Talk:Ocean heat content

First draft

In writing the first draft of this article, my target audience was high school and college students who want some basic information about ocean heat content and reliable sources for additional information. Since ocean heat content is a major issue in the scientific debate about anthropogenic global warming, I was careful to include sources from both sides of the debate as well as primary data sources for the more advanced researcher.

In discussing the historical development of instruments used to collect data necessary to compute ocean heat content, there is always some overlap of technologies. But I believe readers benefit from dates because it provides context even if the dates are somewhat arbitrary and imprecise. Rather than come up with my own dating scheme, I have chosen to follow the dates presented in Lyman and Johnson [1].

Wikipedia does not currently have an article on “Ocean heat content.” “Oceanic heat content” redirects to “Sea Surface Temperature,” which is not exactly the same thing. One of my goals was to write a first draft that would not get slapped with the “stub” label. But I do hope others jump in to make the article better.

One of my frustrations was in not finding an image to show OHCA changes over the years. The NOAA is a government agency and should have such images on the web. Unfortunately, the only ones I could find were not up to date such as this one. [2] This shows ocean heat rising quickly but fails to show the leveling off seen in recent years. If someone can get hold of an up to date image we can use for the article, it would be much appreciated.

While I tried to discuss the scientific interest in ocean heat content, I did not discuss possible uses of this heat. If others think its inclusion would benefit the article, you may want to use this resource. What is Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion?

Also, since this is my first article for Citizendium, I may not have followed all of the style points exactly. Feel free to correct me and teach me here.Ron Cram 18:09, 26 December 2008 (UTC)