Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oceans

This is the talk page for discussing WikiProject Oceans and anything related to its purposes and tasks.

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Oceans Oceans portal This page is within the scope of WikiProject Oceans, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of oceans, seas, and bays on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks. WikiProject Oceans To-do List: edit history watch purge Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Article requests : List of oceanographers, create a comprehensive article on Concentrations of marine debris out of all the gyre and "garbage patch" articles Copyedit : Draft:Terrance (octopus) Expand : Coral Sea, Endeavour Strait, Greenland Sea, Solomon Sea Photo : find images for Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in the oceans Stubs : Oceanography stub articles, Marine geography stub articles, Aleutian Trench, Bellingshausen Sea, Caernarfon Bay, Gerlache Strait, Gulf of Oman, Iceland Sea, Draft:Terrance (octopus) Update : Botany Bay, Wilkins Sound, Mariana Trench, Challenger Deep Verify : Antarctic Circumpolar Current, Bering Sea, Gulf of Aden, Iceberg B-15, Ionian Sea, Japan Trench, Moreton Bay, Sound (geography), Timor Sea Other : add ISBNs and remove excessive or inappropriate external links from Aral Sea; check La Belle (ship) for GA status; improve citations or footnotes and remove excessive or inappropriate external links from MS Estonia

Archives

/Archive 1 (2007-2017) /Archive 2 (2018— )

This page has archives. Topics inactive for 200 days are automatically archived 2 or more at a time by Lowercase sigmabot III if there are more than 6.

Requested move at Talk:Sea of Japan naming dispute#Requested move 18 April 2025

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sea of Japan naming dispute#Requested move 18 April 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Valorrr ^{(lets chat)} 16:28, 18 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move at Admiralty law

An editor has requested that Admiralty law be moved to Maritime law, which may be of interest to this WikiProject. You are invited to participate in the move discussion. TurboSuperA+_(connect) 10:28, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Merger discussion for Names of the Mediterranean Sea

An article which may be of interest to members of this project—Names of the Mediterranean Sea—has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. TurboSuperA+_(connect) 15:35, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion re Ocean heat content

An editor has extensively edited Ocean heat content, introducing tracts of unsourced technical detail in what was formerly geared toward readers of this layperson's encyclopedia. I want to avoid an edit war (see Talk:Ocean_heat_content#Definition_of_heat), and I urge project members to weigh in there. —RCraig09 (talk) 20:06, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The alleged "unsourced technical detail" is basics in thermodynamics, written in a separate section, with several links to the wikipedia articles of thermodynamics.

The lead section, which RCraig09 doesn't like, reads:

============================================ (START)

Map of the ocean heat anomaly in the upper 700 meters for year 2020 versus the 1993–2020 average.^[1] Some regions accumulated more energy than others due to transport drivers such as winds and currents.

Ocean heat content (OHC) or ocean heat uptake (OHU) is the enthalpy absorbed by oceans, and is thus an important indicator of global warming.^[2] Ocean heat content is calculated by measuring ocean temperature at many different locations and depths, and integrating the areal density of a change in enthalpic energy over an ocean basin or entire ocean.^[3] Despite being called heat content, “work and heat are not stored in a system. Each is a mode of transfer of energy from one system to another,”^[4]. Historically, in the 19th century, the now obsolete notion “heat content” was used in thermodynamics for enthalpy and denoted by ${\displaystyle H}$, see the section about history and etymology of enthalpy, and see also the section Critics and possible misunderstandings.

This wikipedia article

• provides the present definition,
• explains measurement methods,
• discusses causes for heat uptake and
• expected impacts.

============================================ (END)

The problem seems not to be "unsourced technical detail" or the like, but just the issue, that some people lack basics of thermodynamics and do not know, that no system stores work or heat. Systems store energy (and mass). Heat is not a quantity associated to a state. The idea of an "amount of heat stored" was a point of view till the mid of 19th century, but meanwhile, physics knows, that such an amount does not exist and this point of view is obsolete. Heat is just some mode of energy transfer, associated to processes. That's basics in thermodynamics, but might come to some as a surprise.

OHC is an enthalpy (dependent on the context: per area, per volume, or total) and therefore a notion of energy.

This is also clarified in the original articles about TEOS-10 , e.g. the official TEOS-10 manual, or in the wikipedia article Conservative temperature.

--EinMathematikerInAustria (talk) 09:02, 21 June 2025 (UTC) EinMathematikerInAustria (talk) 09:02, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good article reassessment for 1981 Pacific typhoon season

1981 Pacific typhoon season has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 19:56, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Conservation

Is this page focused on the conservation of oceans or just better educating people on oceans? Avery-skoglund (talk) 21:29, 27 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is a WP:WikiProject page, so it is focused on bringing together editors interested in improving Oceans-related articles. I suppose you could say that is "better educating people on oceans". CMD (talk) 01:06, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion about WikiProject banner templates

For WikiProjects that participate in rating articles, the banners for talk pages usually say something like:

• "This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale."

There is a proposal to change the default wording on the banners to say "priority" instead of "importance". This could affect the template for your group. Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Proposal to update wording on WikiProject banners. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 19:47, 6 December 2025 (UTC) (on behalf of the WikiProject Council)[reply]

1. Jessica Blunden (25 August 2021). "Reporting on the State of the Climate in 2020". Climate.gov. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
2. Cheng, Lijing; Foster, Grant; Hausfather, Zeke; Trenberth, Kevin E.; Abraham, John (2022). "Improved Quantification of the Rate of Ocean Warming". Journal of Climate. 35 (14): 4827–4840. Bibcode:2022JCli...35.4827C. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-21-0895.1.
3. Dijkstra, Henk A. (2008). Dynamical oceanography ([Corr. 2nd print.] ed.). Berlin: Springer Verlag. p. 276. ISBN 9783540763758.
4. Beretta, G.P.; E.P. Gyftopoulos (2015). "What is heat?" (PDF). Journal of Energy Resources Technology. ASME. 137 (2). doi:10.1115/1.4026382.