The Influence of Oceans on Climate Change

This page gives links to scientific articles about both the influence of oceans on climate change and the influence of climate change on oceans.

We also find that the detection threshold of mass loss acceleration depends on record length: to detect an acceleration at an accuracy within ±10 Gt yr⁻², a period of 10 years or more of observations is required for Antarctica and about 20 years for Greenland. Therefore, climate variability adds uncertainty to extrapolations of future mass loss and sea-level rise, underscoring the need for continuous long-term satellite monitoring.

A new NASA and university analysis of ocean data collected more than 135 years ago by the crew of the HMS Challenger oceanographic expedition provides further confirmation that human activities have warmed our planet over the past century.

Models of carbon dioxide in the world's oceans need to be revised, according to new work by UC Irvine and other scientists published online Sunday in Nature Geoscience. Trillions of plankton near the surface of warm waters are far more carbon-rich than has long been thought, they found. Global marine temperature fluctuations could mean that tiny Prochlorococcus and other microbes digest double the carbon previously calculated. Carbon dioxide is the leading driver of disruptive climate change.

The climate is getting warmer, and sea levels are rising -- a threat to island nations. As a group of researchers led by colleagues from the University of Bonn found out, at the same time, tiny single-cell organisms are spreading rapidly through the world's oceans, where they might be able to mitigate the consequences of climate change. Foraminifera of the variety Amphistegina are stabilizing coastlines and reefs with their calcareous shells.

Historic lake sediment dug up by University of Pittsburgh researchers reveals that oceanic influences on rainfall in Central America have varied over the last 2,000 years, highlighting the fluctuating influence the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans have on precipitation.

Now, a new paper published recently in the journal Geophysical Research Letters documents the effects of the 2010-11 La Niña on global sea level and updates the measurements. The result: as predicted, by mid-2012, global mean sea level had not only recovered from the more than 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) it dropped in 2010-11, but had resumed its long-term mean annual rise of 0.13 inches (3.2 millimeters) per year. Results of the new study are presented graphically at: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA16294.

Anthropogenic climate change leads to melting glaciers and rising sea level. Between 1902 and 2009, melting glaciers contributed 11 cm to sea level rise. They were therefore the most important cause of sea level rise. This is the result of a new assessment by scientists of the University of Innsbruck. They numerically modeled the changes of each of the world’s 300,000 glaciers. Until 2100, glaciers could lead to an additional 22 cm of sea level rise.

Climate scientists agree there have been a lot of strong hurricanes lately. They agree that warmer seas have given these storms some extra punch. But they disagree how much global warming is to blame.

To demonstrate Mazria’s point, Architecture 2030 has compiled a report that features images depicting the dramatic effects of sea level rise — from about 3 to 16 feet — on 21 cities around the country.

Historically, the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans has been ice-bound through the year.
But the agency says ice cover has been steadily shrinking, and this summer’s reduction has made the route navigable.

A Duke University-led analysis of available records shows that while the North Atlantic Ocean’s surface waters warmed in the 50 years between 1950 and 2000, the change was not uniform. In fact, the subpolar regions cooled at the same time that subtropical and tropical waters warmed.

To date climate change projections, as published in the last IPCC report, only considered changes in future atmospheric composition. This strategy is appropriate for long-term changes in climate such as predictions for the end of the century. However, in order to predict short-term developments over the next decade, models need additional information on natural climate variations, in particular associated with ocean currents.

Scientists have long known that atmospheric convection in the form of hurricanes and tropical ocean thunderstorms tends to occur when sea surface temperature rises above a threshold. The critical question is, how do rising ocean temperatures with global warming affect this threshold? If the threshold does not rise, it could mean more frequent hurricanes.

Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have conducted a new study to measure levels of carbon at various depths in the Arctic Ocean. The study, recently published in the journal Biogeosciences, provides data that will help researchers better understand the Arctic Ocean's carbon cycle -- the pathway through which carbon enters and is used by the marine ecosystem. It will also offer an important point of reference for determining how those levels of carbon change over time, and how the ecosystem responds to rising global temperatures.

Comparing detailed measurements taken during the Australian Antarctic program's 2012 Southern Ocean marine science voyage to historical data dating back to 1970, scientists estimate there has been as much as a 60 per cent reduction in the volume of Antarctic Bottom Water, the cold dense water that drives global ocean currents.

In a paper just published in the journal Science, Australian scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, reported changing patterns of salinity in the global ocean during the past 50 years, marking a clear fingerprint of climate change.

"At this point we can only speculate as to how the mercury enters the river systems, but it appears that climate change may play a large role," says Jacob. "As global temperatures rise, we begin to see areas of permafrost thawing and releasing mercury that was locked in the soil; we also see the hydrological cycle changing, increasing the amount of runoff from precipitation that enters the rivers."

A new study from the Bjerknes Centre explains decadal variations in the oceanic circulation south of Greenland and Iceland. (this report is referenced to help us understand ocean currents and thus be able to better understand any change in those currents due to climate change)

New research by a team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and international collaborators shows that the observed ocean warming over the last 50 years is consistent with climate models only if the models include the impacts of observed increases in greenhouse gas during the 20th century.

To discover how the situation has changed since the last ice age, researchers studied 20,000-year-old mud samples from the sub-Arctic Pacific Ocean lying approximately three feet below the present sea bed. They found the water in the ocean’s depths exchanged less CO2 with the atmosphere than it does at present, while capturing more atmospheric CO2 than the water does today, suggesting as oceans become warmer as a result of climate change they release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. [posted by NewsDaily on January 24, 2008]

The upper layer of the world’s ocean has warmed since 1993, indicating a strong climate change signal, according to a new study. 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.

The Atlantic overturning circulation is a system of currents, including the Gulf Stream, that bring warm surface waters from the tropics northward into the North Atlantic. There, in the seas surrounding Greenland, the water cools, sinks to great depths and changes direction. What was once warm surface water heading north turns into cold deep water going south. This overturning is one part of the vast conveyor belt of ocean currents that move heat around the globe.

Scientists have long known that atmospheric convection in the form of hurricanes and tropical ocean thunderstorms tends to occur when sea surface temperature rises above a threshold. The critical question is, how do rising ocean temperatures with global warming affect this threshold? If the threshold does not rise, it could mean more frequent hurricanes.

Sea levels around the world can be expected to rise by several metres in coming centuries, if global warming carries on. Even if global warming is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, global-mean sea level could continue to rise, reaching between 1.5 and 4 metres above present-day levels by the year 2300, with the best estimate being at 2.7 metres, according to a study just published in Nature Climate Change. However, emissions reductions that allow warming to drop below 1.5 degrees Celsius could limit the rise strongly.

Rising sea levels cannot be stopped over the next several hundred years, even if deep emissions cuts lower global average temperatures, but they can be slowed down, climate scientists said in a study on Sunday. (posted by NewsDaily for July 1, 2012).

In research results published online July 5 in the journal Science, scientists report evidence of another trigger. Not sunlight, but whirlpools, or eddies, that swirl across the surface layer of the North Atlantic Ocean. These eddies sustain phytoplankton in the ocean's shallower waters where they can get plenty of sunlight to fuel growth, thereby keeping them from being pushed downward by the vagaries of rough processes at the ocean surface.

Towards the end of the last ice age, at the time of mammoths and primitive humans, the climate naturally warmed. This started to melt ice at increasingly high elevations, eventually reaching and melting the saddle area between the ice domes. This triggered a vicious circle in which the melting saddle would lower, reach warmer altitudes and melt even more rapidly until the saddle had completely melted. In just 500 years, the saddles disappeared and only the ice domes remained.

In fact, the Arctic may have been colder during the Eemian, with lower heat transfer from the North Atlantic. On the basis of their finding, the authors suggest that previous records may reflect other phenomena and caution against the use of the Eemian as an analog of the present. Their finding also challenges climate models that predict extreme warmth and ice-free conditions in the Arctic in response to greenhouse gas warming in the 21st century.