Deep ocean heat uptake on the rise
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Embargo
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London: Monday 18 January 2016 16:00 (GMT)
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New York: Monday 18 January 2016 11:00 (EST)
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Tokyo: Tuesday 19 January 2016 01:00 (JST)
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Sydney: Tuesday 19 January 2016 03:00 (AEDT)
The amount of the heat absorbed by the ocean has doubled in the past 18 years, relative to the
industrial era as a whole, reports a paper published online in Nature Climate Change this
week.The study shows that approximately 35% of this heat has entered the ocean below a depth
of 700 m, and continues to increase rapidly.
Peter Gleckler and colleagues use data from a variety of sources—including the nineteenth
century Challenger expedition, more recent ship-based measurements and autonomous floats—
to investigate how the heat content of the ocean has changed from 1865 to 2015. They consider
the data in three depth sections: upper (0–700 m), intermediate (700–2,000 m) and deep
(>2,000 m) layers. They then compare the observations to climate model simulations, and use
the consistency between them to interpret changes over the industrial era.
This study provides temperature information across the full depth of the ocean, contributing
significant data to our understanding of this understudied area, and highlights the importance of
ocean monitoring programmes to track climate change.
Article and author details
1. Industrial Era Global Ocean Heat Uptake Doubles in Recent
Decades
Corresponding Author
Peter Gleckler, Livermore
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, United States
Email: gleckler1@llnl.gov, Tel: +1 925 422 7631
DOI
10.1038/nclimate2915
Online paper*
http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/nclimate2915
* Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends).
Geographical listings of authors
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United States
Related documents
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Full text (482.82 KB)
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Supplementary information (540.83 KB)