Ocean Temperature Rise

Ocean Temperatures

Of all excess heat resulting from people's emissions, 93.4% goes into oceans. Accordingly, the temperature of oceans has risen substantially.

Globally, the average September ocean temperature marked a record high for that month in 2014, at 0.66°C (1.19°F) above the 20th century average, breaking the previous record that was set just one month earlier. On the Northern Hemisphere, the temperature of the ocean in September 2014 was 0.83 °C (or 1.49 °F) above the 20th century, 

The anomaly was 0.84 °C in August 2014, as illustrated by the image below.

On specific days, anomalies were much higher. On August 19, 2014, the Northern Hemisphere showed a sea surface temperature anomaly of 1.78 °C, while the North Atlantic sea surface temperature was 1.82 °C above average (CFSR 1979-2000 Baseline) on October 16, 2014, as illustrated by the image below.

Sea surface temperature anomalies are at the top end of the scale in many places in the Arctic, as well as off the coast of North America. The danger is that the Gulf Stream will keep carrying ever warmer water from the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean, threatening to unleash huge methane eruptions from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor, in turn causing even higher temperatures and more extreme weather events, wildfires, etc.

Above image shows methane levels as high as 2666 ppb, as measured by the MetOp-2 Satellite at 14,385 ft (~4.4 km) altitude on October 26, 2014 am.

Is 2666 ppb as high as it will get?

Sadly, methane releases from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean are becoming increasingly larger around this time of year and they look set to get even larger than this. Note that the amount of methane actually erupting from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean is even larger than what is visible on above image, for the following three reasons.

1. No data were available for some areas, as the IASI (Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer) instrument measuring methane only covers a certain width. The white shapes showing up on above images are areas where no measurements were taken, resulting from the way the polar-orbiting satellite circum-navigates the globe, as pictured on the image on the right.
   
   Furthermore, quality control failed in the grey areas on above images, indicating reading difficulties due to high moisture levels (i.e. snow, rain or water vapor), as also discussed in an earlier post. Accordingly, high methane levels (above 1950 ppb) as show up in the yellow areas could also be present in the many grey areas over the Arctic Ocean.
   
   When also looking at methane levels on days following the high 2666 ppb reading, methane is persistently present over most of the Arctic Ocean, as illustrated by the above October 29, 2014, combination image, confirming that high methane levels were likely present in areas where no data were available on October 6, 2014.
      
   
2. Much of the methane that is released from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor is broken down by microbes as it rises up in the water. The SWERUS-3 research team recently found methane in the waters of the East Siberian Sea at levels that equate to atmospheric levels of  3188 ppb.
      
   
3. Much methane is broken down in the atmosphere by hydroxyl, as illustrated by the image below, showing carbon dioxde levels on October 27, 2014, that indicate that large amounts of methane are broken down at higher latitudes on the Northern Hemisphere.

The latter point could explain the sudden recent rise in carbon dioxide levels, as also detected at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, as illustrated by the image below.

In conclusion, the amount of methane that is erupting from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean is larger than what is visible on satellite images, and the water will be highly saturated with methane at locations where the methane is escaping from the seafloor, highlighting the danger that, in case of large abrupt releases from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor, microbes and hydroxyl will quickly get depleted locally, resulting in little of the methane being broken down, as discussed at an earlier post.

Why are such huge amounts of methane starting to get released from the Arctic Ocean's seafloor now?  

As the image below shows, temperature at 2 meters was below 0°C (32°F, i.e. the temperature at which water freezes) over most of the Arctic Ocean on October 26, 2014. The Arctic was over 6°F (3.34°C) warmer than average, and at places was up to 20°C (36°F) warmer than average.

Above image illustrates the enormous amount of heat that has until now been transferred from the waters of the Arctic Ocean to the atmosphere. Underneath the surface, water temperatures are much higher than they used to be and, as around this time of year the Arctic Ocean freezes over, less heat will from now on be able to escape to the atmosphere. Sealed off from the atmosphere by sea ice, greater mixing of heat in the water will occur down to the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

As land around the Arctic Ocean freezes over, less fresh water will flow from rivers into the Arctic Ocean. As a result, the salt content of the Arctic Ocean increases, making it easier for ice in cracks and passages in sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean to melt, allowing methane contained in the sediment to escape. Furthermore, the sea ice makes that less moisture evaporates from the water, which together with the change of seasons results in lower hydroxyl levels at the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, in turn resulting in less methane being broken down in the atmosphere over the Arctic.

This situation will continue for months to come. Salty and warm water (i.e. warmer than water that is present in the Arctic Ocean) will continue to be carried by the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean, while less heat and moisture will be able to be transferred to the atmosphere.

In conclusion, high methane levels threaten to further accelerate warming in the Arctic, in a vicious cycle escalating into runaway warming and resulting in death, destruction and extinction at massive scale.

So, what can be done to reduce the risk?

Climate Plan

- Emission Cuts

It is imperative that large emissions cuts are made quickly. The Climate Plan calls for 80% emission cuts by 2020, as one of multiple lines of action that need to be implemented in parallel.

- Greenhouse Gas Removal and Storage

The IPCC points at the need for carbon dioxide removal and also warns about ocean warming continuing for centuries (text below).

Indeed, even if all emissions by people could somehow be brought to an abrupt end, this alone will not stop the rise of ocean temperatures, at least not for a long time. For starters, air temperatures would start rising within days, in response to the disappearance of aerosols that now mask the full wrath of global warming. Furthermore, such a temperature rise would further accelerate feedbacks such as snow and ice decline, methane hydrate destabilization, etc., in turn feeding further temperature rises.

The Climate Plan therefore calls for carbon dioxide removal, as well as for active removal of other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, and for further lines of action.

- Further Action

Again, merely implementing the above lines of action will not suffice to quickly bring down ocean temperatures. Paleo-climate records show that falls in temperature go hand in hand with falls of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to levels under 280 ppm, as opposed to current carbon dioxide levels that are around 400 ppm.

Raising Funding for Further Action

The Climate Plan calls for comprehensive and effective action that includes additional lines of action. Such additional action will require U.N. supervision, which may make it hard for the necessary action to obtain sufficient funding.

In earlier posts, it was suggested that, besides having fees imposed on facilities that burn fossil fuel and on sales of fossil fuel itself, additional fees could be imposed on commercial international flights. As long as it seems too hard to substantially reduce emissions associated with such flights, it seems appropriate to explore further ways to minimize such flights, e.g. by imposing additional fees that could help fund further action.

There are a number of ways such fees could be implemented. Such fees could be calculated based on the distance traveled or as a percentage of the fare.

Fees could also be calculated on the basis of the traveler's flying history, e.g. in the form of frequent flyer fees. Such fees could be collected either by the respective airline or airport.

In the box on the right, Ekta Kalra gives further details about how the latter idea could be implemented.

What do you think?


References and related posts

- Four Hiroshima bombs a second: how we imagine climate change
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/08/four-hiroshima-bombs-second-how-we-imagine-climate-change.html

- Arctic Methane Release and Rapid Temperature Rise are interlinked
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2013/11/arctic-methane-release-and-rapid-temperature-rise-are-interlinked.html

- Climate Change Accelerating
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/10/climate-change-accelerating.html

- NOAA, Global Analysis - September 2014
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/9

- NOAA Ocean temperature anomalies
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series

- Methane Hydrates
http://methane-hydrates.blogspot.com/2013/04/methane-hydrates.html

- Climate Plan
http://climateplan.blogspot.com

Post by Sam Carana.

Blaming universities for our nation's woes

©CartoonStock.com

In black below is the text of a comment piece in the Times Higher Education by Jamie Martin, advisor to Michael Gove, on Higher Education in the UK entitled “Must
Do Better”. In red are my thoughts on his arguments.

In an increasingly testing global race, Britain’s
competitive advantage must be built on education.

What is this ‘increasingly testing
global race’? Why should education be seen as part of an international
competition rather than a benefit to all humankind?

Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings show that
we have three of the world’s top 10 universities to augment our fast-improving
schools. Sustaining a competitive edge, however, requires constant improvement
and innovation. We must ask hard questions about our universities’ failures on
academic rigour and widening participation, and recognise the need for reform.

Well, this seems a rather confused
message. On the one hand, we are doing very well, but on the other hand we
urgently need to reform.

Too many higher education courses are of poor quality. When
in government, as special adviser to Michael Gove, I was shown an analysis
indicating that around half of student loans will never be repaid. Paul Kirby,
former head of the Number 10 Policy Unit, has argued that universities and
government are engaging in sub-prime lending, encouraging students to borrow
about £40,000 for a degree that will not return that investment. We lend money
to all degree students on equal terms, but employers don’t perceive all
university courses as equal. Taxpayers, the majority of whom have not been to
university, pick up the tab when this cruel lie is exposed.

So let’s get this right. The government
introduced a massive hike in tuition fees (£1,000
per annum in 1998, £3,000 p.a. in 2004, £9,000 p.a. in 2010). The idea was that
people would pay for these with loans which they would pay off when they were
earning above a threshold. It didn’t work because many people didn’t get
high-paying jobs and now it is estimated that 45% of loans won’t be repaid.

Whose fault is this? The universities! You might think the
inability of people to pay back loans is a consequence of lack of jobs due to
recession, but, no, the students would all be employable if only they had been taught
different things!  

With the number of firsts doubling in a decade, we need an
honest debate about grade inflation and the culture of low lecture attendance
and light workloads it supports. Even after the introduction of tuition fees,
the Higher Education Policy Institute found that contact time averaged 14 hours
a week and degrees that were “more like a part-time than a full-time job”.
Unsurprisingly, many courses have tiny or even negative earnings premiums and
around half of recent graduates are in non-graduate jobs five years after
leaving.

An honest debate would be good. One that took into account the
conclusions of this
report by ONS which states: “Since the 2008/09 recession, unemployment
rates have risen for all groups but the sharpest rise was experienced by
non-graduates aged 21 to 30.”  This
report does indeed note the 47% of recent graduates in non-graduate jobs, but
points out two factors that could contribute to the trend: the increased number
of graduates and decreased demand for graduate skills. There is no evidence
that employers are preferring non-graduates to graduates for skilled jobs:
rather there is a mismatch between the number of graduates and the number of skilled
jobs.

This is partly because the system lacks diversity. Too many
providers are weak imitations of the ancient universities. We have nothing to
rival the brilliant polytechnics I saw in Finland, while the development of
massive online open courses has been limited. The exciting New College of the
Humanities, a private institution with world-class faculty, is not eligible for
student loans. More universities should focus on a distinctive offer, such as
cheaper shorter degrees or high-quality vocational courses.

What an intriguing wish-list: Finnish
polytechnics, MOOCs, and the New College of the Humanities, which charges an
eye-watering £17,640 for full-time undergraduates in 2014-15.  The latter might be seen as ‘exciting’ if you
are interested in the privatisation of the higher education sector, but for
those of us interested in educating the UK population, it seems more of an
irrelevance – likely to become a finishing school for the children of
oligarchs, rather than a serious contender for educating our populace.

If the failures on quality frustrate the mind, those on
widening participation perturb the heart. Each year, the c.75,000 families on
benefits send fewer students to Oxbridge than the c.100 families whose children
attend Westminster School. Alan Milburn’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty
Commission found that the most selective universities have actually become more
socially exclusive over the past decade.

Flawed admissions processes reinforce this inequality.
Evidence from the US shows that standardised test scores (the SAT), which are a
strong predictor of university grades, have a relatively low correlation with
socio-economic status. The high intelligence that makes you a great university
student is not the sole preserve of the social elite. The AS modules favoured
by university admissions officers have diluted A-level standards and are a poorer
indicator of innate ability than standardised tests. Universities still
prioritise performance in personal statements, Ucas forms and interviews, which
correlate with helicopter parents, not with high IQ.

Criticise their record on widening access, and universities
will blame the failures of the school system. Well, who walked on by while it
was failing? Who failed to speak out enough about the grade inflation that
especially hurt poorer pupils with no access to teachers who went beyond
weakened exams? Until Mark Smith, vice-chancellor of Lancaster University,
stepped forward, Gove’s decision to give universities control of A-level
standards met with a muted response.

Ah, this is interesting. After a
fulmination against social inequality in university admissions (well, at last a point I can agree on), Jamie Martin
notes that there is an argument that blames this on failures in the school
system. After all, if “The high intelligence that makes you a great university
student is not the sole preserve of the social elite”, why aren’t intelligent
children from working class backgrounds coming out of school with good
A-levels? Why are parents abandoning the state school system? Martin seems to
accept this is valid, but then goes on to argue that lower-SES students don’t get
into university because everyone has good A-levels (grade inflation) – and that’s
all the fault of universities for not ‘speaking out’. Is he really saying that if we had more discriminating A-levels, then the lower SES pupils would outperform private school pupils?

The first step in a prioritisation of education is to move
universities into an enlarged Department for Education after the general
election. The Secretary of State should immediately commission a genuinely
independent review to determine which degrees are a sound investment or of
strategic importance. Only these would be eligible for three-year student
loans. Some shorter loans might encourage more efficient courses. Those who
will brand this “philistinism” could not be more wrong: it is the traditional
academic subjects that are valued by employers (philosophy at the University of
Oxford is a better investment than many business courses). I am not arguing for
fewer people to go to university. We need more students from poorer backgrounds
taking the best degrees.

So, more reorganisation. And somehow, reducing
the number of courses for which you can get a student loan is going to increase
the number of students from poorer backgrounds who go to university. Just how
this magic is to be achieved remains unstated.

Government should publish easy-to-use data showing Treasury
forecasts on courses’ expected loan repayments, as well as quality factors such
as dropout rates and contact time. It should be made much easier to start a new
university or to remodel existing ones.

So here we come to the real agenda.
Privatisation of higher education.

Politicians and the Privy Council should lose all control of
higher education. Student choice should be the main determinant of which
courses and institutions thrive.

Erm, but two paragraphs back we were
told that student loans would only be available for those courses which were ‘a
sound investment or of strategic importance’.

Universities should adopt standardised entrance tests. And
just as private schools must demonstrate that they are worthy of their
charitable status, universities whose students receive loans should have to
show what action they are taking to improve state schools. The new King’s
College London Maths School, and programmes such as the Access Project charity,
are models to follow.

So it’s now the responsibility of
universities, rather than the DfE to improve state schools?

The past decade has seen a renaissance in the state school
system, because when tough questions were asked and political control reduced,
brilliant teachers and heads stepped forward. It is now the turn of
universities to make Britain the world’s leading education nation.

If there really has been a
renaissance, the social gradient should fix itself, because parents will
abandon expensive private education, and children will leave state schools with
a raft of good qualifications, regardless of social background. If only….

With his ‘must do better’ arguments,
Martin adopts a well-known strategy for those who wish to privatise public services:
first of all starve them of funds, then heap on criticism to portray the sector
as failing so that it appears that the only solution is to be taken over by a
free market.  The NHS has been the focus
of such a campaign, and it seems that now the attention is shifting to higher
education. But here Martin has got a bit of a problem. As indicated in his
second sentence, we are actually doing surprisingly well, with our publicly-funded
universities competing favourably with the wealthy private universities in the
USA.

PS. For my further thoughts on tuition fees in UK universities, see here.