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posted by Fnord666 on Monday January 08 2018, @12:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the oceanic-fever dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The oceans are the largest global heat reservoir. As a result of man-made global warming, the temperature in the global climate system increases; around 90% of the extra heat is absorbed by the oceans. This means that the average sea temperature can tell us a lot about the state of our climate, both today and in the past. However, it is difficult to determine an accurate average value across all sea depths and regions of the world.

The results of previous measurement methods heavily depend on location, season or sea depth, which can lead to distorted results. As part of the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project, an international research team led by Bernhard Bereiter from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography - now working at Empa and the University of Bern - has developed a method of measuring ocean temperatures over the last 24'000 years with high accuracy.

These measurements have now been published in Nature. "Our study clearly shows that the basic idea - the connection between the concentration of noble gases in the atmosphere and the average ocean temperature - is correct and that the method works," said Bereiter.


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  • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday January 08 2018, @01:13PM (4 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Monday January 08 2018, @01:13PM (#619491) Homepage Journal

    Yes, you misunderstood, or I said it poorly. Search for ocean warming, and you will find all sorts of claims that the oceans have already warmed, by some amount up to a full degree centigrade. Which claim this paper would seem to disprove.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 08 2018, @01:49PM (1 child)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday January 08 2018, @01:49PM (#619495) Journal

    Well, I looked briefly, and I see references to rise in ocean SURFACE temp on the scale you claim. The way TFA is worded, it sounds like this study may be measuring mean ocean temperature overall (not just surface temp) which is a very different metric. Unfortunately, as you note, the full study is paywalled, so I don't really know the details -- but this could make a big difference.

    The deep oceans are a huge heat (and CO2) sink, and part of the supposed "pause" in global warming that some claim.in the past couple decades has been claimed to be related to heat migrating to these lower layers. (And again, you may claim this is a post hoc justification, but I remember learning about the potential influence of different ocean layers on warming and CO2 levels in the late 90s, though no one that I remember was predicting an imminent "pause" due to it at that time. But it was recognized as a large influence.)

    But again, I'll fully admit I'm not an expert in this area, and I haven't read the full study here. But if the discrepancy of predictions was as large as you claim, I think this study would be bigger news...

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 08 2018, @02:00PM

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Monday January 08 2018, @02:00PM (#619497) Journal

      Actually, the report from Nature [nature.com] confirms this study is definitely about mean ocean temps overall, not ocean surface temp. So that may be a significant difference. Do you have studies that claim a full degree rise in the deep oceans in recent years? Because I don't think I've seen predictions of that magnitude.

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:05PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:05PM (#619500)

    In other news, scientists again have no clue what is really happening with pretty much anything.

    • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @03:02PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @03:02PM (#619516)

      When did they let you out? I think Algernon's treatments made him a little loopy.