New study finds heat is being stored beneath the ocean surface [View all]

[mackdaddy]

For much of the past decade, a puzzle has been confounding the climate science community. Nearly all of the measurable indicators of global climate change—such as sea level, ice cover on land and sea, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations—show a world changing on short, medium, and long time scales. But for the better part of a decade, global surface temperatures appeared to level off. The overall, long-term trend was upward, but the climb was less steep from 2003–2012. Some scientists, the media, and climate contrarians began referring to it as "the hiatus."

If greenhouse gases are still increasing and all other indicators show warming-related change, why wouldn't surface temperatures keep climbing steadily, year after year? One of the leading explanations offered by scientists was that extra heat was being stored in the ocean.

Now a new analysis by three ocean scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory not only confirms that the extra heat has been going into the ocean, but it shows where. According to research by Veronica Nieves, Josh Willis, and Bill Patzert, the waters of the Western Pacific and the Indian Ocean warmed significantly from 2003 to 2012. But the warming did not occur at the surface; it showed up below 10 meters (32 feet) in depth, and mostly between 100 to 300 meters (300 to 1,000 feet) below the sea surface. They published their results on July 9, 2015, in the journal Science.

"Overall, the ocean is still absorbing extra heat," said Willis, an oceanographer at JPL. "But the top couple of layers of the ocean exchange heat easily and can keep it away from the surface for ten years or so because of natural cycles. In the long run, the planet is still warming."

http://phys.org/news/2015-07-beneath-ocean-surface.html