Jim Steele
NOAA’S Climate.gov’s Ocean Heat Content presents an illustration (graphic A) of changing ocean heat content with this accompanying narrative. “Rising amounts of greenhouse gases are preventing heat radiated from Earth’s surface from escaping into space as freely as it used to. Most of the excess atmospheric heat is passed back to the ocean.” However, their regional changes in heat content are much more consistent with solar heating than from greenhouse theory.
Although greenhouse theory describes rising CO2 as acting like a blanket across the globe that keeps more heat in the ocean, graphic A perfectly depicts asymmetric heating that we would expect from solar heating and ocean circulation (graphic B). The greatest increase in heat content happens along the east coasts (highlighted by red ovals), especially in the Kuroshio Current off Japan, and the Gulf Stream.
Why such regional differences from the same CO2 blanket?
Graphic C, from peer reviewed research (Huang 2015), describes the net heat flux in and out of oceans. The red and yellow colors represent where more heat enters the ocean than leaves, yet NOAA shows cooling in those regions. The blue colors in graphic C, show where more heat is ventilating back to space than that region absorbs, yet NOAA’s graph shows those regions warming! Observations completely contradict NOAA’s greenhouse warming narrative.
The most plausible explanation is based on well-known ocean science. For example, greatest amount of heat flux into the ocean happens in the tropical eastern Pacific, where La Nina-like conditions cause upwelling of cooler waters that reduce cloud cover that increase solar heating! Solar radiation penetrates several meters into the eastern ocean where it can be stored for various lengths of time. That stored solar heat is then transported into the western Pacific where much is then deflected northward along the Kuroshio Current where it ventilates. During La Ninas that heat transport is greater, explaining why NOAA’s observed increase in the regions from 1993 to 2022 correlates with the switch to more La Nina-like conditions during the past 3 decades.
A similar dynamic happens in the Atlantic, where stored tropical heat ventilates from the Gulf Stream and moderates Europe’s winter. Not all the Gulf Stream’s heat ventilates allowing much of the salty warm solar-heated waters to enter the Arctic Ocean, creating a reservoir of warm water between 100- and 900-meters depth, and capable of melting all the Arctic’s sea ice (Polyakov 2017).
In contrast to the fact that CO2 infrared only penetrates the ocean by a few microns, solar heat penetrates several meters. Due to subsurface saltiness that inhibits heat convection back to the surface, some heat is trapped for entire seasons to many decades and centuries. As illustrated in Graphic D, the science of solar ponds demonstrates how the sun heats the subsurface oceans. Despite air temperatures averaging 68°F, solar ponds can fantastically triple temperatures in their bottom layer to over 190°F. For more details explaining the different dynamics that explain why ocean warming is due to solar heating, watch Science of Solar Ponds Challenges the Climate Crisis