World's Oceans Heating Up Faster Than Expected, Scripps Reports

Researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Princeton University released a study Thursday that concludes the world’s oceans are heating up faster than expected, making it more difficult to stop climate change.

The study, published in the journal Nature, found the Earth is more sensitive to fossil-fuel emissions than previously thought. In each of the past 25 years, according to new measurements, oceans have absorbed an amount of heat energy that is 150 times the energy humans produce as electricity annually.

Last summer record ocean temperatures — the highest 79.2 degrees — were recorded at Scripps Pier in La Jolla, CA (just north of San Diego).

Lead author Laure Resplandy, a Princeton assistant professor of geosciences, said that if society is to prevent temperatures from rising above pre-industrial levels by 3.6℉, emissions of carbon dioxide must be reduced by 25 percent more than previously estimated. Resplandy said the new estimate of ocean warming is more than 60 percent higher than the figure in the latest climate change report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

https://timesofsandiego.com/tech/2018/11/01/worlds-oceans-heating-up-faster-than-expected-scripps-reports/