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Past Measurements May Have Missed Massive Ocean Warming

An anonymous reader writes "Previous estimates of global ocean warming have been significantly underestimated due to historically sparse temperature data from the Southern Ocean, new research has found. From the article: "Earth's oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the warming caused by greenhouse gases, researchers estimate, with the stored heat showing up as warmer seawater. But a new analysis suggests scientists may have underestimated the size of the heat sink in the upper ocean—which could have implications for researchers trying to understand the pace and scale of past warming."

18 of 423 comments (clear)

  1. Re:please no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > nonono, the science is settled.

    Science, by definition, is never settled. What's far more difficult is to bring a scientific attitude to the table if there is a political dog (or two) in the fight.

  2. Re:What happens to that heat? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Informative

    The ice caps which are melting are taking some of the heat. Evaporating water will cool it down too. The currents moving the water to cooler areas will go to warm up the cold areas. That it is called global climate change. Not global weather change the whole system is changing from the imbalance.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  3. Re:The Sky Is Falling by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    But the temperature on Mars is rising too! We are sooooooooooooooo screwed!

    Relax. Temperature may be rising but sea levels are remarkably stable.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  4. Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong? by dave420 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You outed yourself with your last sentence. The only place global cooling was discussed was in the media, not in the scientific literature. It also wasn't the 1980s or 1990s, but the 1970s, which also means you either have a terrible memory, or are regurgitating something you heard someone else say. So, to sum up, you just demonstrated that you:

    1. Get your scientific information from the mass media
    2. Have a terrible memory of this topic, or simply regurgitate what others say without checking.

    Just one of those is enough to make people not listen to you, but you got both. Brilliant.

  5. Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts by wbr1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Enough already. The Earth is warmer, probably. We don't know for how much longer. We don't know how much warmer. We don't know how it's happening, mostly. We don't know why it's happening.

    That's climate in a nutshell. Do you want a _government_ ringing in new policies based on that? A government can't even get well understood problems under control ... like say, traffic, or urban development. And if you dare say, "Hey, traffic is hard to model!", well guess what, climate is harder.

    We know car accidents happen, probably.
    We don't know when you will be in one
    We don't know what type of accident you will be in.
    We don't know the severity of the accident you will be in.

    This is car travel in a nutshell. Aren't you glad that the government mandates safety belts, airbags and car seats for children?

    Just because something is not 100% does not mean we should not protect against it. I feel like using some ad hominem against you but I will refrain today.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  6. Re:both poles are at record level high... by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    im so sick of the lying

    So why are you doing it? We just covered how wrong you are.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  7. Re:please no by ThePhilips · · Score: 5, Funny

    Models will NEVER be accurate enough for any real predictions, causes or illustrations.

    I heard that modern weather models have accuracy above 80%.

    Good enough, IMO.

    --
    All hope abandon ye who enter here.
  8. Re:please no by dywolf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Myth: The models arent accurate

    Fact: The models are accurate.

    "Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean."
    "While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations."

    http://www.skepticalscience.co...
    http://www.skepticalscience.co...

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  9. Re:please no by Whibla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really? The same models that predict that result in the weather man telling you its going to be a beautiful sunny day while it pours down rain?

    Weather models are an absolute joke.

    What?

    Your weather forecasts are wrong every day? And in every conceivable way (Temperature, Cloud cover, Humidity, Rainfall, Windspeed, etc.)?

    Honestly, that would be an achievement in itself!

    Or, maybe, they get it right most of the time, but it's only the times they're wrong that stand out?

    However, while I'm sure that both 'sides' in this debate are equally guilty of seeing what they want to see, that which confirms their observer bias, I'm not sure that ridiculing weather forecasts is a valid argument against the accuracy and predictive power (or lack thereof) of climate models.

  10. Re:Oh god, here we go again. by dywolf · · Score: 4, Informative

    And here goes the lying liar linking to another lying liar, again.
    The only reason they're inexplicable, is because he's not a scientist.
    The blog post refers only to land based sensors in the US, and the difference it causes is less than 0.02%, and it onyl affects a single data set for the US.
    http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/G...

    "Denialists jumped on the bandwagon in regards to this shift making many grandiose claims that it invalidates all of the data that proves this has been the hottest decade in recorded history. This is not the case; it only makes a tiny difference that does not change the decade averages or the global averages."

    So.. once again: nothing you have stated is valid.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  11. Re:please no by Jason+Levine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The "models aren't 100% accurate therefore we shouldn't trust them until they are" argument is essentially the same as the ones the anti-vaxxers use: Vaccines aren't 100% safe and therefore we shouldn't use them until they are 100% safe.

    The fact is that the groups plan on never trusting climate models or vaccines because they realize that neither will never reach 100%. Even if we were able to improve climate models by leaps and bounds above the current ones (which themselves are pretty accurate), there would still be *some* uncertainty. We might get it to 99.999%, but there would still be that 0.001% that deniers would point to. Same with the anti-vax groups. If one person gets sick due to a vaccine (e.g compromised immune system & shouldn't have gotten the vaccine or allergy that wasn't known at the time) then this will be proof that vaccines aren't 100% safe and therefore shouldn't be used. Never mind that a 99% safe vaccine is orders of magnitude more preferable than any of the vaccine preventable diseases.

    Both arguments use the Perfect Solution Fallacy.

    --
    My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
  12. Re:What happens to that heat? by Sqr(twg) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And just around the same time we've had a recent minimum of severe hurricanes.

    By which you mean that we had no category five hurricane last year? That's just a consequence of the fact that there is less than one per year on average, and the number must be integer. (If you do the count per decade, then 2000-2009 had the highest number (8) of category five hurricanes in recorded history, but this number is still too small to draw any statistically significant conclusions from.)

    There is more information in the data on category four hurricanes. I found this table of category 4 hurricane statistics on wikipedia

    Period Number Number per year
    1851–1900 13 0.26
    1901–1950 29 0.58
    1951–1975 22 0.88
    1976–2000 24 0.96
    2001–2012 19 1.6

  13. Re:Right... by mtudee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No need for ice breakers on the great lakes? Apparently you didn't get the memo that the great lakes almost completely froze over last year. http://www.accuweather.com/en/...

  14. Re:please no by whistlingtony · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm pretty sure it was you that diverged from reality... The earth is getting warmer dude... The data is easy to see. It's really easy to see. You can look up satellite pics of ice coverage. A simple Wolfram Alpha search will tell you global mean temperatures, and show you the data sources so you can investigate them better.

    How do you people keep insisting nothing is going on? The excuses keep changing. "It's not warming. Ok, it is, but it's solar! Ok, it's not solar, but it's not man made.... It's natural cycles! Ok, it's it's moving too fast for natural cycles, but it paused for the last few years! It's warmer, but it stopped, so it's not warming! Ok, so yeah, Arctic sea ice is dwindling, but antarctic is growing! Ok, sure, arctic is sea ice and antarctic is land ice, but.... It's scientists, just making a grab for lucrative grab for government money! Ok, so that money is shit and it's pretty obvious all the real money is in private industry, but..."

    On and on you people go, changing your story. Diverging from reality, if you will.....

    furthermore, it's quite obvious that several industries just don't want a drop in profits that would come with regulation. It's quite obvious they've spent a TON of money to muddy the conversation. My question is, in 30 years when we can look back on this, will you !@#$holes fess up that you were wrong the whole time? Will you admit that you all were duped and spent decades ignoring your betters? Will you finally shut up?

    Don't worry, I know the answer....

  15. Re:please no by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So it wasnt going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?

    You know, if people who arent climate scientists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent climate scientists are also not qualified to defend the science.

  16. Re:What happens to that heat? by thrich81 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually I don't see any problem in the OPs statistics as stated. If you combine the 1951-1975 entries and the 1976-2000 entries you get a 50 year period, just like the two periods before. And its total number of cat 4 hurricanes is 46, well over the totals for the 50 year periods before, which perfectly fits his narrative. It isn't uncommon to reduce the intervals in statistical aggregations when things start changing more rapidly. In this case the OP did it such that we can easily recreate equal sized bins. By the way, those periods he used are 1851 to 1900 = 50 years, 1901 to 1950 = 50 years, 1951 to 1975 = 25 years, 1976 to 2000 = 25 years, not 49, 49, 25, 24 as you stated. The statistics here are pretty simple, not much room to manipulate or complain about them. Looks like a trend to me.

  17. Re:What happens to that heat? by Sqr(twg) · · Score: 4, Funny

    Also, these so-called "scientists" claim that there will be "winter" a few months from now, but the weather today is actually warmer than it was yesterday, so I'm scratching my head...

  18. Re:please no by multimediavt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So it wasnt going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?

    There are some really simple explanations for this: one, the ocean currents changed (due to changes in the atmospheric climate) forcing more of the warmer water deeper into the ocean than before, two, no one said it was an "all-at-once" thing, and even if they did their perspective on "all-at-once" may be decades where you may be thinking more immediately, three, no one said that the rise in air temperatures WASN'T heating the oceans all along. As a matter of fact the continuing rise in ocean temperature has always been a priority concern to climatologists because of the impact on the entire food chain.