[patrickg_zill]

"Oceanic thermocline" never fails to trigger people.

As soon as they actually do in fact research it, they realize that:

a) we don't have the data

b) we don't have an accurate/sane mathematical model for it.

We can't use satellites to measure anything other than surface temperature of the ocean; it would require an actual, physically located sensor network spread throughout the oceans of the world to get this information. Which we don't have now and never had in the past...

[tzs]

> We can't use satellites to measure anything other than surface temperature of the ocean

...and atmospheric temperature, and surface temperature of the land, and the solar energy arriving on Earth, and the energy being radiated away from Earth. There are plenty of things we can measure to show that there is warming beside just deep ocean temperature. We probably need deep ocean temperature measurements to predict accurately how the warming effects will be distributed, but we don't need it to show the warming is happening.

I don't know what you are going on with about the oceanic thermocline because all you've said is that there is some problem with some data related to some phenomenon involving it and that we don't have enough data to understand the oceanic thermocline.

You seem to think this thermocline problem is inconsistent with global warming. Let's say you are right. So what? You noted that we don't have good data or models for the thermocline.

We do have good data and models on dozens of things that do indicate warming. Generally in science when you have a lot of things that have good data and good models and support a theory, and some thing without good data or a good model that doesn't fit the theory, you wait until you get good data on the later before considering throwing out the theory.

[patrickg_zill]

The Pacific Ocean, alone, has a greater surface area than all the land masses of Earth, combined.

Water, especially a large deep mass of water like the Pacific, can hold a lot of heat energy.

And we don't know what is happening with the heat transfer and storage cycle; we don't even understand the full operation of heat exchange between ocean and the rest of the planet.

Thermocline is "about" 800 meters of water depth (that's a HUGE heat sink): https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/thermocline.html

[fallingfrog]

http://www.argo.ucsd.edu/FAQ.html

We have a whole fleet of submersible thermometers that dive down to 2000 meters. And it's not that hard to tie a thermometer to a lead sinker and take a deep ocean temperature.

[patrickg_zill]

We don't even have 20 years' worth of data. As far as historical data, nothing at all.

"In 1999, to combat this lack of data, an innovative step was taken by scientists to greatly improve the collection of observations inside the ocean through increased sampling of old and new quantities and increased coverage in terms of time and area.

That step was Argo. "