Top Layer Of Planet's Ocean Has Been Warming Steadily Since 1993 - Reuters

(Reuters) - The top layer of the world's ocean has warmed steadily since 1993, a strong sign of global warming and a key driver of sea level rise, according to a study by an international team of scientists.

"The ocean is the biggest reservoir for heat in the climate system, so as the planet warms, we're finding that 80 to 90 percent of the increased heat ends up in the ocean," said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Scientists from NASA and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Britain's Met Office, the University of Hamburg in Germany and the Meteorological Research Institute in Japan analyzed different estimates of heat content in the upper ocean from 1993 to 2008 to assess the size and certainty of growing heat storage in the ocean.

They estimated that the heat content of the ocean has increased over the last 16 years and the energy stored is now enough to light nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs for every person on the planet.

EDIT

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64J1QR20100520

Every time a journalist writes about energy and power, and confuses the units of each, or leaves their story unclear by perhaps omitting "a year" from it, they should be plugged into a 240V socket. For 5 seconds.

Crap even NOAA seems unable to phrase this unambiguously:



"The energy stored" is ambiguous. Do they mean "the energy being stored", in which case this would be the rate of energy storage, and that rate is the same as the power for the light bulbs; or "the energy that has been stored", in which case it's the accumulated energy since 1993, and you would need to say how long the light bulbs are to be run. Reuters makes it worse by changing the wording to "the heat content of the ocean has increased over the last 16 years and the energy stored is now enough...". That really makes it sound like the accumulated energy.

OK, so I have to assume they mean the current rate of energy storage in the oceans is enough to power nearly 500*6.7 billion 100-watt light bulbs, ie 335 trillion watts. They say that's in the top 2,000 ft, which I think means 2.2e17 cubic metres. So that's an average rate of temperature increase of 3.35e14/(2.2e17*1000*4200)=3.7e-10 K/s. I think. Or 1 degree Centigrade every 86 years. Which is believable. :shrug: I have probably made a mistake somewhere, but I shouldn't have to do calculations just to figure out what their English means.

Just because you can't tell the difference doesn't mean the rest of us have to get a lobotomy.

so someone there thought it worth correcting too. It now reads "The energy stored is enough to power nearly 500 100-watt light bulbs per each of the roughly 6.7 billion people on the planet continuously over the 16-year study period".

I bet some slashdot nerd alerted them to it. ;)

Good data on ocean temperatures really only goes back to the deployment of the Argo array in 2004, so I wonder how they can make the claim that the oceans have been warming since 1993?

I'll have to wear shades.