Ocean Warming is Accelerating Faster Than Thought, New Research Finds (nytimes.com)

Scientists say the warming of the world's oceans is accelerating more quickly than previously thought, a finding with dire implications for climate change given that almost all of the heat trapped by greenhouse gases ends up stored there. From a report: A new analysis, published Thursday in the journal Science, found that the oceans are heating up 40 percent faster on average than a United Nations panel estimated five years ago. The researchers also concluded that ocean temperatures have broken records for several straight years. "2018 is going to be the warmest year on record for the Earth's oceans," said Zeke Hausfather, an energy systems analyst at the independent climate research group Berkeley Earth and an author of the study. "As 2017 was the warmest year, and 2016 was the warmest year." As the planet has warmed, the oceans have provided a critical buffer, slowing the effects of climate change by absorbing 93 percent of the heat trapped by human greenhouse gas emissions. But the escalating water temperatures are already killing off marine ecosystems, raising sea levels and making hurricanes more destructive.

Comments

Bipolar

[ArhcAngel]

Wasn't there a story here yesterday saying the oceans were getting colder?

Re:Bipolar

[Luckyo]

Do you even realise how dumb it is to claim that "model is correct" and then literally follow it up with "model was incorrect"? Because if it's warming faster or slower than model predicted, MODEL IS WRONG. Direction is irrelevant in this regard. Model's point is to predict the outcome. If outcome falls OUTSIDE the model, model is WRONG.

Re:Bipolar

[Archangel Michael]

Science says some of the water is warming, some of it is cooling. That is all science says.It suggests causes, but can't prove them. Models suggesting particular warming/cooling trends don't support measured reading in any reliable way. Models are constantly adjusted for differences between predicted and actual numbers is evidence that the models are in fact not accurate enough to make ANY long term predictions.

Further, models predicting weather and climate changes based on the models has been proven even more elusive. Hurricanes were supposed to be more and worse a long long time ago haven't panned out. The Greening of Africa was not predicted at all. Major failures like these cause skepticism about reliability of predictive models. But we are supposed to drop everything because chicken little is claiming the sky is falling.

Science that has wrong, missing data, can't fulfill is predictive modeling isn't really science. Newtonian physics is wrong. However, Newtonian Physics is accurate enough that we still can use it because it is accurate enough. "The polar ice caps will be gone by 2015" isn't science. Isn't accurate. Isn't even close. AND yet we're supposed to believe it still, because it "might" happen, eventually ... maybe.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...

Deniers faster to deny

[Oswald McWeany]

Deniers faster to deny the evidence without looking at it, studies show. Refer to flat earth and soundstages for Moon landings.

Re:Deniers faster to deny

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest reason that deniers exist, is that the parties who study the warming are presumptuously asserting that they should be the ones who get to decide what to do about it. Which usually involves setting up a totalitarian socialist state that controls every aspect of its citizens lives, justified by "saving the planet". Of course once the natural solar cycles cool the earth back down again, the totalitarian state will hang onto its power just for good measure.

If the proponents of global climate warming change would focus on solving the problem in ways that are least disrupted citizens lives, they might get more traction than they achieve by making more and more exaggerated claims of less and less credible imminent catastrophe.

For example - Ammonia - NH3. It is already made in industrial quantities, costs about $3/gal in bulk, can be shipped by truck, and distributed using gas pumps with slightly modified nozzles. It will "burn" in both diesel and internal combustion engines with minor modifications to the fuel injectors. And it has ZERO carbon. We could have had a zero-carbon economy YEARS ago. Why is no one promoting it? Because it would solve the problem without creating a totalitarian socialist state. ( Or allowing the Algore to enrich himself with carbon taxes)

OR, instead of just shutting down coal-fired power plants, why not create energy forests on our vast public lands. Convert the coal-fired plants to burn wood, and raise the wood as a renewable resource. The process is carbon-fixing, and would be carbon neutral or better. Why no advocacy? Because it undercuts the motivation to create a "green" socialist government, and wouldn't make all the green advocates who have invested in wind and solar plants get rich.

It ain't WHETHER there is warming , its WHAT to do about it.

Attention Denialist try-hard moron :

[Anonymous Coward]

Your local observations aren't what they're talking about, AS YOU KNOW ALREADY, it's the aggregate mean/median/average over time, you intentional dipshit.

People shocked energy has to go somewhere

[WillAffleckUW]

It's either showing up in floods, storms, and the like, or it's getting stored somewhere, sunshine.

Science doesn't care about your denial.

Enjoy coastal flooding and more severe weather patterns!

I've seen this narrative...

[TheZeitgeist]

Ah yes, the weekly Climate Fear Mongering article from NY Times.

Without reading it (and the attendant report) I know exactly how it goes:

1. A preamble about how its even worse than worse.

2. Then description of how researchers put new scarier variables in a video game oracle of some kind.

3. Followed by dour descriptions that the video game oracle now says that its all that much more terrible.

4. A doom-day has to be quoted if we don't repent (all cults work this angle); so something like 2050 or 2100 and we're Venus, unless...

5. The "unless" narrative that follows essentially says we need to just shutup and implement statist schemes...or its Venus.

6. Trump - or the entire USA somehow - gets tossed under rhetorical bus somewhere somehow.

Re:Don't care. No one really does.

[Oswald McWeany]

Really, no one cares. It's a worry for worriers.

Nothing can be done about it anyway, at least within the bounds of the politically possible

That comment reminds me of the scene in Austin Powers where the steam roller ever so slowly moves towards a man who is screaming in terror rooted in spot instead of running away, despite having plenty of time.

It's not like we haven't known about Global Warming for decades now, but we haven't shifted policy an inch. There are things we can be doing, but we're like that man waving his arms around screaming as 1mph steam roller slowly inches towards him.