In the last post Willis Eschenbach was cited: “we can say nothing about whether the ocean might be warming, cooling, or standing still.” We doubt that it will be possible soon, as the “oceans have stripes”.
A paper by Ethan Gutmann (2008)HERE explains:
“These stripes are not visible without looking very closely, but they are visible through their effect on currents, temperatures, and sea surface heights. They were first spotted in a careful analysis of the Mean Dynamic Ocean Topography (MDOT) dataset, but had to be confirmed by looking directly at ocean buoy and vertical temperature profile data”. Further details (selection):
The stripes have velocities around 1-1.5cm/s,
Most changes in sea surface height, velocity, and temperature occur over thousands of kilometers.
These stripes are interesting for a number of other reasons. For one thing, they persist to at least 700 meters deep…
the velocity within the stripes does not always follow the orientation of the stripes.
