Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Oceans

Metres of Sea-Level Rise: Climate Commissioner

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WILL Steffen is the executive director of the Australian National University Climate Change Institute and also a member of the Australian Climate Commission. This is the Climate Commission established to provide all Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about the science of climate change. This is the same Professor Steffan who, you may remember, sort of fudged hot day data for western Sydney [1].

My name is Mr Koala and I’ve been reading the latest contribution from this professor who is paid to provide me with an independent and reliable source of information on climate change.

He has a piece in today’s national newspaper, The Australian. It’s really scary! Professor Steffan tell us:

“Scientists have painted a clear picture of the risks from failing to act on climate change. The natural world would experience the sixth great extinction event in Earth’s history, coral reefs would almost completely disappear, and we would be facing metres of sea-level rise as oceans continue to warm and polar ice sheets melt and disintegrate.”

Ouch. Nemo!

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How the Oceans Get Warm? (Rephrased)

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ACCORDING to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) the oceans are warming [1]. But the IPCC does not explain the underlying physical mechanism, the IPCC does not explain from first principles how the oceans warm.

In 2000, in a short article for Science and Technology Magazine, a respected oceanographer, the late Robert E. Stevenson wrote that the popular scientific consensus that greenhouses gases were causing the oceans to warm was incorrect because infrared radiation from greenhouse gases heats only the top few millimetres of the ocean and as a consequence is soon dissipated by evaporation [2]. According to Dr Stevenson, it is only the sun that can warm the oceans.

Indeed incoming solar radiation in the visible spectrum* is mostly short-wave radiation and it is generally accepted, including by those who swim in the ocean, that this radiation can penetrate a significant distance into the water column and is stored as heat.

Physicists that specialize in quantifying heat transfer will generally concur with Dr Stevenson. They explain that evaporation, conduction and long-wave infrared radiation (for example from greenhouse gases) are all surface heat transfer effects. That is, they only heat or cool at the very surface of the water.

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Climate4You Update

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Dear Jennifer,

Please find below a link which will take you directly to a monthly newsletter (ca. 1.5 MB) with global meteorological information updated to June 2012:
http://www.climate4you.com/Text/Climate4you_June_2012.pdf

All temperatures in this newsletter are shown in degrees Celsius.

Previous issues (since March 2009) of this newsletter, diagrams and additional material are available for download on http://www.climate4you.com/

All the best, yours sincerely,
Ole Humlum
Professor of Physical Geography
University of Oslo, Norway

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How the Oceans Get Warm: Robert E. Stevenson

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THERE are only ever a small number of scientists who can explain a phenomenon from first principles and these experts will often speak in jargon that is unintelligible[1]. But every so often one comes across a real expert who appears to not only have a deep understanding of a subject area, but can also write with clarity on that subject.

The oceanographer the late Robert E. Stevenson [2] wrote a short article for Science and Technology Magazine in 2000 disputing the popular consensus on how the oceans warm [3]. In the following extract from ‘Yes, the Ocean has Warmed; No, It’s Not Global Warming’, Dr Stevenson claims that:

1. Sunlight directly heats the ocean to a certain depth, up to 100 metres;
2. The ocean heat balance is maintained by heat loss to the atmosphere, not to the deep ocean; and
3. Infrared radiation from greenhouse gases heats only the top few millimetres of the ocean and as a consequence is soon dissipated by evaporation.
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