Tools, Not Toys

How civilizations cease to exist

An irregular reader recently asked why Dredd Blog does not have a lot of readers, which reminded me of the time another reader asked why I bother, because, the reader intimated, "it [my posts] will not work."

The answer is I do "it" because it is the right thing to do, not because Dredd Blog is concerned with ratings as commercial news outlets must be in order to stay in business and pay the wages of their employees (In a Summer).

On the other hand, regular readers are not likely to ask why Dredd Blog uses the "TEOS-10"software library of Gibbs functions to analyze in situ ocean measurements stored in the World Ocean Database (WOD).

Not-so-regular and new readers, however, may wonder about that.

So today, since a new published paper has been recently released, I will once again explain the reasons.

A recently published paper states:

"In the terrestrial climate system, water is a key player in the form of its different ambient phases of ice, liquid and vapour, admixed with sea salt in the ocean and with dry air in the atmosphere. For proper balances of climatic energy and entropy fluxes in models and observations, a highly accurate, consistent and comprehensive thermodynamic standard framework is requisite in geophysics and climate research. The new Thermodynamic Equation of Seawater –2010 (TEOS-10) constitutes such a standard for properties of water in its various manifestations in the hydrological cycle. TEOS-10 was recommended internationally in 2009 by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) to replace the previous 1980 seawater standard, EOS-80, and in 2011 by the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG)“as the official description for the properties of seawater, of ice and of humid air."

(Thermodynamic properties of seawater... TEOS-10, emphasis added). So, since Dredd Blog focuses on the terrestrial (a.k.a. Earth) oceans as well as the impact of climate change on them, and since TEOS-10 is the best tool, that is why it is used here.

The lack of commercial pressures on Dredd Blog (no ads) makes it easier to bring non-commercial scoops to regular readers (Antarctica 2.0, 2, 3, 4, 5, [6& supplements A, B, C, D, E, F]).

The few, the proud, the marine scientists.