Slashdot Mirror


Deep Pacific Waters Are Cooling Down Due To Centuries-Ago Little Ice Age, New Study Suggests (inquisitr.com)

schwit1 quotes a report from The Inquisitr: Most of the world's waters may be warming as a result of climate change, but a new study shows that the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean still appear to be cooling down hundreds of years after the period in history known as the "Little Ice Age." According to a report from Science Daily, a team of researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) and Harvard University discovered that there has been a "lag" of a few centuries in terms of temperature change in the deep Pacific. This part of the ocean, the report stressed, is still seemingly cooling and adjusting to the temperature drops of the Little Ice Age while the rest of the Pacific gets warmer as a result of modern factors.

"These waters are so old and haven't been near the surface in so long, they still 'remember' what was going on hundreds of years ago when Europe experienced some of its coldest winters in history," commented WHOI physical oceanographer Jake Gebbie, lead author of the new study. As documented in a paper that was published Friday in the journal Science, the researchers created a model simulating how the deep Pacific's temperature might react to changes in climate on the surface, then compared the data from the model against two historical sources. These sources included ocean temperature data taken in the 1870s by scientists aboard the HMS Challenger and temperatures gathered over a century later, through the World Ocean Circulation Experiment in the 1990s. Based on how these comparisons aligned, the researchers found that warming was present in most parts of the world's oceans and consistent with the current trend of climate change. The only exception was the deep Pacific, where temperatures were cooling at around 1.25 miles (two kilometers) deep. This suggested that long-ago changes in surface climate, such as those that took place during the Little Ice Age, could still have an influence on the effect of climate change in modern times.

6 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Pepridge Farm Remembers by jwhyche · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is the worst pseudo-science since Trump shut down the EPA for generating most of it.

    An this the exact kind of crap that you keep saying about any study that doesn't agree with your views on what should be. If a study doesn't support your ridged views on climate change is fake science or pseudo science. It has gotten so bad that you throw this label at a study, such at this one, that doesn't in any way refute man made climate change in any way.

    All this study shows is that an event that happened hundreds years ago can still have an effect on the climate today. That just goes to show how complex the climate is and how much we actually don't know about it. This study in no way refutes any affect that man made effect will have on the climate.

    --
    I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  2. Re:Don't worry by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There is no type of proof that cannot be warped into the Global Warming Armageddon myth.

    "Proof" is a mathematical concept. In science, there is only evidence.

    The evidence is that the very deepest ocean water, in the Marianas, Philippine, and Bougainville trenches, is getting colder. A plausible hypothesis is the one made in TFA: A lag of Antarctic bottom water from the Little Ice Age, because of the deep basins in the Southern Ocean.

    This is supported by models, and (most importantly) is falsifiable: If the hypothesis is correct, the water in the southern basins should be getting warmer. Surface waters should also be warming. Only the extreme depths should be getting colder.

    If you have an alternative hypothesis, then please tell us, and explain how it can be falsified.

    Other "contradictory" evidence, such as expanding sea ice around Antarctica, is also best explained within the context of global warming: As air temperatures rise, they hold more moisture, which means more snowfall onto the ice pack. So the ice pack is expanding even as measured air temperatures rise. Notably, this is NOT happening in the Arctic, since temperatures there are already higher. The northern ice pack has shrunk by over a million square miles. Feel free to post an alternative falsifiable hypothesis.

  3. Re:Pepridge Farm Remembers by jwhyche · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bull. You saw an opportunity to bash Trump and you took it. That is all there was to that.

    --
    I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  4. Re:Don't worry by Sique · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The moronic credo is, that "doubt" is equivalent to anything. Doubt is just "I don't believe it", and belief does not go well with science.

    It's a completely different story if you put up a What-if-hypothesis and gather data and build models and investigate which consequences this What-if would have. And if this What-if harmonizes with what we see, then you have a valid ground for further scientific investigation.

    Albert Einstein was famous for not believing into Quantum Mechanic. But he didn't deny quantum mechanics, he put up a series of very interesting what-if-hypotheses like the Bose-Einstein-condensate, quantum entanglement etc.pp. which would be true if quantum mechanics were true, and which were the base of further scientific work. Today, we know they are real, and Quantum Mechanic is still ruling supreme. Albert Einstein was wrong in this case, and still he managed to greatly further the science of Quantum Mechanics. He even got his Nobel Prize in Quantum Mechanics (and not for Special or General Relativity). That's how doubt works in Science. Not by just declaring "I don't believe it" or "There might be future results contradicting this", but by actually thinking through your alternative hypotheses and publishing possible results.

    Yes, it's possible that there are unknown effects lurking somewhere, and we should be open if we get evidence of it. But for instance, we are able to calculate the absorption spectrum of Carbon dioxide down to 10 digits, and the results of experiments fit the calculation. There is not much wiggle room for Carbon dioxide not being a Greenhouse gas. The planetary greenhouse effect was wellknown already in the 1970ies, when the first probes landed on Venus and Mars and actually measured the effect of a 95% Carbon dioxide atmosphere on both planets. Why for some reason the effect clearly measured on two other planets would not exist on Earth is somehow not clear.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  5. Re:Don't worry by stealth_finger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seriously, stop this game where you pretend there's no scientific consensus

    I didn't. There's no consensus on what feedbacks are important, or how large they might be. Here's another one for you that will show how ignorant we are: there is no consensus on how much the atmosphere warms the earth compared to if it weren't there. We know to within ~10 degrees, but that's a huge margin of error. Look it up.

    So the obvious solution is to do nothing and everything will be all fine forever? You talk like the earth gives a shit if we're on it or not and will always balance for us. Spoiler alert, it won't. Regardless of the causes we can see the average global temperature is going up and that's bad for us so were trying to do something about it.

    --
    Wanna buy a shirt?
    https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
  6. Re:Don't worry by stealth_finger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One day, nothing will exist in our universe and possibly the entire multiverse/xenoverse.

    And if we one day find ourselves in a position to stop or delay that should we take it or just say hey ho it's the natural run of things and it was fun while it lasted?

    --
    Wanna buy a shirt?
    https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u