[Vision2020] ARGO Ocean Data: May 20, 2010, Journal "Nature"--"Robust warming of the global upper ocean"

[Ted Moffett]

In the past week I posted information about the over 3000 ARGO ocean floats
that have been deployed globally since 2000, greatly improving the gathering
of environmental data about the Earth's oceans.  I had no clue such an
important scientific study was about to be published about the warming of
the Earth's oceans, using ARGO data.  As stated by one of the authors, “The
ocean is the biggest reservoir for heat in the climate system.”  This is
sometimes overlooked in discussions of anthropogenic climate warming, when a
dominant focus is atmospheric temperature:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/full/nature09043.html

Robust warming of the global upper ocean

*Nature* *465*, 334-337 (20 May 2010) | doi:10.1038/nature09043; Received 8
December 2009; Accepted 22 March 2010
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http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100519_ocean.html
 Ocean Stored Significant Warming Over Last 16 Years

May 19, 2010
The upper layer of the world’s ocean has warmed since 1993, indicating a
strong climate change signal, according to a new study. The energy stored is
enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs per each of the roughly 6.7
billion people on the planet.

“We are seeing the global ocean store more heat than it gives off,” said
John Lyman, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Joint Institute for Marine and
Atmospheric Research <http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/jimar/>, who led an
international team of scientists that analyzed nine different estimates of
heat content in the upper ocean from 1993 to 2008.

The team combined the estimates to assess the size and certainty of growing
heat storage in the ocean. Their findings will be published in the May 20
edition of the journal Nature. The scientists are from NOAA, NASA, the Met
Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom, the University of Hamburg in
Germany and the Meteorological Research Institute in Japan.

“The ocean is the biggest reservoir for heat in the climate system,” said
Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and one of
the scientists who contributed to the study. “So as the planet warms, we’re
finding that 80 to 90 percent of the increased heat ends up in the
ocean.”

A warming ocean is a direct cause of global sea level rise, since seawater
expands and takes up more space as it heats up. The scientists say that this
expansion accounts for about one-third to one-half of global sea level rise.

Combining multiple estimates of heat in the upper ocean – from the surface
to about 2,000 feet down – the team found a strong multi-year warming trend
throughout the world’s ocean. According to measurements by an array of
autonomous free-floating ocean floats called Argo as well as by earlier
devices called expendable bathythermographs or XBTs that were dropped from
ships to obtain temperature data, ocean heat content has increased over the
last 16 years.

The team notes that there are still some uncertainties and some biases.

“The XBT data give us vital information about past changes in the ocean, but
they are not as accurate as the more recent Argo data,” said Gregory
Johnson, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental
Laboratory<http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/>.
“However, our analysis of these data gives us confidence that on average,
the ocean has warmed over the past decade and a half, signaling a climate
imbalance.”

Data from the array of Argo floats­ – deployed by NOAA and other U.S. and
international partners ­– greatly reduce the uncertainties in estimates of
ocean heat content over the past several years, the team said. There are now
more than 3,200 Argo floats distributed throughout the world’s ocean sending
back information via satellite on temperature, salinity, currents and other
ocean properties.

NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's
environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to
conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Visit us on
Facebook<http://www.facebook.com/usnoaagov>
.

*Note:* Full name of the paper is *Robust Warming of the Global Upper Ocean*.
Authors are John M. Lyman, Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric
Research, University of Hawaii at Manoa and NOAA/Pacific Marine
Environmental Laboratory, Seattle; Simon A. Good, Met Office Hadley Centre;
Viktor V. Gouretski Klima Campus, University of Hamburg; Masayoshi Ishii,
Climate Research Department, Meteorological Research Institute, Japan;
Gregory C. Johnson, NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle;
Matthew D. Palmer, Met Office Hadley Centre; Doug M. Smith, Met Office
Hadley Centre; and Josh K. Willis, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
Calif.

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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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