Warming of the Oceans

In 2005, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Lawrence Livermore Laboratories announced the results of a new study of global warming. They modeled changes in ocean temperature in response to the release of greenhouse gasses during the last forty years. Then they checked their models against 7 million direct measurements of ocean temperature. They found a 95 percent correspondence between the models and the observed data.

Most modeling studies so far have focused on atmospheric temperatures, but the planet's oceans represent a much larger energy sink, absorbing and holding much more heat than the atmosphere. Ocean temperatures are one of the key patterns determining worldwide weather patterns.

Tim Barnett, one of the authors of the study, told The Independent that, "Over the past 40 years there has been considerable warming of the planetary system and approximately 90 per cent of that warming has gone directly into the oceans.... If we could mine the energy that has gone in over the past 40 years we could run the state of California for 200,000 years."