Seas Rising and Warming Faster Than Realized

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Scientific detective work has uncovered a decades-old glitch in ocean temperature measurements and revealed that the world's seas are warming and rising faster than previously reported.

An international team of scientists, reporting their findings on Thursday in the journal Nature, looked at millions of ship-based measurements taken since 1950, but particularly from 1960, and revealed an error in data from a common probe called an XBT.

Correcting the error in data running over decades as well as applying a complex statistical analysis to sea temperature data, the team came up with a global estimate of ocean warming in the top layers down to 700 metres (2,300 feet) as well as how fast oceans are rising.

"We show that the rate of ocean warming from 1961 to 2003 is about 50 percent larger than previously reported," said team member Catia Domingues, from the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research.

http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnBAN946269.html

NYC immediately pops to mind.

n/t

Other cities will follow sooner than we think.

I'd really like to know whether to move to higher ground now....

Hekate

would raise the sea level by about 2 feet, simply due to thermal expansion.

Interactive flood maps:

http://flood.firetree.net/

South Florida and Chesapeake Bay seem the most vulnerable in the US.