Jill..." Uncool is the least of it."...I realize Im most likely causing some to start their flame throwers...but I'd like to think all involved must at times take into consideration the so called over heating of the economy and the 'apparent ' overheating of the planet.....have traveled in the 3rd world over the last 30 years...and have seen such rapid development that ...well...I am at a loss for words...can we continue to add 100 Million people per year...ahead of the death rate and feel no impact on a global level......??.....Guess Im wondering about hidden agendas.......On the one hand..Feel AG is a little trigger happy...on the other...considering my ' Green Views'...( I am a father of two young ladies)...He may be necessarily applying the brakes on a run away train......How does one define 'Right Action' in the face of all we 'Appear' to know.....
Stay Well........
Tim
Washington Post
Friday, March 24, 2000
The temperature of the world's oceans has increased
dramatically over the past four decades, according to
a major study in today's issue of the journal Science
that gives new credibility to projections of increased
global warming.
For years, many experts have suspected that heat
stored in the sea may have kept the planet's atmosphere from heating
up as much as greenhouse-warming scenarios
predict. But there has been no convincing evidence
because detailed, long- term records of ocean
temperatures -- especially at extreme depths -- were
unavailable.
Now, that evidence has arrived. In the first effort of its
kind, scientists from the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration spent years painstakingly
piecing together millions of seawater temperature
records made by hundreds of independent observers
worldwide over the past 50 years but never compiled
into a single database.
As a result, it's now clear that ``the oceans can store
lots of heat,' said lead researcher Sydney Levitus,
who heads NOAA's Ocean Climate Laboratory in Silver
Spring, Md., ``and for the last 40 years, they've kept
it away from the atmosphere.'
No one knows whether, how or when that stupendous
rise in thermal energy content -- an average of 0.11
degrees Fahrenheit throughout the world's seas to a
depth of two miles, roughly equivalent to the energy
consumed by 100 trillion 100- watt lightbulbs burning
for a year -- will change the atmosphere's
temperature.
But the NOAA team reports that increases in ocean
temperature appear to have preceded increases in air
temperature by a decade or so in the recent climate
record, suggesting additional warming might be on the
way.
The new research ``is of enormous importance to the
climate change issue,' said climate modeler James
Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies
in New York. ``In my opinion, the rate of heat storage
in the ocean is the single most important number that
we need to check our understanding of decadal
climate change.'
Because the ocean heat record appears to follow the
same general pattern as warming trends in the
atmosphere and melting rates of sea ice observed
over past decades, the new study supports the
contention that global warming continues.
That is what most climate models -- the complex,
computerized simulations of global-scale weather
interactions among oceans, air and land -- have
projected for the 21st century, and perhaps beyond.
MODELERS `IN THE BALLPARK'
``Unfortunately for all of us, it shows that the
modelers are still in the ballpark,' said Jerry Mahlman,
director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
in Princeton, N.J., one of the world's top modeling
centers. ``If either the ocean or the Arctic (sea ice)
was going in a different direction' from the air-
temperature record, ``it would give you pause. But it
now appears that all three are acting in concert.'
Critics of climate-model results have noted that many
models project two or three times as much warming
as has been measured at the Earth's surface. Global
average temperatures increased by about 1.2 degrees
Fahrenheit in the 20th century, about half the amount
predicted by several leading models.
Model defenders countered that the ``missing' heat
was probably in the ocean. But the case was hard to
make. Although numerous worldwide measurements
have been taken and coordinated in the past 15 years,
about 2 million other records dating to 1948 have
been lying around in a variety of forms in a dozen
countries.
Levitus' group ``took enormous gobs of badly
cared-for data, worked really hard and found things
that nobody had ever pulled out,' Mahlman said. ``It's
really quite an achievement.'
There's no direct evidence that the oceans' rising heat
content, which apparently peaked in 1998, is the result
of human-caused increases in greenhouse gases, and
the researchers note that it ``could be due to natural
variability, anthropogenic effects, or more likely a
combination of both.'
ENERGY IMBALANCE
Whatever the cause, the new study ``confirms that
the immediate `reason' for the observed warming at
the Earth's surface is a planetary energy imbalance,
with the planet giving off less heat than it absorbs
from the sun,' Hansen said. The reason is that the
infrared heat radiation emitted from the globe's
surface is trapped by greenhouse gases such as water
vapor and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and
re-radiated back toward Earth.
According to calculations Hansen and colleagues
published in 1997, ``if human-made greenhouse
gases have been the dominant (climate-modifying
factor) in recent decades,' the energy imbalance
would average out to about half a watt per square
meter around the world, Hansen said.
At the time, Hansen said, the ``excess heat must
primarily be accumulating in the ocean.' The NOAA
researchers found a net heat increase of 0.3 watts per
square meter.
``The observed changes are not small,' they write,
``and can make an appreciable contribution to Earth's
heat balance on decadal time scales.' |
