the planet is warming quite a lot more than we thought
The oceans may be storing 13 percent more heat than previously estimated, according to a new study co-authored by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The finding, published in the journal Science Advances, is based on a new analysis of how ocean temperatures have changed since 1960. The research team, led by Lijing Cheng of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, compared their results to estimates published in the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2013.
"In other words, the planet is warming quite a lot more than we thought," said NCAR scientist Kevin Trenberth, a study co-author.
The vast majority of excess heat trapped on Earth by greenhouse gas emissions—about 90 percent—is stored in the oceans, but measuring how the heat content of the oceans has changed over time has been a challenge due to sparse observations.
Historically, the temperature of ocean waters was measured by a variety of ships, but this limited observations to areas where ships traveled. In more recent decades, measurements of ocean heat have increased, thanks to new observational techniques. In 2000, scientists began deploying a network of thousands of floats called Argo to profile conditions in the top layer of the ocean extending down 2,000 meters (6,562 feet). Argo achieved near global coverage in 2005, though some remote regions are still not sampled.
To fill the large gaps in the historical ocean temperature record, the research team used a combination of statistical techniques an
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-ocean.html#jCp
