Planet, Oceans Burning Up: There is no “Pause” in Global Warming

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/02/oceans-burning-warming.html

Planet, Oceans Burning Up: There is no “Pause” in Global Warming
By Juan Cole | Feb. 13, 2014
(By Jon Queally)

Climate change has not hit a "speed bump." The planet's temperature is not remaining steady and it certainly isn't cooling. Earth, especially its ocean, are heating up… and rapidly.

Those are the findings and the consensus of the global scientific community. And a new study shows that the detectable slowdown of global surface temperature increases over the last fifteen years—a trend that climate change denialists have seized on to foment doubt among the general public—is, in fact, the result of a terrifying phenomenon in which the planet's deep oceans are increasingly absorbing the world's excess carbon, offering a false sense of temperature stability when the reality is very much the opposite.

The new study, conducted by U.S. and Australian scientists and presented in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that unusually powerful trade winds in the Pacific Ocean have contributed to pushing the warmer ocean waters to greater depths, creating an illusion of a warming plateau on the surface.

~snip~

According to the study, acceleration of Pacific trade winds has been twice as strong in the past 20 years compared with the prior 80 years and suggests the surface warming "hiatus" could "persist for much of the present decade if the trade wind trends continue." However, warn the scientists, when the winds return to their long-term average speeds, rapid surface temperature warming will resume and the consequences could be dire.

[democratisphere]

1. Climate change and its HUGE consequences are accelerating

The damage humans are causing to the air, land and seas will be irreversible if we don't start taking global warming and climate change seriously. The right and the GOP can't continue their ridiculous denials.

[Laelth]

2. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[hatrack]

3. It's just getting more interesting by the day, ain't it?

.

[daleanime]

4. K&R....

[LouisvilleDem]

5. Something about this bugs me

First there is a minor typo.

Those are the findings and the consensus of the global scientific community. And a new study shows that the detectable slowdown of global surface temperature increases over the last fifteen years a trend that climate change denialists have seized on to foment doubt among the general public is, in fact, the result of a terrifying phenomenon in which the planet's deep oceans are increasingly absorbing the world's excess carbon, offering a false sense of temperature stability when the reality is very much the opposite.

I'm pretty sure he meant to say that planet's deep oceans are increasingly absorbing the world's excess heat, not carbon.

More importantly, it bothers me that we are stuck trying to explain why something happened, rather than being able to predict with confidence what will happen. I wish that 15 years ago we had said "air temperature increases are going to level out because vast amounts of heat will start getting dumped into the deep ocean." However, the bottom line is that no one did say that, and as a result the deniers now can step in and say "see, these folks don't know what they are talking about." I really don't know what can be done about this, other than provide greater amounts of funding for climate science so we can fill in the gaps of our knowledge.

What bothers me even more though is the tone of the article that seems to assert that it doesn't really matter that climate models got air temperature increases wrong because "hey, lots of other horrible other things are going on." I'm starting to think that one of the reasons we are having such a hard time making progress in this area is because we have not been honest about what we do and do not know.

[NickB79]

6. Well, the oceans ARE absorbing massive amounts of carbon

Just look at ocean acidification rates lately.

But yes, I'm also pretty sure he meant to say heat.

[LouisvilleDem]

7. I agree

Acidification is a problem. BTW, I screwed up the post and left off the part that really bugged me...