No temperature changes, method change

2008/07/27 Lakar Iraizoz, Oihane - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Klima
• Ozeanografia

Since 1860 we have a continuous record of data of ocean temperatures. (Photo: ANDÉN)

But there is a fact that so far has had no explanation: The record indicates that in 1945, coinciding with the end of World War II, sea temperature decreased by 0.3 °C. On land, however, no changes were detected, nor has any climatic or geological phenomenon been found that could explain this cooling. Curiosity was very big among scientists.

It seems that a group of the United States and Great Britain have found the explanation once and for all: there was no temperature change; the fact that a different methodology was used to perform the measurements allowed the collected data to present that temperature difference.

The problem is to measure it

During World War II, very few data were collected from sea temperature, which were mostly measured by American ships. At the end of the war, however, the English ships retook the measurements.

Some changes in the temperature of the Earth are due to the violent eruptions of some volcano.

As has been said, they did not follow the same methodology, since water to measure temperature was not collected in the same place. The U.S. crew made the measurement in the water from the sea to cool the vessel's engine. The English, for their part, threw them into the sea in the water collected in the broths. Thus, it is very likely that the water captured in one way or another present this difference of temperatures. That is, the Americans made measurements with the aim of heating a little (0.3 ºC) water on the access road to the inside of the boat.

However, in the newspapers that collected the temperature data on the ships, neither one nor another was placed the procedure followed to perform the measurements. That has made so far no one rely on it.

In fact, so far most researchers considered that the cooling recorded in the registry was a real cooling. They knew that, during the war, fewer measurements had been made, but no one had been passed by the head that this incidence could be in the hands of those who measured the temperature. This heating was attributed to sulfate aerosols, which could contaminate the atmosphere and caused cooling.

During World War II, most of the sea temperature data were measured on American ships.

US government

The truth is that the explanation given to the scientists themselves was very rare, since suddenly there was a change in temperature, since only the change to the temperature measured in the ocean, etc. But, in the absence of another explanation, they accepted it.

David Thompson, one of the researchers who made the above discovery, suddenly came up with the idea that perhaps that cooling would have no physical agent. He met with marine experts from different countries and asked about the history of fishing, analyzed scientific papers and international databases... of all of them collected relevant information and finally found response.

This study will allow climate researchers to adapt the temperature record of the twentieth century. Surely this sudden incidence of 1945 will disappear, but it is not clear the value that they will give to the succession of temperatures. How to imagine the ocean temperature more than sixty years ago?

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