Ocean Accumulated Significant Heat Content Since 1993

Just How Much Warmer?

Can you imagine the power required to light on 500 100-watt light bulbs for every person on the planet (assume a population of 6.7 billion people).

That’s an estimate of how much warmer the the upper layer of the world’s ocean has become in since 1993, which points to “a strong climate change signal,” according to a new study called Robust Warming of the Global Upper Ocean.

“We are seeing the global ocean store more heat than it gives off,” said John Lyman, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research, who led an international team of scientists that analyzed nine different estimates of heat content in the upper ocean from 1993 to 2008.

Current Sea Surface Temperatures

Source: SSEC/Wisc Uni. Click image to enlarge.

“The ocean is the biggest reservoir for heat in the climate system,” said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of the scientists who contributed to the study. “So as the planet warms, we’re finding that 80 to 90 percent of the increased heat ends up in the ocean.”

Global sea level rise is a direct effect of ocean warming. As the ocean heats up the seawater expands taking up more space.  The expansion is responsible for about 30% to 50%   sea level rise globally, researchers say.

“Combining multiple estimates of heat in the upper ocean – from the surface to about 2,000 feet down – the team found a strong multi-year warming trend throughout the world’s ocean. According to measurements by an array of autonomous free-floating ocean floats called Argo as well as by earlier devices called expendable bathythermographs or XBTs that were dropped from ships to obtain temperature data, ocean heat content has increased over the last 16 years.” NOAA reported.

The data, however, is subject to some “uncertainties and some biases,” researchers note.

“The XBT data give us vital information about past changes in the ocean, but they are not as accurate as the more recent Argo data,” said Gregory Johnson, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. “However, our analysis of these data gives us confidence that on average, the ocean has warmed over the past decade and a half, signaling a climate imbalance.”

“Data from the array of Argo floats­ – deployed by NOAA and other U.S. and international partners ­– greatly reduce the uncertainties in estimates of ocean heat content over the past several years, the team said. There are now more than 3,200 Argo floats distributed throughout the world’s ocean sending back information via satellite on temperature, salinity, currents and other ocean properties.” NOAA said.

Related Links:

• El Niño
• Verifiable Impacts of Climate Change (Part II)
• Verifiable Impacts of Climate Change Despite Dinosaurs

Links to Entries on Ocean Health:

• Ocean Deserts Source of GHG
• North Atlantic Ocean Garbage Patch
• Back from the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”
• WILD FACTS SERIES: Our Oceans Are Dying!
• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂

• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV :  Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico.
• Human carbon emissions make oceans corrosive : ‘Carbon dioxide spewed by human activities has made ocean water so acidic that it is eating away at the shells and skeletons of starfish, coral, clams and other sea creatures …’
• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish : How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish.
• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study : Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures.
• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island : A patch of garbage twice as large as the continental United States and dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in North Pacific Gyre.
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III : Tourism: The Most Destructive Human Activity After Warfare
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II : Major Problems: Fertilizer Runoff; Tourism; Coastal Developments [and Ocean Warming due to climate change]
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I : Our Oceans Are Now Dying!

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