The upper layer of the world’s ocean has warmed since 1993, indicating a strong climate change signal, according to a new study. The energy stored is enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs per each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet.
“We are seeing the global ocean store more heat than it gives off,” said John Lyman, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, who led an international team of scientists that analyzed nine different estimates of heat content in the upper ocean from 1993 to 2008.
From NOAA: John Lyman (left) holds an expendable bathythermograph or XBT, a device that was dropped from ships to obtain temperature. Gregory Johnson (right) holds an ARGO Float, an autonomous, free-floating ocean device that collects a variety of data, including temperature. (NOAA photo, 2010)
The team combined the estimates to assess the size and certainty of growing heat storage in the ocean. Their findings will be published in the May 20 edition of the journal Nature. The scientists are from NOAA, NASA, the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom, the University of Hamburg in Germany and the Meteorological Research Institute in Japan.
“The ocean is the biggest reservoir for heat in the climate system,” said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the scientists who contributed to the study. “So as the planet warms, we’re finding that 80 to 90 percent of the increased heat ends up in the ocean.”
A warming ocean is a direct cause of global sea level rise, since seawater expands and takes up more space as it heats up. The scientists say that this expansion accounts for about one-third to one-half of global sea level rise.
Combining multiple estimates of heat in the upper ocean – from the surface to about 2,000 feet down – the team found a strong multi-year warming trend throughout the world’s ocean. According to measurements by an array of autonomous free-floating ocean floats called ARGO as well as by earlier devices called expendable bathythermographs or XBTs that were dropped from ships to obtain temperature data, ocean heat content has increased over the last 16 years.
The team notes that there are still some uncertainties and some biases.
“The XBT data give us vital information about past changes in the ocean, but they are not as accurate as the more recent Argo data,” said Gregory Johnson, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. “However, our analysis of these data gives us confidence that on average, the ocean has warmed over the past decade and a half, signaling a climate imbalance.”
Data from the array of Argo floats – deployed by NOAA and other U.S. and international partners – greatly reduce the uncertainties in estimates of ocean heat content over the past several years, the team said. There are now more than 3,200 Argo floats distributed throughout the world’s ocean sending back information via satellite on temperature, salinity, currents and other ocean properties.
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Visit us on Facebook.
Note: Full name of the paper is Robust Warming of the Global Upper Ocean. Authors are John M. Lyman, Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, University of Hawaii at Manoa and NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle; Simon A. Good, Met Office Hadley Centre; Viktor V. Gouretski Klima Campus, University of Hamburg; Masayoshi Ishii, Climate Research Department, Meteorological Research Institute, Japan; Gregory C. Johnson, NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle; Matthew D. Palmer, Met Office Hadley Centre; Doug M. Smith, Met Office Hadley Centre; and Josh K. Willis, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
From NASA: The international science team analyzed nine different estimates of heat content in the upper ocean, based on ocean temperature data from a global array of more than 3,200 Argo free-floating profiling floats and longer data records from expendable bathythermographs dropped from ships. Image credit: International Argo Project
Legislation by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, seeks to protect the nation’s largest public school population from the revised social studies curriculum approved in March by the Texas Board of Education. Critics say if the changes are incorporated into textbooks, they will be historically inaccurate and dismissive of the contributions of minorities.
* * * * * *
Under Yee’s bill, SB1451, the California Board of Education would be required to look out for any of the Texas content as part of its standard practice of reviewing public school textbooks. The board must then report any findings to both the Legislature and the secretary of education.
The bill describes the Texas curriculum changes as “a sharp departure from widely accepted historical teachings” and “a threat to the apolitical nature of public school governance and academic content standards in California.”
“While some Texas politicians may want to set their educational standards back 50 years, California should not be subject to their backward curriculum changes,” Yee said. “The alterations and fallacies made by these extremist conservatives are offensive to our communities and inaccurate of our nation’s diverse history.”
Bully for California and Rep. Leland Yee.
Tip of the old scrub brush to HeyMash.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Social studies curricula climb the scaffold to the gallows set by the “conservative” majority of the Texas State Board of Education today. If they get their way — and signs are they will — they will hobble social studies education for at least a half generation.
As The Dallas Morning News explains this morning, lame-duck board members fully intend to change Texas and American culture with their rewriting of history, de-emphasis of traditional history education, and insertion of what they consider pro-patriotic ideas in social studies.
AUSTIN – When social conservatives on the State Board of Education put the final touches on social studies curriculum standards this week, it will be a significant victory in their years-long push to imprint their beliefs upon what Texas students learn.
We in the part-time blogosphere can’t cover the meeting as it deserves — nor have we been able to mobilize pro-education forces to do what was needed to stop the board — yet.
McLeroy will make the most of his remaining time on the panel. He proposed several additions to the social studies standards for the board to consider this week. One would require students to “contrast” the legal doctrine of separation of church and state with the actual wording in the Bill of Rights that bars a state-established religion.
McLeroy has resurrected the old Cleon Skousen/David Barton/White Supremecist argument that “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution, disregarding what the document and its amendments actually say. Jefferson warned that such discussions poison children’s education, coming prematurely as this one would be as McLeroy wants it.
Watch that space. Tony Whitson at Curricublog will cover it well, and probably timely — read his stuff. Steve Shafersman’s work will be informative. The Texas Tribune offered great coverage in the past. Stay tuned. And the Texas Freedom Network carries the flag and works hard to recruit the troops and keep up morale.
It is discouraging. Under current history standards, Texas kids should know the phrase “shot heard ’round the world,” but they do not get exposure to the poem from which the phrase comes, nor to the poet (Emerson), nor exposure to Paul Revere whose ride inspired Longfellow later to write a poem that children have read ever since — except in Texas.
But under the new standards, Texas children will learn who Phyllis Schlafly is. Patriots are out; hypocrites and demagogues are in.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I get e-mail, this time from the Texas Freedom Network:
The State Board of Education meeting is next week, and we need YOU to make a difference.
“Am I a religious fanatic? Absolutely. You’d have to be to do what I do.”
– State Board of Education member Don McLeroy
Don't White Out Our History! - Texas Freedom Network
Is this who you want to decide what Texas schoolchildren learn? Or would you rather entrust that task to someone who believes public education is a “tool of perversion,” as board member Cynthia Dunbar believes? Or maybe any one of the board members who believe the separation of church and state is a myth?
If this is not what you want for Texas children, NOW is the critical time to take a stand.
The controversial social studies curriculum process is coming to an end. Public testimony will be heard at the State Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, May 19, and we expect a vote on these standards to take place the following day. We need you to stand up to the State Board of Education by attending our rally on Wednesday, May 19. Or testifying in front of the board. Or both!
Also on Wednesday, the State Board of Education will hear public testimony on the social studies curriculum standards. Since you are already planning to be at the William B. Travis building for the rally, you can also sign up to testify! Read below for more information on registering to testify with the Texas Education Agency. (Testimony will begin in the morning and likely stretch into the evening — so if you wish to testify, be prepared for a long day.)
We look forward to seeing you next week. If you have any questions, e-mail Judie or call us at 512-322-0545.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
I get e-mail from the NAACP; the rest of the nation is paying attention to the follies run by the conservative bureaucrats at the SBOE:
Ed,
I wouldn’t want to be a Texas State Board member this week.
Last week, we asked you to write to your representative, telling him or her that rewriting Texas history textbooks is ignorant and unpatriotic.
Over 1,500 people have already written in, filling the inboxes of our school leaders.
This week, we’d like to offer you one more chance to get involved. The NAACP is planning rallies, hearings and press conferences in Texas to stop the state board from rewriting history. But we can’t do it without you.
An issue as controversial as rewriting history elicits strong emotions, and we want to give you the chance to speak out. Do you have something you would like to say at the hearing?
The NAACP works to ensure equal rights and to eliminate discrimination against all racial and ethnic groups. The proposed changes to our textbooks threaten our mission. This is not about Republicans or Democrats — it’s about our shared history as Texans. That’s why we want to use the words of our Texas supporters to turn the tide.
The Texas textbook vote is just two weeks away, so we need to push ourselves harder now than ever before.
The future of our children’s education is in the hands of just a few State Board members. Your voice could be the one to tip the scale.
Take a moment to tell us what you think about the Texas State Board rewriting history. The best submissions will be read at the hearing on May 19th.
We need your help to keep divisive politics out of Texas’ classrooms.
From now until May 14th, the State Board of Education is accepting public comments on its proposed curriculum changes.
The SBOE has proposed removing Thomas Jefferson from a part of the curriculum. They are also planning to exclude references to Hispanics who fought Santa Anna and died at the Alamo.
During the primaries, Texans voted against the most extreme and hyper-political SBOE candidates, sending a clear message about their approach of injecting politics into our classrooms.
Last month, I called on Rick Perry to ask his appointed chair of the SBOE to either send changes back to expert review teams or delay the vote until new board members are seated.
Perry’s response has been to say that he’s not going to “try to outsmart” the SBOE. He declined to show leadership, refusing to ask his appointed chair of SBOE to rein in the hyper-political curriculum amendment process.
Our next governor should be a leader who ensures our schools prepare young Texans for college and their careers. I am committed to improving education and working for our future.
Thank you for taking the time to weigh in.
Sincerely,
Bill White
P.S. If you would like to send your comments directly to the SBOE, click here.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
If you’re teaching world history, or art, or government, or environmental science, or geography, this might be a great blog to track.
Senegal is a very interesting place. Note on the map how it completely surrounds its neighbor nation of The Gambia.
Senegal, map courtesy of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
France held the nation as a colony once upon a time, from 1850 to independence of the Mali Federation in 1960 — one of the national languages is French, but regional languages are numerous, Wolof, Soninke, Seereer-Siin, Fula, Maninka, and Diola. The Mali Federation was short-lived, and Senegal broke off in August of 1960.
If you listen to NPR, you’ve probably heard their reporter signing off in that distinct way she does, “Tthis is Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, for NPR, in Dah-KAHHH!” (Not to be confused with Dacca, Pakistan).
The French colonies of Senegal and the French Sudan were merged in 1959 and granted their independence as the Mali Federation in 1960. The union broke up after only a few months. Senegal joined with The Gambia to form the nominal confederation of Senegambia in 1982, but the envisaged integration of the two countries was never carried out, and the union was dissolved in 1989. The Movement of Democratic Forces in the Casamance (MFDC) has led a low-level separatist insurgency in southern Senegal since the 1980s, and several peace deals have failed to resolve the conflict. Nevertheless, Senegal remains one of the most stable democracies in Africa. Senegal was ruled by a Socialist Party for 40 years until current President Abdoulaye WADE was elected in 2000. He was reelected in February 2007, but has amended Senegal’s constitution over a dozen times to increase executive power and weaken the opposition, part of the President’s increasingly autocratic governing style. Senegal has a long history of participating in international peacekeeping and regional mediation.
The country is tropical, hot and humid. Geographically, it is low, rolling plains.
Dakar is about as far west as one can go on the African continent. (See the map inset — Senegal is in dark green).
Senegal has iron ores, and phosphorus (ancient bird droppings?). It’s not a rich nation, but it’s better off than many developing countries.
Adkins is in for a great adventure, no?
Africa, showing Senegal - CIA Factbook
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Jeff Danziger cartoon, for the New York Times Syndicate, on Texas State Board of Education “changes” to Texas social studies texts.
People for the American Way have joined the fight for good education in Texas, pushing better social studies education standards. The Texas State Board of Education will conduct final votes on social studies standards in May.
Grotesque slashes damaged social studies standards in the last round of amendments. Conservatives will probably try to keep secret their proposed changes, offering a flurry of last-minute amendments carefully designed to gut serious education and make the standards work as indoctrination for young conservatives instead.
PFAW has good reason to fear. Here’s their letter. from PFAW President Michael Keegan:
Dear People For Supporter,
Thomas Jefferson banned in Texas schools? Maybe… if the Right has its way. The fight is still on to keep absurd changes out of the Texas social studies textbook standards, with the final standards set to be adopted by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) on May 21.
Right-wing members of the SBOE are using the textbook standards in Texas to rewrite history in a way that could impact students across the U.S., tossing out facts in favor of propaganda like:
America is a Christian country, founded on “Biblical principles.”
Conservative icons from Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, the Moral Majority and even Sen. Joseph McCarthy are history’s “good guys,” but progressives and progressive values are at odds with what it means to be “American.”
Words like “democracy” (sounds like “Democrat!”) have nothing to do with America — we’re a Republic — In fact, “capitalism” has sort of a negative connotation to some, so they want that word to be universally replaced with “free market.”
Some of the major contributions of Thomas Jefferson — arguably America’s greatest thinker — are on the chopping block, as are the contributions of other important figures not favored by the zealots on the Texas State Board of Education, like Cesar Chavez and Thurgood Marshall. (Who’s next? Martin Luther King? FDR?)
Texas is just ground zero for what is clearly a national effort. We need to make sure that whatever standards are adopted in Texas, they do not affect the social studies textbooks used by students in other states.
The Texas State Board of Education traditionally has tremendous power in determining the content of textbooks not only for Texas students but for students across the U.S. Texas reviews and adapts textbook standards for the major subjects every six years, and because of the size of the state’s market, textbook publishers often print books consistent with the Texas standards. Last year, they attracted national ridicule for trying to inject creationism into science textbooks. This year, they’re voting on social studies standards.
The right-wing majority on the State Board wants indoctrinate Texas students into this new perverse revisionist history. PFAW is supporting our allies on the ground in Texas who are working to make sure students have the chance to learn history as it occurred, not how the Far Right wish it had happened. But we need to do all we can to make sure this is not exported to other states and school districts as well. Help us take extremism out of textbook decision making and let our children learn the truth in the classroom.
“Follow the Money” is a video summarizing the results from the project by Northwestern University grad students Daniel Grady and Christian Thiemann. Using data from the website Where’s George?, they have been able to track the movement of U.S. paper currency. What can you learn from this? That there are natural borders within the U.S. that don’t necessarily follow state borders, and it can also be used to predict the spread of disease because it maps movement of people within the U.S.
From Maria Popova on BrainPickings.org: This may sound like dry statistical uninterestingness, but the video visualization of the results is rather eye-opening, revealing how money — not state borders, not political maps, not ethnic clusters — is the real cartographer drawing our cultural geography. The project was a winner at the 2009 Visualization Challenge sponsored by the National Science Foundation and AAA.
Here’s another opportunity to put real, cutting edge technology in your classroom. In fact, your kids could probably invent all sorts of new uses for it.
Have you even heard of this stuff? Can you use it, live, with the equipment you’ve got?
Blaise Aguera y Arcas of MicroSoft demonstrated augmented-reality maps using the power of Bing maps, Flickr, Worldwide Telescope, Video overlays and Photosynth, to an appreciative and wowed audience at TEDS:
My prediction: One more advance in computer technology that classrooms will not see in a timely or useful manner.
But have you figured out how to use this stuff in your geography, history, economics or government classes? Please tell us about it in comments. Give examples and links, please.
A 7.2 magnitude earthquake has hit the Mexican peninsula of Baja California, killing at least one person and causing tremors as far away as Nevada.
The quake struck at 1540 (2240 GMT), 26km (16 miles) south-west of Guadalupe Victoria in Baja California, at a depth of 32km, said the US Geological Survey.
Some people are still trapped in their homes in the city of Mexicali, where a state of emergency has been declared.
It was the worst quake to hit the region for many years, officials said.
The US Geological Survey said some 20 million people felt tremors from the largest quake to hit the area since 1992.
My students with Mexico connections tend to come from farther east, and higher in the mountains — I don’t think I have a single student who visits Baja California on breaks. But the news will prompt questions from them tomorrow.
A magnitude 7.2 earthquake occurred at 3:40:40 p.m. (local time at the epicenter) on Sunday, 4 April 2010 in Baja California, approximately 75 km south of the Mexico-USA border. The earthquake occurred at shallow depth (approximately 10 km) along the boundary zone between the North American and Pacific plates. Since earthquakes have been recorded instrumentally, only two similar sized earthquakes have been recorded in the area. The first was the 1892 earthquake estimated at magnitude 7.0-7.2 along the Laguna Salada fault just south of the USA-Mexico border. The second was the 1940 Imperial Valley magnitude 6.9 earthquake which occurred in southernmost California. Today’s event is located nearly in line with these earthquakes along the plate boundary, but is situated farther to the south. There are several active faults in the vicinity of today’s earthquake, and the particular fault that generated this quake has not yet been determined. Faulting is complex in this region, because the plate boundary is transitional between the ridge-transform system in the Gulf of California and the continental transform system in the Salton Trough. Most of the major active faults are right-lateral strike-slip faults with a northwest-southeast orientation, similar in style to the San Andreas fault to the north. Other faults in the vicinity with the same orientation include the Cerro Prieto fault and the Laguna Salada fault.
USGS "shake map" for the April 4 7.2 quake near Mexicali, Mexico - Click to go to USGS site
What other questions can we anticipate? Somebody will ask whether this quake is related to the Haiti and Chilean quakes (probably not closely related). Somebody will wonder about the Pacific Ring of Fire, and this quake’s relation to volcanoes and general earthquake activity around the Pacific (high relationship). Someone will want to know about quakes in your area. Is this the precursor to “the Big One?”
The USGS site is a good place to start on all of those questions.
SBOE isn’t exactly asking that the Bible be rewritten — or at least, not directly. Suggesting we replace Thomas Jefferson as a founder with John Calvin in high school standards, is just as silly.
A friend wrote me the other day wondering what I thought about the global warming hoax. I told him I thought denialists and contrarians have acted shamefully claiming that warming is not occurring.
My friend wrote back puzzled. He had meant, what did I think about the collapse of the false claims of warming? He said he had understood that almost all the claims of warming were hoaxes cast by a cabal of conspiratorialist scientists who had gotten fat government contracts only on the condition that they claimed there is warming.
It’s actually been about two weeks since I got that message, but it’s a common thought around the world. The thieves who stole e-mails from scientists did what Shakespeare termed worse: They stole the good names of scientists. The thieves’ accomplices, especially in blogs but also in brazen journals of bias like The Australian and The Daily Mail, successfully transplanted a stick they claimed was the end of warming science, and they’ve managed to keep it spray-painted green to convince careless observers that it’s alive.
That tree won’t flower. God’s earth doesn’t care about such falsehoods, but goes on cycling as Darwin noted. In that cycling, warming continues faster than apace, burning our future and our children’s futures in bits noted only by careful scientists.
While AnthonyWatts and other denialists gloated about heavy snows — we’re still cleaning up broken trees and destroyed groves and forests here in Dallas — fact is the North American west suffered from a snow drought. You may have seen part of it if you watched the Olympics from Vancouver. It was unseasonably warm, and until the second week there was a great shortage of natural snow for snow events.
We may forget about the ecological chains that weather actually push. Over at Ralph Maughan’s Wildlife News I found a story about the annual count of elk in Wyoming/Montana/Idaho. Ralph tracks all sorts of wildlife news, but especially news about wolves and wolf reintroductions. Wolf packs prey on elk when they can. The health of elk herds affects the health of wolf packs.
In January I heard there would be no elk count this year because the lack of snow made counting pretty much impossible. I’m glad the amount of snow increased because these numbers are important. Gaps in the data are harmful.
How much have you heard about snowfall shortages in the west, other than the Olympics? The drought is pretty bad up there. Much of the Mountain west, on both sides of the Rockies, gets water from the melting snows. It doesn’t rain much in the spring and summer, but melting snows supply rivers throughout the year. One reader commented at Maughan’s blog:
I have been in the back country of Montana, Idaho and Washington in the last 3 months and I can tell you, there is no snow to really speak of, the place I stay in Montana normally has about 5-6 feet of snow on the ground in January and when I returned around the first part of January, it had about a foot, Bozeman was very low snow as was Great Falls and Billings, Sandpoint has flowers blooming already, the Columbia River Gorge area up in the Mountains above the Gorge is greening up real well, no snow and Mount Hood has not had much snow either.
Right now, it looks very bleak for river levels this year, My wife was on the phone with her cousin in Florence, MT and Her Uncle in Lincoln, MT this week and they are saying the snow is just not there this year and expects that fishing this year will be very poor due to low water levels and higher river temps, one lives on the Blackfoot and the other on the Bitterroot..
Looks like unless we have a strong spring rain season, things could get dicey this year..
Anecdotal news, just one spot of rather amorphous data, right?
Surely not all the droughts nor drought effects can be blamed on warming — but the rolling disasters of dead forests, especially from pine borers and pine bark beetles, across North America, can be fairly attributed to global warming. Average winters would kill the insects — where average winters now are a rarity, forests that have stood at least since Columbus are dying out. Many of the dying forests predate the coming of all humans to the Americas, 37,000 years ago or so.
Housing prices will rise. Wildfires will increase. Water emergencies will be declared, and restrictions on development in water-strapped counties and states will be enacted.
Humans can deny warming and human causation. But even the Rockies cry out.
Who will listen?
US Drought Monitor, March 16, 2010 – Click image for updated maps
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Three earthquakes in a week do not make a swarm. Interesting that the last post on an earthquake in Oklahoma drew earthquake conspiratorialists and “skeptics.” Too many people distrust all science and sources of information these days.
Here’s the dirt on Oklahoma’s shaking in the last week, from the U.S. Geological Service site:
Earthquake List for Map Centered at 36°N, 97°W
Update time = Sat Mar 6 18:00:02 UTC 2010
Here are the earthquakes in the Map Centered at 36°N, 97°W area, most recent at the top.
(Some early events may be obscured by later ones.)
Click on the underlined portion of an earthquake record in the list below for more information.
This isn’t unusual at all, of course. I think many people just don’t understand that earthquakes happen all the time, but they usually get crowded out of the newspaper because no one really cares.
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it’s mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 