This is your ocean under global warming.

Rick:  How do you go about testing that “the ten year mean surface temperature rise of four degrees in the Gulf of Maine” is not global warming and not a big deal?

Rob:  I went into the kitchen and got out a measured pint glass. I poured some old wine up to the 12-ounce line to represent the wine-dark sea.  I added a level tablespoon of salt to bring the salinity to about 40 parts per thousand or 4% salt, thinking I would create Homer’s sea. I stirred with a long handled spoon.  Later I found much salt still crystalized on the bottom, so perhaps this was closer to Gulf of Maine Seawater at 34 parts per thousand.

I poured tap water from a small pitcher onto a spoon so as not to disturb the waters.  I filled it to the brim, the full 16 ounces.  There was some mixing because the top water took on a pinkish color.  The wine was cooler because it came from the refrigerator, and the tap water was warmer because I had let the tap run to accentuate the density difference and minimize mixing.  However, when I touched the water on the top of the full glass it felt like it was closer to refrigerator temperature, colder than room temperature.

For Global Warming I turned on a hair dryer and held it close to the pint glass.  It made the surface ripple.  I turned my cell phone’s video recorder on and watched the distinct boundary layer, the thermocline, where the water turned from pink to red.   I watched the 12-ounce mark and saw no mixing of surface and deep water.  After a couple of minutes, I turned the hair dryer off.

Energy as heat from the hair dryer had gone into the pink surface layer.  Yet, there was no mixing into the deep waters.  Hot air and warming surface waters had no effect on the vast waters below.  Had there been a crayfish at the bottom of my pint glass, it would have felt no change in conditions when the hair dryer was on.   This is good news for lobsters and cod living on the ocean floor.

The reason researchers found surface water temperatures differing from one year to the next, and needed to a medium before looking for trends is because surface water temperature is determined by how hot or cold the water was when entering the sea.  It is effected by air temperatures because it has so little depth and so much area in contact with the air, like a lens on the water.  It is effected by the seasonal weather. Warmer in the summer, colder in the winter.

The science article failed to give context of how much surface waters varied year to year.  It did not present surface water temperatures for the other three seasons or give salinity values, needed to determine density.

The surface water temperatures of the Gulf of Maine have always varied more widely than Atlantic Ocean temperatures because surface waters are the top 1% and because the Gulf of Maine is an estuary beside the ocean.