I’ve moved to WordPress: http://bobtisdale.wordpress.com/

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Revisions To KNMI Climate Explorer-Based OHC Posts

I’ve moved to WordPress.  This post can now be found at Revisions To KNMI Climate Explorer-Based OHC Posts
################
I have revised the following two posts that are based on the NODC [Levitus et al (2009)] Ocean Heat Content data that’s available through the KNMI Climate Explorer.

1. ENSO Dominates NODC Ocean Heat Content (0-700 Meters) Data

2. North Atlantic Ocean Heat Content (0-700 Meters) Is Governed By Natural Variables

KNMI corrected a problem in its NODC Ocean Heat Content data on October 1, 2009. The error grew in effect with the distance from the equator. It changed the scale of the variations and the trends but did not drastically change the overall shape of the curves. The problem, therefore, had no real impact on these posts, which illustrated the timing of ENSO-induced step changes in the OHC of numerous oceans and the effects of the NAO on high-latitude North Atlantic OHC. But to prevent a disagreement between the data presented in this post and future ones, I have updated the graphs in these posts and revised the text where appropriate.

4 comments:

John said...

Out of curiosity, what did it do to the trends? Increase or decrease? Did it lead to a higher or lower level of OHC?

I tried to look on their website, but only saw a very brief note that the data had an error and was fixed.

Bob Tisdale said...

John: With the correction, the trends increased with the distance from the equator. In other words, KNMI had been underestimating the trends in the NODC OHC data before the correction.

John said...

Sorry to bother, but was it a significant increase? Certainly something like that seems important, as OHC is a critical data point for all sides of the climate argument.

Bob Tisdale said...

John: It was a significant change, but the problem wasn't with the Ocean Heat Content data itself. So it doesn't impact the climate change argument. The problem was how KNMI converted the NODC OHC data on their Climate Explorer website.

Donations

Tips are now being accepted.

Comment Policy, SST Posts, and Notes

Comments that are political in nature or that have nothing to do with the post will be deleted.
####
The Smith and Reynolds SST Posts DOES NOT LIST ALL SST POSTS. I stopped using ERSST.v2 data for SST when NOAA deleted it from NOMADS early in 2009.

Please use the search feature in the upper left-hand corner of the page for posts on specific subjects.
####
NOTE: I’ve discovered that some of the links to older posts provide blank pages. While it’s possible to access that post by scrolling through the history, that’s time consuming. There’s a quick fix for the problem, so if you run into an absent post, please advise me. Thanks.
####
If you use the graphs, please cite or link to the address of the blog post or this website.