Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:03PM (12 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:03PM (#619498)

    How much as the temperature risen or fallen from non-manmade global warming/cooling?

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 08 2018, @02:36PM (#619507)

    Looks like someone forgot to turn off their lame topic-starter bots.

  • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Monday January 08 2018, @04:35PM (10 children)

    by fritsd (4586) on Monday January 08 2018, @04:35PM (#619564) Journal

    You can look it up here (Milankovitch cycles) [wikipedia.org]; the fastest cycle seems to have a period of 25 000 years, and the one with the largest amplitude, 400 000 years, if I understand it correctly.

    So nothing that can cause a bump within 100 years.

    • (Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Monday January 08 2018, @05:04PM (4 children)

      by WalksOnDirt (5854) on Monday January 08 2018, @05:04PM (#619582) Journal

      Volcanoes could cause an effect over that period, but I think they have been of roughly normal activity lately.

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday January 08 2018, @08:14PM (3 children)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 08 2018, @08:14PM (#619669) Journal

        No, I don't think volcanoes could alter the mean ocean temperature that rapidly. A giant meteor impact could, however. Or. speaking of volcanoes, something like the Deccan Traps happening underwater could cause a fairly rapid change.

        Mean ocean temperature changes extremely slowly.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by WalksOnDirt on Tuesday January 09 2018, @11:11AM (2 children)

          by WalksOnDirt (5854) on Tuesday January 09 2018, @11:11AM (#619952) Journal

          You're being inconsistent. First you say that volcanoes couldn't cause the warming, then you say maybe the Deccan traps could. I noted that there actually hadn't been such a volcanic event recently.

          • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 09 2018, @07:18PM (1 child)

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 09 2018, @07:18PM (#620161) Journal

            The Deccan traps wasn't just "a" volcano, it was essentially a range of volcanoes going off all at once. I suspect that it was caused by a giant meteor impact on the other side of the planet, but the volcanoes are what left evidence. And that kind of event has only happened a couple of times in the entire history of the planet (well, since the late heavy bombardment). Calling that "a volcano" is just unreasonable.

            --
            Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 2) by slinches on Monday January 08 2018, @05:59PM (4 children)

      by slinches (5049) on Monday January 08 2018, @05:59PM (#619600)

      You can look it up here (Milankovitch cycles) [wikipedia.org]; the fastest cycle seems to have a period of 25 000 years, and the one with the largest amplitude, 400 000 years, if I understand it correctly.
      So nothing that can cause a bump within 100 years.

      I wish it were that simple. Even if there weren't influences on the time scale between 1 & 100 years (there's the solar sun spot cycle, for one), there can still be oscillations in natural feedback loops within that period set off by random perturbations. Natural systems tend to be chaotic, but fairly well bounded, which means that variations in the system can naturally occur on shorter time scales than the forcing function changes themselves. Only the bounds of the system are limited to following the rate of change of the forcings.

      Of course, that makes it much harder to interpret climate data on something close to human time scales.

      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday January 08 2018, @08:17PM (3 children)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 08 2018, @08:17PM (#619672) Journal

        They're talking about mean ocean temperature. I really doubt the solar sun spot cycle would have even a measurable effect. Mean ocean temperature changes extremely slowly.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by slinches on Monday January 08 2018, @11:16PM (2 children)

          by slinches (5049) on Monday January 08 2018, @11:16PM (#619768)

          And how do they measure mean ocean temperature?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @01:30AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @01:30AM (#619811)

            I'm more interested in how they determine which oceans are the mean ones.

          • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:56AM

            by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 09 2018, @05:56AM (#619879) Journal

            That's partially what the article is about.

            --
            Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.