
Is this a permanent condition or will the reef return to normal if the sea cools ?
View attachment 66380
Here is the Global outlook forecast for the 28/4/16 to the 05/05/16 , the heat is going no where.
...
And the shame is, we can do it all at no more overall cost with clean alternatives.
If it will kill us, we'd do it anyway just to be sure [?]
Don't we sometime wonder how the heck does our species survive and the dinosaurs didn't?
You answer it then. I haven't.
You won't though.
(you don't won't to challenge your religious beliefs by thinking about facts, It's Galileo all over again)
Go to Google......there is a heap of info on the capture of CO2.
It's waste heat
Link to this page
What the science says...
The contribution of waste heat to the global climate is 0.028 W/m2. In contrast, the contribution from human greenhouse gases is 2.9 W/m2. Greenhouse warming is adding about 100 times more heat to our climate than waste heat.
Climate Myth...
It's waste heat
"Global warming is mostly due to heat production by human industry since the 1800s, from nuclear power and fossil fuels, better termed hydrocarbons, – coal, oil, natural gas. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2 play a minor role even though they are widely claimed the cause." (Morton Skorodin)
When humans use energy, it gives off heat. Whenever we burn fossil fuels, heat is emitted. This heat doesn't just disappear - it dissipates into our environment. How much does waste heat contribute to global warming? This has been calculated in Flanner 2009 (if you want to read the full paper, access details are posted here). Flanner contributes that the contribution of waste heat to the global climate is 0.028 W/m2. In contrast, the contribution from human greenhouse gases is 2.9 W/m2 (IPCC AR4 Section 2.1). Waste heat is about 1% of greenhouse warming.
Radiative forcing from waste heat vs anthropogenic greenhouse gas radiative forcing
What does these numbers mean? They refer to radiative forcing, the change in energy flux at the top of the atmosphere. Or putting it in plain English, the amount of heat being added to our climate. Greenhouse warming is currently adding about 100 times more heat to our climate than waste heat.
...Somebody's crunched numbers. Small globally, noticeable regionally:
Nearly all energy used for human purposes is dissipated as heat within Earth's land–atmosphere system. Thermal energy released from non-renewable sources is therefore a climate forcing term. Averaged globally, this forcing is only +0.028 W m−2, but over the continental United States and western Europe, it is +0.39 and +0.68 W m−2, respectively. Here, present and future global inventories of anthropogenic heat flux (AHF) are developed, and parameterizations derived for seasonal and diurnal flux cycles. Equilibrium climate experiments show statistically-significant continental-scale surface warming (0.4–0.9 °C) produced by one 2100 AHF scenario, but not by current or 2040 estimates. However, significant increases in annual-mean temperature and planetary boundary layer (PBL) height occur over gridcells where present-day AHF exceeds 3.0 W m−2. PBL expansion leads to a slight, but significant increase in atmospheric residence time of aerosols emitted from large-AHF regions. Hence, AHF may influence regional climate projections and contemporary chemistry-climate studies.
Flanner, M. G. (2009), Integrating anthropogenic heat flux with global climate models, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L02801, doi:10.1029/2008GL036465.
The basic theory of the three phases of ENSO are here:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/enso/history/ln-2010-12/three-phases-of-ENSO.shtml
TL;DR version is in each phase the ocean winds / currents are acting differently so the warmer water ends up in a different part of the Pacific Ocean.
During El Nino the water closer to the northern parts of Australia is cooler, so generally there is less rainfall and less cyclone activity. Land temperature is warmer because there is less cloud coverage etc.
During La Nina the water in that region is warmer.
There's two things here:So are the waters in the Coral Sea getting warmer or cooler?....Cooler waters will have a greater affect on the reef than warmer waters.....The coral will survive much better in warmer waters.
There's two things here:
During El Nino the temperature in that part of the ocean is at a cooler part of the temperature cycle. Temperatures aren't stagnant. They fluctuate.
In saying that no one is saying that it is historically cooler than it usually is at this part of the cycle.
Can you confirm you understand the difference?
edit: I'm talking exclusively about the area in the BOM map discussing ENSO. Not the reef.
You asked why there were no cyclones this year, I'm confident I've answered that question.
I think you want 2 bob each way.
So what is your answer to stop the bleaching in the meantime?
Thanks basilio, I still stick to my gun of at least 2C increase temperature of the atmosphere since the industrial revolution (am happy if someone can find a fayult in my computation (genuinely happy as this would increase the earth survival chancesIs global warming simply a consequence of the huge amount of heat produced by the burning of fossil fuels rather than the effects of greenhouse gases?
Apparently not. The question has been asked and analysed. Waste heat contributes 1% overall of the extra heating on the Earth. There are some regional differences . For example in highly industrial areas the US and Western Europe for example there will be some additional local warming.
The paper which does the maths on this question seems to be accessible if anyone would like to check it out.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/waste-heat-global-warming.htm
Don't have an opinion on it at this point. As I've said, I only answered your question about why there were no cyclones in Northern QLD this year.
I'm not really interesting in debating anything outside of that.
I guess you don't want to debate any further because obviously do not know or understand it yourself....You have not answered any question to my satisfaction I am sorry to say.....
You may think you have but you are deluding yourself.
You have a one track mind and that is every problem relating to Earth is man made and nothing will ever change your mind.
According to you, natural phenomenons just do not occur.
**** off mate.I guess you don't want to debate any further because obviously do not know or understand it yourself....You have not answered any question to my satisfaction I am sorry to say.....
You may think you have but you are deluding yourself.
You have a one track mind and that is every problem relating to Earth is man made and nothing will ever change your mind.
According to you, natural phenomenons just do not occur.
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