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Startling New Research Finds Large Buildup of Heat in the Oceans, Suggesting a Faster Rate of Global Warming [Update] (washingtonpost.com)
The world's oceans have been soaking up far more excess heat in recent decades than scientists realized, suggesting that Earth could be set to warm even faster than predicted in the years ahead, according to new research published Wednesday.
From a report: Over the past quarter-century, the Earth's oceans have retained 60 percent more heat each year than scientists previously had thought, said Laure Resplandy, a geoscientist at Princeton University who led the startling study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The difference represents an enormous amount of additional energy, originating from the sun and trapped by the Earth's atmosphere -- more than 8 times the world's energy consumption, year after year.
In the scientific realm, the new findings help to resolve long-running doubts about the rate of the warming of the oceans before 2007, when reliable measurements from devices called "Argo floats" were put to use worldwide. Before that, different types of temperature records -- and an overall lack of them -- contributed to murkiness about how quickly the oceans were heating up. The higher-than-expected amount of heat in the oceans means more heat is being retained within the Earth's climate system each year, rather than escaping into space. In essence, more heat in the oceans signals that global warming itself is more advanced than scientists thought.
"We thought that we got away with not a lot of warming in both the ocean and the atmosphere for the amount of CO2 that we emitted," said Resplandy, who published the work with experts from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and several other institutions in the U.S., China, France and Germany. "But we were wrong. The planet warmed more than we thought. It was hidden from us just because we didn't sample it right. But it was there. It was in the ocean already." Wednesday's study also could have important policy implications. If ocean temperatures are rising more rapidly than previously calculated, that could leave nations even less time to dramatically cut the world's emissions of carbon dioxide, in hopes of limiting global warming to the ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Updated on November 14 at 14:40 GMT: Scientists Acknowledge Key Errors in Study of How Fast the Oceans Are Warming.
In the scientific realm, the new findings help to resolve long-running doubts about the rate of the warming of the oceans before 2007, when reliable measurements from devices called "Argo floats" were put to use worldwide. Before that, different types of temperature records -- and an overall lack of them -- contributed to murkiness about how quickly the oceans were heating up. The higher-than-expected amount of heat in the oceans means more heat is being retained within the Earth's climate system each year, rather than escaping into space. In essence, more heat in the oceans signals that global warming itself is more advanced than scientists thought.
"We thought that we got away with not a lot of warming in both the ocean and the atmosphere for the amount of CO2 that we emitted," said Resplandy, who published the work with experts from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and several other institutions in the U.S., China, France and Germany. "But we were wrong. The planet warmed more than we thought. It was hidden from us just because we didn't sample it right. But it was there. It was in the ocean already." Wednesday's study also could have important policy implications. If ocean temperatures are rising more rapidly than previously calculated, that could leave nations even less time to dramatically cut the world's emissions of carbon dioxide, in hopes of limiting global warming to the ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Updated on November 14 at 14:40 GMT: Scientists Acknowledge Key Errors in Study of How Fast the Oceans Are Warming.
"It was hidden from us just because we didn't sample it right." This must have been the last remaining sampling error and from now on the science is settled.
Now my counter argument. I happen to live in the Alps. They were always famous vacation resorts, and here, skiing and bobsleigh were invented. We have thus hundreds of printed pictures of well known regions like St. Moritz or Bad Ischgl dating back 250 years and photographs dating back 150 years and more, and we have the touristic and sport infrastructure built during the decades.
Thus we can tell from the pictures, from the buildings and the natural features like moraines, how far snow and ice have been in the 1700ies, the 1800ies, the 1900ies and today. And they all tell a consistent picture: Temperatures in the Alps have risen about 2.5 degrees Celsius since the 1700ies, and the end of the glaciers have retreated 750 height meters. Oetzi, the Similaun Man, an ice mummy more than 5000 years old, was only found recently, because the glacier on the Timmelsjoch, which covered the corpse, has tawed to a point where the mummy came back to the surface.
At least for the Alps, the climate development is definitely consistent with what the computer models tell us. Actually, it's more the reverse. The computer models are gauged with what we see in temperature sensitive regions like the mountaintops, where the extension of the glaciers is directly dependent on the recent average temperatures.
(And of course, daily temperature measurements started in the Early modern period, and thus, we have continuous climate protocols dating back until the first half of the 18th century. And of course, some of those early temperature stations were too close to buildings or inside towns, giving too high readouts for the local temperature. Later the stations were moved to more appropriate places, giving slightly lower readouts. And sometimes, the towns have grown around climate stations, making it necessary to move the stations.)
why do you think it mitigates the issue? My reading is that one of the biggest heat sinks we have is filling faster than we thought, reducing future ability to absorb heat.
Discovering deep ocean temperatures as evidence of faster than expected global warming is not news to me, I recall hearing this at least a decade ago. Making this discovery over and over again is either evidence of a short memory among the scientists or that they've been making bad predictions for the last 40 years or more.
It IS news. Here's the thing about science: it doesn't work like in the movies. It's not some genius in isolation who disappears into a chalkboard montage and emerges with infallible truth. It's somebody who makes a claim and supplies their evidence, and then somebody else comes out and challenges it, and then a third group comes out with some additions to the first claim that addresses inaccuracies and suggests a more accurate methodology, and then the original researcher publishes a followup with more recent data, etc, etc. It's iterative, so if it sounds repetitive, it's because this knowledge is built up one small step at a time. Our sensors are constantly improving, our data processing is constantly getting more sophisticated, our models are continually being refined - so our picture will get more and more accurate with time. Predicting the future is hard, but we're getting better and better at it, one small step at a time.
The thing is, our entire society is built upon this basic process of iterative discovery. It's allowed us to produce the most prosperous, populous, and technologically advanced civilization in history. When the foremost experts at this process tell us they are worried about what their data suggest, we should pay attention.
It doesn't mean that their predictions are infallible, or that they won't be updated or improved - it means that this is the best knowledge we have, today. We should make decisions based on the most accurate information available to us at any given time. It's absurd to me that so many people will happily enjoy the abundance of a scientific society, but the moment scientists suggest action that requires personal inconvenience, those same people will attack scientists ruthlessly. Biting the hand that feeds you, and is trying to pull you away from a crumbling cliff.
Look at how the left/dems are blocking nuke energy from replacing fossil fuels. We can do that rapidly, but the far left is stopping it.
The all powerful hippies are still crushing corporate America under their dirty Birkenstocks! Will hundred billion dollar energy companies never catch a break? Oh the humanity!
This is a fantasy that never dies, since it floats around without the least bit of evidence to support it (notice that Windbourne offers none).
The real truth is that nuclear power is in unattractive investment for capitalists, and without a lot of orders the industry has shriveled and become unreliable for those who do place orders. If you consult this handy industry webpage you will see that no fewer than eleven construction and operating licences for units have been approved since 2007, but of these seven have been withdrawn/cancelled, only two are still under constructions (the two Vogtle units) but which are way over budget (and in imminent danger of cancellation), and two more have yet to break ground. The DOE shares the costs of these license applications, and the U.S. government provides loan guarantees, as well as free insurance, yet no plants are being completed.
It isn't lawsuits, or protests, or public opinion, or "government regulations", bringing these projects down, it is hard-nose corporate bean counters pulling the plugs.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I used to care. The older I got, the more I realized that people WILL believe what they want to believe. They won't be convinced. They will come up with amazing, overcomplicated stories for how their version of reality is actually reality. They will believe that zaniness without proof over a simpler explanation with proof. Because we will believe in the conclusions we want to be true and then work backwards to cherry pick evidence, discount any non-supporting evidence, and engage in personal attacks on anyone who argues differently. I got tired of it. It's too draining. Too few want to honestly exchange ideas. We just want to sit in our tribes.
Your countdown was not needed since the people denying science were right there in the article.
They are claiming we should be worried despite admitting we had no idea the ocean could absorb heat a lot faster than we thought which seems like it helps mitigate the danger greatly, all models now being wrong in terms of some excess heat taken up by the oceans.
How is that denying science? Taking on board new evidence is how science is done.
The only thing known is that the ocean is acting to absorb a lot more heat than they thought before, so presumably it will for some time to come as well.
The models had indicated that there had to be some missing heat, and since it wasn't in the atmosphere it was suspected it was in the oceans. The issue was that without sufficient monitoring of the deep ocean (which is expensive) it couldn't be confirmed.
The concerns that scientists have are two fold, though. First, that a warmer ocean is a less good sink for CO2, so CO2 in the atmosphere may rise more quickly that anticipated, causing faster warming. The second is that it is not known what will happen if ocean currents change and there is an exchange of the heat back from the ocean. The historical record suggests this does indeed happen (MWP being one such possible period, although the MWP was cooler than today), and palentological also. ENSO is also a potential method of temperature exchange.
If someone falls of a roof that is not called a solar death.
I think confirmed deaths from Fukushimas is about 1. Plus maybe a dozen more statistical deaths. The tsunami killed thousands.
And that is the point. Nobody talks about the tsunami. The reactor is considered to have been far more dangerous than the ocean, even though the facts are quite different.
This makes nuclear untenable. Safety issues are over blown. Nobody is going to shut down the solar industry because someone falls off a roof. But think about what happens to nuclear investment if even one person dies.
Likewise the nuclear waste. It is a major issue precisely because it contains those two words, "nuclear" and "waste". Perceptions are reality.
So let's hope the price of solar falls before the globe cooks.