Study confirms steady warming of oceans for past 75 years

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2017/research/ocean-warming-confirmed/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Study confirms steady warming of oceans for past 75 years[/font]

Posted on 4 January 2017

[font size=3]Scientists have solved a puzzling break in continuity of ocean warming records that sparked much controversy after climate data was published in the journal Science in 2015.

The latest research from the Universities of York, UK, and California, Berkeley, US, confirms that the conclusions of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) research paper, which sparked wide debate following the suggestion that there was no detectable slowdown in ocean warming, were in fact accurate.

The 2015 analysis by NOAA scientists showed that ocean buoys now used to measure water temperatures tend to report slightly cooler temperatures than older ship-based systems. As buoy measurements have replaced ship measurements, this had hidden some of the real-world warming.

Scientists corrected this ‘cold bias’ and concluded that oceans have actually warmed 0.12 degrees Celsius per decade since 1997, nearly twice as fast as earlier estimates of 0.07 degrees Celsius per decade. This brought the rate of ocean temperature rise in line with estimates for the previous 50 years, between 1950 and 1999.

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http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/01/04/global-warming-hiatus-disproved-again/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Global warming hiatus disproved — again[/font]

By Robert Sanders, Media relations | January 4, 2017

[font size=3]A controversial paper published two years ago that concluded there was no detectable slowdown in ocean warming over the previous 15 years — widely known as the “global warming hiatus” — has now been confirmed using independent data in research led by researchers from UC Berkeley and Berkeley Earth, a non-profit research institute focused on climate change.

The 2015 analysis showed that the modern buoys now used to measure ocean temperatures tend to report slightly cooler temperatures than older ship-based systems, even when measuring the same part of the ocean at the same time. As buoy measurements have replaced ship measurements, this had hidden some of the real-world warming.

After correcting for this “cold bias,” researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded in the journal Science that the oceans have actually warmed 0.12 degrees Celsius (0.22 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade since 2000, nearly twice as fast as earlier estimates of 0.07 degrees Celsius per decade. This brought the rate of ocean temperature rise in line with estimates for the previous 30 years, between 1970 and 1999.

This eliminated much of the global warming hiatus, an apparent slowdown in rising surface temperatures between 1998 and 2012. Many scientists, including the International Panel on Climate Change, acknowledged the puzzling hiatus, while those dubious about global warming pointed to it as evidence that climate change is a hoax.

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[True Dough]

1. The upside will be

our fish will soon come out of the oceans pre-cooked. No need to turn on the oven, saving electricity.

Always a silver lining!

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. "Lamar Smith owes Tom Karl an apology."

Fat chance of that, of course:

Instead of looking at all the data mashed together, Hausfather and his colleagues studied the trends in the data from different sources separately, including data from ships, buoys, satellites, and drifting robots called Argo floats.

"The authors did a great job of inter-comparing independent and semi-independent SST data sets," Thomas Karl, the lead author on the 2015 NOAA paper and former director of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, writes in an email to the Monitor. "Their results show the importance of independent measurements to clarify observational uncertainties."

"This paper further allays any qualms that there may have been scientific errors or any non-scientific agendas," Kevin Trenberth, senior scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who was not part of either paper, writes to the Monitor. "Lamar Smith owes Tom Karl an apology."

Moreover, the perceived significance of a "hiatus" was itself a misunderstanding, says climatologist Gavin Schmidt, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who was not involved in this study. "If you think that very small changes on a very short number of years makes a difference to the big picture, you're just fooling yourself," he tells the Monitor in a phone interview.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2017/0104/Debunking-the-myth-of-climate-change-hiatus-Where-did-it-come-from