Deep-ocean contribution to sea level and energy budget not detectable over the past decade
As the dominant reservoir of heat uptake in the climate system, the world's oceans provide a critical measure of global climate change. Here, we infer deep-ocean warming in the context of global sea-level rise and Earth's energy budget between January 2005 and December 2013. Direct measure...
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Published in | Nature climate change Vol. 4; no. 11; pp. 1031 - 1035 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
London
Nature Publishing Group
01.11.2014
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | As the dominant reservoir of heat uptake in the climate system, the world's oceans provide a critical measure of global climate change. Here, we infer deep-ocean warming in the context of global sea-level rise and Earth's energy budget between January 2005 and December 2013. Direct measurements of ocean warming above 2,000 m depth explain about 32% of the observed annual rate of global mean sea-level rise. Over the entire water column, independent estimates of ocean warming yield a contribution of 0.77 ± 0.28 mm yr-1 in sea-level rise and agree with the upper-ocean estimate to within the estimated uncertainties. Accounting for additional possible systematic uncertainties, the deep ocean (below 2,000 m) contributes -0.13 ± 0.72 mm yr-1 to global sea-level rise and -0.08 ± 0.43 W m-2 to Earth's energy balance. The net warming of the ocean implies an energy imbalance for the Earth of 0.64 ± 0.44 W m-2 from 2005 to 2013. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 1758-678X 1758-6798 |
DOI: | 10.1038/nclimate2387 |