New Computer Fund

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Decades of Heat Capacity Change

This is not really ready for prime time but it is an interesting view of climate change.  I am using the surface area of the oceans by 5 degree bands of latitude and temperature data to put together a profile view of heat capacity.  I am working more on the look than the accuracy right now, using GISS regional land and ocean data  instead of actual ocean 5 degree bands, but it looks pretty neat.

This is how it looks so far.  Estimated heat capacity of the surface layer or the oceans by latitude.  There are decade plots of average showing that there is not much to see.

This view is a lot better.   The plots are the decades (shifted up one year to include 2011) subracted fro the 1942 to 1951 decade which is the base period.  The oughts (00s) are the main story, but it is interesting that the 90s where not that different than the 40s except for the northern high latitudes.  The bump in the ACC region is obvious in all the plots, but the 70s, 80s and the 00s show the shift toward the northern latitudes pretty well.

Still a lot of work to do, but it will be fun to "see" heat capacity changes instead of the same old boring temperature anomaly stuff.

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