Tag Archives: ocean warming

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 36: Ocean plastic outpaces warming & CO2 in race to bottom

Earth’s oceans currently take up almost 50% of our CO2 emissions and absorb over 90% of the heat the other half of the CO2 traps in the atmosphere. Both ocean CO2 and heat absorption will have major consequences for deep-sea … Continue reading →

Understanding Sea Level Rise, part 1: Thermal Expansion – a Physical Foundation of several metres, irrespective of ice melting

In between our series about the global temperature trend and our (upcoming) series about climate & biodiversity, let’s do a short series about sea level rise, shall we?

Real Global Temperature Trend, p23 – Climate sensitivity has large geographical spread: 2-3 degrees global average equals 6+ in the Arctic

Why climate change is such a killer? Because disruption is never a linear process. We see that with ecosystem disintegration – where beyond a certain threshold cascading damage sets in – leading to shifts and collapse scenarios that are easy … Continue reading →

Real Global Temperature Trend, p16 – Climate System Thermal Inertia: Trend Line = 0.6C higher than observed temperatures show

In part 16 of our temperature trend series we take a better look at one of the main reasons almost everyone still underestimates climate urgency: ‘Thermal inertia’ of the climate system – a delay between the moment of emissions of … Continue reading →

This image shows it all. El Niño from May, intensifying over 2014

The below image was released by NOAA yesterday, 7 April 2014. It shows the NCEP climate model is anticipating the arrival of this Kelvin wave – and that El Niño will surface around May 2014 and likely intensify during the boreal summer … Continue reading →

A weak or a strong El Niño ahead? Hint: we live in a 3D world

If we take another look at the IRI ensemble forecast for El Niño some members show a clear and speedy rise in East Pacific tropical ocean temperatures. Before we conclude ‘El Niño ahead’ during northern hemisphere summer and autumn let’s … Continue reading →

Global ocean temperatures have been rising for at least a century

Locations of Argo's ocean-profiling robots

The location of Argo's 3,500 ocean-profiling robots in the world's oceans. (Credit: Image courtesy of Scripps Institute of Oceanography)

A new study contrasting ocean temperature readings of the 1870s with temperatures of the modern seas reveals an upward trend of global ocean warming spanning at least 100 years.

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Missing heat 2000-2009 indeed deeper in ocean, says NCAR model

As a regular of Bitsofscience.org you may recall a publication on ocean warming [between 2003-2010] in Geophysical Research Letters from last July. That one was little-noticed by the world’s media, but now its findings may receive more attention, as an … Continue reading →