Comments 1 to 10:

1. Seqenenre at 04:55 AM on 16 January, 2020

   In a CNN article the lead author said the ocean temperature (I am not quite sure what this means) was 0.075 degrees Celsius above the 1981-2010 average in 2019.

   That does not look like very a serious problem to me. What am I missing?

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2. Doug Bostrom at 06:16 AM on 16 January, 2020

   Seqenenre, it sounds like a small number but message and effects are notable.

   As expressed elsewhere, the energy required to raise the temperature of such a large mass at this rate is "equivalent to every person on the planet running 100 microwave ovens all day and all night." Warming the entire ocean at this rate is a fairly shocking confirmation of the effects of increases in what some dismiss as "only a trace gas." 225 zetajoules is a very large amount of energy. 

   What looks like a small absolute change in the temperature of the upper ocean results in profound changes in moisture in the atmosphere and hence what we can expect in behavior of rainfall, convective storms, etc.

   Thermosteric sea level rise is about 0.7m per degree centigrade warming of the ocean. With an accelerating rate of ocean warming, seemingly small increases in temperature will stack up to become a significant problem. 

    

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3. Eclectic at 08:09 AM on 16 January, 2020

   Seqenenre :-  As Doug says, the amount of extra heat energy involved is enormous in total.   As well as producing a sea level rise (with its own major effects on coastal humanity) you find the heat energy "sloshing about" in uneven distributions.   Heat coming to the surface to produce El Nino surges of global air temperature.   Heat driving the "fewer but stronger storms/ hurricanes".   Heat undercutting & melting the Antarctic ice, and increasingly melting the arctic sea-ice.   Heat leading to increased flooding & droughts & heat waves.

   The surface air temperature (that we live in) is a sort of "tail of the dog"  ~ the oceanic dog moves itself slightly . . . and the tail moves a lot.

   Even within the ocean, you see important fluctuations as the overall water temperature rises.   Vast areas of coral can bleach and die, as shallower water experiences "watery heat waves".   Tropical / warm-water fish must move to cooler habitats, further away from the equator.   The effects on marine life are much larger than you would intuitively expect.

   "Tiny" changes can sometimes have large effects.  We are used to the large swings of temperature with the seasons: typical winter/summer change might be 20 degreesC or more . . . yet (counter-intuitively) a sustained gain of 1 or 2 degrees can build up to a colossal effect on the whole planet.   We must look at "small numbers" with a scientific eye, rather than with our usual "everyday eye".

   I am always amused by science-deniers such as Lord Monckton ~ how, one day they can be arguing that 0.04% of the atmosphere (as CO2) is such a tiny amount ("and which has only increased by one part in ten thousand, in the past 100 years") and is so tiny as to be entirely unimportant in this world . . . and the next day they argue the 0.04% is so very important because "it sustains all life on earth".

    

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4. Mathieu18981 at 08:38 AM on 16 January, 2020

   A study using Zetajoules always make my critical mind goes wild, alarms going on.

   99.8% of the globe does not know what is a zetajoules and cannot convert it to a more common metric, the Celsius.

   Doing the maths i saw that the ''shocking'' study (from some headlines i saw on MSM) is actually a 0.1 C of increase in the last 60 years. Ok? but it becomes wilder still. The margin of error is 0.003%. I mean come on! Do you really takes us all for retards?

   With 4000 buoys from Argo you can't pretend having such a low margin of error. It is a deceptive affirmation, as every buoy needs to mesure the temperature of the sea the size of Portugal AND 2 KMs deep. 

   Does anyone here believe a reading in Lisbon actually gives the temperatures of Porto, Faro or Lagos? It is ridiculous and does not help the narrative at all. 

    

   I'm 100% for waking up people but the data and affirmation needs to be strong and realistic. In the end, anyone with some understanding of margin of error can understand the results of the ''study'' IS within the margin of error and what does this say? Nothing here move along...

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5. Mathieu18981 at 08:46 AM on 16 January, 2020

   @doug_bostrom

   Anyone using figures like hiroshima bombs and microwaves gibberish is simply trying to confuse the mind of his readers. We have real figures in zetajoules, celsius or farenheit if you are americans. Theses figures everyone understand them and are easily convert to one another.

   Everything goes down the drain when you realise the assumption about the margin of error the scientists affirmed they achieve. Its pure madness if you understand statistics requirements.

   Finally 225 zetajoules is nothing on a 60 years period. The earth receive more than 6K zetajoules a year meaning with some simple maths : 6K (round up) x 60 = 360 000. Now do a % its 1/1600 of what the earth received in 60 years. 

   I'm supposed to worry about that? There is many many ways to explain this and remember it is within the margin of error. 

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6. Doug Bostrom at 08:55 AM on 16 January, 2020

   Mathieu, I know you're not calling folks like Gregory Johnson (who runs the American portion of Argo— look him up in Google Scholar, read and understand his papers) liars, so the only remaining plausible (and still charitable) conclusion is that you're suffering from a universal affliction called the Dunning-Kruger effect. That's not a unique and awful reflection on you— it's a fallibility we all share, more or less. Check it out— seconds away on Google.  

   As to error and confidence interval in the paper's conclusions, now that you've asserted your superior expertise do see Figure 2. It's an open access paper. There's no reason to guess. 

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7. Doug Bostrom at 09:14 AM on 16 January, 2020

   "225 zetajoules is nothing on a 60 years period. The earth receive more than 6K zetajoules a year"

   And the central heating system in my house liberates far more energy in a year than does the grease fire on the stove I've just noticed. So I don't need to worry about the grease fire. Let it burn. It's such a relatively small amount of energy, right? :-)

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8. GwsB at 04:32 AM on 20 January, 2020

   ''Seqenenre at 1. Thank you for pointing out that the ocean temperature has only increased by 0.075 degrees Celcius over the 1981-2010 average. An increase of 0.075 over 25 years is quite small. It will take 25/0.075=333 years for the oceans to heat up by one degree. Hence w may depend on the oceans to cool us down over the next three centuries and we need not worry about rising sea levels, 0.7 meters over the next three centuries.

   Either that or the value of 0.075 degrees in the CNN article is a mistake.
   Is there anybody out there who can translated 225 zetajoules into degrees Celcius, so we can clear up this issue?''

   This was posted at 00.57 AM on 18 January, 2020. Since then it has been deleted. Does Skeptical Science use censors? If so, who are they, and where does one apply to find out the reason for deleting the original post?

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9. nigelj at 05:52 AM on 20 January, 2020

   GwsB, The increase in ocean temperature of 0.075 degrees Celcius over the 1981-2010 average might be for the oceans as a whole including the deep oceans.  The nasa giss graph of ocean temperatures below is for the surface 100 metres or so (I think)  and it looks like about 0.5 degrees c for the same period. 

   data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/

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10. GwsB at 21:51 PM on 20 January, 2020

    nigelj, your answer was very helpful. 4600 joule heats one liter of water by one degree C. Hence 228 zetajoule heats the ocean with a volume of 1.35 zetaliter by 228/1.35/4600=0.04 degrees Celcius. Add 10% for the deep ocean (below 2000 meter), see p 139 in the Cheng et al (2020) paper, to obtain an average increase in the temperature of 0.044 degrees Celcius for the whole ocean. The CNN estimate of 0.075 degrees grossly over estimates of the effect of climate change.

    Perhaps you can help me with another issue.

    https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/IRISN4RAD_001/summary

    shows the spectrum of the outgoing radiation on May 5, 1970 over the Sahara. The absorption due to CO2 is clearly documented. A more recent spectrum, say from 2019, might show in how far the situation has deteriorated over the last fifty years, and help convince skeptics that there is no saturation. Where can one obtain a plot with more recent data?

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