Posted on 04/01/2012 9:40:29 PM PDT by smokingfrog
Her Majesty's Ship Challenger set sail in 1872. Stripped of her guns and outfitted for science, her mission was to sail around the globe sampling as she went.
Among other scientific triumphs, the Challenger gathered the first global set of ocean temperature readings, more than 260 in all. The British expedition measured from the surface to a depth beyond 900 meters.
In 2004, a set of drifting buoys began to make similar measurements. There are now more than 3000 of these floats bobbing in the world's seas, collecting oceanographic information.
Comparing the data sets, separated by more than a century in time, reveals that, yes, the ocean is warming. On average, the global ocean is warmer by roughly 0.6 degrees Celsius at the surface and 0.1 degrees at depth. The analysis appears in the journal Nature Climate Change.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
I’m glad it’s still above -2 degrees C, give or take a pinch of salt.
The instrument had to be pulled back on ship to read, correct?
At the very least, that means it spent 1 or 2 minutes in progressively warmer water.
Were temperatures read on deck in hot summer sunshine?
Were they read in freezing winter winds?
Has anyone rebuilt the 1872 instrument and tested it against the exquisitely precise 2012 instruments?
Excellent point.
there are obviously too many fish in the ocean putting out much too much body heat - get yer fishin boats boys, we gotta go save the planet !
0.1 degrees 100 years ago?
i’m going with measurement error
I don’t believe them.
Isn’t SA owned by Germans?
Those questions would not have mattered, since they would have been using simple but very accurate max/min mercury thermometers of the kind still used by gardeners in greenhouses. These have pins sealed into the u-shaped glass tube which are pushed by the two extremities of the mercury column. The pins stay at the maximum and minimum positions reached until reset by a magnet after a reading has been taken.
This would give a measurement of the coldest temperature reached in that sounding: but of course the coldest temperature would not necessarily be at the greatest depth. To check that would need repeated soundings at the same location, but at progressively reducing depths. Which, knowing the thoroughness of Victorian scientists, I've little doubt they did. I'd be wary, too, of underestimating the accuracy of Victorian scientific instruments.
Isn’t the Challenger Deep, deepest part of the Marianas Trench, named after the British ship Challenger? I remember watching a show on History Channel, “How the Earth was Made” about the trench and the work the Brits did on the late 1800’s measuring the ocean, discovering the depth of the trench with a rope and an iron weight.
Great answer, much of it brand new to me.
Thank you.
Was the 135 y.o. equipment calibrated before using its numbers? Was the same methodology, dates and locations used for the readings? If not the comparison IS meaningless. The fact that it is reported as “135 years of records” is a clue-to-the-skew. It is in fact two years of records using wholly different equipment and methodologies. Ergo it is nonsense.
Yes, that's the one. This was one of the many projects devised by the Admiralty to keep the Royal Navy occupied, and its brightest minds engaged, during the hundred years after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in which it had undisputed command of the high seas.
IOW, any increase in the deep ocean temperature is a good thing, it means that CO2 warming is negated.
Any readings that did not fit the desired model after 1950 were discarded...
This is ridiculous. The temperature readings from Challenger are of no use in any scientific enquiry. They are talking about 260 sets of data points, separated by what amount of time? What time of year? Based on what accuracy of the readings? If they’d taken a reading at the height of el-nino we might now be reading that ocean temps had dropped significantly. Oh wait. No we wouldn’t. It doesn’t fit the neo-luddite narrative.
Worth repeating.
Watts discusses this topic on his site:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/04/02/300-soundings-from-19th-century-compared-to-argo-data/
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