Paul Durack and his team from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used new satellite altimetry observations as well as a large suite of climate models to reach this conclusion – finding that their data lined up with previous measurements in the northern hemisphere but not the southern hemisphere, where ocean temperatures appeared to be higher than previously thought. As documented in the publication Nature, the underestimation is blamed on ‘…poor sampling of the Southern Hemisphere, and limitations of the analysis methods that conservatively estimate temperature changes in data-sparse regions.’
The implications of this finding are not positive. Oceans store upwards of 90% of the heat attributed to the global warming, meaning that this is a huge sway (2.2–7.1 × 1022 J 35 yr−1) in the amount of heat the Earth is understood to have absorbed. Obviously the temperature of the ocean affects how much of it is stored as ice, and added heating means that that ice will be melting and raising the sea level faster than previously thought.
Coupled with the recent IPCC report that stated,
‘Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped.’
The current news regarding the environment is not very positive at all.
Original paper: Nature
IPCC report: Summary
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