<h2><font size="2">Journal of Climate article abstract from subject heading at bottom of post.</font></h2>
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<h2><a href="http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100920_oceanwarming.html" target="_blank"><font size="2">http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100920_oceanwarming.html</font></a></h2>
<h2>Scientists Find 20 Years of Deep Water Warming Leading to Sea Level Rise</h2>
<div>September 20, 2010</div>
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<p>Scientists analyzing measurements taken in the deep ocean around the globe over the past two decades find a warming trend that contributes to sea level rise, especially around Antarctica.</p>
<p>Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, cause heating of the Earth. Over the past few decades, at least 80 percent of this heat energy has gone into the ocean, warming it in the process.</p>
<p>“Previous studies have shown that the upper ocean is warming, but our analysis determines how much additional heat the deep ocean is storing from warming observed all the way to the ocean floor,” said Sarah Purkey, an oceanographer at the University of Washington and lead author of the study.</p>
<p>This study shows that the deep ocean – below about 3,300 feet – is taking up about 16 percent of what the upper ocean is absorbing. The authors note that there are several possible causes for this deep warming: a shift in Southern Ocean winds, a change in the density of what is called Antarctic Bottom Water, or how quickly that bottom water is formed near the Antarctic, where it sinks to fill the deepest, coldest portions of the ocean around much of the globe.</p>
<p>The scientists found the strongest deep warming around Antarctica, weakening with distance from its source as it spreads around the globe. While the temperature increases are small (about 0.03°C per decade in the deep Southern Ocean, less elsewhere), the large volume of the ocean over which they are found and the high capacity of water to absorb heat means that this warming accounts for a huge amount of energy storage. If this deep ocean heating were going into the atmosphere instead – a physical impossibility – it would be warming at a rate of about 3°C (over 5°F) per decade. </p>
<p>“A warming Earth causes sea level rise in two ways,” said Gregory Johnson, a NOAA oceanographer at the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, and the study’s co-author. “The warming heats the ocean, causing it to expand, and melts continental ice, adding water to the ocean. The expansion and added water both cause the sea to encroach on the land.”</p>
<p>Sea level has been rising at around 3 mm (1/8 of a inch) per year on average since 1993, with about half of that caused by ocean thermal expansion and the other half because of additional water added to the ocean, mostly from melting continental ice. Purkey and Johnson note that deep warming of the Southern Ocean accounts for about 1.2 mm (about 1/20th of an inch) per year of the sea level rise around Antarctica in the past few decades.</p>
<p>The highly accurate deep-ocean temperature observations used in this study come from ship-based instruments that measure conductivity through salinity, temperature and depth. These measurements were taken on a series of hydrographic surveys of the global ocean in the 1990s through the World Ocean Circulation Experiment and in the 2000s in support of the Climate Variability program. These surveys are now coordinated by the international Global Ship-based Hydrographic Investigations Program.</p>
<p>The study, “Warming of Global Abyssal and Deep Southern Ocean Waters between the 1990s and 2000s: Contributions to Global Heat and Sea Level Rise Budgets,” authored by Sarah G. Purkey and Gregory C. Johnson, will be published in an upcoming edition of the <em>Journal of Climate.</em></p>
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<p><a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1" target="_blank">http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1</a></p>
<div><span>Journal of Climate </span>2010 ; e-View </div>
<div>doi: 10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1 </div>
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<div>Warming of Global Abyssal and Deep Southern Ocean Waters Between the 1990s and 2000s: Contributions to Global Heat and Sea Level Rise Budgets<a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1#fn1" target="_blank">*</a></div>
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<div><strong>Sarah G. Purkey<a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1#aff1" target="_blank">1,</a><a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1#aff2" target="_blank">2</a> and Gregory C. Johnson<a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1#aff2" target="_blank">2,</a><a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1#aff1" target="_blank">1</a><a href="http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3682.1#cor1" target="_blank"></a></strong>
<p><a name="12b3171d4f8b1648_aff1"></a>1 School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle WA 98195, USA </p>
<p><a name="12b3171d4f8b1648_aff2"></a>2 NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle WA 98115, USA </p>
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<th valign="center" width="95%" align="left">Abstract</th></tr></tbody></table></p></div>
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<p>We quantify abyssal global and deep Southern Ocean temperature trends between the 1990s and 2000s to assess the role of recent warming of these regions in global heat and sea level budgets. We compute warming rates with uncertainties along 28 full-depth, high-quality, hydrographic sections that have been occupied two or more times between 1980 and 2010. We divide the global ocean into 32 basins defined by the topography and climatological ocean bottom temperatures and estimate temperature trends in the 24 sampled basins. The three southernmost basins show a strong statistically significant abyssal warming trend, with that warming signal weakening to the north in the central Pacific, western Atlantic, and eastern Indian Oceans. Eastern Atlantic and western Indian Ocean basins show statistically insignificant abyssal cooling trends. Excepting the Arctic Ocean and Nordic seas, the rate of abyssal (below 4000 m) global ocean heat content change in the 1990s and 2000s is equivalent to a heat flux of 0.027 (±0.009) W m<sup>−2</sup> applied over the entire surface of the Earth. Deep (1000–4000 m) warming south of the Sub-Antarctic Front of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current adds 0.068 (±0.062) W m<sup>−2</sup>. The abyssal warming produces a 0.053 (±0.017) mm yr<sup>−1</sup> increase in global average sea level and the deep warming south of the Sub-Antarctic Front adds another 0.093 (±0.081) mm yr<sup>−1</sup>. Thus warming in these regions, ventilated primarily by Antarctic Bottom Water, accounts for a statistically significant fraction of the present global energy and sea level budgets.</p>
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<p>Received: February 16, 2010; Revised: July 28, 2010; Revised: August 18, 2010</p>
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<p><sup>*</sup>Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory Contribution Number 3524.</p>
<div><a name="12b3171d4f8b1648_cor1"></a><i>Corresponding author address</i>: Gregory C. Johnson, NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, 7600 Sand Point Way N.E., Bldg 3, Seattle, WA 98115. E-mail: <a href="mailto:gregory.c.johnson@noaa.gov" target="_blank">gregory.c.johnson@noaa.gov</a>.</div>
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<div>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett</div></div></div></div>