Global Warming

The Ocean Deeps are Absorbing Global Warming

A new study shows that the world’s oceans are warming significantly under the influence of greenhouse gas-induced climate change, especially the deeps. Scientists from the U.S. and European weather agencies reassembled data from 1958 to 2009, using all available sources to create a model of ocean temperature changes.

They found that dimmed sunlight due to massive volcanic eruptions in the early 1980s and 1990s briefly reversed an otherwise profound trend of ocean warming.

Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers from NOAA and the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasts say that the deep waters have absorbed a surprising amount of heat, and did so at an increasing rate over the past decade.

About 90 percent of the energy added to the global environment by human activities was found to have gone into the ocean.

The ocean depths absorbed a surprising amount of heat, which may be related to a cycle of ocean circulation patterns known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

Once it changes, researchers believe the ocean surface temperatures will begin to warm more.