Seas rising, warming faster than realised

Those rejecting the enormous body of evidence pointing to a growing human influence on climate had embraced some transitory findings implying that the oceans were cooling.

Those rejecting the enormous body of evidence pointing to a growing human influence on climate had embraced some transitory findings implying that the oceans were cooling. A new work may help resolve that particular line of debate. The formula holds: more CO2 = warming world = less ice + higher seas + lots of changing climate patterns.

The study, by Australian and American researchers, reviewed millions of measurements of ocean temperatures taken using a particular instrument on submarines and other vessels over four decades. The researchers found a subtle error that, when fixed, shows that the rate at which seas warmed and rose

between 1961 and 2003 was about 50 percent greater than previous estimates.

Overall, seas rose two inches in that span, but the change in rate is what is important, the experts said, because it implies greater coastal retreats than anticipated last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The rate of sea-level rise has dropped sharply since 2006, according to satellite tracking.

The instrument in question, an expendable bathythermograph, is cheap and disposable, used for example by submarines to find the thermocline, the depth where warm and cold layers of ocean water meet. It was designed to take snapshots of water temperatures, not to collect readings that could be compared year after year, as is required with climate studies. Oceanographers have been trying to identify errors in the ocean-temperature data for awhile. (NYT)