This climate change thing sure is complicated. Researchers with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory studying temperature changes in the world's oceans are finding they don't seem to have heated up all in the last 5 years or so.
Scientists at the lab have been working on a program called Argo that looks at ocean temperatures using robotic buoys which dive down to three thousand feet to collect data. Since the study began in 2003, measurements have not only failed to find evidence of warming, but in fact have picked up a slight cooling trend.
The results of the study are especially significant since 80-90% of global warming involves the oceans, which retain far more heat than land.
The findings are difficult to reconcile with surface readings, which show consistently rising temperatures. JPL scientist Josh Willis recently said in an interview with NPR that the phenomenon may have something to do with heat flowing from the water into the air (the phenomenon known as El Nino), or it may reflect a a brief hiatus in an overall warming trend. Other possibilities are that researchers aren't interpreting the data properly, or that the heat is going deep into the ocean where it isn't being measured by the Argo buoys.
As if the figurative waters weren't muddy enough, static sea temperatures should imply stable sea levels, since water expands when heated. However, sea levels have risen by about half an inch in the last four years - a significant change.
So is it time to take a long drive in the Hummer and hack down a little rain forest to celebrate the end of global warming? Probably not; climate is incredibly complex, and there are clearly a few things going on here that aren't fully understood just yet. However, it may be time to fire up the old supercomputer and reexamine the climate change models.
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