Deep ocean 'missing heat' causing sea levels to rise 1/5 of 1 inch per century

A paper published online today examines temperature measurements of the deep oceans that have been performed 2 or more times at 28 sites between 1980 and 2010. The paper concludes that warming of the global deep ocean abyss is contributing 0.053 mm/yr or 1/5 of 1 inch per century to global sea level rise.

Alarmists such as Kevin Trenberth et al claim the "missing heat" generated by greenhouse gases has somehow gone to the deep ocean, bypassing detection by satellites in the atmosphere or by thousands of ARGO floats monitoring the upper 1000 meters of the oceans. If the "missing heat" has teleported to the deep oceans, this paper suggests it is causing a trivial influence on global sea levels.

Warming of Global Abyssal and Deep Southern Ocean Waters between the 1990s and 2000s: Contributions to Global Heat and Sea Level Rise Budgets*

Sarah G. Purkey and Gregory C. Johnson

Abstract

Abyssal global and deep Southern Ocean temperature trends are quantified between the 1990s and 2000s to assess the role of recent warming of these regions in global heat and sea level budgets. The authors 1) compute warming rates with uncertainties along 28 full-depth, high-quality hydrographic sections that have been occupied two or more times between 1980 and 2010; 2) divide the global ocean into 32 basins, defined by the topography and climatological ocean bottom temperatures; and then 3) estimate temperature trends in the 24 sampled basins. The three southernmost basins show a strong statistically significant abyssal warming trend, with that warming signal weakening to the north in the central Pacific, western Atlantic, and eastern Indian Oceans. Eastern Atlantic and western Indian Ocean basins show statistically insignificant abyssal cooling trends. Excepting the Arctic Ocean and Nordic seas, the rate of abyssal (below 4000 m) global ocean heat content change in the 1990s and 2000s is equivalent to a heat flux of 0.027 (±0.009) W m⁻² applied over the entire surface of the earth. Deep (1000–4000 m) warming south of the Subantarctic Front of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current adds 0.068 (±0.062) W m⁻². The abyssal warming produces a 0.053 (±0.017) mm yr⁻¹ increase in global average sea level and the deep warming south of the Subantarctic Front adds another 0.093 (±0.081) mm yr⁻¹. Thus, warming in these regions, ventilated primarily by Antarctic Bottom Water, accounts for a statistically significant fraction of the present global energy and sea level budgets.