Slashdot Mirror
Study: Past Climate Change Was Caused by Ocean, Not Just the Atmosphere
Chipmunk100 writes Most of the concerns about climate change have focused on the amount of greenhouse gases that have been released into the atmosphere. Researchers have found that circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth's climate. The study results were published the journal Science (abstract. "Our study suggests that changes in the storage of heat in the deep ocean could be as important to climate change as other hypotheses – tectonic activity or a drop in the carbon dioxide level – and likely led to one of the major climate transitions of the past 30 million years," said one of the authors."
Any engineer who has studied thermodynamics knows that water has about four times the specific heat as air. The mass of the oceans is about 260 times that of the atmosphere. Combine these facts, and you find the oceans have about 1000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere. Thus it should be obvious that in any scenario of temperature change, the oceans will play a big, if not dominant part.
In regards to Chipmunk100's summary, greenhouse gases affect the heat input to the planet. The oceans represent a vast amount of thermal storage capacity. One is the current rate of change, the other is the integrated total of the changes over a number of centuries. Different units with different dimensions. A change in greenhouse gases today will take a long time to show up as an overall change in ocean temperature.
Meanwhile the number of record low temps outnumbers record high temps 2 to 1 in 2014.
No, that's just the USA.
Thats right, more record highs means global warming, but more record lows is just temperature.
No, it's that record highs globally means global warming, record lows in the USA only means that 1.9% of the planet is cooler.
The reason that this is not inconsistent is that 1.9% of the planet doesn't have to have the same temperature trend as the global mean.
18 years of no warming is just temperature,
This 18 years?. Because that's warming.
but 6 months of warmer is climate.
Six months of warmest.
No one believe your lies anymore
This from the guy who tried to pass off the USA as the globe, the last 18 years of warming as not warming, and restated the latest 6 months that were the warmest ever recorded as 6 months warmer in the context of 18 years (falsely) not warmer.
Care to explain yourself on any of those points?
This post is offtopic and wrong.
/. to people with something sensible to say.
It discusses current heat content to try to refute that the ocean thermally connected the Antarctic with the Arctic 2.7 million years ago to start the current ice age.
It also casts the recent NASA paper that showed the increase in ocean heat content to be consistent with current estimates of radiative forcing as not finding the "missing heat". If the radiative forcings agree, there's no missing heat.
And raises the question "Why would a 150 year melt cycle be "right on time" in warming world?"
The answer is "Because the melt cycle is on top of a melting trend".
I can only assume that this got modded to +5 because there are too many climate change deniers on slashdot with mod points. I remember when the people posting and modding here had an interest in science.
WTF people? Science denial here? It's supposed to be "news for nerds" not "news for US tea-party morons from the trailer park" is here. Please go there an leave