Ocean Temperature

[haizhung]

Not sure if my math is correct, but seems like compared to before global warming started, the oceans now hold an excess of energy that is equivalent to running a nuclear power plant for 3 million years. This is now excess energy in our system.

I just wanted to share that since I couldn’t really relate to the 10^22 joules number in the article.

[dndn1]

The number appears to me as ~20 x 10^22 J

I tried to replicate your maths using 1Bn W for a power plant and I get ~6.3M years. Did you use a different W?

I chose 1Bn from reading https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/infographic-how-much-powe...

I'm glad your comment triggered me to do this exercise!

Boggling numbers all the same, and this is only the top half-mile of ocean

[rsaesha]

Venus any% glitchless speedrun.

[ttul]

Great. We just need to find a way to vent that extra heat off into outer space. Problem solved. /s

[thret]

Which article are you referring to? I didn't see it in the parent.

[throw_away1525]

Given that the excess energy did come from nuclear power plant (the sun) over millions of years I think that is a really apt way to look at things.

Interesting coincidence that you ended up with 3 million years, given life appeared on earth about 3.7 million years ago.

[jackhab]

Can someone explain me why people post links to Wikipedia articles without any context?

[arc-in-space]

For the exact same reason people post links to other things, it's interesting. It's always been more "hacker" than "news" here.

Incidentally, check out this wacky alien-looking worm that exhibits bioluminescence even though it lives its entire life inside of a tube, so there is no one to perceive it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaetopterus

[hyperpape]

Ocean temperatures have been the subject of a half dozen HN articles (driven by articles in the news) in the past few weeks, so I assume that’s the reason.

Speaking for myself, not Dan, but for non-technical topics that appear on HN, the discussion would be a lot better if the average commentator read the obvious Wikipedia article before commenting. That’s true even though Wikipedia has a lot of problems.

[prawn]

I've submitted them before and often enjoy when they're posted. Sometimes the zeitgeist-link is obvious or sometimes it's a bit random. I'd guess that people who enjoy when they're posted also take to submitting interesting pages they've read (or re-encountered).

[stefncb]

They maybe stumbled upon it and found it interesting. There's often no need for context, it can simply be an interesting article to read.

[avgcorrection]

It’s a delightful HN quirk. You can post a direct link to anything you find interesting, apropos of nothing.

[kzrdude]

Ocean temperatures have been in the news (for me), so I for one can see the context.

[melenaboija]

Because it is compliant with HN rules.

If you see it in the front page and it bothers you enough to ask the question maybe you should try to find another community.

[ricardobayes]

What's the reason it started to skyrocket after 1980 and not before? What made it stagnant or even slightly drop between 1940 and 1980?

[sixbrx]

That mirrors global average temperature in general for that time period. Apparently it was because we were pumping sulfates into the atmosphere at an amazing rate from the 1940's until the EPA was born. Sulfates block sunlight and so mask the overall warming, at the cost of polluting the atmosphere.

See for example: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/50-years-ago-scientists-...

[legulere]

CO2-Emissions have been growing at an accelerating speed. Cumulative emissions double every 20-30 years. Half of CO2-emissions since 1750 have happened just since 1993.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co-emissions?c...

[notamy]

> What made it stagnant or even slightly drop between 1940 and 1980?

Well, there was that one really big war in the 1940s...

[philjohn]

Aerosols from pollution could be a culprit?

[ezconnect]

We probably are getting better at measuring things and crunching the numbers as years pass by.

[upsidesinclude]

> between the 1950s and the 1980s, the temperature of the Antarctic Southern Ocean rose by 0.17 °C (0.31 °F), nearly twice the rate of the global ocean.

>The warming rate varies with depth: at a depth of a thousand metres the warming occurs at a rate of nearly 0.4 °C per century (data from 1981 to 2019), whereas warming occurs at only half that depth [sic]

So from 20% of two centruries we have developed a long term average?

The chart of excess ocean energy also relates the current ocean energy relative to an average which ends in 2006. If you're unaware this biases the end values upwards.

Calculating out their 2020 value to each kg of ocean water on earth for a depth of 700m gives 0.189Cal. In other words, less than 20% of one degree above an arbitrary average calculated on a century basis with 80% of the century data absent.

If this could just pretend to appear as science i would start to care.

[brabel]

> These predictions suggest ocean temperatures of 55–85 °C during the period of 2,000 to 3,500 million years ago, followed by cooling to more mild temperatures of between 10 and 40 °C by 1,000 million years ago.

Imagine going to the beach and finding the water temperature is 85C, near boiling :D. What a different world that would be.

[f6v]

What concerns me is sloppy writing of this article. For example:

> In other words: the climb in ocean temperatures is the inevitable outcome of Earth's energy imbalance, primarily associated with increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.[8]

The reference leads to https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00376-023-2385-2 which is an article that doesn’t establish the causal relationship between human emissions and rising temperatures. Rather, the authors use this as an opening and reference other works on the topic.

If you put a reference to back up your claim, the reference should be to a primary study and not some study that references other study that might be relevant.

[brianush1]

Primary sources are not allowed on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a tertiary source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research...

[jfengel]

Oh, you may be looking for this. It dates back before the doi system, so I don't think it has a link there.

https://www.geographyrealm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/18...

“Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays”, pp 382-83 in: The American Journal of Science and Arts, Second Series, Vol. XXII — November, 1856 (Whole Volume). New York: G.P. Putnam & Co., 1856

[RecycledEle]

If someone did present evidence that they oceans were not warming, they would be shouted down. Therefore, the claim the oceans are warming is not falsifiable. Therefore there can be no scientific position taken on whether the oceans are warming or not.

I regret that both sides in the warming debate have proven they will fake data. Their actions make it impossible for me to know if our planet is warming.

[skymast]

What is the temperature of the oceans supposed to be?