Sunday, April 30, 2017

Significant Quarterly Jump in Ocean Heat Content

The ocean has recovered from its heat loss during last year's El Nino, and is again accumulating heat.

Here are the data: 0-700 m, 0-2000 m.

Over the last quarter, the 0-700 m region of the ocean gained 1.1 W/m2, and the 0-2000 m region gained 1.3 W/m2.

Over 12 months, these regions gained 0.3 W/m2 and 0.5 W/m2, respectively.

Though both these numbers are barely higher than they were 2 years ago, in 1Q2015.

Here are the latest big numbers: anyone who wants to explain global warming via natural factors has to come up with 0.18 W/m2 since 1Q1955 for the 0-700 m region, and 0.65 W/m2 since 1Q2005 for the 0-2000 m region.

That's 180 ZJ and 125 ZJ, respectively.

(1 ZJ = 1 zettajoule =  1021 Joules.)

The first value is how much sunlight (240 W/m2) reaches the surface in 17 days, and the second in 12 days.




2 comments:

Unknown said...

David - the data on your 0-2000 meters link appears to stop during 2014.

David Appell said...

I fixed that. Thanks for pointing it out.