Scientists Acknowledge Key Errors in Study of How Fast the Oceans Are Warming (washingtonpost.com)

A major study claimed the oceans were warming much faster than previously thought. But researchers now say they can't necessarily make that claim. From a report: Two weeks after the high-profile study was published in the journal Nature, its authors have submitted corrections to the publication. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, home to several of the researchers involved, also noted the problems in the scientists' work and corrected a news release on its website, which previously had asserted that the study detailed how the Earth's oceans "have absorbed 60 percent more heat than previously thought."

"Unfortunately, we made mistakes here," said Ralph Keeling, a climate scientist at Scripps, who was a co-author of the study. "I think the main lesson is that you work as fast as you can to fix mistakes when you find them." The central problem, according to Keeling, came in how the researchers dealt with the uncertainty in their measurements. As a result, the findings suffer from too much doubt to definitively support the paper's conclusion about how much heat the oceans have absorbed over time.

The central conclusion of the study -- that oceans are retaining ever more energy as more heat is being trapped within Earth's climate system each year -- is in line with other studies that have drawn similar conclusions. And it hasn't changed much despite the errors. But Keeling said the authors' miscalculations mean there is a much larger margin of error in the findings, which means researchers can weigh in with less certainty than they thought.

Comments

It's Called Science

[Bender0x7D1]

This is what science does. People find something and publish the results for everyone to look at. If there is something wrong, other people point it out, and they go back to the drawing board.

This is how science is supposed to work; although, ideally, the errors are caught prior to publication - the process still worked correctly.

Re:It's Called Science

[MrMr]

Peer review is not only the bit the journals do. The real exchange of ideas starts after the publication. In fact if nothing published was ever improved on, science would stop and become something dogmatic and immutable of no particular value.

This just in: science is messy

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Two weeks after the high-profile study was published in the journal Nature, its authors have submitted corrections to the publication.

Quit trying to time your studies around US election dates and we'll all be better off. (E.g. many informed people already mostly ignore employment and GCP numbers because they always expect significant corrections to the just-announced figures just around the corner.)

...and this will...

[tmshort]

...be used by Client Change/Science Deniers "to prove" that it's just a big hoax and a big conspiracy...

Re: Mistakes cost billions.

[Etcetera]

You don't believe that global warming is a problem? But how exactly does switching to *economically competitive* wind or solar hurt things?

It might very well be a good idea, but the evaluation takes on a different tone when it's "this has many upsides and fewer downsides" rather than "do this or we'll kill you because we're all gonna die".

Many of the climate groups that have been the most effective are the ones that search for things that all parties can agree on rather than try to impose their (debatable) senses of conclusivity and morality upon the others.