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CLIMATE
If you can’t
stand the heat...
Warm water now storing heat below the surface is liable
to cause future atmospheric temperatures to rocket
Credit: © Shutterstock
Our climate
change is
related to deep
ocean currents
and glaciations
The days when the flap of butterflies’ wings were theorised to cause potential storms across
the earth are not over. But instead of chaos theory, we now have real storms caused by outdated
technologies that pollute and then warm the whole planet
The top 10 normally
refers to
something popular,
pleasant
or in some way
profitable. This time it’s the
bad news. Since this millennium
started, we have now
had the 10 hottest years.
Only four have failed to
breach the records. Carbon
dioxide concentrations naturally
rose to the highest in
the last 30 years in 2013, too.
NOAA has recorded these
facts for us, with politics and
economists finally turning
to the warm side as well.
With those CO2 figures,
we are due for a century or
two of continued warming.
The struggle will be to
contain that temperature to
a 2oC. rise. Politically, those
who thought previously we
could manage our emissions
regarded that aim as
achievable. Now it is very
unlikely.
Warming oceans have,
hidden depths, if you like.
The warm water now
storing heat below the
surface waters is liable to
cause future atmospheric
temperatures to rocket.
With Australia’s day
temperatures breaking
their records and the UK
with a hottest September,
only 1976 stands out with a
below 20th century average
temperature over the
whole globe. There was a
cold winter last year, but
only in the US (the eastern
bit.)
The final months of this
year are not included in
NOAAs annual Septemberfest
of world climate figures.
The awful truth is that 2014
will almost certainly set an
annual record for heat. Of 9
months so far, 4 have been
record breakers with most
others contributing to the
prospect for record warmth.
Ocean temperatures
can’t change quickly,
leaving us to finish off the
year in literally hot water!
Last year’s report is also
interesting, to compare the
approaches in “Remember
November”. Politicians and
decision makers should pay
much more attention this
time around.
The El Niño Southern
Oscillation is set to bring us
that awesome harbinger of
disaster, with estimates of
a 60% chance of its warming
presence by December
this year. That means the
intense flooding in Jammu
and Kashmir and the terrible
loss of Arctic ice (not as
in the Antarctic) will simply
be symptoms of worse to
come. The droughts and
flood, ice loss and giant
cyclones (hurricanes) will
be with us for a long time,
and with a vengeance. –
www.earthtimes.org
The mapping of currents deep in the oceans
has been a protracted study. A combination
of deep ocean sediment core samples and
NASA imaging now reveal that climate
change is affected at least as much by the
sea as by the air temperature. Rutgers
University academics Stella Woodard, Yair
Rosenthal, Kenneth Miller, James Wright,
with Kira Lawrence (Lafayette College) and
Beverly Chiu, all contributed to the paper in
the journal Science that puts a new perspective
on climate change.
We recently looked at Atlantic/Pacific
deep ocean current links in Ocean temperature
alarm call. The amount of greenhouse
gases in circulation within our oceans has
also possibly been underestimated. As the
earth has cooled over the last 2.7 million
years and continental ice has built up, ocean
circulation changed to that we saw in the
previous paper.
The cause could have been the major
expansion in northern hemisphere glacier
volume, associated with falls in sea level.
Heat and CO2 began then to be pulled into
the Atlantic and moved from north to south
before being conveyed to the Pacific and
released. Antarctic ice would have played
a role too, cutting off heat exchange at the
surface there, and forcing heat energy to the
depths.
And the effects of carbon dioxide? Well, 3
million years ago, in the late Pliocene, we had
similar levels of the gas in the atmosphere,
with higher temperatures (around 2.3oC.), so
there is a possibility we could assume those
ancient oceanic and atmospheric conditions
again. Phew!
Global climate change was not caused
then by carbon dioxide levels rising,
so the ice changes explain the cooling
instead. That modern circulation in the
oceanic deeps is revealed in sediment core
samples up to 3.3 million years old. Prof. Yair
Rosenthal has the last word on that with his
summary here.
“Our study suggests that changes in
the storage of heat in the deep ocean could
be as important to climate change as other
hypotheses - tectonic activity or a drop
in the carbon dioxide level - and likely led
to one of the major climate transitions of
the past 30 million years,” he said. – www.
earthtimes.org
green+.2014, november-december 67