Report: Another Year of Record Heat for the Oceans

[chubbs]

18 hours ago, bdgwx said:

And as of this morning it is official. Hansen et al. 2023 was formally accepted for publication.

Why is this a big deal?

1) It is a sobering prediction of what may happen.

2) The authors (and there are big names in this list) take an adversarial tone toward the IPCC by indicting them of reticence and gradualism.

Official: https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889?login=false

News: https://www.eenews.net/articles/james-hansen-is-back-with-another-dire-climate-warning/

 

Will take a while to sort out the ramifications of this years temperature spike. A spike is unsettling when there is uncertainty  about climate sensitivity.  We are running a big science experiment.

[csnavywx]

Hansen not the only one sniffing out higher ECS. @bluewave @chubbs @bdgwx  Timestamped for the appropriate part of the talk.

 

[csnavywx]

https://staff.cgd.ucar.edu/cdeser/docs/hwang.anthro_aerosols_persistent_lanina.oct23.pdf

Paper link.

 

Would go quite a long ways in explaining why La Nina and trade wind strength has been persistent. Seems to suggest that this is a fast (transient) response and that the slow response is in the opposite direction. Interestingly the model experiment in the paper seems to suggest the fast response in the real world peaks this decade and then the slow response kicks in, reversing the trend.

Overall, not great news as this slants the table more towards higher sensitivities with the current trend only being a transient braking mechanism on warming.

[chubbs]

10 hours ago, csnavywx said:

Hansen not the only one sniffing out higher ECS. @bluewave @chubbs @bdgwx  Timestamped for the appropriate part of the talk.

 

Interesting, shows we need to consider aerosols as well as CO2 in understanding man-made climate change, particularly short-term trends which may not have much staying power, if aerosol driven. One quick thought: aerosols apparently contributed to WPac warming and increased frequency of Modoki ninos and perhaps helped our winter snow.

[chubbs]

September update continues this years ocean heat content (OHC) spike which started in May. Broadly consistent with Ceres net radiation data which shows an increasing earth energy imbalance, but doesn't match in detail since the Ceres imbalance has been increasing since 2015. Not clear why OHC would spike in a nino, when stored ocean heat is being released to atmosphere and space, but measurement uncertainty probably plays a role. Another one of this years warm-side surprises.

[bdgwx]

One of Mann's criticism against the accelerated warming hypothesis is that OHC dataset are not yet confirming the high EEI. I don't know...that looks like a pretty big jump in OHC. And like @chubbs said it is coming at a time when we are expecting a drop due to El Nino.

[Typhoon Tip]

It's kind of interesting...

the critics of CC have been, thus far been, unilaterally wrong. 

the consensus, warning of CC ( ... not even qualifying it, just warning ) have if anything been objectively proven insufficient in  timing, and/or magnitude - not only wrt those predictions, but observations of impact over the broad environmental global scale. 

Yet, the former group ... keeps attempting with what really comes off at this point to be stressing even AI to generate argument nuggets. Here's the thing, they don't appear to qualitatively be aware that those 'plausibility' discussion points are getting weaker and weaker - they keep using them regardless - sometimes with the same fervency.

 

 

[bdgwx]

[Miniere et al. 2023] - Robust acceleration of Earth system heating observed over past six decades

[chubbs]

13 hours ago, bdgwx said:

[Miniere et al. 2023] - Robust acceleration of Earth system heating observed over past six decades

Unfortunately study doesn't cover last couple of years, when Ceres energy balance estimates have continued to spike higher. There is brief discussion in the paper comparing Ceres to the ocean heat data. Ceres is running higher than OHC at the end of the study period, (ending in 2020). There are large error bars though and the difference is not statistically significant. They mention that the ocean heat data only covers 60S to 60N and 0-2000m and could be missing some heat content increase. Bottom-line confirming the recent Ceres spike with ocean heat content data is still an open question.

 

[chubbs]

Ocean heat data is out for 2023. Overall the data is similar to recent years. The oceans continue to warm at a steady clip. Found this twitter exchange interesting. There is considerable uncertainty in short-term trends making it hard to determine how much acceleration is occurring.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-024-3378-5

[bdgwx]

Here is a another twitter thread with more information and graphs.

 

[Typhoon Tip]

https://phys.org/news/2024-01-global-ocean-temperatures.html

[chubbs]

Another paper summarizing 2023 ocean warming with a comparison to other methods of estimating global heat imbalance. Ocean warming is accelerating. Reasonably good agreement among the methods considering the measurement uncertainty. Global heating rates are running above the worst case scenario (bottom graph). Why? - aerosols are coming down faster than projected due to air pollution control. This warming boost will last another decade or two unless CO2 emissions start to fall as well.

https://www.mercator-ocean.eu/en/news/new-paper-co-authored-by-moi-oceanographers-reports-record-breaking-ocean-heat-content-levels-in-2023/

[Typhoon Tip]

This is an interesting article over at Phys.org,

https://phys.org/news/2024-04-atmospheric-teleconnections-sustain-blobs-northeast.html

This is statement is concerning,

"...The fundamental problem is that warmer waters hold less carbon dioxide and offer fewer nutrients for the plants and animals that exist there..."

On the other hand, science has shown that the oceans in general "absorb 25 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and captures 90 percent of the excess heat generated by these emissions" - https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/ocean.  ( I've read this in countless other direct sources of peer reviewed/publications)

If (then) warmer oceans hold less carbon dioxide, and we are seeing the oceans warming at a non-linear increase ( the future will test whether that is temporary...), that should infer a -d(absorption) capacity.  

See ?  this is how 'run-away' green-house warming begins. 

[GaWx]

On 7/21/2023 at 1:47 PM, GaWx said:

 To show how unprecedented in the records is the heat this month at Marathon in the FL Keys (records back to 1950), the largest # of days with highs of 96+ for the entire YEAR before 2023 was 11 in 1987, followed by 9 in 2019 and 8 in 2022. There have been 15 straight days counting today with highs of 96+ and 16 total days this month! That's truly amazing for a location surrounded by ocean.

 Prior to this month, the warmest month on record was 88.0 set in June of 2019. July of 2023 is at 90.0 MTD! Should that hold up, a two degree margin over the prior record for a station surrounded by water would be quite notable.

 Assuming there haven't been any recent changes in or location of the sensors at Marathon Airport, July of 2023 there will be considered astounding. I'm not aware of any. The 90.0 MTD air temp there is very believable when considering SSTs in and near the Keys averaging in the low 90s MTD. If they were, say, instead in the upper 80s, I might have questioned the Marathon sensors as the average air temp is often 1-2 F cooler than the average nearby SST.

 Besides the background support from AGW, what else is causing this extreme marine heatwave? Any ideas? What is causing SST averages in the area to be stuck in the lower 90s for the entire month? Some of the very shallow waters such as at Johnson Key buoy to the north in FL Bay even had 5+ days of upper 90s SST highs last week! (That location has water that is only ~5 feet deep though. So, it routinely has daily ranges of 8+ degrees. So, even when it had SST highs of 97+, it had SST lows of upper 80s/near 90 and daily averages near 93.)

 Is the Tonga volcano that put a lot of water vapor in the air an additional factor there and worldwide?

 I expect to be closely following the water temps in the Keys as we head toward summer. Last summer had a prolonged coral bleaching event as a result of continuous significantly warmer than normal water. A big contributor to this marine heatwave was a drier than normal pattern, which when combined with GW lead to unbelievable ocean heat. Hopefully it won’t be as dry. If not, the waters will almost definitely not be as hot.
 
 One thing I learned was that whereas the Key West buoy is in deep enough water to count as comparable to other locations around the world for its water temps, there are some buoys in FL Bay such as Manatee Bay and Johnson Key (see quoted post) with too shallow water along with a dark sea floor to count that way. There’s no coral in these very shallow waters. Several of these buoys had a good number of days with high water temps in the upper 90s to low 100s but with wide diurnal ranges due to the shallowness resulting in lows in the 80s to low 90s. These upper 90 to low 100 water highs were taken out of context (due to not noting the shallowness/wide diurnal ranges) by many media outlets using them for sensationalism to get attention/clicks (see earlier ITT). That results in AGW skeptics using that as ammunition to refute the credibility of any articles related to AGW, sort of a red herring fallacy. Even Dr. Masters noted this.
 

 At the same time the deeper KW buoy typically had only a few degree range on most days. The KW buoy was setting its own records on many days with daily water temp means in the low 90s. That was detrimental to the coral. I’ll be especially following the KW buoy water temps. It is currently in the 83-84 range, similar to 5/10/23. Last year, KW waters had significant warming 5/17-24. Once it reached 30C (86F) on 5/18/23, it appears there wasn’t even one hourly reading that went back below that til 8/30/23!! The highest hourly was an amazing and likely all-time record high of 34.0C (93.2F)(on 8/10/23)! This continuous hot water is what hurt the coral.

 2023 Key West water temps found here:

https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/view_text_file.php?filename=kywf1h2023.txt.gz&dir=data/historical/stdmet/

[etudiant]

5 hours ago, GaWx said:

 I expect to be closely following the water temps in the Keys as we head toward summer. Last summer had a prolonged coral bleaching event as a result of continuous significantly warmer than normal water. A big contributor to this marine heatwave was a drier than normal pattern, which when combined with GW lead to unbelievable ocean heat. Hopefully it won’t be as dry. If not, the waters will almost definitely not be as hot.
 
 One thing I learned was that whereas the Key West buoy is in deep enough water to count as comparable to other locations around the world for its water temps, there are some buoys in FL Bay such as Manatee Bay and Johnson Key (see quoted post) with too shallow water along with a dark sea floor to count that way. There’s no coral in these very shallow waters. Several of these buoys had a good number of days with high water temps in the upper 90s to low 100s but with wide diurnal ranges due to the shallowness resulting in lows in the 80s to low 90s. These upper 90 to low 100 water highs were taken out of context (due to not noting the shallowness/wide diurnal ranges) by many media outlets using them for sensationalism to get attention/clicks (see earlier ITT). That results in AGW skeptics using that as ammunition to refute the credibility of any articles related to AGW, sort of a red herring fallacy. Even Dr. Masters noted this.
 

 At the same time the deeper KW buoy typically had only a few degree range on most days. The KW buoy was setting its own records on many days with daily water temp means in the low 90s. That was detrimental to the coral. I’ll be especially following the KW buoy water temps. It is currently in the 83-84 range, similar to 5/10/23. Last year, KW waters had significant warming 5/17-24. Once it reached 30C (86F) on 5/18/23, it appears there wasn’t even one hourly reading that went back below that til 8/30/23!! The highest hourly was an amazing and likely all-time record high of 34.0C (93.2F)(on 8/10/23)! This continuous hot water is what hurt the coral.

 2023 Key West water temps found here:

https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/view_text_file.php?filename=kywf1h2023.txt.gz&dir=data/historical/stdmet/

Excellently illuminating comment.

Thank you!

[GaWx]

On 5/10/2024 at 6:25 PM, etudiant said:

Excellently illuminating comment.

Thank you!

You’re welcome.

1. Yesterday, KW had an air temp low of 82. That was the earliest in the season 82 by 3 days.

2. The low so far today (as of 10PM) is 83. With the 10PM temp being 84 and with there being neither precip nor a cold front nearby, there’s a good chance the low of 83 will hold. If it does it would become the earliest on record 83 low by a whopping 14 days!
 Edit: the low for yesterday held at 83.

3. The KW buoy water temp has risen significantly since just 4 days ago, when it was 83-4. Today the water high was a whopping 87.4! A year ago today the high was only 84 and it didn’t first hit 86 til May 18th. This is a bit worrisome. Hopefully a wetter pattern will start soon.

[chubbs]

 

[GaWx]

 Key West has had 5 of the last 8 days with record high mean air temps for the date (tied or broken), including the last 3. (Records go all of the way back to 1872):

5/7/24: 83.5 tie

5/10/24: 84.5 broken (old record 84.0)

5/12/24: 84.5 broken (old record 84.0)

5/13/24: 85.5 tie

5/14/24: 88.0 broken (old record 87.0 (2019))

 The 88.0 of 5/14/2024 is the earliest in the season mean that warm by 22 days! The prior warmest mean on any May day was 87.0 (5/14/2019 and 5/22/2023).

 These record high means always occur with little or no rainfall to allow especially the mins to be warm enough (little or no rain cooled air). Key West has had an extremely dry May so far with only 0.03” and no measurable rain the last 10 days:

https://www.weather.gov/wrh/Climate?wfo=key

 This dryness is helping the nearby buoy water temps to steadily rise into what is likely record warmth for the date. Yesterday it was as high as 87.4! Last year’s (same date) KW buoy warmest water temp was 2.8 cooler at “only” 84.6:

 https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=kywf1

 
Edit: KW buoy had a water high of 88.2 today, that’s right 88.2 on May 15th!

[GaWx]

 Ft. Lauderdale has had a whopping 11 days in a row of a record high minimum and with another very likely coming today! Along with this, the last 9 days in a row have had a record high mean. This includes yesterday’s 89.5, the highest on record for May (records back to 1913). Also, only one other day has had a warmer mean, the 91.5 of 6/22/2009!

[GaWx]

At 3 PM were these amazingly high HIs:

Miami 112
WPB 114
Key Largo 117

 These must be records for at least the day, if not the month!

[GaWx]

 I’ve been following the Key West (KW) buoy data closely again recently to see how it is comparing to last year. Keep in mind that this buoy’s water temp is legit since it’s over deep water unlike the buoys over shallow FL Bay/just S of the S tip of FL. During 5/15-18/24, KW water averaged an insanely warm 30.5C! That was warmer than 5/15-17/23, which was “only” 29.1C. And then today (5/19), the KW avg rose to 31.0C!
 
 Last year around this date, KW started warming significantly and was up to 30.5C on 5/19/23. It didn’t fall back to that level til late August. The peak was on 8/10/23, when the avg was ~33.5C and one reading just touched 34.0C/93.2F!!

 There is a coral reef in this deep water near and I believe just S of the Keys chain. It suffered severe, extensive, and very longlasting bleaching much of last summer. I’ll be closely following this again this summer. If the most recent water temps are any indication, it isn’t looking encouraging.  

 In addition to a significant increase in the warmth of the planet overall and more specifically in the N Atlantic Ocean in 2023 vs 2022, the Keys and nearby had a lengthy dry/sunny spell during July-early Aug, which exasperated the ocean heat. Will it be as bad there this summer?

Key West latest buoy data:

https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=kywf1 

 

2023 KW buoy data:

 https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/view_text_file.php?filename=kywf1h2023.txt.gz&dir=data/historical/stdmet/

[Stormchaserchuck1]

Models suggest a strong -PNA (Aleutian High) for the next 10 days, so the warm weather there should continue.. 

[GaWx]

 From met. Ben Noll, this is consistent with what I’ve been posting about S FL/Keys recently:

A strong-to-severe marine heatwave has developed in South Florida's coastal waters amid the recent wave of noteworthy heat and humidity... The extremely warm water will likely form a positive feedback loop, with above average sea temperatures causing above average air temperatures and vice versa - a cycle that looks unlikely to be broken in the weeks ahead

A pattern of persistent and strong high pressure over Mexico is driving the situation. When superimposed with the long-term warming trend, it creates some downright oppressive conditions. Simply put, such widespread and severe marine heatwaves are a sign of the warming climate. They are only expected to become stronger and last longer in the years and decades ahead. This event is a glimpse at what the future holds.

It's not just Florida that's being affected: a category 5 "beyond extreme" marine heatwave is active near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where it recently soared to 100˚F, a few degrees shy of the annual record. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, reached 101˚F this month, a degree shy of its annual record. The story has been similar for San Juan, Puerto Rico. Nighttime temperatures have been 5-10˚F above average in these areas, offering little or no reprieve from the heat.
 

However, these locations can't hold a candle to Campeche, Mexico, which had a 26-day run of high temperatures exceeding 100˚F from April 23rd to May 18th. This included a ridiculous 113˚F reading on May 17th and a low of 83˚F that night, qualifying as 13˚F above average for the day as a whole.

https://x.com/BenNollWeather/status/1792877963052261488?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet

[chubbs]

NOAA ocean content has been updated through end of first quarter. No surprise the sharp upward trend continues. Hard to tell if there is acceleration.

[TheClimateChanger]

Lots of talk about the oceanic heat wave, but not much mention of the incredible marine heat wave in the Great Lakes.

If we look at the water temperatures at the Buffalo crib, where water temperatures have been recorded continuously since 1927, we can see a new daily record was set by an astounding 4F. Also, a whopping 11F above the average reading for May 23rd.

By contrast, the record low for today's date is 32F from 1971 - yes, it was still frozen. On this date in 1936, during the so-called hottest summer on record, the water temperature was a frigid 37F - the ice having broken up just about a week prior.

Even Lake Ontario off Rochester is up to 58F today, as shown above.

[Typhoon Tip]

12 hours ago, TheClimateChanger said:

Lots of talk about the oceanic heat wave, but not much mention of the incredible marine heat wave in the Great Lakes.

If we look at the water temperatures at the Buffalo crib, where water temperatures have been recorded continuously since 1927, we can see a new daily record was set by an astounding 4F. Also, a whopping 11F above the average reading for May 23rd.

By contrast, the record low for today's date is 32F from 1971 - yes, it was still frozen. On this date in 1936, during the so-called hottest summer on record, the water temperature was a frigid 37F - the ice having broken up just about a week prior.

Even Lake Ontario off Rochester is up to 58F today, as shown above.

I'm not sure the "marine heat wave" phenomenon works for the Great Lakes the same way. Great Lakes thermal storage has a different response to physical stressing. They may be considered the same but my personal ( perhaps semantic, fine - ) take on that is that because the causal geophysical roots cannot really compare, they shouldn't be dubbed the same way ( if that is the case...).   Just sayn  lol

The marine aspects out amid the total expanse of the 'oceanic hemisphere'  are a synergy resulting from geophysical inputs that cannot ever apply to the Great Lakes.   For one thing... time and mass -related different responses to stress factors makes the comparison less so.  For example, wind stressing on the Lakes can literally slosh the surface and thermocline depths, complete obliterating the previous state in a single event.   As a result of these so-called "over turning" occurrences,  it's not uncommon for beaches along Lake Michigan's eastern shores to plummet from 75+F, all the way to the mid 50s, even in mid summer ... due to strong short duration wind events... Derechos, be they late summer canonical first fronts ...etc.

The stuff we're discuss out among the oceans has to do with OHE loading and mass quantities that exceed the single capacity of a local timescale wind stressing events.  They are a combination of a reducing evaporation rate in the total integral of the oceanic-atmopheric coupling, which lower evaporation is a warming influence, combined with changes in the circulation footprint - which this latter is redistributing the wind stressing pattern as part of CC.  Those warm pools thus can and will maintain a 'heredity' of that truer longer term more dominating aspect.

[GaWx]

Key West buoy SST in May of 2024 peaked way up at 33.5C/92.3F on 5/29/24! Records go back to 2005. The previous May’s hottest on record was the 32.3C/90.1F of 2023!

Year/That May’s hottest KW SST
2024: 33.5C/92.3F hottest in May

2023: 32.3C/90.1F 2nd hottest in May

2022: 30.7C/87.3F

21: 31.4C/88.5F

20: 30.3C/86.5F 3rd coolest

19: 31.5C/88.7F 4th hottest

18: N/A

17: 31.7C/89.1F 3rd hottest

16: 30.9C/87.6F

15: 31.4C/88.5F

14: 29.7C/85.5F 2nd coolest

13: 30.7C/87.3F

12: 31.1C/88.0F

11: 30.5C/86.9F

10: 31.2C/88.2F

09: 30.8C/87.4F

08: 31.2C/88.2F

07: 29.0C/84.2F coolest

06: 30.8C/87.4F

05: 30.8C/87.4F

 

05-22 May hottest avg: 30.8C/87.4F

For the period 2005-12, the hottest KW SST was 33.6C (in July). Compare that to the 33.5C of 5/29/24!

[Terpeast]

21 hours ago, GaWx said:

Key West buoy SST in May of 2024 peaked way up at 33.5C/92.3F on 5/29/24! Records go back to 2005. The previous May’s hottest on record was 32.3C/90.1F (2023).

May hottest KW SST
24: 33.5C/92.3F hottest

23: 32.3C/90.1F 2nd hottest

22: 30.7C/87.3F

21: 31.4C/88.5F

20: 30.3C/86.5F 3rd coolest

19: 31.5C/88.7F 4th hottest

18: N/A

17: 31.7C/89.1F 3rd hottest

16: 30.9C/87.6F

15: 31.4C/88.5F

14: 29.7C/85.5F 2nd coolest

13: 30.7C/87.3F

12: 31.1C/88.0F

11: 30.5C/86.9F

10: 31.2C/88.2F

09: 30.8C/87.4F

08: 31.2C/88.2F

07: 29.0C/84.2F coolest

06: 30.8C/87.4F

05: 30.8C/87.4F

 

05-22 May hottest avg: 30.8C/87.4F

For the period 2005-12, the hottest KW SST was 33.6C (in July). Compare that to the 33.5C of 5/29/24!

I know your post is focused on KW (for good reason, huge 2 day jump) but look at the entire Atlantic. It’s effin boiling! I cannot look at this map without being alarmed for our futures, not to mention our local snowfall prospects. 

[GaWx]

1 hour ago, Terpeast said:

I know your post is focused on KW (for good reason, huge 2 day jump) but look at the entire Atlantic. It’s effin boiling! I cannot look at this map without being alarmed for our futures, not to mention our local snowfall prospects. 

 I need to clarify something. Those are years that I listed. I went back and modified the post to prevent any more confusion. So, that wasn’t a huge 2 day jump from May 22nd to May 24th.

 Rather, that was a large rise from May of 2022’s hottest of 87.3 to May of 2024’s hottest of 92.3. Also, this 92.3 of 5/29/24 was 4.9 warmer than the avg of the hottest in Mays of 2005-22 as well as 2.2 warmer than that for any other May back at least to 2005.

 Good news is that KW buoy down to 87.3F this morning, which compares to 90.0F at same time on May 29th and 30th. As if 87.3F is cool lol.

 Indeed, Atlantic as a whole is boiling.  I don’t get any snow way down here in an avg winter but I still prefer the winter not be mild. This hurts those chances.